The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy Part Eleven

     Afternoon, darkened bedroom.  Nurse Stowski turns on a desk lamp to its lowest fifty watt setting, approaches the bed where Moe Lieden, in pajamas, dozes.

     Lieden: Where am I?  This ain't my bedroom!  You're not Amanda!  What planet is this?!

     Stowski: You're in Bethesda, top floor, executive suite, you're swimming in tranquilizers but apparently they're wearing off.  You're not the President anymore.

     Lieden: (sitting up) I am so the President.

     Stowski: Incorrect, sir.  Dinah Parris is President.  

     Lieden: That bitch!?

     Stowski: No argument.  General Bomb konked you from behind, initiated a military executive order, taking the reins of power temporarily to the Joint Chiefs, meaning him, and then he railroaded through an improperly executed confirmation of the twenty-fifth amendment--that's your hemlock, Mr. President--and Parris was sworn in by the Chief Justice in the Oval Office.

     Lieden: While I was unconscious?  Karate-chopped by Bomb?

     Stowski: A big terrible man, a grizzly bear.

     Lieden: Where's Amanda?

     Stowski: She's in Aruba.

     Lieden: What's she doing there?

     Stowski: Vacationing.

     Lieden: Without me?

     Stowski: The vacation is one from you.  I'm sorry, sir.

     Lieden: She must not like me anymore.  Oh well, there are lots of women.  Do you know any?

     Stowski: Only the women in my family and the women at work in the White House.

     Lieden: I'd like to meet the women in your family.  The Stowski Women!  Your mom, what's her hair like?

     Stowski: She's bald from chemo.

     Lieden: That's no fun.  Sisters?

     Stowski: Tracy, the younger one, has long reddish-blonde hair.

     Lieden: Sweet.  How old?

     Stowski: Nineteen.  

     Lieden: A little older than I prefer, but okay.  The other?

     Stowski: Juliana, she's twenty-nine.  She has long brown hair.

     Lieden: Arrange a meeting.  Since my wife has left me I'm free to do whatever I want.  I'm going totally ego-driven, it's all about me now.  Bring on the hair!

     Stowski: Tracy's in college at USC, Juliana is a dental hygienist in Buffalo.  

     Lieden: I don't care how you do it.  I want them here, in Bethesda, or wherever I decide to live.  I can leave here, right?

     Stowski: With Secret Service protection you can retire to your Wilmington home.  That is acceptable to Dr. Lieden and the President.

     Lieden: The President decides where I can live?

     Stowski: President Parris is the one who committed you.

     Lieden: She can't do that!--(low voice) she did it, didn't she.  

     Stowski: She did.  I'm sorry, sir.  

     Lieden: Poor Amanda.  All by her lonesome in Aruba.  I'll call her later.

     Stowski: She went without a phone.

     

     A beach in Aruba, turquoise blue water, Dr. Lieden walking hand in hand with a handsome man in swimming trunks fifteen years her junior.  She looks happy.

     FBI Director Slats, Herman Slats, a lifer in the Bureau since '68, met Hoover in an elevator, Hoover gave him the once-over, gave him a job surveilling Clyde Tolson, Hoover's boyfriend.  No one was beyond Hoover's suspicion, not even the love of his life.  He was a model American.  Slats ate steak, boiled potatoes, crab, lobster, fish, and couldn't get enough of bread during a private dinner one on one with President Parris in the Oval Office. 

     Slats: We've been humiliated again but it doesn't matter.

     Parris: I beg to differ.  Will Smith's slap embarrassed the Ratfuck Bastards.  Doug tells me the Bastards held an emergency meeting the night of the Oscars.  Will Smith may be ejected from the Ratfuck Bastards.  They need their celebrities as well as their dark personalities.  

     Slats: You're not a member.  You don't know what their mindset is, neither does Doug.  He's a newbie.  You think Henry Hugginger takes your husband aside and confides secrets to him?

     Parris: Last time they got together, Doug had a great conversation with Henry.  Henry called me and told me so.  Doug woke me up and had urgent sex with me because he was so happy to have gabbed with Henry Hugginger, well, that same Henry Hugginger said power is an aphrodisiac.

     Slats: What about Moe Lieden?  Do we keep him in Bethesda?

     Parris: No, move him to Facility One in Nebraska.  Put him in the suite where he'll believe he's in 1950s Wilmington.

     Slats: He'll enjoy that.  Cornpop was influential in his life then.

     Parris: Moe Lieden was a petty criminal, Herman.  Contemptible.  Stealing cars, chop shop shit.  Moe Lieden stole that green Corvette in the 2020 campaign ad, remember that one?  

     Slats: We could arrest him, make him spend ten years in prison, some remote place in Maine.  Cold prison for a man in his eighties (chuckles).

     Parris: (smiling) Harsh, Herman.  Facility One for now.  If he gets unruly...(draws her finger across her throat, makes a rattling sound, laughs).

     Slats: You had the recording system removed?

     Parris: First thing.  This room is clean.

     Slats: Surveillance is done from without.  FBI surveils the Oval Office regularly.

    Parris: Now?

     Slats: Yes.

     Parris: Call em off.

     Slats: (takes out phone, calls someone) Turn off the feed.

     Parris: How dare you surveil your President without her knowledge!  She deserves respect, you disrespect me.  Herman, I'll give you one chance.  Work with me not against me.  I'll make it worth your while (smiles, unbuttons one of her blouse buttons).

     Slats: I'm canceling my four o'clock.

     Parris: I'm open, baby.

     

     Cassandra Blade waits to see President Parris, said by her secretary, Juan, to be unavailable until later.

Cassandra will not be stopped.  Demanding of the Secret Service men to open the door, she sweeps in imperiously to see Parris, tits hanging out, riding FBI Director Slats on the couch where decisions affecting the entire world are made.  The Secret Service men smile and nod at each other.  

     Cassandra: Dinah!  Slats?!

     Slats: And why not me? (Angry Herman disengages from the President, unfinished with his task, pulls up, zips, belts his three-thousand dollar slacks).  You harridan!  I'm a virile man!  Madame President invited me to experience her sweet insides, and they are sweet!  You've cockblocked me for the first and last time, Cassandra Blade!!! (exits).

     Cassandra: Well Dinah, you've made a faux pas.  (She sits in her favorite chair, the largest).  If this gets out, and it will--this is Washington--you're going to acquire a whore's reputation.  You're going to be getting calls for dates.

     Parris: Sounds fine with me.

     Cassandra: You embrace your new role as Slut of the Beltway?

     Parris: I wouldn't go that far.  Just that little taste of strange, that Herman Slats, his dick so different than Doug's.  Wider, longer...

      Cassandra: And?...And?...

      Parris: A nice vacation from Doug's member, that's all.

     Cassandra: I understand.  My Billy Boy's purple and maroon member is so chafed in spots from 18,000 vaginas and mouths I could use a fresh member, something youngish and pure, about a seven incher.  

     Parris: I'll put the word out for you.  I don't think I can get work done today.  I need Doug.

     Cassandra: You need him like you need an old man sniffing your hair.  

     Parris: I kinda wish Moe was still around to take care of some of this job's boring bits.  Doing photo ops with the foreign minister from Poland is about as exciting as eating overcooked toast in an English bed and breakfast (laughs).

     Cassandra: You've been holding that laugh in for hours, I can tell.  Let it out, Dinah.  You're safe with me.

     Parris: Slats said the FBI is surveilling this office.

     Cassandra: Of course they are.  Not in Billy Boy's time.

     Parris: I don't know who to trust.

     Cassandra: Only trust me.

     Parris: I can do that.  It simplifies things really, but I'm going to trust myself, too.

     Cassandra: Don't go too far with that.  Self-deception is a real thing among carpet salesmen and statesmen alike.  

     Parris: Cassie, will you excuse me, I need to cum.  

     Cassandra: Go right ahead.  I'd like to see it.

