A night of debauchery on the campaign trail in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire

In the taxi I fingered the business card with the address printed on it. I texted Julie in case she woke up and discovered my empty bed. After many twists and turns we pulled up to the end of a driveway, and I paid the cab driver, tipping extra, and told him to wait. It was 11:45.

My heart raced as I walked up the gravel drive. I used a light from my cell phone because the surrounding trees made it impossible to see anything. Rocks crunched underneath my shoes. Suddenly over the idling of the taxi I heard music, faint at first, then louder the longer I walked. It sounded like bluegrass, and it came from somewhere in front of me.

The road curved to the right. As I traced the light from my phone I was suddenly aware of a big building looming in front of me: it was multi-storey, with small ankle-level lights illuminating a walkway that appeared to lead to an entrance. This was it. I retraced my steps and bid goodbye to the taxi.

I knocked on the door of the building, which appeared to be someone’s house. No one answered. I rang the bell and waited. Nothing. The music was loud now, but I wasn’t sure what direction it came from. I tried the door handle, pressing down the button above the handle and giving a little shove. It moved. I shouldered in.

“Hello?”

I was inside a foyer. To my left a tall table was covered in candles, each one winking from the breeze of the door’s movement. A few steps from there was a living room of some size, sunken, with hardwood floors, dark rugs, a wood-frame couch with two huge, thick cushions, and a couple smaller chairs of similar design. On the far side of the room, three simple children’s drawings were framed, spaced and illuminated in the way fine art would be. Underneath one, on the floor, a twenty-something woman was looking at her phone. She glanced up.

“Oh hey. You come for the music? They’re all in back,” she said, gesturing with her thumb to a hallway behind.

“Cool, thanks.”

I walked across the room and down the hallway. A feeble nightlight shone the way. At the end I saw a door that seemed like it would lead outside. The hallway continued to the right, but I pushed straight through the door and onto the porch.

There were people scattered over the entire expanse of the porch, which was long, wide, screened in and protected by an awning. The party-goers were sitting in two rough circles, drinking big cans of beer and passing what smelled like some very pungent bud.

Outside a band played up on a makeshift stage. The stage was probably built to hold four or five people, but I counted nine out there — two drummers, two singers, two on acoustic guitar, as well as three playing electric guitar, bass and violin. A few people leaned over the side of the stage and nodded along to the music.

As I walked across the porch and down to the yard I scanned the crowd that had gathered. There were people of all ages: gray-haired Boomers in tie-dye shirts; a family with three young kids and two parents my age; jockish bros in polo shirts and ripped jeans; middle-aged men in NASCAR hats with the bills rounded and worn just above the eyes; high school kids; young women with dreads; people of all stripes milling about, drinking, smoking and talking unselfconsciously.

I searched for James. Here was an impressive gathering of people for a Thursday night in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and the orchestrator was nowhere to be seen.

“Do you know where James is??” I shouted at a woman on the edge of the crowd. She didn’t. I asked a few more people and was rebuffed each time. Where the fuck was this guy? I was ready to give up and grab a beer from the giant coolers near the porch when I got a tap on the shoulder.

“Hey! You came!” It was James. Same intense stare from the bar earlier when we sat inches apart, but now his lips were a deeper red, and his eyes were shiny from God knows how much drinking. “And right on time! The band just started another set. These guys are the best. Their first time playing here. You want something to drink?”

He cracked a couple beers for us. I got a good look at him. He was taller, maybe, than I originally thought. He looked happy and loose. He moved quickly, maybe too eagerly, like someone stricken with a sudden joy who didn’t quite know how to ride it out.

We stood to watch the band play song after song, jam after jam. They covered a couple tunes I recognized from O Brother, Where Art Thou? The sight of 40 or 50 white people dancing (I use this term loosely) to bluegrass ain’t a pretty one, but it was spirited.

James stood to the side, alternately shaking and nodding his head. At a certain point he motioned away from the house, past the band and down further in the yard, and raised his eyebrows in question. I grabbed another beer and followed.

