And here it was, Verity assumed, midway between Valencia and Mission, on a prime two-story stretch of smooth brick: a celebration of the president’s bravery during the campaign, rendered in shiny black and white, like a giant Victorian steel engraving executed by OCD fairies. The president stood smiling, her arms outstretched to America. Her opponent loomed behind her, as he once actually had, Verity herself having watched this debate live. Seeing this now, she recalled her own sickened disbelief at his body language, the shadowing, his deliberate violation of his opponent’s personal space. "I don’t think anyone I know believes there was ever any real chance of him winning," she said to Eunice. "I don’t know whether I did myself, but I was still scared shitless of it." She was looking at how the artist had rendered his hands. Grabby.