As had Seema. The memory of their previous evening’s fight clouds Bill’s morning. They had originally planned to return to San Francisco Sunday night as usual. But Bill couldn’t shake off the fear of some last-minute Republican shenanigans that would deliver the election to McCain. He has promised precinct captains that he’ll help clean up the final get-out-the-vote lists, targeting those who hadn’t voted yet—and he intends to stay, to see it through. Even if Seema must leave.

Besides, he wants to be able to observe in person the fruits of Obama’s (and his) labor and savor the moment of truth as America goes to the polls. Coffee and a list of polling stations in hand, he drives around Reno as voting begins at seven, stopping first at the one closest to the campaign headquarters, in the Latino section of Reno. The line circles the block, animated chatter reaching him as he pulls up and rolls down the windows.

He’d spent the night dreading that the expected Latino turnout, key to Obama’s victory in Nevada, would fail to turn up. He drives around the block relieved, exercising his meager Spanish in excited greetings and felicitations, until a policeman warns him against loitering. He flashes high fives and thumbs-ups at the campaign’s election monitors. The other polling stations, too, have decent turnouts, though some seem less than busy, to his returning anxiety. But that is surely expected, given the successful push for early voting that the surge of volunteers into Nevada enabled—what Seema has been doing the past few weekends.

He wishes Seema were with him now, as he’d been there for her in Iowa. But she’s decided that volunteering for No-On-Prop-8 is more important to her. She’d taken a flight back last night.

“What can you do about it in one day?” he’d asked.

“You know I wanted to stay in SF this weekend, Bill. You begged me, as if Obama would lose Nevada otherwise. You said we’d return Sunday night, that’s why I agreed. But if Prop 8 passes, your Obama will surely bear some of the blame.”

She’d been complaining about the missteps of the No-On-Prop-8 campaign that had made the referendum a toss-up in the last couple of weeks. The gays couldn’t pull their act together, and Obama is to blame. How can Obama risk coming out in support of same-sex marriages now, when it could cost him the election?