Presidential master bedroom. Wearing his soft beige pajamas, President Lieden studied the full length portrait of Hubert Humphrey, "An honorable man," and then turned to the Mondale portrait opposite. A small seated Chick Raney portrait occupied the President's night stand. Other artworks: A painting of Thor by some Norwegian 19th century painter, a painting of Siegfried's body on fire, and a postcard from Dallas, Texas, postmarked November 23, 1963. Addressed to "Lynnes," it says "Someone caught this on film. You'll see I did a good job."
Dr. Lieden enters, wearing her usual nightgown, silk and creamy fabrics from Uzbekistan, China, and Thailand. She owns factories in those three countries, pays the workers eight cents a day, forces them to live in barracks near their jobs, sometimes they're required to sleep at their stations. Unlike the view of the celebrity who blurted that Dr. Lieden is a real doctor, like a surgeon, Amanda Lieden is not a "real" doctor, but she has a Ph.D. in sociology, big whup. But that's the key, her interest in sociology. She's a molder of society. Using her husband's sometimes badly controlled power, guided often by others working the "Liedenbot," not that he was yet a robot.
President Lieden: Do you ever feel like you have hair on your tongue?
Dr. Lieden: What kind of hair, darling?
President Lieden: A thick, gray, ugly hair, a pelt! A beaver growing in my mouth!
Dr. Lieden: Go to bed, honey.
President Lieden: I loved you once. (Gets into bed), We used to have fun at bedtime! Where's the jubilant Mandy of yore? Let me lick my beaver off on you!
Dr. Lieden: I'm tired, honey.
President Lieden: And you have a headache too, I'll bet!
Dr. Lieden: Stop shouting!
President Lieden: Woman! Thou art mine!
Two secret servicemen respond to the button push by Dr. Lieden. One of the guards has a syringe.
Two hours later, President Lieden wakes in a dark room lit by a widescreen TV showing the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where they meet the Elf dignitary Galadriel.
Lieden: Beautiful. Say, (he says to the Secret Service man sitting nearby, reading a magazine) who is that woman?
Guard: Galadriel. Cate Blanchett plays her. It's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I prefer the books.
Lieden: As president I can meet this Galadriel.
Guard: You could meet Cate Blanchett, she's real. Galadriel is an imaginary character.
Lieden: Do you remember when Michael Jackson was in the news all the time for being a weirdo?
Guard: I remember that.
Lieden: What they ignored was the guy's sheer raw talent. Watch him in the Jackson 5. A confident, half-pint front man and those backup singers, his brothers, are good, too. Any one of em could host their own one hour variety TV show, remember those? Carol Burnett, Dean Martin? Am I losing you? The references are spoken by an old man who happens to be the president? Why do you keep looking at me? What is your name?
Guard: Steiner.
Lieden: Clint Steiner.
Guard: Bill Steiner.
Lieden: Where you from?
Guard: Chicago.
Lieden: Great city. You know, I narrowly lost in Illinois in the oh-eight primary. That one stung, I think about that loss more than I do my wins.
Door opens, Dr. Lieden enters wearing street clothes, including a mink stole dyed pale green. She wears green sunglasses. She's been partying, enjoying two hours away from her burden, Morris Lieden.
Lieden: There's my little buttercup!
Dr. Lieden: Do you feel better? The thoughts not crashing in your head?
Lieden: Sit on my lap. Damn you feel good. Bill, this woman of mine feels good. Do you have a woman, Bill?
Guard: I have women.
Lieden: Oh-ho, a stud! Honey, Bill's a stud! I bet you're a good shot, too. Let me see your gun!
Guard moves aside his trench coat. A large caliber handgun in a polished brown leather shoulder harness.
Dr. Lieden: My, that's an attractive harness.
Lieden: Let me hold that gun!
Guard: No, sir.
Lieden: You have to obey me!
Guard: Not always.
Lieden: I am your Commander-in-Chief!
Guard: No you're not. You're Commander-in-Chief of the military--
Lieden: Space Force!
Guard: I work for the Secretary of the Treasury, Diane Mink Yerginovsky.
Lieden: Who works for me.
