Olga Dies Dreaming(27)
Before his mom bounced, Prieto had planned on applying to colleges outside of New York. He was desperate for some distance from what had heretofore been his life. His aunt took him to D.C. to see American and Georgetown; he sat in on classes at Howard. But when his senior year rolled around, his mom was gone, and his dad was in a bad way, and Prieto’s brain hurt just thinking about filling out those financial aid forms. Whose income tax return did he use? The Radical or the Junkie? So, he applied to a bunch of SUNYs and wound up at Buffalo.
He joined a Latino Greek figuring that, with his own family in shambles, having some brothers might not be a bad thing. It turned into his lifeline. Pledging, living with his line brothers, the public vow of silence, wearing the uniform for nearly eight weeks. It provided him with structure and closeness at a time when he’d felt alone and flailing. His brothers held him up when no one in his own family could.
He’d started college wanting to become Brooklyn’s Johnny Cochran: using law to fight police brutality. But an environmental justice class he took made him realize that the cops were just one small thread of a tightly woven system of discrimination. He was shaken to discover how systemically government and industry had imperiled the health of minority communities for convenience and profit. The course opened his eyes and invigorated him in a way his parents’ Brown Power rhetoric never had. By the middle of his sophomore year, his father was in full-blown crisis. No one asked Prieto to come back, but he wanted to be there for his family. With Tía Lola’s help he proved he was “legally emancipated” and transferred to NYU with a full ride, commuting to class from Abuelita’s. It was right around this time that the city was trying to erect a waste-processing plant in Sunset Park, just a few blocks from their home. He emailed his line brothers saying, “I’m not religious, but God brought me home to fight this.” He linked up with the Latino Youth League and the Community Board and made arguments so eloquent, he wanted to tape them and mail them to his professor up at Buffalo, just to let him know he’d been listening. The Daily News, The New York Times, even the Post covered their fight and the city buckled under the pressure. He’d found his calling.
Then, just a year later, despite public outcry, outside the light of day in a not-quite-legal move, the waste-processing plant seemed to have arisen overnight. By this time, Prieto was in law school. He was livid and scrappy—filing motions as a private citizen against the city, doing presentations on community health impact for the City Council. He was handsome and eloquent. The news cameras loved him; he was the perfect salve for White Guilt. He had been practicing law and running a campaign to block a prison expansion when the local Democrats came to suggest he might run for the City Council seat that was opening up. Prieto couldn’t think of a better way to protect his ’hood.
* * *
HE’D JUST STARTED his second term on the Council when an envelope came through the mail slot of his office. It was hand printed, the card inside engraved, inviting him to dinner at a private residence on the Upper East Side. It had no return address or contact information and Prieto’s assistant was about to throw it in the trash when the phone rang. The caller was confirming that the invitation was received and hoped that Councilman Acevedo would not be skipping their dinner. The timing freaked the secretary the fuck out and she ran into his office saying that she had canceled everything on his calendar before and after this dinner. He called one of his frat brothers who worked in real estate to see what he knew about the building.
“That address is nothing but money. I think they print it in the basement. The Selbys have two units in there. Both the brothers.”
In a city of real estate dynasties, the Selbys were one of New York’s most prominent. The father had spearheaded the redevelopment of Bryant Park a generation before, and the sons had sunk a fortune into redeveloping the Lower East Side, to mixed results. But, in the aftermath of September 11, they found opportunity. With downtown desolate of people, filled with dust, and backlogged by slow insurance payouts, and with landlords unable to collect rent, the brothers headed to Ground Zero with literal carloads of cash. Betting that the desire for immediate relief from misery would obscure any misgivings. The people—the small business tenants, condo owners, the landlords—certain that nothing could be built on top of all this tragedy, that nothing would ever be possible on this square of misery—thought them fools. In a highly public news conference, the Selby brothers unveiled a broad plan for the area, where, on a windy day, trapped ashes from the fallen buildings might still unwedge themselves and flurry the air with death.
The city, for its part, thought the Selbys Heroes of Hope—that’s what the mayor called them—and Prieto’s colleagues moved to reward them as such with tax breaks upon tax breaks. Who, in the wake of such disaster, wouldn’t support such entrepreneurial vision? For his part, Prieto was unsettled by any one family scooping up such concentrated plots of land, tax free, but sensed that public morale was too low for such cynicism. Besides, as his sister pointed out to him, with all of his colleagues from the Manhattan districts on Selby payroll of some form or another, why squander the political capital by raising the issue? Just quietly vote against it. No need to poke an urban bear.
Which is why, when he realized that it was this very bear summoning him to their ultra-luxurious, doorman-and-private-elevator-entry-actual-motherfucking-Picasso-in-the-foyer-and-a-maid-in-an-actual-motherfucking-maid-outfit lair, he knew it could be nothing good. Prieto had never given much thought to The Man. The notion of one mythical, monolithic, rich, powerful White Man puppeteering the lives of people of color to keep them dancing in service of his larger plan seemed far too simplistic to serve the complex issue of systemic oppression very well. But, on that spring night in 2003, after the maid took his briefcase and the butler escorted him to a dining room half a city block away, passing a museum’s worth of fine art en route, Prieto found himself thinking, if The Man existed, this would certainly be his apartment. He had made it a point to arrive fifteen minutes early—no person of color serious about being taken seriously was ever late to meet white people—but the two Selby brothers were already seated, napkins on their laps and wine poured. In that moment Prieto knew he’d already lost whatever battle he was about to fight. No matter what he had mentally prepared for, they were already a step ahead. It was a setup.