     Parris: All right (laughs, pulls down her pantyhose).

     Cassandra: That's some beaver.  Doug doesn't pressure you to shave?

     Parris: No.  He likes it this way.

     Cassandra: Oh, what a darling pink pussy!  So adorable!  If America could see your sweet pink pussy America would swoon and vote for you 100 percent in twenty-four!

     Parris: You think so?

     Cassandra: I know so.  Put a photo of that adorable pussy on a campaign button, on signs, in ads.  Straight from the Oval Office, the hottest, pink of pussy, Dinah nobody's fine-uh Parris, the African-American woman, not the place.

     Parris: I think that would be outrageous.

     Cassandra: Fuck em if they can't handle your sexuality!  You're a strong Black woman!  You uplift the dreams of Black girls across this White-run planet!  Use your sex!  Shake those big tits back and forth.  Shake those tits for votes!

     Parris: I'm doing it.  OMG!

     Cassandra: Fantastic.  Let that out, baby, you're my protege, you deserve it.  Okay, feel better?  Ready to rule the world together?

     Parris: I daresay.

     Sneffen's Foggy Bottom office.  Holroyd, and a Mr. Smears, a high-ranking representative from a defense company.

     Smears: Our JX-2 Catfish Missile has a surprise right after it detonates its 540 pound payload.  Puff!  A patented lining along the shrapnel melts, forms a gas that severely damages the intelligence of those enemy caught within its radius inside twenty seconds.  

     Sneffen: Sounds scrumptious.  Is it legal?

     Holroyd: If we say it's legal, it's legal.  

    Smears: This little number, the KO "Knockout" -14-B.  This 800 pound ball of lethal detonation also irradiates up to half a square mile of enemy territory.  Destroying enemy crops is a welcome side effect of this product, priced at 750,000 per copy.  If you buy ten we'll give you a five percent discount.  

     Holroyd: Ten?  How about twenty and a ten percent discount?  And those Catfish?  We'll take thirty of those.  

     Smears: Excellent.  One more thing.  A Madness Inducer, sends out frequencies, set it up outside a town, outside a suburb.  Sit back and watch the riot.

     Sneffen: That's not a good thing for anyone to have, Mr. Smears.

     Smears: Mr. Holroyd?  Surely you'd like to try it in the next city that undergoes protests?  

     Holroyd: Would I?  I'll take one for now.  Is it--oh, it's hand-held!  

     Smears: Simple to operate.  Give my company a $1.3 billion boost in the next Defense bill.  

     Holroyd: You've got it.

     Sneffen: Arms deals I had nothing to do with, except they occurred in my office.  Gentlemen, you're both crazy, I love you, get out of here.  I must meditate upon the happenings of the last week.

     Smears: Thanks for the use of the office.

     Sneffen: Tell your friends.

     Holroyd: (giggling at Sneffen) A madness inducer!

     East Room of the White House: President Parris in a handsome dark blue jacket and skirt, with white blouse and a red armband to complete the red white and blue look.  Doug Gard, dressed conservatively in gray sports jacket and white tee shirt with a big RB in red and green lettering, sits in the front row next to the President's empty seat as Parris introduces the next guest, Stonvarr Chapinson, Professor of Norse Historical Studies at Perth University, UK.  

     Parris: (laughing) He'll give us an idea of what it was like to live in the time of bone-crunching violence that was the Viking Age.  Stonvarr?

     Chapinson: Madame President, congratulations on your elevation to the highest office in the land.  Stonvarr salutes you!

     Parris: (laughs) Thank you, Stonvarr! (takes her seat).

     Chapinson: On with it!  With the snap of my fingers thirteen of my men, picked warriors, will sweep into this room and cut all of your throats, but I feel generous today, see how I put the fear of imminent bloody death, I could see it in your eyes, put it into you and then took it out, the thorn from the lion's paw?  Am I not a splendid speaker?

     Parris: That was wonderful, Dr. Chapinson.

     Chapinson: I've hardly begun, my dear Madame President.  Please sit down.

     

     Parris hurries to obey him.

     Chapinson: The decks of the ship, covered in the blood of the slaves we finally decided to kill, needed a good scrubbing once we got into safe harbor.  We headed for Dublin, a nest of Vikings until the 11th century.  Ah, chopping off heads, raping anything, even inanimate objects, raping each other, Vikings raping each other, yes!  Well, I assume that they did.  In fact, in 1987 two caches dating from the late tenth century, written in Latin were found at the Church of St. Nonce.  One cache deals with accounting, tallies, profits, commerce.  The other cache deals with daily life there from 982 to 992.  Dealings with Vikings during and after their raids, lots of Viking on Viking rape.  The priest in St. Nonce, Herbert, made peace with the barbarians, gave them Christian instruction.  As Christians, the Vikings now killed for Christ.  Perfect.

     Parris: All right, Professor, that's good, moving on to the next act. 

     Chapinson: I'm not done, Madame President.

     Parris: Oh yes you are, you said bad things about Christianity, we can't have that.  Thanks for coming!

     Chapinson: All the way from Perth.

     Parris: Life's a bitch. (laughs) Okay people, we have a treat of music coming now!  Last month six bands in Racine, Wisconsin competed to be the group that would perform in the White House for this function that was planned and scheduled by the Lieden administration, I had nothing to do with it.  Anyways, here's the winning band, all the way from Racine, Wisconsin, I think I campaigned there once in nineteen (laughs).  Please welcome Fluffy Jacobson and his Ragdoll Orchestra!  (sits down, Sneffen approaches, leaning over Doug, everyone here shouts to be heard above the Ragdoll Orchestra's horns and saxes).

     Sneffen: That Scottish haggis is a fabulous kook.  Who hired him?

     Parris: Jennifer Psyop put together the so-called talent in this show.

     Sneffen: I'll fix her poodle.  She obviously wants to make your administration look plain ridic.  Well we're not ridic.  We're superb.  We'll beat any spy shenanigans these weasel enemies of ours might unleash upon us, let it come!

     Doug Gard: Artie, you're really hot standing over me, move off.

     Sneffen: Can't take the heat, Doug?

     Doug Gard: This jacket, it's too much, I'm taking it off.

     Parris: No, Doug, leave it on.

     Doug Gard: It's a matter of health, darling.  I must cool down or die.

     Parris: At least disrobe elsewhere!

     Doug Gard: It's off!  Demon skin!  Suck my life energy away from Doug Gard you would!  Well, Demon Skin, you're a failure!

     Parris (coverage-laughs as her husband apparently loses it): It's a bit he's working on!  White House talent show, next month, it's gonna be a gas!  Do you have a talent?  Oh, juggling is fun to watch!  I'm going to read the Declaration of Independence straight through without laughing (laughs).  

     Doug Gard: Pardon me for interrupting.  Honey, I've shed my Demon Skin.  I now reside in my pure form, let's go make love.

     Parris: Doug, not now, and keep your voice down.

     Doug: I'm aiming a missile at your temporary storage facility.  Wrap up this idiotic Culture Day and join me in the Presidential Bedroom. (he strides away, wearing his Ratfuck Bastards tee shirt, soaked through with sweat).

     Sneffen: (taking Doug's seat) That husband of yours is a grand case of crazy, but that's fine.  Ever since Bomb decided to go against our plan to have Moe Lieden remain President until May 2024 we've had to improvise.  Cassandra's closeness to you worries me.  She's motivated to help you screw yourself.  When the time comes she'll abandon you.

     Parris: I know.  I've already abandoned her.  I'm just stringing her along, finding out things about Billy Boy.

     Sneffen: You find Billy Boy fascinating?

     Parris: Like the Loch Ness Monster.  

     Sneffen: Which doesn't exist.  He does.  There's an allure to the man?

     Parris: A charisma.  He talked me into, well...

     Sneffen: Oh, you're playing innocent.  You banged him!  No surprise, he bangs everybody!  

     Parris: It's a wonder he hasn't perished from a venereal disease.

