The Swing Voter of Staten Island (16 page)

“It’s okay,” Deer assured the man. “I’ll vouch for him. Mr. Siftwelt wants to see him.”

On the second floor, she silently led him down a linoleum-tiled hallway, up a short stack of steps, and through a large outer reception area with a middle-aged secretary stationed in front of a tall set of cloudy glass double doors.

“Joane, could you tell Mr. Siftwelt that a new arrival is here?” Deer said politely. Looking at her watch, she added, “Oh gosh, I’m late for a strategy meeting. I’ll see you later.” She abruptly ran off.

“Name?” the frumpy secretary asked Uli.

“Huey, I think.”

The secretary suggested he take a seat. Looking over at a magazine rack, Uli saw a number of illustrated pamphlets printed on cheap grainy paper. One with a large yellow oval on it was entitled,
Making Lemons out of Lemonade
. Another pleaded,
Join the Gang o’ God!
Inside was a cartoon of a robust, happy creature and a puny, gloomy figure. The big fellow was pointing to a multilayered cake. Underneath, in a small font, it said,
When Unhappy—EAT!

The intercom buzzed. The secretary smiled and nodded for Uli to go inside—Rolland Siftwelt was ready for him. Uli entered his office, but the chairman of P.P. was nowhere to be seen. A wide variety of trinkets and snow globes filled his shelves. Posted behind Siftwelt’s big desk was a large map of New York, Nevada, divided up by red and blue borders.

Uli heard a flush, then a red-faced man with a muscular chest and huge biceps burst through a small side door that had to be his private bathroom.

“The name’s Rolland Siftwelt.” He gave Uli a powerful handshake and talked in a low, confiding voice: “Remember what New York City was like before we were attacked?”

“I’m suffering from acute memory loss, so … no.”

“It was very, very dangerous. Divided by gangs and drug dealers, the homeless roamed the streets and the average inner-city resident was incarcerated at least once before the age of twenty-five. Teen pregnancies boomed and life-expectancy dropped.”

“Don’t all those things still exist here?”

“We do have some drugs and two gangs, but there are fewer bullets and teens with every passing day.”

Siftwelt’s phone rang and he pardoned himself to answer it. He listened for a moment with a pinched expression on his face, then shouted, “There’s a big difference between a three-foot prototype and one designed to carry people! I’ve got someone in my office.” He slammed the phone down, took a moment to recompose himself, and asked, “Ever heard of Jack Wilson?”

“Yeah, they renamed Flatbush Avenue after him,” Uli said.

“He vanished a number of years ago. Rumor has it he was killed by one of his lieutenants and his body was dumped in the desert. But lately a crazy new rumor has been surfacing—that he learned to fly.”

“He could fly?”

“A plane.”

“You mean … an airplane? He built an airplane?”

“It’s absolutely ludicrous, but the rumor has all these kite flyers thinking they can be the next Wilbur and Orville Wright.”

“How’d the rumor get started?” Uli asked hopefully.

“Someone supposedly found a miniature prototype. But guess what: I can make a prototype by folding a sheet of paper.” Instantly changing the topic, Siftwelt leaned forward in his chair. “Before we go any further, let me fill you in a bit on what we’re about. We started out as a religious mission that went door to door in many of the inner cities of this great country.”

“Does that mean—”

“If you let me just make my pitch, I think it’ll answer all your questions.” Uli smiled and Siftwelt resumed. “For starters, we have a big dorm that most workers live in. Novices usually start with outreach. We pair them up and send them into tough neighborhoods, where they try to spread the word of a good, healthy, violence-free, community-building lifestyle. As well as the value of getting educated.”

“You know, there’s a rumor that the Piggers run P.P.”

“Yes, and one that P.P. runs the Piggers.”

“So it’s false?”

“Let me put it this way: Even when the Crappers were in power, I was friends with Mayor Will just as I am with Shub. Could I get either man to do as I say? No.”

