People said what they had to say. Building great; building not so great. Offer great; offer not so great. Four billion meant around two million per co-op member; this was a lot, or it wasn’t. Charlotte couldn’t stay focused long enough to catch more than the pro or con expressed, leaving the gist of people’s arguments to some later time when she might give a shit. She knew what she knew. Get to it for God’s sake.
So finally Mariolino called for a vote, and people clicked their clickers, which were all registered to them, and Mariolino waited until everyone indicated they had done the deed, then tapped his pad such that he had added the votes of those present to the votes of the absentees. Anyone who hadn’t voted at this point was simply not part of the decision, as long as they had a quorum. And there was going to be a quorum.
Finally Mariolino looked up at Charlotte and then the others in the room.
“The vote is against taking the offer on the building. 1,207 against, 1,093 for.”
There was a kind of double gasp from those in the room, first at the decision, then at the closeness of it. Charlotte was both relieved and worried. It had been too close. If the offer was repeated at a substantially higher amount, as often happened in uptown real estate, then it wouldn’t take many people to change their minds for the decision to shift. So it was like a stay of execution. Better than the alternative, but not exactly reassuring. In fact, the more she thought about it, the angrier she got at the half of her fellow citizens who had voted to sell. What were they thinking? Did they really imagine that money in any amount could replace what they had made here? It was as if nothing had been learned in the long years of struggle to make lower Manhattan a livable space, a city-state with a different plan. Every ideal and value seemed to melt under a drenching of money, the universal solvent. Money money money. The fake fungibility of money, the pretense that you could buy meaning, buy life.
She stood up, and Mariolino nodded at her. As chair it was okay for her to speak, to sum things up.
“Fuck money,” she said, surprising herself. “It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Because everything is not fungible to everything else. Many things can’t be bought. Money isn’t time, it isn’t security, it isn’t health. You can’t buy any of those things. You can’t buy community or a sense of home. So what can I say. I’m glad the vote went against this bid on our lives. I wish it had been much more lopsided than it was. We’ll go on from here, and I’ll be trying to convince everyone that what we’ve made here is more valuable than this monetary valuation, which amounts to a hostile takeover bid of a situation that is already as good as it can get. It’s like offering to buy reality. That’s a rip at any price. So think about that, and talk to the people around you, and the board will meet for its usual scheduled meeting next Thursday. I trust this little incident won’t be on the agenda. See you then.”
After she had spoken with a number of people who came up to commiserate or argue, Vlade approached. It was clear he wanted to talk to her in private, so she made her excuses to the last clutch of residents, who would have been happy to argue all night long, and followed Vlade to the elevators.
“What’s up?” she said when they were alone.
“Some things have come up you should know about,” Vlade said. “So now that you’re free, why don’t we go up to the farm. Most of the people involved are up there, and Amelia is just about to arrive and tie off her blimp, and she might be a good one to have in on this too.”
“In on what?”
“Come on up and see. It will take a while to explain.” He pulled a bottle of white wine from his refrigerator and held it up for her inspection. “We can also celebrate holding on to the building.”
“For now.”
“It’s always for now, right?”
She was not in the mood to indulge his Balkan clod-of-earth stoicism, and merely hmphed and followed him into the elevator.
Up they rode in silence and got off at the farm. Vlade led the way over to the hotellos and called out, “Knock knock, we’re here to visit.”
“Come on in,” said a voice.
“Too crowded in there,” Vlade replied. “Why don’t you guys come out here and we’ll drink a toast.”
“To what?” someone asked, while someone else said, “Good idea.”
Out of the tent emerged the two boys Vlade indulged around the docks, and the old man they had befriended and then rescued from his drowned squat; and then the two men who had disappeared from the farm so many weeks ago.
“Hey!” Charlotte said to the two men. “You’re back!”
Mutt and Jeff nodded.
“I’m so glad to see you!” She gave them each a brief hug. “We were worried about you! What happened?”
Mutt and Jeff shrugged.
Vlade said, “We were over in the Bronx doing some treasure hunting with the boys here, and we found these guys in a container down in the Cypress subway hole.”
Charlotte was amazed. “But didn’t you, you know—”
“Yeah,” Vlade said. “We got the water police to extricate them. They’ve been checked out at the station. Gen took care of all that. It’s been a long couple of days. But now they’re back, and I thought we should celebrate.”
“We persist in living,” Jeff said sardonically.
“Good idea,” Charlotte said, and sat down heavily on a chair by the railing. “Plus we voted to keep this building in our own hands, and won by like two votes. So lots to celebrate, yeah.”
“Come on!” Vlade objected. “There is! Plus the boys and Mr. Hexter have news too, right boys?”
The two boys nodded enthusiastically. “Big news,” Roberto declared.
They sat around the vegetable cleaning and cutting table, and Vlade uncorked the bottle and poured wine into white ceramic coffee cups. The two boys looked eagerly at him as he did this, and he regarded them squinting for a second, and then, shaking his head, poured them about a mouthful each. “Don’t start drinking now, boys. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.”
Roberto snorted at this and downed his shot like an Italian espresso. “I was a lush when I was seven,” he said. “I’m past that now. But I won’t say no to a refill.” Holding his cup out to Vlade.
“Quit it,” Vlade said.
Then while the two men were telling Charlotte their tale, Vlade went to the elevator and came back with Amelia Black. She had clearly been weeping on his shoulder, as he was frowning in a pleased way.
“Amelia’s back,” he said unnecessarily, and made introductions all around. Charlotte had only met the cloud star once before, and was content to be introduced again, as Amelia didn’t seem to recall their earlier meeting, in their conversation over the phone when Amelia had been trapped in her blimp’s closet.
“We’re celebrating,” Charlotte said grumpily.
“Well I’m not,” Amelia said, tearing up again. “They killed my bears.”
“We heard,” Vlade said.
“Your bears?” Charlotte asked.
Amelia gave her a bereft look and said, “I just mean I was the one who took them down to Antarctica. They were my friends.”
“We heard,” Vlade repeated.
“Fucking Antarctic Defense League,” Amelia said. “I mean there’s literally nothing down there but ice.”