Olga Dies Dreaming(28)
A place was laid for him, but where a plate would have been was an envelope. He sat and opened it, looking to their faces for a tell and finding none. He pulled out the photos and inhaled deeply; the first showed him fellating a man in what was clearly his own apartment, the next featured his face visible during intercourse, his partner clad in leather. He exhaled and stood up.
“I have to be honest, gentlemen. What have you got here? Some photos? Of me with a man? New York’s a very liberal city; this is hardly leverage.”
“New York is quite liberal, Councilman,” the elder brother, Arthur, said, “but you’re not the councilman for Chelsea or the West Village. You represent, as you so proudly say whenever a camera is near, Sunset Park. And I’m not so sure the Catholics and the macho Hispanic community you speak for would be quite as happy to be represented by—what’s the slang your people use?”
Nick, the younger, chimed in: “Maricón, Arthur.” He seemed pleased with his Spanish.
“We don’t think your district would want to be represented by a maricón, Councilman, and we’re prepared to put a lot of resources into making sure that they aren’t.”
When looking back on that night—the beginning of the collapse of who he had thought he was—Prieto often wondered how things might have played out had he been just a bit more courageous. Would anyone have cared who he slept with? How might he have responded if he’d found himself in that dining room a year, or even two, later? Once Ellen’s talk show got its footing, or after Jim McGreevey came out? After his grandmother had died? What might his whole life have looked like? But at that moment, the idea of his most private life becoming public paralyzed him with fear.
“What is it that you need?” Prieto had asked.
“When the vote comes up,” the younger brother replied, “you’ll know.”
They were right. As soon as the proposal was put forward to clear the path for the Bush Terminal Warehouses to be redeveloped by the Selby brothers, he knew what he was expected to do. For more than a generation, Bush Terminal had housed the industrial and garment factories that put food on many a table in the neighborhood. Abuelita had worked as a seamstress there, and of course Papi worked there until he wasn’t able to work. Then, little by little, they all closed. Moved to Jersey or, more commonly, offshore, to places where people worked for even less money than the poor of Sunset Park. On its face, there was nothing wrong with encouraging some development in this dormant area, whose most robust commercial activity was a brisk drug and sex trade. Yet, Prieto knew this would do nothing for the area but quicken the ascent of rents, offering little by way of job opportunities, tax revenue, or even amenities for the working poor who made up his electorate. Prieto, the local hero, the straight man, would have fought for more. But, Prieto, the compromised, the closeted homosexual—which he wasn’t even sure that he would call himself, it was just that when fucking men, he felt his most unbound—that guy folded like a fucking shirt. He voted to move the project forward. He gave a press conference about how this would attract new people from all over Brooklyn for cuchifritos and the wonders of Eighth Avenue’s Chinatown, knowing full well that this would never happen. No one who went to the Selby brothers’ waterfront supermall would ever venture into the real neighborhood.
Prior to this, he’d resigned himself to a compartmentalized life. One where his sexual desires were placed inside an iron box locked so tight, they’d be unable to burgeon into emotional attachments. He’d contented himself with his career, his friends, his family, and made peace with the fact that he would simply not have, nor pretend to have, a meaningful romantic relationship. But after the Selbys approached him, he felt desperate for a cover. Desperate to put some distance between their secrets and his public life. He married a neighborhood girl, Sarita, who he knew would be a devoted political wife. Who he knew would want kids, something he pined for and had assumed was beyond his grasp. He was eager to share the kind of love his father had given them with children of his own. They had a child, a girl, and for a while, he almost felt grateful to the Selbys for forcing him down this path. He’d asked that they name her Lourdes, in a nod to both his parents and the place of redemption he hoped she would be for him. She was not enough. Not Lourdes, and not Sarita. Not enough to keep him from what he longed for.
There were more votes. Yes to a basketball stadium downtown whose rezoning enabled them to move forward with dozens of luxury condo projects. No on a ferry project that would have saved his constituents hours of commuting time into Manhattan. And on and on. Yet, he was still able to eke through enough pieces of good for his neighborhood and for Brooklyn to feel his compromises worth it. For this reason, when one of his mentors, his local congressperson, announced his retirement, Prieto foolishly pursued it, na?vely believing the Selby brothers’ interests too local to have any use for his one little vote in the House of Representatives. He won the election easily, and his strategy worked well. For a term or two he found some breathing room. By now divorced from Sarita, he wondered if there might even be a way to be free, to step into who he fully was. Then Hurricane Sandy hit, ravaging the waterfront of not just his district, but all of New York City.
The call came through his office; his chief of staff had Arthur Selby on the line. Terrible damage, they both agreed, awful for the people of New York, the businesses lost, the homes flooded. Wonderful that they had him as a champion in Washington. Just as Prieto relaxed into the conversation, talking the elder Selby through the environmental policy proposals he was planning to make, Arthur interrupted. This was all terrific, really, but he hoped that Prieto could see the wisdom in providing a tax incentive or, better yet, find some federal matching funds for anyone entrepreneurial enough to undertake redevelopment along the flood zones. The dollars for disaster relief, Prieto reminded him, are very competitive, with their priority being recovery and shelter for families displaced by the storm. Of course, Arthur agreed. Prieto hung up, confident.