by Scott Simon
Sunny thought that he could see Vera's face flush slightly even in the cold.
“It wasn't commodities trading. But a solid job. The mayor wrote Lucy Julian,” said Vera. Sunny knew the name; she was in charge of Facilities Management for the South Region. “James was hired.”
“Good Christ,” said Sunny. “And James was the one.…”
“Yes,” said Vera quietly. “Last November. Arrested for running drugs out of an equipment shed in the Douglas Nature Sanctuary.”
“Old habits die hard?” he asked softly.
“Old friends don't let go.”
“He needed the money?” asked Sunny. “The friends?”
“He needed to be free of me.”
Vera clinched her collar against her throat as a tendril of wind slipped under the hot glare of the heat lamp.
“Sunny, there's something I left out,” she said, looking over the edge of the Hall toward a bank building on Clark Street. “James and I. We were involved.”
Sunny paused and smiled gently.
“Once or twice?”
“A week,” she smiled back. “I told you once, Sunny. Everyone has a personal life. Whether they know it or not.”
Sunny clasped his arms over his chest. He stretched his legs, and rocked back and forth on his heels for warmth as Vera went on.
“Always my place,” she explained. “Of course—I'm sorry if that sounds smug. I had the cab downstairs to take him away at six because, after all, I had to go to the gym. I had a breakfast meeting. He began to feel humiliated. We never went out. Never a movie, never a restaurant. I was always getting bean and tofu pancakes delivered, because prison food fouls your guts. Sunny, what could I do? I was at the right hand of the mayor. I go to China, climb the Great Wall, and there are always a few tourists who wave, ‘Hey, Alderman Barrow! We're from Glencoe!’ I represent the Archdiocese of Chicago. I'm on the Harvard Board of Overseers. I couldn't bring a man covering up gang tats on his forearms into the University Club. I'm sorry if that sounds cold. If we took the Olympic committee to the Lyric Opera, I had to tell him he could stay home and watch TV in bed—like some kind of four-year-old.”
The wind had begun to blow icy white grains from the top of the encrusted piles on the roof. The snow made Sunny rub the back of his hand over his eyes.
“You didn't ask me if I loved him,” said Vera, and Sunny just shook his head. “I've been thinking how I'd answer when you did.”
“That's a question for teenagers, Vera,” he told her. “People who think love can make everything right.”
“People will do things out of loneliness they wouldn't for love,” said Vera, and Sunny drew his toe into a small pile of snow.
“Yes,” he said simply. Vera's eyes seemed to scrunch against the snow, too.
“The mayor wrote the letter, Vera,” Sunny pointed out. “It's on his hands. His cold, dead hands.”
By the time she turned to Sunny, real tears simmered in her eyes; she held them back like gobs of spit.
“He wrote the letter, Sunny. It said, ‘My good friend, Alderman Barrow, highly recommends Mr. James Masterson. I have misgivings.’”
“Black ink?” Sunny asked softly.
“Of course. Granted me my favor, and gave me away.”
“Bastard.”
“No need for a blood test for that, is there Sunny?”
He blew burps of steam through his hands.
“The mayor could put your foot in a bear trap and make you think it was a glass slipper,” he told Vera. “I just didn't think he'd do it to you. To us.”
Vera laced an arm through Sunny's and put her chin against his shoulder.
“Roland wanted to be mayor forever, Sunny. He didn't want anyone else to be mayor, ever. Not me, not Linas, not some Kennedy or Jesse Jackson IX. He thought he'd just be buried in that big leather chair and they'd never roll in another. The more times I got mentioned as his successor, the more he worried that I wouldn't wait around. He made sure to bury a land mine for me.”
For the first time in their talk, Vera sat back on the bench and smiled without hurt and strain. She even opened the top of her coat at the collar.
“James took a plea,” she went on. “We got a junior partner to handle it. I said I was too busy with council work. Everybody thought it was because I felt let down by him. It was a little more complicated, wasn't it? James is back in Menard. Happy, too, in a way, that he never was out here. In there, he has image. Authority. He counts. Out here, he's an ex-con—a middle-aged man pushing a cart down the hall. In there, he's the Mahatma.”
She put a hand on his knee, squeezing lightly, as if touching a child's hand. She brought her polished bronze profile close to his mouth and chin.
