The Best Laid Plans.

Terry Fallis.

For Nancy, Calder, and Ben.

The best-laid schemes o' Mice an' Men.

Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy.

The best laid plans of mice and men Often go awry.

And leave us nothing but grief and pain.

Instead of promised joy!

-ROBERT BURNS, To A Mouse (1785).

PROLOGUE.

I am Daniel Addison. When I escaped Ottawa the first time, I was head speech writer for the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. But after five years in the crucible of Parliament Hill, my public-service calling was battered beyond recognition. Naive, innocent, and excited when I arrived, I was embittered, exhausted, and ineffably sad when I left.

Still, I remained liberal and a Liberal in that order. I had come by my liberalism the hard way by slowly and steadily shedding the expectations and a.s.sumptions inflicted by my family's five generations of leadership in the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party. I had canva.s.sed for PC candidates when the staples in my diet had been pureed chicken and strained peaches. In those days, the candidate-kissing-the-baby shot had been de rigueur for campaign leaflets. Well, I had served as the local baby until I was old enough for it to be creepy. Check out the party's photo archives and you'll find my smiling mug over and over again, my snowsuits or sunhats festooned with Tory paraphernalia according to the season.

When I arrived at university, I decided that family tradition was one reason to be a Tory, just not a very good one. So I decided to read about ideology, liberalism, socialism, and conservatism and what they really meant in theory, in practice, and in our history. I majored in English but also pursued my personal political science minor on the side. The more I read, the more of what had been my family's bedrock cracked and crumbled. After literally a lifetime of blind support for the Progressive Conservative Party, the family veil fell, and I realized in my heart and in my head that I was actually a Liberal. My forebears are still dizzy from subterranean spinning.

My parents seemed amused by my conversion and considered it to be a predictable manifestation of late-onset teenage rebellion. Their tolerance of what some of my relatives considered a knife in the family's back or, at least, a slap in the face was couched in the sincere belief that I would eventually come to my senses. Even then, I felt certain I'd be a Liberal for life.

In the first year of my master's program in English after much soul-searching I capitalized the L and joined the Liberal Party of Canada. Uncle Charlie stopped speaking to me. Had I known, I'd have taken the plunge years earlier.

I landed in the Opposition Leader's office after completing my coursework for a PhD in Canadian literature at the University of Ottawa. I started in the correspondence unit and within eighteen months, wrote my way up from letters to speeches. For most of my thirty-two years, I had lived with what I called my "completion complex." I was bound to finish what I started. I couldn't leave any food on my plate even if the meatb.a.l.l.s were hard as golf b.a.l.l.s. I couldn't start a book, hate the opening chapters, and discard it until suffering through all 569 pages of it. I would sit through far more very, very bad movies than someone with even average cerebral capacity would ever endure. So leaving U of O one dissertation shy of my PhD was a therapeutic breakthrough, of sorts. After all, an opening as a wordsmith for the Leader of the Liberal Party (arguably, the Prime Minister in waiting) did not beckon often. I took the job. But in twisted tribute to my completion complex, I somehow nursed along my dissertation on Canadian comedic novels at night while turning phrases by day. After enduring Liberal caucus meetings, I found that defending my dissertation two years later was as easy as the dinner conversation in Leave it to Beaver. However, juggling my time and the demands of both poles of my life was not easy. Some of my colleagues thought I was very committed while others simply thought I should be. I languished somewhere in the middle. I was glad the PhD was done but was unclear about the implications. Clarity came soon enough.

On Parliament Hill, the pendulum of power swings between the cynical political operators (CPOs) and the idealist policy wonks (IPWs). It's a naturally self-regulating model that inevitably transfers power from one group to the other and back again. It can take years, even multiple elections, for the pendulum to swing to the other side. It was just my luck that I a member in good standing of the idealist-policy-wonk contingent would arrive in Ottawa just as the backroom boys were starting their swing back up to the top.

To be fair, governments work best when the pendulum is somewhere near the middle with the CPOs and IPWs sharing power. When the CPOs are dominant, as they were when I arrived in Ottawa (and when I left, for that matter), they tend to erode public confidence in the democratic process and infect the electorate with the cynicism, self-interest, and opportunism that flow in their veins. In the mind of a hardcore CPO, the ends always, always justify the means. At least, that's my balanced, impartial view.

