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The Unforbidden Is Compulsory
Or, Optimism

Jan. 28, 2004 | Stuart and Jeannie One were taking a short break, eating flan and orange juice, when she saw them. "Oh good lord," she said, and tilted her head west, up to the bleachers, where Sergei and Nicky were sharing a notebook and a pair of binoculars.

Sergei was dictating to Nicky the size and quality of the fair's attendees. "Two New Adopters, four Elder Strivers, two Young Believers, six Teen Nihilists, two New Empty Nests, three New Bohemians, four Gray Powers, two Country Casuals, three Middleburg Managers, one New Homesteader, five Boomtown Singles, two Old Glories, four City Startups, two Young & Rustics, five American Classics, and Older White Man with Young Czech Mistress. Two New Adopters, four Old Adopters, six Recalcitrants, four Pluggers, five Shruggers, one Recidivist -- "

Stuart made his way up the bleachers to stand between them.

"Look who's here," Sergei said.

Little Nicky smiled like it hurt. Truth be told, Nicky didn't much like Stuart.

"Here, put this on," Sergei said, giving Stuart a leather flight jacket. It was approaching 80 degrees and would climb 10 more when the sun finally dragged itself to the roof of the sky. "It'll be 90 today," Stuart said. "Why?"

"You'll look virile, capable, sexy."

"It's so heavy!" Stuart said, in a way that straddled complaint and a simple sense of wonder.

"With the jacket, you look like an outsider, a maverick. You're the Wild One."

Stuart was going to, and then didn't, make a joke about how funny it was that he was considered the outsider, when he was being pushed by the state GOP machine only because his family name was known by the town's older residents. But he couldn't think of a way to make it funny. Together the three of them watched the people drift into the fairgrounds.

"This should be good," Stuart said.

"Once we deal with the blimp," Nicky noted.

Stuart hadn't noticed the blimp, but now did.

"Don't look so impressed," Sergei said.

Stuart stopped looking impressed.

"That blimp is our enemy," Sergei said.

Stuart nodded. Sergei was exceptionally good at pointing out his enemies.

Stuart appreciated Sergei's strong sense of self, his strong sense of what needed to be done, his strong opinions and quick judgments. Stuart didn't want to wear an 11-pound leather bomber's jacket on a day like this, but he had much too much respect and appreciation for Sergei to say no. He knew he was lucky to get Sergei on a smallish campaign like this, chiefly because Sergei told him this often, and told him again just then.

"You're lucky to have me on a smallish campaign like this!"

He said all this in a vaguely and messily European accent that no one could place. Stuart felt sorry that he'd made Sergei even have to point out how fortunate he was.

Sergei Andropov was considered one of the best campaign managers in California, even though he hailed from pre-Gorbachev Georgia, was educated in Switzerland and now lived in Minnesota. Did he claim responsibility for Jesse Ventura's seizure of the governorship? He did. Was he actually responsible for that seizure? Probably. He was everywhere and nowhere, like dust and David Gergen. Were the rumors about Sergei true? Had he fired a guy because his name was Maurice? Usually and yes. He now had handled a number of successful California campaigns, each one of them breaking records for fundraising and spending, though he still pronounced Los Angeles Los Anghaleze, and couldn't tell the difference between Catalina Island and the Farallons.

Sergei had the look and posture of a badger, specifically the University of Wisconsin badger mascot, with his barrel chest and angry hair, which intimidated many and rightfully implied that Sergei would fight anyone over anything, and, like the badger, preferred his clothing snug. He had worked actively on 34 campaigns, 18 in the U.S., 10 in Belgrade, two in Lithuania and one each in Russia, Spain and Montenegro -- and had consulted clandestinely on 50 or so more. He had been equally passionate about each one. Could he remember each of his candidates' names? He could not. Did he know his record? He did. He was 32-2. One loss in the Ukraine, which he didn't really count because he'd been suffering from mono throughout, with the one American loss in Massachusetts and that race was the candidate's fault, because she wouldn't listen to him and continued, against his implorings, to wear pants. He made clear than no woman can wear pants and win but she wore pants and lost and whose fault was it? Barbara Boxer rarely wore pants. Ferraro wore pants and look what happened to her! But still she wore pants because she was difficult and out of touch and a loser.