“Are you a religious organization?”

“Everything’s religious,” the man replied.

Before Uli could ask any further questions, a cute thin woman with a box-shaped head and a crisp brown tan entered.

“This is Ernestina Eric,” Siftwelt introduced. “And this is our newest member, Huey. Ernestina is the supervisor for Brooklyn South.” Turning to her, he added, “Huey is going to be working with you. Would you mind giving him a tour and bringing him up to speed?”

“Sure.” Instead of taking a seat, she led him out the door. Uli thanked Siftwelt as he exited the office.

“This job is mainly old-fashioned street-corner work,” Ernestina said. “We have to try to energize a listless people. It’s late. Why don’t you get settled? We’ll talk more over dinner.”

Joane, the executive secretary, instructed Uli to fill out a batch of forms. While he did so, she typed him a temporary ID and mentioned other perks such as a free haircut and suit, both available in the basement. She concluded by giving him a dorm key to a room in Building 4.

He thanked her and headed downstairs, where he tried to see the tailor. A sign on the door indicated he had missed his chance for the day. In the next room over, a bald man was sitting in an empty barber’s chair reading a copy of
The Godfather
by Mario Puzo. Uli approached him and asked if he could get a quick haircut. “I’d like a little taken off the sides, but leave the top and sideburns intact.”

“Sure,” the barber replied. Uli took a seat and had a large white bib buttoned around his shirt collar. Looking straight ahead, Uli noticed a photo of Vice President Spiro Agnew staring back at him in place of a mirror. He sat for ten nervous minutes as the barber snipped away. Then, without asking, the man applied hot lather to his face and gave Uli an extremely close shave with a straight edge razor. He padded him down with talcum powder and brushed off all the snipped hair.

“Thanks,” Uli said.

The guy nodded. When Uli caught a glimpse of himself in a passing window, he realized why the barber had no mirrors. The old bastard had given him a crew cut. Uli ran his hand over his quarter-inch of bristle and sighed. For an instant, he remembered being in boot camp.

Uli got directions to the cafeteria, which was located in Building 3. It was a large, harshly illuminated area lined with low tables and fold-out benches. The cashier at the entrance asked to see his ID and slowly copied the name
Huey
onto her clipboard.

Dinner that night was a choice of smoked hocks or meatloaf. There was also a selection of green vegetables, yellow vegetables, and white starches. He moved his tray along a shiny metal counter and inspected the various steamer pans through a glass case. He picked the hocks, potatoes, broccoli, soda water, and a bun. Most of those present were men missing at least one limb. They seemed to have either just completed their day shifts or were coming on for the night shift. By the time Uli took a seat, he was starving.

The vegetables were mush that seemed to undergo a cellular breakdown as soon as they were taken out of their watery solvent. The hocks, which Uli strongly suspected to be reshaped Spam, retained some kind of stringy texture, perhaps protected by the grease, but they only tasted like the salt and pepper he shook on them. The stale bun and flat soda water were the highlights of the meal.

After downing what he could, Uli sat with his eyes closed and tried not to throw up. When he heard footsteps approaching, he glanced up to find Ernestina Eric standing before him with a few battered books.

“You’re literate, aren’t you?” He nodded yes. “I located some material about this place that might be helpful.”

“Thanks.” Uli noticed a film of dust on the cover of the top volume.

“Most people here are nonliterate,” she said, taking a seat across from him. She flipped through one book entitled,
T.R.C.N.Y.
Inside the title was spelled out:
Temporary Rescue City of New York. Copyright 1971 by the U.S. Army.

“This book is just about the New York contingent. It doesn’t really include other protectees who wound up here over the years.”

“Which other protectees?”

“Earthquake and hurricane victims. Some time ago, for instance, three people from the Love Canal area arrived. People who couldn’t find perma-temp shelter anywhere else.”

