Sergei was horrified, but at the same time content in knowing that something like this would so enrage Nicky that out of it all would come infinitely more harm to Murray Olongapo. Nicky was a real bastard when his dander was up. Nicky walked up to Sergei and Ronette at that very moment, which was convenient enough.

Nicky's full name was Nicholas Chiaroscuro, but his childhood friends quickly shortened that to Nicky Chiaroscuro, which over time -- due to his unfortunate middle-school height -- became Little Nicky Chiaroscuro or Little Nicky C, and now, more often that not, was simply Little Nicky. He was, with Jeannie Currie, in charge of opposition research and the planning of most of the events, festival appearances, parade walks, games of fake impromptu beach football, visits to elementary schools -- never junior highs; at junior highs those little cynics will eat a candidate alive and lick his bones with their forked, sandpapery tongues -- and senior-citizen beauty pageant judgings, like the one recently won by the lascivious Lorna Wellington, who gyrated like a toy dog in heat through every part of the contest, including the citizenship speech. Little Nicky was a real bastard because he actually was a bastard. If he ever met the prick who fathered him, he'd beat him like a punk. His mother was a saint.

Nicky was like an athlete who only plays well when behind and humiliated. Months ago, after Ronette had revealed that in college Stuart had written an admiring letter to Manuel Noriega, Nicky had befriended the photo editor at the La Jolla Standard Weekly, and thereafter every photo printed of Olongapo featured him sleeping, in mid-yawn, standing next to an unfortunate street sign or building -- Old Boar Ave, the Hall of Ancients -- or, at parties and fairs, next to a clown, dancing penguin or, on two occasions, Mr. Peanut. The power of photo editors was so seldom appreciated. Nicky had once paid $25,000 for a photographer to wait -- and wait he did -- for a shot of Robert Byrd with his eyes closed at an MLK memorial. The poor man had only blinked, but the world figured he was asleep, and the damage was done.

Nicky had earned his stripes in the party a decade earlier, when as a high school senior, he'd planned and carried out the Night Without Dreams. The year was 1992, the setting Jersey City. With the Republican candidate for city council down 10 points the night before the election, Nicky, with a team of malcontents in a minivan, had made sure the residents of North Jersey woke up with a fuzzy but unshakable antipathy for the Democrats, given that Nicky's team had spent the wee hours barking the Democrats' slogans from loudspeakers attached to the van's roof. "Vote for us Democrats! That's right, us, the Democrats!" they said. This they did from 2:30 a.m. to 5 a.m. "It's a bright new day, New Jersey! Not yet, of course, but in a few hours, when you wake up, it will be! Sleep tight and thank us, the Democrats!"

Now, Nicky was clearly enraged. Bennett was a hero of Nicky's -- his cherubic face was tattooed on Nicky's ankle -- and Sergei felt like something good would happen soon.

Ronette sailed back to her corner.

"We need something big," Sergei said, with venom and heat, "and we have to start with something to take the shine off that godforsaken demon-blimp."

Jeannie One looked at Jeannie Two; neither had the energy to care or act. Dmitri was devoid of inspiration, while Nicky was shot through with it. He whispered a directive to Dmitri, which was immediately obeyed.

Dmitri jogged down the bleachers, tripped on the last one, and landed on his face in the grass. He rose again, half of an ice cream sandwich stuck to his cheek. He saddled Jeannie One's scooter and was gone, across the fairgrounds and toward the highway.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"My balloon's too big."

"Can I get mine smaller?"

All day they'd hoped to attract kids, without luck, and now were swamped. At the booth, Jeannie Two and the U.C.-Riverside volunteers were losing their minds.

A boy of 6 wanted a smaller balloon.

Jeannie made another balloon, this one smaller. The boy cried.

His sister spoke for him: "He wants the same balloon, but smaller."

Jeannie took the balloon and began working on untying the knot. She let out some air, shrinking the balloon, tied it again and returned it to the child. He left without a thank you. He was replaced by a boy of 8 with the voice of a flute.

"Can I get mine made into a donkey?"

Jeannie explained, gently, gently -- for she could see the boy's chin begin to quiver -- that she didn't know how to make balloon animals. The boy wailed. Jeannie explained that even if she did know how, their balloons were not the correct kind for balloon-animal-making. The boy bleated. She promised to try, and this quelled the squall momentarily.

Jeannie stretched a balloon, tied it, turned it into itself and it popped. The boy cried again.

