Berengaria's Best: The Ultimate Short Story Collection

Kenny the Cowpoke for Guv

A campaign bus isn't the best place to get a good night's sleep, but if you've been on the trail as long as I have, you learn to adapt. Conversations tend to be more spaced out and hushed when the world outside is composed of specks of quickly passing light. Masses of lights that represent all the good voters who are going to put your candidate into office.

There's always a quiet corner to curl up in on a bus, and with a blanket or a jacket covering you, you're bound to get at least four or five hours of shut-eye.

I'm tucked into one of the back seats, my head resting on a thin pillow that's conducting the vibration of the bus' tires directly onto the side of my face like a gentle massage. I'm almost to that point where I can sense the cotton candy of sleep wrapping around me, erasing my limbs and tugging me into oblivion, when a presence shifts into the next seat over.

And stays there.

From the cologne, I know who it is, but I play possum. It's been a long day and I need my beauty rest. And so does he. We've got a full schedule tomorrow and every second of respite both of us can steal could make the difference between winning hundreds more votes, or losing them.

"You still awake, Bird?" he whispers.

Now I have to make a decision. Continue the possum act, or open my eyes and solve whatever it is that's come up while bags form under my eyes and the bus puts another eighty miles behind us.

The money wins out. It always does. Kenneth Jespers is paying me a handsome chunk of change to be where I am and do what I do. To leave him to his own devices would not just be unprofessional, it might also lead to him unwittingly sabotaging his entire campaign.

"Jusss barely," I answer, mumbling the words to give him a guilty conscience. "Whass up?"

"Tell me everything's going to go well."

Call off the dogs, he just needs some hand-holding.

"Everything's going to go well. You're doing fine in the polls. You've practiced your speeches. You know your platform backwards and forwards, and you've just had an expensive haircut. Everything's peachy."

"The TV debate. They're going to throw me some wild curveballs. Curveballs I can't handle."

"We've been through every curveball imaginable, remember? And besides, that's still a week off. It's nothing to wring your hands over tonight. Leave that to the day of the debate."

I'd grilled Kenneth for days at the start of the campaign. I threw every oddball question I could think of at him, ranging from if he thought radical day-glo Leftists should be allowed to run around loose, to if he used facial moisturiser for men and wore boxers or briefs. He'd got fairly good at it, but he always believed there was going to be some question he'd not banked on, some answer he'd not practiced. Kenneth lived in constant fear of the question that was going to catch him with his trousers down and make him into a state-wide laughing stock.

It's a rare bonus to know your candidate's greatest fear, and Kenneth Jespers' was of looking stupid. Not exactly the most convenient brain-rat for a politician hoping to be sworn in as the next state governor to have, but also not the worst.

Kenneth didn't say anything and I drifted back towards cotton candy land. The contours of a dream were just starting to form when Kenneth spoke.

"Marilyn had a bad dream."

My eyes jerked open.

"Marilyn always has bad dreams. It's related to her medication," I mumble. "No need to panic."

Marilyn is Kenneth's wife and the most neurotic person it's ever been my displeasure to sit next to during a five-hour political dinner. I used to think she was Kenneth's biggest liability, until I learned that Marilyn only trots out the weirdo when she thinks she's safe from judgement.