Citizen Vince

by Jess Walter

  He can’t help but wonder what it means, if there aren’t quiet omens, too.

  Vince opens his wallet and slides the registration card in beside his crisp social-security card.

  Next he opens the mailman’s manila envelope. The deal works like this: The mailman watches for new credit cards in the mail, and drops them in a manila envelope for Vince, who steams them open, writes down the numbers, then puts the cards back and seals the envelopes with a glue stick. The cards are delivered to their owners, and it’s usually a month or two before they realize that someone else is charging the shit out of their account. By then, Vince has dumped the cards.

  This load is light: six unopened MasterCard and American Express envelopes slide out. He can feel the hard credit cards inside. Then a white folded note falls from the envelope and flutters to the table, almost the same size as his voter’s registration card. He stares at the note from the mailman. No, this isn’t right.

  Dread takes up very little space.

  Vince looks down at the note and has the urge to ignore it. He doesn’t need this. Not after the day he’s had. Finally, he picks it up and reads it.

  I need to see you. Tomorrow. Three. Regular place.

  Important.

  No. All wrong. Vince meets the mailman on Mondays. They just met yesterday. He paid the mailman and gave him some cards to put back in the mail. Mondays. They’ve never met any other day. Tomorrow is Wednesday. This is wrong. And just like that, the misgiving, the fear, the paranoia—whatever it is—is back.

  Maybe it’s being back in his house, where this day started with such unsettling thoughts, or maybe it’s the combination of getting the voter’s registration and the mailman’s note, but Vince can feel darkness in front of him, and he can taste the dread that he woke with this morning, and he knows with certainty: They’ve found him. They’re going to kill him.

  When you’re dead, the world goes on without you, swallows you up like a stone in black water. So, there’s that.

  He looks up to see a stern Barbara Walters at the debate moderators’ table, the others deferring to her huge head, which is cocked and serious: Mr. President, the eyes of the country tonight are on the hostages in Iran. I realize this is a sensitive area, but the question of how we respond to acts of terrorism goes beyond this current crisis.

  Vince thinks of Lenny—You’re paranoid, man—and Doug—think I’m gonna go against you—and David—No one cares anymore. They are right. All of them. He is paranoid. And they are going against him. And no one cares. Coldness moves up his ankles into his calves. Jimmy Carter bites his lip and cocks his head in sympathy.

  Barbara, one of the blights on this world is the threat and the activities of terrorists…we committed ourselves to take strong action against terrorism. Airplane hijacking was one of the elements of that commitment. But ultimately, the most serious terrorist threat is if one of those radical nations like Libya or Iraq, who believe in terrorism as a policy, should have atomic weapons.

  While we watch the small patterns, the big movements elude us. We are so intent on incidental waves of news and memory that we miss the larger tides of history.

  Vince stands and feels his own pulse in his ears. Okay. Think. Think. Who is behind all of this? Who has the most to gain? The problem with conspiracies is that only crazy people can find them. That’s why conspiracies work, because they shatter the truth into shards and only crazy people can look at shards and see the whole. And who is going to believe a crazy person, anyway? Are you losing it? Vince rubs his temple. You’re losing it, aren’t you?

  Ronald Reagan can’t wait to answer: You’ve asked that question twice. I think you ought to have at least one answer to it. I have been accused lately of having a secret plan with regard to the hostages…Your question is difficult to answer, because, in the situation right now, no one wants to say anything that would inadvertently delay, in any way, the return of those hostages.

  Okay, let’s assume David is right, and it’s not someone from his old crew out to get Vince. Could one of Vince’s own guys be trying to get a bigger cut, or increase the number of credit cards in play? The mailman? No way. Clueless. That leaves Doug and Lenny. He can’t imagine Len has the brains, or Doug the balls. They both seem harmless. Still, there’s an old Sicilian proverb that Coletti used to quote: The smiling enemy is the one to fear.