On the other hand, when the IPWs are at the helm, however well-meaning we may be, we often lack the necessary killer instinct and political ac.u.men to push our vaunted policies across the finish line. We can't seem to accept that selling the policy is just as important as coming up with it in the first place. We seldom get to the ends because we mess up the means.

But even the staunchest policy wonk cannot work in a CPO-controlled environment without absorbing and a.s.similating the overtly political approach we wonks philosophically abhor. It's insidious and inexorable. One day, you wake up and find you're instinctively reviewing polling data in a different way; you find yourself thinking about the election cycle and how to isolate the weak Cabinet Minister from the rest of the herd in order to move in for the kill. I felt sick when I realized how my perspective had changed. I was as if I had inadvertently crossed to the dark side and that all the backroom boys were waiting just across the threshold to present me with monogrammed suspenders, shove a cigar in my yap, and welcome me into the fold. It really was time to go.

But in the interest of full disclosure and transparency concepts sadly absent in government these days I confess there was more to my hasty retreat from Ottawa than a near-fatal case of political disillusionment. Something else also played a role. Around the time of my crisis of conscience, my two-year relationship with Rachel Bronwin flamed out in much the same way as the s.p.a.ce shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean. When I replay our last encounter in my mind, I always accompany the scene with the public-address voice of NASA Mission Control, uttering that now cla.s.sic understatement, "obviously a major malfunction," as burning wreckage fell into the sea.

Rachel was serving as senior political adviser to d.i.c.k Warrington, the youngish and, some would say, handsome Opposition House Leader. I had met Rachel at a political-a.s.sistants' meeting, and we had clicked in a way that had left me somewhat unnerved. She was wonderful in every way. It was as simple and rare as that. She was intelligent, thoughtful, committed, ambitious, and beautiful so beautiful that our relationship violated the accepted order of the universe. The match just wasn't credible. Someone like me was not supposed to be dating, let alone sleeping with, someone like her. But I was. I wore the perpetual, loopy grin of a lottery-ticket holder who wins big his first time out.

When we would walk hand in hand down Sparks Street on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, I could almost feel the skeptical glances of pa.s.sers-by. Modesty aside, I'm a far cry from ugly. But I was not exactly in Rachel's cla.s.s. Pierce Brosnan would have just barely made the cut.

For those two years, I'd never been happier. By the end of month six, I had a toothbrush at her apartment in the Glebe. On our first anniversary, she gave me the bottom drawer in her dresser. After two years, I was frequently noting the folly of paying rent for two apartments when only one was really being used. I really thought the big search might be over. I'd also finally stopped looking over my shoulder, waiting for some uniformed relationship bureaucrat to tell me that there'd been some mix up with my paperwork and that I couldn't see Rachel any more. He never showed up, but someone else did.

Nothing really seemed amiss at the time. I thought she seemed a little distracted, even distant, but I blamed that on a spike in her workload. Lookingbacknow, I realize she was pulling a few more all-nighters at the office than might be reasonably expected of the senior adviser to the Opposition House Leader. It was mid-July so Parliament wasn't even sitting at the time. Hindsight is a cruel companion.

One night, after Rachel told me she'd be working late again, I unexpectedly found myself back in Centre Block, picking up the car keys I'd managed to leave on a table in the Library of Parliament earlier in the day. No wonder I left my keys there. I usually became misty-eyed and foggy-headed in the Library of Parliament, so I often forgot things there. I thought of the library as one my favourite places in the world. In one of Canadian history's few spasms of generosity, the fire of 1916 spared the library and its immaculate woodwork while razing the rest of the original Parliament building. A new and equally majestic Centre Block was erected to house the two chambers of our democracy, grafted onto the original library in all its august glory.

