The Swing Voter of Staten Island (17 page)

A
distant canine howl woke him some time later. He could faintly hear a bongo drum, broken by occasional barks. In the large windows of the deserted warehouse on the pier, he thought he saw a figure moving along the upper floor.

The sky was a silky shade of blue. Reading
The Clarion Call
, he learned that a suspect had already been apprehended in the bombing of the Crapper headquarters.

DROPT’S ASSASSIN ARRESTED
by Christen Soll

Daniel Ellsberg, a suspected terrorist with CIA ties, was arrested for bombing the Manhattan Crapper headquarters and killing nearly two dozen people including the Crapper mayoral candidate, James Dropt.

Tom Di Hammer, an up-and-coming District Gangcop Lieutenant from Jackson Heights, Queens, arrested the man who masterminded the bombing. Ellsberg, a former Pentagon employee according to an unnamed source, has clear connections to the notorious Weather Underground. He was apprehended early yesterday on Ditmas Boulevard and charged with twenty-two counts of murder along with a host of related charges that included stealing four road repair trucks. According to confidential sources, Ellsberg has not revealed the identity of his coconspirators. He was sent into detention here eight years ago for allegedly stealing military secrets from the Pentagon and trying to smuggle them to his contact in Hanoi …

The story definitely had the stink of conspiracy theory. Another article also caught Uli’s eye:

TERRORIST TRUCK BOMB KILLS 2 NEAR ST. PAT’S
by Harold Steward

A truck was blown up today in front of Rock & Filler Center killing two people and wounding three others. Sources claim that Crapper guerrillas intent on blowing up the Midtown Crapper Administration at 30 Rock & Filler Center accidentally detonated their bomb before they were able to remove it from the truck. Mike Mulligatawny, 53, and Sam Reynolds, 62, both registered Crappers, were killed. Four others were wounded. Pray for their eternal punishment.

Instead of blaming random terrorists, as had the paper he found on the bus, this publication only fingered Crappers. What bothered Uli most was that the article about Rock & Filler Center had greatly undercounted the dead and injured. The dozen or so who had been killed and the countless wounded were victims again—this time to propaganda.

Depressed by the news, Uli pulled his shoes on and walked back to the television area which was now empty. He followed the sound of deep chuckles to a small chubby man sitting alone in front of the large community TV.

“What’s up?” he asked the merry viewer.

“Jack Gleason in
The Honeymooners
,” the man said, trembling with laughter. When he caught his breath, he shook his fist and said, “To the moon, Alice!”

“They broadcast this?”

“No, we get to watch the tapes.” Pointing to a broom closet, the viewer added, “We have an archive next door.”

In a little room lined with bookshelves, a clipboard listed all the videotapes in the library. The collection consisted of top-rated television shows, including
The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Prisoner, Naked City, Gilligan’s Island, Wanted Dead or Alive, Gunsmoke, Hogan’s Heroes, The Andy Griffith Show, Ben Casey, The Tonight Show,
and
Bewitched
. Uli felt too exhausted to watch anything, so he went to the communal bathroom and took a hot shower. Utilizing the free supplies, he brushed his teeth and gargled, then returned to his little cubicle. Glancing out the skinny window, he spotted a lone figure coming from the empty warehouse on the pier.

As soon as Uli lay down, he heard the distinct clicking of high-heeled shoes. Peering out the window again, he saw a woman exiting the warehouse as well. Uli was fairly certain it was Ernestina Eric. Her eyes were open wide and there was a strangely vacant smile on her face. He watched her vanish around a corner, then he went back to bed.

11/1/80

T
he next morning Uli woke to a strange synchronized chant:
“We’re right, cause we’re right, cause we’re right, cause we’re right …”

Looking out the window into the courtyard, he saw a group of roughly two hundred men and women donning gray sweats in tight formation, doing jumping jacks to the beat of the word, “Right!” Uli figured this was why all the workers here looked so trim and fit.

He shaved and showered, then slipped on his filthy clothes and jammed two food stamps into his pocket. In a corner of the room where the carpet was coming up, he hid the balance of stamps that Mallory had given him two days earlier.

Down in the cafeteria, people were gathering for breakfast. Grabbing an orange tray, he moved down the food line.

“Name?” asked a large curly haired woman who monitored everyone entering.

“Huey.”

The monitor checked under the letter
H
and told him to proceed. Uli was given a plate of reddish scrambled eggs and yellow mashed potatoes; both appeared to be made from a mix. He took two pieces of black bread, a cup of watery coffee, and an unripened apple. He found that if he ate quickly without inhaling, the food didn’t taste so bad. Since he needed energy, he had two more helpings of everything. His dirty clothes made him feel self-conscious, so after stacking his tray in the dishwasher’s window, he raced downstairs to the tailor. He found a short line of men and women already gathered. After twenty minutes, it was his turn. He was given a baggy suit to try on and a stool to stand upon. A woman with a mouthful of needles and a piece of chalk made notations on the cloth.

“How soon will the suit be ready?” Uli asked eagerly.

“Every morning I get the same number of people waiting for me that you saw today,” she said laboriously. “There’s a one-month backlog.”

