Jennifer only agreed to do the workshop because she owes me. I know that, and so be it. I stopped feeling guilty for expecting quid pro quo from my sister when she won the St. Catherine’s Academy spoken word slam with a piece I wrote. Do you know how hard it is to turn the Stations of the Cross into hip poetry? But it was Jennifer who transformed it into theatre. I have to give her that. Even crispy Sister Rita Clare folded into tears when Jennifer reached the Agony in the Garden and grabbed the mic, rapping, “I plead take this cup from meeeee, deliver me from my enemieeees,” like she was channeling Tupac Shakur. I was so proud of her. And resentful. And, yes, jealous. I vowed then that if I were going to help my sister do anything—especially if I craved to do it myself as I often did—I would never again hesitate to demand a fair exchange.
My sister owes me for helping move Rocco’s remaining things out of her East Harlem co-op to a Brooklyn storage facility. When her ex left to crash at a friend’s place in Fort Greene, he only packed one suitcase and his CF Martin acoustic guitar. I couldn’t believe it when Jennifer told me it was worth more than two thousand dollars. “Why can’t a guy who can afford something like that hire movers?” I asked as I hoisted a stack of barbells onto the U-Haul. “When’s Rocco coming anyway? He better not think he’s going to show up here at the last minute after we’ve done all the work. And I hope he brings some friends to help.”
Jennifer dropped his exercise bench into a corner of the truck. “Rocco’s not coming.” She started to walk down the ramp when I grabbed her by the arm.
“What do you mean he’s not coming?” Then it hit me. I thought it was highly unusual for my sister to devote a Saturday morning to help her ex move out of her apartment when, according to Jennifer, she broke up with him because she had lost all respect for him. I should have known she was up to her ball-busting ways again. “Jen, please don’t tell me Rocco has no idea we’re taking all his stuff to storage.”
She wriggled her arm out of my grasp and headed down the ramp. “Of course he knows,” she said over her shoulder as I followed her back to the building. “I told him that if he didn’t get the rest of his shit by the fifteenth, I was getting rid of it. If he doesn’t realize I was serious until he gets the rental invoice, hey, that’s not my problem.” Jennifer held the door open for me, but I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Bad enough that you do these things, Jennifer, but you rope me into them!” I never wanted to help Rocco move even if at the time I had nothing better to do. “This is so fucked up….”
“You make it sound like I’m pulling a Bernadine,” Jennifer said, referring to the Waiting to Exhale character who piles all her cheating husband’s designer clothes and expensive toys into his BMW then sets them on fire. “Remember, I’m paying for all this. And I was nice enough to choose a storage facility near where he’s staying with whatever his name is.”
“God, you so owe me!” I let her know.
And last week I called in my chip and ordered her to be at the library on Wednesday by noon as the next speaker of my Power Lunch series. Of course, Jennifer hated the idea of having to travel uptown in the middle of a workday and tried to get out of it. She said, “Hey, let me see if I can get Priya to do it.” Priya is a senior partner at my sister’s law firm and her immediate supervisor. In other words, she’s also a prime target for Jennifer’s ass-kissing.
“I don’t want Priya to do it,” I said. “I want you to do it.” Then I hung up, probably surprising myself even more than I surprised her. Oh, I challenge Jennifer from time to time, but for the most part, I hold my tongue and certainly never tell her what to do. That was the first time I thought to myself, Wow, this training I’m doing is really taking hold. Anything for these kids. They really need to meet someone like Jennifer, especially the girls. Any adult who believes teenagers have it easier than they did has no clue what it’s like to be a kid these days. They see all the technological wizardry—iPods, Side-kicks, TiVo—and think they live carefree. Their world may seem like a virtual playground to adults like my sister who’ve managed to graduate from adolescence with a sense of who they are or at least who they would like to become. But to a fifteen-year-old who’s still trying to figure these things out, there’s just too much stimuli out there and much of it’s pretty unsettling. Of course, she doesn’t see it that way until it’s too late. She sees nothing wrong with posting a picture of herself in a thong bikini on MySpace, adopting the screen name The !llest Beyatch U’ll Eva Wanna F?K!, and counting “models” such as Vida Guerra and Karrine Steffans among her heroes.
This is why I piloted the Power Lunch series at the library this summer. Now that the kids are out of school, it’s harder to get them into the library, never mind pick up a book. The ones who live in this neighborhood are more likely to sit on their stoops or hang out at the park on a nice day. If they come into the library, it’s to escape the heat and peruse the free magazines. So every Wednesday, I buy a few pizzas or a six-foot hero (an exception I really had to fight for with my boss Elaine since no food or drink is allowed here) and host a speaker who answers questions about his or her job. As often as I can, I prefer to invite someone from the neighborhood, and so far I have a perfect record. I want the kids to see that you don’t have to be a basketball playing rapper or actress-slash-dancer-slash-“singer”-slash-serial monogamist to emerge successfully from the Bronx. The first speaker I invited was Tammi James, the formerly incarcerated and wildly popular self-published author of Every Trick Needs a Treat and its sequel, Tricks Ain’t for Kids. One day nine teens came into the library asking if we had copies of Tammi’s novels. Not one of these kids had ever been there before. Furthermore, three of them were boys who only come to the library to get on the Internet, flirt with girls, or flirt with girls on the Internet. No matter how hard I tried to push Walter Dean Meyers and Ernesto Quinonez on them, I could never get them to pick up a novel. So I cringed every time a boy came in and asked if we had Every Trick Needs a Treat and heard Elaine bark, “No, we do not carry that,” then back away from them as if they were gun-toting gangsters.
Each time I rushed over and said, “If you like stories like that, maybe you’ll like these.” I handed them my list of gangsta lit substitutes, which includes titles such as Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas and Native Son by Richard Wright. Still, I ordered a copy of Tammi James’s books for myself because I wanted to understand her appeal to the kids. Unlike some writers in the same genre, I found that she had a respectable command of the writing craft and truly wove her street life novels into urban morality tales that taught important lessons, as if she knew kids would be reading her adult fare.
So I researched more on Tammi James and found out three critical things. She wrote Every Trick Needs a Treat while doing two years in prison for counterfeiting and extortion. Yes, she made fake cash even as she shook down people for the real thing. How can you not admire such ambition? After being rejected by over three dozen agents and editors, Tammi self-published the novel and hawked it out of the trunk of her Geo Metro. In less than a month she sold over eight thousand copies on the corner of Westchester and Morrison Avenues, only a crack vial’s toss from the slumlord’s wet dream where she grew up.
Tammi was everything I needed to get the Power Lunch series off to a fantastic start. Not only was she known among the kids I was trying to reach, they idolized her. She had a glamorous job—at least, that’s what her fans thought, and their perceptions were all that mattered—at which she was tremendously successful. (Or as Elaine would crack, “Obscenely so,” with the word “obscenely” having more layers than baklava.)
Most important of all, Tammi James was a local girl done good. Actually, she was a hood rat gone good because despite the prurient nature of her tomes, she said all the right things to two dozen kids—yes, she drew that many on a sticky afternoon in late June—who attended her talk. She answered all their questions with candor, humor, and most important of all, respect. Tammi inspired the birth of quite a few writers that day, and not a single one of them left with the idea that they had to drop out of school, do time, or suffer an abusive boyfriend—all of which Tammi had done and relayed—to feel they would have meaningful stories to tell.
Of course, when I invited Jennifer, I let her think she was my inaugural speaker. She was actually the third. The second speaker was Ms. Woo, the Korean owner of the most popular novelty shop in the area. I didn’t expect her to generate the kind of attendance Tammi did, but after I did my research, I gambled that a respectable number of kids would show out of curiosity. Figuring that it would be a good idea to introduce the kids to a local business owner, I had asked them where they shopped the most. Of course, they mentioned places like Old Navy and Foot Locker, but I was looking for a mom-’n’-pop shop operation, not the local franchise of a major chain.
“Yeah, but you’re not in Old Navy and Foot Locker every day,” I said to Echo and Cindi, my two favorite informants. For a while I couldn’t put my finger on why I liked them so much. It certainly wasn’t because they reminded me of Jennifer and myself at that age. More like Echo and Cindi’s friendship made me wish that Jennifer and I had been more like them when we were that age.
Echo sucked her teeth and nodded at Cindi, “She is. She ain’t got no money to buy nothing, but she is.”
Cindi gave her a playful slap on her arm. “Shut up, bitch.”
“Shhh,” I said, more for Elaine’s benefit than out of any fealty to the reputed sacred silence of libraries. Never expect any publicly funded institution in the “’hood” to be quiet. I personally don’t care if the kids swear so long as they do so only in jest and avoid the strong stuff. “Where do you go to buy your knickknacks? Things for your hair, school supplies and stuff like that.”
Echo and Cindi both said, “From Ms. Woo.”
“Ms. Woo’s mad cool,” Cindi added. “We go to her place ’cause she doesn’t follow you around the store like she’s waiting for you to boost something.”
“Yeah, and she got jokes, too,” said Echo.
So I invited Ms. Woo, and, yes, she had jokes, not to mention wonderful anecdotes. She’d lived in our community almost thirty years and watched it transition from a predominantly Italian and Jewish community to a Puerto Rican and black stronghold to the Dominican and Mexican immigrant enclave it currently is. Only a half-dozen kids came to lunch with her, though, and I need a speaker who is more like Tammi James and less like Ms. Woo, so participation in the Power Lunch series doesn’t fade. Besides, Elaine is constantly complaining about the food (even though I pay for it and clean up with the help of the kids after every workshop) and threatening to cancel the program.
I expected a good turnout for Jennifer, not only because she’s an attorney, but because I let the kids know that she was my sister. Not that I told her that the kids are more likely to come hear her speak out of a loyalty to me. Little did I know that what I did during the day would cast a spotlight on what I did at night, especially since I didn’t want anyone to know—least of all my sister.
Just when the elevator reaches the lobby and I think I’ve managed to slip out undetected, who do I bump into when the doors open but my boss.
“Hey, Priya,” I say. “See you in a bit.” I hope she thinks I’m just running out to grab a bite and that I’m coming back to the office within the hour. As I inch past her off the elevator and into the lobby, however, I can feel her eyes scrutinizing me.
The elevator doors start to close behind me when Priya flings a well-tailored arm between them and they bounce open again. “How’s the Berman case?” A wall of men—not a single one under six feet—glare at her. By the stiffness in her posture, I can tell Priya is aware that they loathe her for holding them up, and she’s thinking, They can kiss my four-eleven ass. This is why I both worship this woman and would rather eat live scorpion paella than have her angry with me.
“Plenty of progress to report,” I say as I make for the exit. “I’ll fill you in on everything when I get back.”
As the elevator doors loom toward each other, Priya yells, “Okay, let’s say around four.”
Shit. Okay, Jen, relax. If she’s watching you, it’s because you’ve been the first associate in the firm’s history to accrue the most billable hours in a month for four consecutive months in a row. Priya’s watching you because she likes you. She has no idea that you’re headed all the way to the northeast Bronx to speak to a roomful of teenagers as part of some Career Day workshop in the middle of the work week. Nor does Priya need to know. At least not until you show her all the progress you made on the Berman case so she knows that I committed this act of charity on behalf of the firm and still handled my business.
If I don’t get back into midtown by three-thirty, I’m going to kill Michelle.
I glance at my watch. A quarter to three. I clap my hands once and say, “So in conclusion, no matter what your interests are, you can find a way to relate it to the practice of law.”
I glance at Michelle, who is busying around the back of the room, collecting soiled napkins and used cups and tossing them in a wastebasket. Michelle hounded me so much to say something to that effect, I told her that if she kept drilling the reminder into my head, the point would probably leak right back out of it. C’mon, now. If anyone knows how to command a room, it’s me.
“You like music? Become a lawyer and work for a record label. You like sports? Become a lawyer and represent an athlete or maybe even an entire team. Becoming a lawyer doesn’t mean giving up your passion for other things. It means translating that passion into a viable career that can last a lifetime.”
A boy in the back of the room raises his hand. The brim of his baseball cap is pulled so low over his face, I swore he was sleeping throughout my entire lecture. While I’m glad to discover that I hadn’t lost his attention, I’m hoping his question doesn’t lead to an onslaught of interrogation. “Yes, you have a question?”
“You said that being a lawyer is a secure way of life, but I thought there were more people in law school than there are lawyers in the streets.”
“Where the he—” I catch myself. “Where did you get that statistic?”
“That’s what Keanu Reeves says in The Devil’s Advocate.”
“Stupid!” says his friend who sports his own baseball cap backward. He smacks the kid who asked the question on the back of the head, and for a second I wonder if I have telepathy. “Al Pacino said that, not Keanu Reeves.”
A shrilly voice in the corner says, “I love me some Keanu.” I can’t tell if the voice belongs to a boy or a girl.
Gee, thanks, Michelle.
A pudgy girl raises her hand. I squint through my glasses to read her name tag. “Echo?” Naming your child after spirits, cars, nature, virtues, and scientific phenomena should be deemed a form of child abuse and rendered illegal.
She lowers her hand and strokes the baby hair she plastered against her temple with God knows what slimy concoction. “I got a question.”
Great. “Shoot.”
“Me and my friends, we’ve been having a lot of problems with the cops ’round here—”
“Yeah, in Harding Park,” says a girl with a name tag that says Cindi with a heart drawn over the second i. Is that a bow she drew through it, too?
Fuckin’ wonderful. “Okay.” I glare at Michelle, who’s grinning and nodding, pleased that they were eager to take up more of my time by seeking free legal advice. Look, I wouldn’t mind if I had known. If Michelle had said, “I want you to hold a pro bono legal clinic,” fine. I’d have asked her to have patrons register, submit their queries in writing in advance, and then make fifteen-minute appointments. That way I could prepare to answer their questions in some way that might prove useful. They don’t get disappointed, and I don’t waste my time.
But I wasn’t expecting to do this. Instead I have my handout with steps toward becoming a lawyer, tips on how to choose and get into a decent law school, and the pros and cons of the most popular specialties. Now when I have to blow out of here at three o’clock on the dot, these kids are going to hate me because they didn’t get out of this what they wanted. And I’m a corporate lawyer to boot, not a criminal attorney. Yeah, thanks a whole lot, Michelle. “So what’s going on?” I ask.
“We be hanging in the park, right,” says Echo. “And the po’s always steppin’ to us, tellin’ us we gotta keep it movin’.” Every English teacher the girl’s ever had should be gathered at Madison Square Garden and hung from the rafters to send a message to the next round of recently hired teachers: This will happen to you if you fail our children. “But we’re, like, yo, this is a public park. As long as we ain’t doing nothing wrong, we should be able to chill here for as long as the place stays open.”
Echo does have a point. If they’re not doing anything wrong. “So what do you go to the park to do?” I ask.
Cindi says, “We just sit on the benches and shoot the shit.”
“Do you eat?’
“We can’t. Food’s not allowed in the park. If we get hungry, we bounce.”
“Do you smoke? Tell the truth.”
“Nah.”
“Stop lyin’,” says the Boy with the Brim over his face. He finally pushes back his cap, revealing sharp cheekbones and brilliant dark eyes.
“Not in the park, stupid!” says Echo.
I’m beginning to like this girl. “Okay, do you ever bring a radio with you?”
