She wanted to be anywhere but here.

She was part of the administration, not part of the campaign. But the President had insisted that she travel with him on this trip, as on so many others.

She’d hoped perhaps Miles Jameson would be here, that she could have a word with the ex-President. But the man who’d chosen John Stockton as his VP and effectively handed Stockton his first term as President wasn’t in attendance. And his people weren’t responding to any of her messages.

At least the election was going well. Texas put them over the top. Really, it could have been any of the dozen states whose polls closed at 9pm eastern, but the President chose to call it Texas.

They were here, after all. John Stockton had told his campaign to rejigger everything, to move his election night party to Houston, to be here in solidarity with the city. Pryce imagined the expense was ruinous, that Miami felt snubbed by the abrupt move. But then again, Stockton had steamrolled to victory, and he wasn’t ever planning to run for office again.

“That’s it!” His campaign manager Larry Cline said. “Three hundred and fifty eight electoral votes! And the whole West Coast isn’t even in yet. It’s a landslide!”

There were cheers among the select staff and family in the private room back stage.

Pryce watched from across the room as the President hugged and kissed his wife; his daughter; his son-in-law, Steve, an Air Force Captain whose career she’d been quietly watching. Even his grandson, Liam, was still awake, and to the small crowd’s apparent approval, the President lifted the one-year-old into the sky, and both grandparent and grandchild seemed to take great delight in the many airplane-like flights the President gave the boy through the room.

Pryce asked the waiter for another glass of Perrier.

Protocol dictated that the loser call to concede. Yet pride and the need to make one’s supporters feel that it had been a close race – even if it hadn’t been – meant that the call would usually come well after the outcome was clear.

So they waited. Pryce watched, studied the President as the hours wore on. The west coast results came in. California went for Stockton. Washington went for Stockton. It was officially a landslide. Every network, every blog, every analyst, every expert system, every machine learning system, and every idiot who could count agreed.

And Stan Kim didn’t call.

Stockton’s grandson fell asleep. The President himself mixed with his staff, thanking them, making jokes, smiling, giving hugs and high fives, ticking through his mental list of people who deserved special thanks once the dust settled.

Finally Pryce noticed Larry Cline working his way towards the President, a grin on the Campaign Manager’s face, but that unmistakable look of you have work to do buried beneath it.