March 8, 2013--Chapter 29--Found On Staten Island (Part 1)

Since I've posted so much of my novel during the past week, in oredr not to overtax anyone still reading along, here is a relatively brief introduction to "Found On Staten Island." I will publish the rest of it on Monday and Tuesday.

After having been fired as the result of the faculty coup at Queens College, I surprisingly found another assignment almost immediately.  Via an unorthodox and indirect route, I was hired to serve as the Assistant Dean of Community and Continuing Education at a community college on Staten Island.  Though it might appear that the dean’s title was evidence of professional progress, becoming an assistant dean at a junior college was in the world of the university a step backwards. 

There were, however, some compensations—importantly, I had a job and a salary.  And, I was pleased to discover that two-year colleges of this kind were mostly populated by young people and adults from working-class families, which would allow me to apply my administrative skills to a student population also seeking cultural and social mobility.  So there was ample opportunity on Staten Island, as there had been in Queens, to contribute to social change.  The Larger Revolution was for me, though, put on indefinite hold.  Rather, in the active voice again—I placed that Revolution on the back burner and embraced the revisionist idea that individual change needs to precede social change.  For the students this certainly had to be true, I rationalized; and, who knew, maybe it would be for me as well. 

I heard about Staten Island Community College, SICC (smart-ass students pronounced this acronym SICK), from a Queens College colleague—Harvey Weiner, a sociologist from the “regular” faculty who had supported the COP Program sit-in and all of the non-negotiable demands, including the one that would have required the student cafeteria to serve Soul Food.  Actually, from Harvey I learned about SICC’s president, William Teitelbaum who had written a book, The University In the City.  As a self-described radical sociologist, Weiner studied the “political economy” of education—the relationship between who, via taxes, paid for public education and who benefited.  Through his research he claimed that he found that public schooling did not live up to its egalitarian rhetoric.  When he looked at the data to see how well schools functioned in fostering meritocracy, he discovered, and proclaimed to those who would listen, that the opportunities schools provided benefited primarily those from privileged backgrounds.  

In a word, public schools were not the engines of democracy many claimed them to be, but rather they helped reproduce the advantages of affluence and the disadvantages of poverty and race.  Lower-income people in the aggregate, Weiner argued, paid a disproportionately higher percentage of taxes, which were then used to provide more years of higher quality education to the children of the affluent.  Since Harvey saw COP to be a radical alternative to this “rigged system,” his phrase, he befriended the program and me. 

Thus, he passed along Teitelbaum’s book, which he urged me to read while I was adrift and looking for employment, feeling that it, in spite of my disappointment and sense of having been treated unfairly, would help keep me focused on “the on-going struggle.”  In addition, Harvey wished me well, though he was not reluctant to add, looking me square in he eye, that he “fully supported” my firing, seeing my summary dismissal as just another example of “collateral damage,” again his phrase, which was one of the inevitable consequences to be expected on the long march toward revolutionary change.  Which for him, unlike me, was decidedly not on hold.  He had both the data and bumper stickers to prove it. 

In fact, the book was just what I needed to inspire and distract me.  I was so taken by Teitelbaum’s central thesis that when I finished it I shot off to him a gushing letter in which I said things such as:  “Your powerful and, may I say, energetically written case in support of the idea that the university must be more than in the city but of the city and that it has social responsibilities, especially to the poor and disenfranchised, is brilliant and spoke directly to me in my role as an administrator of a special program at Queens College that is doing this very thing. [I did not see it to be necessary to refer to myself as an unemployed former administrator—I was so enthusiastic about his ideas that I felt the need to write to him as a version of a colleague.] . . . Though up to this point I have not thought as much as I should have about how the setting and physical arrangement of a typical university communicates and encourages exclusivity, and that to become socially engaged with the community it needs to be radically redesigned, Queens College high up on its isolated hill is certainly such an example.  The brilliance of your critique,” I continued to pour it on, “is more than just spot on [I was, after all, a former English professor]; your book, unlike others of a revisionist kind, also charts a path forward for those of us involved in leadership positions in higher education.  You provide the inspiration as well as the agenda for engagement as we struggle to reform the university and thereby transform it into the kind of responsive institution the country requires.” 

My letter ran on in this vein until I had typed four single-spaced pages on Queens College stationary; and even though it was 2:00 AM, I was so excited by Teitelbaum’s book and my letter, that I pulled on a pair of pants over my pajamas and raced out to mail it.  I also hoped that he would like what I wrote about the book and him and thus might be willing to help me find a job somewhere.  Anywhere. 

