The French Revolution (36 page)

“You sure ’bout dis?” Jacqueline asked. She was short and built like an icebox, naturally pushy, the kind of person who always captured a seat on the bus and wormed her way up to the front row at concerts. Fourteen years ago she’d emigrated from an unpronounceable island in the Pacific, possibly in the Philippines, and had been zealously working two or three service jobs at a time ever since.

“Course I’m sure. I can barely move, my arthritis acting up.”

“Ho-kay, I go. But I got phone call. Rubbapear coming by soon.”

“Robespierre?”

“Oh yeah! She come get some bagers, OK?”

“Weird. Real weird.” Especially since Robespierre had never visited Bagel Stop before.

“Relax, Miss Ezzie! I not gon make up story! What da point of dat?” Her fervent smile reminded Esmerelda that Jacqueline’s children were similarly grown up and more important than her, husband long out of the picture, her only friends a deaf aunt and her knitting group.

“How long til she gets here?”

“Dey say twelve firty. You know how supastars go. Whenever convenient.”

Esmerelda put on some lipstick and a little mascara and dove back into work, filing streams of cash in the register, ripping receipts, punching orders into the computer, moving the ceaseless crowd along even faster than usual, so that the line backed up at the pickup counter and she received snotty sneers from the kitchen staff. She knew Robespierre was close when a photographer backed ass-first into the store. “Face front!” she cried, slapping her hand against the counter, “and order something or scram!”

“Hey, Ma,” came Robespierre’s voice as she strutted into the store in a night-black half-dress half-suit, a blazer with skirt and leggings, serious but kind of sexy, an emerald scarf tied to her neck, balmy lips swollen from her permanent bee sting. Her hair was an elaborate weave of highlights and styles, a fraud in Esmerelda’s opinion, these were not her genes, but she smiled anyway, because votes mattered, this was her daughter, she owed her, she had no choice.

“Hello, hon!” she called, climbing off her perch for some half-assed hugging. “Can I get you the house special?”

“You got it,” she said, her patronizing smile warming up. “Ma, I wanted to tell you something.”

“I know,” Esmerelda said, “you’re making Bagel Stop the official breakfast restaurant of San Francisco.” The reporter laughed. “Always had good taste,” Esmerelda continued unconvincingly, not in the mood for palling around. “No wonder everybody loves her.”

Robespierre took both of her mother’s hands and spoke ultraslow, as if giving directions to a European tourist: “Mom, I wanted to tell you that today I’m formally announcing my candidacy for mayor.”

Esmerelda reacted as she had to, flurried arms and squawking and a round of free bagels for everyone, then calling friends on
Robespierre’s cellphone and kissing her daughter all over. And through the hullabaloo she despised—What kind of daughter informs her mother about an important life decision on television? Why is the hardscrabble mother brought front and center only at her shameful retail job? Was cheap manipulation what it took to get votes? What about the issues? Wasn’t this against everything her bold, idealistic daughter held dear?—she knew she had to do it, and sell it.

She owed them. Childhoods penned in under Fanny’s rule, recycled clothing, her own immobility and uselessness. Trading down kitchen stardom for the dumbest job in the world, missed sporting events and plays and back-to-school nights, helpless with homework, no mentorship or initiative, encouragement coming in derisive shots the kids couldn’t understand. Letting Marat’s dope-slanging fester in front of her, never laying down the law or highlighting applicable sentencing guidelines or offering replacement income in the form of a decent allowance. Lifelong financial mismanagement and her newfound gambling habit, burning money everywhere. How they pried Fanny free when she couldn’t, devising and executing a liability-proof suicide facilitation plan she hadn’t had the creativity or stomach for, the gray mark on their souls more than worth it: the sham contract burned in the fireplace, the ceaseless bitching abuse finally silenced, the elephant in the parlor returned to the jungle in the sky. The years lost to hyperobesity and lack of will, only clawing out through kid-imposed boot camp and calorie control. But she owed them the most for Jasper. And so long as breath was in her, she’d work their shitty jobs and smile her shitty smile, so they knew how much she regretted everything. To see her eat it when she didn’t have to, when the money was there. She’d volunteered to work at Marat’s hag-faced boss’s bagel venture because she was a world-class chef, a master of quality control and kitchen hygiene, she understood how to calm customers when tempers flared and had decades of management experience, and of course she could process data faster than anyone
she’d ever met and might as well use the skills she had—but mostly she did it because of Jasper.