I like to think that the best speeches I wrote for the Liberal Leader were penned and polished in the Library of Parliament. My preferred spot was a varnished, wooden table under the watchful gaze of a white plaster bust of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. When words would abandon me, I'd stare at Laurier or read his speeches from Hansard, which lined the shelves behind me. Canada has sp.a.w.ned precious few orators and even fewer leaders of Laurier's calibre. I fear he'd be disgusted and depressed were he to return to the House of Commons today for the tabloid TV of question period.

After leaving the library's security desk, keys in hand, I thought I'd surprise Rachel and, given the hour, perhaps even drive her home. I strolled through Centre Block, feeling the history, as always, seeping out of the walls. I pushed open the door to the House Leader's office and found the reception area empty and dark. I could look right down the hallway to Rachel's office, which was bathed in light from her black, halogen desk lamp. I was surprised to see the House Leader himself sprawled in Rachel's chair with his hands on his head like he was about to be handcuffed. He had a rapt expression on his face, which left me somewhat perplexed for another two breaths. That's when I caught sight of Rachel.

For me, Centre Block is hallowed ground. I'm reluctant to defile its image with tawdry descriptions of infidelity. On the other hand, what happened that night gave me the strength to reject the path of least resistance and get the h.e.l.l out of that netherworld. So I'll recount the story, but out of respect, I'll take care to honour the strictures of parliamentary language.

Rachel, my Rachel, was on her knees in front of the Opposition House Leader. Let's just say she was rather enthusiastically lobbying his caucus. Stunned and devastated, I turned away to get a better view in the lee of a well-endowed rubber plant. Rachel jumped into her advance work with both hands before moving to what seemed to be his favourite part of the proceedings Oral Questions. Eventually, he pulled her up off the floor and onto the desk where he begged leave to introduce his private Member's bill. Clearly, there was unanimous consent as the cut and thrust of debate started immediately well, mostly thrust. By the look on her face, second reading was proceeding satisfactorily with just a few indecipherable heckles thrown in for good measure. The House Leader occasionally shouted "hear, hear" and slapped her backbench in support. At one point, she amended her position on his bill, and the debate continued.

They were hurtling towards royal a.s.sent when I regained my faculties. I considered rising on a point of personal privilege, but, abhorring confrontation of any kind, I simply threw up on the rubber plant and stumbled back out into Centre Block's arched and awe-inspiring main corridor. Portraits of former prime ministers mocked me as I hurried by, searching for answers and some industrial-strength breath mints. At that moment, I was sure that Rachel and the Honourable "d.i.c.khead" had no idea I was their vomiting vestibule voyeur. d.a.m.n my weakness for alliteration.

By the time Rachel arrived home in the wee hours, I'd already cleaned out my drawer and repatriated my toothbrush. I left her a crumpled leaf from the rubber plant, which I was surprised to find still clenched in my hand, along with a terse note, breaking it off and suggesting that she invest in a deadbolt and a do not disturb sign for the office. I resigned the next day.

Before meeting with the Leader and his chief of staff to consummate my escape from federal politics, I made a phone call to the head of the English department at the University of Ottawa, who was also my dissertation supervisor. I couldn't just throw in the towel and live off my savings and investments until I found gainful employment. Given the state of my finances, that would mean finding another job by the following Tuesday afternoon. So I decided to advance the plans I'd already intended to pursue just not so soon.

Professor Phillip Gannon not only ran the English department but also chaired the faculty-appointments' committee. They'd recently had a transfer appointment fall through and weren't happy. The committee was short one junior professor for the fall term, and they were scrambling to find a replacement. He'd already called me some weeks before to gauge my interest. At the time, I was still planning on staying with the Leader through the election expected in early October and perhaps becoming speech writer to the Prime Minister should the campaign unexpectedly go our way. But much had changed in two weeks, and I prayed that in the dead of summer, the committee members would be more interested in their Gatineau cottages than in searching for a newly minted PhD to teach Canadian Literature 101. After the way my life seemed to be unraveling, I fully expected this opportunity to have been shut down already. I was wrong.

