The Swing Voter of Staten Island (23 page)

“Maybe that’s what happened to me,” Uli said.

“They put the whole counterculture here.”

“Were you investigating the war in some way?”

“I don’t really know, I’ve been having memory problems.” Uli didn’t think he had been a reporter, or even opposed the government. “When exactly did the war start?”

“The Democrats started it slowly under Kennedy. Johnson escalated it. Then the antiwar movement kicked in and Nixon claimed the peaceniks were preventing the U.S. from winning, so after New York got hit, they tied the movement to domestic terrorists and a lot of the leaders were rounded up and sent here.”

“When did the war end?” Uli asked.

“It hasn’t,” Bernstein said. “As of two months ago, based on radio reports we’ve managed to pick up, over a quarter-million Americans have been killed—”

“You know what just occurred to me?” Woodward interrupted. “She could be in the East Village.”

“Who?” Bernstein asked.

“Mallory.”

“Why do you say that?” Uli asked.

“That Chain guy’s last words.”

“He called us evil,” Woodward remembered.

“No, we asked him where they were holding Mallory and he said
Evil
, which is an old Pigger term for the East Village.”

A
fter the sun had set, their old truck finally rolled into downtown Brooklyn, where it immediately got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The crowd of pathological shoppers were fumbling through the latest tawdry products piled in the blue sales troughs along the sidewalk: plastic belts, unmatched flip-flops, rubbery wallets, broken flashlights, hazardous children’s toys, board games’ missing pieces, carcinogenic paint sets, lenseless reading glasses, dented cans of unlabeled food, half-crushed boxes of pasta, aerosol cans without spray tops, nonbiodegradable cleansing solutions, and so on. All selling for peanuts.

“What you’re seeing is one of the greatest feats of Pigger ingenuity,” Woodward said. “This place started out as a fully subsidized pantry of free items. By referendum, the Piggers were able to convince the majority of people here to auction off these supplies, thereby switching the place over from a charitable service to a free-market economy.”

“Why?”

“They claim it’s all taxed to operate the city government,” Bernstein replied. “But now the Pigger Party and the city government are essentially one and the same.”

“Subsequently, the Piggers always have the largest war chests during election times.”

“Ninety-four percent of the time the candidates with the bigger budgets win.”

The engine of their truck suddenly stopped humming, and they came to a silent halt in downtown traffic.

“Shit!” Bernstein muttered. “We’re out.”

“Out of what?” Uli asked. Horns behind them instantly blared.

“Electricity,” the driver said. “The sun set an hour ago. We’ve got to run a cord to an outlet and recharge for the night.”

“You better scat,” Woodward said to Uli as they got out to push.

Bernstein steered, as the other two pushed.

“We still have to find Mallory,” Uli said.

“We’re reporters. We’re not trained to go running around fighting,” Bernstein replied.

“He’s right. We’ll tell our people to look into it,” Woodward said, “but poor Mallory’s probably dead. And all those Piggers at Rikers Island know your face. You can bet that before this day is through you’re going to be public enemy number one.”

“Your best bet is to head down to Stink Island if you can,” Bernstein added. “You can camp out in the desert. Bring a warm sleeping bag. Cause if you light a fire, they’ll spot you.”

The two men gave Uli ten stamps, all they could spare. Uli thanked them for the money and advice and helped them push their truck down a side street to a small clothing shop. A proprietor they knew allowed them to plug in their extension cord for a recharge at the discounted price of two stamps.

The reporters headed south toward Park Slope and Uli turned west to where Deer Flare had been politicking earlier, near the corner of Jackie Wilson Way and Jay Street.

Her coven of campaigners were gone. As Uli passed through the late-night throngs of consumers at the grand bazaar, he saw trucks unloading a wealth of new items. The Piggers had obviously privatized the economy for more than just the revenue to run the city. When an economy was doing well, constituents usually elected the incumbent party. By dumping cheap items on the eve of an election, the government could simulate boom conditions and get itself reelected.

