“Damn,” he swears. He’d hoped to be there with Seema for this. His initial disappointment pivots to uncontainable euphoria. He finds some release leaning on the horn and switching lanes, the car shrieking as he swerves from one lane to the other and back, amid a cacophony of blared warnings. He pictures Mame’s censures, Seema’s alarm. He laughs and whoops, ceasing the zigzagging, but continuing to pound on the horn.

Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!

Nobody else is going to get it, he thinks. But they do: first one car honks in reply, then another, and soon the entire stretch of highway slowing down through Fairfield becomes one long chorus, a rolling chant against the little town’s disbelief, its dazed lights blinking—

Yes! We! Can!

So Nevada didn’t matter. A twinge of regret: he should have gone to volunteer in Ohio after all. But who could have predicted such a blowout?

The evening deepens as he crosses into East Bay but seems brighter as the skies clear. I-80 swings toward the water, and he can finally see the faint lights of San Francisco beckoning across the bay. Already the landscape is rosier, dusk but also dawn. Only last week he and Seema were driving this same way, discussing what they’d do if Obama—if they—won:

A house. A tree. A child. The parameters of each are clearer: a house in Piedmont, not Oakland, if they’re going to give their child the best education, as Mame would have wanted; and it must be a girl—he pictures Obama’s younger daughter—with Seema’s eyes and smile; and the tree must be ready to bloom a canopy of scarlet by the time their daughter is old enough to climb it.

The traffic slows to a crawl near the Bay Bridge. Is it an accident? No, it’s the chaos of a street fair, a celebration anticipating the coming declaration: windows rolled down, the air rent with honks and shouts and thumping music, passengers whooping it up through open sunroofs, cars stranded empty, drivers dancing on hoods, leaping about, and exchanging high fives. The vehicles trying to get through are confounded, like lost ants, not the orderly crawl he’d been confident he’d make it through. He’s on the bridge nearing his exit when voting closes in California, and seconds later the election is called for Obama.

He drives home through a city that has poured out into the streets in ecstasy: thronging, dancing, music, firecrackers, whistles. He receives texts and calls from his friends in Reno, all jubilant and boisterous. He joins in their remote celebration, though unable to silence the little voice that keeps pointing out his screwup. He calls Seema, hoping she’ll at least pick up this time.