But I heard nothing back; and thoughts about SICC, The University in the City, and any remaining enthusiasm for social engagement generated by the book and my time at Queens College rapidly receded.  I was beginning to feel desperate about my own much more personal lack of engagement.  To the point where, in addition to sending résumés to colleges and universities in an ever-widening geographic circle, including one to Ohio State University, and hearing nothing back except, “We will keep your vitae in our files in case an appropriate position becomes available.  But in the meantime, please do not call us because we receive literally hundreds of applications of this kind each month,” out of frustration, desperation, and self-doubt, I began to think about what other careers I might pursue.  Equally important, as I saw the balance in my checking account shrinking, I considered other ways to make a living.  Perhaps, I thought, with a publisher or at an advertising agency—I had after all been an English major and though I had not been able to publish very much of my own work I still thought of myself as well read and at least a decent writer.  That should qualify me.

Who knew, maybe I might have the ability to write advertising copy.  What, in truth, was so difficult about coming up with slogans as for Coca Cola—It’s the Real Thing, or Quality is Job One for the Ford Motor Company, whatever that means.  Really.  I could do that.  It certainly paid a lot better than university teaching or administration.  To test myself I even tried to come up with some tag lines of my own.  But, thankfully, before I got too far into that, and in truth because it turned out not to be as easy as it seemed (my best line was for St. Pauli’s Girl—The Queen Of Beers, so you can see what I mean), I got a call from Teitelbaum’s assistant who told me that he liked my letter and would I be available to meet with him later in the week so we could talk about it.   I wasn’t sure if it meant the book or my letter, much less if I might be able to talk honestly with him about my own circumstances.  But to be able to talk with anyone, much less a college president, much less the author of that book, on an actual university campus nearer to New York City than Columbus, Ohio, and not to be needing to buy a new wardrobe for Madison Avenue, though I pretended to Teitelbaum’s assistant that I was “all tied up” through Thursday, when she said he was only available on Wednesday, I said “no problem, just tell me when to be there.”  She said come at 3:00, and I again said “no problem.”

*   *   * 

In my best corduroys and my old English Department tweed jacket with the leather patches on the sleeves, at noon on Wednesday I made my way across the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island.  I wasn’t comfortable with the directions—I had only been on Staten Island to pass through it on the way to South Jersey or Philadelphia—and so I wanted to give myself enough time to find my way to the president’s office.  But I also wanted to take in and understand how Teitelbaum’s college related, including physically, to its community since he had written so extensively about that and had included many pages of glossy illustrations to make his point.  I was thus eager to become familiar with his campus and its surroundings so that I would be able to talk knowingly with him about this essential aspect of his thinking.

But as I found my way there, it was immediately evident that Teitelbaum’s college appeared to be the very kind of place he most criticized in his book.   It was even more set apart from its community, in spite of being a community college, than Queens College. 

SICC sat isolated in a wooded valley between two soaring hills, Todt and Grimes, which were the island’s most exclusive and valuable real estate.  In fact, most of New York’s leading Mafia families had their faux-Tudor and Mansard-roofed mansions perched in gated-enclaves on those hills, reputed to be the highest along the east coast south of Maine.  Indeed, I later learned that the wedding scene in The Godfather had been shot in one of those chateaus not more than a quarter of a mile up the road from Teitelbaum’s campus—they had even used classrooms at the college to dress and make up the actors.  

And when I drove through the security gate, where I was required to show my drivers license before I was allowed to enter, I found the campus to be more a series of nondescript buildings surrounded entirely by parking lots than anything lavishly represented in The Univeristy In the City.  It was hard to imagine anything about Todt Hill that resembled Teitelbaum’s notion of “city.”  It was even more difficult to think about what I saw through the hurricane fencing that completely encircled the campus as of the community much less in it.  Queens College, by comparison, felt like the Sorbonne, the quintessential university in the city. 

From this I knew the conversation that awaited me was going to be more complicated than I had been imagining.  But I needed a job—anyone, anywhere—and whatever Teitelbaum might say or offer to do was going to be fine with me. 