Haunting her sleep for decades. Capturing stardust on the stereo.

The impossible spiritual hero she never would have let him become.

A moon big as a basketball hung over the Bay Bridge. In the Fairmont hotel ballroom, a Buick with tinted windows puttered onstage, Tiny Jake driving. The stage clogged with smoke, the car eased to a stop, two toots on the horn and out from the passenger side rolled Jasper Winslow, Werewolf, shriveled like an old cat and decked out in blue basketball warm-ups. He smiled and tap-danced a little for the moshing crowd, slick socialites sloshing cocktails and shoving for position, already convinced their ten-thousand-dollar donations were worth it.

He hopped around the stage and went back to the car, pulled the seat back, and helped a woman climb out. She was dressed in an identical jumpsuit, thick round sunglasses, her hair pulled in a shiny ponytail, giant hoop earrings weighed down to her shoulders, a strained mouth-tucked smile. She walked stiffly, her swing a beat off, something phony about her style. Wasn’t until she started giggling up tears that the crowd realized it was Candidate Robespierre, and detonated.

“Hello,” Jasper said into the microphone, breathy and punch-less over the din. “My daughter, Robespierre Van Twinkle. Next mayor of San Francisco.” Robespierre pushed her smile wide, looking young and uncharacteristically hesitant, her father’s arm a feather boa on her shoulders.

“Lots of you know my daughter and I were apart for a long time,” he gasped. “So it’s good to be here with her. Made so much out of herself without me helpin’. I couldn’t be prouder.” Beside him Robespierre’s face retreated, she raised a hand over her eyes. The crowd burned with noise.

“Think about all this woman done. Leading the movement against the foulest war America ever fought. Taking a stand against what’s wrong. Got the guts to go further than anybody says she should, take her Supervisor role to the federal government and raise the issue. Getting down in the trenches to make it better.” He slid back a step, propped a fist under his chin. “Beautiful, ain’t she?”

He picked the mic off the stand and started to sing. She slipped down to the floor, her head hanging over her lap. It was hard to hear or see her father’s serenade over the crowd’s shouting, but those up front could make out the faded lyrics, “Hello Again” by Neil Diamond. He sat down next to her spinning out long notes, hopscotching the circle of fifths, harmonizing with himself, Tiny Jake mashing the drums up-tempo. The song ended, and she stood up and hugged him so hard he burped. She wiped her sunglasses on her jacket and blinked butterfly wings into the stage lights. The microphone moved into her hand.

“My father. Jasper Winslow. Everyone . . . ”

The applause defeated her. “A man . . . ” she took two long breaths “ . . . a man who exemplifies what this city is about. A city of compassion and opportunity. A great, majestic city that leads the country on the edge of the sea. My father.”

In the back of the ballroom, Marat chewed gum a step or two in front of Joel Lumpkin, blocking him from the curious glances of donors who’d seen him around and wondered if he was a war victim here to raise awareness, deformed from uranium exposure, face melted from Iranian cluster bombs. A head arresting for its chemical odor, multiple layers of makeup topped with several unnecessary loads of hairspray plastering down his trademark buzz cut. The outlandish white suit Joel insisted on wearing attracted extra attention, white shoes white slacks white gloves white blazer white vest white top hat, accented with aviator sunglasses and a camel-bone cane. A porn-star circus ringmaster; even for San Francisco, a sight.