During their first meeting, he'd warned Stuart about being difficult. "Difficult candidates make the best losers," he'd said, and then pointed to a plaque above his file cabinet that bore that very axiom. Looking around his office, Stuart wondered if Sergei had an in with an engraver, because he seemed to have engraved everything he'd ever said. VOTERS AREN'T BORN, THEY'RE REGISTERED!!! Three exclamation points after that one. If Sergei used one exclamation point, he used three. BEFORE YOU CAN RUN, YOU MUST LEARN TO CRAWL!!! said another, heralding a trend in his declarations, for next to it was TO GO FOR THE GUSTO FIRST YOU MUST DRAWL!!! and below that ANYTHING IN LIFE WORTH FIGHTING FOR IS WORTH CRAWLING FOR!! On his immaculate desk was a paperweight that read: THE BUCK STOPS HERE, and then in parentheses, J.K.

"That means just kidding," Sergei had said, when he saw Stuart looking at the engraving. "Some people think it's someone's initials, like Jack Kerouac or something, but it's not. It means just kidding, because I like to kid. I am a kidder and a crazy man. I am a political animal!" he yelped, and laughed and laughed. "Now, do you have any last questions before we start getting you elected?"

Stuart had one question then, and repeated it to Sergei now, as they stood on the bleachers, watching their constituents -- "Look at that!" Nicky said. "Two Multi-Culti Mosaics with three Golden Ponds and one Crossroads Villagers!" -- wander into the fairgrounds:

"Do you really think Fred Savage will come to my rally?"

Sergei had promised Stuart as much, because outside of having an in with an engraver -- which he did, and man that was sweet! -- he had ins with all the prominent Republican celebrities in L.A., Fred Savage and Scott Baio among them, and was working on Drew Carey, that fickle libertarian bastard. On Sergei's car, an old Buick LeSabre, he had a bumper sticker that read I CHOOSE NOT TO RUN, quoting Coolidge and echoing the fact that Sergei had run once, himself, in South Dakota -- he'd taken up residence there, thinking it would be his easiest route to the Senate -- and had lost, miserably, to a man named Bob Evans, who didn't spend a penny against a badger-looking man named Sergei Andropov.

So now he was doing what he was meant to do and yes, he loved and believed fervently in all of his candidates, except those who lost, who he called losers who didn't want it in the first place. The only people who belonged in office, Sergei felt, were those who won, because who wants a loser in office? No one. He loved his winners, and he loved making them winners. Each race presented a unique set of problems, and each one presented him with an opportunity to make flyers, and he loved to make flyers. Flyers were the lifeblood of small-budget campaigns, which was his specialty. Anything under $300,000 was his area of expertise, and with that kind of money, TV was pretty much out, flyers were in. He had a number of his best flyers framed around his office. VOTE FOR ADLER, one said, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! WACHOVIA FOR AMERICA, another read, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

"People in America don't like to be late," he'd explained. "I tried the same slogan in Spain. It did not work so good."

Just behind Sergei's desk was a large, elaborately framed pastel drawing of his grandfather, Edward Bernays, standing in front of a tunnel, holding a corndog.

Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the inventor of public relations. Those two words, public and relations, had never been uttered together before Edward Bernays, an American who invented consumer desire and used his uncle's theories of latent wants and fears to sell everything from cars to war, and engineered not only the inauguration of Hoover but the overthrow of at least one South American government. Edward Bernays had a sister, Anna, named after the senior Freud's odd and strident and possibly deranged daughter, and she'd married a Russian named Alexei, who brought her to Georgia and there birthed Sergei, who came into the world with a smirk and eyes alight. Sergei liked to think he looked something like his Uncle Edward, but there was no resemblance whatsoever. Sergei was clearer, more direct, obviously possessed and very funny. The joy he took in running campaigns was a joy to behold, if the beholder can see clear to do so.

The blimp continued to dominate the sky through late morning. It moved in circles, its progress so slow, so lethargic as to be imperceptible. Every new fair attendee took in the sights of the food and rides and then the blimp, at which they pointed and smiled.

