Of all the hotels in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into this one.

Laureen Harper, I mean. The prime minister's wife.

And the digs? The Delta Toronto East.

The NDP campaign had settled for a few hours of filing time. The press were hungry. They were anxious.

The sun was heading for the yardarm and the deadlines loomed like a thundercloud about to let loose.

The air in the press room was stiff and stale. A dank smell hung in the air like a policy drop gone bad.

An NDP political staffer and a reporter stepped outside to sample the clean, cool Scarborough air.

The sun was warm. The shade was cool and the breeze was fresh.

The two stiffs sat against a low concrete wall, flapping their gums. Chewing the fat.

A black SUV pulled up.

Out stepped the dame. She was blonde. In a pantsuit. Polished.

She had the look of someone the stiffs had seen before.

Then it struck them. Like a bottle of cheap rye across on the back of the head in a dockside speakeasy.

It was her.

Laureen Harper.

The big guy's wife.

She was carrying some plastic bags. Looked like she'd been to the Disney store.

The politics man and the radio man clammed up.

It was awkward. Quiet. Too quiet.

The SUV purred in the background like some kind of mountain cat what had spotted easy prey and was about to
get lunch.

Something caught her attention. Maybe the silence, maybe the two stiffs trying to melt into the background like a couple of candles on an old wood stove.

You could tell she knew the two fellas were watching her, that she'd caught them on the edge of running away, like two schoolboys diving behind a hedge after being caught out throwing rocks on the road.

Maybe it was the stupid look splashed on their mugs. Or maybe the two large plastic NDP tags that hung around their necks like a couple of bad polyster polka dot neckties, but either way. she knew these men were political.

She knew they knew who she was, and that they knew she knew they knew who she was, too.

It came down to this: Who'd get the first word out, who'd break the clumsy quiet and rescue the whole lot of them from their embarrassment, like three orange tabby kittens plucked from the long limbs of a maple tree.

"Hi," she said, outclassing the two characters by a country mile.

It was the politics guy who spoke first.

"I'm going to tell people you're hear to meet with Jack," the NDP staffer threatened, a sly grin cracking the corner's of his mouth like a cold sheet of lake ice meeting the sole of a heavy rubber boot on an early March day.

The fella's a joker.

She took it in stride.

"I would love to," she smiled.

"I like Jack. He's a great guy."

And she left.

— James Cudmore