The Swing Voter of Staten Island

by Arthur Nersesian

  There was something depressing about the low-level skyline of European buildings behind them that made up this odd simulacrum of Manhattan.

  An old man slid his hand along the overhead aluminum bar as he walked down the aisle peddling something. Uli figured it was gum until he spotted a middle-aged woman with a bad dye job giving the fellow a sixteenth-stamp. In return he handed her a small padded clothespin that the woman duly clipped over her flared nostrils.

  “Holy shit,” the man said as he approached Uli. “You’re—” Something behind Uli caught the solicitor’s attention, and he hastened past. Uli turned and saw a cardboard sign slung around the man’s stooped back: NOSE PINS!

  “Excuse me,” Uli called out. “What were you starting to say?”

  “I was just looking at that.” The old man pointed out the window over the swampy waters of New York Harbor. Standing on a cluster of black rocks was a plastic lime-colored lady, about six feet tall—a mockery of the Statue of Liberty. In her outstretched arm someone had taped an empty beer bottle onto the torch. Over her arm where she held the Bill of Rights someone had strapped a golf bag with a single rusty club sticking out. Inasmuch as the entire place seemed like a miniature golf course done in a New York City theme, it sort of made sense.

  Behind him, four young bucket-passers from the devastated Crappers headquarters were asleep across the rear seats.

  “Want a nose pin?” the solicitor asked.

  Uli purchased one, and as he clipped it on, the bridge they were passing over started swaying back and forth.

  “Why is this thing so damn shaky?” Uli asked the pin seller, and added, “I’m new here.”

  “The Feedmore Corporation gave us ten old ferry boats, but Staten Island here is a lot closer than in old town and the water is far shallower, so the local engineer submerged the ferries, laid planks over the tops, and turned it into this ratty-ass bridge.” The pin seller studied Uli’s face closely.

  “But the sewage level is rising, isn’t it?”

  “Not anymore. But at its worst, the water level came right up to the bridge. That was when Rafique decided to dig the canal, and in one day the water dropped six feet.”

  When they reached Staten Island moments later, Uli noticed another bridge, dull and red with abruptly arching spans shooting northeast. “Is that the Verrazano?”

  “Name’s been shortened like the bridge,” the man replied. “Here it’s just the Zano.”

  The bus headed slowly down Richmond Road, past the row of submerged and semi-submerged luxury houses, all uninhabited. The paved street turned to packed dirt and sloped steeply downhill. A handmade sign read, Hyman Boulevard. It was the same street he had driven up with Dianne Colder strapped to his roof.

  For the first mile or so, in the low swampy parts of the borough, more abandoned houses sprang up. They almost looked like homes on a military base. Though the land was mostly dry now, earlier flood waters had wrecked the area.

  Crossing sporadic flows of black sewage, the bus stopped at various points along the succession of tiny Staten Island communities, all of which looked more barren than anywhere else he’d been on the reservation.

  The further down they drove, the more primitive the little settlements appeared. Many of the structures were made from old packing crates and pallet wood, probably from when the Staten Island airport had been functioning. In one instance, Uli noticed a small circle of huts with thatched roofs that looked like they had been made with dry grass and stripped bark.

  Whenever they went down a sharp incline, the smell worsened and the road would be washed out by an inlet of lumpy black water. The driver had to gun the engine to slice through the hazardous streams. Clearly the entire borough was one big environmental disaster zone.

  Just like Manhattan, hand-painted planks corrupted the original names of deserted little outposts with their ramshackle huts: Doggone Hills, New Dope Beach, Great Killers, and so on. Large rodents, perhaps prairie dogs, sat on their haunches staring at the passing bus.

  As the bus ventured to the southern tip of the borough, the road grew worse with ever fewer shanties. Occasionally, Uli saw people walking about. Most of them appeared grungy and sickly, much like the borough itself. On several occasions when people boarded the bus, Uli wondered how they could stand the smell. Looking over the swampy streams and arid dunes he kept wondering how much further the route continued. Sometimes when the bus lumbered uphill, they’d catch a desert breeze and there would be a fleeting reprieve from the heat and smell, but then the road would slant downhill again, through the liquid shit.