“No, we can’t.”
“The only thing we do is, like, talk….” says Cindi.
“…And take some goofy pictures with our cell phones…” adds Echo.
“…And try and holla at the dudes playing basketball,” says the BWB.
Echo slowly twists in her seat and fixes her eyes on him. “You just mad ’cause ain’t nobody hollering at you, Christian, so don’t speak unless spoken to.” It’s official. I do like her. She turns back to me and says, “Look, Ms. Saez, we ain’t breakin’ no laws or rules or nothing. We just chillin’ there.”
A girl in the back of the room says, “We do get a little loud though, sometimes.”
“No matter! It’s the park. That’s what it’s there for.”
Now Christian says, “What? The playground’s right there by the expressway. We can’t hear each other if we don’t shout.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” says Echo, and the kids start yammering about the “po” trying to chase them out of the park when they should be harassing the drug dealers.
Cindi jumps to her feet. “Let me tell you why they’re doing that, though.”
Echo waves her hands to quiet down the group. “Let my girl speak.” They hush, and it amazes me the command she has over them. Especially since it’s not an obedience born of fear. The girl is tough and feisty, but she’s not a bully. Her peers listen to her out of respect.
Cindi says, “The reason why the cops are on us is ’cause that fat-ass councilman is running for reelection. I saw him on TV the other day saying that he’s been bugging the police commissioner to put more cops in this neighborhood. Talking about controlling the ‘youth element.’”
“Maaan,” says Echo. “Fuck Cuevas.”
“Echo!” my sister calls from the back of the room.
Echo gives a little smile and brings her fingers to her lips. “Sorry, Ms. Saez.” Then she turns to me. “Sorry, Ms. Saez.” Then she giggles at having to repeat her apology to two women with the same name.
“Call me Jennifer,” I say. Is that my imagination or did Michelle just give me a dirty look? I would think that she’d prefer that I be informal with the kids. “Tell me more about this Councilman Cuevas.”
Michelle says, “He’s running unopposed on a tough-on-crime platform.”
“Well, I ain’t no freakin’ criminal,” says Echo, and a bunch of the kids respond in agreement. “What’s the point of having a park in the neighborhood if we can’t hang out there?”
“Why these politicians are always making a big deal about hiring more cops anyway?” Christian asks. “You’d think we lived in the wild, wild west and shit. There are other things that he could do for the neighborhood, you know, like reopening that community center in Soundview so we don’t have to go all the way to Castle Hill to play ball.”
“See, Ms. Saez, that’s why we be in the park,” says Cindi. “That center’s far.”
Echo says, “And it’s always mad crowded.”
“You’re all making good points,” I say, “and I’d like to answer Christian’s question because it’s a good one.”
“What question?” he asks.
Patience, Jen. “Why politicians on the campaign trail always take a tough-on-crime stance, as Mi—I mean, as Ms. Saez put it. When you’re an elected official, you only have a few years to show your constituents that your leadership has a positive impact on your community.”
“Because if they don’t see it, they don’t vote for you again, right, Ms. Saez?” asks Echo.
“That’s right, Echo. So you tend to focus on things that the voters can see right away. People immediately notice when there’s a new beat cop on the corner of their street that wasn’t there yesterday. They notice when the trash gets picked up an extra day every week or if the street in front of their house is repaved or the graffiti on their building is removed.”
My sister says, “But if Cuevas were to succeed in getting the city to reopen the Soundview Community Center, the voters would see that, too, no?” What’s Michelle doing? Challenging me, or feeding me a lead?
“That’s true,” says Echo. “They would have to watch and listen to the construction every day.”
“Yes, but until the center actually opens and proves to be a positive change in the neighborhood—which can take years—most people will either tune out the construction or complain about the noise and debris.”
Echo sucks her teeth and yells, “People are stupid.”
“It’s not that they’re stupid,” says Michelle. “It’s that when you live in a neighborhood where there are so many needs, you start to lose hope. For example, it takes a long time to turn around a failing school, so people become conditioned to settling for the quick fixes.”
Hey, Michelle, I work alone. I say, “You have to let the people in charge know that there’s enough of you who are going to hold them accountable for what they do or don’t do.”
“What does that mean?” asks Cindi.
But Echo says, “We tried that already.”
“What do you mean? What did you do?”
Michelle grins. “They organized a group and went to the precinct that covers the park.” She’s so proud. She must have had a hand in it. The kids probably complained to Michelle, and that’s what she advised them to do. Not bad, sis. “After another cop chased them out of the park, Echo and Cindi rounded up their friends and headed to the precinct to complain.”
“And how’d that go?”
“The clerk called the community affairs officer, and he met with us.”
“Really?” I underestimated these kids.
“He was nice at first….”
“No, he was just trying to blow smoke up our ass,” says Echo. “He kept trying to say things like, well, we must be doing something we weren’t supposed to, and that the park is for everyone, and that even if we don’t mean to, we’re probably acting in ways that’s, like, scaring off the nannies and shit. Whatever!”
Cindi says, “And we weren’t disrespecting him, Ms. Saez, I swear. We were just like, no, that’s not it. But it’s like the community affairs officer got tired of talking to us, so finally he said something real smart-ass. Something like, well, if you don’t like it…”
“Write your councilman,” Christian finished her sentence, punctuating it with a hiss.
Not a bad idea. “And did you?”
“Yeah!” all the kids yell at me.
Damn, I really underestimated these kids. They remind me of the time back in high school when I started that petition in defense of an alumna named Catalina Marte. My sister’s class had extended an invitation to Catalina to be the keynote speaker at their graduation. When I found out who she was and all that she had accomplished, she became my idol. After graduating from St. Catherine’s Academy, she went on to earn her bachelor’s and law degrees from St. John’s University, and today is the first Latina to head the American Civil Liberties Union.
As if that did not already make the principal, Sister Mary Lucille, a bit nervous, she also discovered that between law school and the ACLU, Catalina served as the general counsel of Planned Parenthood. Oh, and that she was a lesbian. And that her life partner Stefania was born male and was once named Steve. Don’t ask me how Sister Mary Lu uncovered that last bit of intelligence. Sometimes I think the archdiocese has an investigative arm that would green the CIA with envy.
So without first informing the class of ’93, Sister Mary Lu contacted Catalina Marte and rescinded the invitation. Michelle (who was secretary of the senior class) and the rest barked among themselves and then rolled over. I was so livid, I wrote the petition and began to collect signatures at lunch the next day.
When I reached Michelle’s table, the snobby president of the senior class looked at me and said, “What do you care, Jennifer? You’re not even a senior.”
“That’s exactly why I care,” I said. “If we let Sister Mary Lucille tell you who you can invite to your graduation now, what’s to stop her from trying to do the same to us three years from now?”
Michelle sighed and took the petition from me. “She’s right.” And then she signed it. Once she had the guts to sign it, so did other members of the senior class, minus a few brown nosers. Sister Mary Lucille called my sister and me into her office, laughingly told us that we had confused St. Catherine’s Academy for a democracy, and tore up the petition in our faces. Then she told us if we felt that strongly about her rescinding Catalina Marte’s invitation to speak, we could always exercise our First Amendment right to boycott the ceremony and not go to graduation, although she was sure that would deeply disappoint our parents after they sacrificed so much and worked so hard to afford to send us to a parochial institution.
Not only did Michelle attend her graduation, so did I. Our entire family was there. Until then I had no idea we had enough cousins to populate a small island.
I look at Michelle now, and I just know that she’s remembering the same thing. Except that she’s not smiling. I stand up and lock my briefcase. “Well, it’s time for you to follow up,” I say to the kids.
“How?” asks Christian.
“Lobbying. That’s what the councilman did when he pressured the police commissioner to assign more officers to this district. Now you make an appointment to see this Cuevas, and at that meeting, you state your concerns and make demands. Tell him to ask the precinct commander to order his officers patrolling the park to lay off you guys, and request that he secure the funding to renovate the Soundview Community Center so it can be reopened to serve the youth of this neighborhood.”
“I’m down, I’m down!” The kids bubble up again.
“But you gotta come with us, Ms. Saez,” says Cindi, and the rest of them call out in agreement. “You can, like, coach us on what to say and do, but you gotta be there to have our backs. Cuevas may try to run some politician bullshit, so we need someone there who can tell us our rights.”
“Shit, if Ms. Saez is there, ol’ Cuevas ain’t even gonna try and run no game on us,” says Echo. “She’s, like, the Puerto Rican Hillary Clinton and shit.”
Once Echo likens her to Hillary Clinton, I know Jennifer is hooked. Introducing herself as the legal representative of several constituents with some concerns about community policing, Jennifer calls Cuevas’s office the next morning and makes the appointment herself. She tells me it’s to ensure that Cuevas’s staff took the request seriously. I’m not sure that’s totally true, but I still respect the stealth tactic.
Because she also had a big case to resolve at her firm, Jennifer asks me to do some research on Cuevas in preparation for the meeting. My only interaction with the man has been to send him a thank-you letter several years ago when he enabled us to buy several computers for the library. Every City Council member is awarded a pot of money each year to allocate in his or her district, and during budget season every community organization and cultural institution in the area vies for a slice of this pie. Elaine informs me that the library is lucky to ever get a grant because discretionary funds are very much a political issue.
“Every politician has his pet projects, and almost all of Cuevas’s pork goes to the Throgs Neck Center for Independent Living and the Castle Hill Youth League,” she says. “He gives the center money because the residents are seniors, and they vote. Cuevas funds the league, however, because not only is the executive director his longtime buddy, he also harangues the kids to volunteer on Cuevas’s reelection campaigns. You know how you have to collect about a thousand signatures from registered voters in the district in order to make the ballot? Well, I hear that overseer at the league pressures the kids to carry petitions for Cuevas.”
I quickly learn that it’s worse when I call Jennifer to share the results of my research a few days after her visit to the library. I convey how Cuevas distributes his pork, and she says, “That’s not only unethical, it damn well might be illegal.”
“Really?”
“If I’m correct, the people who collect the signatures themselves have to be registered voters who live in the district.” Before I could ask Jennifer how in the hell did she know that, she asks, “Are these kids at least eighteen years old?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure some are. But most probably are not. The center’s geared toward kids in high school.”
“I bet anything most of them are not eligible to collect signatures.” I think I hear a copy machine whirring in the background, but it’s probably just the churning of Jennifer’s ambition. “Which means many of the signatures are invalid. Sneaky fuckin’ bastard.”
If that’s what he’s doing, Cuevas is more than a sneaky fuckin’ bastard. He’s a classic poverty pimp, a self-proclaimed community leader who pretends to have the interest of the poor at heart when he makes his own living off of their continued poverty. Cuevas keeps these organizations dependent on his discretionary funds so they will expend whatever resources they have to keep him in office—resources that are best galvanized on behalf of the people the organizations are supposed to serve.
The more I learn about Cuevas, the more I worry about the kids. I have no concerns about Jennifer. But what if Councilman Cuevas refuses to meet with them or makes the appointment only to shrug them off on his chief of staff? Or worse…what if he does meet with them and demoralizes them, annihilating their fledgling civic proclivities? I didn’t invite Jennifer to meet with my kids for her ego to lead them into a spiritual massacre. “Jen, if Cuevas ODs, you have to protect the kids,” I say as I feed a copy of his legislative voting record into the fax machine.
“If Cuevas what?”
“ODs.” Then I remember that while Jennifer may be the one who’s smart, I’m the one who’s hip. “As in overdose.”
She picks up the smugness in my voice. “Okay, ’Chelle, how old are we?”
I spend so much time around the kids, I sometimes soak up their slang, and it bursts unpredictably through my interactions with other adults. The other day Elaine made a catty remark when I refused to stay an extra hour to help her process some new arrivals. I told her I couldn’t be late for my date, and she mumbled, “Cleopatra can see you anytime,” referring to the black kitten I recently saved from a life on the streets.
I spun around and said, “Just because I choose to stay late every once and while, don’t get it twisted. I have a life.” At least, I do now that I’ve found Whipped. “So don’t hate.”
I don’t go out of my way to speak like that. It just happens. Although because of this one man I meet at Whipped who has granola gentrifier-meets-hood-rat fantasies, it happens more and more often. I may be thirty years old, but I still think I pull it off. “At least, I used it correctly.” I punch in the number for Jennifer’s fax machine at home.
“Well, translate.”
Jennifer’s smart enough to deduce from the context. I mean, isn’t that what lawyers do? But I don’t want to waste my time arguing with her about this. “If Cuevas steps out of line, put him back in place.”
“Oh, that goes without saying,” says my sister, and of course she’s right. “Besides, he’s not going to do or say anything to alienate these kids.” When my fax machine connects with the one at her home office, I can hear it in ringing in the background.
“I don’t know, Jennifer,” I say. “He’s supposed to be a real piece of work. Why don’t you take the meeting with Cuevas?”
“You with the dual masters in library science and adolescent psychology are suggesting that I speak on behalf of these kids as if they can’t speak for themselves?” Jennifer scoffs. “I can’t believe how adultist you’re being, Michelle. Doesn’t being a good mentor to young people mean allowing them to make decisions and take risks instead of doing everything for them?”
If I could reach through the phone, it’d be a wrap for my sister. This is the same woman who did not even want to meet the kids. Now that they treat her like the second coming of Johnnie Cochran, she thinks she knows how to deal with them better than I do? I think not. “Let’s get something straight, Jennifer. Sometimes being a good mentor to young people means recognizing that they are still young and should not be thrust into adult situations no matter how eager or ready they might think they are. Look, I didn’t say to uninvite them to the meeting with Cuevas. All I’m saying is that since they’ve never lobbied an elected official before, maybe you should bring them along just so they can observe how you do it instead of pushing them on him.”
“Michelle, you are so paranoid!” says Jennifer. “I’ll have you know that I am preparing Echo, Cindi, and Christian very well for this meeting. I spent an entire day with them last weekend preparing a script and doing role-plays. And this Saturday, I’m going to pass on all the information you’ve collected and quiz them on it. His voting record on public safety issues should come in handy. Were you able to get your hands on any transcripts of relevant speeches Cuevas has made during City Council sessions?”
“Two weeks isn’t exactly a lot of time to acquire all the things you’re asking,” I say. Although that’s absolutely true, I still feel like a failure. Echo, Cindi, and Christian missed the last Power Lunch series, saying that they had to prepare for their meeting with Cuevas, and now I find out that they hang out with my sister on the weekends, too? Of course, I’m proud of how hard they’re working on this issue. I’m just not more proud than I am jealous of all the time they’re now spending with Jennifer.
You should be proud of yourself, Michelle, I tell myself. You’re the one who brought them together. You knew Jennifer would be a good influence on them, so you’ve done a wonderful thing by introducing her into their lives. And it’s not like you’re not making a contribution to their cause. “But not only do I have a copy of Cuevas’s discretionary grants for the past three years, I also found a record of how he distributed capital funds in the district. The Independent Living Center in Throgs Neck got a new stage for their auditorium, and the Youth League had their in-ground pool completely redone.”
“So if Cuevas really wants to,” Jennifer says, “he can see to it that the city allocates some funds to renovate the Soundview Community Center instead of dishing out the pork to the same handful of groups year after year.”