"What's it say?"

"Olongapo, it says," they said.

"Who's that?"

"He's our state representative."

"Our state representative is a blimp?"

"I don't think so. I think he's a human-type person."

"So what's he doing on a blimp?"

"He's wanting us to vote for him again."

"For what?"

"For state representative."

"So he's our congressman?"

"No, I think this is different."

"He's a senator?"

"No, I think this is just a state office. A representative ... in the state."

"A what? Like the governor?"

"No, like he represents us in Sacramento. Like the governor, but under the governor."

"Oh look, they have one of those games where you hook the rings around the frogs."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The fair did in fact have a game where participants could hook rings around the heads of frogs. The frogs looked more like cats with frog heads -- their necks were too long, their perches too feline -- though the people at that booth squealed and laughed and played again. The fair was in full swing, crowded with residents in bright clean clothing, walking slowly, wondering where to spend the $22 they'd decided to blow at the fair. There were bumper cars, and a parachute kind of ride, and the swings attached to the carousel that fly high in the air and which one sometimes see on album covers and public policy books.

On the ground, the balloon war was at full pitch, though neither side had pulled noticeably ahead. There were approximately 4,000 balloons in circulation and the number was rapidly rising. Nicky was now in the announcer's box, and was counting. There were about 2,200 Olongapo balloons to 1,800 of Craspedacusta's, with the two types forming a Yin-Yang or Pangea sort of shape in the fairground's center. Nicky ordered Dmitri to free more of the Olongapo balloons, which Dmitri did with great joy, sending another 40 or so into the air, where they flew a quarter mile, resting in the branches of a giant ficus, where they popped, convincing a member of the Mission Beach Ever-Ready Militia that the Day of Reckoning had come, and he was now staging an armed confrontation with area SWAT officers. But no one at the fair was aware of this.

At 4 p.m. a small army of 13-year-olds, the scourge of any mass of decorative balloons, descended. They seemed to come from all sides at once, 50 of them. They all looked the same, with their long shorts and their visors on upside down, their dirt bikes and their squinting eyes. Before long the popping began, like the sound of snare drums being struck in every corner of the fair.

Why must these kids destroy everything they see? Sergei wondered. Birds, icicles, streetlamps, Trans Ams -- anything exquisite and smashable. At Sergei's command, Jeannie Two got rid of them all in the usual way: She handed out a box of Lubriderm and copies of Juggs. They gathered around her, already half-blind and sweating from every orifice, and there was a quick sucking sound, a great implosion of time and space, as the boys flew off to the nearest carpeted basement to test-drive the bounty.

By 11, the day was in full swing. The fairgrounds were bursting and the children's parade, which had featured an abridged theatrical version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," was over, and the people kept streaming in. Stuart was in the thick of it, his bomber's jacket draped over one shoulder, his back soaked with sweat just under it, always preceded or trailed by one of the Jeannies. He was shaking hands, rustling the hair of young boys, saying hello to teenage girls without looking at any part of them, including their eyes. Sergei had told him that the trick was to stare at the tops of their eyebrows, thus seeming to be making eye contact without any possibility of implying anything lewd, for teenage girls, Sergei insisted, saw lewdness and sex and propositions and worse in the eyes of any man over 22. Stuart was running low on Wet Wipes.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

It was around noon when Ronette Robinson, Olongapo's right hand, sailed over to Sergei. She was always so smug. She looked like a news anchor, polished and with just enough sass to be sexy, always wearing something silk; she'd worked for Dukakis and thought that meant something. She'd advised Gephardt and thought that meant something. She'd gone to the Kennedy School and fellowed at Brookings, had been published in Dissent and thought that meant something. She was insufferable, acting always as if Sergei was taking all this too seriously, this race. She'd been called down from Sacramento, actually, when Sergei had been brought over from Minnesota, so there was a symbiosis here, something of a shared vision of the future, even if a wildly divergent future, and Sergei naturally wondered if he should have a romance with this woman.

"That's a pretty old-looking blimp," Sergei said.

"It should look old," she said. "It's an antique. One of our volunteers is a collector of old airships." Sergei and Ronette both looked up at the blimp.

