Day five: the university debate club had invited both of them. Neither had known the other was coming. She had arrived first and was setting up at the podium when he came in and they had looked at each other across the lecture hall with the expressions of people who were adapting rapidly. The debate club president, a young woman who had the specific delight of someone who had accidentally produced excellent television, had suggested an impromptu debate. Both of them had said yes — because saying no would have looked like fear, and neither of them was in the business of looking like anything except completely ready.
The debate lasted forty minutes. She won on substance — she could tell, she had been doing debates since law school and she could read a room, and the room was with her on the water infrastructure argument and on the eastern ward school proposal and on the municipal budget transparency issue. But he won on presence — he had the platform manner of someone who had been trained from childhood, the controlled warmth, the specific way of making a room feel that he was speaking to each person individually rather than to all of them at once. She had the better arguments. He had the better delivery. She filed this as information to act on and did not let it distract her during the session but thought about it extensively afterward.
Afterward, in the corridor outside the lecture hall, he had appeared beside her as she was putting her notes away. "Your Kanpur NGO model is better than mine," he said. "I've been researching it since Tuesday. The fourteen-month figure is real."
"I know it's real," she said. "I was there when it happened."
"You were the consultant on that project," he said. "Before you ran for office. That's why you know the lead."
"Are you reciting my CV to me?"
"I'm saying that your credibility on the school project comes from direct experience and you're not making enough of that in your campaign literature. The voters in the eastern wards don't know you were the consultant." He paused. "They should know. It changes the promise from a politician's word to a professional track record."
She stopped. She looked at him. He was putting his own notes into his bag — the contained, efficient motion of someone who was never not doing four things simultaneously. "Why are you telling me this?" she said.
