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The Fishmonger Returns

Feb. 24, 2004 | On a blistering Thursday in late August, Rebecca made the drive, down I-57, from Chicago to Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, a small town just next to Mattoon. An old law school friend of Rebecca's, Max McArsnep, taught an ethics course there and had asked Rebecca to come speak; he promised to arrange for a more general audience in the student union afterward. It would be Rebecca's first speech on a college campus in about seven years, and Giacomo and Charlie were hoping Rebecca's low-key style, her clear lack of pretense, would appeal to the students. At the very least, she might relax a bit on the stump.

Her comfort level in front of audiences had never been very high, but even so, her first few dozen appearances had been a new low, had been brutal, had been, even to the disinterested, very difficult to watch. She was so visibly nervous that all who sat witness wanted to douse her with water, throw a Red Cross blanket over her, and lead her to safety. She mumbled, she tangented, she corrected herself -- almost angrily, almost mercilessly -- and she invented, it seemed, a new twitch for every given appearance. In Aurora, speaking at a bottling plant, she pulled on her ear incessantly, in a way deeply resonant of Carol Burnett but without the charm -- Rebecca seemed to be trying to remove it, her lobe, as one would toe cheese or dead skin. In Carbondale, speaking to ethanol lobbyists, she'd begun running her fingers along the front ridge of the lectern, as if sanding it, or measuring it, repeatedly, registering that measurement and then starting over, again and again. Doing it once might have seemed playful, almost sexy, like a finger circling the edge of a wine glass, but on a podium, in a public setting, executed with workmanlike regularity, looked plumb nuts. In Barrington, speaking at a Junior League political forum, she'd pulled every hair away from her forehead, one strand at a time, and inserted each one, carefully, lovingly, behind her left ear. She performed this task with Sisyphean determination and by the end, every Junior Leaguer present was gasping at each new strand taken on its journey. What, they thought, is wrong with that fucking woman?

It tortured Rebecca to think of any one of these speeches, which she knew had not gone well, chiefly because at each, a number of the attendees told her so. They told her in almost scolding tones, evidently upset that their time had been wasted by someone who had not prepared properly, or who was clearly in the wrong line of work. But were things improving, slightly, each time? This was her humble assumption, whether or not it was true (and it wasn't; if anything, she was getting worse). She longed for the days when no one really cared, when as a state senator few people expected much in the way of oratory. Trying to think forward, not backward, trying to concentrate on the straight endlessness of I-57, Rebecca drove alone in her Chevy Capri, screaming the lyrics to and utterly polluting her Joni Mitchell bootlegs, her Rickie Lee Jones rarities, and her most guilty and prized of pleasures, her Greg Kihn boxed set.

Giacomo Skinputty, her day-to-day manager and fundraising man, followed behind her, in his own car, a silver-green Prius, for he had family in Charleston and after her appearance planned to stay through the weekend. Giacomo and Rebecca called each other periodically on their cellphones, each of them wishing they could be driving together. These drives through the middle of the state were beautiful in an austere sort of way, but with few turns and fewer sights or landmarks, it was easy to allow your mind to bend, your eyes to flutter. Through her rearview mirror, Rebecca checked on Giacomo periodically, and even at 75 miles per hour, even with him 40 feet behind her, she could see the anxiety in the set of his mouth, the tension in his brow.

Giacomo was indeed stressed beyond composure. Normally an unshakable sort of man, with a healthy sense of balance and perspective, Giacomo was feeling heat from all sides, but chiefly from Charlie Panglosserman, who felt that the Rebecca Romaine for Senate fundraising efforts were quite sub-par -- those were his words, "quite sub-par," and he'd begun to call Giacomo "Mr. Skinputty," perhaps to reinforce the fact that Giacomo was an employee, not necessarily a friend or even a person. Charlie made clear that if Giacomo couldn't raise at least $1 million by September (and thus far he'd only netted $157,980), Romaine wouldn't be taken seriously by the party in the state or nationally, the campaign would lose any momentum it might have had, Giacomo could and should and would be replaced, and Charlie himself would have to step into the fray. Which Charlie didn't want to do. And besides, it would probably be far too late at that point, what with all the millionaires in the race.