She tried once more, twisting and tying, all the while watching across the fairgrounds as the Olongapo balloon-makers busily added blue to the park, unabated and uninterrupted. Ten minutes had passed with this boy, a period in which she might have blown and tied a hundred standard, non-donkey balloons. She smiled with gentle, gentle fury at the boy and when she was finished, his creation was not quite a donkey, but was indeed something new, was clear evidence of great effort and goodwill. The boy took it, placed it between his knees, extinguished it with a muffled pop, and walked away.

"I want a meerkat," said the next girl.

"I want a meerkat kissing a capybara," said the next.

"I want a truck," said a third. This child had the face of a very young Gene Wilder, and Jeannie almost punched it, wanted to pop his head like a grape.

From the pressure and the helium, Jeannie fainted. When she came to, she saw Ronette at the Olongapo booth, giving hugs and then high fives to the very same children who'd tortured the Jeannies with their requests. They were spies! The treachery!

At that moment, Dmitri arrived on the scooter. He was clearly thrilled with himself. Under his arm was a large black piece of rubber, resembling a fragment of a truck tire, or a chunk of whale blubber. He unmounted the scooter and straightened his back.

"You get that off the highway or -- ?" Sergei asked.

"Watch," Nicky said, and took what looked like a very small uncircumcised penis, the color of lead, out of the heap of rubber, and put it into his mouth and began blowing. It grew and grew. Midway through, with the object taking shape, spherically, Nicky took a rest and handed the task to Jeannie Two. She blew until blue and handed the finishing blows to the aging but spry Missy and Nancy, who brought it to fullness and, when done and spent, insisted that a picture be taken, the two of them next to the now-colossal rubber ball. Thirsty, they gulped some of the refreshing milk they'd brought, leaving it all over their mouths and chins. They smiled and the camera clicked.

"Ah, that's the money shot," Nicky said.

Nicky placed Craspedacusta stickers all over the sphere.

"It's like a concert, right? This will dominate! Everyone will want to touch the ball and bat it around. You know how at a concert or hockey game or whatever, you have these beach balls flying everywhere and suddenly it's all anyone cares about? Like they ignore the show because the beach ball's so crazy fun?"

Jeannie Two nodded slowly, though she was skeptical, and actually hated with great passion the notion that what a concert needed was a beach ball batted around. It brought to mind kittens or Latvians -- both willing to punch anything put in front of them. Meanwhile, Dmitri and Sergei were trying to connect the idea of a beach ball -- light, colorful, merry -- with Nicky's sphere, which was black, almost 5 feet high and given its rubber makeup, weighed easily 50 pounds. "It looks like a giant medicine ball," Jeannie Two observed, and she was correct.

Nicky was impatient to show people how much fun could be had. "Watch," he said, as he hefted the balloon, with a heroic exhalation, over his head and launched it into the crowd. Carried on a Pacific gust, it climbed about 18 feet, slowly but determinedly, up and up over the fair's ticket booth and the line extending from it, up and up some more, pirouetting at its apex, blocking out the sun for what seemed like minutes, and then fell like a conductor's hand and flattened a family of six. There were screams from the proximity, and then a moment when the family's feet were all that was visible under the great round monolith. Dmitri suppressed a laugh, while dozens of onlookers raced toward the crushed fair-goers and together removed the ball, lifting it over their heads, at which point another gust took it 30 yards south, into the beer garden, where it mowed down four city councilmen and Karch Kiraly.

"Jesus, what's Karch Kiraly doing here?" Sergei asked.

"I think the balloon might be too heavy," Nicky said.

The councilmen and Kiraly extricated themselves from the weight of the ball, at which point Kiraly, frustrated yet agile, booted the ball and could only watch, helpless, as it careened downhill, too much like a bowling ball for anyone to make that comparison in good conscience, leveling revelers and innocents alike, a few of them becoming briefly attached to the rubber hide and swinging upward and around as the ball picked up speed and eventually came to rest, like a giant racquetball, against an obelisk honoring Stuart's great-many-times-over-grandfather Miguel. "Damn," Nicky said. "Sorry."

Sergei and the other volunteers looked at him, too stunned and frankly full of wonder to scold him, and then, as one, the entire Craspedacusta campaign rose their heads to look at the source of their troubles and strivings. That blimp, still there, still self-satisfied and slow and embodying all Earthly evil, had to be destroyed.

Episode 3: "Here we take over," said Sergei. "Here we end this thing. Here we win."

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