“A month? My clothes are literally falling off my body.”

“I’m sorry, but unless you want to pay something extra …”

“How much to get it done right now?”

“Four stamps for right now.”

“I’ve got two stamps.” He held them out and she snatched them.

He waited in the hallway until five minutes to 9, an hour and a half later, when she waved to him. His suit was done. He immediately put it on. Although the polyester blend abraded his inner thighs and the fabric felt carcinogenic, it was a perfect fit. He walked proudly to the bus stop. In the half an hour or so that it took for the bus to arrive, about two dozen others joined him. The men all wore the same style and color suit as he, while the women had on long, dark blue dresses with matching jackets.

Ernestina Eric, the Brooklyn South supervisor for educational outreach, was the last of the group to appear. “I’ve been waiting eight weeks for a new suit,” she said to him. “How’d you get one so quickly?”

Uli shrugged innocently, then asked, “Did I see you outside last night?”

“Outside where?”

“You were coming from the abandoned building on the pier.” He pointed over to it.

“No way, it’s dangerous out there.”

“What the heck is that place anyway?”

“They were going to convert it to a school, but then they decided to turn it into a giant church instead.”

Ernestina introduced him to his new team of coworkers: Lionel, Eileen, Harvey, Linda, Derek, and Sam. Uli knew he’d never remember their names, he wasn’t even sure of his own. After a flurry of handshakes, the little group returned to their conversation about the upcoming mayoral election and how if Shub lost, it would mark the advent of godlessness in Rescue City.

“And this is your new partner, Patricia Itt,” Ernestina said, leading him to a woman with goofy curls shooting out of her head like mattress springs.

His new partner didn’t so much as look at him. Instead, she walked over to the bus as it pulled up and kicked its dented fender. Then she screamed up to the driver about being late. Uli looked at their supervisor with concern.

“She’s a Taurus,” Ernestina explained. “That’s what they do. They’re impulsive.”

“Okeydoke.”

Ernestina joined others boarding the bus. His new coworker, however, stood before the vehicle and continued to berate the driver as everyone got on. Regarding her as a kind of angry female Oric, Uli gently took Patricia by her arm and led her onto the bus.

When the two sat down in the rear, his new partner finally seemed to notice him: “I heard you’re from old New York City.”

“I don’t really remember.”

“What’s it like there now?” Patricia asked. “They were supposed to clean it up.”

Uli repeated what he had just said.

“They told us that once it was cleaned up they were bringing back the evacuees and releasing most of the detainees, and I was told I was only a suspect, so I would probably be released.”

“Good.” Even Oric had been easier to deal with.

“I heard they elected some guy named Koch as mayor.”

Something shifted in Uli’s memory, confirming the name. “So why hasn’t he done anything to help us?”

Uli replied that he had no idea what was keeping them from containing the microscopic traces of radioactive particles from each tiny crack on the endless streets and buildings that made up lower Manhattan. Impatient with his answer, Patricia turned around and started making barking sounds at someone behind her.

Uli noticed early-morning nomads canvassing the garbage piles in that tricky zone between Brooklyn and Queens. Billboards along the roadway had pictures of Mayor Shub squinting earnestly, along with the slogan,
Vote Shub & Don’t Look Back!

He ain’t lyin or flirtin
, another campaign poster rhymed,
reelect him or you’ll be hurtin!

As the minibus bounced and skidded along King’s Highway, it stopped every once in a while to pick up passengers.

Unlike that nightmarish bus trip on the first day, this one remained packed with P.P. people. It passed through east Brooklyn, where Uli realized that he preferred the traditional Japanese architecture over the dreary Soviet designs.

About an hour later, when they reached the southern end of Brooklyn, teams of missionaries started bailing out two at a time at each stop.

“You and Patricia are going to be at the western end of Coney Island,” Ernestina said, giving Uli a small stack of leaflets and two full paper bags. “Hand out the pictograph flyers and these are your lunches. I’ll come at the end of the day to collect you.” Uli felt like a child whose mother was depositing him at school.

The bus slowed down as they approached a miniature amusement park. The supervisor signaled to him that it was their stop.

Once on the sidewalk, Patricia raced up ahead of Uli, past the food concessions and the half-dozen or so rides that made up Astroland.

“Slow down!” he shouted as she bounded over the sparsely populated walkway. Uli now felt like a geriatric father in pursuit of some hyperactive child. He stared out over the narrow manmade river to see the results of a strange catastrophe. The wreckage of four rusty roller coasters were coupled together—it was the old Cyclone ride. Two of the cars were half buried in the sand on a little beach. The rest were submerged in the bluish-green waters of the long winding canal.

“Wow!” Uli uttered. It appeared that at the zenith of the ride, the roller coaster had come off its track and flown out over the desert, crashing into the river.

Apparently having seen it all before, Patricia just pulled out her stack of brochures and raced over to passersby: “Hey, you! Get an education! Right here, right now—
pow!”

