"The parties are controlled by screamers from the left and the right. There's no room for my dreams in this town." She shivered, though the night was merely cool, not chilly. "I can't believe I'm telling you all this. I don't tell this to people. I guess you're hearing my swan song."

"I'm kind of curious why you have these dreams of politics in the first place."

She looked at him with a kind of fierceness in her eyes and took hold of his arm tightly. "Because I love power, Mr. Fears. Power used wisely and well, power used to make people safer and freer and happier. But it's power that I love, even though one is supposed to pretend that it isn't. As if anyone would ever come to this benighted town for any other reason."

"So why don't you run for office?" asked Quentin.

She smiled. "Voters don't take pretty women seriously."

Quentin almost said, You're not that pretty.

She laughed as if she had heard him. "I'm telegenic. The camera loves me. You should see my driver's license. My yearbook picture. I swear I can't take a bad picture. It's a curse. I'm much less attractive in person."

Quentin laughed and felt something inside him relax for the first rime in twenty years. Something that he hadn't even known was clenched. "Well darn," he said. "I wish I'd seen your picture before I met you."

"No, it's better this way. You would have felt too intimidated."

"Now I've got to see your license, you know."

She shrugged, opened her little evening purse, and took out the plastic card. He looked at it, angling it to get moonlight on the picture. "Am I correct in thinking that you actually crossed your eyes for your driver's license picture?"

"I stuck out my tongue the first time but they made me take it over again. They were very angry."

"This may be the ugliest driver's license photo I've ever seen."