“So how’s your family? Where’s your uh …. sister?”

Earlier I’d managed to drink some water and regain focus after a heavy night of boozing. Still, it took me half a second to recall my earlier lie about Julie and I being related.

“Good, yeah. She’s asleep. Since you were kind enough to invite us out, I thought I’d see what this was all about. I took a taxi over.”

“A TAXI?” James looked at me, mouth agape. We were some distance away now. It was darker and quieter.

“A taxi, seriously? We’re like five minutes from downtown! I think the driver took you for a ride, sorry to say.” He laughed to himself.

“Five minutes?”

“Yeah, look out there,” James said, pointing down the hill toward in the direction we were walking. “Know what it is?”

I shook my head.

“Lake Winnipesaukee.”

“Fuuuuuck me.”

“Yuuuuup.”

I hadn’t bothered to look at the map on my phone. The driver must have run me twice around the lake. What a fucker.

James bounced a little as he walked.

“Hahaha. Guess he needed a little extra money. Yeah you got taken for a ride,” he repeated, flashing a mischievous grin. “Hey, you want some of this?” He pulled a white film canister out of his pocket.

What the fuck?

“I’m… not sure. What is it?”

“A little of the white stuff, just a bump to keep us going.”

I shook involuntarily. I’m not a prude. But I didn’t know this guy.

“Nah, I’m good. I’m probably leaving soon anyway,” I said, trying not to sound like a killjoy.

“No problem! Don’t go, I didn’t know if you were into it. I’m good now too.”

He put it back in his pocket with a dismissive shrug. We reached what turned out to be the lake’s edge, which came up right to the property line. There were a couple lawn chairs flipped upside down on the grass, which seemed to be well-trod. Thirty feet to our left was a long dock whose form I could make out because the clouds had finally cleared, and the hazy half-moon now beamed down.

James took each lawn chair, flipped it over and brushed it with the back of his hand.

“Have a seat?”

The chair was stiff and uncomfortable, but I sat down and exhaled a deep breath.

“So, tell me about this place. Is this your place, like, your house? There’s so many people for a Thursday night!” I sounded like an asshole.

“I live here, yeah. It’s pretty cool. My parents lived here for a long time, but when they moved to Texas they let me keep the place.”

“Oh, nice. Gift houses are the best.”

“Yeah.” He paused for a second. “I thought it would be awesome but it ended up being a little lonely. Especially in the winter when everybody’s basically hibernating and — wait, did you grow up here?”

“Nope.”

“Ahh nevermind, anyway — when everybody’s in for the winter Wolfeboro is a goddamn ghost town. It’s different than tonight. This is fun. All summer I’m taking advantage of this.”

“And you throw parties in your fancy lakefront place so people can keep you company? That’s a lotta house for one person, I guess.”

He shot me a quizzical look.

“Nah. I throw parties because it’d be a shame to have this house and NOT do it. Right? I mean, if you look around the lake here, 99 percent of these houses don’t get used at all. They’re owned by big corporations, or rich-ass people, and they might come in for Memorial Day, or the 4th of July, and that’s about it. The housekeepers and property managers come and go, they change the decorations for the holidays, and that’s it.”

James paused to take a sip of beer. He continued.

“All the year-rounders here in Wolfeboro are in the same boat. Everybody who’s here tonight lives in town, works in town, and basically makes peace with this big yearly influx of tourists and whatnot. If you don’t stay 12 months a year you ain’t a resident!”

He rose up in his chair at this proclamation.

“And anyway, the reason people pop in at my place is because it’s fun. Need solid folks to be around when there ain’t shit to do in town.”

“That makes sense.”

“Speaking of being in the same boat, I’ve got a little Bass Tracker at the end of the dock there. We should take it for a spin?”

I hadn’t noticed the little fishing boat, but there it was, tethered up to a post at the end of the dock, bobbing slowly in the water. Huh.

“Yeah, why not I guess?” It was late, but I couldn’t think of a reason not to.