Uli spent the day trying to hand out the educational pamphlets. But by lunch he had only gotten rid of three and he saw all three people toss them to the ground. Patricia kept up her effective rhyming system, and by 4 o’clock, when some youth walked by Uli, he tried to make a similarly upbeat plea: “Get an education—it’s better than Claymation!”

“You fucked that up big time,” Patricia said to him.

“What are you talking about?”

“You ain’t suppose to tell folks to get no cremation.”

“No, I said it’s better than
Claymation
!”

“Well, you ain’t suppose to throw big words at folks trying to make ’em feel small an’ all,” she said in a singsong beat.

“I was trying to convince him—”

“If you do it again, see if I don’t report you to Ernestina,” Patricia said and dashed off.

Uli waited a moment longer, then sunk down on a bench and tried to imagine the ocean lazily lapping at the shores of old Coney Island. Eventually, he leaned over, pulled his legs up, and nodded off to sleep.

“Lazy Jehovah’s Witnesses!”

The words jolted him awake. Some old-timer, a pale giant of a man, was sitting next to him on the bench and staring at his stack of brochures. The ancient fellow had deeply sunken eyes, floppy ears, a long narrow nose, and he lacked a single strand of hair. “This ain’t South Ferry, but it’ll have to do,” the guy said as he pulled a large Danish from a brown paper bag. “That’s where I used to live in the old town.”

“Would you be interested in getting an education?” Uli asked, offering him a brochure.

“I have a graduate degree from Yale, hotshot.” The hairless man took a bite out of his pastry and continued talking: “I just couldn’t get a job, that’s how I wound up in the Bronx way back when. But that wasn’t why I had to change my name. That was something else entirely …”

Uli still felt exhausted and decided to take advantage of the situation. To dupe Patricia, he acted as though he was listening, pretending to attempt a recruitment. While the old man’s voice droned on, Uli closed his eyes.

There was something familiar about the guy’s high voice—as though he were speaking at a frequency only Uli could pick up—but it didn’t make complete sense: “…
indguessoonlytonenofeusecouldoprevail
…” Slowly screening out the static, Uli was eventually able to decipher what the man was saying: “The other had to eat crow and that was me … We were a redundancy of sorts. What he did was amazing, the great pyramid of parks, beaches, highways, bridges …”

Uli’s awareness seemed to click off, yet he could feel his brain digesting information like a stomach filling inside his head. When he awoke again, he could still hear the old man’s words flowing almost magnetically into his ears, and yet he hadn’t really grasped any of it.

“I’m truly sorry, Millie! Sorry about the failed revolution! Sorry about then leaving you in New York … Sorry, Elise, for using you to compete with Mr. Robert … Sorry to Teresa and the kids for all our hopes that drowned in the goddamn pool … Sorry, Lucretia, for not putting it all behind me and abandoning you … Most of all, Bela and Beatrice, I’m sorry to both of you, letting one die without knowing what she meant to me, and not feeling worthy enough to claim the other when she had been abandoned …”

“I’m sorry too,” Uli finally joined in, yawning. “But at least it sounds like you had more than your share of women.” He looked over to the million-year-old man, only to see he was fast asleep. Apparently, Uli’s own brain had devised and unspooled this bizarre “sorry” soliloquy. He quietly rose to his feet and left the strange elderly man snoozing on the bench.

At 6 p.m., supervisor Ernestina waved over from the street entrance to the boardwalk. Uli signaled to Patricia Itt and together the three of them returned to the minibus, which collected all the outreach workers as it headed back to the P.P. compound.

Patricia ratted him out on the bus ride back: “He was just a lazybones! Spent the whole day with some old liver spot, not doing nothing.” Uli didn’t respond.

Back in his dorm, he washed his face. Finding a pair of abandoned slippers in the communal bathroom, he put them on and came down to dinner in his former shirt and pants, not wanting to get his new suit dirty.

“So, how’d you like your first day?” Ernestina asked as Uli sat staring at his inedible dinner of something brown floating in something green.

“Maybe a good night’s sleep will make a difference,” he replied.

“Actually, I wanted to invite you to a prayer meeting we’re having downstairs.”

Uli said he was experiencing indigestion, which was partly true, and he politely declined.

As he headed out of the cafeteria and up to Building 4 after the meal, his limbs felt increasingly heavy. He was simply tapped out.

Lumbering up to his distant room, he barely heard the sultry whisper: “Blowjob?”

He turned to see Deer Flare, the girl with the abrupt forehead who he’d met yesterday getting off the bus. She was wearing a white shirt, a tight plaid skirt, dark nylon stockings, and seductive black heels.

“Did you say something?”

“Sleeping on a bench with some old mummy when you should be trying to educate the masses. Tsk, tsk,” she said, walking toward him.

“Huh?”

“I spotted you today out in Coney Island, hon,” she replied, then smiling she added, “I guess I’m not the only one who’s seen something I oughtn’t.”

“I think you’ve confused me with someone else.”

“You saw us last night,” she accused. “Did you take a photo? Is that it?”

“What are you talking about?” But Uli knew exactly what she was talking about. Now he was sure he had seen Siftwelt in the middle of some vague sexual misconduct the night before.