"He looks like hell," Susan said. I nodded in agreement and squeezed her hand. He did look like hell. We had done everything we could for him up to that point, but if the man didn't want to shave, we couldn't take a razor to his face for him. He asked me to come on board and though I didn't want to do it at first, he badgered me into it. I wish I could say that he was really convincing and inspirational and all of that good stuff that people want in a politician but the simple fact was that the man hounded me into doing it. I wouldn't so much as say that he's a bulldog when he wants something so much as one of those little yapper dogs that won't shut up until you give in. That's Mike.

I've known Mike since I was a kid. He and I were pals because our mothers were, which meant that we spent a lot of summers together in one of our swimming pools trying to figure out things to do. Eventually we had been together for so long that we called it a friendship and it lasted until the end of high school. After that I went to George Washington and he went off to Chico State and we lost contact until last year.

Part of what he had was timing, I had to give him that. I had been working for a state senator in Sacramento and was tired of the kind of policies we dealt with. It was cyclical. It made sense, his constituency being some farmers in the central valley, but I didn't want to deal with farm bills every year. The senator wasn't on any serious committees so we were left out of the action when the power crunch hit the state. My guy didn't even make a speech, the weenie, so though it took convincing from Mike to join his campaign, I probably would have left to look for another job before long anyway.

A word first about Mike. Mike isn't a very interesting guy. After reading Primary Colors and thinking about how much fun it would be to work for a candidate like that, Mike was a serious disappointment. It's only because he went to Chico and is married that I think the man ever got laid because he is still the same as he was in high school, a loser with the ladies. The guy can't talk to one to save his life so it goes without saying that I was a little surprised to meet his wife over one of our first recruitment lunches. Mike is fit, but not outstandingly so. He's tall, but only in that not short way. And ff you met him and then saw a picture of him in the paper, you'd swear that he looked familiar but not be able to remember his name. I say this, not to bring down a childhood friend or ruin the man's campaign, but because with this knowledge in hand, it becomes clearer what a waste of time the last seven months have been.

Mike was running for a recently vacated United States Congressional seat that became that way because of a sex scandal from the previous representative. The guy didn't step down. He was arrested. It was a real mess involving a minor and something about mangos which I never fully understood. The district was not pleased. It seemed they wanted somebody who would represent their morals better or at least use produce grown by his constituency. Mike thought that this was perfect timing. As said, he's a pretty boring guy except for this one flash of inspiration. People could dig and dig and not find a single thing to use against him. The reverse side of that being that we dug and dug to find something to use for him and came up with the same result.

It was Mike's wife's suggestion to bring me aboard. The two of them were apparently looking though some high school yearbooks one evening at the beginning of it all and he kept spotting pictures of me saying, "Oh yeah! Will's a great guy. You know, he's in politics," to which his wife said something along the lines of, "Well bring him on." Now, don't mistake, I'm not running the campaign. Mike has a few other people doing that which is fine with me because I'd rather not be involved with the nitty-gritty of organizing old ladies to lick envelopes and make copies with machines invented past their lives half way mark. No, I'm his speechwriter and advisor which means that I tell him what to say, how to say it, and when not to say anything. It's really a much better deal. Susan, Teddy, and I make up his little cabal and though I'd say the three of us together make up a hell of a team, we can't seem to do anything to help Mike out.

The first indication that I should have ditched his sinking ship was at the very first rally I wrote a speech for. It was a good speech with a lot of rah-rah to get people excited and a lot of emotional fervor about how morals are an important thing for people like them, the honest, the hardworking, the true Americans. Delivered by someone with even a modicum of ability he would have had to call in the riot police to calm things down. Mike, however, decided to deliver it like Churchill, totally understated and completely monotone. From the back – where I like to stand to watch the crowd – I counted all of six people still awake by the end of it and they were reading John Grisham novels. Sadly, it seemed for every one thing that we managed to correct with him, we found two more things that made him un-electable.

Susan – a friend of his wife's – was near the end. She held out hope for as long as she could that her very first candidate would go all the way to Washington, but after three months of wondering back and forth over the district she eventually broke down crying in my room one night over the mere mention of Mike's name. I knew where she was coming from. The last four months have been substantially easier since we started sleeping together. Sexual harassment be damned, it's a hell of a stress reliever.

The latest incident, the one Susan, Ted, and I were all sharing a picnic table for, the one where Susan astutely noted that Mike looked like hell, we all knew was officially the end of the road. Mike had stopped shaving four days ago and his five o'clock shadow had become something out of a noir film. He was scruffy and his slacks were wrinkled. We had four days until the election, and though none of us had any money riding on his wining, we knew that the bulkheads had broken and water was now filling the ship. What was supposed to be an informal little talk at a town picnic had become perhaps the most newsworthy event of his entire campaign.

Susan squeezed my hand harder every time Mike stopped what had become a tirade to take a swig from a fifth of bourbon he picked up. I shot a look over at Ted, asking him with my eyes where he got it. Ted shrugged. The speech, which I wrote as a last ditch attempt to get him noticed, wasn't going well but Mike was making it worse as he added his own thoughts to the jumble. "Issues schmichues," he belted out to the audience. "If bonking a god damned mango is what I need to do to get into office, well…," and the audience held their breath. "Well, I'll do it!" People looked nervously back and forth at one another. Mothers shoed children away and fathers started to wind their belts around their fists. "Everyone loves a mango-fucker," Mike screamed. "You can just call me the Mango-man. That's right folks. The Mango-man for a district full of mango-fuckers."

Men stood up and women started to pack away their lunches. The mayor of the town tried to thank Mike for coming out today but Mike wasn't having any of it. He pushed the mayor back and feigned a punch which he explained to the audience represented his belief that politicians needed to stay on their toes. "Look at him," Mike laughed. "His reflexes are so slow he's not even flinching!" He was the only one laughing. Ted, Susan, and I packed up or things and started to make our way to the car which was parked in a gravel parking lot behind some trees. Over the loudspeaker we heard him start to sing a little ditty which he titled "District of Mango Eating Mango-fuckers" to which he received nearly universal disapproval. We didn't wait to hear the end of it as we pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. Over the course of the campaign the three of us had found a great little bar about thirty minutes away and were headed towards it to have a drink and toast our candidate, the man who would never represent the Great State of California: Mike, our Mango-man.