Addis felt the water and remembered a story O’Connor once told him about the consultant. At the start of the administration, O’Connor’s father had died suddenly when an aneuryism burst. While she was working frantically to place scheduling matters in order before flying to Georgia for the funeral, Carey dropped by her office. I heard the news, he said, sorry. She thanked him for the condolences. Then he added: “At least it didn’t happen during an election year.”

No other anecdote so encapsulated what Addis thought was the small soul of Dan Carey. For years, Addis and O’Connor had shared a private complaint: Carey and the other technicians—the pay-to-play pollsters, the media advisers, the focus-group engineers, the communications specialists—were crowding out the politicos like Addis and O’Connor, who were drawn to the game because they wanted not only to win but to alter policy outcomes as well. Politics—in the White House, on Capitol Hill, across the nation—was becoming ever more dominated by sharpies obsessed with the means. Hundreds of young men and women were enrolled in graduate programs that taught them how to be campaign managers and consultants. There was no requirement they care about anything other than the mechanisms of politics. Addis occasionally was asked to speak at these programs. In the first half of the administration, he had accepted several such invitations, hoping he could discern in the students a reason for optimism. He rarely found it. These days he routinely sent regrets when invited.

Now O’Connor and Carey were talking, sharing a ride somewhere.

Addis shut off the water. So much for do-it-yourself meditation, he thought. He dried off, dressed, and left his house through the back door.

“Mr. Addis, a moment please.”

A thin man in a crumpled white suit was standing next to Addis’s Honda. He was fifty or so, had a craggy, pale face, with dark rings beneath narrow eyes. His accent was British.

My alleyway is turning into Grand Central Station.

“Mr. Evan Hynes-Pierce,” he said and held out a hand. “Pittsburgh Courier-Press.”