     Sneffen: First African-American woman President with the clap.  

     Parris: I'm gonna crush your nuts some day.  

     Sneffen: Hubby's waiting.

     Parris: He can wait.  What's the next act? 

     Sneffen (reading the program) The first two chapters of Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., read out loud by Patti Smith. 

     Parris: I heard her first album when it came out, I was in college then.

     Sneffen: Fabricatrix!  That album came out in 1975, I bought a copy when it came out.  I was into the photography of Mapplethorpe, the cover featured a Mapplethorpe portrait of Patti Smith.  You were not in college in 1975, more like in fifth grade.

     Parris: I remember that album!  Mules. 

     Sneffen: Horses, Madame President.

     Parris: And she had an album called Radio Tanganyika.

     Sneffen: Radio Ethiopia. 

     Parris: And the one where she shows her armpit...Holy Saturday.

     Sneffen: Easter.

     Parris: And that fourth one, Particle.

     Sneffen: Wave.

     Parris: If you say so.  I'm really a Styx girl.

     Sneffen: Is that so?

     Parris: I saw them in concert four times.  I shook hands with Tommy Shaw.

     Sneffen: The guitarist?

     Parris: Dreamy guitarist.  

     Sneffen: What's your favorite album by Styx?

     Parris: The Grand Persuasion.

     Sneffen: Grand Illusion.

     Parris: Of course, Solstice is great.

     Sneffen: Equinox.

     Parris: I'm also partial to Segments of Nineteen.

     Sneffen: Pieces of Eight.

     Parris: Oh, this act is finally happening.  Here's Patti Smith.  Where's the book?  Is she going to read it from memory?  Wow, that's amazing!  She's doing it!  Can you believe that?  Oh bravo!!!  Bravo Patti Smith!!!!  Absolutely wonderful!  Freakish that you can do that!   Memorize words and say them again.  How? (laughs)

     Sneffen: Madame President, that's not Patti Smith.  I just said Patti Smith for a lark.  You believed me, you said ridiculous things to a woman you absolutely believed to be Patti Smith, even though this woman who spoke Vonnegut for us looks about twenty-five.  Think!  Patti Smith's album Horses came out in seventy-five or thereabouts.  Patti Smith was a young woman then, but now?  

     Parris: I was a girl, about eleven.  Moe Lieden was in his thirties.  He'd want to smell my eleven year old hair.

     Sneffen: He's quite the pervert, easy to satisfy, though.  That's why it's fucked up that we can't let him take the heat for everything bad in the next two years.  

     

     Doug Gard, wearing a white silk sheet like a toga, enters the East Room and approaches the President.

  

     Gard: The time has come, Dinah.  (Loudly) Please excuse us!  I'm going to take her into the bedroom that we as man and woman, husband and wife, share and then I'm going to remove her clothing, do a little foreplay and dick-pound the fucking hell out of the President and oh I will fucking pound her hard!

     Dinah (goes along with it, trailed by reporters, frankly, she's bored, good to abandon the Culture event) Doug is trying out that part in the upcoming talent show.  More news on that forthcoming! (Parris gives a one eye shut double thumbs up.  Into the bedroom they go.

     Dracula Deadface in his coffin-shaped office.  He speaks to a hologram of former President Bongo.  When Bongo stays still, the image is perfect.  Then it shifts and breaks up to reassemble quickly.  

 

     Dracula: Once I've turned people into holograms the world's storage space will increase, all the spaces where man and woman, boy and girl tread, now available for other life forms, the Grek, the Partymen, the Kookberries.  New Earth for New Aliens, aliens becoming Earth people in a few generations.  Isn't that wonderful to ponder?

     Bongo: I can tell you're enthused.  No, really, you look dead.  Why don't you get some sun?  You live in California.  Last I checked, California's a sun-drenched state, you got the...oranges, the lemons, need em for drinks, limes, avocados, marijuana.

     Dracula: Have you tried my line of health shakes?

     Bongo: Can't say I have cuz I haven't.

     Dracula: You'll gain projective force in life.  You'll realize you're superior to most others.  You have conquered your inhibition about being selfish, you are solipsistic, only you exist, are you following me?

     Bongo: Sign me up!

     Dracula: The shakes are expensive.  1,500 dollars per gulp.  

     Bongo: Whatever it takes, I got money.

     Dracula: You won't even recognize the reality of your wife on this stuff.

     Bongo: I hardly ever see her anyway.  She's starting to campaign and I told her Honey, you go and do that, leave me out, don't want to talk about it.  She said Okay, don't expect any sex until after the campaign.  Well that misfired my jumbo jet!  I said Baby, you pulling a Lysistrata on my ass?

     Dracula: What did Mrs. Bongo say?

     Bongo: She said, "It'll work, won't it?" One little peck on the lips and she was gone, heading for Washington, a fundraiser.  I know all those chumps.  I called ten of em just a week ago and asked them to attend.  She doesn't know what I do for her political ambitions.  Fuck, I want to get back in the White House.  I lost something there and I'd like the freedom to look for it.

     Dracula: Not your soul?

     Bongo: Something tangible, Drac.  You don't have a soul, it's obvious, just look at you.  Eighty billion dollars, social network platform used by everybody on the planet, connected up with intelligence agencies, that's you, you're a go-between connecting intelligence with ordinary people.  Someone signs on to your platform, they don't expect to be spied on by government agencies or bombarded with propaganda...and then the censorship rules, it's like 1984.  Hey, I'm not knocking it!  I didn't preside over the creation of a massive surveillance state because I didn't want it to happen.  Let's make one thing clear (shaking his jowls like Richard Nixon, disrupting to a blur the holographic image) I am a crook.

     Dracula: Recorded and time indexed, Mr. President.  Tell your partner, Mrs. Bongo, I'm looking forward to offering to her the sum raised by my PAC.

     Bongo: Gaby always enjoys your company and your cold handshake.  Really cold.  

     Dracula: A pleasure, Mr. President.  I must discipline an employee in two minutes.

     Bongo: Give him or her maximum hell.  Are you going to threaten termination?

     Dracula: No.  But the employee must no longer read minds while at work.

     Bongo: Of course, what else?  I'll hang up before my mind gets read.  Boy, if you could see what's in this brain case.

     Dracula: Mutilated corpses, people you killed in drone strikes?

     Bongo: Nah, I replaced those images with the Andy Griffith Show, watched every episode, skipped Mayberry R.F.D.  Wholesome entertainment, black and white world, the early sixties, the Twilight Zone, Bay of Pigs.

     Dracula: The psychic is arriving, Mr. President.  Begone.

     Bongo: My cue to check out, deactivating Presidential hologram. 

     

     Bongo's office, sits at his desk, feet up.  Meeting with Bezos tomorrow.  Cassie Blade here now to talk about Dinah Parris.

     Bongo: Come right on in.

     Blade: I like how you fit "right on" into that statement.

     Bongo: Okay.

     Blade: Which is the most comfortable chair?

     Bongo: Mine.

     

     Blade flicks her fingers at him to vacate his chair, clunks her purse on his desk and sits, rocks, turns.

     Blade: Say, not bad, I see how you're not pulling my elbow when you say this and not those are the most comfortable chair.  Sit, Amare.  Find a comfortable chair for yourself.  You should be familiar with each chair.  Oh, that's a beautiful chair, good choice, tall, soft blue texture, you look like a deposed monarch in that chair.

     Bongo: Cassie, your sense of humor befuddles me.  Do you have any pot?

     Blade: I gave that up years ago, back when I was in the motorcycle gang.

     Bongo: The Pinch Hitters.

     Blade: That's the one.  75 percent female bike gang, I was top bitch for one day, got concussed by Shirl the Girl, she became top bitch.

     Bongo: You're still top bitch with me, Cassie.