"He fill it with hydrogen, too?" Sergei laughed.

"Matter of fact, he did."

"Good, good. Glad there's a mass of highly flammable gas floating over the fairgrounds."

Ronette patted his hand maternally. She did this often.

"Don't be so sad, my emigré friend," she said. "You're in America now. Ease up."

She wanted to make clear that she felt for Sergei, thought he was desperate and not equipped with all the tools for his job. She did this in part because she was attracted to Sergei -- was it his turtlenecks? His snug black jeans and woven belt? -- and she felt he was a good enough man in the wrong line of work. If she married him she'd let him stay home, tinker in the basement with model airplanes. Her condescension made him want to win this one more than any race since Montenegro, when he'd run against an ex-Monk named Roberto, who wore fur collars and stole Sergei's girlfriend and then dropped her a month later. He missed her, he had to admit. She had eyes like a squirrel monkey's, but he missed her.

"Listen, I am sorry about your man Bennett," she said, though they'd never spoken about this subject before. She was a hellion he loved very much. Sergei feigned disinterest.

"You haven't heard?" she pressed.

"Right, right," Sergei said, "he plays cards." Sergei tried to whistle in a dismissive way, but it came out sounding like he was choking.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine."

Sergei was fine, was at ease, knowing that without a picture of his man with William Bennett, the association would never stick. He was about to tell Ronette about his lack of concern when she pulled out of her valise (only she would have a valise at the Fourth of July fairgrounds) a piece of paper, a color copy, which featured a smiling Stuart Craspedacusta -- he was beaming! -- doing the golf-tournament handshake with Bill Bennett. God knows where and when it was taken. "It was from a golf tournament, the Bob Eubanks Invitational. You haven't seen this?"

Sergei grimaced. A dragonfly sped between the two of them and Sergei remembered, with excruciating clarity, a day of his childhood, chasing salamanders and dragonflies in a riverside cemetery on a Ukraine vacation. Was that possible? When was that? Who was the boy with him that day? Oh how he missed his mother, her strong shoulders and deep voice!

"1999. Look at Stuart -- he's so cute!" Ronette really was a cancer.

"Your point?" Sergei pleaded. "You're boring me, and I'm hard to bore."

"Oh gosh. You don't know ... " She sighed and crossed her arms. "Now I'm even sorrier I have to bring you this news," she clucked, and told Sergei that tomorrow's paper would carry news that Bennett had wagered not just on card games and horses, but on the last five presidential elections. "He bet against both Bushes," Ronette added.

Sergei experienced a stabbing sort of pain in his knees.

"He lost about $500,000," Ronette added, "about what he dropped that one night in the Bellagio."

Sergei's knees always hurt when he got bad news. He leaned on the booth, attempting to look casual.

"What I don't understand," Ronette continued, "is how a guy like Bennett had that kind of cash to throw around. Did 'The Book of Virtues' pull down that kind of money?" He was going to kill Nicky. It was Nicky's job to see these things coming. Ronette was blooming with power. She would make a great queen. If Sergei ever became a king, of anything, he would make her his queen. Lord she had presence! Even if she was a wretched blight upon mankind. She smiled like a pediatric nurse.

"I'm surprised Little Nicky didn't tell you about this. What happened -- his Blackberry run out of batteries? He didn't show you this, I don't suppose -- it's a little ad our art department put together." She pulled another color copy from her valise, this one with above the smiling handshakers these words: CRASPEDACUSTA -- Don't Bet On It.

Sergei was horrified, but at the same time content in knowing that something like this would so enrage Nicky that out of it all would come infinitely more harm to Murray Olongapo. Nicky was a real bastard when his dander was up. Nicky walked up to Sergei and Ronette at that very moment, which was convenient enough.

