Wendy
At five o’clock, I gathered my belongings and took the A train uptown to talk to Michael in person. I’d tried both his cell and office landline and I’d left messages. I’d sent a strongly worded email.
On my way from the subway to Clayton & Sons, I stopped at The Shops at Columbus Circle to use the restroom, passing stores on my way that I’d been shopping at since childhood. I recalled doing homework at Jamba Juice. Throwing a fit outside Hugo Boss because my father was forcing me to take Latin instead of Spanish like everyone else. Trying on dresses in the changing room at Bebe. Scoping senior boys who worked at J. Crew. My friend Monica stole a Coach bag. I cowardly declined. Monica got caught and the guard called her mother and Monica was sent to boarding school in New Hampshire. My mother died and my father brought me here to pick out something special. I chose a Chanel jacket and never once wore it.
The mall was filled with members of the target demographic for my new campaign. They walked its halls and waited in its lines. They ponied up for immersion blenders. For cashmere bathrobes. For jeans with hundred-dollar holes in the knees. These were the people I would have to convince. First, I’d have to convince myself.
For most of my life, politics was a matter of principles and hypotheticals. I supported a woman’s right to choose, but had never needed to make that choice. I supported legal marijuana, but smoking made me paranoid. I was against war, but wouldn’t be eligible for a draft if there were one. I was for gay weddings, but had never been invited to one. I was worried about the ozone layer and our reliance on crude oil, but I would be dead before the fallout.
The UBI would affect me directly. If it passed, 60 percent of my salary would go to income tax. We’d pay a 6 percent mansion tax on the current valuation of our home. From a practical standpoint, it was hard to object. There was abundant wealth and not enough work. The gap between rich and poor was growing. I’d read about the pilots in Canada and Kenya, and I’d seen the studies showing that Basic Income actually led to reduced spending on drugs and alcohol. I’d read the arguments about the UBI kick-starting the economy. That rich people tend to buy imported goods, but the poor spend money on American products. That people would have more time and energy to volunteer. That it would wipe out homelessness and extreme poverty, lower crime, increase the bargaining power of labor unions, and improve public health. Artists would have time to make art and the world would become a more beautiful place. Battered women would have the financial independence to leave abusive husbands. Women would not be forced into sex work. With less competition around low wage jobs, racist and xenophobic sentiment would visibly decline. Despite what the Republicans argued, I knew that having money didn’t make people lazy or less motivated—I’d met billionaires who worked eighty hours a week—and that even if it did, then $23,000 would not satisfy anyone’s desire for a life of leisure and material things.
And yet, in my secret, selfish heart, objections were raised. Lucas was right about the meth-heads in Appalachia. I didn’t want my work to pay for their indolence. Money is a fickle thing, as I already knew, and was reminded of that morning in the boutique. This was why we had a system for saving. I believed in that system despite Michael’s apparent failure to exploit it. And if the UBI passed, then what would we do? Michael would be jobless and the combined $46,000 we’d receive from the government wouldn’t help with our debt when I’d be paying more than that in income tax.
Dissenters warned of other issues as well. That free money gave people false reassurance when they bought cars and homes on credit. That this would create another bubble, a feedback loop that would increase rather than diminish debt. That inflation would moot all potential benefits. That the pilot studies could not be trusted—Canadians and Kenyans were fundamentally different—and we’d soon become a country of obese, lazy people, living off dribbles from the state’s leaking teat.
These feelings made me uncomfortable. They were feelings I would never express. They were feelings I barely allowed myself to acknowledge. Neither would the people at this mall. We spent our days on social media where friends encouraged us to attend protests and call our senators. They suggested we check our privilege. Implied that we were awful human beings if we didn’t retweet. That we would be ostracized, villainized. We wanted to be liked. Lucas was asking me to alter this paradigm. It seemed an impossible task.
After using the restroom, I walked briskly down Broadway in the direction of Rockefeller Center. The Clayton & Sons office was an avenue over, but even in my haste, I wanted to stop and watch the skaters. I grew up on Manhattan’s West Side, near Lincoln Center. After my mother passed, I would walk from my apartment through the crowds lingering outside the Metropolitan Opera, then down past Columbus Circle, onto Central Park South, and eventually to Rockefeller Plaza, where I would stand in my earmuffs on the overlook above the ice rink. My favorites were the lone adults doing figure eights. I imagined that if I ever fell in love it would be with one of these skaters, someone able to carve a slice of solitude from public space.
In November of 2008, I met Michael at the rink after work and we stood in a packed crowd and watched
