by Matt Stewart
He pushed open the limo door and sprinted after them.
In twenty seconds he was behind Esmerelda. He was about to slip her a surprise hug and tell her she was looking like her burning-hot daughter these days when Robespierre spun around and faced him, an iron sentry guarding a critical bridge.
“Hey,” he said, feeling failure creep in, all the mistakes he’d made and would make again. His lungs contracted, in need of weed, a cigarette, a rolled sassafras leaf, fucking helium. “I’m sorry,” he finished.
She pulled him into a hug. She smelled amazing, like friendship and warmth and that first beer after work, a place of sanctuary. “What?”
“That night in Iran,” he gulped. I’m sorry.”
They hadn’t talked about this ever. “Why?” she asked cheerfully, waving over his shoulder.
He’d thought about it at length and had never come up with a good answer. The boys hadn’t been really hurting anybody, maybe it was insulting, there was minor property damage, but the civilians were all going to get out with only temporary discomfort, better than plenty of men in his unit. He’d been tired. The Iranians were faceless and foreign-speaking and very whiny. Whiny, sand coated his mouth and his nose and his ears and his brain. It had been the end of a long, dangerous day guarding her, Supervisor Van Twinkle, the most important person ever to visit Iranian soil under his watch, the one most likely to break off from her escort and trot over a mined road to talk to some kids, so many questions, so impatient, always up to something. A day trying to keep his family alive. A bit of rest and a stale cigarette.
Another order he didn’t ask for. The sanctimonious onslaught that never seemed to end. How she’d screwed him every chance she’d had.
And still, here and now, the only person he had left.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m sorry. About everything.”
Robespierre looked out toward the stage and turned back to him, her face dried up and achingly professional. He watched the crowd, talking, singing, setting up lawn chairs, skimming newspapers and paperbacks, hugging and French kissing, passing around wine bottles and champagne and coffee. Across the plaza one of Joel’s guards nodded at him, his hand inside his blazer, talking into his watch.
“I want you to know I’m with you,” he said. He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it seemed to address the moral quicksand he was in, watching his clan move on without him, all the money, the mistakes, the shifting loyalties of rival factions.
“That’s a nice thing to hear,” Robespierre confided, “but maybe he’s paying you off.”
There it was. She knew him better than anyone else on earth. He sat down on the pavement and put his head between his knees.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, pulling him up by his collar. “C’mon, c’mon.”
He couldn’t say anything. She knew that was what happened when he got unbearably sad, like when Fanny’s corpse was carried out from the lion habitat and he’d gone silent for weeks, a war-addled grimace hung on his face. Over the cliff and still falling, beyond the world of words. “I’m off,” she said. “Wish me luck.”
He waved until he felt a bodyguard’s hand on his elbow.
Robespierre kissed her parents’ cheeks and walked to the stage through ranks of her supporters, waving back at their exuberant cheers and catcalls. She felt savagely pretty, a movie star riding a box office hot streak, a supermodel eviscerating the catwalk. They chanted her name and gave her limitless money and recited odes to her movement, zealous declarations of allegiance and pride. From Vietnam on, wars brought out the love in people, and she knew why. With so much death, people loved all that was left.
Some irritations. The way they talked to her, like they were intimates. “How’s the geezer?” a middle-aged man in a brown monastic robe asked her. “Love the cheesecake,” said a young Asian woman with purple hair, “but tell your mom parking sucks.” Comments on her figure, her wardrobe, what they’d like to cram between those life-preserver lips. But instead of sitting at home eating waffles and watching Saturday morning cooking shows they were with her, shooting the moon, insisting the world could be fixed and that she was the one to do it. Their strident conviction undergirded her days, and she felt her supporters’ souls in the cadence of her speeches.
Her staff asked her how she was doing, refreshed her beverage, touched up her mascara. She lied that she was nervous and made a show of leafing through her briefing book, but she’d memorized the responses days ago: insightful, uncanned-sounding answers to every imaginable question. The day was turning hot and her armpits began to water. “Tell me a joke,” she said, setting off her staff—a joke, to lighten up, genius!—and they cooked up something entirely inappropriate about Britney Spears and sanitarium conjugal visits and soon she was fake laughing so hard she swallowed her own snot.
