People cheered.
“Damn it,” she went on when urged to continue, “this is horrible. Being elected, I mean. But also what’s happened to the city. It’ll take years to regrow the trees and rebuild. It’s such a big job it’s probably best to think of it as some kind of cosmic demolition that allows us to start over. That’s how I’ll be thinking of it. We’re in the middle of another crash, headed for another big recession. Every time this happens there’s an opportunity to seize the reins and change direction, but up until now we’ve chickened out, and besides our government has been bought by the people causing the crash. And we don’t even know what to try for.
“This time we’ll see if we can do better. The new Congress has a lot of new members, and there’s a pretty great plan coming from the progressives. I think Teddy Roosevelt announced his presidential bid as candidate of the Progressive party from right here on this square, and he ran that campaign from our Met tower. Actually I think he lost, but whatever. I’ll hope to be as cheerful and tough and effective as he was. I’ll go join the people trying to do that.
“But damn.” She looked at them, sighed. “I’d rather be here among my friends. You are certainly all welcome to come down and visit me when I’m in D.C. And I’ll be here as much as I am there, I swear.”
After that Ettore and his piazzollistas set up and ripped off some torrid tangos for the crowd to dance to. Between songs Ettore wiped his brow and told everyone, with his hand drunkenly on his heart, that the great Astor, Piazzolla himself, had grown up just a few blocks south of where they stood at that very moment. Holy New York, he said, holy New York. The Buenos Aires of the north.
After another song, standing out under the prow of the Flatiron, Vlade and Idelba watched as Franklin’s friend Jojo approached Charlotte and congratulated her. Charlotte thanked her and then called Franklin over and asked them to discuss how they could coordinate their Soho and Chelsea redevelopment projects, such that they combined strengths and both got better. Franklin and Jojo agreed to this with a handshake and went over to the drinks table to see if they could find an unopened bottle of bubbly.
Vlade stood in front of Ettore’s band, swaying to a milonga, feeling the outbreak flood pour through him. Idelba said she was tired and headed over to his office. When the band had played its last song, Vlade walked over to the Met with Charlotte, steering her over the looser gangplanks; she seemed wasted.
In the dining room she sat down heavily next to Amelia Black and Gordon Hexter. Vlade sat across from them.
“Maybe you can settle Stefan and Roberto in my room,” she said to Vlade. “They can house-sit the place for me.”
He gave her a look. “Won’t you need it when you come back to visit?”
“Sure, but I can sleep in one of the other dorms, or they can. With the best will in the world, I won’t be around that much. Not at first.”
She looked so tired. Vlade put a hand to her arm. “It will be okay,” he said. “We’ll help out here. The building will be fine. And I think you needed a change of pace anyway. Something new.”
She nodded, looking unconvinced. Trying to get a hold on some kind of bitterness, some kind of grief. Vlade didn’t get it. Well, joining Congress as a plan to slow down: probably not realistic. Maybe it was just that she liked what she had been doing.
Franklin Garr came breezing in, saw them and came over and leaned down to give Charlotte a hug and a kiss on the head. “Congratulations, dear. I know it’s just what you always wanted.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughed. He was flushed and seemed a little giddy, maybe from talking to his friend from the Flatiron. “Just let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. Finance minister without portfolio, right?”
“You’re already doing that,” she objected.
“Redevelopment czar. Robert Moses meets Jane Jacobs.”
“You’re already doing that too.”
“Okay, so maybe you don’t need me.”
“No, I need you.”
“But not for anything more than what I’m already doing.”
She looked up at him, and Vlade saw a new look on her face, an idea she liked. “Well, I wonder,” she said. “Could you give me a ride in your stupid little speedboat down to like Philly, or Baltimore? Would that work? Because I need to get down there fast as I can, and the train tracks in Jersey are still fucked up.”
He was startled, Vlade could see.
“Might have to recharge,” he said. He looked at Vlade: “How far is it?”
“You got me,” Vlade said. “Couple hundred miles? How far will your boat go when you got it up on the foils?”
“I don’t know. Pretty far, I think. Anyway I can check it out. But yeah,” he said to Charlotte, “of course! Love to take you down there to your coronation.”
“Please.”
“Your investiture.”
“You’re the investor.”
“Your congressification.”
She cracked a smile. “Something like that. My befucking.”
“Oh no, dear, you don’t have to go all that way for that. Hey I gotta take a call, I’ll come down in a while and we can celebrate.”
“No!” she called out after him, but he was off to the elevators.
Charlotte looked at Vlade. “A nice young man,” she said.
They all stared at her.
“Really?” Vlade said.
Charlotte laughed. “Well I think so. He tries to pretend otherwise, but it keeps breaking out.”
“Maybe for you.”
“Yes.” She thought things over. “How fast does that thing of his go?”
“Too fast. Like seventy or eighty miles an hour.”
“And battery charge?”
“It might have enough to get you there.”
“Is it safe?”
“No.”
“But people do it.”
“Oh yeah. People do everything.”
“Okay, maybe I will.”
“You could always get a ride with Amelia on her blimp.”
“Oh yeah, there’s a good idea!”
They all laughed together, even Amelia.
“It’s not my fault!” she protested, but they only laughed more.
When they had collected themselves, Charlotte said to Vlade, “So what about Idelba, where is she?”
“She went to bed. But she’s going back out to Coney Island to keep working.”
“And so what will happen?”
Vlade shrugged. “We’ll see when it happens.”
“But you went back over there with her.”
“Yeah.” He tried to think how to say it. “It seems good. I think it could work. I don’t know how. I mean, I don’t know what I mean by that.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Yes. I guess it is.”
“Very nice,” she said. “I’m happy for you.”
“Ah well. Me too.”
At the 1964 New York World Fair’s International Pavilion, all twenty-two of the visiting Burundis slept in a single room, “just as they would have at home.”
One thought ever at the fore—
That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space,
All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination.
I see Freedom, completely arm’d and victorious and very haughty, with Law on one side and Peace on the other,