“I'm radioactive, Sunny,” she told him. “You can't see it yet. But …”
She shook her hands under her chin and flashed out her fingers, as if sending off sparks. “Weeks, months from now, it'll come out,” she said. “It's not the story, but the headline, right? ‘Alderman Uses Clout to Put Drug Dealer in Park’ ‘Wise Old Mayor Issued Warning’ ‘Ex-Con Dealt Drugs from Alderman's Love Nest.’”
Vera splayed her nails like a thousand sharp rays pinging through the night.
“You don't think some people won't be happy?” she asked. “Uppity colored girl brought low.…”
Sunny took Vera's hand, placed it softly under his chin, and gravely kissed her palm. True tears began to roll. Vera shuddered and squeezed her ribs to recover her breath. She began to turn around, left and right, flailing for a handbag, and realized that she hadn't brought it, only her cigarettes and lighter. Sunny drew the white linen from his lapel pocket, and Vera pressed it, folds and all, against her eyes and nose.
“What do I do now? Right now.”
“Nothing,” Sunny said after a small pause. “Make them play the game all the way through. See if something occurs. You've got votes in your pocket, and the sale is on. There's always the unexpected.”
“Collins sent me a message Thursday night,” she said. “Seems years ago, doesn't it? Within minutes, I'd guess. Something like, ‘Dear Vera: We've lost our best friend. My heart feels so inky black.’”
“Oh good Christ,” said Sunny. “That was supposed to be some sort of clever code?”
“I imagine,” she said. “That rock will get turned over, too.”
They both sat back on the bench. Fat flakes zipped over their heads, floated toward the hot light, then dropped wetly onto their hair and hands.
“I got to go with Arty over Fred,” said Vera. “He's a clown and a fool but there's something there, somewhere.”
She held a closed fist against her chest, but Sunny waved it off with the last glowing inch of his cigarette.
“Well no need to go diving into the earth's molten core just yet,” he told her. “Let me try a few names first.”
He saw Sgt. Gallaher wave from the groaning iron door, and Eldad Delaney trying to clop around the snowy clumps of bins and planters.
“Vera. Vera dear. Is there anything else I should know?”
She smiled and then buried it in her palms, raised her eyes to Sunny but put her fingers across her face, like slats in a fence.
“Linas and me,” she said. “A three-day weekend in Aspen at a conference on ‘restoring and rehabilitating urban ecosystems.’ Never left the hotel room. Croque monsieur sandwiches, strawberries, and sparkling wine.”
“A shame,” said Sunny. “Aspen is lovely. I've seen postcards.”
Vera shook her head.
“Altitude makes you do crazy things.”
“Things you regret?” he asked, and Vera took her fingers down, one by one, before answering.
“Things you decide not to do again,” she said softly.
From below, they could hear police whistles cheep and twitter as they turned back rush-hour traffic on LaSalle.
“Vera,” said Sunny suddenly, “I thought we could do things right this time. I loved the mayor. Even—even now. But I th
ought this was our chance to do things right. Not always winking and scheming, begging and money grubbing, jiving and conniving. I thought we could do it right.”
Eldad steadied himself on his smooth heels as he pulled up within a respectful distance of Sunny and Vera. He stayed silent, but Vera smiled back, and replied to Sunny in a low, hoarse voice.
“Sunny, maybe we just waited too long.”
Sunny slipped into the big burgundy chair on the rostrum shortly after six-thirty Aldermen began to drift back, mopping their mouths with the backs of their hands and resettling their belts, from pools of gossip. Sgt. McNulty came up behind Sunny and placed a hand gently on his shoulder.
“Second shift, sir,” said the sergeant. “We didn't plan for quite so many curtain calls.”
“Neither did I. Sgt. Gallaher is off duty?” he asked, perhaps a little too anxiously.
“Yes, but,” said the sergeant, and when Sunny looked up he thought McNulty looked a little too blank-faced to be sincere.
“Sgt. Butler cadged a seat for her with your daughters,” he explained. “She said the show was so good, she wanted to come back on her own time.”
Sunny looked out into the gallery and picked out Rula and Rita among the bright-colored drooping snow parkas and sagging mufflers. He feigned surprise at the sight of Sgt. Gallaher, smiling alongside Rula.