“Yeah,” I say halfheartedly.
“You should’ve seen Echo during the role-plays.” Jennifer pauses to laugh, then continues, “Christian was pretending to be Cuevas, and I directed him to pull some macho bullshit on her. Echo handled it perfectly. She kept her cool, stuck to the script and told him that she would be monitoring his decisions in the near future. So stop worrying, ’Chelle. I have them prepared for the worst-case scenario, which is highly improbable. What kind of politician mouths off on a group of poised but reasonable constituents?”
I’m afraid that we’re soon going to find out.
“What the hell do they want again?” the raspy baritone booms from the back office.
Christian’s eyes balloon open. “Is that the councilman?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry,” I say, although I’m starting to think that maybe bringing the kids with me was a huge mistake. I mean, Cuevas has to know that we can hear him out here, so surely he’s not referring to us. It’s bad enough that we have been waiting to meet with him for over an hour. “Just think of him as the Wizard of Oz,” I say. “His bark is much worse than his bite.”
Echo sucks her teeth and twirls one of her braids around her finger. “Better not come at me like that,” she says. “I don’t care who he is.”
“Hey, remember how we role-played this,” I remind her. Then I hear Michelle’s warnings echo in my head. “Look, if Cuevas becomes antagonistic, let me handle it.”
The door to the back office opens and out comes the councilman’s chief of staff, Ryan Alfaro. I feel Echo and Cindi hold their breaths as he heads toward the reception area. Echo whispers, “He is sooo fine.”
“Man, we ain’t here for that,” Christian says.
“Enough, you two, “I say. Although I realize that I, too, was holding my breath. Physically, Ryan is cut from the same cloth as my ex, Rocco, who was striking even without a backbone. Oh, grow up, Jen. I stand up, and the teens follow my lead. “This is it.”
Ryan reaches us and stutters, “The councilman will see you now.” And he says it as if he is truly sorry. He motions us to follow him.
When we walk into the councilman’s office, Cuevas is flipping through a stack of messages while anchoring the telephone between his ear and shoulder. With 250 pounds heaved upon a five-ten frame, and a boomerang of gray hair around his head, the man could pass for a Puerto Rican Santa Claus. The problem is his disposition is less Jolly St. Nick and more Fat Bastard.
Cuevas ignores us as Echo, Cindi, Christian, and I take the seats across his desk. Every few seconds he scoffs at the message he’s reading, crumples it up in his stubby fist and tosses it in the wastebasket. Suddenly, he barks into the receiver, “You know what I got to say about that? Fuck ’em!” Christian gasps and Echo giggles. I glance over at his chief of staff, who’s rubbing his fingertips into his eyes so hard his eyeballs just might pop through his nostrils. “Fuck the NAACP, fuck the Urban League, fuck the whole lot of ’em.” Cuevas swivels in his chair until it squeaks for mercy. “Let me tell you something about them people. They’re always talking about unity this and solidarity that. But when we stand by them—be it in the street or in City Hall or cualquiera—what exactly do they give us in return for our support?” Cuevas slams his bloated fist on his desk. “They give us ice in the winter.”
Now it’s my turn to gasp. I peek at Echo from the corner of my eye. The youngest of five children born to a Dominican man and an African-American woman, I pray she doesn’t understand who the councilman means by they. By the way her knee is jiggling at a hundred taps per minute, however, Echo clearly does. Still, she is trying hard to restrain herself, and I adore her for it.
I shoot at look at Ryan Alfaro, who finally steps forward. “Councilman…” He mimes a plea for Cuevas to get off the phone and tend to us.
Cueva says, “Look, I have to meet with some constituents, but I’ve said my piece. You know where I stand, and it’s not gonna change. Don’t fuckin’ ask me no more.” The councilman slams down the telephone, and finally acknowledges us with his red, watery eyes. “You are…”
Ryan says, “This is Jennifer Saez, and these are Echo Contreras, Cynthia Morales, and Christian Rivera. They’re all residents of Soundview, and they’re here to share their concerns with you about the playground on Noble Avenue.”
“Ah, Noble Playground,” says the councilman. “Did you hear about the bill I introduced at the City Council last week?”
I grow excited and shoot a smile at the kids. This meeting might go well after all. “No, we haven’t. Please tell us.” Then I remember. There’s nothing in Michelle’s research about a bill regarding the playground. Perhaps Cuevas introduced it recently.
“Right now the baseball field is named after some Irish kid. Philip Hill, Hayes, algo así—”
Christian says, “It’s called Philip Harding Field.” His eyes are now the size of satellite dishes, telling me that he has no doubts that this meeting is going to go from bad to worse.
“Yeah, that’s it! Philip Harding Field. Well, I introduced a bill to change the name of the entire playground including the baseball field.” The councilman waves to his chief of staff. “Give ’em copies of the resolution, Ryan.”
Ryan opens his clipboard. “I actually have them right here.” He hands each of us several clipped sheets of legal-sized photocopy paper.
“You’re renaming the park after Willie Colón?” I ask. “Why?”
The councilman glares at me. “Don’t you know who Willie Colón is?”
“Of course I know who Willie Colón is,” I say. I notice the edge in my voice, but I can’t seem to check it. “Everyone knows who he is.”
The councilman points a pudgy finger at Christian. “Do you know who Willie Colón is?”
Christian hesitates. “He’s got something to do with music, right?”
Cuevas growls and turns to Echo. “Do you know who Willie Colón is?”
“Yeah.” I kick her seat, and she rolls her eyes. “Yes, Councilman.” I pray that he doesn’t ask her to prove it because even though I know she can, Echo instead will recount the one hundred and one things that prove the councilman is a bona fide loser.
“Con permiso, concejal,” I say. The courtesy works because he looks at me like a curious bulldog. “We’re actually not here to discuss your bill to change the name of the park. We’re more concerned with the way the local precinct has been policing the playground there.” I feel a little bad because this is Cindi’s line in the script. When I glance at her, however, she seems relieved.
“That park has never been safer,” Cuevas interrupts me. “Crime is down in this district twelve percent ever since I took office. I’ve been on the local precinct to move the drug dealers the hell on outta there.” He waves to his chief of staff, who rushes to hand us a multicolored bar chart of declining crime statistics.
“But they’re treating all of us like we’re dealers,” says Christian.
Echo adds, “Yeah, we’ll just be sitting—oops! I mean, that all we are doing is sitting and talking on the park benches, doing nothing against the rules or regulations, certainly not disturbing the peace, when a police officer will come over to us and say that we have to ‘move along.’”
The councilman squints at Echo. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.” Before I can kick her, she says, “I mean, yes, Councilman Cuevas.”
“Are you Puerto Rican?”
What the hell…? Always able to recognize a challenge and never willing to retreat, Echo lies. “Yeah, I’m Puerto Rican. So what?” I don’t bother to give her a corrective kick because I’m thinking the same thing. Why does it matter if she’s Puerto Rican or not?
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe the cops are harassing you because you wear your hair like that?”
Both Echo and I yell, “Excuse me?”
“Aren’t you proud to be Puerto Rican?” Cuevas insists more than he asks. Before Echo can respond, he says, “If you’re Puerto Rican and proud of it, why do you do that to your hair? If you act like a morena, you can’t blame the cops for treating you like one.”
Echo looks at me with eyes blazing. “He did not!”
Cuevas ignores her and sets his veiny eyes on me. “You asked me why I’ve decided to rename the park after Willie Colón. This is why. When I’m done, every damned park and playground will be named after a Puerto Rican. Hell, if I could, I’d name every street in this district after a Puerto Rican. We’re still the majority in this district, and our public spaces should bear our names. The Irish and the Jews and the I-talians…they abandoned this neighborhood decades ago, so why should anything here still be named for any of them?”
“Councilman…” Ryan squeaks his name like a mouse stuck in a glue trap.
“Ryan, don’t worry. Somos toda familia aquí.” The councilman taps his desk. “You know how I won this seat?”
By first kissing the collective ass of the Bronx Democratic machine and then extorting volunteer hours and campaign donations out of members of the community organizations in your back pocket? I barely swallow.
“Because I—how do you kids say it?—keeps it real.” Christian snickers, but Echo folds her arms across her chest. “That’s right,” Cuevas continues. “I’m not afraid to speak the truth on behalf of my community. And the truth is, the Boricuas in this neighborhood are losing ground. After all those years of struggling to improve the schools, increase services, and open businesses, what are we doing? Instead of staying here and building our economic and political power, we’re selling our homes and businesses to the Mexicans and heading off to Florida. These Mexicans are taking over!”
Christian stops snickering. Not only is he Mexican, his parents recently opened a small but popular restaurant on Westchester Avenue. The previous owners were a Puerto Rican couple who decided to retire to Orlando. Despite the backlash from some of the older neighborhood residents, the kids made sure Christian’s parents’ restaurant became just as popular as the lechonera it had just replaced. During our prep meetings, Christian brought us quesadillas and horchatas, and one taste of his mother’s homemade guacamole and I knew that no amount of Puerto Rican nationalism would keep that restaurant from becoming a success.
Christian says, “Don’t you represent the Mexicans who live in this neighborhood, too?”
Cuevas throws his hands up in the air. “Why? It’s not like they can vote for me. What would be the point? If they want me to represent them, they have to support me. Let them become citizens and register themselves to vote. They should carry petitions for me during the primaries so I can get on the ballot. And hell, illegal or not, nothing’s stopping them from making a donation to my campaign.” That idea is obviously new to Cuevas, and he likes it lot. “Ryan, make a note of that. We have to make campaign stops wherever them Mexicans are to tell them, ‘Ask not what Cuevas can do for you. Ask what you can do for Cuevas.’”
Suddenly, the councilman jumps to his feet and aims his sausage of an index finger my way. “And you! You shouldn’t be teaching these kids to lobby me. Brown shouldn’t lobby brown. I’ve had it with you people coming in here complaining about everything. I did my job. I voted against the budget cuts. If you’re unhappy about the cuts in funding to the public schools and health clinics and whatnot, don’t come here whining to me. You want these kids to get a lesson in politics? I’ll give you a damned lesson in politics. The speaker of the City Council—who’s supposed to be a Democrat, mind you—cuts some backroom deal with the Republican mayor and promises to convince the City Council to approve his budget. Well, Cuevas’s vote cannot be delivered by nobody but Cuevas! Even when most of the other Democratic members of the council voted with the speaker and approved that awful budget, I stood up for the people of this district and voted against it. And you know what that cost me? I lost my seat as the chair of the Committing on Aging and my discretionary fund got slashed! I stand up for your interests, and you have the balls to come here and lobby me? I’m not the one gutting the city budget. Instead of coming here, why don’t you go lobby the Republicans from Queens or Staten Island?”
I’ve had enough. I yell, “Because you are supposed to be our representative. As residents of this district, we can’t vote for anyone regardless of party in Queens or Staten Island. We can only vote for you.”
“Or more like not vote for you,” Cindi finally mumbles under her breath.
Now I’m on my feet. “How dare you speak to your constituents this way! Did it ever dawn upon you that the reason why people are moving out of this community is because your leadership is atrocious?”
“Go on, Jen!” Echo cheers. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
“You should be doing everything in your power so that this is a place where everyone—regardless of national origin, street address, or even political affiliation—wants to live. Don’t you demand to be commended for voting against those budget cuts to schools and hospitals. That was your job. And it’s also your job to unite the people who live here to improve the quality of life for everyone.” Echo grabs my hand and pulls at it as if pumping octane into a Ferrari at the Formula One. “Who gives a damn who the park is named after when good kids are being driven out of it and onto the streets? What are you doing to help the newcomers believe they are a part of the community? What are you doing to make the longtime residents feel like it’s worth staying here? Nothing. Instead you’re spewing all this divisive nonsense as a way to deflect from the fact that you care about no one but yourself!”
“Get the hell out of my office!”
It’s almost six-thirty when my telephone rings. Without looking at the caller ID display, I know it’s Jennifer. On the one hand, I’m dying to know how the meeting with Cuevas went. But on the other hand, I don’t have time to hear Jennifer brag because I have to leave soon to meet my date at Whipped. I let the machine answer while I finish feeding Cleopatra from the baby bottle.
“’Chelle, it’s me,” my sister says. “Pick up.” I check my gym bag to be sure I have everything I need for tonight. “Michelle, pick up.” Why the hell does she assume I’m here? “Look, I don’t know where you are, but you have to call me back now.”
Shit, the meeting backfired. As much as I want to know what’s going on and if the kids are okay, I just can’t get into this right now. I can’t be late for this date. It’s my first with this new guy, and it sends a terrible message. Although maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make him wait for me. I peck Cleo on her tiny, furry head and place her back in her faux sheepskin bed when my cell phone rings and vibrates at the bottom of my purse.
I fish it out and, sure enough, it’s Jennifer. I don’t answer the phone, but keep it in hand as I head out of the house and toward my car. The jingle of voice mail plays, so once I settle behind the wheel of my new Cabriolet, I finally check it.
“Michelle, why aren’t you answering your fuckin’ phones? Look, I’m headed over there with the kids. Fuckin’ Cuevas gave us hell. Echo and Christian are plotting his assassination. Cindi won’t stop crying. I don’t know what to do ’cept I can’t take them home like this. We should get to you in about five minutes. Still call me back!”
Cindi’s crying? I debate whether I should call my date and cancel. No. I love the kids, and sometimes I even like Jennifer, but now that I finally have a life, I don’t want to lose it. But I should at least call them and find out what happened.
I connect my headset into my cell phone, dial back my sister and pull out of the driveway. Jennifer answers after one ring. “Are you home?” Shit, she has me on speaker, and I can hear Echo ranting, Cindi bawling, and poor Christian going back and forth between egging on one and consoling the other.
“No, I’m in the car on my way downtown.”
“For what?”
“Just tell me what happened.”
“I’ll tell you when we get to your place.”
“I told you I’m not going home.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“To an appointment.”
“An appointment for what?”
Now it’s my turn to say, “Okay, how old are we?”
“Look, Michelle, whatever the hell you’ve got planned, cancel it.”
I almost run a stop sign. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
“I mean, I can’t.” I turn onto the entrance ramp of the expressway. “Take me off the speaker, please.”
Jennifer pauses, debating for a hot second whether to challenge me. “Wait a minute.” Eventually, she returns. “Hello?” Her voice loses that tunnel quality, and the kids sound fainter. “This is an emergency, Michelle. What are you doing that’s so important that you can’t give me a hand here?” I’m a bit peeved that she’s doing this at all, let alone in front of the kids, especially since I know that my sister knows better. She’s the queen arbiter of appropriateness. Then in a strangled whisper, Jennifer says, “I mean, not only did this whole thing start as a favor to you, it went to hell when your research didn’t include the bill Cuevas introduced to rename the damned park.”
I have no idea what bill she’s talking about, but I’m pissed enough at the suggestion that this is my fault. Since I know that the kids can’t hear me, I say, “This lobbying thing was your idea. I told you I had a bad feeling about it, but you’re the Puerto Rican Hillary Clinton, remember. I have an appointment, and you’re the Mentor Extraordinaire, so you handle this on your own.”
Just as I hang up on my sister, I swear I see her BMW speed by me on the opposite side of the expressway on the way to my house.
