Mitchell was hunched over his desk nursing a maté and scowling at a photograph of his avowed enemy the honorable mayor, Baldwin Shergar III. Mitchell knew quite a lot about Shergar. He’d read memos from him, studied critical and rapturous coverage about his project to remake the city. The mayor was a political celebrity and essentially Mitchell’s boss, yet Mitchell had never spoken directly to him. The llama often glimpsed the mayor’s comings and goings in the Hall, a specter flanked by security dogs. He knew the mayor but felt sure he was a nobody to the horse. This was how the llama wanted it. Know your enemy and be invisible. Mitchell recalled Sun Shih Tzu. “O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible, and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our paws,” Mitchell hummed.

Before him on the desk was the horse’s long face in a flattering magazine photo spread. The llama hated this horse with all his being, not for who the mayor was—all right, that too—but for what he was doing to the city. Mitchell began to read.

THE MAYOR GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS

By Honey Pongo

It doesn’t matter if he’s just come from a marathon meeting with charter school leaders or from a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a wastewater treatment center: Baldwin Shergar III is one of those horses who appears always freshly groomed. In any encounter with the mayor, you’re confronted with a tall, glossy stallion in a uniform of pinstripes and silk tie. His greetings are forceful and clipped. This is a horse on a mission.

“Sure, if the mission is trampling over us,” Mitchell grumbled. Shergar wanted to be mayor so he could tell the inhabitants of the largest city in the country to stand up straight, pay their debts, and hustle like their lives depended on it. He wanted to be mayor so he could strip away the social contract and implement a Horse and Sparrows financial structure: feed everything good to the few, and convince everyone else that sifting through whatever plopped out at the tail end could sustain them. What did this lead to but a few obese creatures and a lot of shit? Mitchell snorted again and kept reading.

As is well documented, Shergar is one of the richest animals in the world. This is a fact he both wears on his finely tailored sleeve and downplays in conversation. He’s not afraid to laugh loud or swear when he’s feeling passionate. He has a common touch.

He was born into a prominent family, but in order to push their son onto his own path, Shergar’s parents left their son only a minuscule inheritance. This mix of privileged upbringing and financial restraint uniquely prepared our mayor for the dualities of running New York, a city of great wealth and poverty.