Boston 2004

Overlooking the Boston Skyline from behind the Royal Sonesta hotel in Cambridge, she tells her friend, "Boston is surreal."

They'd taken an Elantra and a Suburban. They'd swung through DC, marveled at John Ashcroft's well-guarded abode, taken in a They Might Be Giants street concert, walked so many miles their feet were numb.

And now Boston, where the radio plays "Dirty Water" as soon as you cross the city limits, where standing by the Charles River in August is as chilly as a Texas November.

She leaves the river some, mingles with politicians who hold every office imaginable in the forgotten state she sometimes represents. In the hotel lobby they chit-chat, hold babies, pose for photographs. The mornings start with some importance; organized breakfasts where the failed Democratic nominee she'd fought for sits at the next table over.

The man she sits next to at one breakfast will go on to become the governor of the great state she represents. She wonders if he can detect her hangover.

It's hard for her to wrangle her way inside the convention center, so she takes a cab to a small church, where she dons a gray polo and learns about the volunteer duty she'll have to complete for access to the Fleet Center. She is to man the celebrity press entrance, she learns. It's warm out. She won't need a sweater.

But later she wishes she'd brought one. She shivers as she uses a strange piece of machinery to scan credentials - some for people she doesn't know, others for people like Larry King, Mo Rocca, Michael Moore, Tom Brokaw. Surreal. She converses with the Boston police, who tell her smoking's "bad fo'yah." After a few hours of work she sneaks inside the Fleet Center, finds an abandoned seat just in time to hear Barack Obama speak. He momentarily re-ignites her passion for politics.

She mingles with the future and current politicans of her state at an open bar party later. As her cohorts consume more and more alcohol, she watches her representatives degrade into dancing fools. She wishes she could dance.

A group of young people splay themselves on the floor of one of the Sonesta's ballrooms. They use Magic Markers to draw signs for their failed Democratic nominee - he is to speak at the convention. Later, the signs will be forgotten.

As she pushes her way through the credential-checks one night, she sees a group of anti-Bush protestors through the chain link fences that keep the Authorized separated from the Unauthorized. She locks eyes with an old woman who solemnly holds her fingers in a peace sign. The girl reciprocates, and the old woman smiles, laughs and curls her hand into a thumbs up sign.

Inside the convention center, Diddy and his entourage slink about, clad in black, cameras trained on them.

She stays in her seat throughout the long speeches - Lieberman, Pelosi, Albright. Willie Nelson. John Kerry. He'd lose. She knew it. But these things are all about hope, she told herself, and can't hope defy reason?

She watches the swaying nets full of red, white and blue balloons throughout the presentations. When they're over, the balloons start to fall, but lopsided - first one side, then the other. It always looked so elegant on TV, she thinks. But this is what it's really like. The balloons don't fall at the same time.

Who has to clean up all this confetti, she wonders, once our job here is done? After we're done cheering and yelling and pledging to do our best to help people get ahead in life, who comes in and cleans up our mess?

Her candidate doesn't win. She gives up. Maybe, she tells herself, someone will come along who will give me a reason to be passionate again. Just maybe.