  President Carter doesn’t need to be told this: This attitude is extremely dangerous and belligerent in its tone, although it’s said with a quiet voice. And perhaps it’s that last phrase—a quiet voice—that finally forces Vince to snap out of his own head and register the low hum he’s been hearing for the last thirty seconds. A car is idling outside.

  Among certain groups—political operatives, criminal gangs, middle school girls—every breath is conspiracy. And so it should come as no surprise that Reagan’s people have gotten their hands on Jimmy Carter’s debate notes and used them to coach their candidate. Or that Reagan may be working behind the scenes to make sure the hostages aren’t released until after the election.

  And what about Vince—crouched in front of the parted curtains, looking around his house for some kind of weapon? What plots swarm around him, what currents of malevolence and greed and dark chance? And more important: Who’s in that car idling outside his house?

  VINCE CRAWLS ON his hands and knees across the frosted lawn. He doesn’t recognize the car—an early 1970s Impala. He grips the narrow lead pipe, cold in his hands. Found it under the sink. Grass crunches beneath him. Vince crawls away from the car, toward his neighbor’s house, then along a shrub line, until he emerges directly behind the car and breathes in carbon monoxide. There’s a bumper sticker on the car: I BRAKE FOR SASQUATCH! Vince crouches and sidesteps, hefts the pipe one more time, exhaling in small bursts. Okay. Okay.

  He reaches the back bumper without the driver seeing him. Okay. Deep in his crouch. The driver is smoking, staring down the block. Vince closes his eyes, counts three and rushes the driver’s-side door, opens it and pulls the guy out by his hair, throws him down in the grass, and his cigarette sparks and flies across the lawn and he crab-crawls away on his back.

  It’s just a kid, maybe eighteen, long stringy red hair and a blue letterman’s coat with a big yellow M. “I’m sorry!” he says, and covers his head.

  Vince holds the pipe up, but doesn’t swing it. “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah. Jesus. Don’t hit me.”

  “Someone tell you to park in front of my house?”

  “Yeah. She said to wait here.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Everett.”

  “Everett, I’m going to bust open your head unless you tell me who sent you.”

  “Nicky. Nicky said to wait down the block.”

  “Who’s Nicky?”

  “What?”

  “Nicky. Who the hell is Nicky?”

  “Please, sir. Don’t do this. I’ll leave.”

  “Who…is Nicky?”

  “Well, I’m assuming she’s your daughter, sir.”

  Vince sees her then, a girl from the neighborhood. Fifteen, sixteen tops. Climbing up from a window well in the basement of a house three doors down. She wipes the grass off her jeans and starts toward Vince and this boy. But she sees Vince holding a pipe and her stealth date lying on the ground, and she stops and, without changing her expression, turns and climbs back into her window well.

  After a moment, Vince helps the kid up and they watch together as the pretty girl shimmies back into the basement window.

  I’VE BEEN PRESIDENT now for almost four years. I’ve had to make thousands of decisions. I’ve seen the strength of my nation, and I’ve seen the crises it approached in a tentative way. And I’ve had to deal with those crises as best I could.

  Vince stands in his dark house with another beer, two feet from the television set, staring into Jimmy Carter’s hooded eyes as he delivers his closing remarks: I alone have had to determine the interests of my country and the degree of
involvement of my country. I’ve done that with moderation, with care, with thoughtfulness.

  Sometimes you just get tired. And maybe there are forces aligned against you, maybe they have stolen your debate notes and maybe they’re even making deals with terrorists and maybe the minute you’re out of office, the hostages will come home. Then again: maybe not. Maybe you’re just too tired to go on. And maybe that is defeat, in the end…simply giving in. Maybe it’s no worse than going to sleep.

  Yes, that’s it, the president says. It is a lonely job. The American people now are facing, next Tuesday, a lonely decision. Those listening to my voice will have to make a judgment about the future of this country. And I think they ought to remember that one vote can make a lot of difference. If one vote per precinct had changed in 1960, John Kennedy would never have been president of this nation.