“Sgt. Mo said that she went over the drill, sir.”
“Yes. We pick a new mayor, and you drop me like an empty candy wrapper.”
Sgt. McNulty rocked back on his size twelve brogues and stuck out his hand.
“If I don't get a proper chance to say goodbye. You ever need a parking ticket fixed, sir, I'm at the First District.”
Sunny took McNulty's hand warmly and rose from his seat to the height of the sergeant's shoulders.
“And if you ever want the biryani of your life.…”
Lewis Karp tugged noisily on the coiled serpentine neck of his microphone. All but a few aldermen seemed to be in their chairs. Sunny nodded, pulled his own chair into the rostrum, and began in a soft voice, holding the scuba diver's gavel in his hands.
“The council will come to order,” he began. “Again,” he added, and soft chuckles wound around the chamber.
“I understand several aldermen have received complaints from citizens who do not appreciate having their favorite shows preempted by this prolonged session. And I am also told that television stations have received even more calls saying, ‘These are the best afterschool cartoons we've ever seen.’” Sunny said in the rising clamor of handclaps and laughter.
“So we will endeavor to continue this important session with spirit, but also with a seriousness to reassure the city.”
From a corner of his eye, Sunny saw Eldad approach and put a small, ivory scrap pad on the corner of the rostrum. Sunny rolled back slightly from the desk on his gilt wheels.
“Mr. Clerk, please resume the roll call,” he said, and Lew Karp looked down into the center of the chamber.
“Kowalski, Twenty-three!”
“Artemus Agras,” Felix called from his seat.
“Booker, Twenty-four!”
Sanford decided to stand, in his light gray suit with a blue stripe, and turn back to the gallery as he revved up an arm.
“Vera Barrow!”
The cheers rose and fell before Sunny could try to quiet them.
“Goo-tee-airrrez, Twenty-five!” trilled Lew Karp, and Alonzo shot up angrily from his seat, flailing his arms so fiercely that his red tie jumped.
“Question! Question Mr. President!” he cried.
“Questions are not usually entertained during a vote unless they are procedural,” Sunny explained in an amiable tone. “But I don't want to stand on procedure.”
“My question is germane, your honor,” said the alderman. Alderman Guttierez had absorbed the phraseology of courtroom procedure from appearing as a witness in robbery cases of his own currency exchanges. “Why does the clerk announce every Spanish name like he's shouting ‘Goooaallll’ at the World Cup?”
Hoots flew up from the aldermen's seats as Alonzo tried to shout above the laughter.
“I don't hear him go, ‘Ko-valll-ski!’ I don't hear him go, ‘Kat-sooo-lis!’”
“He sure has fun with my name,” shouted Janet Watanabe, and Lew Karp steamed and burned above his tight white collar.
“Mr. President. Mr. President,” he stammered, but Sunny was not about to let Lewie return fire. He held him back with a flat, friendly hand.
“I know the clerk. I think we all know that he enjoys every syllable of the immense variety of this city. I am glad to say that a roll call here is as diverse as the United Nations. I enjoy when Mr. Karp calls out, ‘Rrrr-ooo-peee-knee!’ It makes me feel like I'm onstage at La Scala. But I will ask the clerk to tone down some of his artistic impulses.”
Lew Karp began to clear his throat, but Sunny leaned forward into the microphone, and looked directly at Alonzo Guttierrez.
“And I will ask aldermen to keep a sense of humor and an open heart. Mr. Clerk,” he said, gliding his chair back smoothly.
“You say my name just fine, Lewie!” John Wu barked from the second row, and Lew Karp let roars of “Wu ! Wu!” subside before he went on.
“Guttierez, Twenty-five,” he said softly, and Alonzo, who now simmered and slumped in his seat, called out even more softly, “Sandoval.”
“Abboud, Twenty-six!”
Rod polished a gold pencil against his gray vest and called out, “Agras,” as blandly as if he had been asked to choose between mundane condiments.
“Stubbs, Twenty-seven!”
Donald's smooth copper head gleamed above everyone else's.
“Barrow!”
“Llll-ind-strom,” trilled Lewie, and caught himself just as quickly and so articulated “Twen-tee-ayt,” as if an electronic chip had uttered it.