Professor Gannon was thrilled to hear of my interest in the position. Apparently, I was saving his bacon, not to mention his summer. He did a quick call around to his vacationing committee members, and by noon, I had paperwork on my home e-mail. In the minds of the dock-lounging committee members, I was more than qualified to teach undergraduate English. After all, I knew my ABCs and had never been in prison. As for the approval of the Senate Committee on Appointments, my years on Parliament Hill and a.s.sumed proximity to power at a time when the university was seeking federal funding for a new economics building seemed to grease the wheels.

The university usually operated in geological time but not that day. By three-thirty, it was official. I was the English department's newest faculty member. Thanks to a practice common in many universities when easing in a new and untested faculty member, I wouldn't actually be teaching until the second term, freeing up some time in the fall to orient myself to the rigours of life in academe.

Despite appearances, joining the faculty wasn't a precipitous decision on my part. I'd already decided to pursue teaching after completing my PhD. I just didn't think it would happen for another few years. In politics, leaving your options open is standard operating procedure.

My final meeting with the Leader and Bradley Stanton, his chief of staff, went as expected at least until the end. In other words, they were mad as h.e.l.l. How could I abandon them on the eve of an election? After all they'd done for me, how could I leave just as the battle beckoned? I calmly explained that I'd already produced the election kickoff speech, two stump speeches (one of them down and dirty, which hammered the Government, and the other one high-road, which sounded more Prime Ministerial), opening and closing debate remarks along with witty and thoughtful repartee in all policy areas, a victory speech, and a concession speech. Stanton had been so busy planning diabolical campaign gambits that he knew nothing of my election prep work.

I apologized for the short notice and pledged my support during the campaign, provided it didn't interfere with my new faculty responsibilities. I also offered to partic.i.p.ate in debate prep when the networks and the party leaders had decided on timing and format. As the meeting wound down, the Leader seemed to soften and asked me if I was moving out of Ottawa. I replied that I really wanted to get out of the city as part of my reintegration into normal Canadian society. Escaping Ottawa's gravitational pull was a big part of my plan, I explained, as I relayed my intention to find a place on the water in c.u.mberland, about a 30-minute drive east of the capital on the Ottawa River. Several U of O faculty members lived there and made the short, sedate commute to campus every day. The Chief of Staff's left eyebrow lifted in a Spockian arch, and a wave of unease washed over me.

I had made a big mistake mentioning c.u.mberland. Since birth, I had had great difficulty saying no. Though I was already guilt-ridden for bailing on the imminent campaign, I was determined to make a clean break. But like a thin crust on new-fallen snow, my resistance looked solid enough only to give way at the slightest touch. The Leader gave me his sad-eyes routine, and I swayed, vibrated, and collapsed like the Tacoma Bridge. One last favour; then, I was out.

I left the Leader's office and Parliament Hill, not quite free of politics. My parting gift to the Leader? I promised to find a Liberal candidate for the riding of c.u.mberland-Prescott and then manage the local campaign. I'd be free and clear by mid-October.

No problem. Piece of cake. How hard could it be?

c.u.mberland-Prescott a Tory stronghold since before confederation and currently held by the Honourable Eric Cameron, the most popular Finance Minister in Canadian history. He was young, good-looking, widowed, and blessed with an eloquence that, while honed and rehea.r.s.ed, sounded as if he were talking off the cuff a wonderful gift in politics. In other words, Cameron was as close as any politician came to the elusive "complete package."

People actually believed he was honest and a straight shooter. I saw through him. I loathed him in a partisan way. But I may have been the only person in Canada who did. I had watched him at close range for five years and was convinced he was not what he seemed. He couldn't possibly be. n.o.body could be. He'd won the last election by over 36,000 votes, up from a 31,000 plurality in the previous campaign. His most recent budget, introduced in February, gave Canadians a 10 per cent cut in personal income tax, a one-point cut in the goods and services tax, and higher RRSP limits, while still paying off $10 billion of the nation's debt. Masterful.

Skyrocketing favourability ratings for the budget, the Tory government, and the Finance Minister himself had the pollsters checking and rechecking their field and tab operations. No one had ever seen anything like it. The unprecedented numbers cemented an autumn election call. And we weren't ready. c.u.mberland-Prescott was the only const.i.tuency in Canada still without a nominated Liberal candidate. Only seven weeks remained before the Prime Minister's quadrennial drop-in at the Governor General's to dissolve Parliament and call an election.

