Land Of The Blind

of jail.' Eli grinned. 'He just got busted again a few days ago for cocaine. Isn't that great?'

'You hired an investigator to find Pete Decker?' I asked.

He must've registered the discomfort in my voice because he took a step back. 'Yeah, like we were talking about. Unfinished business. I mean, you of all people must've wondered what happened to Pete Decker.'

I was curious, but honestly I felt nothing as I looked at the pictures of this skinny, smoked-out guy, hands in his jeans pockets, a cigarette butt dangling from his mouth.

'Yeah,' I said. 'I don't mean there are scores to settle. It's more about myself, like I got sidetracked, like I've forgotten who I was supposed to be.' Again, I thought of Dana. And Ben. 'Like I've let people down.'

Eli smiled and took the pictures back. When he put them in the drawer I saw something black and metallic and it was only later that I realized that it was a handgun. And if I make this discovery sound casual on my part, a fleeting image, know that later, when hatred and revenge filled my chest, I had no trouble remembering exactly where that gun was located.

'Come on,' Eli said. 'I want to show you one more thing.'

I followed him out the door and down the stairs. We crossed the dry lawn to the main house, dark and empty. He juggled some keys until he found the right one. He turned on a light and half the bulbs lit up in a huge chandelier in the foyer. I followed him into the big open living room, pillars on either side of the door and a curved staircase climbing to the second floor. The windows were topped with stained glass and the wood floors were polished and immaculate.

'Beautiful,' I said.

'It's too big. And there are so many windows. It feels so… exposed. I don't feel like I fit here, like my life hasn't caught up with this house. So I haven't put any furniture here. I haven't hung anything on the walls.' He gestured to the fireplace. 'Except that.'

It took me a moment to recognize the framed photograph that hung above the mantel. There were four people in the picture and they were so young, their faces line-less and blameless and unafraid. The two girls in front were pretty, especially the petite dark-haired one, who smiled shyly, as if she knew something the others didn't. The other girl clearly didn't want to be in the picture and she contributed little beyond a bland attractiveness – blond hair, blue dress, baby's breath corsage. But it was the two boys in the flaring tuxes who caught my attention: the taller one with the feral hair and uneven eyes, his arm thrown around the shoulder of the short awkward boy, who beamed like this was the high point of his life.

I felt Eli over my shoulder. 'You were fearless,' Eli said. 'You did whatever you wanted. Played sports and dated cheerleaders and ran for everything. I thought you could do anything you wanted.'

I turned back to Eli Boyle and it occurred to me that, outside my family, he'd known me longer than anyone in the world.

'I remember who you were going to be,' Eli said.

I looked at the prom picture again.

That's when he pulled a pen and a checkbook from his back pocket, leaned against the wall, and wrote out a check. He turned and handed it to me. It was a check for ten thousand dollars. It was made out to 'The Committee to Elect Clark Mason.'

'I can help you,' he said.

And even though it was preposterous, seeing my name like that – The Committee to Elect… – it sparked something in me, something primal and powerful. I tried to laugh it off but I could not take my eyes off the check. 'Elect me to what?'

'Whatever you want,' he said. 'Something big.'

And that was it – the genesis of my half-witted plan to become Representative Clark Mason (later, Eli and I agreed that a candidate with two last names might be a meal too rich for Spokane voters and I went with my middle name, Tony), my plan to pick up my ambitions at the place where I'd left them fifteen years before. Eventually Eli and I settled on the U.S. House of Representatives as my best big shot. The current lifer in that seat, a prosaic Republican named George N-, was vulnerable for the first time because he'd defeated the previous lifer, Tom F-, an equally prosaic Democrat, solely on the issue of term limits – specifically, limiting candidates to three terms. Now, of course, faced with his own fourth term, George N- had changed his mind and decided term limits weren't such a good idea after all.

We talked about it all that first night and the next night and every day for the next two weeks. We were taken with the millennial excitement of the 2000 campaign, the opportunity to present a new kind of candidate – progressive both socially and technologically – and over the next few months Tony Mason was born.

My God, I was invigorated. It was as if clogged blood vessels had been cleared to my head and my heart. But if I was happy, Eli was positively exuberant, and he attended the details of my impending campaign as if we were both running.

'Butch and Sundance,' he said one day, out of the blue. 'Together again!' I mostly laughed this kind of stuff off, but it was a recurring theme for Eli in those early days of the campaign, this idea that the election was about him and me. 'It's good to have someone who will always be loyal to you,' he said one day.

'You bet,' I said.

'You know, Clark,' he said another time, as we priced office space for my campaign headquarters, 'in my whole life, I never made another friend like you.'

I thought about our fight at the bus stop, the way I avoided him at school and made out with his date at the prom, the way I used him and Empire to try to get Dana back into my life, how I went weeks, months, even years without talking to him. And he thought of me as his best friend. But again, I was too self-absorbed to really register Eli's loneliness, or to imagine what he got out of helping me run for office. All I could think about was the campaign; all I could think about was the candidate.

Even though the general election was still two years away, my contacts in the Democratic Party were clearly intrigued by me. Conservative Spokane was a tough sell and anyone who had a plan – and, especially, his own money – was welcome to run. After getting the party's blessing, the very first person I called was my old professor, Richard Stanton.

'Maybe you ought to just go straight for president,' he said.

I explained my theory, why I thought George N- might be vulnerable this time, how I was going to bring economic development to my old hometown, how I would run as the first true candidate of the twenty-first century.

He said he hadn't heard me this excited since I was imagining my stupid nonprofit legal service ideas. 'Good to have you back, Mason,' he said.

That's when I asked him to be my campaign manager.

Dr. Stanton burst into laughter. 'No way in hell.'

I figured I could change his mind later. In the short term I began fund-raising, calling some of my old business contacts. Finally, after a week or so, I called Michael and Dana Langford at home. It had been two months since I'd slept with Dana.

'Mason,' Michael said. 'Tell me: how is it that you're not in prison?'

I heard someone else come into the room with Michael. 'Hey, baby,' he said. 'It's our old friend, Clark Mason.'

I patiently and evenly explained what I was doing, and said that if he and his wife would support my candidacy in any way, I would be eternally grateful.

He put his hand over the phone and I could hear him telling Dana. After the word 'Congress,' he burst into laughter. Then Dana came on the phone.

'Are you really?' she asked. I was thrilled at the things I heard in her voice – pride and envy, hesitation and urgency.

'Yes,' I said. 'I am.'

'That's great,' she said. 'Of course we'll make a donation.'

'Hey, tell him our news,' Michael said in the background.

'I was going to,' she said, another strain in her voice. 'Clark, do you remember in Spokane, when you and I were talking about timing?'

'Of course I remember,' I said quietly. 'You said mine was bad.'

She cleared her throat. 'Well, I didn't know for sure then, but now I do,' she said. 'I'm pregnant. Michael and I