*    *    * 

It took some time to find a place to park but I finally did in a spot marked Presidential Visitors Only.  And from there I was directed up the steps to Teitelbaum’s office on the second and top floor of the proletarian-named A Building.  That felt more like what I had been expecting from the college of a socially-conscious author and CEO—no Hamilton or Livingston Halls here.  Though the walls of the corridors even outside the presidential suite were of high-gloss painted cinderblocks, another sign that I had entered a people’s college, once in Teitelbaum’s outer office these plebian surfaces were replaced by wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling mahogany panels and all the furniture was of carved wood and sumptuous leather.  

One of his assistants told me to sit, that Dr. T would be with me in a minute—he was on the phone with the editor of the Staten Island Advance, the local paper, and she said, with a conspiratorial wink, that Dr. T was trying to “get him off his back.”  They were editorializing about the College’s upcoming Italian Culture Festival, claiming that Teitelbaum, through it, was attempting to patronize the local Italian-American community by pretending it was to show his respect for them though he had been overheard on numerous occasions referring to Staten Islanders as “Yahoos.”

Needless to say, this information, much more than I would have expected to receive considering the purpose of my visit, did not help me to relax.  What after all was I getting into here?  Hadn’t I just been invited to see Dr. T so we could talk about his book? 

While pondering all that I had seen in the neighborhood surrounding the college, the fenced-in college itself, and now this about his apparent struggles with the local community, while wondering if I might simply slip away, his assistant returned and told me he was ready to see me and would I take this with me into his office.  The “this” was a tall cut crystal tumbler filled with ice cubes. 

On automatic pilot, with the glass in my left hand I was ushered through the door into his immense office.  From twenty feet away, Teitelbaum sprang from his desk chair and seemed for a moment to disappear behind it.  As he came around I realized that this was because he was, how to put this, so short—perhaps no more than five-four—and was, while standing, dwarfed by the huge desk and chair.   

As he approached me, wearing unpresidential well-worn jeans, a black tee shirt that revealed he was in excellent shape, and Franciscan-style sandals, I reached out to take his offered hand but he ignored it, reaching instead to pull the tumbler from my other, trembling hand. 

I stammered, “Sorry, I didn’t know.  I thought that . . . “

Dismissively waiving off my attempted apology, he said curtly, “It’s not important what you thought.”  And with that, leaving me standing there with my hand still extended, he turned his back to me and retreated behind his desk where he hopped up onto his chair which, because it was cranked up to its highest position, and I suspected included a pillow or booster on the seat, allowed him to appear to be a tiny giant, if that is oxymoronically possible.

He bounced in his seat once or twice to balance himself on his perch and, by grasping hold of the edge of the desktop, pulled his chair and himself forward .  And from amidst the clutter of his desk top which included stacks of unread newspapers, a typewriter, books, and inexplicably what looked like a length of rusted chain, he retrieved a bottle of Cutty Sark, which he uncorked, and from it filled the glass I had been instructed to bring to him with Scotch.

“I know, Lloyd, what happened to you at Queens College and I understand why you did not write about that in your letter to me.  But though I understand why you were pretending to still be employed at that awful place it is still disappointing to me that you did not have the self-confidence to mention that and reflect on the meaning of the experience, no matter how difficult and painful.  While writing about the book of course.  You could have made all of that coherent if you had been honest and clever.”  

He took a long drink, watching for my reaction over the top of the glass.  I think I managed not to reveal my unease.  He therefore continued in the same manner, seemingly eager to provoke me, “This does make me wonder about your delivery capacity.”  To this I must have shown a look of confusion and so he added, “Delivery capacity is what this work is all about.  I didn’t come to this absurd place just to play games with Yahoos.”  So, I thought, the editor was right.  “I came here to transform lives and institutions.”  He gestured to take in his plush surroundings, perhaps to indicate this was one of the institutions he was engaged in transforming or perhaps to indicate that he was planning to redecorate.  “And so when I want you to work with me, you note I did not say ‘for me,’ I will expect you to deliver.” 

From that I did in fact react, “Did I hear that you are offering me a job?  I must admit, to try to be honest here, that I’m a little nervous and maybe I misheard what . . . “ 

He cut me off again with another wave of his hand.  The same one that was holding the Scotch, which caused some of it to splash out onto his desk.  “To be my Director of Community Education.  Actually I think I’ll make you an assistant dean.  That will impress them.  ‘Dean Zimmerman’—how does that sound to you Lloyd?” 

In spite of my leaping excitement, I tried to pretend to be calm.  I smiled back at him, and wanted to seem casual when I said, “It would actually sound better if it were ‘Dean Zazlo,’ since that’s my name.” 