  One vote…See, you’re not afraid of Lenny. Or Doug. Or the mailman. Or even all three of them together. The conspiracy itself is not what gets you; it’s the idea that they’re conspiring. The unknown. It’s not one snowflake, one vote; it’s the idea of a landslide. That’s what’s so scary. How many times have you imagined that life would be easier if you knew the future? Well, you know the future. We’re all walking dead.

  The sun’s going to explode one day…so don’t get out of bed? Fifteen billion years or fifteen minutes…does it matter? Does anything matter?

  And then, of all people, Ronald Reagan offers an answer: Next Tuesday is Election Day. Next Tuesday you will go to the polls, stand there in the polling place, and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be good if you would ask yourself…

  Are you better off than you were four years ago?

  Vince drops his beer. It thuds on the carpet. Bleeds foam.

  A single thought is nothing; combined, the thousands of separate electrochemical, synaptic sparks that went into creating this sentence wouldn’t fire a ten-watt bulb. And yet here is Vince Camden, at the peak of technology and development, at the crest of a remarkable wave of human achievement, in a world created by piling these single thoughts together, strung out over millennia—here is Vince Camden, himself a technological and legal creation, standing alone in a heated, wired, insulated shelter, witnessing a thirteen-inch box beaming a mash of electrons that when unscrambled depict two men vying for the most powerful position in the history of the world at a time when the push of a button can effectively end civilization. Here is Vince Camden, overwhelmed by his own significance and by his desire to change, by the undertow of history, and by the weight of so many choices, undone by this miracle of being and by all of these strands connected in the thread of one simple thought:

  Which of these stupid fucks are you supposed to vote for?

  Spokane, Washington

  1980 / October 29 / Wednesday / 2:25 A.M.

  II

  Chapter II

  Hookers arguing about bras.

  If he’d known, Vince would’ve just kept walking. He was deep in thought about this election business, and something about it was making him feel better—or distracted anyway—but now he’s outside Sam’s Pit, and Beth and her friend Angela are waving their hands in the cold air, making points with little bursts of steam.

  “Vince can settle it,” says Angela, and she toddles over in a pair of heels that make her lean dangerously far forward and transform her ass into a shelf. “Beth thinks guys like bras, but I said you all would just as soon see the bare titties.”

  Vince looks from Angela, all brown and curvy, to Beth, skinny, pale—frayed cast behind her back. “I don’t think I’m the right guy to ask.”

  Angela takes Vince’s arm in hers and bunkers it with boobs. She flutters her eyes and he can feel the dusting of her long lashes on his cheek. “Oh, come on, Vince. Which would you rather see? Beth’s bra…or these?”

  “Well, those are nice.” Vince glances down at the dark crease of Angela’s cleavage. “Then again, a bra has a…certain sensuality.”

  Angela pushes him away. “You’d like balls if Beth had a pair.”

  Beth laughs uncomfortably. “Angela!”

  Vince escapes into Sam’s, already crowded with cigarette smoke and poker games, ribs, and beneath-the-counter booze. Eddie comes up from the basement with a pan of coated chicken wings.

  “Vince Camden. Hardest-working man in donuts. How she goin’, Vince?”

  “Good. How you doin’, Sam?”

  “Fat, tired, and diabetic.” Eddie is sixty, black, with a gray beard and black-rimmed glasses.

  Vince stops and turns to face him. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  Eddie shrugs. “What’s on your mind, Vince?”

  “I was just wondering, who do you think won the debate?”

  “Two whores arguing about bras? Ain’t no winner in a goddamn thing like that.”

  “No. No. I mean the presidential debate.”

  Eddie just stares.

  “You know. Carter and Reagan? Last night on TV?”

  Eddie thinks for a minute, and then shrugs. “Like I said, Vince: ain’t no winner when a couple of whores start arguing.”

  “COLOR HAS A lot to do with it. Bet a buck.”

  “You mean like black or red?”

  “Yeah, those are good. Or even white. Just not that flesh color.”

  “Color don’t matter long as they ain’t all wired up. Call.”