Guard: You got me there, but I'm not handing over my gun to you because you're not in your right mind just yet. You had an incident, you were out for two hours, you're not stable right now, no gun for you.
Lieden: You're fired.
Guard doesn't argue, nods at Dr. Lieden, leaves.
Lieden: I liked him. I shouldn't have fired him. Did I fire him?
Dr. Lieden: You fired him.
Lieden: Call him back. Close off the White House! Bring that man Bill to me! I'm going to offer him a better-paying job.
Dr. Lieden: Cathy caught him at the first floor elevator. She's escorting him here.
Lieden: Cathy will keep him glued. She has strands of red in her light brown hair, a copper foil sheen. I'll have a word with her when she arrives.
Dr. Lieden: Which job will you offer the Secret Service Man?
Lieden: I'll plug him into a department where his skill set will benefit said department. I'm excited to see Cathy.
Dr. Lieden: Keep it down. Here they are. Bill Steiner!
Lieden: Cathy Bistro!
Cathy: Bechaud, Mr. President.
Lieden: Come here, let me look at you! Ah yes, prettiest hair in Ireland. Are you an Irish princess? A.D. 470? Is that your time period? Did you time travel from some Irish court, an aristocrat out of her own time, to 2022, yes, Cathy Bistro, that's the year, 2022. Look around. What's that? That's a computer! And that? That's a knickknack, I don't recognize the character. And this, a potted plant. Plants inside people's work spaces! Harvey Weinstein, donor to the Democratic Party, great guy, he had a use for a potted plant, remind me to show you what he did sometime--
Dr. Lieden: Moe!
Lieden: I'm supposed to call the President of Ukraine, the Winston Churchill of the twenty-first century, believe it.
Dr. Lieden: Artie Sneffen made that call, dear.
Lieden: Not fair!
Dr. Lieden: President Zelensky has a war to fight.
Lieden: A righteous war. I wonder if we can get the people believing it's a holy war, that the Russians are like a religion we hate, something antithetical to our moral foundation, the bedrock of Judaeo-Christian-and, okay-Islamic values.
Bill Steiner: You wanted to see me, Mr. President?
Lieden: Hi, yeah! Bill! Man of the hour! That's a great idea. The man of the hour, the woman of the hour awards, twenty-four seven! Any given time a consumer can tune in to find out who the man of the hour is, let's say it's you, Bill! For that hour people look you up on Google. People want to know Bill Steiner. Who is he? Does he know Cate Blanchett?
Bill Steiner: I don't. You haven't said why you called me in here.
Lieden: I understand you're unemployed.
Bill Steiner: Since I was last in this room.
Lieden: I had something to do with that. Well now we're offering you a job. How would you like to be my unofficial advisor, salary nine-hundred thousand a year, insurance, yes, dental, even dental! Refuse and leave my sight. Accept and join the quest.
Bill Steiner: My first advice is to get a handle on Secretary Sneffen. He seeks to undermine you in favor of Vice President Parris.
Lieden: I've heard it.
Steiner: You better do something about it. Confront Parris. She'll fold like a lousy hand with no confidence behind it.
Lieden: Yes, poker.
Steiner: I'll bring her to you tomorrow at noon. Be ready to confront her with evidence of her guilt in seeking to undermine you, to coup you.
Lieden: Do I have evidence of that?
Steiner: I'll find some. It may not be good, but shock is our best weapon.
Lieden: Shock and awe.
Steiner: Something pertaining to Vice President Parris's predilection for dining with members of the Progressive Caucus. Her frequent meetings with the Blades. She's coup-ing you as we speak.
Lieden: That lousy coup!
Steiner: I'll twist off the nuts of this conspiracy against you, you give me ten million dollars, you'll never see me again, or you let me in on every decision you make.
Lieden: You have beautiful blue eyes, Bill. How can I say no to those blue eyes?
Steiner: You can't. No one ever has. Dr. Lieden. I've been signed on as the president's newest advisor. My first advice, get this man to bed, give him his nightly dose of Strawberry Quik, he has a speech to give to the Boy Scouts tomorrow at eleven. At noon, he's having a meeting with Vice President Parris and myself-
Dr. Lieden: With you? Who's getting big for his britches?
Steiner: I've been cleared to do this work.