When they called her backstage, she went alone. Lumpkin looked ill, contagion cracking his skin, his teeth radioactively clean. “Hello, Joel,” she said, “find a place to park the helicopter?”
“We’re on wheels today,” he grunted back. “Easier on the stomach. Even the best of us can get a little jumpy.” But that was complete bull, and both of them knew it; Joel Lumpkin was notorious for his titanium balls, swallowing unholy interest rates and shitting gold bars a month later. Even with his fakery of a campaign on display—no volunteers handed out fliers on his behalf or talked up his positions to undecideds waiting for the bus, his official campaign staff an ad agency with more money than seemed fair—the man was cockstrong and ready to knock heads, pretty good for a guy painted up like a doll.
Leslie Han walked over and said hello, great day for some baseball, his brown suit atoning for its off-the-rack monotony with a crisp press and a carnation pinned to the lapel.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the candidates for mayor of San Francisco,” a voice rumbled, and they walked out to their assigned podiums. Over the open plaza San Franciscans squeezed together, screened guests for the first couple hundred folding chairs, reserved seats distributed evenly between candidates, beyond them a field of Robespierre’s supporters singing love songs and blowing kisses and pumping placards emblazoned with STOP THE WAR!, noise booming from their mouths. Jasper and Esmerelda sat front-row center, the crooner megastar massaging the neck of the whirlwind superchef, ruffians to royalty in the blink of a decade.
“Good afternoon and welcome to the only debate between San Francisco mayoral candidates,” read the political editor with the signature specs, a hardass when the cameras were rolling but one of the best bawdy joke-tellers in town, especially after a couple fingers of bourbon. “Mr. Han, we begin with you.”
Robespierre smiled into the camera with all of her candle-power and let her tongue out for a microsecond, just enough to spark subconscious fantasies.
“First I would like to thank the city of San Francisco for coming to support our democracy in action,” Leslie Han said. “It’s time for a new beginning in San Francisco, and I can provide the leadership necessary to carry the mantle of this great city.”
Han’s slow-rolling and pinched explanation of generic policy positions filtered out as Robespierre scanned the swelling crowd, spotting staff, colleagues, friends, interns, advisers, class-mates, volunteers, community activists, professors, donors, supporters whom she’d never been introduced to but recognized on sight, the citizens who stopped her in the street with intrusive questions. In Lumpkin’s seating area, Marat sat between a couple of hired henchmen, behind them mostly vagrants paid to attend, some of them drinking, sleeping, crawling away.
Her cheeks throbbed from the extended display of positivity and she dialed it down from energized to respectful, always a statesman.
“ . . . safety for all of our citizens. I ask for your vote.” Leslie Han backed away from the microphone to polite clapping, his cheering section buoyed by old ladies and school principals, their applause unfailingly even.
“Mr. Lumpkin,” the political editor announced. Joel hulked
over the microphone, dominating it, his nostrils pulled back in long ovals, zombie eyes flickering over the crowd, streaks of olive peeking through holes in his face paint.
“Greetings, San Francisco!” he barked. “I won’t insult your intelligence with platitudes or foreign policy solutions. I will say that I am uniquely qualified to make the changes this city needs to thrive.”
Huge portions of the audience called bullshit, yapped witty comebacks, waved dismissively, delivered old-fashioned silent-movie bad-guy hisses. The political editor cleared his throat like a power washer and popped the microphone with his fist.
“It’s well publicized how I’ve become financially successful in a short period of time,” Joel continued. “I worked hard, used my smarts, and got more than my share of lucky breaks. Don’t hate me for it. I grew up a foster kid, fending for my own. I served my country in Iran—”
The noise rose from all corners, spearing toward the stage, generalized anger contorted into insistent respectful applause for the troops.
“—and when I got back, I had business opportunities and I took them. I give back to the community through my foundation, helping thousands of foster kids achieve better lives. I am relentless, and I don’t stop fighting until I make things better. That’s what I want for this city. No whining, no goddamn excuses—I will give you the city services you deserve while taking as little as possible from your paycheck.”
