Today, like every day, Siddhartha was fishing for fluke, porgy, and the occasional albacore, wildly wrestling with his pole as if he’d hooked Hemingway’s giant marlin. “I wish the boy were here with me. Blessed Mary, pray for the death of this fish, wonderful though he is. I wish the boy were here.” If Siddhartha would sign the petition, Winston would be the boy.
The northernmost outpost of the ward was the intersection of Lexington Avenue and 129th Street. Winston envisioned constituent Jaimito Linares standing in front of Manny’s Superette, sipping on fifty-cent cans of malt liquor, hissing at any female who strayed too close to his lair. Psst, Mamí, com’ere. No, I really like you, you make me want to settle down. Next to him, in the shade of an orange beach umbrella, Wilma “La Albina” Mendez. Legs cocked open like a bronco-busting cowboy on break, Wilma would be running her pink-margarita eyes over Jaimito’s spillover. Her quasar-white skin set off with sparkling twenty-four-karat gold necklaces and dental caps, she would be searching for lesbian tendencies in the faces, walks, and haircuts of those who rebuffed Jaimito’s advances or talked to him but couldn’t keep their eyes off her. Wedding rings be damned. It’s fucking hot, right? You want some cold wine cooler. Come on, don’t be that way, tómelo. Come sit in the shade. Jaimito and Wilma would sign just to impress the ladies with their political savvy.
Down Lexington to 110th Street the streets would be lined with locals seeking relief from the heat. Some would have washrags dipped in ice water pressed to their foreheads, moving and speaking only when absolutely necessary. Others would be sitting on the porch listening to the block’s interlocutor provide the latest “Oye, you heard about” gossip, basking in the air-conditioning of someone’s problems. Up and down Lexington, youngsters would keep from stalling in the heat by lubricating their idling engines with various coolants, both legal and illegal. On 121st Street, next to the record shop, Carl Fonseca would be tending his quarter-acre vegetable garden, bragging that the only thing that matched the size of his tomatoes was the size of his balls. Between 114th and 115th Streets a pair of towheaded Mormon boys would be knocking on doors, clicking open attaché cases like movie hitmen, threatening the local heathens with their pamphlet weaponry. Maybe, Winston thought, he could use the Mormon evangelism to his advantage. He’d let the Mormons open the doors, get the doomed descendants of Cain talking, then he’d swoop in and, catching the hosts in be-polite-in-front-of-the-white-man mode, have them sign his petition.
Winston’s eyes traveled west on 110th past the park, past the church of St. John the Divine, and down Broadway to what he approximated to be 96th Street. He struggled for an image of the area. That’s not my people. I don’t know shit about the West Side. Don’t white people live over there? Fuck. The Eighth District included Central Park, the lines of demarcation excluding the residential sides of its eastern and western borders. Though Central Park wasn’t a key voting bloc, the green was his jurisdiction. Right now Armello was playing baseball on diamond 10, nonchalantly scooping up hard-hit ground balls in the field and, after two feeble at-bats, being pinch-hit for in the fifth inning. If I win the election I can pass a law saying Armello gets four strikes.
“Ms. Nomura, it’s so big.”
“What is?”
“The district. I’m mean, I got the park, the West Side, everything but the fancy buildings on Central Park West and Fifth Avenue.”
“Well, East Harlem’s interests and their interests are different.”
“Don’t everybody pretty much want the same things — jobs, good schools, and shit?”
“Yeah, but they don’t want you in their neighborhood, much less having any say-so over their lives.”
Winston plucked a gooey tortilla chip from Inez’s plate, making sure to hook a slice of jalapeño. “Man, for a second there I was excited about this shit. But from here you see how many people live in the neighborhood. I mean, look at all the windows. In every one there’s a life being lived.”
Spencer smiled. “Winston, you don’t know it, but you’d be a really good city councilman.”
“Man, I don’t know shit about politics. No, wait, hold up, I do know something.” Winston swallowed his food and began singing in a shower-perfected baritone that rarely graced the world excepting in drunken soft lullabies to his son.
I’m just a bill. Yes, I’m only a bill
And I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill.
It’s a long, long journey
to the capital city
It’s a long, long wait
While I’m sitting in committee
But I know that I’ll be a law someday.…
There wasn’t an American born after 1960 who hadn’t heard “Schoolhouse Rock.” Not surprisingly, Spencer joined Winston in singing the last lines of the chorus.
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a bill.
Winston grumbled. “I know that song. That’s it, thank God. If I really knew something, my stubborn ass might get some ideas and actually try and make a change.”
“But if you could make a change, what would you do?” Spencer asked, taking out his notebook. Tuffy glanced at his distant neighborhood, its dirt-brown facades barely visible, camouflaged in the smoggy haze. “First thing I would do is paint a yellow line on the ground that exactly matched the boundaries of the district. That way we’d know that the neighborhood is ours. ‘This is our shit, step lively’—you know what I’m saying?”
Winston went on to create a paradise ex nihilo, an idyllic shtetl of midnight swimming holes and hassle-free zones where denizens would be free to “drug, fuck, suck, and thug” to their heart’s delight. Where personal stereos wouldn’t shatter into plastic shards when you dropped them, but bounce back into your hands undamaged, like rubber balls. Where children would never have to know what it is to eat sugar sandwiches for breakfast, frozen broccoli for lunch, and sit down to dinners of Spam, canned corn, and moldy pieces of bread, listening to Mother say, “Don’t worry about the green stuff, that’s where penicillin comes from, it’s good for you.” East Harlem would be a Shangri-la of moist weed, cold beer, and zesty sofrito.
“Then I would put up a huge sign that read ‘Spanish Harlem’ in bright red neon lights that flashed one letter at a time and then all at once. Some shit that make this GE, Citibank, big-business bullshit look small. Something that would make these foreigners say, “Over there is the Brooklyn Bridge, and over there, there is Spanish Harlem!” Winston shook his head. “I’m tripping, right?”
“Winston, those are things people need to hear,” Inez said.
“Even that madness about fuckin’, suckin’, druggin’, and thuggin’?”
“Well, maybe not the thuggin’.”
Inez handed Winston a petition. “Here, this is the petition I have to turn in to the Board of Elections in three weeks.”
Winston looked it over. “Nine hundred names? That won’t be so hard.”
“But they have to be registered voters and it has be done in three weeks.”