Despite an unprecedented Tory lead in the polls, we had many, many hard-fought Liberal nomination battles across the country. We were optimistic, had attracted some star candidates, and had put little stock in the pre-election numbers. Inexplicably, most Liberals across the country were feeling good. Why? Well, during an election period, seemingly rational people commonly take leave of their senses and replace reason with hope. Political parties have practiced the ma.s.s delusion of their members long before the Reverend Jim Jones took it to the next level. Despite this ill-conceived Liberal optimism in many parts of the country, Eric Cameron's utter invincibility cast a pall over the handful of Liberals living in c.u.mberland. The Liberal riding a.s.sociation was not just moribund, it was very nearly extinct.

So I packed up and moved to c.u.mberland, choosing a clean but inexpensive local motel as my home base until I could find permanent accommodations. But that wasn't my first priority. I had seven weeks to secure a Liberal candidate for c.u.mberland-Prescott, no doubt to be led once more to the electoral slaughter. Otherwise, I'd be struck from the Leader's Christmas-card list a sure sign of political excommunication.

Part One.

CHAPTER ONE.

After an impressive hang time, I plummeted back to the sidewalk, my fall broken by a fresh, putrid pile of excrement the size of a small ottoman. I quickly scanned the area for a hippo on the lam.

Before I quite literally found myself in deep s.h.i.t, my day had actually been ripe with promise. I'm a big believer in signs. After six straight days of rain, I believed the sun burning a hole in the cloudless, cobalt sky was a sign a good one. It somehow lightened the load I'd been lugging around in my mind for the previous six weeks. I lifted my face to the warmth and squinted as I walked along the edge of Riverfront Park. Even though it was a Monday morning, I hummed a happy little tune. Maybe, just maybe, things were looking up. Unfortunately, so was I.

My foot made a soft landing on the sidewalk and shot forward all on its own, leaving a brown, viscous streak in its wake. Congenitally clumsy, I was well into the splits before I managed to drag my trailing leg forward and slip the surly bonds of earth. Airborne, I surveyed the terrain below and, with all the athletic prowess of a quadriplegic walrus, returned safely to earth, touching down on the aforementioned c.r.a.p cushion.

Just after I landed, I counted roughly twenty witnesses, who stared slack-jawed before many of them split their sides. Fortunately, only a handful of them had video cameras. I expect you can still find me on klutzklips.com. Everyone seemed quite amused by the prominent sign planted three feet to my left: KEEP c.u.mBERLAND CLEAN. PLEASE STOOP AND SCOOP. The owners of whatever behemoth produced this Guinness-book offering would have needed a Hefty bag and a snow shovel.

And what an unholy aroma. I've always believed that English is better equipped than any other language to capture the richness and diversity of our daily lives. I promise you, the Oxford Concise does not yet have words to describe the stench that rose like a mushroom cloud from that colossal mound. Stepping in it was one thing; full immersion was quite another.

Bright sun in a clear blue sky good sign. Russian split jump into a gigantic dog t.u.r.d not a good sign. Good form, good air, but not a good sign.

An hour and a shower later, I retraced my steps, eyes fixed on the pavement, ignoring the two township workers in hazmat suits at the scene of my fall. I quickened my pace, pumping myself up for the important encounter ahead. After nearly six weeks of intensive searching, I was down to my last seven days. I'd tried flattery, threats, cajolery, blackmail, and bribery, but had come up empty and bone-dry nothing.

In the first two weeks after my arrival in c.u.mberland, I'd spoken to the mayor and every town councilor, including the lone Liberal, as well as the head of the chamber of commerce. No dice. In week three, I had pleaded with prominent business leaders, local doctors and lawyers, the head of the four-bus transit authority, and the high-school princ.i.p.al. They're all still laughing. In fact, one of them needed two sick days to rest a pulled stomach muscle. Last week, I had bought drinks for the local crossing guard, baked cookies for the chief instructor at the Prescott Driving School, and shared inane banter with the golf pro at the c.u.mberland Mini-Putt. No luck, although the crossing guard at least listened to half my spiel before holding up her stop sign.