Even though Michelle hangs up on me—which she’s been doing too freakin’ much lately—I still expect her to be home when I get there. Sometimes my sister talks shit to me for no other reason, I think, than to remind me that she’s older than me. But then guilt, sisterly duty, or whatever kicks in, and Michelle eventually tows the line. Of course, she will this time because if I hadn’t done this Power Lunch thing for her, I never would have met these kids, let alone be in this situation.
When we arrive at the house, no one answers. I use my key to open the gate, and the kids and I wait on the porch. Sure, I can let us into the house—after all, I grew up here, too—but I don’t want to overstep my boundaries. As it is, Michelle is going to be pissed to cancel her appointment and come home. I don’t want to “OD” by not treating the place as if it weren’t her personal space.
But fifteen minutes come and go, and Cindi sniffles. “I gotta use the bathroom.”
I figure what the hell. On top of the hellish experience she had at her first attempt at being a citizen advocate, I can’t let the child suffer from a strained bladder. I open the front door. I say to Cindi, “The bathroom’s right down the hall and to your right, sweetie.”
“Ms. Saez’s house is nice,” says Echo.
Christian asks, “She lets you have a key to her house?”
“Actually, this is our parents’ house. When my parents retired to Puerto Rico, she took it over.”
“Oh, you don’t live here with her?” asks Echo.
“No, I own an apartment in Manhattan.” Even though I’m peeved at Michelle for not returning home, I refrain from telling the children that she never left this place. It’d probably embarrass her for them to know that.
Echo asks, “How come y’all don’t live together?”
“Damn, stop being so nosy,” says Christian. “Just ’cause they’re practically twins doesn’t mean they should be attached at the hip and shit. You see they don’t really get along.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I went away to college, and Michelle stayed here, so…” When I returned to the city after graduating from college to attend Columbia Law School, it never occurred to me to move back home. Were it not for the fellowships I won, I would have graduated with too much debt to live on my own, never mind buy the co-op. And just because Michelle and I don’t hate each other is no call to revert back to childhood living arrangements.
Before I can say anything more, Echo swats the brim of Christian’s baseball cap and almost knocks it off his head. “I swear, Christian, you don’t even want to start with me. I can ask Ms. Saez whatever I want, and if she don’t wanna answer, she don’t have to. She knows it’s not gonna bother me none. You just take care of Cindi, okay?” Then Echo turns back to me. “You told us all about law school, Ms. Saez, but you ain’t tell us where you went to college.”
“I went to Princeton,” I answer. “In New Jersey.”
“Daaamn, Miss Saez. That’s one of them—what they call ’em—Ivy League schools, right? The tuition’s mad high, they’re like real hard to get into and, like, mostly white people go there, right?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, you can say that.” Funny, I’ve always been proud of my Princeton education, but not quite like this.
Cindi returns from the bathroom, carrying Michelle’s new kitten Cleopatra. Her face is dry, but her eyes and nose are red. I catch Echo elbow Christian in the side. He walks toward Cindi with his arms outstretched, and she places her head against his chest. I like him for doing this, but I like Echo even more for making him do it. The girl has him well-trained, and he’s not even her boyfriend. If anything, Echo’s whipping the guy into shape only for him to wind up with her best friend; I feel a twinge of sadness for her.
Needing no sympathy from me, Echo says, “I’m thirsty,” and it’s clear she expects me to offer her something to drink.
“Go find the refrigerator,” I say. I have come to adore Echo, but there can only be one queen in every hive.
And with neither hesitation nor attitude, Echo walks out of the living room into the kitchen. She says, “If y’all want something, too, you better come ’cause I ain’t your housekeeper.” We follow her into the kitchen. I get some glasses while Echo pulls out a pitcher of homemade limeade.
“You guys, I’m really sorry about what just happened,” I say. “I had no idea Cuevas would be such an asshole.” Maybe I shouldn’t be using this kind of language with them, but I’m only calling it as they already witnessed it for themselves. Besides, Michelle’s not there.
“It’s okay, Ms. Saez,” Cindi finally says. After taking a long sip, she lets Cleopatra lick a drop of limeade off her fingertip. “It’s not like you knew how he was gonna be.”
“Please call me Jen,” I say. “After what we’ve been through together, you’ve earned that. And know that most politicians are usually more…political.”
“How does a guy like that stay in office?” asks Christian. “I mean, no way we’re the first people he’s treated that way. And if Cuevas is like that with the people who can vote for or against him, imagine how he is with people he has any control over. Like the people who have to work for him.”
Cindi sniffs. “Poor Ryan.”
“What you mean poor Ryan?”
Echo shoots Christian a look that screams Shut up! She asks, “Jen, is it true all the things he said?”
“I didn’t even understand half of what he said,” says Cindi.
“Unfortunately, it is. Electoral politics is a very complicated thing with many shades of gray. Cuevas probably did lose a committee chair position because he stood up to the speaker of the City Council,” I say. “But don’t feel too sorry for him. He probably made an additional ten grand per year for chairing that committee. And you’ve seen his record. Cuevas didn’t really do anything meaningful with that power. He’s only upset because his pay was cut.”
“How much does a councilperson make?” asks Echo.
“As of now? About ninety thousand dollars each year.”
“What?” asks Christian. “I wanna be on the City Council.”
Cindi says, “Me, too.”
I laugh and say, “And that’s for what’s theoretically a part-time job.”
“For real?”
“Many council members have other jobs or businesses. Many are lawyers, like I am, who have their own practice. And some are the executive directors of nonprofits that they founded,” I explain. “But if you ask me, a really good councilperson should treat it as a full-time job. With that kind of salary and with so many people counting on you, there’s plenty of work to do and more than enough money for you to devote yourself to it.”
“You would make a great councilwoman, Jen,” Echo says. “You should run against that fool Cuevas. I’d vote for you.”
“Me, too.”
“Me, too.”
I smile and say, “Too bad for me you can’t.”
“But my mother can,” says Echo. “My brother can. Mi tio, mi abuela, mi madrina, I would get all of them to vote you. Shoo, I can make my whole block vote for you.”
And Echo being the sparkplug she is, I believe her.
As Greg launches into a complex lending formula, I realize what a mistake it was to invite him. I watch as he bores the five kids I manage to drag off MySpace to attend this week’s Power Lunch. Two boys are asleep, the third is staring out the window, and the two girls are passing each other notes. Since I forced them to participate, I have no right to demand they pay attention.
And Greg. What was I thinking inviting him to present to the kids? I barely know him. I thought it’d be a good opportunity to solidify our relationship to make him do this. He followed my instructions to the letter so the fault is all mine. The bizarre thing is that Greg would be a hit in a roomful of adults. He defines acceleration clauses and loan-to-value ratios with confidence and clarity. He wears the navy pinstripe suit and parts his hair on the opposite side just like I insisted. Every so often he cracks a joke that would floor anyone who knows what it’s like to scrape together enough money to pay a real bill—a car note, school tuition, rent. The biggest expense these kids have, however, is refilling the pay-as-you-go accounts they opened for cellular phone service, so Greg’s jokes sail over their heads.
And where’s Echo? And Cindi and Christian? Why aren’t they here? Since it’s the middle of the workday, they can’t be with Jennifer. Are they upset with me for not coming home after the Cuevas fiasco? I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Admit it, Michelle, you deserve the cold shoulder. You didn’t come home when they needed you because you wanted to punish them for choosing Jennifer over you.
Even though we have an hour left in the seminar, I signal Greg to wrap it up. He stops dead in the middle of his explanation of escrow and says, “And that concludes my presentation.” Then he says not another word.
The girls who were passing notes notice that he’s stopped speaking. Believing that he’s resorted to that old teacher’s trick of halting the lecture until the side conversations cease, they turn away from each other, lean back in their seats and fix their eyes on the front of the room. Not a peep from Greg, and they start to exchange scared looks.
I ask, “Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Adler?” One of the boys lets out a vicious snore, and the two girls giggle. “Then that concludes today’s Power Lunch.”
As one girl jostles the boys awake, the other checks her watch. “For real?” she asks me.
“Yes, please show Mr. Adler your appreciation and enjoy the rest of your day.” The kids weakly applaud Greg and then jump out of their seats and race for the door, grabbing one last slice of cold pizza or a handful of pretzel nuggets on the way. I avoid Greg’s gaze and begin to clean the room.
He slowly makes his way to me. “How did I do?” His eyes blink with desperation for my approval.
You were great, I think. It’s not your fault that you were overly prepared because I told you that you couldn’t be too specific. You bored them to death, and I’m the one to blame because even though you’re confident, charming, and accessible, you just weren’t the right speaker for this crowd. I’m so sorry I twisted your arm into coming here.
Stop it, Michelle. Remember your training. You are never wrong.
I turn to Greg, look him in the eye and say, “I’m very disappointed in your presentation.”
“But I did exactly as you asked me.” Although he sounds confused, Greg’s eyes flutter with excitement. “I followed your—”
“No backtalk!” I shout. “You were barely adequate.” Okay, that was pathetic, Michelle. I really need to work on this. I’m supposed to humiliate him, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Even though this is exactly what Greg wants me to do, it’s still hard for me let him have it. How do I salvage this scene?
I look at the wastebasket in my hand and shove it toward him. “Clean this mess,” I say. “The utility closet is over there, and you’ll find everything you need to sweep and mop this floor after you’ve cleared out this garbage.” Good, Michelle, good! I never mop the floor. The library has a custodian who does that.
Even though Greg immediately takes the wastebasket from me, he says, “But I have to be back in my office for a—”
“That is of no concern to me,” I say. “And if it’s of no concern to me, it’s of no concern to you, Gregory. You will return to your office if and when I grant you the permission to return to your office. Now clean this mess.”
Greg hurries to remove his jacket and drape it across a seat. Then he rushes to toss stray cups and crumpled napkins into the wastebasket. As I watch him, I realize that I’m really doing this. I’m dominating him, and we’re not even at the club! Queen Josephine and Lady Lash were right. Damn, this feels so good!
As I make my way to the door, I say, “You are to stay in here with the door locked until this room is spotless.” I mean, I can’t have Elaine walk in on my guest speaker mopping the floor. “This evening you are to report to the club at exactly eight-twenty for your punishment. Don’t you dare be late and force me to make it worse than it’s already going to be. Do I make myself clear, Gregory?”
“Yes, Madame Michelina.”
What a rush! I let myself out of the room, locking the door behind me. Now that Greg can no longer see me, I dance a jig in the hallway. Then my groove is disrupted by the last voice I expect to hear at the library in the middle of the day.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Jennifer! What are you doing in here? Why aren’t you at work?”
My sister moves for the knob on the conference room door. “Let’s go in here and I’ll tell you everything.” She tries the knob but it doesn’t turn.
I grab her arm and say, “We can’t go in there. It’s locked.”
“I can see that.”
“The floor’s wet,” I say as I pull her down the hallway toward my office. “I just finished mopping in there.”
“Oh.”
We reach my office and, thanks to God, Elaine is out to lunch. I sit down, but Jennifer remains standing. She comes here unannounced in the middle of the workday, and now she won’t sit down. This is big. “What’s up?”
“I’ve decided to run for City Council.”
“Jen, that’s great!” It was only a matter of time before my sister would do something like this. I think she’d make a fantastic representative, or, at the very least an effective politician. “Wow, isn’t the deadline for the primary right around the corner?”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of work to do,” says Jennifer. “I’m really going to need your support.”
“Absolutely.” I reach into my bottom desk drawer, pull out my pocketbook and search for my checkbook. “What’s the maximum contribution I can make?”
“Oh, I don’t expect you to do that….” she says.
Yeah, right. “I’m your sister. I should be the first to do it. C’mon, what’s the max?”
Jennifer squints at me through her eyeglasses. “Three thousand.” I scribble out the check, tear it out of the book and hand it to her. She stares at it. “Can you really afford this, ’Chelle?”
“I wouldn’t offer it if I couldn’t,” I say. I stand up and open my arms. “I can’t believe it! My sister, member of the City Council!” Jennifer gives a little shriek and jumps into my arms. As we hug, I say, “Councilwoman Jennifer Saez, representing the eighth district of Manhattan.”
My sister pulls away from me and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Actually, I’m not running in East Harlem. I’m going up against Cuevas for his seat right here. The eighteenth district.”
“You what?”
“I mean, between having grown up here and the research you just did to help us prepare for the lobbying visit, I know this community so much more intimately than where I currently live. Besides, I haven’t lived in El Barrio that long at all.” For a minute Jennifer sounds like she’s rehearsing her response to a question posed by a debate moderator rather than speaking to her own sister. “I’ve been so busy at the firm, I really haven’t gotten involved in East Harlem politics, so it’s much more strategic for me to move back to Soundview and run here.”
Strategic?
“And besides, this community deserves better than Cuevas.”
That may be true, but I’m only willing to sacrifice so much to be rid of him. “You’re just going to put your co-op on the market and move back to Soundview?” I ask. “Not that long ago you were telling me what a coup it was to buy property in East Harlem now that it’s become prime real estate.”
“I want this, Michelle,” Jennifer says in that decisive tone of hers. “You know me. I wouldn’t take this lightly for all the reasons you’re stating. But I really want this. I want this seat more than any co-op. And I need your help.”
What more could my sister want from me than a campaign contribution and some volunteer hours? Then it hits me. “You want to move back into the house.”
“Of course I do. I have to,” Jennifer says. I catch a rare glimpse of rejection in her face. “You say that as if you don’t want me there.”
Because I don’t. I’m positive that the reason why my sister and I get along as well as we do—and it’s only well enough to put us in get-along-well territory—is precisely because we don’t live together. And now I have a cat. A second job. A whole new world. There’s just no room for my sister.
The hurt look on Jennifer’s face morphs quickly into her usual confident demeanor. “Look, ’Chelly, I know what you’re thinking, and I truly understand. We’re both grown women who haven’t lived together in years. We lead very different lives and need our own spaces. So I promise you that the move’s just temporary. Once I swipe the seat out from under Cuevas, I’ll go find my own place, so we’re only talking about a few months here. What do you say?”
One thing I do appreciate about my sister is that she’s reasonable. Maybe that’s because besides our striking resemblance, it’s one of the few qualities we share. And the truth is, I really can’t say no to Jen. The house still belongs to my parents so I’m really in no position to say that she can’t move back. But even though I’m still a bit uncomfortable with the situation, I do believe Jennifer truly understands and respects my feelings. Of course she does. She would feel the same way if the shoe was on the other foot. And I want to support Jennifer in this exciting new venture like a good sister should. I really don’t want to see people attacking my sister for moving into the neighborhood to run for Cuevas’s seat, so if allowing her to reclaim her old address can reduce the likelihood of that, so be it.
I open my arms and say, “Welcome back to the neighborhood, sis!”
“Oh, thank you, ’Chelle!” Jennifer throws her arms around me. “Trust me, the time’s going to go by really fast because we have so much work to do. When we’re knee-deep in the campaign, you’ll be so happy I’m under the same roof. First thing we have to think about is planning a fundraiser ASAP. Now I was—”
“Wait, wait, wait!” I say, waving my arms to flag down my sister. “You’re going off and coming at me as if I were your campaign manager.”