  When the bus finally came to its terminus, only one passenger remained on board with Uli, a skinny kid curled up in the rear. How he could sleep through such stinking turbulence was a mystery.

  “Tottenville—Nut Central!” the driver shouted, as he folded open the door. Uli wished him a good day and stepped off. The kid followed, then walked away in the opposite direction.

  A huge terminal that had fallen into disrepair was balanced all alone on the edge of a hill. This was the southern demarcation of Staten Island, Nevada. Below it was a dusty recreation field that looked like it might once have supported a little league team, a haunting reminder of the absence of children. Beyond that a swamp of sewage covered the old airfield.

  The oxidized copper ferry building was an homage to the old St. George Landing, even though it was at the opposite side of the borough than in old New York. In front of the station was a big hand-painted sign: The Dastardly Notorious VERDANT LEAGUE—Adolphus Rafique will debate with anyone at any time (subject to availability)!

  The terminal was covered with old paneled doors and large unwashed bay windows reinforced by wire netting, but there didn’t seem to be anyone inside. Uli followed a faded red arrow pointing around to the back of the building, where he heard a muffled ruckus. Semi-naked forms danced sweatily in the sun, chanting through plumes of smoke to the steady beats of handmade drums. They looked like a strange fusion of American Indians and urban homeless. Uli figured they were the tribe of environmental extremists that Mallory had mentioned—the Burnt Men. Semi-domesticated barking canines dashed about and chickens squawked. A smoky bonfire burned in the center of it all. An old man in a loincloth and white facial paint stopped dancing and stared at Uli. The banks of the swamp behind the dusty rec field were a honeycomb of tents and cardboard partitions.

  Uli reached a set of open double doors in the rear of the terminal and came upon a heavyset security guard. He was sitting at a desk with a phone and several strange clerical-looking machines reading a worn paperback copy of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

  “If you’re here for the Turning Toxic into Organic class, it’s been canceled till next week,” the man said, “but if you’re here for the Fantasy Literature course—”

  “Actually, I was hoping to debate with Mr. Rafique.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but the sign says he’ll debate with anyone at any time,” Uli said.

  “If he’s not out campaigning,” the guard amended. “He’s running for mayor and for the presidency, you know.”

  “Is he available?”

  “That depends. Are you Pigger or Crapper?”

  “I’m neither.”

  The security guard held his finger up asking for patience, then lifted his phone and dialed a number.

  “Why does that sign say this is Templehof Airport?” Uli asked while waiting.

  “That was the main airfield for the Berlin airlift. Before it was flooded, this was where the piloted flights landed with all the supplies, so they … Hello.” The guard asked if Adolphus Rafique was available to debate “an unregistered walk-in.” After another moment, he hung up and said, “Rafique’s there, but you have to have your paw prints checked and get cleared here first.” He took out a blank index card and an ink blotter.

  “I can save you some time by telling you that there is no record of me.”

  “Which means you’re potentia
lly a detainee, which in turn means a possible terrorist,” the guard said, pressing Uli’s thumb and middle finger onto the blotter and then the card. He fanned the card till it was dry, then slipped it into the slot of a machine that looked like a black cigar box. Wires connected it to a small monitor, upon which boxy green digits appeared. “As you say, you’re not registered with either party,” the guard deciphered aloud.

  “That’s why I want to talk to Mr. Rafique.”

  The security guard told him he’d have to strip down to his underwear.

  “Can’t you just frisk me?”

  “Adolphus Rafique has survived ten attempts on his life. Twice he was shot in the head. A few years ago some guy stuck a wooden spike right through his heart.”

  “How’d he survive?”

  “The Indians down in the swamp claim that it’s his private mana. A lifetime of losing election after election yet always coming back has made him a survivalist.”

  “I could use a gift like that,” Uli replied, as he started peeling off his shirt and pants. After having every inch of his naked body checked, Uli put his clothes back on. The guard stuck an adhesive pass on his shirt pocket and told him to report to Room 310.