“Zimmerman, Zazlo, what’s the difference?  You’ll still be a dean and I assume that’s what you really care about.  You’re here for a job, correct?  The book aside.”  But before I could get myself mobilized to even begin to appear to contradict him, though I was thrilled by his offer, or thank him, though I couldn’t begin to imagine what the job would actually involve, he said, “Of course you will not have an office.  I have already spoken with my dean of administration about that.  Nor will you have an assigned parking space on campus.”  He noticed my puzzled look, “That’s because I want you out in the community, not wasting your time here with the other deans, a sad lot they are.  It’s all about delivery capacity, and in your case that will occur among the people of this miserable island.  I cannot, as I should, yet tear down this place, and I mean that literally, and rebuild it as a true college in and of the community.”  That was a phrase becoming increasingly familiar to me.  

Again he swept the room with a grand gesture, which this time came to rest behind him on an architectural model that covered the entire surface of his massive conference table.  “That was designed by Paul Rudolph, a friend,” he said, not facing me, “who as you know is the dean of the School of Architecture at Yale, and eventually this will be the shape of the new college here.  It is a brilliant conception and will prove to be the template for other socially-engaged colleges in America and worldwide.  In fact, to signal that, since it will take some years to convince the Neanderthals here to let me build this—notice how the buildings are set in grids, just like the city into which they will effortlessly blend.”  At that I did wonder how that would work on gridless Staten Island, which was more rural than urban, but I did not interject.  

By flailing his arms and gyrating his body he twisted himself back from the cardboard model to face me.  By this I was reminded that he was too short to turn his chair in the conventional way with his feet.  But with no self-consciousness about that or anything he picked up where he had left off, “Yes, I wanted to create a title for you that would express my global aspirations for a new kind of responsive institution.  You were to be Le Directeur Pour L’Éducation Permanent.  There is such a position at the Sorbonne.  Isn’t that an extraordinary concept, those French, to think of education as lifelong, as permanent?  That’s what the title translates to mean.  But you knew that.”  For the first time he smiled and I felt the beginnings of colleagueship, though I was happy not to have to bear that title.  Especially not on Staten island.  Or, for that matter, anywhere.  “And wouldn’t it have been something,” he added, “to have that magnificent title on your business card.”  Actually that’s precisely what I was happy not to have to deal with. 

”Those gavones who live up on that hill,” he pressed on and, though Todt Hill was visible through the expansive window behind him, President Teitelbaum resisted making another gesture, “They didn’t want a college here in the first place.  Any kind of college.  They want to keep control of their children, especially their daughters, to see them confined in marriage and having babies.  They feel threatened by any form of education, particularly a liberal education.  That it will infect the minds of their sons and daughters who might come home asking unanswerable questions about complicated and embarrassing subjects.  Their world would be threatened.”  He paused and then laughed, “And of course they are right. 

“And you can only imagine what they think about me—a big-eared Jew from Iowa.”  He saw the look on my face, misinterpreting its meaning, though he did have protruding wrestler’s ears, which may have explained his blocky body, “Yes they do have people of our faith there.  But not that many here on Staten Island, much less running this college, which is right in their backyard.  I will tell you, as I am about to launch you into their midst, that they will not like who you are either, in spite of your Americanized title.  They came here in the first place to get away from people like us.” 

His tone had changed; it had softened, coming from deeper within him, “And away from black folks as well.  They welcomed them as slaves but when that was ‘unfortunately’ ended,” he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “they wanted to send them back from where they came.  Staten Island, some evidence shows, wished to side with the Confederacy during the Civil War.  Did you know that?  I see you didn’t.  So we are still living with that legacy today.”  

He paused again to take another long swallow of his Scotch and noticing that the glass was now nearly empty, bellowed, “Hattie!  Ice.  More ice!”  In an instant the door to his office popped open and I assumed it was Hattie who appeared with an identical glass filled to the top with ice cubes.  Dr. T poured himself another drink, emptying the bottle of Cutty.  Hattie by then had found another bottle in his lateral file cabinet and placed it on his desk.  He stared at it for a moment as if to think what to do with it and the empty one.  He opened the horizontal desk drawer where one usually keeps pens and scissors and slid the empty bottle, on its side, into it.  I could hear it rolling back and forth as he slid the drawer closed.  The three of us, as if transfixed, silently listened to that hollow rattling sound. 

