Wayne Stukey on that long ago beach saying: There’s something in you that’s like biting on tinfoil.

Quietly, Lucy said: “You’ll be fine.”

He jumped. “Huh?”

“I said you’ll be fine. Won’t he, Leo?”

“Oh yes,” Leo said, bobbing his head. His eyes never left the audience, as if they had not yet been able to communicate its size to his brain. “Fine.”

You don’t understand, you numb broad, Larry thought. You’re holding my hand and you don’t understand that I could make a bad decision and wind up killing both of you. I’m well on my way to killing Judge Farris and he’s seconding my fucking nomination. What a Polish firedrill this turned out to be. A little sound escaped his throat.

“Did you say something?” Lucy asked.

“No.”

Then Stu was walking across the stage to the podium, his red sweater and bluejeans very bright and clear in the harsh glow of the emergency lights, which were running from a Honda generator that Brad Kitchner and part of his crew from the power station had set up. The applause started somewhere in the middle of the hall, Larry was never sure where, and a cynical part of him was always convinced that it had been a plot arranged by Glen Bateman, their resident expert in the art/craft of crowd management. At any rate, it didn’t really matter. The first solitary spats swelled to a thunder of applause. On the stage, Stu paused by the podium, looking comically amazed. The applause was joined by cheers and shrill whistles.

Then the entire audience rose to its feet, the applause swelling to a sound like heavy rain, and people were shouting, “Bravo! Bravo! ” Stu held up his hands, but they wouldn’t stop; if anything, the sound redoubled in intensity. Larry glanced sideways at Lucy and saw she was applauding strenuously, her eyes fixed on Stu, her mouth curved in a trembling but triumphant smile. She was crying. On his other side Leo was also applauding, bringing his hands together again and again with so much force that Larry thought they would fall off if Leo kept on much longer. In the extremity of his joy, Leo’s carefully won-back vocabulary had deserted him, the way English will sometimes desert a man or woman who has learned it as his or her second tongue. He could only hoot loudly and enthusiastically.

Brad and Ralph had also run a PA from the generator and now Stu blew into the mike and then spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen—”

But the applause rolled on.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll take your seats—”

But they were not ready to take their seats. The applause roared on and on, and Larry looked down because his own hands hurt, and he saw that he was applauding as frantically as the rest.

“Ladies and gentlemen—”

The applause thundered and echoed. Overhead, a family of barnswallows that had taken up residence in this fine and private place after the plague struck now flew about crazily, swooping and diving, mad to get away to someplace where people weren’t.

We’re applauding ourselves, Larry thought. We’re applauding the fact that we’re here, alive, together. Maybe we’re saying hello to the group self again, I don’t know. Hello, Boulder. Finally. Good to be here, great to be alive.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’d take your seats, please, I sure would appreciate it.”

The applause began to taper off little by little. Now you could hear ladies—and some men, too—sniffing. Noses were honked. Conversations were whispered. There was that rustling auditorium sound of people taking their seats.

“I’m glad you’re all here,” Stu said. “I’m glad to be here myself.” There was a whine of feedback from the PA and Stu muttered, “Goddam thing,” which was clearly picked up and broadcast. There was a ripple of laughter and Stu colored. “Guess we’re all going to have to get used to this stuff again,” he said, and that set off another burst of applause.

When that had run itself out, Stu said: “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Stuart Redman, originally from Arnette, Texas, although that seems a far way down the road from where I am now, lemme tell you.” He cleared his throat, feedback whined briefly, and he took a wary step back from the mike. “I’m also pretty nervous up here, so bear with me—”

“We will, Stu!” Harry Dunbarton yelled exuberantly, and there was appreciative laughter. It’s like a camp meeting, Larry thought. Next they’ll be singing hymns. If Mother Abagail was here, I bet we would be already.

“Last time I had so many people looking at me was when our little consolidated high school made it to the football playoffs, and then they had twenty-one other guys to look at too, not to mention some girls in those little tiny skirts.”

A hearty burst of laughter.

Lucy pulled at Larry’s neck and whispered in his ear, “What was he worried about? He’s a natural!”

Larry nodded.

“But if you’ll bear with me, I’ll get through it somehow,” Stu said.

More applause. This crowd would applaud Nixon’s resignation speech and ask him to encore on the piano, Larry thought.

“First off, I should explain about the ad hoc committee and how I happen to be up here at all,” Stu said. “There are seven of us who got together and planned for this meeting so we could get organized somehow. There’s a lot of things to do, and I’d like to introduce each member of our committee to you now, and I hope you saved some applause for them, because they all pitched together to work out the agenda you’ve got in your hands right now. First, Miss Frances Goldsmith. Stand up, Frannie, and let em see what you look like with a dress on.”

Fran stood up. She was wearing a pretty kelly-green dress and a modest string of pearls that might have cost two thousand dollars in the old days. She was roundly applauded, the applause accompanied by some good-natured wolf whistles.

Fran sat down, blushing furiously, and before the applause could die away entirely, Stu went on. “Mr. Glen Bateman, from Woodsville, New Hampshire.”

Glen stood, and they applauded him. He flipped a pair of twin v ’s from each of his closed fists, and the crowd roared its approval.

Stu introduced Larry second-to-last and he stood up, aware that Lucy was smiling up at him, and then that was lost in a warm comber of applause that washed over him. Once, he thought, in another world, there would have been concerts, and this kind of applause would have been reserved for the show-closer, a little nothing tune called “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” This was better. He only stood for a second, but it seemed much longer. He knew he would not decline his nomination.

Stu introduced Nick last, and he got the longest, loudest applause.

When it died away, Stu said: “This wasn’t on the agenda, but I wonder if we could start by singing the National Anthem. I guess you folks remember the words and the tune.”

There was that ruffling, shuffling sound of people getting to their feet. Another pause as everyone waited for someone else to start. Then a girl’s sweet voice rose in the air, solo for only the first three syllables: “Oh, say can—” It was Frannie’s voice, but for a moment it seemed to Larry to be underlaid by another voice, his own, and the place was not Boulder but upstate Vermont and the day was July 4, the Republic was two hundred and fourteen years old, and Rita lay dead in the tent behind him, her mouth filled with green puke and a bottle of pills in her stiffening hand.

A chill of gooseflesh passed over him and suddenly he felt that they were being watched, watched by something that could, in the words of that old song by The Who, see for miles and miles and miles. Something awful and dark and alien. For just a moment he felt an urge to run from this place, just run and never stop. This was no game they were playing here. This was serious business; killing business. Maybe worse.

Then other voices joined in. “—can you see, by the dawn’s early light,” and Lucy was singing, holding his hand, crying again, and others were crying, most of them were crying, crying for what was lost and bitter, the runaway American dream, chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected, and stepping out over the line, and suddenly his memory was not of Rita, dead in the tent, but of he and his mother at Yankee Stadium—it was September 29, the Yankees were only a game and a half behind the Red Sox, and all things were still possible. There were fifty-five thousand people in the Stadium, all standing, the players in the field with their caps over their hearts, Guidry on the mound, Rickey Henderson was standing in deep left field (“—by the twilight’s last gleaming—”), and the light-standards were on in the purple gloaming, moths and night-fliers banging softly against them, and New York was around them, teeming, city of night and light.