     Blade: One male member of the gang, George Boysense, tried to be top bitch.  Oh, the chain duel between Shirl the Girl and George Boysense!  Whirling hard chains, clinking and clanking, thunking when Shirl the Girl connected with George Boysense's head, right side.  Stunned, he staggered and dropped.  Not dead, skull fractured, slower and slower in later years.  Those were the good old days.  Shirl was top bitch with good reason.

     Bongo: What happened to Shirl the Girl?  She sounds exciting.

     Blade: Any man would bang her in a heartbeat, way I remember her.  We were on a roller derby team together, too.  She became a real estate agent then married a banker.

     Bongo: You're an onion.

     Blade: My dad had an onion farm.

     Bongo: Why did you support Goldwater in '64?

     Blade: That's where the fun was.  A Goldwater Girl, that's important-sounding.  Like a Girl Scout, or a Girl Group, like a singing group, the Supremes, they were hot!  (Blade launches into a horrid attempt at singing "The Happening" by the Supremes.  Bongo has to intervene).

     Bongo: Cassie, please, you're scaring my wife's cat.

     Blade: I get carried away, these are emotional times.  Did you know a woman is President?  Isn't that grand?

     Bongo: It certainly is.

     Blade: Do you think she's doing a good job?

     Bongo: Considering the pressures put upon her by her advisors, that's you and the other advisors, Cassie, I think Dinah's doing a fine job, thus far.  The incident with Doug Gard carrying her away like he's a caveman was a bit much, but hey, nobody really gives a shit, the world's probably coming to an end sooner than later.  Will Smith slapped Chris Rock?  So the fuck what?

     Blade: You've reached the point of not caring.

     Bongo: I reached that point about 2014.

     Blade: If the public could read our diaries, assuming we keep them, they'd find us fragile, humble, spiteful, selfish creatures.

     Bongo: Speak for yourself, Cassie.  Don't bring me down with your gloom jive.  

     Blade: Dinah Parris is a perfect cypher.  We of the mighty can use her to our ends.  

     Bongo: Do you trust Sneffen?

     Blade: No, but he's necessary now.  The Oval Office end of things is a gunked up affair.  Dinah needs time to settle in.

     Bongo: I'm unimpressed.  Settle in?  Bang!  Go!  Time to work, Dinah, work like you've never worked before!  Deny yourself!  The people need their leader to produce results!  Parris 2024!  She'll Get You the Results You Need.  How does that sound?

     Blade: Biased toward Dinah, unless you're pulling my leg.

     Bongo: I lack the strength to move one of your mighty hams.  

     Blade: You've been perfecting over the years your asshole personality.  Congratulations, you've achieved a first class ranking.

     Bongo: Second Class, after you.  Don't object!  You're a walking pile of bullshit, Cassie.  Nothing wrong with that!  Some folks bullshit, some folks hear bullshit all the time.  I honor your bullshit.  You give good bullshit.  

     Blade: Don't make it sound dirty.

     Bongo: Clean bullshit, then.

     Artie Sneffen dining on quail with grapes at Joe's Eatery, despite the name, the most expensive restaurant in Washington, D.C.  Artie's table is screened off from the rest of the place.  His dining companion is Hector "Bloodfist" Frankbarrhuber, the Garbage Collector, a retired wrestler looking for freelance work in the security sector, with other assignments, too.

     Sneffen: And you would take on the job knowing that if you're caught, no one will come to your defense.  "Bloodfist?"  I'll say.  "You mean the wrestler?  What has he done?  Killed Moe Lieden?  Oh my god, I had lunch with Hector Bloodfist Frankbarrhuber just the other day!"

     Hector: Look, the money's good, so I take the job.  If you betrays me, I'll gut you like a fish.  

     Sneffen: Point not your steak knife at me, large man.  

     Hector: (sawing meat): Why you want President Lieden dead?

     Sneffen: He sticks around like a bad odor.  The possibility of his return as a challenger to Dinah Parris in twenty-four is real and must be eliminated as a possibility; that's where you come in.

     Hector: Yeah, I get yuhzz.  You're too much of a pussy to do your own murderin so you hired me, you've heard I do good work, I make the clients' sought-for results happen.  Yeah? 

     Sneffen: Have you been doing hits for long?

     Hector: Since high school.  Regular work but when I got my wrestling career going, I'd do them just occasional, one a year maybe, but I pick it up quite a bit now.  

     Sneffen: You certainly come recommended by good people.

     Hector: (laughs) Surely you don't mean good?!

     Sneffen: Everyone in our cause is good.  Even Moe Lieden, but he's become a liability.  We must adjust to shifting circumstances.

     Hector: I'll say.  I need A-1, dry steak, and this is like the five star of Washington?  

     Sneffen: Shall we discuss that irony, or sit in silence, finishing our meals before going our separate ways never to see each other again, or to speak to each other.  You know the code--DON'T repeat it here!  Say it into my answering machine the day you plan to make the attempt.  I'll erase it, don't worry.

     Hector: Erase what?

     Sneffen: The code phrase you say into my answering machine.

     Hector: What code phrase?

     Sneffen: We went over this earlier, a bunch of times.  Just, a lot of times!  The code phrase!

     Hector: Oh yeah, the code phrase...G-9--

     Sneffen: Don't say it now!

     Hector: I'm trying to remember.  There are fourteen characters.  That's a lot.

     Sneffen: Your poor concussion-shaken brain.  Wrestling, though it's fake, involves real athleticism, with all its risks.  

     Hector: Tell me about it.  You ever been the propellor in the airplane engine maneuver?

     Sneffen: I've never wrestled.

     Hector: What a surprise.  You get whirled around, you're out of balance, everything's a blur.  You get flung against the ropes or outside the ring, you land on people in the first row.  I did that once, broke a guy's glasses with my elbow.  Expensive glasses.  Nine-hundred bucks!  Of course I paid, I'm an honorable man.  

     Sneffen: I want to be clear that you know the code phrase part of your role in this enterprise we're undertaking.

     Hector: Enterprise, yeah.  Star Trek.

     Sneffen: Yes, of course, more obtuseness, why not?

     Hector: My favorite is when Kirk fights the lizard thing.  It's slow but it's tough, and smart.  Kirk wins through his smarts, plus he's the hero of the show.  What's Star Trek without Kirk?

     Sneffen: Star Trek Picard.

     Hector: Haven't seen it, heard it's bad, don't know, willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, if I come across it I'll give it a try, why not?  Give it a try, it might be good, it might be bad, it might be the worst turkey in history but it's probably not as bad as all those episodes of Designing Women my mother had on when I was growing up! 

     Sneffen: Hector.  We part now.  You know what to do.  Good luck with all of your endeavors, unless one of your endeavors ever means shooting me.  Please don't.  I can be a reliable source of income to you.  

     Hector: Don't bite the hands that feeds yuh.  

     Sneffen: Precisely, if not grammatically.

     Facility One, eastern Nebraska, Moe Lieden placed in a holographic reality machine, fed non-stop impressions of being in 1959, Wilmington, Delaware.  He's seventeen, though he has the mind of old man Lieden.  The hair obsession is the same.

     Lieden: Where am I? (gets up, in his pajamas, a framed photo of Eisenhower above his bed).  I feel foggy.  Foggy dew!  Foggy foggy dew!  My pops used to say that on a foggy morning.  Let me look outside, gauge the day's climatological makeup.  Let's see, I see a rabbit, a boy's bike on the sidewalk, that's my bike, how sloppy of me.  A wagon.  Boy, this sure seems like it was.  Hey, there's Cornpop!

     A 1955 station wagon drives by.  This is not Cornpop.  Elderly Lieden inside teenager Lieden's head jumps to an old man's conclusions.  Lieutenant General Cornpop is in charge of this experiment.  He finally has a chance to take revenge on Moe Lieden for that diving board altercation in Wilmington.  

     Moe Lieden hitches a ride from a farmer going to market.  Moe gets off, buys an apple and an apricot for a nickel, leans into whatever hair passes by his nose.  Society is a sexual experience for Moe Lieden.