When the bottle finally came to rest Hattie slipped out and Teitelbaum picked up where he had left off.  “We live today with that history of racism.  And we, by that I mean you and I, we are going to be dealing with that.  We will be confronting it directly.”  He glared at me, adding with considerable emphasis, “I mean all day every day.”  He paused to allow that imperative to sink in, to have its effect on me.  I understood from that why I would have neither an office nor a parking space.  I would be out in the community on the front lines with him.  Though I also knew that he had both an office and a reserved parking space for him right by the entrance to the A Building.  But I did need a job and he certainly was fascinating, not in any way the usual university administrator, and I had learned to deal with issues of race at Queens.  I thus felt ready and qualified to take on his challenge to help build his university in the city.  I even managed to chuckle to myself—I sure have the scars to prove it. 

“So here’s the deal,” he said, snapping me out of my reflections, “You start on Monday and will have that dean’s title.  I know your last Queens College salary and I’ll double that.  I assume you will not be unhappy about that.  But for it I expect you to work day and night because much of what you will be having to do will occur after normal college hours.  Are you all right with this so far?”  I had barely heard anything after the doubling-of-the-salary part, and he took my stunned silence as evidence of agreement.  

“You will be my agent, in and of the community.  Also, my eyes and ears.  I know those Mafioso up in these hills hate me as do many of their ethic ilk who live in those tacky developments all over the island.  But they are nonetheless our community and you have to win them over to our agenda.  An agenda they will not like because I plan to integrate this place.  The face of this campus is going to change.  It already has in the first eighteen months of my presidency.  Walk around.  Talk to people.  You’ll see many black faces.  But that’s just a beginning.  Before I’m done here the fences will have been taken down and the windows broken to allow fresh ideas to blow through.  (I am of course speaking metaphorically.)  And you will be in the vanguard.  Are you understanding me?”  He peered at me with his black eyes with such penetrating intensity that I felt he could see and feel my soul which was aflame.  In spite of all the contradictions and inconsistencies that were only too evident at his college and in the community, he had gotten to me.  It had become more than about a job or the doubled salary.  I couldn’t wait to get stated.  Monday, just four days away, felt like an eternity.  Perhaps the Revolution might still be possible.  And on Staten Island of all the unlikely places! 

“I do not want to see you on campus.  As I said, you will work exclusively in the field.  We will meet monthly at the bar of the Staten Island Rathskeller.  A terrible place but they serve honest drinks.  At those times you will report to me about what you have learned and accomplished.  What you have delivered.”  He smiled broadly at that.  “Do we have a deal?” 

But again, before I could respond that I did have the delivery capacity he was seeking and that we did indeed have a deal, he again slid off his chair.  With his hips he shoved it back and it rolled off the plastic carpet shield, crashing into the conference table, jarring the flimsy architectural model.  He reached forward, brushing aside the newspapers and books, some fell to the floor, and grabbed hold of the old chain.  Holding it gingerly as if it were fragile, he carried it, more he cradled it, and brought it around to the front of the desk where I was seated and stood with it, now extending it toward me like an offering.  He asked, “Do you know what this is?”  I shook my head.  “I wouldn’t think so.  These are leg irons.  This one was actually worn by a slave.  On the passge from Africa.  A man who was brought here as chattel, in chains.  I brought it back with me from Senegal, from Goré Island, which is just off shore from Dakar.  Do you know about Goré?”  I didn’t move.  “From the 15^th to the 19^th centuries, it was the point from which perhaps 20 million African slaves were shipped to the Americas.  Twenty million!  Do you understand the meaning of that number?”  Still I did not move.  I just stared back at him with unwavering eyes.  “Helene and I, my wife, went out to that island and we walked among the ruins.  Incredible.  But one building is still preserved.  It was the place where the men and women were kept before being loaded, in chains like these, onto the ships.  And when that time came they were hauled through a doorway that forever thereafter was known as The Door of No Return because after passing through it there would be no going back.  It is said that not one of those millions even looked back as they were marched to the dock.”  

I thought I saw tears forming in his eyes, but he shook his head to clear them and continued, “And of those that survived, and millions didn’t, some, a few came here.  Right to here.  To this forsaken island.  To work the fields.  There were French Hugonauts and Dutch Patroon settlers here and they were known to be very cruel.  If anyone, any slave escaped and managed to swim across the Kill Van Kull to what is now New Jersey, they would track them down, every last one of them, and force them to return.  Punishing them so severely that many died from the lashings.” 