To many of the twelve thousand in the plaza indoctrinated to despise and distrust this insincere corporate apologist, no response was possible other than predetermined derision, booing and jeering laughter and unflattering comparisons to animal excrement. But dead spots hovered over clumps of onlookers, voters equating Lumpkin’s straight talk with the dedicated advertiser they knew so well, a guy who didn’t seem scared to buck the city’s ongoing flirtation with socialism and install some sound business practices. Also, cursing in a debate took balls, and there was never enough of that to go around.
“Supervisor Van Twinkle.” The editor nodded at Robespierre. She tucked her shiny black hair behind her ears, curved her back slightly, angled up her face, bunched her lips in a playful pout. A few seconds as the surf of livid San Franciscans pounded in the backbeat, and she launched her fist in the air. “Stop the war!” she yelled.
Delirium. Raucous unchained madness popping out in watery eyes, a wall of sound. Even the viewers occupying dead spots felt their skin surge over their frames, synapses sparking, their rooted disappointment voiced in unanticipated calls of agreement. She spoke for the rest of her allotted time, the words coming but instantly forgotten as shared frustration metastasized across the plaza. Stuck on a dot lost in the west, envied for their hills and sunsets and gastronomy and creativity but ridiculed for their politics, they were tired of the nationwide running joke. For wanting more for themselves and their city, paradise propped up on a fault line. How was humanism such a bad thing? When did love of life turn into treason? Why couldn’t imagination conquer the dead?
As they cut to the prearranged break, Joel Lumpkin observed the raw emotion and knew he was almost done for. He waved at Marat and skipped off the stage.
“My money’s not there,” Marat stated. “I called.”
“Tell me,” Joel said. One of the bodyguards inserted a gun into Marat’s bellybutton.
“Check it out,” Marat responded, and nodded at the Lumpkin seating section.
He was walking toward them from the back of the plaza, a tall, dark-haired man surrounded by a platoon of gangsters, flabbier since they’d last seen each other, his hair longer and locked into dreads, but his bratty face just the same and directing a madcap stare at Murphy Ahn, a starved animal locked on lunch.
Reaching into his pocket, Big D couldn’t help uncorking a grin, gold-capped teeth wedged in his beak like dominos.
“Give me a fucking phone,” Joel said, grabbing the first one presented and calling Switzerland. He whispered long series of numbers. When Big D broke into joyful song, he plugged the phone into Marat’s hands.
“The confirmation number,” he said. “Call him off.”
“I don’t have a pen,” Marat said, enjoying this too much to end it.
“Fuck you.”
“Fine then,” Marat said, and hung up calmly, assured that whatever came next would be right.
Midday heavy under the bleeding sun; past, present, future wound into a fragment of space. Troops marched into the light, taking final sips of sweet California air as they dipped into their pants and under their shirts.
Joel Lumpkin knew things looked bad, but a drop of hope still vibrated, his invincibility cloak. He was smarter than all of them, and he’d beaten bloodbaths before.
The phone rang. Marat answered. An accented voice confirmed.
Marat was twenty million dollars richer.
“OK,” Marat said, whipping his arms at Big D to stop. They kept coming, bleating screwy laughter, all these guys really wrong in the head and thirsting for Murphy Ahn’s bountied skull. “Hey!” he yelled, “green poodle, green poodle!” but they stumbled through the abort code word, eyes yellowed and dim.
A producer hopped down the stairs and told them showtime in thirty seconds, move it.
“Get the helicopter ready,” Joel Lumpkin growled. Sweat carved mud banks on his face. “The dirt. Now.”
The information in Marat’s head, hubris encased in sugar glass. He whispered ten seconds of terrible history into Joel Lumpkin’s ear, because Robespierre would have done the same to him.
Then he ran.
“We’re back,” the political editor announced as Joel Lumpkin returned to his podium. “In this portion of the debate, the candidates will respond to questions submitted by San Francisco residents. Mr. Han, we’ll begin with you.” As the political editor posed a question comparing school system management to municipal government administration, Joel watched Marat press stacks of bills into the hands of Big D’s posse, their gaits slowing, scarred hands jerking away the cash. Their deadened faces sneered at the stage, their bodies jerking erratically.