     Lieden: (at a magazine/book stand) Hand over that book, what is that?  Time Out of Joint.  Philip K. Dick.  Funny name, Philip.  Starts with a P-H, not with an F.  What's this book about?  Huh.  Ragle Gumm goes to a newsstand, the newsstand vanishes, a piece of paper saying Newsstand floats into his hand.  Weird.  Sounds like one of Amanda's dreams.  Maybe I'll buy this book...two ninety-five!  Shit!  Am I made of money?  Two ninety-five for a book?  Hardcover, granted, new edition, in good condition, looks like it's never been read, it's a very tempting buy, a pleading buy, an urging buy, an imploring buy.  Why shouldn't I buy it?  After all, I'm a reader!  I know how to read!  I don't often read but I know how!  I pay little Scott Michaels to write my papers, he does a good job, he accepts his measly payment and does a good job, a damn good job, by jiminy.  What time is it?  I'm buying this book.  No, bedevil me why don't you!  I lack the cash to buy this book!  I have a buck ninety five.  I'm short a buck, one lousy buck.  My wanting to buy this book and read it thwarted for need of a singleton.  I just need one George!  One Father of our country.  One President.  I'm wait what?  President.  But I'm seventeen.  I'm a high school lad, I've only just begun a life of petty crime stealing cars for chop shops.  I'm with Cornpop.  We had our disputes, I called him Esther Williams, he and his gang had rusty straight razors.  Good memories.

     Throughout this monologue passersby look at him, listen to his blather.  He seems mad.  A teenager gone off his rocker.  Soon a doctor and his nurse are talking to him, a cop stands nearby keeping people away and moving along.  The doctor and nurse take Moe Lieden into their downtown practice.  After a checkup and some cocoa, the doctor determines Lieden is simply undergoing a fugue state compounded by a double dose of Jung and Phildickian and Kafkaesque circumstances.  The doctor, of course, isn't real, but is a projection from Lieden's imagination, as the whole construct is.  In Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick, Ragle Gumm comes to find that his reality is vanishing around him.  Eventually he goes to the real world, which is a futuristic time many decades away from the 1958 of Ragle Gumm's familiar reality.

     Oval Office.  General Cornpop meets with President Parris and Secretary Sneffen, Holroyd, Grauchi, and Bomb. 

     Parris: If what you're saying is true, and I believe you when you say it is (laughs), Moe Lieden is starting to realize he's in a simulation?

     Cornpop: Realizing it, yes, but his cognitive faculty is foggy, you might say the man's an idiot.

     Sneffen: (bursts out laughing) But that would be generous?

     Cornpop: In the simulation he's a seventeen year old vigorous sports-loving boy.  The mind inside  that boy is the cracked brain of an ex-President.  

     Parris: Why don't we make him older?  Seventeen he doesn't have agency.  He should be twenty-one, in college, partying, there's plenty of hair in college.

     Bomb: The hair obsession.  I don't understand it.

     Dr. Grauchi: His nervous system is particularly sensitive to olfactory overload.  It sends electric sparks to his gonads.  His gonads are attached to his librum.  The librum is connected by a rhomboid bone to the fegulis.  Signals from the fegulis travel straight to the President's penis via the Mansack Junction.  The man gets a rise out of hair, what I can tell you?

     Holroyd: Ah, to hell with Moe Lieden.  Let's send in a team, take him out of there, put him in a helicopter and drop him from a thousand feet.  

     Dr. Grauchi: We'd have explaining to do to Dr. Lieden.

     Holroyd: Her too, then!  Out of the helicopter!

     Parris: Enough with that talk!  I'm the ultimate giver of orders involving death.  (Laughs).

     They exchange uneasy looks.

     Inside Moe Lieden's constructed fantasy.  He's still seventeen.  He has a poster advertising Jailhouse Rock.  He liked the movie, saw it twice when it came out.  Now, something in his mind nags at him.  A Mississippi White boy, Elvis, does not properly represent America's prison population, most of whom, Lieden thinks to himself inside his seventeen year old face with original teeth, are Black, but in 1959 the great screwer of Blacks, me, Moe Lieden, hadn't yet decimated their communities.  Where did I get that thought from?  Who is in my head?  I seem to have an old fart inside my mind commenting on everything I think and do.  I am scrutinized by a grandpa!  Who in Dante Alighieri's name are you, Gramps?  Not talking?  I'll have to just ignore you when I hear you.

     Lieden: (inside 17 year old Lieden's mind) Just ignore me, I'm a blatherer.  The older you get the more you blather.  No joke.  Hey, you hanging around with Cornpop and his crew?

     Young Lieden: If I think the answer you'll hear me?  

     Lieden: Yes, I'm you, but some sixty-two years later.

     Young Lieden: Am I a grandpa?

     Lieden: Yes.  That's all I will reveal about the future unless I say something by accident that changes history somehow, I never understood those time travel paradox TV shows like Sliders.  I just watched that for Kari Wuhrer, great red hair.  

     Young Lieden: You still like hair as an old man?

     Lieden: I love hair.  Hair.  Hair, I like saying it.  Hair.

     Young Lieden: Hair

     Lieden: That's it.  Hair.  Go look for hair, young me.

     Young Lieden: I'm going to shut myself in my bedroom with a soda and snacks and read this here book.

     Lieden: Not the choice I would've made, but you're in charge of the body.  

     Young Lieden: Tomorrow, hair.

     Lieden: Whose?

     Young Lieden: A women's function at the college.  I've been invited to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

     Lieden: I remember that.  I made a date with a sorority sister from Kappa Tau Beta, a high-ranking sister at that.  Her name is Susan.  Keep an eye out for her.  About five ten, wears cat's eye glasses, real sharp, long elegant body, nice legs, you're gonna fuck her hard and cum on her pillow, she'll take a shower with you, make breakfast for you, and then she'll kick you out, an about face in personality, just wanted your cock, what a mercenary semen-greed.  You'll have a great time, but don't get attached to Susan Griesman.

     Young Lieden: You said you wouldn't reveal details about the future.

     Lieden: I forget one thing from one moment to the next.  I'm not a well man, but I'm fighting to stay relevant.  I got robbed of my presidency--

     Young Lieden: I'm going to be President?

     Lieden: Yes, for about a year and a half, then the back stab happens.  Military coup underneath the surface of an invocation of the twenty-fifth amendment.  While I was unconscious, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Bomb, Air Force, summoned the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Vice President Parris.  One short ceremony later and Parris was President.

     Young Lieden: You keep violating your admonition to not tell me anything future-related.

     Lieden: It feels good to remember this stuff.  You see, for a while I thought I was you, completely you, seventeen in Wilmington, the pool, Cornpop, that first fifty-three Chevy I stole, turns out it was the mayor's daughter's car! (laughs).

     Young Lieden: I'm a car thief, too, huh?

     Lieden: Yeah, a good one, never caught!  Something to be proud of!  Never prosecuted for committing mass murder of civilians, never prosecuted for grand theft auto.  Never prosecuted for transporting guns over the border into Mexico.  Young me, tell me something.

     Young Lieden: Shoot.

     Lieden: I see you're reading a book I remember having read.

     Young Lieden: Starship Troopers. 

     Lieden: That reality isn't far off.  Space Marines of Space Force.  Space Force!!!  Oh, the aliens we'll fight!  Some of them will make the aliens in Independence Day seem like pushovers!

     Young Lieden: You're implying that Earth soldiers will attack planets occupied by aliens we're at war with?

     Lieden: Exactly.  Ukraine is an alien planet if you follow my drift.

     Young Lieden: Ukraine?  I guess I catch your thrust, but--

     Lieden: Let me lay this on you then--

     Young Lieden: Lay it on me, Morris.

     Lieden: We're at a turning point.  Aliens are about to enter the Human Condition.  Yes, I was briefed on this two days before they committed me.  Yeah me, us, committed by Dinah Parris, President of the United States, but in 2022, not 1959.  Dinah's a woman.