Dr. Lieden: I didn't hear about it.
Steiner: The thought chip appears to be working. He thought it was his idea to fire me, and then to have me come back, but no, I tongued letters of the words I wanted to pass into his thought chip--workable up to 35 yards--and sure enough, he followed my tonguing.
Dr. Lieden: When did you implant a thought chip?
Steiner: I didn't implant it. Dracula Deadface stuck it in him the last time he was in the Oval Office, after testifying before the Big Tech Congressional Committee.
Lieden: Does this mean I can't pee without splashing it on the floor?
Steiner: As far as I know, no.
Lieden: Bill, Billy me lad, will you be there in the Oval Office with me? When we have the meet and greet with Dinah?
Steiner: I can't miss it.
Lieden: The thing I like about Dinah is her hair...
Oval Office. Heightened expectancy. Shifting of buttocks, Dinah Parris's, Artie Sneffen's (he hopped along to protect Dinah's interests, acting like a union rep), Steiner, the president, Dr. Lieden, and Billy Boy Blade, who smiled his way into the meeting.
Lieden: I'm calling this meeting to order. I'm glad you've all come. We have a mystery to solve. A million dollar mystery. A big wazoo of a problem for me, little Moe Lieden! What have I done to deserve ingratitude! I picked you, Parris, because you're Black and you're a woman! If that's racist I'll eat my hat--don't wear a hat, why? cuz I ate em all! Back to your betrayal!
Parris: My betrayal?
Lieden: You are a traitress! A monster! An aberration! Plotting against me, your boss, your political savior, your mentor, your appreciator of your beautiful hair! We still have time to dance, never forget that, Dinah. You have allied with smart political players, the Blades--
Billy Boy Blade: Right here.
Lieden: The Sneffens!
Sneffen: There's only one of me (titters).
Lieden: What I wouldn't give for a Big Mac right now. Why did we make this meeting for noon, Bill? Everybody meet Bill? He's the new kid on the block. He's the rookie. He's the one who gets my coffee. He'll introduce me to his friends, I hope. Got any young lady friends, Bill?
Billy Boy Blade: I'm here to speak for Dinah Parris, America's first African-American Vice President, and a female to boot.
Parris: Thank you, Mr. President (smiles at Blade)
Lieden: Hey, we've got two presidents in the same room, time to celebrate! Champagne? Finger foods?
Billy Boy Blade: Mr. President, distinguished attendants of this historic meeting--my people are recording it. People, we have a problem. The president here ain't popular. Hee no likelee to ween eelecshone! (speaking suddenly like a stereotyped Latino). Dinah Parris waits in the wings, the understudy to Moe Lieden's Bette Davis.
Dr. Lieden: Dinah, tell us you're not on board with this!
Parris: Honestly (standing, pacing about the room like Hercule Poirot), I'm looking out for myself. I learned something important from your husband, Amanda. Take advantage when your opponent is fumbling around, trying to get it straight. This is my time. Morris Lieden, you have disappointed your country, you must step down, retire, write a book, reemerge in two years, heck, you'll be more popular than I'll be! Retire and then there will be peace in the White House. Hold on to your job and wait for hell's fountains to scorch your forces with all resistance committed to the fulfillment of Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos's edicts, his rules, if you will, for humanity in the coming age.
(giggles)
Parris: Just kidding! Who here is in for a little Lovecraft! My favorite bedtime reading!
Blade: Dinah, we see how you're elevated in mood, it's understandable why. Get with it, though, demand Moe's resignation.
Parris: Resign! (standing over him, peering at him, spittle hitting his cheek) Resign!!!
Lieden: Remember when we played in the sandbox on 14th Avenue and Chucky Mengler ate so much sand--I'm not here. Fascinating thought: it's Tuesday the 14th, somewhere in Cookie Land, the kind of cookie with pot in it, you know the kind, a little bwownie. Hanging out with Elkins, that mooch. Always borrowing my stuff, my comic books, my Weird Tales issues, my Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos Fan Club pin, member number 36. Creature from the Black Lagoon, I loved that one. Monster of the swamp looking at pretty girl in a one piece, swimming at the surface, doesn't know a voyeur swamp demon watches from below, watches her pretty hair, the hair.