Astrid hunched forward on her elbows and drew a deep breath. “Sandoval,” she said quietly.
“White, Twenty-nine!”
“Barrow.”
“Rodriguez, Thirty,” said Lew Karp in a studious, unaccented monotone.
“San-do-vahl,” Wandy called back, then smiled and shrugged when Linas Slavinskas and Brock Lucchesi turned around from their desks in the front row.
“Zamora, Thirty-one!”
“Agras,” said Luis, and there was a small stirring in the seats around him at the end of the row.
“I love you, Fred,” he called down to the front row. “But Arty's got the corazón today.” Sunny surmised that Luis had also calculated that Arty, even unelected, would be more likely to deliver the appointments Luis desired in the Department of Constructions and Permits than Alfredo Sandoval could in defeat. The roll call moved into the third row.
“Wagner, Thirty-two!”
“Excuse me, Mr. President. Mr. Clerk,” said Emil. His doughboy cheeks burst cherry red with something he couldn't contain. “That's Vahg-ner.”
Sunny let the laughter roll over the chamber. Linas Slavinskas chortled so hard that Brock Lucchesi had to pat his back, as if to bring up an egg roll. Eldad discreetly slid another message pad over to Sunny, who pointedly stayed with his smile even as his eyes played over the few words that Eldad had sketched on the pad. Alonzo Gutierrez looked up from the seat between Sandy Booker and Rod Abboud and announced, “All right, I'm an asshole.” When this set off new whorls of reaction, Sunny leaned forward and began to rap the gavel gently.
“I'm sure the clerk will so note. Does the alderman of the Thirty-second Ward wish to give us his vote?”
“Sandoval,” said Emil.
“Tierney Thirty-three!” said Lew.
“Sandoval.”
“Gregory, Thirty-four!”
Regina removed her black reading glasses and raised them over a shoulder.
“Barrow!”
“Viola, Thirty-five!”
Carlo, wearing one of his signature slouching black sweaters, rolled his thumbs over the Sanskrit gree
n granite mandala around his neck.
“Eternity, unity, and Sandoval,” announced Carlo.
After Keith Horn of the 36th and Vernetta Hyne Griffin of the 37th cast votes for Vera, Sunny caught Wandy's eye in the second row and beckoned him to preside. Sunny slipped back into a conference room. Aidan Ruffino of the 38th voted for Fred Sandoval. Torey del Raso stood when Lew Karp called out his name and hailed back, “Arr-tee! Arr-tee!” Cyril Murphy of the 40th voted for Fred. Ivan Becker of the 41st pretended to nap, jolted awake, rang his head from side to side like a cowbell, and said, “Barrow! Uh, Barrow!” Sidney Wineman was resting his head between his thumb and forefinger when he heard his name, then pulled on his wire-rim glasses to answer, “Barrow, absolutely,” as if making a diagnoses. Kiera Malek said, “Me, too,” which Lewie Karp did not stop to make her clarify. Sunny had returned to the rostrum to hear Lew ring out, “Walker, Forty-four!” when Wandy crept back and whispered to Sunny, “Keith needs a few minutes to recharge.”
“So do we all,” said Sunny, then pulled back to the desk.
“I think all aldermen could use a recess to refresh and restore before we complete this roll call,” he announced. “Our labors may stretch on.” He brought down the gavel hard to say, “Without objection, the council will return at seven p.m.,” he added and set off scattered laughter.
Sunny motioned for the uniforms to hold back so that he could step down and walk to the last row, where Keith Horn had piloted his chair into an aisle.
Keith had a law office on west Belmont. He specialized in settling estates and handling drunk driving pleas. He called his chair, powered by a four-ampere charger, “my Learjet.” When he was sixteen, Keith had fallen during the first steps of a hundred-yard dash at a high school track meet at Winnemac Park; other runners cursed and kicked gravel into his eyes as they stepped over him. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Keith's muscles were now as lean under his slacks as the legs of a nine-year-old. He wore the same black shoes each day—and why not?—that dangled, unscuffed, just above two flat footrests. For the past few years, Keith's optic nerves had been popping and going dark, like old lightbulbs in a dimming hallway.