Harris put his arm around his wife and pulled her close. There was so much he wanted to say. Courage! Look around you! The makings of happiness are before us! When Demographics in America first began to thrive, when he launched his focus groups of disenfranchised machine tool workers and reconstructed farmers, when the politicians started showing up, Ellen had been electrified. If all these people were coming to him here, she’d said—here in the middle of nowhere—imagine what would happen when they moved somewhere central! By then, Harris had glimpsed the truth that his wife still could not accept: this was the center. This. The center of the world. The place everyone turned to learn what American voters and moviegoers and worshipers, investors and sports fans, dieters, parents, cooks, drivers, smokers, hospital patients, music lovers, home-builders, drinkers, gardeners really cared about. What they would buy, yearn for, dream of. Harris had those answers. Or knew how to find them. The Lord had given him this gift.