Lieden (sitting now on Dr. Biden's lap): Remember green Septembers and endless jugs of homemade wine, bitterest drink I ever done had, made the tongue and the roof of the mouth stick together. Do you want that sensation? Then don't drink that wine. Good memory though. Julia Adams, that was the actress in the one-piece watched by a creature. Esther Williams, water actress, say I like those water actresses. I say we put on a Busby Berkley type show, thirty-nine expert swimmers, America wants to see water ballet!
Parris: America wants to see the first Black woman president, it's that simple. Who can argue with the nobleness of that cause.
Lieden: In identity politics I agree with you, in old man language it's horseshit! You're not qualified to be president because you have a vagina. You're not qualified because you're Black! You're qualified because you were the best damned prosecutor in San Francisco's history, and the best goddamned attorney general in California's history. I want more from you! I want to expand your portfolio to bulging size. Can you withstand a bulged portfolio?
Parris: I can withstand it.
Lieden: Good. I'm lending you my guy, Bill Steiner for a little while. He's my new advisor, he'll advise you for a bit.
Sneffen: Every day something outrageous happens in this office. You, Mr. President, accuse Dinah here of plotting to overthrow you before twenty-four. We see no evidence.
Lieden: Bill? Ready?
Steiner: Ready, Mr. President.
Lights go down to emergency floor lights, a square picture forms on the wall next to the FDR portrait. It's a woman on a bed. She's wearing Vice President Parris's blue outfit, same white blouse. A naked pale man on his knees pumps his hips, reaches out, pulls on her hair. Billy Boy Blade riding high.
Lights come on.
Lieden: Looks to me like there's no more questions.
Blade (sotto voce with Lieden as the others mill about and talk while Parris sits alone) You have the Vice President's office under surveillance?
Lieden: What gives you that idea?
Blade: That film. It was made today! How long have you surveilled Dinah Parris?
Lieden: How long has she been in that office? But we've had a team on her since she started to sniff out the dog's anus that is the ambition to be president.
Blade: No anus ever smelled as sweet.
Lieden: And women find you charming. I can sleep peacefully tonight. Dinah Parris is no longer a problem. I've spent many a late night theorizing about what to do about Dinah. Send her on lots of trips and give her conflicting information about the purposes of her visits? Have her speak at a school opening where she plays T Ball and lectures about what a great country America is, it is, isn't it?
Blade: Without question.
Lieden: What I enjoy is how we're still in Dinah's office but she doesn't have the stones to tell us to leave so she can get some work done. Hey Dinah! Honey, come here! Uncle Moe has a little advice for you now that you're no longer dangerous to me. Keep it that way. As long as I'm alive, you're nothing! Nothing! Apologize, and go away from me.
Dr. Lieden: Honey, I think you need to lie down.
Dinah Parris: He can take the couch, it's very comfortable. I'll look after him, Dr. Lieden. He needs to rest. I've got hours of work to do on my desk, paperwork, can you believe it? I'm the second most powerful woman in the free world and I got paperwork! Damn, someone give me a Clark Bar!
Blade: Dinah, come here, I'll give you my famous neck rub.
Parris: Starts at the neck, ends with the butt?
Blade: Oh, what a thought.
Lieden sees Blade taking his clothes off, doesn't process the fact of it. White, hairy, fat Billy Boy Blade was never a star of handsomeness, but he'd been at least slimmer in the past. Cassandra became attracted to his wit, his confidence, his sudden seduction, for Cassandra Hartliss was a horny Republican chick.
Blade sits next to Parris, Sneffen nearby. Sneffen comes over to whisper into Lieden's ear.
Sneffen: Shall I call security?
Lieden: Why?
Sneffen: There's a naked man in Vice President Parris's office.
Lieden: As we've seen, not the first. Come to think of it, the same guy. You're that guy! Now you're naked!
Blade: I was feeling restricted in my clothes. I'm going to the Caribbean next Monday. Clothes optional where I'm staying.
Cassandra Hartliss Blade enters, stops, sees her naked husband.
Cassandra Blade: What in the world!?
Lieden: Join the fun.
Billy Boy Blade: Cassie, I got stabbed by the heat monsters again.
