It was late in the day, and the sun was beginning to sink. I had gone home early from work, so I was naturally very deep into a contemplative combination of whiskey and Moroccan black hash when I recieved a call from some loud woman who called herself Sarah Parker. The name seemed familiar, as did the brutish voice, thick with a Carolina preacher's daughter's accent, but in my haze I couldn't place the person.
"Have we met?" I belligerently interrupted. She didn't mind.
"Well, hell yes, Mr. White," she said, "as a matter of fact we have. I was on the staff for Dukakis in '88- so you may not remember me, but I surely do remember yousir." She said "sir" not in deference to my standing in Washington or something but in the southern way of combining yes or you with sir, to make yessir or yousir.
Something in her tone and this accent jarred my memory.
"Ah yes, dear girl," I began drunkenly. "So nice to hear from your pretty face again," I struggled a bit here, if I remember right," and what can I do for you?"
"Actually, Mr. White, we were hoping that you could come for a speech. Next week, in Nashua."
"Nashua, Nashua New Hampshire? well, I'd love to, but that's about a thousand miles outside my current affordable range...and who's we?"
She ignored the last part, but went on: "Mr. White, my boss has already sent you a plane ticket. It should be in your mailbox. She paused. "Come to Nashua, sir. You'll be surprised. I was." Then she hung up.
I sat there for a moment with the phone glued to my ear. What the fuck?, I thought. Of course, in my line of work, proposals like this came often, but who the hell was Sarah working for that got my home number, which I took great pains to conceal from the public as well as from most people in politics.
This was, of course, no small feat, and I took it seriously, because I wanted to know that there was somewhere I could go at my own will where no senator, staffer, or unknown person of any kind could reach me for whatever reason. This kept me effectively disembodied from the Machine, and it helped me a good deal in observing It with a clear head.