Jennifer laughs. “What do you want? An official invitation? Okay, Michelle, you’re going to be my campaign manager. And when I win, naturally you’ll be my chief of staff.”
“No.”
“Oh, c’mon, what more do you want me to say?”
“No, Jennifer, I don’t want you to ask me to be your campaign manager,” I say. “I can’t be your campaign manager.”
My sister says, “What do you mean you can’t be my campaign manager?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?” I yell. I remember where I am and lower my voice. “Jennifer, if I could do it, I would. But I can’t do it.”
“Can’t,” says Jennifer, “or won’t?”
I don’t like the way she asks me that, but I don’t want to escalate this conflict. So I merely repeat, “I can volunteer a few hours per week, but I can’t take on the responsibility of running your campaign. I just don’t have the time.”
But leave it to my sister to take it there. “What do you mean you don’t have the time? You work here during the day, and…that’s it. Are you doing something with the kids? I mean, they’re all volunteering on my campaign right through the general election anyway.”
It’s such a wrap. “Jennifer, I am thirty years old, and my mother is living on a tropical island enjoying her retirement by watching telenovelas and tending to her vegetable garden. In other words, I do not answer to anyone let alone my arrogant, younger sister. Listen to me carefully because I will not say this again. I just gave you a three thousand dollar check. I can offer you ten hours every week. I will allow you to move back into our house. But I am not going to be your campaign manager. Get it?”
Jennifer and I stand off, huffing at one another like two rams about to butt horns. Then my sister spins on her heel and heads for my office door. “Got it,” she yells, and slams the door behind her.
Although I feel that my sister went too far and I did the right thing, that didn’t feel anywhere near as good as dominating Greg. Not even close. I don’t think all the domme training in the world is going to ever make it fun to speak to my sister like that.
Rocco beats me to Serafina’s. When I walk through the door and toward the table, he gives me this twisted face, so I can’t tell if he’s happy or anxious to see me. I don’t get it. He wanted to leave me. You’d think the moron would show me some appreciation for making it easy on him.
A little over five months ago he walks into the kitchen while I’m reading through the transcript of a deposition and says, “Jennifer, this isn’t working out.”
I saw this coming, and I meant to save him the anguish. Then the case I was trying to settle went into litigation, and he beat me to it. Oh, be real with yourself, Jen. You got blindsided by the sexcapade that occurred the night before the chickenshit called it quits, and thought there was one last chance for you two.
When Rocco finally summoned the courage to say what we both knew for a long time, I didn’t want to drag out the inevitable.
“So leave,” I said. Then I went back to my transcript.
“C’mon, Jen, don’t be like that….”
“I’m not being like anything. You’re unhappy. I’m unhappy. I own this apartment. There’s nothing more to say.”
Not that Rocco didn’t harass me for “closure.” After he moved out, he sent me countless e-mails and phone calls begging for me to talk to him if not meet with him. I answered him once. I sent Rocco a single e-mail where I clearly delineated that I knew the separation was for the best, that I harbored no ill will toward him, and that other than to arrange the logistics of his moving out, there really was no need to rehash what went wrong with the relationship. I never mentioned the loan, taking it as a loss.
So when I finally called Rocco and asked him to meet me for lunch, he presumed that I was finally ready to have the Conversation. I let him think that. If Rocco had any idea why I really wanted to see him, he never would have agreed to lunch at Serafina’s.
Rocco stands up when he sees me. “Hi.”
“Hello.”
He walks around the table to pull out my chair. I chuckle to myself, remembering how long it took me to train him to do that. His next girlfriend should thank me. The man wasn’t a Neanderthal when I met him. Far from it. It was that he was pretty spoiled, and therefore completely self-absorbed. It didn’t bother me much because the fact that he had his own interests allowed me to pursue mine. That is, until he confused me for his damned mother.
“You look good,” Rocco says. He means it. Whether he likes it or not, it’s the truth. I look great.
“So do you,” I lie. Rocco’s one of those guys who thinks he’s good-looking enough to ignore his appearance. He is, but that’s beside the point. We’re talking principle here. When he worked at the law firm, his Taryn Rose shoes were always scuffed and his Burberry ties always had coffee stains.
Now Rocco’s into the starving artist thing with torn jeans, a wrinkled T-shirt, and “mandals.” How did I ever fall for this man?
“How’s the artistic life treating you?” I ask, even though I really don’t care. Of course, I hope the man is not literally starving, but as long as I don’t have to feed him, I have greater concerns.
“Awesome!” he says, his eyes lighting up. “The band just landed a gig at Crash Mansion.” Rocco digs into the outside pocket of his Ferragamo messenger bag and pulls out a stack of glossy postcards. He hands me one: a flyer listing a calendar of performances for the band he created called Homeland Security. Rocco refers to it as “folk hip hop.” I don’t know how accurate that label is because I could barely stand to listen to it. I had no problem with the music or lyrics or anything like that. I just couldn’t get past the notion of a trust fund baby rapping about gentrification, school shootings, and the prison industrial complex. The fact that Rocco’s family emigrated from Buenos Aires to the Upper West Side where he attended the Trinity School before studying at the London School of Economics hardly qualifies him for street cred. “When are you going to come hear us play?” he asks.
If he begged me, maybe I would go, but it’s obviously a rhetorical question. Yes, it would surprise and even please him if I were to show up at one of his gigs. But Rocco and I both know that not only do I not give a shit about his music but also that he doesn’t give a shit if I like his music.
I could lie again and tell him that I’d really like to, but what’s the point? “I don’t have the time,” I say. “I’m running for City Council.”
Rocco’s eyes flare. “No way!”
I nod then prop my hand on my chin. “I had an encounter with my local representative and decided that the district needed better.”
“But I thought you liked Councilwoman Mendoza. You even voted for her.” Rocco squints in confusion and then leans forward so that no one can overhear him. “I remember you threatening to not give me any for a month if I didn’t vote for her, too.”
I roll my eyes at him. “I’m not running for the East Harlem seat. I’m moving back to the Bronx and running against Raul Cuevas.”
Rocco scoffs. “I’m shocked at you, Jennifer. And quite a bit disappointed.”
“What are you talking about? You always said I’d make a great politician. You encouraged me to run in the last election.”
“But you’re carpetbagging!”
I crumple up my napkin and toss it on the table. “Oh, that’s bullshit. Save for the few years since I graduated high school, I’ve lived in that district all my life. And quite frankly, it hasn’t changed a lick since I left.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Rocco asks. “Things haven’t deteriorated.”
“Things are not supposed to just not deteriorate,” I snap. “They’re supposed to get better.”
Rocco throws up his hands. “Okay, okay, okay.” Then he places his hands over mine. “I do think you’d make a fantastic local official, and I wish you all the best with your campaign. Tell me what I can do to support you.”
“Glad you asked,” I say. “I need you to repay me the five grand I loaned you.”
“What?”
Rocco had quit the law firm for two reasons. One, to be with me. I insisted on it. I wasn’t about to put both my heart and career on the line by dating someone at work. Two, to pursue his musical career. By the time he moved in with me, the money he’d saved had run out, and he was a long way off from getting his hands on his trust fund. I can’t stand Rocco’s mother because she couldn’t stand me. That salty Latigringa—that’s the name ’Chelle and I give to Latinos who would bleach their blood free of its African and Native American DNA if they could—never approved of her favorite offspring wanting to marry a Boricua trigueñita from a working-class family whose hair crinkled at the first hint of moisture. But the one thing I’ll hand to that old bitch is that she knew her son and how to keep him in check. By her decree, Rocco doesn’t get his trust fund until he turns thirty-five or gets married, whichever comes first.
I explain, “Yes, I’m entering the race at the last minute, but I can work that to my advantage. But I need money to raise money, Rocco. I’m going up against the political machine’s favorite son. When this moron is finally forced out by term limits, the Bronx Democratic Committee already plans to hand the seat over to his son. Can you believe that?”
“Yeah, I can. It happens everywhere,” says Rocco. “You know, my bassist lives in Brooklyn, and he told me—”
“So I’m going to need the money by the end of the month.” While I’m happy Rocco understands my dilemma and sympathizes with me, I didn’t come here to consult with him on strategy. I should be having those discussions with Michelle, but she wants to pretend she has a life. Her check for three grand is still sitting in my wallet, and I have no intention of cashing it. Instead I have every intention of making Rocco repay this loan as soon as possible. “I’m going to use the money you repay me to organize a fund-raiser, and hopefully I can flip that five grand into at least twenty. Meanwhile, I just submitted my application for public matching funds, which means I’ll get four bucks for every one I raise.” The formula is a bit more complex than that, but like I said, I don’t want to talk politics with my ex-boyfriend.
“Jennifer, I want to help you, but I can’t do it,” Rocco says. I’m really starting to hate that damned word. First my sister, now my ex. You’d think I wasn’t self-sufficient and always begging them for help. On the contrary, it’s hard for me to do this, and both of them should know me well enough to know this. “I’m more than happy to repay you the money,” says Rocco. “But there’s just no way I can scrape up five grand by the end of the month.”
I already had a response to that, too, because I know Rocco doesn’t have the money on hand. Until he gains access to his trust fund, he has to earn his keep like the rest of us, which is eventually why he needed to borrow the five grand in the first place. Except the rest of us do not get a new Ducati motorcycle on our birthdays or a check for a thousand dollars tucked in a “Just Thinking of You” card. No matter where she happens to be in the world with her boy toy of the month, Latigringa never fails to dote on her boy. “Sure, you have it,” I say. “Either sell something or ask your mother for it.”
Rocco jolts in his seat as if my words contain two thousand volts. “Are you crazy?”
“Don’t throw a tantrum.”
“Where do you come off—” I dig the tip of my Carmen Marc Valvo slingbacks into the front of Rocco’s ankle. “Ouch!” He reaches down and grabs it.
“I told you to calm down,” I say.
Rocco grabs his messenger bag and almost knocks over his glass of water. “I’m not taking this from you, Jennifer.” He slings his bag over his shoulder and limps toward the door. I allow him to make it to the street before I drop some cash on the table and follow him.
“Rocco!” I call. He shoots a frightened look over his shoulder and hobbles faster, like a terrible actress in a bad horror flick. He reaches the curb and hails frantically for a cab. By the time one pulls over for him, I’m by his side. I open the door for him. Rocco groans but climbs into the backseat. I follow him, and he groans again. I don’t say anything. His whining has never fazed me. “You owe me this money, Rocco, and you know I wouldn’t ask for it if I didn’t need it. I took a leave of absence from the firm to launch this campaign, and I won’t see the money from the sale of my co-op in time. You really think I would go so far as to suggest that you borrow it from your mother if I didn’t need it?”
Rocco breaks my gaze and stares out his window. When he wanted to quit the firm to focus on his music, I supported him. In fact, my enthusiasm for the idea surprised him. He expected me to react just as his mother had. Despite the frequent gifts, Latigringa offered him no moral support and always asked him when he thought he might be done with this “artistic phase.” I, on the other hand, allowed Rocco to move in with me when his savings ran low.
But I had conditions. If Rocco was going to devote himself to his music, I wanted to see progress. I wanted to read new songs in his notebook (even if I did find the lyrics a bit disingenuous) and to hear new melodies emanating from his guitar. I wanted to come home to notes on the refrigerator that read At the studio, be home at nine, and to stories about auditions and jam sessions. And because I had become the sole breadwinner and worked longer hours to support us both, I expected Rocco to manage the house. Groceries in the refrigerator, clean laundry in the basket, a hot meal on the stove, an empty bag in the garbage, and yes, a ready body under the comforter. I was lucky if I got a fresh roll by the toilet. Rocco turned my place into a Dumpster and had not one recorded song or paying gig to show for it.
Although he failed to carry his weight, he had the audacity to call me domineering. “So I’m domineering because I don’t let you treat me like your housekeeper,” I said. “You don’t think I have the right to demand that you do your share around here?”
“That’s just it, Jennifer,” he said. “Yes, we both know you have the right. So why be so demanding? Fine, it annoys you when I forget to clean the shower or pay the bills late. You don’t have to punish me for it.”
“Punish you? How do I punish you? I’m the one who’s getting punished when you don’t earn your keep.”
“Last night you made me sleep on the couch just because I forgot to take out the garbage!”
“It was a recycling night!” I said. “Now we’re stuck with all that paper for another week.”
“The point is,” Rocco said, “that was an extreme reaction to a little mistake.”
“You know, Rocco, sometimes I think you do these things because you want me to get on your ass,” I said. “Your mother allowed you to get away with anything and everything. Oh, you pretended to enjoy the freedom. But deep down inside, it bothered you that she didn’t care enough to put you in check.”
“You fuckin’ bitch!”
I slapped him across the face and was hauling back for el revés when Rocco tackled me onto the sofa. We tumbled onto the carpet, tearing at one another’s clothes. I commanded him to eat me until I came, and he did. Rocco begged for me to return the favor, but I refused. Instead I teased him until the point of no return and then I kneeled over him and ordered him to finish himself off while I watched. When he was done, Rocco kissed my hand, told me he loved me and wanted to marry me no matter what his mother said. We had never gone at it like that before, and I thought we had embarked on an exciting new path in our relationship.
The next day the wuss shuffled into the kitchen. “We need to talk.”
Now, in the cab, Rocco finally turns away from the window and looks at me. “Okay, I’ll ask my mother for the money, but on one condition.”
Great. “What?”
“Homeland Security gets to play at your fund-raiser.”
He’s got to be fucking kidding! But that glow across his face tells me he’s dead serious. Rocco intends to hold out for this. Why can’t the man just do what I ask of him? This is why we can’t be together.
“You get no pay, play only three songs, and I choose every single one.”
“Half pay, five songs, and we choose them together.”
“I said no pay, three songs, I choose.”
“Okay, it is a fund-raiser so you don’t have to pay us,” says Rocco. “And I guess you do have to be careful that what we play doesn’t contradict your campaign platform. So how about this? No pay, five songs, you choose.”
“Or how about this?” I say. “No pay, three songs, I choose.”
Rocco gazes at me in a way that tells me he misses me. And I miss him, too. But I also know that we will never work. We went somewhere new that last night, and from that place I had to go forward. But for whatever reason, Rocco needed to turn back. It scared the shit out of him, and yet in my gut I knew what happened was not a symptom of but the solution to our problems. I can’t explain it. I’m not even convinced that I should feel the way I do. I never have been able to behave according to how I should feel, but only how I do feel. Even when everyone says it’s wrong. This is how I end up alone.
Now it’s my turn to look out the window, because I can’t let Rocco see me cry. I hear him say, “Okay, Jen, you win.” First I wipe my tears, and then I turn to give him a smile.
To make peace with Jennifer and get her off my back, I offer to sit on her interviews for a campaign manager who can also serve eventually as her chief of staff. Of course, she resists left and right, insisting that she doesn’t need my help. Then she finally agrees, only to make it seem as if it’s her idea.
Jennifer spends almost an hour with every candidate. She takes copious notes and asks the same question a variety of ways, as if she’s deposing a witness. Listening with one ear and minding the clock, I go on instinct. I know my sister and can tell who can work with her or not within minutes. Right now she’s impressed with this Leslie Harewood, but I see nothing but trouble.
