Mayor Hidey Seek
1.
Her mama named her Ivana because the name would make her rich. There was nothing else around to pull that trick. Ivana went to the Gracie Mansion looking for Donald Trump, but her teacher told her: This ain’t where he lives.
2.
My dentist kicked me out, not out of her office, but out of the luxury condo we shared. From up high we could see cars drive through the city streets like baby teeth fleeing childhood. We drank martinis and watched. I could go back to her office if I want to open my mouth to unendurable pain, but I don’t think I can do that. I suffer from Fear Itself.
3.
This is where the mayor lives. The mayor, yeah, thought Ivana, the man who owns where she lives, all the buildings crawling with people like ants, where she sleeps in one room with her seven brothers and sisters and her mama and her boyfriend on torn mattresses.
4.
You’re a baby, a wimp, a coward, my girlfriend, my dentist accuses. That’s all true, I say. What’s your point?
5.
Gracie Mansion. She’s gonna tell the mayor to do something about the rats. She hates rats. Mist’ Mayor, give em a place of their own. A rat mansion.
6.
There are heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan, she continues, and continues and continues, and every day shrapnel pierces them, roadside bombs blow off limbs and give them closed head injuries, and you–you won’t have a silly root canal.
7.
She’s lookin’ for the Mayor, lookin for signs, lookin for the Criminal Minds guys that guard him, keep him safe, keep him away from the serial killers and the perverts who lurk everywhere, who rape you or send you into freefall some other way.
8.
I have no defense. I have to admit she’s right. All I have to fear is fear itself, but that fear towers above me like a monolith about to fall and crush me.
9.
But Ivana doesn’t see them. The Mayor’s nowhere in sight. All her teacher shows them is stuff she calls “elegant.” Ivana’s mind tries to compute pawn value, but the numbers in her head don’t go that high.
10.
Even if I had an attorney, I’d have no defense. I only hope she relents, blunts her own judgments, finds some mercy for this poor dental sinner.
11.
Back home, Ivana sees two men in her building knife fighting. She sees a crack pipe on the bathroom floor. Ivana feels it: she is becoming the place. The Mayor is hiding. That’s his name, another girl on the tour says. Mayor Hidey Seek.
