Whenever Phil Volz focused on the empty booth behind Janine, he imagined his campaign coworkers eavesdropping on the conversation, laughing, covering their mouths with napkins. When he looked back at Janine, she fuzzed into phosphorescent light like a photo in the glossy magazine she edited.

"Tell me one thing you specifically like about me," she said.
"I love women. They've taught me so many things. It's a pity --"
"No. One thing true about me. Why do you like me?"
"This country was built on the strength of individuals. So naturally your individual qualities draw -- they make me -- I mean it's true your eyes, they're the most peculiar shade of -- but then of course the eyes are the windows to the soul."
"You can't stop, can you?"
"I mean it. I sincerely mean it. I'm sorry."
"I wish you could communicate with me the way you do an audience."
"But that's not me; that's the candidate. I write the speech, but they're not my words."
"That's what I mean: He's not like you at all."
"He's a good man."
"They always say that."
"Honesty. Integrity. Character."
"Phil, stop it. Stop."
"I'm sorry."
"We're not here to talk about him. Don't say anything. Just look at me."

He saw her for a moment, singular in the mid-afternoon sun. He saw her face divided into rectangles of shadow and light from the sun shining through the slats. He saw her blemishes and the flecks of makeup around the curves of her nose. Then his mind fuzzed over with phrases from the next day's speech until her complexion splashed out of his concentration like watercolor.

"Are you looking at me?"
"Yes, I'm looking right at you."

She bent towards him and kissed him and he kissed her back, thinking, "Tomorrow is a new day for America, a new start for you and me." She touched his cheek and he blushed, thinking, "The kind of global warming we can all support, a new warmth in human relations all across this great planet." She was still kissing him and he was thinking, "There's no reason the growth in this economy cannot go on and on into the indefinite future."

When the kiss finally ended she asked, "Do you have any children?"
"No, but one day I'd like them. A child or children. Because --" Because, he thought, goddamn it, the children are the future.
"Well -- " she said, looking at the charge slip.

He wondered if she had read his mind. She had. She definitely had. It would not have even amounted to a parlor trick for her to have filled in the words for him. "I've got to get going," she said.

"I'd like to see you this weekend. I'll be back in D.C. on Saturday. Maybe Saturday night?"

"Let me think about it. I'm just thinking, you know, that maybe we should wait until the campaign is over. People could think that's why we're dating, some kind of quid pro quo. But after --"

"Let's not do that," he said. "Please let's not do that."
She kissed him, a dismissive peck. "Call me."

On the Metro he felt as though he had sucked the humidity into the train so that it hovered above him in a sweaty mist. What am I thinking right now? he asked himself. His eyes tracked the passing objects, not the railroad tracks or sky or houses but billboards (Kool Cigarettes) and graffiti (kiLlz biTChes), then tracked closer inside to placards above (Needles Kill Fast or Slow). A radio somewhere on the train played a pop song ("I don't know what to tell you/I just know my heart is true/There's no way to explain it/Except to say I love you, I do). Between his arm and his ribs, stuffed into his armpit, was a briefcase containing the notes for Friday night's speech. It was a good time to work on it and he tried to think of a phrase, any phrase, but all his phrases fuzzed into light, like type on burning newspaper.

***

They met Saturday night. He suspected she was attempting to postpone the date when she said, "I'd rather not see you just yet" and "Don't you think it's best if we wait a while before we see each other?" and "I'm just tired and I'd rather rest tonight if you don't mind." But he let her know, after a while, that there was something wrong: "I don't know, Janine, there's something wrong, and I need to talk to you right now, right now, and it's not about, not really about you, really, or us, but there's something wrong and it would mean a great deal, it would be mean a lot to me, if you could -- I understand you think we should wait -- but now I think we should, I mean I need to -- I know, I'm tired too -- but you have to, it would mean a lot to me if you would -- okay. Thank you. Thank you."

