So: maybe he was the lake. Maybe he was the outbreak through the Narrows. Maybe Idelba was the mighty Atlantic. There would never be an end to it. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. And it was easy to do, on a morning like this.
Then election day came and Charlotte won. Idelba came into the city and joined them all in the Met’s common area for a big party. She helped Vlade get the common room ready, and of course for a thing like this there was no shortage of help. The Flatiron also wanted to host a celebration, and they talked about filling the entire six acres of Madison Square bacino with boats, so they could lay a temporary floor of interlocking platforms and dance right on the water, as they would have if the freeze of this coming winter had yet arrived. It was discussed at length and then abandoned as too much trouble, but what it meant was that the party had to be spread out, a progressive moving from rooms to rooftops to terraces all around the square, and onto big boats in it, and indeed in the end they placed gangplanks connecting eight barges to each other, and to many of the buildings ringing the square, and people wandered around all night long partying. Quite a few partiers fell in the drink.
Charlotte herself didn’t show up until midnight, having gone to work that day as if it were a normal day. She was irritated at having to stop the normality when she got home, and even more irritated that she was going to have to stop it for good. She had proposed continuing to head the Householders’ Union while serving in Congress; there was no law against that, she said, but most people hoped she would finally come round to seeing how impractical it would be. Not to mention some kind of conflict of interest.
“I plan to come back every weekend,” she declared in her brief concession to giving a victory speech. “I don’t know how, given the way this storm hammered the rail lines, but I will. I don’t like it down there.”
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.