Cassandra: Oh, did you put ice on your forehead?
Billy: No.
Cassandra: I'll get it for you. What's going on? Dinah, what are you doing sitting next to my nude husband?
Dinah (stands up and goes to Cassandra): I promise I had nothing to do with why he's naked.
Sneffen: This time.
Cassandra: What's "this time?" Artie? Dinah? Buck naked Billy Boy?
Sneffen: Tell her, Dinah, the sooner the storm the better.
Cassandra: Storm?
Dinah: We've been outplayed.
Cassandra: NO!
Dinah: The president's iron will to stay in office cannot be broken.
Cassandra: You said we could do this without blackmail!
Dinah: I'm going to work with the President, for the sake of the American people. The flag will salute our efforts to improve America. As Americans, we will move forward into a bright new future.
Cassandra: America winning times infinity.
Dinah: Sweet land of liberty.
Cassandra: What the fuck does Lieden have on you?
Dinah: Nothing.
Cassandra: You're gonna fold your good hand for no reason? We taught you better than that!
Blade, cooled off, begins to dress slowly, moving about the room, bumping into things and people, bumping into the Vice President three times.
Lieden: When I sunk my feet into the mud of the Marne I knew the meaning of the word squelch. But also a dial in audio electronics. Squelch dissent. I created a branch of the FBI called the Squelchers of Dissent, SOD. They go after YouTube channels publishing content deemed unacceptable to Dracula Deadface and Gil Bates and other opinion-shapers in our anti-heterodox society. You like that word, anti-heterodox?
Blade (stepping into a pant leg, his penis hangs through his jockey shorts, extending down his leg for several inches, a shower not a grower.) Moe, once you've gone beyond the pale you'll be looked after with the utmost care but you will be forgotten. I will be president again, and so will my wife. (Tucks in his shirt). And Parris, too, will be president, but you'll be in a different universe.
Lieden: A place of miracles.
Blade: And, something tells me, traps.
Roy Holroyd's office in the E Ring of the Pentagon. He has a large black and white painting based on a photograph of Donald Rumsfeld's head and shoulders, looking seriously into the camera. A commanding vision, the rimless glasses lending a hint of the man's relentless nature in the pursuit of profits through making war.
General Bomb sits in the one chair before the cheap Army surplus desk from maybe 1961. Holroyd has a framed photo, signed by the actress, of young Tuesday Weld on his desk.
Holroyd: Gratitude for the peach preserves your Molly sent my Jane.
General Bomb: The women like to keep their interests fed by such activities we men joke about.
Holroyd: Like how they say "excuse me" all time? "I'm sorry," I hear that every day. Just about to walk into someone but you dodge but she says "I'm sorry," spoils the ballet.
General Bomb: Your time infiltrating the Yippies led you to possess a Hippy vibe, Roy.
Holroyd: Damage me not with such accusations. I hate the dirty breed. Actually, I had sixteen liaisons with Hippies during 1968 and 1969. Some of them smelled good.
General Bomb: Now these hippies run defense industries, work the Wall Street racket, do the legal marijuana thing, they're success stories, these capitalist hippies.
Holroyd: These Jerry and Benjamins--what do you think of giving Ukraine nuclear weapons?
General Bomb: Not a good thing to do, if we want to avoid possible full scale war. My choice is to keep the weapons spigot open. Give, give, push in the barrels, the triggers, the ammo, the grenade launchers, the tanks, the death machines squirting a bioweapon that looks like chocolate sauce over the populace, over the crops, no more food--
Holroyd: No more problem
General Bomb: Did you see General Best popping off in his pants?
Holroyd: He's our teenager for war.
General Bomb: I'm giving him command of East 1 Hyper-Security Hemisphere. He'll be well-positioned to blow another load when we finally invade all of Eurasia in the biggest land attack ever.
Holroyd: Operation Guaranteed Success.
General Bomb: Is it?
Holroyd: Is it what?
General Bomb: A guaranteed success?
Holroyd: You drafted the plan with your Chiefs!
General Bomb: We got together one night at General Best's house, watched porn, ate pizza, drank lots of the cheapest shit beers, and at two in the morning, all of us naked, we spread out some papers and pencils and started coming up with ideas. By six we were tired, but ready to party again.