“As your chief of staff, I won’t just manage your calendar and run your district office,” says Leslie. “I’ll be your eyes and ears in the community. If I see an issue that can be addressed with a change in legislation, I’ll do the research and bring it to your attention.”
I stand up and offer her my hand. “Thank you, Leslie. We have one more candidate to see, but we will be in touch with you shortly.”
“Oh.” Leslie shakes my hand then offers it to Jennifer. “Thank you…Councilwoman.” She grins and skips out the door. What I would give to be that confident about anything, but I’m working on it.
“I like her. She’s my favorite so far.” Jennifer looks at the itinerary I gave her. “Actually, Leslie was our last interview.”
“No, I screened a résumé I received at the last minute and decided to accommodate the guy,” I say. “I think he’s perfect.”
Of course, Jennifer says, “Unless he rocks my world, which I seriously doubt, I’m going with Leslie.”
“Trust me, Jen, you don’t want to do that.”
“Are you kidding me?” she says, staring at me over the rim of her glasses.
“She brings a master’s degree in public policy from Columbia University, experience working at the Independent Budget Office, and existing relationships with key staff at City Hall. And that’s just on paper. It doesn’t hurt that she’s an African American who grew up and still lives in the district and is fluent in Spanish. Leslie is perfect.”
“She’s too ambitious.”
Jennifer scoffs. “There’s no such thing.”
“Jen, your priority now is to find someone who can manage your campaign given all the barriers you have to overcome,” I explain. “The girl had nothing to say about that. All she talked about was what a great chief of staff she would make.”
“Fantastic! She looks ahead. And that’s the kind of drive I need if I’m going to beat Cuevas.” Jennifer eyes me up and down. “Since my own sister is too busy to support me.”
Ignore her, Michelle. “Jennifer, you need someone who’s competent but also…” I know exactly what I want to say, but I restrain myself. “Let me put it this way. Sure, Leslie will handle anything you throw her way, but it’s obvious to me that she just can’t…” I probably shouldn’t use this word, but nothing is more perfect. “…submit.”
“Submit?” My sister looks at me as if I suggested she engage in child labor. “I don’t need anyone to submit to me.”
I fight the urge to ask her if she would like to hear the evidence alphabetically or chronologically, but it’s almost eight o’clock and there’s no time for that. I have to leave soon for my own appointment, although I have yet to tell my sister that I have one.
“Yes, Jen, Leslie’s perfect on paper. But you two are too much alike. The second you shoot down one of Leslie’s grand ideas, she’s going to jump ship.” I head to the office door. “You need a campaign manager and chief of staff whose only purpose is to serve you.” I open the door and usher in Mr. Perfect.
As I expected, my sister’s jaw drops at the sight of Raul Cuevas’s chief of staff. “Ryan Alfaro?”
“Not only is he the only candidate that has both experience in running a campaign and managing a legislative office, imagine all the press you’ll get when the media finds out Ryan left Cuevas’s campaign to run yours!”
“So much for loyalty,” Jennifer says, although I can hear her salivate over my rationale. She’s the underdog in this election in more ways than the average contender, and she knows it. But I have no doubt that Ryan’s her man despite her legitimate hesitation. I nudge Ryan, to get him to speak.
“I can alleviate any concerns you have if you would just grant me five minutes, Ms. Saez,” he says. He folds his hands in front of his silk tie. “Please.”
Yeah, he’s perfect for Jennifer. He’d drop to his knees and beg if she asked him to. I say, “Look, Jen, I’ve got to go.”
“Go? Where?”
“I have an important errand to run.” I think quickly. “I need to head to the central library to look up something for you.”
“At this hour?”
“It’s open late. When I get home, we’ll talk, and you’ll make a decision.” I blow her a kiss, wink at Ryan, and rush out the door to meet with the Queen and a star member of the New York Jets.
“Have a seat, Ryan,” I say as I take my own. What the hell is going on with Michelle? It’d be insane for me to hire him. I cut to the chase. “Does the councilman even know that you’re on the market?”
“No, no, no. I’ve been wanting to leave for some time now, but I was just waiting for the right opportunity to emerge. But if Cuevas knew I wanted to move on, he would find some excuse to fire me.”
“What on earth for?”
“That’s just the kind of man he is, Ms. Saez. When he found out that our previous legislative director was applying to law school, he fired him for coming back five minutes late from lunch. This was a man with a wife and child. He wasn’t planning on quitting until he actually began classes. But Cuevas could not imagine how anyone would not give his eyeteeth to do his bidding.” Ryan pauses to hold up his résumé. “May I…?” I nod, and he places it on my desk. “Honestly, Ms. Saez, I could stomach the abuse if Cuevas were a good councilman. But he takes his loyal constituents for granted, and the rest…well, I don’t have to tell you.”
“No, you don’t.” I scan his résumé. On paper he’s stronger than Leslie. But she’s a sparkplug like Echo. This Ryan…I don’t know. He strikes me as a bit soft. “So you want to come work for me to stick it to Cuevas.”
“Not at all, Ms. Saez! In that brief visit you had with him a few weeks ago, I saw in you a person that can lead others and make change for the better. One moment you were coaching those kids and giving them the confidence to speak up for what they believe in, and when Cuevas tried to humiliate them, you were standing up and giving him hell in a way that I have never seen anyone do. Not even the other men on the Bronx Democratic Committee.” Ryan springs forward in his seat until his face is only inches from mine. “And now you’re running for his seat when you have no ties to the county machine, no experience in public office, no war chest of which to speak….”
And Michelle thinks this guy is perfect for me? If Ryan keeps this up, not only will I not hire him, I just might throw in the towel. And move out of the state. “Why would you quit a secure job with such a powerful man to manage a bare-bones, final-hour campaign for a dark horse?”
“Because I know you can win,” he says. “I can help you win. Not only do I know how the machinery works, I know everything about Cuevas.”
As enticing as it sounds, I give myself a reality check. Ryan has much more to lose than gain by joining my campaign. For all I know, Cuevas sent him here to act as a mole. A really good-looking mole. Knock it off, Jen. Where are you? Back in high school? I say, “You expect me to believe that you’re willing to risk your own political career to jump-start mine?”
“I don’t have a political career.”
“Sure you do. Even if I don’t beat Cuevas, he won’t be in office forever. Term limits will see to that. And if you remain loyal to him and the county machine, you can be next in line for his seat. Now why should I believe that you would give that up?”
“Because I never wanted that,” says Ryan. “Ms. Saez, I have no desire to lead anyone or be in the public eye or anything like that. My strength—and what brings me the greatest sense of pleasure and fulfillment—is service.” Then he laughs shyly, reminding me of Rocco when we first met and he wanted to impress me. “And truth of the matter is that, even if I aspired to Cuevas’s seat, that’d be a pipe dream. The county committee has already chosen who they want to take his district when term limits forces him out of office.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “Raul, Jr.”
Ryan nods. “Unless you win.”
“Of course you should let him,” I say as I transpose two books on a shelf. I push the cart down the aisle as Jennifer follows me. “You don’t have anything to hide.”
“A complete stranger poking around my background, looking for dirt,” Jennifer says as she hugs herself. In her Valvo pumps and Maz Azria suits, she usually seems six feet tall. Now she looks like a Girl Scout. I have this urge to protect my sister even though I know she’s in no danger.
“First of all, if Ryan is going to be your campaign manager and chief of staff, he can’t remain a stranger. You can’t keep any secrets from him,” I say as I wheel the cart around the corner toward the adult fiction section. “And Ryan is right. Once Cuevas learns that Ryan has leaped from his bandwagon to yours, he’s going to scour the earth trying to find a way to discredit you.”
“Not like he doesn’t already have the whole carpetbagging issue,” Jen says under her breath.
“Sure he’s going to try that, but that’s a minor thing, and you have a valid response,” I say. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if my sister should drop this campaign. Since Jennifer dove into it, she hasn’t been getting enough sleep. Her late hours at the office enable me to keep my dates at Whipped a secret. Nor has she been eating right, from what the kids tell me, and they live off of junk food. Between her self-neglect and Cuevas’s public verbal assaults, the lioness is losing her roar. But Jennifer won’t quit even if she should, so the best thing I can do for her is help her see this campaign to its conclusion. “Just prepare yourself for the fact that he might twist the truth or straight out lie, Jen. This is the way campaigns are run nowadays. He’s going to go negative, but you can counter if you expect it.”
“Jesus…”
“Oh, c’mon, what’s the worst thing he can find out about you?” I ask. “You ran up some charge cards while in college?”
“Actually, I was probably the only student in my dorm who didn’t.”
Of course not. “You see,” I say. “You’ve never pulled a Paris Hilton, did you? There aren’t any videotapes of you floating out there, right?”
“Oh, God…”
“Is that a yes or a no?” I tease.
“Michelle!”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Ever been arrested for anything?” I already know the answer to this so I ask it only to put my sister at ease. While in college Jennifer did participate in a few demonstrations, but she never got arrested. If anything, she was the one who summoned the pro bono attorney and collected the bail money for those who did.
Jennifer racks her brain for any tawdry events that might come back to haunt her. “The only thing I can think of is when I made law review. I wrote a pretty strident article defending a woman’s right to choose. Think he might use that against me?”
“That depends,” I say. “Have you switched positions?”
“No!”
“Then don’t worry about it.” Even if Jennifer had flipped, Cuevas would never know. The woman’s acting as if she’s running for Congress. Of course, Cuevas is going to play dirty, but he’s not going to go that far to discredit her. It’s just a local election. “Being a maverick is not without its advantages, Jen. The worse thing he can say about you is that you’ve got no track record. Cuevas, on the other hand, has almost four years’ worth of votes and quotes you can use against him.”
Jennifer’s eyes brighten. “It’d be great if you could—”
“No, Jennifer, I can’t,” I say.
“Ryan can’t do it all, and you’re in the perfect position to do it.”
Because I truly believe in Jennifer and want to support her, I debate whether I should come clean. On the one hand, what I’ve learned can help her. On the other hand, Jennifer can’t win this City Council seat if she’s serving time for murdering me. No, this is not the time to reveal the turns my personal life has taken, especially when the truth is that I’m not willing to sacrifice it for her campaign. The only thing that lessens my guilt is the fact that my sister has no idea what I’m keeping from her. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you really?”
“Wait here.” I abandon the book cart and rush to the administrative office for my purse. I come back to find Jennifer picking up where I left off, reshelving books from the cart and reordering books misplaced by browsing patrons. What a freak. After snatching the book from her and placing it back on the cart, I say, “Trying to get me fired?”
“If it means you’ll have to come work for me…” Jennifer stares at me as I reach into my purse for my checkbook. “No, Michelle, stop.”
“I may not have time, but I do have money, so let me give you what I can.”
“I can’t accept that.” Jennifer grabs the checkbook. “You’ve already given me the maximum contribution allowable by law, remember?”
“I’m your sister, for God’s sake.” I snatch the checkbook away from her and flip to a blank check. “Don’t report it. Just deposit it, and spend it as you need it. The law can’t tell you to refuse money from your own family.” I make the check out for one thousand dollars, tear it out and hand it to Jennifer. She rips it in half. “What are you doing?”
Some library patrons at the computer stations turn to stare at me. Ever since Jennifer took a leave from her job at the law firm, she spends almost as much time here trailing me than at her campaign office. If my own sister continues to stalk me at work, I am going to get fired. Then my moonlighting gig will become my primary source of income. Come to think of it, that might be…
“I don’t want your money, Michelle,” Jennifer says. “I need your time and expertise. Nobody can do research and organize things like you. Why are you so intent on denying me the best thing you can do for me?”
My face becomes hot. “So you think the only thing I’m good for is surfing electronic databases and pushing paper…”
“I didn’t say that.”
“…and that I’m not capable of doing anything else? That I have no dreams or desires other than to prep you for your close-up? Is that it, Jennifer?”
“Shhh!” says Mrs. Webb from “her” usual desk across the mystery aisle. The old woman is there every day, sometimes for four hours at a time. Elaine and I joke about charging her rent.
“I can’t talk to you anymore,” Jennifer says. “You twist everything I say.”
“No, I just say everything you mean.”
My sister throws up her hands and steps around my cart. “I’m out of here.”
“Ciao.”
She stops to turn around and glare at me. “Did you just say ciao?”
“What?” I yell. “I can’t say ciao?”
Mrs. Webb says, “Shhhhh!”
Jennifer and I both suck our teeth at her, scoff at each other, then stomp off on our separate ways.
I head to the campaign office. Echo, Cindi, and Christian are there with a few more friends, preparing the invitations for my upcoming fund-raiser at the Marina del Rey. They listen to gossip queen Wendy Williams on the radio and try to solve her blind items as they stuff, label, stamp, and seal envelopes. They make each other laugh so much, no one notices my arrival but the ever alert Echo.
“Hi, Jen,” she says. “Rye-yen called to say he was gonna be here soon.” All the girls have a crush on “Rye-yen.” Echo “pimped” him to recruit some of them to volunteer on my campaign, telling all her friends about the hottie she works for. But since Echo harbors the biggest crush on Ryan of all, she makes sure that her friends get their tasks done.
“Thanks, Echo.” I slip into my office and grab the stack in my in box. At the top is a letter from the chair of the political action committee of Senior Sisters on the Scene, a twelve-year-old civic organization of African-American women over the age of fifty-five. The attached note from Ryan reads, First, the good news.
They voted to endorse me and made a five hundred dollar contribution to my campaign! Not only is that fantastic news, I didn’t see it coming at all. Those old ladies were kind of tough on me, asking me as many questions about my personal life as they did my political opinions. I walked out of the interview believing that still being single and childless at the age of twenty-seven somehow worked against me.
But in the letter, the chair called me a “wholesome woman who as our representative in the City Council will serve as a wonderful example to the girls in this community.” I have to thank Ryan for this one because it was his idea to have Echo and Cindi accompany me to the meeting. The SSS are quite respected and connected, so an endorsement from them is very likely to generate support from other groups in the district.
Next in the in box is a copy of the latest edition of the Bronx Weekly Journal. This time the attached note from Ryan says, “And now the bad news.” I flip to the page that he has flagged with a paper clip. The headline on the editorial page immediately catches my eye: ONE MORE TERM FOR CUEVAS.
But when I read the editorial, I laugh. If I were Cuevas, I wouldn’t leap to quote the Bronx Weekly Journal in my campaign material. Of course, although I’m disappointed to not have won its endorsement, Ryan warned me to not expect it. He said that even though the paper tries to maintain a facade of journalistic objectivity, it always endorses the machine’s candidates. But this editorial amounts to a three-hundred-word backhanded compliment. In fact, I sit at my desk and start to brainstorm ways to spin the paper’s halfhearted support for Cuevas against him.
A half hour later Ryan knocks on my door. I know it’s him because he always knocks then waits. When I don’t want to be interrupted, I tell everyone to hold my calls and lock the door. Otherwise, all my campaign workers knock then let themselves in, except Ryan. He knocks then waits for permission. I have to admit, I find it endearing and even a little sexy. Of course, I say nothing of the sort to him.
Still, I can’t help myself. “C’mon in, Rye-yen.” He enters, and I wave my list of possible campaign slogans at him. “Hey, this endorsement isn’t as bad as it seems,” I say. “I mean, the Bronx Weekly Journal’s practically telling voters, ‘Look, in the face of uncertainty, go with the misery you know.’ Let’s challenge Cuevas to a debate.”