     Young Lieden: (laughs) A woman is President of the United States in 2022?

     Lieden: Exactly.  I'm returning to seize the nomination from her in the summer of twenty-four.  I will be Mr. Surprise, I'll wear a disguise, a mask, I'll have my eyes changed, long eyelashes maybe, no, maybe I'll wear lifts?  I'll be Scaramouche.  I'll strum a mandolin, I'll be frisky with the maidens, I'll build a following, PACs will grow and spend when needed.  I will reveal my true identity and destroy all competition.  I've been rejuvenated by being inside you, young Moe Lieden.

     Young Lieden: Wouldn't mind if you'd exit my mind, Morris.  I feel like I'm being spied on.

     Lieden: Everything you do is not a surprise to me.  Do you need to defecate?  Defecate!  

     Young Lieden: Not at this time, but there are other activities.

     Lieden: You want to pee?  Hump your pillow?  Search for hair to sniff?  

     Young Lieden: I want privacy.  I want to exist as a single voice.

     Lieden: I'll recede.  I'll be back, though.

     Young Lieden: Be careful about how you surprise me...hello?...you're gone?...

     Lieden: Now I'll recede.

     Cassandra Hartliss Blade, the Oval Office, President Parris, both of them coincidentally wearing the same beige pants suit.  They shop for their clothes at the same women's apparel place.  President Parris has by now decorated the office in her style: A hi-fi from 1978, a display of record albums, a Sinatra LP, Devo's Freedom of Choice, Crown of Creation by Jefferson Airplane, and the soundtrack album of The Sound of Music.  A bronze bust of Maya Angelou sits next to a bronze bust of Ronald Reagan.  Her desk is tidy at the moment.  She just shoveled with her arm everything on her desk to the floor before putting her head down on her arm to weep. 

     Cassie: Let it out, darlin!  Your husband's crazy, it could be worse.  He's a Ratfuck Bastard so we can hope they discipline him.  

     Parris: His personality has changed so much since he joined that group, Cassie, what's that about?

     Cassie: Fuck if I know!  I'm only an honorary member, as you will be if they invite you to join.  A prestige hire, getting a President into the club, you know the drill.

     Parris: All right.  I've gotten hold of myself.  I'm the President! (laughs).  I'm going to preside over something (laughs).  

     Cassie: You should be thinking about pressuring Artie Sneffen out of Foggy Bottom.  Give State to me.

     Parris: Are you serious?  You would then run for President while being Secretary of State?

     Cassie: Sure, why not?

     Parris: Okay, well, do you advise me to do this, as my chief advisor?

     Cassie: I advise it.

     Parris: Consider it done.  Shall we trap Artie in a sex scandal?

     Cassie: Artie isn't into sex.  We could tie him to Moe Lieden's dirty Ukraine deals.

     Parris: How?

     Cassie: What was Sneffen doing in 2013 and 2014?

     Parris: I have no idea (laughs).

     Cassie: Sneffen was Undersecretary of State for Eastern Europe, which includes Ukraine.  Sneffen, I'm not making this up, was in on an oil deal in 2014 with Lieden's son, Happy.  There's hard evidence to back this up.  

     Parris: Moe gets hypersensitive about his son.

     Cassie: His son is an overprivileged little cocaine fiend with minimal artistic talent and a head for taking advantage of being Moe Lieden's son.  Crush the little fucker, and damn Moe Lieden to an eternity of not being able to smell hair in a vast realm where he can see it.

     Parris: I didn't know you disliked Moe so much.  Maybe I wouldn't have freed him from the Nebraska Facility.

     Cassie: You should've kept him in there.  

     Parris: Dr. Lieden pleaded his case.  I came around to her viewpoint.  He needs space to roam, to just be Moe.

     Cassie: He's an obstacle!  He's a rock in the river.  He's a mountain I must reduce if I am to conquer!  One of several mountains, I might add.  Destroy Artie, put me back in that office with the view of nothing.  

     Parris: Like I said, it's done.  Let me call a few people in the news world, let me have an accusing meeting with Artie, we'll get him taken down a few notches don't worry, just give me, oh, maybe three days.

     Cassie: I'll give you twenty-four hours.  Strike, Dinah, lightning quick.  Make your victims respect you.

     Parris: I have to go home to Doug.  I must say I don't like having my office inside my house.  Having a cushion of time after work for the day is completed and before one arrives home is a blessing.

     Cassie: Always finding ways to complain about your dream job.  You perplex me, Parris.

     Parris: Doug is going to be ravenous.  He started taking a testosterone booster.

     Cassie: You should just kill him, Dinah.  No one will care.

     Parris: The Ratfuck Bastards would.  They'd probably send out an assassin.

     Cassie: Or they'd laugh when they heard the news about Doug's death.  He's a newbie in that group.  He's had no time to form meaningful attachments with his Ratfuck brethren.  

     Parris: I'll complain of a headache.

     Cassie: Want me to bonk you on the head with my revolver?

     Parris: I'll act the headache, thank you.

     Cassie: Verisimilitude, helps a lot in acting.

     

     Presidential Bedroom.  Doug wears pants and socks, that's it, paces, looks at himself in a tall mirror, flexes muscles, unzips his pants and unbuckles his belt, takes down pants and jockeys and admires himself.  Dinah enters the room in a long wispy nightgown.  

     Dinah: Doug, I left your Oreos and glass of ice cold milk on the tea service in the Zachary Taylor room.

     Doug: Why are you wearing clothes, dear?  We should be naked, naked as Adam, naked as Eve.

     Dinah: I'm bushed, honey, can we make love tomorrow?

     Doug: Tonight and tomorrow!  My urgency to make love insists upon compliance!

     Dinah: Just make it quick.

     Doug: If you try, it will go quicker!  If you lay still like a mannequin it will take me longer!

     Dinah: All right, go for it.

     

     Ten minutes later, Dinah's in bed, Doug's drinking his milk, eating his Oreos, hunched over the plate in the mellow chandelier light of the Zachary Taylor room.  Its blue and gold decorative scheme matches a massive grim portrait of the General in uniform.  The corpse of the uniformed Taylor himself inside a glass coffin next to a donation box, an oak table upon which General Taylor once spread a map, and in a pentagonal corner, a pentagonal seance table engraved with magical symbolisms and a few masonic hints completed the furnishings.  The hero of the Mexico War died in office, alas, but Millard Fillmore, a capable man (our handsomest President) filled out Taylor's term before retiring to Buffalo, his wife, First Lady Abigail, dead from a cold caught at Franklin Pierce's inauguration--why do they do these things outside and in winter?  Imagine Doug Gard dying in office, or Cassie Blade in the nineties, the shock, the bummer for the public, for First Ladies are the better nine-tenths of their husbands, though the percentage in Doug Gard's case is yet to be determined.

     Vote Parris, 

     A Ready Blade, She's Keen For You. 

     Lieden--Back From the Dead.

     Launches his campaign for President Easter 2022, rather premature the pundits opine.  Lieden gets friendly treatment from the news people.  Now that he's no longer President, one can't blame him for current problems, except for those problems caused by him when he was President, Vice President, Senator, Congressman, and Lifeguard.  Now, he sits in his campaign headquarters, rented space at the Scranton YMCA, perpendicular to the men's weight room.  Moe's bodyguards work out in that room.  On the other side, treadmills roll, women and men walk, the women's butts are a constant distraction to Moe, who does little work, just prepares for his speeches, one coming up tonight to 2,000 bribed people in a Philadelphia basketball arena.  Little Moe's tryout, his introduction, back from death's door, from some weird psychic experiment where he was a child again.  

     Lieden: (mid-speech in Philadelphia) For I have seen through the eyes of a child!  I have re-experienced the boners of adolescence.  I am you.  And you, and you, and you!!!  We are one!  One mouth, one head of hair.  Hair, my favorite word.  I admit it, no joke.  Morris Lieden likes hair.  My mother's hair, my god, I stared at her beautiful chestnut locks for hours on end.  

