The Spectators: A Novel by Jennifer Dubois

Author:Jennifer Dubois [Dubois, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Psychological, Lgbt, Gay
ISBN: 9780812995893
Google: AkxkDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0812995880
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2019-04-01T22:00:00+00:00

And Mattie almost looks like he might, when they cut back to him, but the thing’s been choreographed so that there isn’t time: Lisa is declaring That’s our show! and leaning over to thank Mattie for coming. He says something back, but neither Cel nor the audience can hear it. They’re playing him out to “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”

FOURTEEN

semi

1979

The seventies ended with a whimper.

All around us was the feel of a city past its prime: a too-ripe fruit, a fading party, a starlet aging into tragedy. Junkies passed out in the parks amongst their lemon rinds and needles. The smell of citrus undercut with shit. The sixties hadn’t smelled great, either, yet this filth seemed more abject—the stink not of rebellion, but defeat. The revolution had come and gone, leaving nothing more than the detritus of a weather event.

All of this seemed to energize Matthew, perversely. He spoke endlessly of strategy: of issue voters and voting blocs and ethnic groups. He was bullish about the immigrant working class, in whose midst, he believed, lurked many potential voters. Not among the Hungarians, of course, since they preferred a harder line on communism (“Of course,” I echoed faintly); on the Greeks, he was agnostic. But he was hoping to chip away at some of Koch’s other bases—the Italians, the Poles, the Jews—especially the doves, and especially the young. You didn’t have to feel like an American to feel like a New Yorker, he said, and these second-generation voters were New Yorkers through and through—no matter what language they spoke at home, no matter who they rooted for in the Olympics or the more ambiguous wars. He didn’t expect them to go canvassing the city, or to argue with their families about him over dinner. But he believed in the quiet power of double lives—and that all immigrant children were, to some extent, living them—and he believed in the possibility of anonymous votes, unprophesied by polls, that might deliver him the election.

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