Maybelline camps out on those great wide American steps and won’t leave, which gets easier when somebody donates a camp shower and a cot. Her posterboard sign grows weathered; somebody gives her a plywood copy. Passersby ask her to shake their hands. People hear about it as far away as Norway and Morocco, and some of them come to join her.

Eventually a man in a black suit comes out to see them. “Fine,” he says, “we’ll concede whatever you want! But–look, you know you’re not in Washington, right? Just the EPCOT plaza?”

“I don’t understand the question,” says Maybelline.