New Hampshire Is for Lovers

The pumpkin-colored T-shirt of the young bed-headed man working at the coffee shop had a word emblazoned on it that was familiar to Victoria, but from where? Then it dawned on her, and she promptly fainted.

Published May 26, 2004 10:51PM (EDT)

Victoria Passionately took a bus back to her hotel, and by the time she settled in, it was 10 o'clock, time for the local news. She sat on the edge of her bed, rum-spiked Dr Pepper in hand, trying to forget the day, forget her failings, not expecting to see her face on the screen, wanting only to drink herself to sleep. Of course, the day before, she fully did expect to see her face on the screen at this point, on every screen and on the cover of every newspaper, lionized as the brave wrench throwing herself into the endlessly squealing and crushing machinery of the American president-selection process. Something like that.

The rest of this story is no longer online, but does appear in the book "The Unforbidden Is Compulsory, or Optimism."


By Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is the author of "You Shall Know Our Velocity" and "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

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