Ryan approaches my desk and clears his throat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jennifer.”
“Not a good idea? It’s a fuckin’ awesome idea!” For some bizarre reason, the brilliance of this strategy zips past this ordinarily smart guy, so I break it down for him. “If Cuevas refuses to debate me, the voters’ll wonder what he has to hide. If he agrees to it, I have a chance to use his record against him and present my platform. I can’t lose.”
“We should leave now so we won’t be late for our next meeting,” Ryan says. “We can discuss this later.”
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says as he grabs the papers I left him in the out box. “Let’s just go.”
I don’t believe him, but I drop it.
I have no idea what’s going on with Ryan. Ordinarily, he’s so organized, but today it’s been one fumble after the other. First, he forgets the speech I was supposed to give over lunch at the Soundview Collaborative for Intergenerational Initiatives. Then he brings the wrong MapQuest directions from the ballroom where the luncheon took place to the offices of the North Bronx Reporter. We were fifteen minutes late to meet with the editorial board. As if that’s not bad enough, Ryan gives me the wrong background material, so I enter the Reporter editorial meeting well-versed in the demographics and issues facing Parkchester and Morris Park when the Reporter covers the neighborhoods of Castle Hill and Zerega.
As he drives me back to the campaign office, I say, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fire you.” He stammers, and I yell, “Just one, Ryan!”
“Ms. Saez, I have no excuses for my incompetence as of late although I do have an explanation…if you’ll allow me, ma’am.”
This campaign is getting to me. Most women my age would cringe to have an attractive man refer to her as ma’am. But I like it. It saves Ryan his job for now. “Well?”
“I know I’ve been extremely preoccupied…”
“That’s an understatement.”
“…and I deeply apologize, but I’ve come across some information in my research that may have a major impact on your campaign.”
It’s clearly bad news, but I maintain my composure. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you,” Ryan says. “I have to show you when we get back to the office.”
Shit, this sounds really bad. “Does it have to do with Cuevas?” I already know it doesn’t.
“No, it has nothing to do with Cuevas. I mean, it’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t want his campaign to find out.”
Oh, God, it’s that bad. About me? What in the world could Ryan have found that can be used against me that Cuevas did not already have? He already takes every chance he gets to slam me as, and I quote, “the opportunist who abandoned the community only to return now to embark on a career in politics.”
Ryan rushes to fill my silence. “Now, I don’t think the Cuevas campaign knows anything about this, and honestly, I don’t know how they might find out. It’s…” He searches for the right word. “It’s obscure information.”
What the fuck…? “What do you mean, ‘obscure’?”
“It’s not the kind of thing you uncover unless…” Ryan pulls off the Bruckner Expressway toward our exit. “I just have to show you.”
If I weren’t so desperate to know, I’d kick him out of the driver’s seat at the next stop light. Instead I’ll wait until Ryan drops the bomb, and then I’ll fire him. Wait, how the hell can I fire him? Now that he has uncovered this damning information about me, I’m going to go fire him? Pendeja, he’ll run back to Cuevas with it, and my losing this election will be the best case scenario. Christ, I may be beholden to Ryan for the rest of my life. He could plunge into an affair with Echo, and I’d have to keep his borderline pedophiliac ass around to keep my own tail covered.
These thoughts and worse preoccupy me, and we are soon back at the campaign office. The kids are still there, hard at work. Echo refills the paper tray in the copier. “Hey, Ms. Saez.” Then she lifts the lid, places a flyer on the glass, and hits the start button. She leans against the copier, jutting a voluptuous hip in our direction. “Hi, Rye-yen,” she says as the light of the scanner beams across her face.
Ryan barely looks at her as he mumbles hello and leads me into my office. He locks the door behind us and rushes toward the computer. I pace behind Ryan’s seat as he boots the machine and waits to connect to the Internet. He opens a window on the browser menu, clicks on a bookmark, then pushes away from the computer.
I take a deep breath, step forward and peer at the screen. The URL is www.whippednyc.com. A flash animation loads and then images flicker across the screen. I catch something that looks…I don’t know…like a gigantic ship’s steering wheel except there are things dangling from the spokes. Before I can figure out what the hell I’m looking at, the image fades into one of a room with a mirrored ceiling and walls of…is that rubber? That photo soon disappears, too, and then I see one of a woman with straight dark hair and cherry red lipstick. She wears a black latex minidress, a police officer’s cap, and thigh-high boots with heels that are at least six inches high. Not three. Six. At least. I had no idea they made heels that long.
I spin around in the seat and yell, “Ryan, what the hell are you showing me?” But he refuses to look me in the face. Instead he pins his chin to his chest and motions for me to continue looking at the screen. I turn around in time to see the word Whipped, well, whip across the computer monitor with a crackling sound. Under the logo scroll the words Your Pain Is Our Pleasure. “This is one of those—those—those…S&M clubs.”
Ryan finally raises his head. “Actually, it’s a dungeon. I mean, that’s what they call it. Whereas a club is more like…” I must be staring at him something fierce because he drops his voice and gaze.
“What the hell does this have to do with me?”
“Click on, uh, ‘Mistresses.’”
I turn back to the monitor. The Whipped logo is still there because I have to click on a button verifying that I’m aware that the site I’m about to enter may contain words and images that may offend me, but hey, if that’s exactly what I was gunnin’ for, I first must verify that I’m of the age of consent in my state to view adult material. I click on the button, and the photos from the flash introduction pop across the screen.
Ryan says, “On top,” and when I follow his direction, I find the menu. I select Mistresses, and a gallery of thumbnail photos of scowling women sporting leather and latex pop up one by one along the perimeter of the screen. White, black, Asian, blondes, brunettes, redheads, wafer-thin and plus-size, they’re all different shapes and hues. The photo of the center square is five times the size of the thumbnails and is the last to load.
And the woman in it looks just like me. Her hair is much longer, much straighter, much darker. Her lipstick is such a deep purple, it borders on black. But the resemblance is unmistakable.
I don’t know whether to tease or slap Ryan. It takes a second for me to locate him. He’s skulked to the back of the room behind my desk. Since he’s not in slapping distance, I scoff and say, “I can’t believe you freaked me out over this. Yeah, she looks a lot like me, but you do realize that this isn’t me, don’t you?” How in the hell could Ryan think for a second that this mistress or whatever is me?
He says, “Oh, I know it’s not you, but…”
The edge in his voice makes me whirl back to the screen. And then I see it. Under the photo of my doppelganger with the Elvira hair, it reads, Mistress of the Month—Madame Michelina.
My hands fly to my mouth, and I jump to my feet. I rush back and forth between the door and the window. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…” I chant into my hands. I scurry back to the computer, as if within those few seconds my nightmare would fade as quickly as it began. But, no, there was the Mistress of the Month Madame Michelina scowling back at me with the same bow-shaped lips and deep-set eyes that I see in the bathroom mirror every morning and night.
Oh, my God. My sister is a dominatrix! A fetishist. A—ohmygodohmygodImgoingtokillthatbitchIsweartogod—sex worker!
“H-H-How did you…?”
“After I finished the opposition research on Cuevas, I started to see what I might find about you—”
I yell, “I thought I told you not to waste your time and my money with that shit!”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“Aaaargh!” I kick the chair so hard, it sails across the floor and crashes into the door. “I don’t fuckin’ believe her!” Someone pounds on the door. “What?”
“Y’all okay in there?” Cindi’s timid voice sinks into the door.
“Take a break. All of you. Now!”
“Okay!” I hear her flip-flops paddle across the carpet away from my office door. I whirl around to face Ryan, who is now standing behind the safety of my desk. I realize what a lunatic I must sound like. Jen, this is no way for a future member of the New York City Council to behave. Oh, hell, Cuevas has probably thrown aides out the window of his fuckin’ office. That thought only deepens my embarrassment, so I rein myself in. “Before I fire you,” I say wagging my finger at him, “you’re going to tell me what to do about this.”
He looks at me as if I morphed into Carrie White’s mother right before his eyes. “Just get your sister to quit.”
“Get Michelle to quit?” Now it’s my turn to glare at him. “Obviously, I had no idea that my sister was even capable of thinking about something like this, never mind doing it and promoting it on the goddamn Internet! What makes you think, Ryan, that she would even admit this to me?” All this time that she had me thinking she was making runs to Staples for office supplies or going to the midtown library to do research or otherwise doing something to help my campaign while I stayed here through all hours of the night, this Whipped was where she was?
Then the solution hits me. I turn back to the computer and click on Contact Us on the menu. A page with the contact information and an inquiry form for the club or dungeon or whatever the fuck it’s called appears, and I print it. I snatch the printout, walk over to my desk and pick up the telephone receiver. Thrusting both the sheet and the receiver toward Ryan, I say, “Call them. Make an appointment. Ask for my sister.”
“You can’t be serious!”
I check the number on the printout and dial it myself. A woman with a raspy voice answers. “WNYC, this is Miss Veronique,” she says. “How may I help you today?”
Murder Madame Michelina. I take a deep breath. Then the first few words race out of my mouth. “I’d like an appointment with…” I can’t bring myself to say it. “Your mistress of the month.”
“Madame Michelina?”
“Yes. Madame…Her.”
“I apologize for having to ask this, but are you a woman?”
I choke. It never occurs to me that this might be an issue. Are there women who go for this thing? I mean, if a woman gets her sexual kicks being strung along and ordered around, does she have to do anything more than be what she already is? A fuckin’ woman!
Miss Veronique says, “I ask because Madame Michelina does not discipline women. She only disciplines men, so I would have to set you up with Countess Sappho or Mistress Cherry. Unless you’re interested in domme training for women who want to learn how to control their male submissives. Then I can make an appointment for you with—”
I hang up the telephone. Ryan asks, “What happened?”
“You have to make the appointment.” I dial the number again and shove the receiver toward Ryan. Even as terror seizes his face, I mouth Do it.
Ryan finally takes the phone. “Huh-ello? I’d like to make an appointment with Mistress…” I flap the printout in his face, and he squints at the print underneath my sister’s picture. “I mean, Madame Michelina? Uh, yes, I guess so. The name’s Ryan. Yes, that’s the last name, and the first name is, uh, G-G-Giovanni!…Yes, my name’s Giovanni Ryan. My mother’s, uh, Italian, and my father’s Irish…Oh, you are, too. What a coincidence.” I swat him on the arm, and Ryan jumps. “That’sfineI’llbetherethankyougood-bye.” He finally hangs up the telephone.
“Well?”
“Madame Michelina had an opening tonight due to a cancellation, so Miss Veronique scheduled me for six-thirty P.M.”
“Stop calling her that.”
“Are you going to fire me now?” Ryan asks.
“No,” I say. “Not until we go down there and I confront my lying, twisted, devious sister.”
And Michelle thinks I’m a freak!
My trainer Josie and I walk into the “family” room after our last session. As she heads to her locker, I flop onto the love seat and start to unlace my boots. Lounging in the sofa across from me is Leticia aka Lady Lash. She still wears her Baruch College T-shirt and relaxed fit jeans and flips through an InStyle magazine. Leticia attends college during the day and works the eight-to-twelve shift at Whipped. Now that school is out, she still comes a bit early to unwind from her day job at the Gap and socialize with the other girls. Now I do, too, whenever I have the time, because everyone is so different yet very nice in her unique way.
Leticia glances over her magazine, and now that she realizes that Josie and I have entered the room, she sits up and tosses the magazine aside. “Oh, you have to tell me,” she says excitedly. “How was Jaime LoBianco?”
Jaime LoBianco is the star quarterback for the New York Jets and the most prominent client in Josie’s stable of submissives. I bring my hands to my chest and say, “Girl, TV does not do that man justice. He’s so gorgeous.”
“And a real doll, too,” adds Josie. “Excellent tipper. ’Chelly, will you help me undo my corset, please?”
“Sure, just give me a sec.” I pull off my second boot, stand up and walk over to Josie. She raises her arms slightly so I can loosen her latex corset. “And you know how some professional ball players seem big and muscular, but the truth is they’re just fat? Not Jaime. He is cut!”
Leticia bounces in her seat like a little girl. “Did you get an autograph?” Josie and I burst out laughing at that question. “What’s so funny, you bitches?”
“Tell her what I made you do to him,” Josie says. She finally peels off her corset, folds it and places it in her locker.
“Never mind an autograph,” I say as I join Leticia on the sofa. “I made him write ‘My name is Jaime LoBianco, and I belong to Madame Michelina’ on the blackboard one hundred times.”
“Ooh, I’m scared of you,” Leticia says, throwing her hand up so I can give her a high-five. “So he’s into the mean teacher/bad student scenario, huh?”
“Actually, he likes to change it up every so often,” Josie says, “and I like that about him more than anything else. Even the great tips,” she adds as she pulls on a tank top with a silk screen of her three-year-old daughter’s face on it. She reaches for a tub of makeup remover and smears the cream all over her tawny skin. “One time he wants to do the schoolteacher thing. The next time we’ll do the Amazon thing. So long as he gets that paddle, Jaime’s good. And me, I need the variety, too.” Josie turns to look at us with a face full of white cream. “I don’t know about y’all, but when I play the same role all the time, I get bored and fall off my game. I lose control of my subs, they start to rebel, and the next thing you know they’re at the Castle of Desire.”
We all bristle at the name of our nearest rival dungeon, which is only down the street. There are actually quite a few dungeons in this neighborhood, but we all manage to have enough business to share and thrive. But those COD dommes are ruthless, punishing their submissives if they patronize any other dungeons. “I hated working there,” says Leticia. “Instead of doing the enslaving, I felt enslaved. By the other women, no less, they were so damned competitive. I’m glad we got Jaime LoBianco.”
“And, Josie, thank you so much for letting me participate in the scene this time,” I say. “I learned so much.”
“Hey, that’s what domme training is all about,” she says, then grabs a few tissues and wipes the makeup remover off her face. “You should practice all kinds of scenes with different types of guys, and then if you want, you can specialize or be a generalist like me.”
“How come ’Chelly gets to train with Jaime LoBianco?” Leticia pretends to gripe. “When are you going to let a sister dish out to some hottie?” She turns to me and says, “See, I have nothing but average Joes in my stable, and after a while they stop challenging me. Now that’s when I get bored and get myself into trouble. Like sometimes in the middle of a scene, I start to think, ‘Your wife can’t do this for you at home for free?’”
“That’s not good,” I tease her.
“I know.” Leticia grabs a cushion from the sofa and tosses it at Josie. “So what’s up?”
“Okay, quit whining,” says Josie. “Danny Vilar’s coming from L.A. next week to promote his new movie. Wanna sit in on that session?”
Of course she wants to sit in on that session. I want to sit in on that session! Danny Vilar is the Bolivian answer to The Rock and Hollywood’s latest action star.
“Cool!” say Leticia. “But why just watch? Is that his thing?” I live for the day when I’m less star-struck and can ask something like that as nonchalantly as Leticia.
“No, he’s one of those guys that likes to test my authority, so I have to stay focused when I’m with him. He answers back, he forgets to address me as Queen, I say sit, he lies down…. You know, Danny’s so huge, he really has to push my buttons, so when I let him have it, he can actually feel it.”
