E-Mail This Article to a Friend Watching Bill Clinton buy a watch by Mike Miliard

TUESDAY, July 27, 2004 -- It’s a cliché to say that Bill Clinton has a magnetic personality, but it’s also true -- as anyone who saw his speech Monday night at the FleetCenter can attest. But unless you’ve seen the phenomenon up close, you don’t know the half of it.

I’d planned to see Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd speak about George Bush’s "reckless and arrogant presidency" at the First Parish Church in Harvard Square this afternoon. But the place was prohibitively full, especially after a last-minute contingent of Byrd’s West Virginian compatriots wedged themselves inside. So I grabbed a couple slices of pizza, then started to head back to the office. But as I approached Alpha Omega jewelers on my way to the T station, I found myself walking into a wall of people congregated in front of the store. Something was up. By the door stood a handful of helmeted police officers. Still more directed traffic and kept ever-increasing gawkers from blocking the road. "Sidewalk or across the street! You can’t stand here!" Another officer stood impassively in front of a giant, black SUV, alongside a man in a dark suit with an earpiece.

Bill Clinton. The news rippled in murmurs through the crowd. Magnetic indeed. It really was as if he had energized all those precious metals inside that store and was drawing people from miles around toward the place. And they kept coming. There had to have been well over a thousand. They surrounded the store and spilled outward, into and around the Pit. They gathered around Out of Town News. Across the street, all the way back toward the Harvard Coop and up toward the First Parish Church they stood, watching. And they stood.

As the time went on, Alpha Omega employees appeared at a second floor window and gawked at us. Some took pictures of the crowd, nudging each other and calling their co-workers, smiling incredulously as they looked down on the mini Woodstock outside. I wondered if they were laughing at us, the assembled rubes. Fools, they were probably thinking. Don’t they know he’ll leave through the back door?

One guy summed up the absurdity of the situation. "We’re gonna watch the dude walk out of the store." Still, he stayed put.

Another woman called her mother. "Get dad on the other line. I want him to hear the cheers."

"Even ex-Presidents need to buy things," an onlooker reasoned sagely.

The wait went on. Every so often, the door would crack open, a hush would fall over the crowd, and a stone-faced man would walk out who. . .was not Bill Clinton. The multitudes groaned and jeered.

One guy at the back of the crowd called to his friend at the front, and asked if he could pass up his camera, so it would be ready when the moment came.

People hung out windows across the street. One man above the Coop aimed a long telephoto lens.

"I thought that was a sniper rifle!" one goof in the crowd exclaimed.

"Oh boy, that guy’s gonna get arrested for saying that," said another.

Forty-five minutes had passed. The scrum was getting warmer and damper, and people were getting antsy.

"What if I wanted to buy a watch today?" a woman wondered aloud. "I wouldn’t be able to!"

"Whadya doing?" a guy asked the ex-prez rhetorically. "Pick out the watch! I’ve bought homes quicker than this."

"Maybe he’ll come out and ask our opinion," another woman mused. "‘Okay, a show of hands for the tennis bracelet!’"

"What if it’s not actually Clinton? What if it’s Robert Reich?" one guy joked.

"I don’t even know why I’m standing here," said an elderly woman. "I’m still mad at him." Still, she too stayed. Smiling.

"We might as well get to know each other. Who’s from the farthest away?" said one extrovert, taking an informal poll. "Connecticut? Indiana? . . .Ireland? We got an Ireland here! He’s got you beat!"

A man in a wheelchair inched his way through the sardine-tight mass. Three young gel-haired boys who looked to be from France practiced their English. "We want Beel! We want Beel!"

Suddenly, there was a commotion. The door opened. And it appeared. Above the throng, a bobbing soft cloud of gray-white hair, a waving hand.

The crowd surged like a living organism. The heat given of by so many heretofore stationary bodies seemed to increase in an instant. Arms by the dozens reached up like periscopes, clumsily waving pens and digital cameras and picture phones at the moving target.

"Give us a look here, Bill!"

"Thank you for EIGHT GREAT YEARS!"

The cottony mass could be glimpsed through the tip-toed tangle, being swallowed into the SUV. A door slammed with a decisive thud. As the car pulled forward, the rear right window lowered slowly, and the hand reappeared for a final wave. And then Bill Clinton drove away.