Uli’s only chance of not getting caught, he realized, was by radically altering his appearance. Goin Outa Biznez, a popular clothing franchise that he had seen scattered throughout Rescue City, had a line of green army surplus jackets hanging from a drop gate. Uli picked one that fit loosely and selected a flannel shirt with a flower pattern, along with a tight pair of canary-yellow bell-bottoms.

About a block away, he passed a young woman wearing a T-shirt with the apt remark,
Quit Honking—You Ain’t Gettin’ There No Faster
. She was selling a large box of curly black wigs. Uli pulled one over his P.P. crew cut and paid her.

He spotted a colorful diner near Jay Street called JR’s. Inside, the food line was shorter than the line for the bathroom. Pushing to the rear, he calculated that at the ambitious rate of two minutes per person, it would take twenty minutes to get to a toilet stall.

Forty-five minutes later, Uli found himself in the filthiest, smelliest restroom he had encountered in Rescue City. With little arm and leg room, he stripped off his torn and wrinkled Pure-ile Plurality suit, shoved it in the garbage can, and pulled on his new floral shirt and flared yellow pants. The fact that he hadn’t shaved in a few days accented his hippie look.

Someone started banging on the flimsy plywood door. “Hey! We gotta shit too!”

When he opened the door, he saw that the line of bowelladen, bladder-heavy people had practically doubled. Some burly fellow screamed at him about getting high in the john, which convinced him that the hippie disguise was working.

Uli walked the few blocks to the Fulton Street bus depot. Strangely, the only person there was an older man in an official uniform, precariously balanced on a wooden milk carton, snoring loudly. Uli noticed the insignia on his visored cap,
Transcouncil Bus Service
.

“Do you know what time the Lower East Side bus comes?” Uli asked softly.

“Bus service had been suspended for the rest of the evening due to the coming storm.”

“How the hell am I supposed to get home?”

“Shoulda thought of that before you came out, freakin hippie.”

Uli sighed aloud.

“Take a freakin cab,” the scheduler suggested.

“I don’t have enough.”

“Where you going, Crazy Fag Island?”

“No, Manhattan.”

“Oh, that dumb-ass hippie festival,” the guy replied.

“What dumb-ass festival?”

“That Foul Festival celebrating the Day of the Dead. I’d shake my LSD if I were you, boy. When the sky breaks, it’s going to come down like the Hoover Dam and wash you hippies clean.”

Despite the foreboding clouds and the empty bus stop, the streets were still filled with people. Uli heard a bullhorn shouting deals:
“Big storm a-coming, folks, and we got nowhere to put it all, so these are end-of-the-world sales …”

Feeling irritable as the choke began wearing off and the stinging in his seared scrotum worsened, Uli glanced up and observed the clouds and sky growing phosphorus one moment and mustard-colored the next. People were shopping frantically. The winds began rising. That was when he spotted the first
MALLORY FOR MAYOR
poster. It looked like it had just been put up and the storm had already pulled it partially loose. He lumbered over to a soda vendor that advertised a greenish drink called Bolt! that looked like antifreeze.

“How much?”

“A sixteenth,” the vendor said. Uli handed him the denomination and got a tiny chilled bottle. It tasted pleasantly minty, so Uli gulped it down and bought a second bottle.

“Don’t drink too much of the root or you’ll get the jitters,” the merchant cautioned.

As Uli gulped it down, some rude bastard deliberately knocked into him, causing him to spill half the bottle on the ground. It was a member of a gang walking in tight formation through the crowd. People quickly parted for them.

Pigger gangcops must be out looking for me,
he thought tensely.
Shit! They must’ve discovered the bodies of Underwood and Chain!

Not aware that Bolt! was a carbonated antihistamine, Uli broke out into a feverish sweat and decided it was entirely up to him to warn the masses that the gang from the northern boroughs—who had just assassinated their candidate—had also grabbed their replacement candidate.