Nicky's full name was Nicholas Chiaroscuro, but his childhood friends quickly shortened that to Nicky Chiaroscuro, which over time -- due to his unfortunate middle-school height -- became Little Nicky Chiaroscuro or Little Nicky C, and now, more often that not, was simply Little Nicky. He was, with Jeannie Currie, in charge of opposition research and the planning of most of the events, festival appearances, parade walks, games of fake impromptu beach football, visits to elementary schools -- never junior highs; at junior highs those little cynics will eat a candidate alive and lick his bones with their forked, sandpapery tongues -- and senior-citizen beauty pageant judgings, like the one recently won by the lascivious Lorna Wellington, who gyrated like a toy dog in heat through every part of the contest, including the citizenship speech. Little Nicky was a real bastard because he actually was a bastard. If he ever met the prick who fathered him, he'd beat him like a punk. His mother was a saint.

Nicky was like an athlete who only plays well when behind and humiliated. Months ago, after Ronette had revealed that in college Stuart had written an admiring letter to Manuel Noriega, Nicky had befriended the photo editor at the La Jolla Standard Weekly, and thereafter every photo printed of Olongapo featured him sleeping, in mid-yawn, standing next to an unfortunate street sign or building -- Old Boar Ave, the Hall of Ancients -- or, at parties and fairs, next to a clown, dancing penguin or, on two occasions, Mr. Peanut. The power of photo editors was so seldom appreciated. Nicky had once paid $25,000 for a photographer to wait -- and wait he did -- for a shot of Robert Byrd with his eyes closed at an MLK memorial. The poor man had only blinked, but the world figured he was asleep, and the damage was done.

Nicky had earned his stripes in the party a decade earlier, when as a high school senior, he'd planned and carried out the Night Without Dreams. The year was 1992, the setting Jersey City. With the Republican candidate for city council down 10 points the night before the election, Nicky, with a team of malcontents in a minivan, had made sure the residents of North Jersey woke up with a fuzzy but unshakable antipathy for the Democrats, given that Nicky's team had spent the wee hours barking the Democrats' slogans from loudspeakers attached to the van's roof. "Vote for us Democrats! That's right, us, the Democrats!" they said. This they did from 2:30 a.m. to 5 a.m. "It's a bright new day, New Jersey! Not yet, of course, but in a few hours, when you wake up, it will be! Sleep tight and thank us, the Democrats!"

Now, Nicky was clearly enraged. Bennett was a hero of Nicky's -- his cherubic face was tattooed on Nicky's ankle -- and Sergei felt like something good would happen soon.

Ronette sailed back to her corner.

"We need something big," Sergei said, with venom and heat, "and we have to start with something to take the shine off that godforsaken demon-blimp."

Jeannie One looked at Jeannie Two; neither had the energy to care or act. Dmitri was devoid of inspiration, while Nicky was shot through with it. He whispered a directive to Dmitri, which was immediately obeyed.

Dmitri jogged down the bleachers, tripped on the last one, and landed on his face in the grass. He rose again, half of an ice cream sandwich stuck to his cheek. He saddled Jeannie One's scooter and was gone, across the fairgrounds and toward the highway.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"My balloon's too big."

"Can I get mine smaller?"

All day they'd hoped to attract kids, without luck, and now were swamped. At the booth, Jeannie Two and the U.C.-Riverside volunteers were losing their minds.

A boy of 6 wanted a smaller balloon.

Jeannie made another balloon, this one smaller. The boy cried.

His sister spoke for him: "He wants the same balloon, but smaller."

Jeannie took the balloon and began working on untying the knot. She let out some air, shrinking the balloon, tied it again and returned it to the child. He left without a thank you. He was replaced by a boy of 8 with the voice of a flute.

"Can I get mine made into a donkey?"

Jeannie explained, gently, gently -- for she could see the boy's chin begin to quiver -- that she didn't know how to make balloon animals. The boy wailed. Jeannie explained that even if she did know how, their balloons were not the correct kind for balloon-animal-making. The boy bleated. She promised to try, and this quelled the squall momentarily.

Jeannie stretched a balloon, tied it, turned it into itself and it popped. The boy cried again.

She tried once more, twisting and tying, all the while watching across the fairgrounds as the Olongapo balloon-makers busily added blue to the park, unabated and uninterrupted. Ten minutes had passed with this boy, a period in which she might have blown and tied a hundred standard, non-donkey balloons. She smiled with gentle, gentle fury at the boy and when she was finished, his creation was not quite a donkey, but was indeed something new, was clear evidence of great effort and goodwill. The boy took it, placed it between his knees, extinguished it with a muffled pop, and walked away.

