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talking to Ed Horan - he says things are going against us up in the Bronx. He thinks you have been too complacent, Michael.”
    Michael held in his temper; it was too early in the day to start expending his energy that way. “Ed Horan is an uneducated horse’s ass. He wouldn’t know the meaning of complacency.”
    “The word was mine. Ed actually said you had left it too late to get off your butt and take your finger out. Excuse me, Sylvia.”
    “Think nothing of it. I gather the Duke of Edinburgh uses the same expression.” Sylvia looked at her husband. Lately she had noticed that after they had made love she often became impatient with him, almost as if he had left her unsatisfied; she sometimes wondered if other couples went through this post-coital reaction, as if hurt had to be added to love. “It seems rather apt, don’t you think?”
    “No, I don’t.” Michael kept his voice down, though he was tempted to shout at them both. “It’s easy for Horan to sit up there in the Bronx telling me what I should have done. When anyone criticizes him, he can brush it aside - he’s not running for office, never has.” He paused, looking at his father; but Sam Forte, impervious to barbs from his son, was carefully measuring sugar into his coffee. “When Tom Kirkbride came out with his campaign for law and order, what was I supposed to do? Tell Des Hungerford that the police force had to go out and double its daily quota? Already we’re arresting more law-breakers than we have room for - the bail bondsmen are making more money than they’ve ever made in their lives before. They will vote for me,” he said bitterly. “One of them told me so last week.”
    He turned away from them and went back to the window. A uniformed patrolman stood leaning against a tree in the grounds, idly watching a squirrel as it shopped among the

    leaves for its winter larder. Out on the river a Fire Department tender, all fresh red and white paint, moved up towards Hell Gate, fastidiously skirting a garbage scow as the latter came downstream heading for the open Bay. Who will they vote for tomorrow, the fire tender crew and the cop ? He recognized the squirrel and felt surer of its vote. At least when he went out into the grounds occasionally and fed it, it didn’t put one paw behind its back and cross its toes.
    “I’ve done everything I can,” he said, still gazing out the window. “From now on it’s a question of luck.”
    “Luck should never come into an election. It suggests a poor campaign or a poor candidate.”
    He turned round slowly and faced his father. “And what do you reckon you’ve had of those two?”
    Sam Forte tasted his coffee, nodded approvingly at Sylvia. “Excellent coffee - but then it always is. How do you do it?”
    “Never trust to luck,” said Sylvia. “I make it myself and time the percolation exactly.”
    “One second for every granule,” said Michael, “sucked dry like a voter. But you haven’t answered my question.”
    Sam Forte took his time, as he always had with his son. When his boy had been born he had taken the long view: it took years, decades, to put a man into the White House, especially when you decided, when he was one day old, that that was his destination.
    “You have been a good candidate, Michael. You have been a good mayor too, even though you have had a lot of critics. But the Holy Spirit himself couldn’t make a success of running New York.”
    “And, no reflection on you, I never had the Holy Spirit’s family behind me. But you don’t think I’ve run a good campaign this time?”
    “No.” Sam Forte finished his coffee, wiped his mouth deliberately with the napkin Sylvia gave him; she knew his fastidiousness, as if he were afraid of finding himself flecked with some grit from the past. “You let Kirkbride

    get away too soon with his claim that he can bring back law and order if he is elected. You should have hit him right at the start.”
    “How?”
    “By giving