It was interesting to see him being Senator Powell, something she’d really only seen glimpses of since she’d known him. Sure, she’d seen him on TV lots of times, but that was different. It had always felt like he was two people: her boyfriend, Max, who brought her cake and made her laugh and gave her great orgasms, and Senator Powell, who argued with other people on TV about politics, pontificated a little too much, and occasionally cracked very dorky jokes. But now she was here with her boyfriend Max, but she was also with Senator Powell, who chatted warmly with everyone there. He smiled and shook hands and took selfies and asked intelligent questions and had a pleasant smile on his face, and did it over and over and over again.

Would she have to learn how to do that if she and Max kept going like this? Is that what he had meant when he suggested they do an event together, that she see how events like this worked for politicians … and politicians’ wives? If she married Max, would this be what her life was like? Would she have to learn how to put a fake smile on her face all day whenever she was in public so she could look pleasant and harmless? Would she have to remember talking points and details about charities in different cities in California and the name of someone who had volunteered for a campaign two years before, like Max just had? Would she be some sort of Max appendage, where people wouldn’t see her as an individual but only as “the senator’s wife”? Would the world expect her to nod and smile next to him no matter what he said or did? Would she have to go everywhere in some sort of politician’s-wife suit?

“How’s the potato salad coming?” Max came around the counter to her. “Can you put me to work?”

Yes, right, she was supposed to be concentrating on potato salad, not a whole pile of what-ifs. Why was she even thinking about marriage? Ridiculous. She handed Max the washed herbs.

“Here, dry off the parsley. And I thought you were working, what happened to the potato peeling?”

He took the parsley out of the bowl and carefully rolled it in the towel.

“Well, I had a few pictures to take and hands to shake, so Jamila took over.” He lowered his voice. “That always happens when I do this stuff, and for a while I felt guilty about it, like I wasn’t pulling my weight with volunteering, but then— ”

“But then you realized your presence here is pulling the bulk of the weight, so you should give yourself a break? I’m sure those photos you just took—which will be posted everywhere—will bring in tons of volunteers and money, and will do an incredible job to spread the news of the good work we do here.”

He shrugged.