"I want a meerkat," said the next girl.

"I want a meerkat kissing a capybara," said the next.

"I want a truck," said a third. This child had the face of a very young Gene Wilder, and Jeannie almost punched it, wanted to pop his head like a grape.

From the pressure and the helium, Jeannie fainted. When she came to, she saw Ronette at the Olongapo booth, giving hugs and then high fives to the very same children who'd tortured the Jeannies with their requests. They were spies! The treachery!

At that moment, Dmitri arrived on the scooter. He was clearly thrilled with himself. Under his arm was a large black piece of rubber, resembling a fragment of a truck tire, or a chunk of whale blubber. He unmounted the scooter and straightened his back.

"You get that off the highway or -- ?" Sergei asked.

"Watch," Nicky said, and took what looked like a very small uncircumcised penis, the color of lead, out of the heap of rubber, and put it into his mouth and began blowing. It grew and grew. Midway through, with the object taking shape, spherically, Nicky took a rest and handed the task to Jeannie Two. She blew until blue and handed the finishing blows to the aging but spry Missy and Nancy, who brought it to fullness and, when done and spent, insisted that a picture be taken, the two of them next to the now-colossal rubber ball. Thirsty, they gulped some of the refreshing milk they'd brought, leaving it all over their mouths and chins. They smiled and the camera clicked.

"Ah, that's the money shot," Nicky said.

Nicky placed Craspedacusta stickers all over the sphere.

"It's like a concert, right? This will dominate! Everyone will want to touch the ball and bat it around. You know how at a concert or hockey game or whatever, you have these beach balls flying everywhere and suddenly it's all anyone cares about? Like they ignore the show because the beach ball's so crazy fun?"

Jeannie Two nodded slowly, though she was skeptical, and actually hated with great passion the notion that what a concert needed was a beach ball batted around. It brought to mind kittens or Latvians -- both willing to punch anything put in front of them. Meanwhile, Dmitri and Sergei were trying to connect the idea of a beach ball -- light, colorful, merry -- with Nicky's sphere, which was black, almost 5 feet high and given its rubber makeup, weighed easily 50 pounds. "It looks like a giant medicine ball," Jeannie Two observed, and she was correct.

Nicky was impatient to show people how much fun could be had. "Watch," he said, as he hefted the balloon, with a heroic exhalation, over his head and launched it into the crowd. Carried on a Pacific gust, it climbed about 18 feet, slowly but determinedly, up and up over the fair's ticket booth and the line extending from it, up and up some more, pirouetting at its apex, blocking out the sun for what seemed like minutes, and then fell like a conductor's hand and flattened a family of six. There were screams from the proximity, and then a moment when the family's feet were all that was visible under the great round monolith. Dmitri suppressed a laugh, while dozens of onlookers raced toward the crushed fair-goers and together removed the ball, lifting it over their heads, at which point another gust took it 30 yards south, into the beer garden, where it mowed down four city councilmen and Karch Kiraly.

"Jesus, what's Karch Kiraly doing here?" Sergei asked.

"I think the balloon might be too heavy," Nicky said.

The councilmen and Kiraly extricated themselves from the weight of the ball, at which point Kiraly, frustrated yet agile, booted the ball and could only watch, helpless, as it careened downhill, too much like a bowling ball for anyone to make that comparison in good conscience, leveling revelers and innocents alike, a few of them becoming briefly attached to the rubber hide and swinging upward and around as the ball picked up speed and eventually came to rest, like a giant racquetball, against an obelisk honoring Stuart's great-many-times-over-grandfather Miguel. "Damn," Nicky said. "Sorry."

Sergei and the other volunteers looked at him, too stunned and frankly full of wonder to scold him, and then, as one, the entire Craspedacusta campaign rose their heads to look at the source of their troubles and strivings. That blimp, still there, still self-satisfied and slow and embodying all Earthly evil, had to be destroyed.

Episode 3: "Here we take over," said Sergei. "Here we end this thing. Here we win."

-- By Dave Eggers