Civil Disturbance

We’re sitting underneath the overpass, Molly and I, lights off, motor on, staring through the windshield at the row of houses up the hill. On Molly’s lap, propped against the steering wheel, is the clipboard with the street addresses, about fifty of them, listed alongside the pertinent info—name, age, etc.—culled from the Internet and written in her perfect handwriting, evidence that she had gone to a good school in the suburbs. It’s getting dark and it’s getting cold, and neither one of us has said more than a few passive-aggressive sentences to the other, like when I thanked her for putting her window up, as if she’d done me a big favor. “You’re welcome,” she said, but she only closed it halfway. The bickering had started after we both got home from work; first we were arguing, and then we were shouting, and then she disappeared into the bedroom and slammed the door hard, emerging fifteen minutes later, composed, dressed, and ready to go. Today’s particular conflict had been set in motion by the banal—who’d left a cereal bowl in the sink—but obviously indicated a wider problem. Plus, it was compounded by the latest poll numbers, which put our candidate three points behind, with three days to go until the election. “The personal is political,” Molly always says, implying that if we break up it won’t be her fault. Meanwhile, the future of the city hangs in the balance, things going from bad to worse—public transportation, mail delivery, garbage removal—thanks to the mayor, six terms and still nothing to show for it. “Look at the data,” she tells me, but I never know what data she’s talking about. She’s the one with the poli-sci degree in this relationship, socially engaged and crunching numbers, and I’m the former high-school jock, lettering in three sports at the expense of my G.P.A. Sometimes I’ll wake in the middle of the night and see her next to me, looking at her laptop, pie charts glowing up in her face. In the beginning, when times were good, this would have been something of an aphrodisiac, her passion and intelligence radiating beneath the covers. Now she’s all business. Now there’s no time to lose. She says, “The mayor is ipso jure unlawful.” She uses Latin. She uses words like “populace.” She talks as if she were composing a term paper with footnotes. Later, I’ll look things up and still not understand. “The only question that remains,” she says, “is whether the populace has the strength to take matters into its own hands.”

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh on canvassing.

“I doubt it,” I tell her.

“Have faith,” she says.

It’s getting darker and it’s getting colder. Leaves are swirling beneath the overpass, with no trees in sight. According to the data, this is the ideal time to canvass—early evening, inclement weather. I want Molly to close her window all the way but that would mean asking for the same favor twice. Our silence has deepened into something existential. It’s not only the silence in the car—it’s the silence drifting toward us from the unknown neighborhood, winding streets with unknown homes, unknown homes with unknown residents.

In a sudden burst of awkward motion, I lunge across the center console, knocking the clipboard off Molly’s lap and accidentally running my elbow against her thighs. I press the button and the window glides up.

She snorts with satisfaction. “Dress better next time,” she says.

“There won’t be a next time,” I say.

She likes this, too.

The warm air from the vent is blowing around my head, trapped in the car, steaming up the windshield, obscuring the gloom outside. I put my seat back a notch, and then I put it back several more notches, and when I close my eyes I could be lying on a beach chair by the shore of the man-made lake, floating somewhere between awake and asleep. In my semiconscious limbo, I can feel the ghostly imprint of Molly’s thighs against my elbow, reminding me of when times were good.

I’ve been up since six o’clock this morning, eating my bowl of cereal before work at the high-end fitness center that’s in the strip mall between Walmart and a vacant lot. It’s a decent job, all things considered: weekends off, holidays off, also dental. That last one thanks to the mayor—or blood money for the populace, depending on where you stand. All day long, prospective clients stopped by my office, inquiring about signing up for a membership, first month complimentary. “You’ve come to the right place,” I told them, turning on the charm, a sales rep in athleisure. They took a seat across from my desk, surrounded by framed photos of me from my glory days, in high school, while I asked them personal questions about their bodies. Height. Weight. B.M.I. There I am in my football uniform. There I am on the pitcher’s mound. There I am holding the municipal trophy after the championship win. It was my manager who suggested that the photos would be good for sales. “Subliminal advertising,” he told me. He was also a standout high-school athlete, as was his manager before him. None of us had realized that by the time we were eighteen we’d already reached the pinnacle of our careers.

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And suddenly I hear a hard knocking on my passenger-side window, a knocking so hard that I think the glass is going to break, and my eyes are open, heart racing, confirming what I already know—that we shouldn’t be sitting underneath the overpass with the lights off and the motor on. Through the foggy window, I can see the blurred outline of a man in uniform, enormous from my perspective, seven feet tall and out of a fairy tale, probably a police officer, or maybe paramilitary. He wants me to open my window right now, and the cold air blows in my face, along with a flashlight beam blinding me.

“Is there a problem, officer?” I ask from my prone position.

“I’ll tell you what to do and when to do it,” he says. He doesn’t want me to unlock my door. He doesn’t want me to show him my license. He doesn’t want me to sit up straight.

“What are you doing here?” he asks me.

“I’m canvassing,” I say.