I like to think that one of my few strengths is a keen sense of when I'm doomed. None of this "the gla.s.s is half full" stuff for me. I know when I'm in deep. So I gave up and returned to the no-hope option I'd rejected at the outset as cruel and unusual punishment. But what else could I do? I had splinters from sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the barrel.

The Riverfront Seniors' Residence loomed on my left just beyond the park. Built in 1952, it had that utterly forgettable but, I suppose, practical architecture of that era early Canadian ugly. Two wings of rooms extended along the riverbank on either side of a central lobby. Everything looked painfully rectangular. The only architectural grace note, just adjacent to the dining room, was a curved wall of windows, overlooking the Ottawa River. For the residents, the panorama provided a welcome distraction from the steam-table cuisine.

The lounge next to the dining room was populated with 30-year-old couches and chairs, sporting strangely hued upholstery from the "shades of internal organs" collection, accessorized by protective plastic slip covers. I saw a couple of dozen or so residents camped out in the lounge. Some were reading. Others were locked in debate over what vegetables would accompany the pot roast that night. A few simply gazed at nothing at all with a forlorn and vacant look. The scent of air freshener hung heavy, only just subduing that other odor sadly common to many seniors' residences. I loitered in the lobby, surveying the scene and deciding on my approach. Evidently, I was too slow.

A grizzled, old man in a peach safari suit and a lavender, egg-encrusted tie looked me up and down a few times, wrestling with his memory. Finally, recognition dawned on his withered face. "Hey, it's the doggy doo-doo diving champ!" he shouted. I glanced at the aging alliteration aficionado before taking in the rest of the room. All eyes turned to me. I saw heads nodding and smiles breaking. A wheelchair-ridden centenarian gave me a thumbs-up. I heard a smattering of applause that slowly gathered strength and culminated some time later in an osteoporotic, stooping ovation. I felt compelled to take a bow. When the commotion abated, the guy in the peach safari suit approached.

"I gotta tell you that was some performance this morning. After that horse of a dog dropped his load in the middle of the sidewalk, we were all gathered by the window there, waiting for some poor sap to step in it. We even had a pool going."

"I'm certainly gratified that I could brighten your day," I answered with an inferior replica of a genuine smile.

"We had no idea someone would actually throw himself into it. What a showstopper! What chutzpah! We haven't had that much excitement around here since the great Arnie Shaw flatulence evacuation in 94."

"My pleasure," I said. "I'll work up a new routine for next week. Perhaps you can help me. I'm looking for Muriel Parkinson. Do you know where I can find her?"

He surveyed the room and pointed to the far corner. I followed his crooked finger to see an attractive and well-dressed woman, trying to conceal herself behind an anemic benjamina ficus that really wasn't up to the job.

"Thank you," I replied and started towards her.

From behind me, I heard, "No no, thank you. You made our month, young man."

I recognized Muriel Parkinson immediately. I'd met her four years earlier at a Liberal Campaign College prior to the last election. She had attended a workshop that I had led on election communications for campaign managers and candidates. We had eaten lunch together that day, and I had gotten to know one of the grand old dames of the Liberal Party. She'd been acclaimed as the Liberal candidate in c.u.mberland-Prescott for the previous five elections, never once gaining enough support to get back our deposit. Now, that redefines dedication.

During World War II, Muriel had actually worked as Mackenzie King's head secretary. Some historians believed she served as his sounding board and confidante when his dog, Pat, was unavailable. She was Liberal to the core. I clung to the fact that for five consecutive campaigns, with no hope of winning, she'd stood as the lone Liberal in the safest Tory riding in the land. I harboured a faint hope that she might have a sixth left in her.

I was expecting at least to have the element of surprise. I didn't think my mission was well known beyond a small circle at national campaign headquarters back in Ottawa. But from her reaction, I had a faint inkling my cover was blown. She peeked through the spa.r.s.e branches of the ficus and saw that I had a lock on her. Resigned, she sat back in her chair and waved her hands in front of her face in the universal gesture for "get the h.e.l.l away from me."