As Uli flipped through the pages, he glimpsed facts, figures, pie charts, and graphs on the New Yorkers shipped here ten years earlier. Nearly a million people had initially been brought in from the city. They comprised a little less than one-eighth of all New Yorkers, mostly from the poorest rung of the city.

Judging by a shorter document entitled,
S.D.P.
, or
Supplemental Detainee Profile
—which had been issued by the Department of the Interior, copyright 1975—over the course of the next three years the core purpose of the place seemed to have shifted from a rescue location to a detention center. A hundred and fifty thousand people from around the country with questionable criminal or political backgrounds had been relocated here. Most of them had higher levels of education.

“How many doctors are there on the reservation?” Uli asked, flipping through the pages.

“Alternate Service was responsible for bringing in all the trained professionals, but they were only able to enlist about twenty-five doctors. That was ten years ago, and ten have been killed or died, so now only fifteen are still active. The good news is that a lot of residents died as well. If you’re unfortunate enough to wind up in the hospital and you don’t die while waiting for treatment, you’ll probably be seen to by a nurse or P.A. They do most of the work.”

“And what exactly will I be doing here?”

“We have a budding educational system. All literates are automatically assigned to go through various parts of south Brooklyn and try to register people in our new school. We’ll give you cartoon brochures for the nonliterates.”

“What’s the attendance now?”

“We have about fifty people currently enrolled.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“If you can register one person per week, you’ll be way ahead of the curve.”

Ernestina gave him other supporting materials to review, which dealt with how to approach and treat reservation residents.

“We meet at 9 a.m. out front at the bus stop. You’ll be introduced to Patricia Itt, your new outreach partner,” she chirped.

“Great,” Uli said, as he accidentally belched out the fumes of his meal.

After Ernestina left, Uli returned his food tray and tiredly crossed an overpass searching for his assigned dorm room. He paused by a window midway and looked out. Past the back half of an empty warehouse built along a pier he could see the crystal clear waters of Jamaica Bay and the desert beyond. Scanning the building he had just exited, now across from him, he caught sight of something strange a few flights down.

A muscular Siftwelt was standing forward at his desk. His shirt appeared unbuttoned and untucked. His tie was pulled loose. He was bumping repeatedly against the edge of the blotter, then he collapsed forward on his desktop. Uli noticed a slim, almost ghostly shape behind him. He tried to make out who this erect form was, but the person reached over and pulled a cord, dropping the blinds.

Uli walked on to a large room filled with quiet men and women seated in old cloth sofas and armchairs bordered by end tables with ugly brass lamps. There were islands of small cubicles, each with its own portable black-and-white television. In the middle was an open area with a large color TV for group viewing. Another room had a series of small tables where several men sat busily writing. Two older gentlemen discreetly played cards. Another duet was focused on some board game. Upon one table was an abandoned copy of
The Clarion Call
, which appeared to be the official P.P. newspaper. Uli mindlessly scooped it up.

Following the numbers stenciled on the doors, Uli walked down an ever-narrowing corridor, then up a stairway, until he came to the top floor in the rear of Building 4. There he found his door. He opened it and flipped on a light to see a boxy room, seven feet by seven feet. His new home consisted of a slot of a window, a single bed, a chest of drawers, and, like in the recreation room, an end table with an ugly lamp. Lifting the little window, he wondered if it was deliberately narrow to prevent suicide.

He gazed out at the courtyard and over a bordering wall to the pier that jutted out into the bay. Another large warehouse stood along the pier. He hung up his jacket, took off his shoes, and lay down on a squeaky bed with a flattened mattress. How many other bodies had passed over it? he wondered.

He cracked open the U.S. Army—authored, Xeroxed book that Ernestina had loaned him and skimmed facts and figures about the reservation as recorded ten years earlier. The introduction explained what Lucas, the bucket-passer at the Crapper headquarters wreckage, had told him—that the place had been created by a presidential act prompted by a class-action suit following a coordinated terrorist attack in Manhattan. Before he was able to even turn the first page, Uli fell fast asleep.