  “No, see, that there’s a support bra, your twenty-four-hour model. That’s a good thing. A little wire in the cage means they’s plenty a’ booby inside.”

  “Booby? Did you just say booby?”

  “The wired ones are too hard to get off. Bump a buck.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t wear one.”

  “I mean hard to get off the woman.”

  “Maybe you should try it when she’s awake. Call.”

  “I’m okay with the front clasp, but that back clasp…shit oh day.”

  “That’s right. That’s flyin’ blind, undoing that back clasp.”

  “What do you think, Vince?”

  He looks up. It always comes to this—their deferral to him. The guys are staring, holding their cards like a bunch of kids playing Go Fish. Behind them Angela is sitting on her pimp’s lap, sharing a drumstick. Next to them an off-duty uniformed cop is signing Beth’s cast. Vince checks his watch. Quarter to four.

  “All right,” Vince says, and straightens. “I’m going to tell you what it is, but then we’re done talking about this. Okay? We talk about something intelligent for a change. Like politics. Agreed?”

  Guys nod and listen intently. Jacks swills champagne from a magnum in his lap.

  “Okay. First thing you have to realize is that a bra is a symbol for male anxiety. It’s, what do you call it…a surrogate for the clitoris. You know? That fear that we’re all thumbs—it’s dark and confusing and we don’t know what we’re doing down there. Sometimes we get lucky, but even then we don’t know exactly what we did. Ten to eighty, all we think about is girls—and when we finally get one, turns out we don’t know shit about ’em.” He shrugs. “So that’s all a bra is—one more thing about women we’re afraid we don’t know how to work.”

  The guys stare.

  “But you get past that anxiety? Well…For example, there’s that point in the middle of foreplay; just before the fun starts? You’re both half undressed…could still go either way. She could change her mind. And you’re out of your head for her. Kissing and chewing her neck. Your hands are wrestling around, trying to figure out if it’s a hook clasp or a bend-and-twist.

  “And right then, at that moment—she stops you. Pulls your hands away. Stands up. Smiles down at you. And then, as slowly as she can…watching your eyes as she does it…she lowers the straps, unhooks her bra…and lets it fall to the ground.”

  No one breathes. Angela and her pimp stare. Beth, too. The whole room.

  “So yeah. I think a bra is sexy. Now”—Vince straightens up and tosses a five into the pot—“am I the
only one here who watched the goddamned debate?”

  FOUR-THIRTY IN the morning. The girls hit Vince at the door, but he’s distracted today. He has no credit cards and he sells weed without ceremony, before they can bestow hugs and innuendo. Tonight even Beth waits at the door, biting her bottom lip, waiting until the other girls leave. “I like what you said about bras, Vince.”

  “How you doing, Beth?”

  She shifts her weight. “I can’t sleep I’m so nervous.”

  “About what?”

  She looks at him as if it should be obvious. “The open house. Remember? I told you about it last night. I’m running an open house for Larry.”

  “Oh, sure, sure.” Vince had totally forgotten. “When is that again?”

  “Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. You’re coming, right?”

  “Of course I’m coming.”

  “It’s just…I have these dreams where some old trick comes in, or the cops arrest me, or I say something completely retarded.”

  “Beth—”

  “Just tell me the truth. Do people laugh at me?”

  “Laugh at you?”

  “For trying to get my real estate license? It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

  “No,” he says. “It’s not stupid.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  “You know how every stripper says she’s saving for college? But it’s just something they say to make the guys feel better about watching a girl take her clothes off—like their hard-ons are contributing to a better world.

  “Well, I think, maybe at the beginning, it was like that for me. I just liked to hear myself say it: ‘I’m studying to be a real estate agent.’” She leans in and practically whispers. “But now…Shoot, Vince—I mean, they might actually let me do this. And what if I can’t? What if I’m not smart enough?”

  “Beth—”

  “It hurts my head to think about. It’s stupid how much I want this.”

  Finally Vince reaches out and grabs her broken arm. “Look: don’t ever feel stupid for wanting something better!”