“All this self-love shit,” Joel mumbled. “We’re the best, pretty and expensive, rah rah. Like a goddamn pep rally.”

“It is a rally,” Marat reminded him, though in principle he agreed; the fawning oratory felt like overkill even for his finagling sis.

“We’re a family here,” Robespierre continued. “We take care of one another. That means boosting the minimum wage. Building homes people can afford. World-class health care for everybody, I don’t care who.”

From the crowd somewhere:
Stop the War!
They swelled around the call, sang it out like a hymn, in rounds.

Robespierre held her hand to the light. “That’s my issue. You know that. There’s no other public servant against the war more than me. It’s getting our kids killed. It’s encouraging terrorism. It’s feeding extremism. It’s built on a foundation of lies and oil-company shareholders. You know me and where I stand.”

“In front of a tank!” a shout came, and they remembered her trip to Iran, her interviews with soldiers and Iranian peasants. Her good fortune sitting in the backseat when an IED exploded along the road to the Tehran airport, her escorts not as lucky, their brains piling in her lap.

Like banshees the crowd yipped and bucked.

As Marat brooded below the din, he noticed a pair of young women a few rows in front of him, Asian girls in black satin dresses and gold jewelry, touching each other’s arms. Discreetly he tracked them through the rest of his sister’s speech and his dad’s next few songs, their slight hips swaying, their lean curved backs, knuckled spines. Hair long and glossy, the color of outer space. His prick tingled, he felt motion. God, it had been a long time.

When Werewolf launched into “We Built this City,” Marat asked the woman closest to him to dance.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wrapping her fingers around her purse defensively. “I’m married.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “Maybe your friend then.”

“That’s my wife.”

Marat gave silent thanks for the most erotic constitutional amendment ever. “Oh—thanks for coming,” he backpedaled. “That’s my dad and sister up there.”

“Yeah, right,” the first one said. “What’s your name, King Louis? Richelieu?”

“Actually, it’s Marat. No kidding.” A slug of pride struck about how San Franciscans knew the history of their names, often going on to offer opinions about Republicanism and gluttonous monarchs, stringing connections between the Revolution and the Hegelian dialectic and the roots of French identity.

“Marat!” exclaimed the second one. “How’d you wind up with those wild names?”

“My parents wanted to make it easy for me to start conversations with women,” he said, selecting one of the dozens of responses he’d come up with over the years. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Marie Antoinette,” said the first one. “And this is Cake.”

“I have bad news,” Marat said. “Things may end badly.”

“Don’t they always?” asked Cake.

“Let’s dance,” Marie Antoinette said, “just us.” She took Cake’s hand and led her to a patch of open space amid couples and canoodling hippies. They danced forgetfully, three feet apart, eyes flashing around the room in a slow undirected swirl, no mojo to speak of. After a few minutes of aimless bouncing, they were confronted by the pillar of marble known as Joel Lumpkin.

“I’ll pay a hundred thousand dollars to watch you two get it on,” he said through level lips.

“
Excuse
me,” said Marie Antoinette. “Who are you?”

“I own the place,” he whispered.

“Then you know where the free booze is,” Cake suggested.

“What, the Fairmont? I thought the holding company was publicly traded,” wondered Marie Antoinette, whose mother managed a boutique hotel in St. Helena and kept her relatively up to date on the Bay Area hospitality scene.

“Come with me,” he said. “I’ll explain.”

They followed him cautiously to the bar, where he produced his business card and a round of champagne, then detailed the elaborate stock leverage plan he’d developed to wrest control of the hotel, listed the directors on his payroll. They listened intently.

He offered them another hundred grand for video, with sound.

And before Werewolf could drool down to “Amazing Grace,” Joel Lumpkin walked back to his private elevator with the wives on his arms, chatting about decorating themes for the grand entrance and the ideal rum for mai tais. A Twinkie, Joel later described it, pasty white cream surrounded by yellow fluff.