  Just inside the building, a plaque said, THE VERITAS VERDANT LEAGUE. What you don’t know is hurting you.

  Although most of the fluorescent bars overhead appeared to be burned out, the large bay windows running along the side of the building caught the sunlight and the white marble floors made maximum use of it. Uli walked through empty halls until he spotted a young olive-skinned man dressed in loose black formal wear. He had scraggy facial hair with tortoise-shell glasses taped together over the bridge of his prominent Roman nose. Long white strings of cloth flowed from his sides.

  “Excuse me!” Uli called out to him, but the man rushed away.

  He continued down the hallways, from empty room to empty room, until he happened upon what appeared to be a yoga class in session. The practitioners were bent forward on one knee, arms in the air, striking warrior poses. But there was something wrong. The class looked strangely out of sync. It took him a moment to realize that everyone in the room was missing a limb. It was amputee yoga. Hearing more sounds down the hallway, Uli moved along and peaked into another classroom.

  A young dark-skinned teacher was addressing a lecture hall of older students. Uli stepped into the doorway and tried to listen to the young man speaking in a thick unidentifiable accent: “… Da streme leftward gave the streme right a chance to tip the wobbly middle, and they did it. Conned away from the crucifix retards who gave away their votes on trinket issues and working-class gestures, losing their basic well-being, not to mention the future of their dumb kiddies. Billions of bucks that could’ve gone to health or education were wasted in unwinnable slapdowns half a world away, so major corporations could secretly lift their little wallets. Dumbocracy is dead, and we’re living proof of the need for a new criterion for voters based on a standard level of education and skepticism to protect the sentimentally feeble-minded … If mankind or America is to survive, we need a Smartocracy! If we can mobilize our forces, then in ten or twenty years, after we’ve returned to New York, we can try to instigate our own revolution to take power by—”

  Turning abruptly, the man spotted Uli watching him from the doorway. Uli smiled as the foreign ideologue closed the door on him.

  Uli headed on to a huge staircase at the end of the hallway and found a glass-framed directory that listed different departments:

  DePartMeNt OF PRo7EcTEeS & DeTAiNEeS DEpARtMEnT Ov EgG6 EPiDEmIc & AcUte Ammezia Tw1n TeLePaTnY & ShAPeShiF7IhG WoWoKa Profisies—CLoseD 1ndEf1nit7Y dePaRtMEnt oF tErRORist oRgANiZaSHUns & tHeIR

  maNY SPlIntERy gROvPs

  At the bottom was listed, STATEN ISLAND BOROUGH PRESIDENT, Room 310.

  Uli marched up the three flights. Glimpsing the tiny gold numbers on each door, he located Adolphus Rafique’s room. A heavyset secretary handed Uli a clipboard with an extensive questionnaire on it. “You got to fill this out if you want to speak to him.”

  Uli looked over the form: Name (both Nevada & New York), Address (Nev. & New), Birth Date, Employment, (Nev. & New). On the back of page two, under Personal Convictions (optional), quirkier questions appeared, starting with, Past and Present Gang & Party Affiliations, and moving on to, Personal Stands on Hot-Button Issues, including, Pro-life or Pro-choice. Next was Criminal Record.

  Before he could even finish reading it, an older man with a slightly wandering eye peaked into the waiting area. “Mr. Rafique’s ready for you.”

  When Uli entered the borough president’s office, Rafique shook his hand and took his blank form, then asked, “Why do you look familiar?”

  Uli shrugged and said, “I didn’t have a chance to write anything—”

  “My eyes are shot anyway,” Rafique said. “Just have a seat and tell me about yourself.” The man tossed his old suit jacket against the back of his chair.

  “Well, I found myself walking outside of JFK, chanting about killing Dropt, without a clue of how I got here. Though I’m beginning to remember some things, I suffer from general amnesia—”

  “I just heard over the Crapper radio station that they blew up Cooper Union,” Rafique said. “I don’t suppose you killed him.”

  “No.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Do you remember meeting a tall blonde in a fashionable miniskirt?”

