The Believers by Zoë Heller Page B

the governor for reelection."
    Karla's mouth opened and closed. She looked at Mike. "Is it true?"
    Earlier in the year, the Republican governor had pledged two billion dollars to raising salaries for the union's employees, and there had been widespread speculation that he was buying the union's support for his reelection bid. Karla had refused to believe it. The governor had reinstated the death penalty in New York. He had vetoed an increase in the minimum wage. Her union, she had insisted, would never stoop to doing deals with a man like that.
    Mike squared his shoulders defiantly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," he said. "The governor has been a good friend to the union."
    "Shame!" Audrey cried.
    Julie set the tray of sandwiches down on the coffee table. "Food's up!"
    Audrey shook her head. "I haven't got time for food. I have to get back to the hospital."
    "Oh, Audrey," Julie protested, "you must eat something. Look, I made cheese and mayonnaise just the way you like it."
    "I'm going to get my clothes," Audrey said, walking out of the room.
    A moment later, she called to Karla from the staircase. Karla hurried over to the door. "Yes, Mom?"
    "Just remember, Karl," Audrey shouted, "no more than two of those sandwiches, all right?"

    Karla and Mike were quiet most of the long subway ride home to the Bronx. Mike groomed his hair with the special military hairbrush that he kept in his briefcase, and read the paper. Karla examined advertisements for technology institutes--"Are you ready for a rewarding career in database management?"--and gazed out at the tunnel.
    "I'm worried," she said eventually. "I think Dad might die."
    "Don't talk like that," Mike said. His tone was gruff, irritated.
    Karla glanced at him. "I'm sorry you got a hard time from Mom tonight."
    Mike turned his head to the side, considering his profile in the train window. "It's no more than I expected. She doesn't understand union politics. She thinks she knows better than the leadership how to best serve the members."
    Karla nodded. He was right, of course. The leaders knew what they were doing. If they judged that supporting the governor was the best thing for the union, it really wasn't Audrey's place--or Karla's--to second-guess the decision. "Do we...will we have to vote for him, then?" she asked.
    Mike bristled. "What do you think? There's no point in an endorsement if the members don't follow the directive."
    "Right, no, I see. I just wondered."
    Mike looked up as the train pulled into the Bedford Place station. "This is us."
    Karla and Mike lived on a dark prewar block just down the street from the Bronx Botanical Gardens. The hallways of their building were permeated by the fumes of a vicious Mexican cleaning agent called Fabuloso that the super used to sluice the floors twice a week. Upon entering the building, Karla always took care to breathe through her mouth for the first five seconds or so in order to offset the initial olfactory shock.
    This evening, as she stood greenly by the elevators, waiting for Mike to check the mailbox, the elevator doors opened and a middle-aged Filipino woman in knee socks and plastic sandals stepped out. "Hello, Mrs. Mee," Karla said. "How are you?"
    The woman looked at her with a bloodhound's expression of jowly suffering. "Terrible," she said, shaking her head slowly. "Terr-i-bul."
    "Oh, dear," Karla cocked her head in concern. "I'm sorry."
    Mrs. Mee, who lived with her three grown-up children and her husband in the apartment next door to Karla's, was a woman of baroque sorrows--a martyr not only to her ingrate family and her poorly paid job at a Manhattan nail salon, but also to a host of chronic ailments including back pain, asthma, and angina.
    "At work today, the air-conditioning was off," Mrs. Mee said, "and the nail polish got in my throat so bad I couldn't breathe. I said to them--"
    Mike appeared now. He stepped in front of Karla, as if to physically shield her from Mrs. Mee's complaint. "Hey, Mrs. Mee," he