"No no no no no!" she yelled. "Do not even think about it! Do not pa.s.s go! Do not collect two hundred dollars. Security! Security!" She yelled just loud enough to vibrate the picture window behind her. What a voice.

The room once again turned to me while I held my hands up in the universal gesture for "I'm harmless and just want to talk." Fortunately, the celebrity conferred by my morning acrobatics had not yet waned, and I was permitted to continue. I approached her as an asylum orderly might inch towards a violent patient.

"h.e.l.lo, Muriel, I'm Daniel Addison. We had lunch together a few years back at the last candidates' school. How are you doing?"

"I know who you are, and I know why you're here," she said. "You really have your nerve. I told the Leader's office that under no circ.u.mstances would I stand again. I've done my part. Get somebody else to fall on their sword this time."

"Look, we really think Cameron's ripe for the picking this time around," I countered, wondering how plugged-in she still was to the local political scene.

"Look, college boy," Muriel said, "I'll lay it out for you. Eric Cameron is so high in the polls he starts each day with a nosebleed. I've run against him in the last three elections and have never even come close to seeing his dust in the distance. He's smooth, courteous, educated, articulate, widowed, for mercy's sake, and so right wing that the middle of the road is in a different time zone!" Her tirade aroused the interest of everyone in the room and several who weren't. "I'm eighty-one years old," she continued. "I've got the shakes, and I've been in the bathroom thirteen times in the last three hours. I would not run again if the Leader promised to name me amba.s.sador to Bermuda. And looking at the polls, he won't be able to offer me a House of Commons Visitor's Pa.s.s for much longer. I am not your candidate!" she harrumphed with finality, crossing her arms.

I lowered my voice in a vain attempt to lower the temperature. "Is that why you think I'm here to persuade you to run again?" I asked, giving her my best wounded look.

"Well, I don't think you're here to ask me on a date." I paused, unsure of how to play it out. Concern clouded her face. "Oh, please, tell me you're not here to ask me out," she blurted, mortified.

"I'm not here to ask you on a date," I conceded. "My two-year relationship with a philandering girlfriend just ended, and I plan to lay low for a while." I thought I'd open up a little and go for the sympathy vote.

"Then, I'm agog. You really are here to get me to run again, aren't you?" she pressed.

I really had no idea how to handle her, so I just rolled over. "Okay, okay, I thought I at least owed you the right of first refusal."

"Consider it exercised, Danny boy. I'm not your girl this time around. Am I coming in loud and clear, or should I speak slower?"

I crumpled into the chair beside her and buried my head in my hands. I toyed with the thought of convulsive blubbering, but she'd have been unmoved, and around the room, a dozen gnarled hands would've shot from sleeves, offering used tissues.

"What am I going to do?" I wheezed. "If I don't find a candidate to run against Cameron in four days, my solemn promise to the Leader will be broken."

"A broken promise in politics? Stop the presses!" she quipped. Now, she looked like she was officially enjoying herself.

"I just want to do the right thing and leave with a clear conscience," I stammered and fell silent.

I could feel her eyes on me, and when I looked up, they seemed to soften. I knew she'd never run. I think I knew that before I'd even arrived at Riverfront Seniors' Residence. But Muriel Parkinson was a loyal Liberal.

"Look, Daniel, I'll work on the campaign, but my name will not be on the ballot. Is that clear?" she asked gently.

I was very much in a "take what you can get" frame of mind. I was also filled with affection and grat.i.tude, and I told her so. A topic change was in order before she reconsidered.

"How long have you lived here?"

"About two years," she replied. "Ever since G.o.d's sense of humour simply made living on my own too difficult for me and too onerous for my daughter." I was puzzled and must have looked it because she carried on. "It's my lot in life to suffer with a disease whose name I share. I was diagnosed with Parkinson's ten years ago and became debilitated to the point that getting around my house wasn't possible any more. I suppose I should be thankful I wasn't christened Muriel Melanoma. Anyway, after a fall, a broken hip, a stint in c.u.mberland Memorial, and much debate with my saint of a daughter, here I am." I nodded in sympathy and thought of my own name and how JFK had suffered with Addison's disease.