  “Ahh, the lobbyist,” he sighed. “She gave me this.” Rafique exposed his hairy wrist—a brand new digital watch. On it was the Feedmore logo: a brown-skinned baby suckling a light-skinned breast. “Also a big coffee mug.”

  “May I ask what you talked about with her?”

  “It started out as an intellectual discourse on conservatism versus liberalism, and the next thing I know she’s trying to unzip my trousers.”

  “Then what?”

  “When I explained that I was a Buddhist celibate, she offered me bullets, provided I override my constituents and throw my presidential vote to the Democrats.”

  “It makes complete sense that she’s trying to get you to vote for the Democratic party,” Uli said.

  “Uh, yeah, I already figured all this out,” Rafique replied.

  “If you vote Republican, I can get you an unlimited supply of water-purification pills—”

  “Ever taste water after purification pills have been dropped in it? Yuck!”

  “Look, if Spencer Tracy is reelected—”

  “Ronald Reagan,” Rafique corrected. “Not that it matters, cause there’s no way he’s getting reelected.”

  “Why not?”

  “I heard over a homemade radio that a bunch of Iranian students recently grabbed the staff of the American embassy in Tehran and have been holding them hostage,” Rafique explained. “Reagan hasn’t taken any action and the American people don’t forgive things like that.”

  “Not true,” Uli replied. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew this: “When a Democrat doesn’t use military force, people regard it as weakness. When a Republican doesn’t use force, it’s viewed as restraint.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Adolphus Rafique said, amused.

  “The point is, if Reagan is reelected to office, he’s going to cut all excessive government spending. He’s going to shut this place down and dump everyone in some Jersey ghetto—Orange or Newark, probably.”

  “How exactly do you know that?” Rafique asked him.

  “It was Plan A,” Uli answered without thinking, then froze. The dam of amnesia apparently had hairline fractures: He began remembering snippets of administrative and congressional hearings on what to do with the New York refugees. His mind flooded momentarily with flow charts delineating costs and projecting expenses. Congresswoman Chisholm and Senator Javitz from New York cosponsored a bill. Television pundits and critics from both sides of the aisle were arguing heatedly on all the political talk shows. Everybody was for Plan A because it didn’
t involve isolating anyone or suspending any civil rights. The plan was simply to transport the displaced New Yorkers to several economically distressed cities in the Garden State, where housing stock was plentiful yet dilapidated. Mass-produced trailers could take up the slack. That way the federal monies would help the struggling local economies as well as the newly afflicted homeless population. For a while it looked like the plan was going to fly. However, it required first passing a local referendum in New Jersey. That was when a coalition of lobbyists let loose a paranoid television and radio barrage demonstrating how such a plan would turn eastern New Jersey into a permanent ghetto. The referendum failed, and just as quickly the lobbyists initiated what became known as America’s First Rescue City, where unfortunate people could slowly get back up on their feet without dragging down surrounding communities.

  “Look,” Rafique said, “you seem fairly smart, so I’ll simply say that we Staten Islanders want to live in peace. Over the years we’ve had marauding gangs from both sides attack our people and use our borough as a dumping ground. We’ve had our food trucks hijacked and the water pipes from Jamaica Bay shut off. Hell, even after we built the canal that rescued Manhattan, we’ve still been attacked by the Crappers. We don’t have the same resources as the others. That’s why we need those bullets.”

  “Did you know Mallory?”

  “The Councilwoman who was married to the former mayor?”

  “She died in the explosion as well.”

  “Too bad. I liked her. She stayed out here awhile, with Leary’s group.”

  “She asked me to speak to you before she was …” Uli paused. “Before she was murdered, she wanted me to try to get you to change your vote.”

  “If the Crappers were as honorable as they want to appear, they would’ve unblocked the sewer years ago.” Adolphus had clearly made up his mind.

  Glancing at the wall clock above Rafique’s desk, Uli noticed with a start that it was five minutes to 6 o’clock. “I don’t mean to be rude, but the last bus out of Staten Island tonight is leaving in a few minutes.”