His toes began to tingle with numbness, his legs folded beneath his bent-over frame. Javi hurriedly rubbed the sleeve of his sweatshirt against his nose, despite the fact that the only potential witness to his tears was an elderly nun with her back turned against him.
“And please help the other short-stringers,” he begged. “Don’t let things get worse.”
He could hear the nun rise to her feet, steadying herself against the back of her chair. Javi closed his eyes tightly.
“And please, please, when the time comes, let my abuela be waiting for me. And all the other family who I knew, and all those I never got to know, please let them be there,” Javi asked. “So I won’t be alone.”
He paused, at the end, to collect himself before the amber glow of the flames. Then Javi stood up from the floor and silently left the chapel.
The sky had begun to darken by now, and on the edge of campus Javi passed by the light of a ground-floor window, where a few dozen students had gathered in a common room to view the evening’s debate, just now reaching its end. Javi paused outside the open window when Wes Johnson appeared on the screen to deliver his closing statement.
“If I could go back to March, maybe I would tell myself not to look,” Johnson said. “Maybe I would tell everyone not to look. But we can’t go back. We have to accept that these strings are a part of life. But we don’t have to accept what’s happening now. I hear stories of people losing their jobs, losing health coverage, losing loans, all because of their strings. And I’m not willing to simply toe the party line and keep quiet. I see what Congressman Rollins and our current administration are doing—forcing members of certain professions to look at their strings when they had chosen not to, questioning people’s ability to serve their country, and treating people differently based on a mere accident of fate. But I believe in the freedom of choice. I believe in equality. The civil rights activists and women’s rights activists and gay rights activists have all been fighting this fight for generations. And while those of us with short strings may not measure as large in number as those communities, we are not insignificant. And we will not stop fighting, either.”
Maura
It was nine p.m., and Maura was alone. The candidates had finished their closing statements and waved their way offstage, and Nina was staying late in her office to help with the debate coverage, so Maura reached for her phone.
Want to get a drink? she texted Ben.
By nine thirty, they were sitting behind the dark wooden bar in a quiet neighborhood joint.
Maura had arrived a few minutes late, sneaking up on Ben while he was doodling his own impression of the bar on a flimsy paper napkin.
“I forgot how good you are!” Maura smiled, examining his tiny sketch as if it were mounted in a gallery. Then she gestured at the bartender to bring her a beer.
“Do you really think Rollins has a short-stringer nephew?” Maura asked. “I wouldn’t put it past him to make something like that up.”
“Perhaps in a time before fact-checkers.” Ben laughed. “But not nowadays.”
“Well, at least the ACLU has filed a suit against his bullshit STAR Initiative, so maybe that’s a bright spot. Plus, Johnson’s still in the race. Though I can’t believe he was so hounded by rumors that he had to come out and say it, like a gay candidate being shoved out of the closet,” Maura said. “People are guessing that his string ends around age fifty, so he’s officially a ‘short-stringer’ now.”
Ben nodded slowly. “It’s weird, because I certainly wouldn’t wish for anyone to have a short string,” he said, “but I think maybe there was a part of me that hoped the rumors were true? That somebody up on that stage might be . . . one of us.”
Maura tucked her hands into the front pocket of her threadbare CBGB sweatshirt and tilted her head curiously. “Are you seeing anyone?”
Ben nearly coughed on his beer. “That’s quite a change of subject. Plus, I thought you were gay.” He smiled.
“And if I weren’t, then obviously I’d be interested,” Maura teased, “but it’s what you said. That Wes Johnson is ‘one of us.’ That’s a whole debate on its own, right? Whether people like us should be dating people who aren’t?”
“Well, actually, I was seeing someone, when the strings arrived. But we’re not together anymore.”
“What happened?”
Ben stared at the neck of his beer bottle, spinning it gently with two fingers. “She opened my box,” he said, the words steady and deliberate. “Before I had decided what I wanted to do. And then she broke up with me after she saw my short string.”