Leticia says, “That’s even more reason why you should involve me.”
“She’s got a point, Josie,” I say. “Danny might really get turned on about the idea of ‘needing’ two women to break him down.” I squeeze quotation marks in the air at the word “needing.”
Josie leans against her locker and crosses her arms over her chest. “Really? You don’t think the opposite? I’ve been afraid of sending him the message that I’m not strong enough to dominate him.”
“Well, if he was your average gym rat from around the way, yeah, I could totally understand you worrying about that,” I say. “But Danny’s this attractive, famous, rich man who’s so used to everyone catering to his every whim. He probably needs more convincing to feel that he’s not in control.”
“Oh, yeah,” Leticia says as she nods. “And he’s all A-list and everything. You know how massive his ego must be.”
Josie starts to come around. “Hmmm…you guys may be right about that. So what do you think if I—”
There’s a knock on the door and Veronica—aka Miss Veronique—peeks her head in. “’Chelly, just wanted to let you know that your six-thirty walk-in is here.”
I groan at the idea of having to put those platform boots back on so soon. Josie reassures me that once I break them in, they won’t hurt, and I pray she’s right. “It’s only a quarter after.”
“So you know what you do?” Josie says. “You make him wait until six-thirty, and then you punish him for being early.”
Veronica applauds. “I love it.” She curtsies before Josie. “That’s why you are the Queen, Josephine.”
“Seriously?” I laugh. “Punish him for being early?”
Josie says, “Nena, I’m dead serious. You told him to be here at six-thirty. Not six thirty-one. Not six-eighteen. Six-thirty. He needs to understand that you told him six-thirty for a reason. What that reason is, is none of his business. His only business should be to please you by doing exactly as you say. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“She’s right,” Leticia says, snapping her fingers. “This is how Queen Josephine keeps asses in check and makes that paper. Listen to her, ’Chelly.”
Josie preaches on. “Madame Michelina, you have other things to do besides meet with him, so he needs to respect your schedule. So you make him wait until six-thirty, and then you go out there and discipline him for disobeying your commands.”
“Okay, I’ll do it!” Suddenly, my feet come alive. I jump up and look for my purse. My coworkers cheer as I reapply my eggplant-colored lipstick.
“Michelle, his name is Giovanni Ryan,” Veronica says as she heads for the door. “And Leticia, Michelle’s new sub brought a woman with him who said she was interested in domme training. Once I set Michelle and him up in the Ruby Room, you can meet with her in the lounge.”
“Cool,” says Leticia.
“She’ll be easy,” says Veronica. “I know a natural when I see one.”
“And what’s her name?”
Veronica looks at the forms on her clipboard. “Gina.”
We all exchange amused looks. “Giovanni and Gina?” says Josie, cringing. “I hope she’s a cousin.”
I look in the mirror, rub my lips together, then say, “Kinkiness must run in that family.” Then I head to the Ruby Room to prepare for my session with my new client Giovanni.
This place is nothing like I expected, and that doesn’t exactly calm me. When Ryan parks the car in a garage near Madison and Thirty-first Street, I wonder if he screwed up the address. This is Midtown, for God’s sake. The Empire State Building is right there.
Then we walk to this dingy building above a wholesale fabric store, and while closer to what I imagined, it’s still far off. Ryan and I ride up in this dark, gilded art deco elevator that has no button for the thirteenth floor. When we arrive on the floor, it seems like we step into another world. A hospital, to be exact. The floors and walls are so white, and the light is almost blinding. This Whipped place is the last suite on the floor at the foot of an L-shaped corridor away from all the other offices.
We press the intercom, and the same woman Ryan and I spoke to earlier buzzes us into the reception area. The front is very small and clean, with a few pieces of furniture that remind me of a doctor’s office. I expect this Veronique to be in full regalia. Thigh-high boots, a latex bustier, and leather garters over a thong bikini or something like that. But instead she wears a simple sundress that hangs slightly above the knees and a matching bolero jacket. The only thing out of place in her ensemble is the holster with the two-way radio that hangs low on her hips. She introduces herself as Veronica, hands Ryan a clipboard with consent forms, a medical history, and all kinds of paperwork, and asks me who am I.
I have to think quickly. “I…I’m his…my name’s Gina.”
“You’re not a couple, are you?” she asks.
“No!” If I give the wrong answers, I might be asked to leave. Then I remember what she told me over the telephone. “Well, when my friend here told me about this place, I thought, ‘I could do that.’ So…”
“Ah, you’re interested in domme training.”
I’m still not sure what the hell that is, but I nod and say, “Yes, that’s right.”
Perky li’l Veronica chirps, “Oh, okay,” as if I said I wanted to go out for cheerleading. “Let me give you our brochure and take you to the lounge where you can meet with one of the mistresses who will answer all your questions.” She motions for me to follow, then says over her shoulder to Ryan, “And then I’ll come back to escort you to the Ruby Room for your session with Madame Michelina.”
So now I sit in this lounge, fanning myself with this brochure and trying to figure out what to do next. Of course, I have to get out of here and find this Ruby Room before Veronica takes Ryan there and Michelle recognizes him. But she’s standing right outside the door speaking to this woman I can’t see. I hope Ryan has the sense to write very slowly.
This is what you do, Jen. Once this woman walks in here, tell her enough to make her think you’re legitimately interested, ask for the ladies’ room, and find Ryan. And do it fast!
A petite African-American woman wearing a Baruch College T-shirt and loose jeans enters the lounge. She offers me her hand and a huge grin. “Hi, Gina, I’m Leticia. Welcome to Whipped. I hear you’re interested in our domme training programs.”
Her causal outfit and warm greeting throw me. “There’s more than one?”
“Of course, we have different programs for different needs. Didn’t Veronica give you a brochure?” Then she notices it in my hand. “Oh, there you go. Let me show you.” Leticia opens up the brochure and says, “We have everything from onetime ‘Unleash Your Inner Dominatrix’ seminars—you know, for women who don’t really want to adopt the lifestyle but just want to have a few techniques to keep the love life from falling into a rut—to this three-day intensive for those who may want to incorporate BDSM into their daily lives.” Leticia stops abruptly, shaking her head and smiling. “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Tell me this first, Gina—do you want to dominate a man that’s already in your life or do you think you might be looking for a new career?”
“I—I—I…ladies’ room please,” I whisper.
Leticia grins at me as if women choke before her all the time. “Of course.” She reaches into her pocket and hands me a ring with a solitary key. “It’s down the hall to your left past the red door.” Red door! I fight the urge to snatch the key and bolt out of the lounge. When I reach the door, Leticia asks, “Gina, can I get you something to drink? Water, tea, coffee…”
Acid. I swallow hard and say in the strongest voice I can muster, “Coffee would be nice, thank you.” This will buy me some time to find this red door and get into what is surely the Ruby Room.
The second I cross the threshold, I’m down the corridor like Marion Jones running from a steroid allegation. I see the red door and race toward it. When I get to it, I just grab the knob and fling myself into the room. “Ryan!”
Ryan’s nowhere in sight, but there stands Michelle. She has on a fuchsia-colored bustier with black strings across the front and lace down the sides. Her matching leather skirt is so short that I can see the lace at the top of her black thigh-high stockings. And those boots…She must have bought them at a garage sell organized by the rock band Kiss. What is that she has in her hand? Is it a paddle? A black leather paddle?
“Jennifer!”
“Michelle!”
Then we both yell, “How could you do this to me?”
“You’re going to get me fired!” I yell.
“Get you fired?” Jennifer shouts back at me. “You’re going to cost me this election!”
“How am I going to cost you the election? This is my private life, not yours. How is anyone going to find out?”
Jennifer flails her arms and screams, “The same way I did!”
I fluster for a moment. I mean, she’s right. How the hell did she find out? I hadn’t told a soul. The only other people who knew were in the business or lifestyle with me. And none of my clients knew my real name, or anything else about me for that matter. “Who told you about me?”
I get my answer when Veronica comes through the door with Ryan Alfaro trailing behind her. “With all the yelling going on I thought someone else was conducting a scene in here….” Then she recognizes Jennifer. “Gina?”
“Gina?”
Veronica reaches for the two-way radio on her hip. “Michelle, do you need me to call security.”
“No, Veronica,” I say. “I know these people. This is my sister, Jennifer.”
“Oh.” Veronica takes her hand off the radio. She glances at each one of us then says, “Okay, I guess you’d like some privacy, then.”
“Please,” Jennifer and I both say. Veronica hands me Ryan’s forms, reaches for the doorknob and starts to back out of the room.
“You!” I bark at Ryan. “Stay.” He steps around Veronica and into the Ruby Room, his eyes glued to the tassels on his loafers. When Veronica closes the door, I ask, “How did you find out about me?
“He was doing research,” says Jennifer. “Once he finished digging around Cuevas’s past, he started delving into mine.” Her eyes cut into Ryan. “Even though I told him not to.”
“It’s one thing to defy her,” I say to Ryan. “But you had no right invading my privacy. I’m not a candidate in this election.”
“I wasn’t invading your privacy,” he says. “I found out about you by accident.”
“Oh, you were just surfing the Internet in your free time and you just happened to come across my picture?” And the second I say that, I know it to be true. The slightest grin on Ryan’s face even as he stares shamefully at the ground confirms that it’s true. I walk over to him and gently lift his chin with my finger so I can look him in the eye. Using my loving but dominant voice—the one Josie trained me to use when rewarding a compliant submissive or reassuring him that no matter where the scene goes he’s truly safe—I say to Ryan, “You’re interested in this, aren’t you? You want to be dominated. Not by a fat abusive man like Cuevas but by a strong beautiful woman with a bit of a tender streak.”
His smile widens. Jennifer mumbles, “God help me.”
I shoot her a look and start to tell her to be quiet when I take in her stance. In her tailored linen suit with the short skirt and high heels, Jennifer stands with legs apart and her hand on her hips. She’s fuming so hard it’s a wonder her glasses haven’t steamed up.
Then it hits me.
I rifle through the forms in my hand until I find the preference checklist. Which scenario does Ryan rank as number one? Boss Lady. I look at his list of favorite costumes, and he has chosen none of the traditional options. Instead, on the line next to Other he writes Suit. Ryan made sure to cram an additional note into the margin. But not a man’s suit! A woman’s suit. I’m not into the androgynous look. The more feminine, the better, please. And of course in the prop sections Ryan has only one selected.
Glasses!
I get it so good now, I can’t stop laughing. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” says Jennifer. “My sister spends her nights running around this cavern or dungeon or whatever looking like Rosario Dawson in Sin City, and how do I find this out? Because she tells me? Nooo. Because my campaign manager is surfing the Web looking for women to spank him!”
“Ryan’s not just looking for any woman, Jen,” I say. I double over and hobble to the bondage bench with the handcuffs and leg irons. “He’s looking for someone just like you. You got the man so worked up, he went on the Internet to find a dominatrix who looks just like you. And that’s how he found me! That is so cute!” Now I’m howling, and even Ryan chortles just a little.
“You’ve been waiting for twenty-seven years for my ambition to bite me in the ass, so go ahead,” says Jennifer. “Humiliate me.”
And instead of getting furious at her arrogance, I feel sorry for my little sister. I stop laughing and say, “Hey, Jen, don’t think that. The truth is I stumbled onto this trying to be more like you.”
“Like me! You want to be more like me, and this is what you do? I am nothing like this.” But I can see right through Jennifer. Maybe she hasn’t done anything like this, but she sure as hell wants to. After all, she really didn’t have to come here tonight to confront me.
“Ryan, will you excuse us for a few minutes please?” I say to him. For a second he seems disappointed by my request, but eventually he complies. That boy is ready to take his whipping, if only I can convince Jennifer to dispense it. When he leaves, I pat the bench. “Come over here.”
“I’m not sitting on that thing.”
“Fine, but you’re going to have to come closer so I can show you how to use it.”
“I don’t want any part of this,” says Jennifer, even as she sneaks peeks at the torture rack. “When did I ever tell you that I would be interested in anything like this?” She swats a wrist restraint on the rack.
“Now that you mention it, it is kind of weird.”
“Thank you.”
“No, I mean, we’re sisters, right. We’re only three years apart and all that each other has left here in New York City now that Mom and Dad are in Puerto Rico and our cousins are all over the country.” I stand up and walk over to Jennifer. Naturally, we’re the same height, but in these boots I tower over her. For the first time in years I feel like the older sister again. “It’s kind of odd that we don’t confide in these things to one another. You know, that we don’t talk about sex and relationships. And yet I saw how you were with Rocco, and I imagined that you were this Amazon in the bedroom, and I wanted to be more like you. So I took a workshop here, and then I took another, and the next thing you know, they offered me a job.”
Jennifer scoffs. “Trying to dominate Rocco in the bedroom is how I lost him.” As she speaks, she makes her way over to the bench. “He complained about my ordering him around about keeping the house and working on his music, but I think he liked it. I know he liked it. Then I went too far and tried to bring that into the bedroom. Well, he liked that, too, and it scared him.” Jennifer sits on the bench and runs her fingers across the leather.
“Ryan’s not scared,” I say. “He’d love nothing more than for me to show you a few things to practice on him.”
Jennifer suddenly leaps to her feet. “How could you stoop to this, Michelle?” She sounds much less judgmental now and much more concerned. “Okay, it’s one thing to do this with a man you know in the privacy of your own home. But you’re trading sex for money—”
“No, no, no! There’s no sex involved. I mean, there is, but it’s all psychological. It’s fantasy. Role-playing. And it’s one hundred percent consensual, safe and legal. Some of the most powerful men in the city are among our clients. After spending twelve hours every day with millions of dollars and hundreds of lives depending on their every decision, it’s liberating to come here, drop their alpha male postures, and have a woman who they know deep down inside means them no harm tell him what to do.”
Although there are so many more layers to this scene that I myself have yet to learn, I can tell that the little I explain to Jennifer makes sense to her. Then I reveal to her the one thing I know that concerns her most of all. “I couldn’t tell you this before, Jen, because then I would have had to admit how I knew, but now that it’s all out in the open…”
“What?”
“If by any bizarre chance Cuevas were to find out about me, he wouldn’t dare use it against you.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well, he couldn’t expose me without doing the same to some very important men on the Bronx Democratic Committee.”
“No way!”
“And the State Assembly.”
“Get out!”
“And at City Hall.”
Jennifer rushes over to me. “Who?”
“I can’t tell you that, Jen.”
“But I’m your sister.”
“I can get fired and sued.”
“Just give me one name.”
“No, I can’t tell you that.” I put the paddle in her hand and walk over to the door. “What I can tell you is that your campaign manager defied one of your orders, conducted personal business on your office computer and then lied to you about it.” I open the door. “I think you should teach him a lesson.”
Jennifer gives a sad smile. “You know the real reason why I was so against Ryan doing research on me? Because I knew he would find absolutely nothing. I was afraid that he would think I was boring.” Then she slaps the paddle into her palm. “Ryan, get in here now!”
Ryan comes into the Ruby Room. Although his body is stiff with trepidation, I see the same flicker of excitement in his eyes that I saw in Greg’s after ordering him to clean the library conference room. As I head out to leave them alone, Jennifer mouths to me I love you.
Yeah, my sister’s a natural.