He moved closer to me and raised the leg irons so that they were now in our mutual line of sight.  I looked at them and tried to imagine what it had been like to be shackled.  “And,” Teitelbaum continued, “some of those slaves who survived have great-grandchildren living here.  On Staten Island.  Many on Jersey Street, as you will come to know.  But before I send you on your way I want you to do one thing.” 

“Anything,” I replied.  He owned me now in more than a few ways. 

“Put these on.”  He pressed the leg irons into my hands. 

“What?” I cried and jumped back away from him as if seared. 

“You need to know what they experienced before you go to work among them.” 

“But you said,” I stammered, “that I would be working with their descendents.  I’m not sure I want to do this.”  Saying this to him felt like a betrayal and a risk.  I feared he would be so disappointed in me that he would retract his offer.

Thankfully, he didn’t and said, “So you are not ready for this.  I understand.  I really do,” he withdrew the leg irons, “You have much to achieve.  Much more to become.  I knew that when I read your letter.  And yet I invited you here.  I can be patient.  But, I warn you, not very.  There is work to be done and you need to get right to it.” 

And with that he trotted over to a sofa that loomed behind his conference table, threw himself onto it.  And, I could not believe my eyes, he clamped the leg irons around his own ankles. 

Thus shackled, he struggled to pull himself up from the deep cushions.  With considerable effort he managed to, and began to shuffle back toward where I remained seated.  Because he had such short legs one might have imagined he would have been able to make good progress, but he was clearly having difficulty propelling himself forward.  The chain clanked dully with each stumbling step.   I wondered that maybe all the Scotch was also having an effect on his balance.  But hobbling, with what can only be described as an ecstatic look on his face, he finally reached me and, with his hands on his hips and out of breath he said, grinning, “You see it is possible.  Perhaps it will be for you next time.”

I said to him, “Perhaps.”  And to myself, I hope this works out. 

“First thing,” he said, back to business, “is that fucking Italian Festival.  Those illiterates at the Staten Island Advance are calling it the Backlash Festival, claiming I’m organizing it to only to pander to the Italian community—you know, we’ll sell zeppolis and meatballs on campus and that will make up for bringing in the ‘Niggers’ and the ‘Spics.’”  Even though Teitelbaum again formed quotation marks in the air, I thought this was beginning to sound entirely too much like Joe Murphy, my ex-policeman boss at Queens College.  I was having second thoughts about my decision, such as it was. 

“Well let them wait to see what we are going to do here.  In fact, what you do here because I’m putting you in charge of it.  The festival.”    

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I managed to say, “I’ve never done anything like that before.  I mean run a festival.” 

“You’ll be fine.  Everything is planned.  Yes, we will have sausages and peppers to make them happy, but we’re also borrowing furniture from Bloomingdales and will exhibit examples of the latest Milanese designs; and my wife, who is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has arranged for the loan of a dozen Italian Renaissance paintings and drawings.”  I was stunned but he remained matter-of-fact, as if for him this was all in a day’s work, and said that there would be no Titians, of course, just works of lesser figures.  “We have to insure them and have 24-hour security, but to the people from this island they’ll all look like real masterpieces.”  He chuckled ironically, “They’ll talk about it for years.”

“So what is there for me to do?”

“Hand holding.”

“What?” 

“The Italian Club . . .” 

“The what?” 

“The Italian Club of Staten Island.  They’ve been around forever and are a joke; but, incredibly, they wield a lot of power on the island.  The president, a real buffoon, is Al Moroni, the former borough president.  He led the fight against the Port Authority to stop the Verrazano Bridge from being built.  He didn’t want all those people from Brooklyn moving over here.  I’ve arranged for the college to have an ex officio seat on the Club’s board, and I am assigning it to you.” 

“Really?  After what you just said about ‘them’ not liking ‘our kind’ shouldn’t you name an Italian?”  I made my own version of quotation marks with my hands.  “There must be some on your faculty.” 

“No.  I mean there are.  Of course.  This is Staten Island after all.  But to tell you the truth I don’t trust them.  That’s why you will do it.  You will gain their confidence and represent the real interests of the college.  Diplomatically of course.  And you will tell me everything you learn about them and what they are up to.  At our lunches.”

“Well . . . “ 

“Remember—it’s all about delivery capacity.”  He was grinning. 

And I thought, At least I have a job.