Charlie had given Giacomo a talking to that morning -- Giacomo had called it a "squawkingto" and that made Rebecca, who loved only the stupidest jokes, laugh for a full minute -- and that would have been upsetting enough even if Giacomo wasn't already pretty personally depressed about the whole situation. Rebecca knew that Giacomo wasn't going to last, no matter how well he was or wasn't doing with the bottom line. Lately they'd talked often about his crisis of faith -- he'd lost his love of the absurdity of it all, which was the only part of the equation that kept him balanced: the ability to laugh and continue to play the game, knowing that these were simply silly rules -- he compared it to having to complete an egg-carried-on-a-spoon relay -- to a contest that ultimately, despite the anarchic and disgusting way it was played, mattered. But things had not been breaking their way, Rebecca's and Giacomo's, and they found themselves struggling under expectations more than a year before the general election. If they didn't get a sign, any sign, soon, there didn't seem to be a point in flogging, well, the dead horse that was them.

The Democratic field was a mess, overcrowded, crammed with more candidates than at any other point in state history. There were 11 who'd announced, though not all had gotten the signatures necessary. Warren Williams, a designer of women's high-heeled hiking shoes and according to himself, "the world's most feared massage innovator," had not gathered the signatures, but wanted to be granted an exception, because his back had gone out and it seemed very difficult. Just above him in the polls (for what they were worth at that point, which was little) was Maxine Washington, the longtime Cook County tax assessor, who was well-liked and who had been told that the assessor's office was a springboard to bigger things -- she expected a coronation; a notch above her was Kerry O'Shea, an alderman who was running, it seemed, entirely on the fact that he was Irish (though he wasn't) (but wouldn't know this until a few months later, when he would discover, with the help of Timmy Timmerand [the Party Fixer-Cleaner who the reader will meet shortly], that he was in fact an Armenian Jew); Francisco Suarez was a Chicago public schoolteacher who was running a populist campaign out of his station wagon but whose main platform-plank was that he was 600 pounds and, ha ha ha ha ha, the plank would break under his weight ha ha ha -- anyway, he wanted to "make fat politically visible again" and held William Taft up as a hero and martyr; there was the requisite former star of pornographic films, who had the support of the riverboat gambling interests, had a deeply unsettling two-fingered salute, and who traveled with a platoon of Chi Psi fraternity members from Northwestern; there was Sydney Bellows, a retired millionaire, now philanthropist, who was popular and who was, unfortunately, made of glass; there was Richard Blaustein, a former Green Beret and current auto-detailer, who wanted the Japanese to pay down the national deficit, it being, he claimed, their fault in the first place; he had charts to prove it.

And there was Saddam Nessat. He was a second-generation Iranian-American with a master's in economics from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Stanford. He'd run a gigantic data-processing firm -- once going head to head with and trouncing Ross Perot -- and afterward had a volunteer-driven statewide school-nutrition initiative that was now being copied all over the country. He was qualified, charming, handsome as hell and rich, but was polling horrifically and couldn't understand why. He was getting all kinds of signals from those advising him -- chiefly his wife Sharin and his son Tyler -- that should he continue his nascent life in politics, and they had their doubts about whether that idea was such a hot one -- he might consider changing his name. Each time they brought this up, gingerly and with great respect, he became indignant. He didn't want to discuss it, didn't want to hear about it. But the suggestion seemed to be coming from outside his home, too. He didn't read the papers or Web sites, but could tell from his polite and considerate friends and acquaintances that there was talk, the jabbering of mice -- always something about how his name was diminishing his chances at winning the Senate seat, that it might scare people off, that there were certain associations that might not be favorable, in America at this particular juncture in history, to his candidacy. But he was defiant. What would they would have him do, he demanded, spit on his heritage? To deny all that he was, the blood and sacrifice of his ancestors, who gave him the life he had, the opportunities he knew? His family, and these so-called friends and advisors, would have him take on a more friendly moniker, something appealing, perhaps, to the residents of Illinois. What would they have him change his name to? Saddam Payton? Preposterous. Saddam Sandburg? An atrocity. Saddam Daley? Saddam Halas? Saddam Ebert? Ludicrous. Unacceptable. The good people of Illinois would see through such pandering, and he would have none of it. Saddam Nessat was his name, and if the people couldn't see past his proud Persian ancestry, then damn them all to hell.

Episode 9: If Giacomo didn't know better, he'd be convinced he had feelings for Rebecca.

-- By Dave Eggers