President Bongo had pretzels and beer with an African-American college professor and the policeman who arrested him while trying to get into his own apartment. The Kafkaesque drama continued in Act Two, when Bongo sat far away from the cams at a metal table with the aggrieved professor and the cop who ruined the academic's day.
Bongo could be seen eating pretzels. He drank two beers. The professor had two. The cop had four. The president ate the most pretzels by far. It looked like he was playing a kid in a sitcom. The adult conversation is the focus, but the little kid eating in a cute way steals the viewers' attentions. Look at the little president eat!
The cop, it turns out, recorded with a tiny device in his shirt the entire conversation, the Pretzel Race Bring Your Own Beer Summit. He sold it to Ambiguous Magazine, a hard to pin down in terms of theme magazine. Ambiguous didn't know the inexorable approach of the Bongo Machine, the legal and media apparatus heading his way, but the cop got the recording out. Want to hear it?
Bongo: (crunch of pretzel) It's nourishing to my soul, and I speak for my wife, America's First Lady Gabby Bongo, that you two, policeman, and professor, come together to share...bar food, not sit down for a nice dinner like the civilized folks. I think it's funny the news media thinks this is actually something.
Professor Kohl: It never occurred to you that I might not want to see again the same cop who arrested me unjustly?
Bongo: A man talented at bringing people together, like Maury Povich I am not, never claimed to be. How's it hanging, Officer?
The Officer: I was able to arrest the scholar but I couldn't arrest you.
Bongo: I'm above your pay grade, is that what you mean?
The Officer: Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos be with you as of right now. What's that? Yes, I have a wife and two children.
Professor: A family man.
The Officer: Tyvip frebu ss t'oitjett snu'uu.
Bongo: Wind gusts! The wind obscures your words, Officer. I thought you were speaking a dialect of neo-Chaosma.
The Officer: Shoooo.
Bongo: Welcome to our world, traveler of the night passage.
Professor: What are you two talking about?
The Officer: Meet me under the table, both of you.
Bongo: Why are we down here?
The Officer: A distraction. Gives the fireflies something to illuminate, something to wonder about. Wastes their time, see?
Bongo: Brilliant. You seem a clever man.
The Officer: I'm trained by more than the police.
Bongo: I don't know why I'm saying this but I'm looking to be led by a nightmare from a noisome elder past when outer space monsters came to rest on our earth, sleeping and maybe coming back to life in our time, oh read the damn books! Howard Phillips Lovecraft! Lived in Providence, big jaw, wrote of ancient gods before Zeus and Neptune and those guys. Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos.
The Officer: Owns you now.
Bongo: I'm game.
Steiner's apartment bedroom. He sits on the edge of his bed, polishing his gun. Afternoon sunlight, wet and yellow in D.C. July summer, made golden the man's body.
He answers the door. Cathy Bechaud entered, a briefcase clutched to her chest. She swept around the room, sat on the couch, opened the case, took out a folder, handed it to him.
Steiner looks at the materials.
Steiner: Who came up with this?
Cathy: In spite of the signature, not President Lieden.
Steiner: It has a whiff of Sneffen.
Cathy: You got it. He puts his editorship on everything the president reads.
Steiner: Implementing Step Seven of the plan will be the most difficult of all this.
Cathy: The Slight Chance of a Backfire Warning?
Steiner: Yes, but tell me something about yourself.
Cathy: I'm a closed-off person. I don't like talking about myself.
Steiner: Not a candidate for therapy. Ah well, I'm trying to enjoy some of my day, but I'll leave you alone. There's the door.
Cathy: Not so fast. Coffee?
Steiner: I'll make you a cup.
Cathy: Do you have an ashtray?
Steiner: I have a saucer.
Cathy: I'm reminded of old movies. Kitchen scenes, men and women trying to get something made, he's got an apron on.
Steiner: I haven't seen these films. I'm a mod sixties films man.
Cathy: Have you noticed there's something wrong with President Lieden?
Steiner: What do you mean?
Cathy: He's not all there. It's undeniable.
Steiner: One can see something that isn't there.
To Be Continued...
Vic Neptune
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