Sometimes I’ll wake in the middle of the night and see her next to me, looking at her laptop, pie charts glowing up in her face. She’s the one with the poli-sci degree in this relationship, socially engaged and crunching numbers, and I’m the former high-school jock, lettering in three sports at the expense of my G.P.A. “Look at the data,” she tells me, but I never know what data she’s talking about. ![]() Meanwhile, the future of the city hangs in the balance, things going from bad to worse-public transportation, mail delivery, garbage removal-thanks to the mayor, six terms and still nothing to show for it. “The personal is political,” Molly always says, implying that if we break up it won’t be her fault. Plus, it was compounded by the latest poll numbers, which put our candidate three points behind, with three days to go until the election. Today’s particular conflict had been set in motion by the banal-who’d left a cereal bowl in the sink-but obviously indicated a wider problem. ![]() The bickering had started after we both got home from work first we were arguing, and then we were shouting, and then she disappeared into the bedroom and slammed the door hard, emerging fifteen minutes later, composed, dressed, and ready to go. “You’re welcome,” she said, but she only closed it halfway. ![]() It’s getting dark and it’s getting cold, and neither one of us has said more than a few passive-aggressive sentences to the other, like when I thanked her for putting her window up, as if she’d done me a big favor. On Molly’s lap, propped against the steering wheel, is the clipboard with the street addresses, about fifty of them, listed alongside the pertinent info-name, age, etc.-culled from the Internet and written in her perfect handwriting, evidence that she had gone to a good school in the suburbs. We’re sitting underneath the overpass, Molly and I, lights off, motor on, staring through the windshield at the row of houses up the hill.
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