“Just a shortie, then we can go back and hear some more music,” James said, vaulting out of his seat.

“All right man.”

The engine purred as we sliced through the still waters. James sat on the back bench and steered us, scanning the water as we glided towards the center of the lake.

“Wanna steer? Tiller arm’s real easy to use.”

“Nope, you’re doing great.”

The water had a pungent, funky scent as the boat stirred it — it was earthy, fishy and seaweed-y at the same time. A few small lights from nearby houses tripped across the water surface, and in front of us loomed Wolfeboro Bay, and beyond it the street lamps from Main Street Wolfeboro. There wasn’t much going on.

“Why did you stay here? Was it the house, or your friends, or something else that made you stay in Wolfeboro,” I asked.

James eased the throttle slowly to a stop, and locked the tiller arm.

“Well. That’s a great question. This place has a lot to recommend it, don’t you think? If you live here you love the outdoors, or you’re too afraid to move somewhere bigger, or some combination of the two,” he began.

“But I was a happy kid growing up. You make your own fun when there’s no — I don’t know — malls to go to, big city life, that kinda thing. You make your own fun. It’s not like everyone who grows up here is some back-woods hick. You always have a few screwballs, but the people I know are the best. The best. You don’t have to move somewhere else to know that. It’s the tourists and all the fucking political candidates that make this place weird,” he said. “And not always in a good way.”

As he spoke he looked directly at me, not breaking his gaze. His eyes were piercing. I was transfixed — and uncomfortable, too. Time to own up.

“James, I should probably tell you something.”

He nodded.

“You may as well call me part of the problem. I work on a presidential campaign. So does Julie. We’re not sisters. Wolfeboro is one stop out of like a million that we’re going to do for this election. So …… yeah. You invited the enemy into your boat.”

James’s mouth opened, and he hesitated before he spoke.

“Really. Well, yeah, I guess you’re right, you are the fuckin’ enemy!” He started laughing. “How dare you?!”

James got up, walked to the middle of the boat where I sat, and took a seat next to me. For the second time that night I shook involuntarily. The silence roared as he put a hand on my knee, bent in, and kissed me. My mind screamed at his boldness. I felt nervous, and pissed I hadn’t made the first move. Obviously this is where things were leading. Could’ve saved myself an hour or two.

James was an incredible kisser. For someone who came off like an untrained puppy — boisterous, awkward, full of energy — he now revealed a hidden self-possession. His lips were soft but still firm, and after a time his tongue darted into my mouth flirtatiously. His mouth was minty. Apparently he’d managed to pop a mint while we coasted on the lake.

I returned his kiss with tongue of my own. He put both hands on my waist, and then ran them up and down my back while pulling me closer, touching my bare skin, raising the flesh in a way the breeze off the water hadn’t. I let out a small moan. The boat bobbed in the water as I turned to face him more fully.

I hadn’t gotten some since I joined the campaign. Before I left New York I was fucking some bro, but it wasn’t serious. Like his father he worked in finance at some consortium of douchebags, the kind that caused the stock market collapse. He graduated from Wharton, and his dad greased palms so his son could have his first Wall Street job.

To be successful in the news business you work long hours of often tedious work. When I worked at the paper that meant writing always on a deadline, constantly rushing around the city to get interviews. At the television network I essentially lived at work, always on call. Casual relationships were practical. Anything else wasn’t. So he and I worked intense hours, enjoyed Netflix and takeout, and didn’t keep up outside our weekly trysts.

That’s why as I sat on the fishing boat’s metal bench, with James’s hand between my legs, I didn’t object. He wasn’t a threat. As well as I could tell he was a good-natured, too-eager party boy whose wings were clipped a little early. And I was fucking wet.

He slid his fingers inside me, the same ones that manipulated the tiller moments before, with ease and care, pushing my panties the side. I gasped, then steadied my breathing. Around us were the looming trees silhouetted against the night sky, which was peppered with stars. There was silence except for a car motor in the distance. And our heavy breathing.