They would rendezvous on Connecticut Avenue at 8:00 p.m., and take a little walk, as he proposed, amongst the crowds. When he arrived he immediately noticed that, because of the cloud cover, or the phase of the moon, or the atmospheric pressure, or he didn't know what, there was a haziness to the shop and streetlights, a softness, like the blur of Christmas tree lights, and this tranquilized him despite everything that had gone wrong the last two days. Then he realized he was noticing things, specific things, for the first time in many months, and from his brief tranquility sprang a slap happy rush.

Then he saw her beneath a streetlamp, waiting, specific as could be in the way her coat fell about her like folded butterfly wings, her hands high in the pockets. She turned toward him and said, "I don't have much time so --" but he grabbed her hand and led her down a side street. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"I got fired yesterday. You should have seen it. I didn't care. I don't care anymore. They weren't my words. Those words, they make me sick now."

"But why were you fired?"

"Why? Well, they wanted me to put things a certain way. I couldn't do it. I tried to change the speech, but the words, they wouldn't -- they got away from me. And when they got away, I felt something. Relieved. But I suppose I was staring. And they were yelling at me, but I didn't hear what they were saying exactly. Not at first. I just didn't say anything for a while. It was a long, long while. And finally one of them sits down -- I don't even remember which one -- and it was funny. I mean, it was really funny, and I think I might have even started laughing. Because the guy sits down backwards on the chair, and crosses his arms, and he's looking at the floor, you know. And he says, 'Phil: What's going on here? You're scaring us.' And at that point, see, I'm giggling. And he's saying, 'Now Phil, I don't know what's going on here. Have you been drinking?' And I'm still giggling. You know? And finally, he just shakes his head and stands up and opens the door, and without looking back at me says, 'Well, Phil, if this is the way you want it, then I suppose this is it. Unless you have something to say.' I say nothing. And they leave. And then the door closes and I'm sitting there, everything white, blank and silent for a long time. I was just sitting in this kind of white static like somebody changed channels. And then I got up and went home and called you."

She shook her hand free. "But Phil, why would you get yourself fired. It wasn't what I said, was it?"

"What you said? Of course it was."

"But that's not what I meant. I just meant -- God, it doesn't matter now. I don't understand you. I mean, I don't think I even know the first thing about you."

"But you're not listening to me," he said. He reached for her arm. "Remember? You wanted me to say specific things, and I couldn't. I couldn't because all my words belonged to the candidate. So you see, I saw you the way he might have seen you. But now you're specific, so etched -- so --"

"You've got to stop," she said. "This isn't what I meant at all."

"For instance, your eyes. I tried to tell you 'they're the most peculiar shade of' and then I stopped. But now I know. I can see it. They're the most peculiar shade of green, but not green. I mean the green of a turtle, or a preying mantis, or, or a certain kind of frog -- I forget the name. The species I mean. But that kind of color. There wouldn't be a name for it. You see? See?"

"I've got to go now." She was walking faster, trying to get ahead of him, but he caught up to her.

"Wait. There's more. For instance, your neck: It has a specific, very defined arc, at the base, where it joins your shoulders. And I've been home taking measurements, trying to find the degree of that curve. That's geometry, right?"

He hadn't noticed, but they had already circled the block and were just about to re-join Connecticut Avenue when she darted into the crowd, leaving him alone.

He continued walking, certain the person to his left, or the one behind him now, or one of the two ahead of him, must be her. Must be. And so he turned around, feeling her presence beside him, and retraced their route. But he couldn't see her, only sensed and believed that she remained somewhere near him. "Your fingers are like monks," he said, "tucked into your palm, cloistered. There's more, too. I bet your toes, they must resemble, I don't know, the toes of pygmy statues?" Approaching strangers saw Phil talking to himself and hurried past. Each stranger, to him, became Janine, rushing one direction and another, encircling him in bands of light, until, as he stood spinning in circles, he saw the sky become her mouth, her breath warming him, his words tumbling down her tongue, which formed the handle of the big dipper, in which the letters of every word he had ever said pooled like alphabet soup.