“The Piggers kidnapped Mallory!” he shouted into the wind. “They are stealing your election and we must fight them! Fight them in the streets, fight them in the river, fight them in the desert!” He borrowed liberally and unknowingly from Churchill, but no one reacted. He opened his arms and grabbed a passerby. “Don’t you see? The terrorist attack on Manhattan was just part of their plan! That’s how they were able to put us here and gain control in the first place!” He started trembling. In a moment he fainted.

Uli woke moments later gagging, unable to breathe or see a thing. The rain hadn’t commenced, but a violent sandstorm was in full force. Leaflets were scattered everywhere. The world was a brown snow globe being shaken by a madman.

Through granular waves, Uli stumbled along with outstretched arms and fingers. A random sequence of metal gates slammed down far and near. Unable to keep his eyes open, he pulled his shirt up over his mouth so he could breathe and hobbled forth … Bumping into something, he fell down … Crawling on his knees, he was able to feel cheap merchandise that had been cast off … toys, appliances, clothing … He felt a pair of glasses, which he slipped into his pocket. Rising slowly, tripping again, bumping blindly into others bumping into him … The entire time hearing the sounds of negotiation … Voices still making low-ball offers …
“Take it for whatever’s in yer pocket”
… Counteroffers were ping-ponged back, storm-proof haggling … Others frantically crisscrossed like beetles, knocking over sales bins and each other …

A tremendous explosion blasted a hundred feet before him … An orange fire ball under an amber veil of sand, then blackness.
“All sales are final.”
Gagging, coughing through the thick burning smoke. Screams. Shouts …
“A car bomb sale!”
… Sirens. People dashing around him in panic … Crying for others …
“Final sale before dying”
…
“Oh my god! Help me! … My leg! I don’t have no leg!” … “Cynthia! Cynthia! Where the fuck are you?” … “Sixteen for a sixteenth-stamp!”
… He could hear objects crunching under endless feet …

Uli moved away from the blast site and sales … downhill into the grainy darkness … Looking up through the black smoke and sand, he made out the geometric rooftops of mini-warehouses … north of Brooklyn Heights … The storm simmered down just long enough for him to make out one of the narrow suspension towers … The overpass to Manhattan was several blocks away … much smaller than the original Brooklyn Bridge. Faux webbing connected to a thick cable reached upward to the top of the two stone towers. The wind kicked up again, forcing Uli to close his eyes … Breathing through the thin fabric of his new floral shirt, he moved blindly toward Manhattan while grazing his open palm along the railing.

When Uli was roughly halfway across the waterway, the wind tapered again and he found himself facing a blockade in the center of the bridge. A group of blue-uniformed men were stopping cars going in both directions, checking their trunks.

“Hands up,” a uniformed guard wearing swimming goggles ordered. “We have to frisk you.”

“Why?” Uli asked, as they patted him down. Without explanation, they allowed him to continue into Manhattan.

Unlike the vehicular exit he had taken with Oric, the Brooklyn Bridge walkway descended onto 14th Street further east, at Avenue B. Uli proceeded westward, the howling winds deafening once again. The sand was now so thick he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

Ten minutes after getting off the bridge, Uli walked smack into a building. Groping around blindly, he located a door and tried the knob—no luck. With his eyes tightly shut, he continued down the sidewalk. Feeling for other doors, grabbing and turning knobs, one after the next, to no avail. After moving a couple of blocks south, he stumbled several long blocks west. He finally found his way into a courtyard, where he tried the knob of a large majestic door. It opened and Uli toppled in, quickly shoving the door shut behind him. He was in the rear of a large church. At least a hundred young people sitting quietly in rows of pews turned around to see him—reminding him that he was a fugitive.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling his wig on straight. The glasses he had grabbed off the ground in Brooklyn turned out to be sunglasses, so he slipped them on too. A young redhaired man standing at a podium in the front of the room returned to a poem he was in the middle of reading: “Having just won the nomination of his fringe party / the well-meaning candidate celebrated over an unpopular brand of herbal tea …”