Paul Beatty - Tuff

Tuffy looked around suspiciously, making sure no one was eavesdropping, then tugged on the manager’s shirtsleeve. “Look, forget about Ozu for a second,” he whispered. “Listen to this idea … Cap’n Crunch — the Movie .” The manager bolted upright, covering his open mouth with his hand. “My God, that’s brilliant!”

Now it was Winston’s turn to shush for quiet. “Calm down, yo. I got a guy who writes for the paper working on the screenplay. If you want in, let me know.”

When the manager had left, Yolanda spoke without looking up. “You pitching that idea to every white man you know. And one of them going to steal your idea.”

“I know, but I don’t care — I just want want to see it get made. Look up at the screen and say, ‘Yo, there go my idea.’ ”

“Wouldn’t it be better to look at the screen and say, ‘There go my idea and I made crazy dollars off it’?”

“That’s why you going to college. You the one who going to be making the money in this family.”

“Shit.”

Winston stuck his head in her lap. “What you studying anyway?”

Yolanda tapped a finger on a chapter heading that read, “Perception Psychology — Gestalt.”

“What’s that?” Winston asked.

“It like studying why the brain perceives things a certain way. Like how come certain colors make us feel a certain way.”

With a sly expression Winston cupped her breast and said, “Like what is it about your fine ass that make me feel so good?”

“Something like that.”

“And who is Guest-alt?”

“Ge -stahlt .”

“Ge -stahlt .”

“Gestalt is a theory of perception. When we see something that is divided up in parts, we tend to see the whole thing, not the individual units. Say you order a large pizza pie, you see a circle not six triangles.”

“Eight.”

“However many.”

“Like when I look at those little bumps around your nipple I see a circle?”

“Exactly.” Winston started to get grabby and Yolanda elbowed him off her. As the houselights dimmed, he leaned back in his seat and lit a cigarette. “You know if I went to college what I’d take up?”

“What?”

“Space.”

Inez trudged up Second Avenue to Park East High School. It had been a long day. Streaks of sweat pasted her shirt to her spine and the small of her back. Her feet ached from hiking from poll to poll challenging voters and monitoring the clerks. She entered Room 202 in a dither. She brushed away the strands of hair stuck to her face and looked up at the clock — ten-thirty-five. Shit, I’m late . She’d sworn to herself there would be no ballot stuffing this election. That repeat of the great voter fraud of 1977 would not happen on her watch.

There were four other people in the room. At the teacher’s desk, behind the small pile of remaining ballots, sat the district inspector and a clerk. Seated at a student’s desk in the front row was one of German Jordan’s lackeys. And in a back corner of the room, Bendito Bonilla, still in uniform, was absentmindedly spinning a globe.

The inspector, a dumpy woman about Inez’s age, wore a lime-green pants suit and a string of black pearls. She picked up a ballot and said, “Collette Cox.” The clerk, probably her husband, pressed his pencil hard on the tally sheet, dutifully tabulating the vote. “Collette Cox,” he repeated, pulling on the crew neck of his T-shirt. “Hace calor, coño.”

Inez took a seat next to Jordan’s flunky.

“German Jordan.”

“German Jordan.”

The clerk’s pencil broke. The snap echoed for a long moment. The clerk got up to sharpen his pencil, and Inez interrupted the proceedings. “May I ask your name?”

“Lourdes Molina.”

“Ms. Molina, may I request an announcement of the results as they now currently stand?”

“You’ll have to wait until all the votes are counted.”

The hireling hunched over the piece of paper on his desk like an overachieving pupil unwilling to let anyone cheat off him. Inez whistled, looked at her fingernails, then snatched the sheet of paper. It was an official tally sheet missing only the bottom right-hand corner, which was still in the manservant’s hand. Inez scanned the columns. The clerk returned to his seat and the count resumed.

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

It looked to be a two-person race. Quickly, she counted the votes. Wait a minute .

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

Holy shit .

“German Jordan.”

“German Jordan.”

Inez handed the sheet back to the minion, and took out a thick mimeographed copy of the State of New York — Election Law; Rules and Regulations .

“German Jordan.”

“German Jordan.”

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

Tuffy wasn’t winning, but it was close. She looked up at the desk. The pile of votes was shrinking. There looked to be only five or six left, and a stack of about ten absentee votes still in unopened envelopes.

“Wilfredo Cienfuegos.”

“Wilfredo Cienfuegos.”

“Margo Tellos.”

“Margo Tellos.”

The absentee ballots reminded her of Winston’s Rikers Island whistle-stop, a prison cot serving as a campaign stump.

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

But even if all of the remaining votes were for Winston, they wouldn’t be enough for him to win. However, Inez didn’t know if Jordan had enough votes for a plurality. She hurriedly flipped through the book, looking for the requirements for a run-off election. “German Jordan.”

“German Jordan.”

“German Jordan.”

“German Jordan.”

Fuck . There was no run-off for City Council seats. It was majority wins.

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

The inspector slapped the last ballot down on the desk. And with a sharp fingernail slit open the first absentee ballot.

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

The envelope fell to the floor, sliding under Inez’s seat. There had to be a loophole somewhere, but there were almost four hundred pages of picayune New York State election law to pore over. She needed more time.

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

Inez was about to ask if the total number of votes counted matched the number of ballots cast but she didn’t have the energy. She looked down at the envelope under her desk. The return address was for Rikers. She smiled, sat back in her chair and closed the book of election laws with a satisfying thud. Instinctively, she reached into her bag for her bottle of rum. She kissed the label, and took a long sip.

“Winston Foshay.”

“Winston Foshay.”

The rum went down easy. Inez lightly stamped her feet, enjoying the tingle in her toes. For a grassroots campaign in a community with no grass, Team Tuffy had done well. Now all that had to be done was to make sure Tuffy would live to see his twenty-third summer. Just one more sip . Inez raised the bottle to her lips, whispering a toast. “ Gambate , Winston Foshay, gambate. ”