     "Are you admiring my hair, Morris?"

     "Yes, mother."

     Lieden: (ten minutes later in the speech) So these twats in the House of Representatives think they can unseat Angie Crook?  Angie Crook, I'll tell you a story about her.  The view in the media is that Angie is afraid of the Squad.  No, (low husky voice, leans in) it's the other way around.  Now, that's Fox who makes up crap about how Angie's afraid of the Squad.  No no no.  The Squad wants to be Angie, Angie knows it.  Angie is Senior Cheerleader, you must appease Senior Cheerleader (low breathy voice, leans in) or you're nothing.  One joins Congress to help monied interests relocate funds from the public to corporations and the wealthiest individuals.  They're the enemy of all of you.  It's hilarious.  You vote for these people who are actively screwing you!  Chumps!  You believe our lies about how we're fighting on your behalf?  How many times do you have to be humiliated with disappointment because we don't come through for you in spite of our promises?  Why are you so dumb?  Now, it's controversial for a politician to be honest.  I'm being honest with you, that's why I started by talking about hair and boners.  Can't get more honest than that ball sack hanging between our legs, right men?  I've seen Henry Hugginger's ball sack, back in the seventies, when it was still visible.  Now he looks like a statue of a deformed dwarf.  This little ball of mischief, Hugginger, has been running things in this world to his satisfaction since 1977 when he simply went behind the scenes, advising every President since Carter, including me.  I've received the advice of Henry, almost always by phone.  He sounds half-dead, but I call him sir.  He calls me Moe.  He had a thing for Dinah, that's why she got picked to run for President at that Hamptons meet and greet, well Henry himself was there, so I heard.  I wasn't there.  Rival she was to me.  Then.  Still is, turns out.  I'm going to take that bitch down.  She stole my Presidency, she and Bill Bomb.  Bomb assaulted his Commander-in-Chief, hasn't paid the penalty, isn't in the brig, hasn't been broken, whipped, tied to the ground with a steamroller driven over him feet first!  The officers who tried to kill Hitler were brutally dealt with oh yes they were.  (low husky voice, leans in) Piano wire makes a good noose, too.  Bomb, Parris, Sneffen, the Blades, they're all on my shit list!  Did you know there was an Our Gang comedy short called The Shit List ? It was never shown back when it was made in 1934.  Spanky gets knocked down by a bigger boy, Mean Bill Vought.  He compiles, with backwards S's, Spanky's Shit List.  Spanky, Stymie, and Alfalfa arm themselves with jackknives, sharpened sticks, bike chains, fingers black, black...with the oil.  Darla wants to go for a bike ride but can't.  Her bike chain is in Spanky's fist.  Those three little gangsters blacken, oil, cut, slash, punch and kick and bite Mean Bill Vought's gang.  Horrific violence for a children's film.  It fell victim to the Code, made before the Code, not ready for release before the Code, cuts were made, including most of the rumble.  They reshot the ending, had the characters express regret at wanting to do harm, real pitiful pussy excuse.  Hey, Our Gang, you sold out, didn't you?  Afraid to stick to the mayhem of those five minutes, a rumble scene better than the one in West Side Story.  You young folk probably don't know Steven Spielberg isn't the only director who made West Side Story.  You put me and Cornpop and the boys in West Side Story we'll dominate all turf.  You make me President again, I'll give you Medicare For All.  (applause, cheers). I'll erase student debt.  I'll erase medical debt.  (cheers intensify).  I'll cut the military budget by ninety percent.  I'll bring home our boys and girls.  Their hair will fill my nostrils as they each hug me when they return home.  I will greet every woman in the military as she arrives again on U.S. soil, beloved sacred soil of our land of freedom and responsibility to the planet, and how much longer do we have?  Pretty hair on you down there in the front row, what's your name, dear?  Alice?  Menissa?  That's an unusual name but hey, I'm open-minded.  Would you like to give your past and future President a little whiff of your hair?  I'll see if I can guess your brand of shampoo.  Pass?  Your choice.  How about your friend?  No?  Will any female here let me smell her hair?  Okay, I'm going to let the subject pass for now. 

     Oh that Darla.  Pretty little girl, nice dark hair.  I've seen every Our Gang, The Shit List is the best one, just came out on Blu-Ray with commentary by Francis Coppola.  Ouch!

     That Bomb!  I hate the Bomb!  He's not going to work in the Pentagon anymore once I'm back in that seat!  That privileged seat!  The Seat of Coolidge, Truman, Arbusto.  That Parris better not've gotten rid of my orthopedic chair!  For someone who killed so many millions of people, fomenting wars and overthrowing governments, Henry Hugginger's junk is tiny!  A desiccated cashew has more oomph than Henry Hugginger's peeny-weeny.  So back to my campaign.  I'm running for President.  I seek to seize the nomination two years hence.  Gross!  A fly landed on my hand!  Must be rotting meat somewhere.  Probably the rotting meaty consciences of Republicans, denying you affordable care I don't support Medicare For All that's a dream, eating sushi off of your girlfriend's belly, too.  Where am I?  Who are you people?  Am I making a speech?  How come Einstein's hair was messy?  Sounds like a setup to a punchline, doesn't it?  It's not.  He clearly didn't care if his hair was a mess, like Gandalf.  My Gandalf has twigs and lichen in his beard, he's practically a tree stump, a whole ecosystem of fungi and lichens and bugs thriving on rotting wood, that's his breath, a rotting wood smell, like a coffin chucked up by a flood and I'm feeling really mirthful (laughs).  I've got what it takes to do the job.  Guarantee. (makes Richard Nixon peace signs salute).  

     Sneffen and Parris laugh it up in the Oval Office talking about Lieden's meltdown in Philadelphia.

     Sneffen: Girl, you look so good compared to Moe!  His approval rating is 51 percent.  Yours is 29 percent, but Moe's number stems from his being out of office, thus he's perceived as harmless.

     Parris: I'm harmful, then?

     Sneffen: Perception, my dear.  No one knows the real you.  What would you rather be doing, right now?

     Parris: Watching opera.  Tosca.  Yes, Tosca.  

     Sneffen: You surprise me.  I thought you'd say you'd like to see Loverboy in concert.  

     Parris: Are they together?

     Sneffen: I think so.

     Parris: As President I should be able to get a ticket to see Loverboy in concert! (she buzzes her secretary, tells her to get on finding out when and where the next Loverboy concert will be, doesn't matter where, that's what Air Force One is for).

     Sneffen: Styx, Loverboy, which other bands of your teen years were there?

     Parris: Bangles, oh, but they came later.  The Cars, the Dead Kennedys--

     Sneffen: Stop lying, you never got into the Dead Kennedys.

     Parris: Foghat.

     Sneffen: Hm.  Foghat?  Not Grand Funk Railroad, or Rainbow?  Muscular rock for Madame President? How about Van Halen?

     Parris: You got that right.  I'm one of those who likes the Roth and Hagar eras.

     Sneffen: Moe Lieden could seize the nomination from you.

     Parris: As could Cassandra Blade.

     Sneffen: The American people don't like Cassie.  They're sick of the Blades.

     Parris: Subterfuge, vote suppression.

     Sneffen: Everybody does it.

     Parris: Why don't we do it better than anyone?

     Sneffen: You're asking about something in criminal territory, Madame President.  Are we speaking hypothetically?

     Parris: Why not? (laughs)

     Sneffen: The chief contributor to LemnickPAC, Stan Lemnick, is a Parris supporter as of yesterday.  Hard to bribe, but he came around.  He's the CEO of Internal Counting Accuracy (ICA), out of Erie, Pennsylvania.  They have the vote counting contract for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.  By the 2024 election, they expect to have contracts in Florida, Michigan, Idaho, and Kansas.

     Parris: A far-flung group of states.