“—and at the end of the day, what matters is if I can get the job done, if I can make this city a lean, friendly machine. Based on my experience with the school system, I’ve demonstrated that I have the skills to pay the bills. And that’s the bottom line.”
Leslie Han nodded and drank from his water glass, ignoring the tepid applause. The political editor turned to Robespierre. “Supervisor Van Twinkle,” he said, “Jessica Benson from Noe Valley asks: ‘After serving on the Board of Supervisors for seven years, how can you continue to justify spending time and resources on international policies that the city isn’t qualified to enact or enforce? We don’t ask the federal government to pay for our local police force or firefighters, so why should our city government go barging into international affairs?’”
Robespierre turned to the camera, eyes wide open and dizzyingly brown, her mouth circular and hot like a steamed-up jacuzzi. “Excellent question, Jessica,” she said, keeping her voice level, easy to trust. “The City of San Francisco has many connections to the federal government, which pays for a great deal of local services, sometimes by funding specific programs, but mostly through block grants to the state, which the state in turn distributes to us. Then they use our services while ignoring our rules. For example, the Presidio is considered federal land, so while they use city resources, our electrical grid, our sewer system, our gas lines, they don’t abide by city ordinances and aren’t held to the same local laws as the vast majority of San Franciscans who don’t live in the Presidio.
“Now, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors isn’t Congress. We don’t reflect the country as a whole. But we still have a duty to act against things that are wrong. I’m proud to live in a place where hatred isn’t tolerated, where the underprivileged are given the help and respect to get back on their feet, where art and music are treasured, where compassion is integral to our lives.” She laughed lightly, conveying delight and wonder, p
resenting a portal to everlasting joy. “Come on,” she sprayed, “where else could we have all this?”
Bedlam swarmed her, pandemonium crashing across the stage. “In San Francisco,” her voice rose an octave, “when we see our soldiers dying in a war that should never have been started, that is worsening our national security, that is mortgaging our future, that is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people and forcing good people to do evil things, we have a moral obligation to stand up and declare that it is unacceptable.” She threw her arms skyward to evoke victory, her campaign’s capstone within reach. “This tragedy has been playing out for over a decade, and it’s as wrong now as it ever was. We must stop the war!”
Calls from the backs of throats, zinging whistles, beautiful back-breaking disorganized chaos. Esmerelda squeezed Jasper’s hand in the front row; he came back with a dry kiss on her forehead. Onstage, Joel Lumpkin parsed the dirt in his head and Leslie Han clapped politely.
“Mr. Lumpkin,” the political editor butted in when the clamor slipped a notch, “your question is from Randy Spiglowski in the Richmond. He asks: ‘I’ve seen your advertisements many times, and I’m impressed by your attitude and appearance. But what do you stand for? Everything I’ve heard about your positions is rumor, secondhand, or vague. What, specifically, would you do for San Francisco?’”
Murphy Ahn looked over the crowd, gunning for a friendly face to start with but finding only hostility, disgust, in many cases clear-cut malice. “I’m going to make the city transportation system free,” he began. “All buses, trains, and cable cars. I’ll pay for it by selling ads. I’m going to cut business tax rates to attract the biggest companies from Silicon Valley, which will pay far more in cumulative revenue in the long run to offset the near-term losses. I’m going to knock down dilapidated buildings in Bayview and build state-of-the-art office complexes for these companies to set up shop and rejuvenate the neighborhoods. I’m going to build twenty job training facilities and after-school centers in my first year in office, and triple the police presence in known gang areas, so we can stop the killing and move forward. I’m going to get the 2028 Summer Olympics in San Francisco so the rest of the world can experience our marvelous way of life. And, in a point very dear to my heart, I am going to create a sexual assault center staffed by the police department and medical professionals to help the victims and families of the most psychologically ravaging crimes.” He paused to savor the freshly cut quiet, the slow accumulation of respect. He spotted Big D and Marat passing a pipe back and forth, then glanced over at Jasper Winslow, his marked head shaped like an anvil and oblivious.