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inconsequential and had probably cost the Party a pittance. “You don’t care, remember?” But saying this he saw that he did care.
    When he got outside, the man and Adam’s signs had vanished, and where he had been standing was now a sign proclaiming the virtue of voting for the local socialist candidate, Lexington Bramwell Bliss, the kind of name you gave a lap dog or a treasured teddy bear. Aside from the silly pretensions suggested by the name, the situation had now deteriorated into theft, and regardless of his waning emotional commitment to the Party and the PMO , Adam felt duty-bound to retrieve their property.
    Looking across at the leaning house, his destination, he saw a figure briefly part the curtains drawn across the large front window on the ground floor. An elderly woman, he could make out, before the drapes closed again. He wondered if she could tell who he was. Calling on her now, without an election sign to leave, might well be futile. She didn’t seem the sort who changed her mind, and she had certainly expressed no love for Don Feeney, the Party and politicians in general.
    The curtain parted again and this time a dark-skinned face peered out: his rooftop joker.
    The front door opened and out came the man, holding a clipboard and a lawn sign, a duplicate of the one that had sprouted in front of the co-op residence. Everything was suddenly clear. Adam crossed the street.
    â€œMr. Bliss, I presume?”
    â€œI’ll be with you shortly, young sir,” he said, driving the sharp end of the stake forcefully into the beating heart of Mrs. Fallingbrooke’s crabgrass. He adjusted the tilt of the sign to match that of the house.
    â€œNice touch.”
    â€œIt be the touches that nudge we starward.”
    â€œWhat were you doing up there, if you don’t mind me asking?”
    â€œâ€˜My’ asking. Where you acquire you mother tongue, fool?” said Lexington Bramwell Bliss, now more Mr. T than Oxonian.
    â€œYou saw me coming with my signs.”
    â€œSign, sign, everywhere a sign!”
    â€œYou can’t just—”
    â€œWhat you say? Can’t just? Can’t what? Yes I surely just can. And did. Ha!”
    Adam looked past the man, whose tight-fitting white suit and red silk tie made him look theatrical and not at all like the typical candidate from his leftist party. Left-leaning party, left-leaning house. Bliss himself stood canted parallel to the angle of the newly planted sign.
    The homeowner came out to stand, humpbacked, on her top step. She wore a simple black dress and a string of pearls with matching earrings. She looked to be ninety-nine and three quarter years old.
    â€œAs soon as I rang off from talking to you, I called LB, thinking, ‘Oh, let’s make this interesting, shall we?’ Well?”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œYou’re coming in. It’s your turn to persuade me.”
    â€œI thought all you wanted was someone to drive you to the grocery store.”
    â€œLB is coming back to do just that after he has completed his work on this street. Aren’t you, LB?”
    â€œThat I am, my empress, that I most surely am!”
    â€œI’m sorry, thank you for the invitation, but really. You got your laugh at my expense. What’s the use?”
    â€œUsefulness is a highly overrated quality. We quickly outlive our usefulness. Style trumps substance in all but the rarest case worth mentioning these days, and certainly always in the political arena. Isn’t that right, LB?”
    Bliss laughed heartily in agreement as he rang the next doorbell.
    â€œI have to get back to the phones.”
    â€œPhones, drones. Waste of time, your intrusive cold call. Or are you targeting the potentially vulnerable, lonely widows like me with too much money and not enough sense? What they can do these days with a SIN , a postal code and GIS software. Don’t look so surprised; I keep abreast. As for