Election Day

This autumn morning with the birds waking up and the leaves changing is Election Day. I meet Jane Trichter on the downtown train and discuss Henry's upset. Her skin is soft especially her cheeks and she is intelligent and sensitive. The subway riders do not recognize their representative. All week, at the office. I accomplish nothing substantive but I keep the aides and interns working and cheerful. On Tuesdays there is always a wave of constituent complaints, by telephone. One woman's Volkswagon is towed and the police break in to get it out of gear. Do they have that right, can they tow even though no sign said Tow Away Zone? It is an interesting question but I try to avoid answering it. The woman persists and succeeds in committing me. The people at the office want to bomb Iran. A few Americans held hostage and therefore many innocent women and children pay the postage. It may be good classical logic to hold responsible the whole society for the acts of a few, however, then I must begin to expect the bomb and the white cloud that waits. Apocalyptic visions are popular again but we are more likely to thrash the earth to within an inch of its life than scorch it to charred rock. Corner of Church and Chambers, German tourist's language, accent repels me although I wasn't alive 45 years ago and many sweet, great Germans opposed the crazy Nazis but lately I've read Primo Levi's If Not Now, When?, seen William Holden in "The Counterfeit Traitor", have followed the argument started by revisionists who say the Nazi atrocities never happened. War brought many shopkeepers, bookkeepers close to their earth, weather, seasons, death. I see daily life as low-intensity warfare as my father, the World War II vet, did. Off to work we go. What is war? Population control, mother of invention, diversion from the work of making life permanent. Today is Election Day and because it's a day off for most municipal employees, the City Hall area has been quiet and easy to work in. Henry and Jane hold a press conference on teenage alcoholism. Leslie, the other aide, who I'd like to draw the stockings and clothes off of and feel her whole body with mine, goes home with her mother, leaving me standing by my desk with my briefcase at the end of Election Day.