The mayor finds an ace in the hole to save his seat.
Following is installment 3 of an end-of-the-year fictional serial. About a fictional mayoral campaign. In a fictional city. With fictional characters.
(Click here and here for previous installments.)
Repeat: This is fiction.
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Date: Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2007
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: brain fart
beck, u probably noticed i didn’t show up in the dorms today. i meant to.
but everything changed so fast, at the last minute! i’m not coming back this semester. i’m working for my uncle instead. the mayor. u remember i told u about him. mayor al “elbows” pneumonie. “alfred e” for short.
i spent the summer volunteering for his reelection campaign. i thought i’d learn about the “real world” of politics, different from the boring books we had to read in freshman american guv. boy was I wrong. what a boring summer! it was about as “real world” as mtv. seriously. even the other kids were bores. i was stuck in an office with all these loser types from the university here, or from other ivy league colleges. all they talked about how much money my uncle raised, or how they went on campaign stops with him. (big joke — he barely saw them.) if there was really a campaign going on, i didn’t see it.
u’d think my uncle was the pope! u know i love my uncle. my mom always said he was the first one in the family at the beach each summer who would talk to my dad when they got married. he was the only one who wasn’t mad at her for “marrying out” to a chilean. (never mind he had more advanced degrees than all the rest of them combined.) he was the only one who didn’t say “i told u so” when my dad skipped back to south america before i was born.
but i know my uncle’s not the pope. altar boy, maybe. not the pope.
i always thought he was smart, too. i loved that he was in politics, in the city; i always read about him in the Weekly Wrap, about his speeches and his scandals (that is, when I wasn’t reading the clubbing column or the 900 ads lol) . on our summer family beach vacations he sometimes told me about good things he was trying to do for the city. he gave me books to read. (ok they were boring. but he was able to read them. i could tell by all the underlining and folded page corners. i admired that; i admire that even more after taking intro to political philosophy last spring.)
but i never thought he was god! not like these losers i spent the summer with. they think it’s so great he’s helping the new immigrants in town and giving them id cards and free passes to the bowling alley in staven, the next town over. i think it’s great too but i know about the bowling alley — my other uncle joey runs it! (i don’t wanna tell u what goes on there. next time when we swap high school stories …. i AM coming back in the spring! Promise.)
they think he’s called “mayor elbows” because he’s such a tough guy. all i remember is my mom teasing him about how his skinny elbows flew all over the place when we played volleyball at the beach. we love joking about how he loves BIG things. he always had to get the double scoop ice cream or build the biggest sand castle. he loves building big buildings in the city. especially firehouses for some reason. he used to give me rides in the monster truck he got when he tore down the downtown arena. until his staff made him hide it in the underground garage at uncle joey’s bowling alley in staven and drive around town in a little hybrid instead. he could barely fit through the door lol …
anyway the campaign was boring all summer. we thought there’d at least be a primary . (in our city the only election is a primary. everyone’s a democrat. it’s like being catholic in our old neighborhood when we still lived in the city.) we heard black neighborhoods were mad at him, and hispanics too. some guy with a deep voice i never heard of was going to run against my uncle. then he dropped out because he had a cold or something.
so i figured — lost summer. back to the books and rooming with beck. i couldn’t wait.
then just two nights ago my uncle calls me at the campaign office, says i need to meet him up the block in his city hall office. he says we need to talk.
i figure he’s saying good bye and thanking me, although uncle elbows never was too good on remembering to thank people for things. i don’t think he ever thanked my mom for a single birthday or anniversary present, or for pretending she was driving his old alligator s.u.v. the night he crashed it in the suburbs.
“your mom’s gonna kill me,” uncle elbows tells me when i walk in. “but u’re staying on with me for the fall. working on the campaign.”
news to me. “i am?” i said.
“i need u, dest,” he said. “something’s come up. sudden. i really need to win this campaign; it’s what it’s all been about, all these years, what i told u about at beach in the summers, remember? about making the city great? where my dad, your grandpa, was a firefighter, where his son could grow up to be mayor, even the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history. this is the big one, term eight! i’ll be up there with the mayor eternal, right there on the wall.”
i had never noticed all the portraits of old men on the wall outside his office before. i guess they were all mayors. uncle al’s not up there yet. good thing. i think a huge oil painting of uncle elbows staring down from the walls would creep me out. maybe they’d just draw his elbows.
“family, dest. what it’s all about.”
hmmm. if he sez so. i told him, “u’re right, mom’s gonna kill u.”
beck, it was like this had nothing to do with me. like it was his decision, or my mom’s! u know i’m not usually like that. i don’t get shut up easy. i think it had something to do with being in his office. people told me he could get kind of scary in there, especially when he fires people. only he wasn’t scary. he was uncle al.
plus, it was all so confusing. there was no primary. there’s no such thing as a real november election. they have some republicans here — maybe six. their candidate was some bald guy who runs a private club bar or something; he probably wasn’t going to show up more than once or twice in public. plus there’s the pickle party; it’s a protest kinda thing that has to do with some of the oddballs at the university. they don’t really run campaigns, they talk about issues. they dress up as pickles and put on “street theater” plays at lunchtime on the green. not that that’s bad or anything. (beck look how cynical this summer made me!)
“look, dest, i already called state. i already called your mom,” uncle elbows said, “and we had it out. i owe her one. i owe u one. and look, u’re not working down the street anymore. u’re gonna get paid, only you’ll be getting checks, I mean cash, from reverend lumber. instructions too.”
then he stopped talking and arched his left eyebrow. gave me that look. i think it meant “don’t be a prude.”
“here’s a new cell phone,” he said. “just for the job.”
then get this — he says he’s got to go. he points me to the door. heart-to-heart over! that “reverend lumber” guy is waiting outside for me. i had seen him a couple of times before, a friendly loud round guy who shows up whenever my uncle has to go somewhere in a black neighborhood. he handed me an envelope. it had my first paycheck already! i mean paycash. not bad money, beck. the envelope also had a digital camera. (a nice one — check out my facebook when i get like two minutes to post some pics.) and it had a piece of paper with a time and place written on it, and some questions i was supposed to read aloud while taking videos.
u gotta admit, it all sounds kinda mysterious and fun! mission impossible. doesn’t it? can u believe it? i think i’m gonna learn something about politics after all working for my uncle. maybe more than i’d learn back at State this semester. i hope u’re not mad at me?
anyway next thing i knew i was outside the library, and there was this large woman who’s — get this — a LIBERTARIAN, and she’s the new candidate for mayor for the republicans. (this is what uncle elbow’s worried about? al qaeda could get more votes than libertarians in this town. i hope he’s not losing it.) and i’m pretending to be a reporter, asking her questions and gathering information… and this totally wack guy starts berating her about the cia or something, and these rabbis come flying in and push the crowd away and bring her to her hummer (yuck)….
anyway, gotta run. will keep u posted! have a GREAT semester; i hope they don’t stick you with a loser roommate. like my uncle would say, i owe u one…
hugs, dest
Next Installment: Chapter 4, A 3‑Alarm Protest.
Feel free to comment or offer alternative plot twists below.
Previous Installments:
GOP Finds Mayoral Candidate
Garvey Finds An Issue