     Sneffen: Lemnick has houses in each of the states I mentioned, and a castle in Montenegro.  

     Parris: (laughs) Let Stan know I'm open to an invitation to a stay at his castle in Montenegro.  

     Sneffen: I'll inform him of your enthusiasm.  He's a Dinah Parris fan.

     Parris: I'm a Stan fan. (erupts into violent laughter)

     Sneffen: A rigged election, one of many.  I will prevent the Blades from inhabiting this office.  I'll need stronger meat, though, for Cassie didn't seem upset when she saw the DVD.

     Parris: You really showed her that?

     Sneffen: It was glorious.  She sat through the whole thing.

     Parris: If you have a DVD of Doug doing something like that, don't show it to me, just tell me about it.

     Sneffen: Actually, I possess two copies of a DVD showing Doug Gard walking naked in the East Wing, and one time flashing a Marine guard.

     Parris: A male or female Marine?

     Sneffen: Male.

     Parris: Doug is trying to establish the boundaries of his turf.  He calls himself the Lord of the East Wing, he's having a uniform made.  Should he sit around, do nothing?  Should he participate in government?  I'm going to allow him to attend some Oval Office meetings, observe, listen, offer comments when asked to do so.  The Presidency is a partnership.  Patricia Nixon was sad and lonely because her husband wouldn't let her in on the Watergate break-in, wouldn't let her in on bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia, didn't let her know Elvis was in the building. 

     Sneffen: You believe that Doug Gard is capable of making presidential-level decisions, or weighing in on them?

     Parris: Weighing in.  An advisor.  What's wrong with having another advisor?

     Sneffen: I withhold judgment until I have observed your husband in action in this new upcoming role.  I pray that if he fails, you'll can him as your advisor?

     Parris: My Dougie ain't gonna fail, sugar bag.

     Moe Lieden's Campaign HQ, Lieden 24 And A Whole Lot More!, slogan thought up by Lieden, insisted upon by Lieden to the point when he threatened to quit the campaign.  Lieden has the backing of several top-ranking military officers, including General Beak of Space Force.  Beak and Lieden are in regular consultation, like today here in Wilmington, Delaware, center of the Lieden universe, that town.

     Beak: I warn you, Mr. President.  False President Parris has General Cornpop on the ready to initiate a remote experiment against you using hypnotic suggestion planted in your cerebral cortex during your stay in Facility One.

     Lieden: Facility what?

     Beak: One.  It's in Nebraska.  People the upper levels of government want disappeared or put away for awhile get sent there.

     Lieden: That means Dinah.

     Beak: It does.  Mr. President.  She means you harm.  She means you failure and disappointment.  A hard bitch, but a lucky one.  I seek to undermine this cunning hussy at all costs.  She's ruining our nation, poisoning multiple generations of good solid patriots doing the work of Americans.  She's a rain of poison.  But we of Space Force venerate those who pull hard on the rope of life.  Some swing at the end of it through no fault of their own.  Hard cheese for them.

     Lieden: A good Brie cheese with expensive crackers would go down good now.  And a perfect red apple.  Can you obtain these food items for me, Beak?

     Beak: One of your campaign workers, surely, is better suited to the task?

     Lieden: Haven't you ever gone to a grocery store before?  

     Beak: When I was a child.

     Lieden: Go to the O'Loman's on 3rd and Gastritis.  Pick up and pay for some Brie, good stuff, not the cheapest, and a box of the most expensive crackers on the shelf.  I'll charge it to the campaign.  Oh, and the apple, a red one, like the one in Snow White, man that thing was red!  Get me a bottle of Gatorade, the blue stuff, and a package of licorice.  If you want to get something for yourself, go ahead.  We're gonna be here all night, chap.  Go on, it's a nice evening, not too cold, you're an adult, you can figure out how to go to a grocery store and buy items specified by your President whom you have sworn, not in an official ceremony, to serve.

     Beak, in the grocery store.  It's five minutes past nine, only a few customers.  He locates a package of black licorice, finds the most expensive of nine varieties of Brie, crackers next, surprisingly they're only a buck more expensive than a box of Ritz.  Blue Gatorade, check.  Beak selects for himself a deli-wrapped ham and cheese sandwich, a small package of Cheetos, the kind that look like cavemen's clubs, and a Sudoku book.  No one remarks on his splendid dark blue uniform adorned with gold and ribbons.  Back in the campaign office, Biden sits talking with a man in a brown leather jacket, black greasy hair, rotund but with muscular arms and shoulders, an ugly broken mouth, chapped large lips. 

     Lieden: Step on in, General Beak.  This man here is about to tell me something that will affect my campaign, or so he said.  Let's see if he's not lying.  Proceed, son.  Beak, sit down, you're making me nervous. (Beak places the grocery bag on Lieden's desk.  Lieden makes no mention of the bag, nor of Beak's graciousness in fetching goods for the lawful President of the United States when there are at least three other interns or intern-type workers on this campaign, working on this floor right now.  Why in Fuck's name did I have to get these groceries?  And I barely had enough money.  He's a cheapskate.  He's a load of garbage, but he's the best we can do.  Who is this visitor?).

     Visitor: My name is Hector Frankbarrhuber.

     Lieden: Bloodfist?

     Frankbarrhuber: You know me.

     Lieden: Who doesn't?  I'm surprised I didn't recognize yuh.  On the other hand, your face got mangled in a car crash on the PCH.  It was the PCH, right?

     Frankbarrhuber: Highway 5, Seattle.  

     Lieden: Those Seahawks beat my Eagles or Steelers, depending which half of Pennsylvania I'm campaigning in.

     Frankbarrhuber: Mr. Lieden, I'm here to kill you (whips out a small pistol, aims it at Beak, half out of his chair) Relax, General, sit.  

     Lieden: (distressed) What did I do wrong?

     Frankbarrhuber: I'm not the judge of these things.  I never paid attention to you before.  My life is fine without you politicians.  What's one less?

     Beak: Outrageous man!

     Lieden: Bold man! (the Lieden grin lights up)

     Frankbarrhuber: Listen up.  Someone hired me to kill you, Lieden.  You have more money than...that person, has.  Say you offer four times what that person is giving me to kill you.  I don't kill you then, how does that sound?

     Beak: The man has a gun pointed at me, Mr. President.  Accept the offer. 

     Lieden: That's a lot of money, no wait, how much are you asking for?

     Frankbarrhuber: Sorry, I forgot to say.  I've had concussions, the ring.

     Lieden: Bloodfist, you were the master of arena combat!

     Beak: Mr. President, don't encourage the man!

     Lieden: How much?

     Frankbarrhuber: You give me 600,000 dollars, I don't kill you.  

     Lieden: That's all you want?  I'm worth a lot more than six-hundred k, what the hell, Joe!

     Frankbarrhuber: Hector.

     Lieden: We're all Joes, aren't we?  Isn't everybody a Joe?

     Frankbarrhuber (to Beak): Did someone mickey his drink?

     Beak: Did you, Frankbarrhuber?

     Frankbarrhuber: (aiming the gun still at bilious Beak) I didn't. (sotto voce to Beak) I think the prez is a bit on the senile side.

     Lieden: All right, this has gone far enough.  Put that gun away and let's talk business.  I don't want to get shot by you or anybody.  I don't want to get pushed off a cliff by a friend, or get eaten alive by a Great White, oh Jaws, could you be more bloody?  I pissed my pants when I saw you, popular movie!  I still can't swim in the Atlantic Ocean, nor can I watch any more Steven Spielberg movies, although I did see Always.  Schmaltzy piece of shit.  Liked John Goodman's aviators.  The Audrey Hepburn scenes were good.  Audrey, oh Audrey.  I lusted after you in A Nun's Story.  I wanted to see your hair, but you had the nun costume on, you looked awfully cute, though.  Breakfast at Tiffany's though, oh boy, my Audrey was smashing to see.  I saw the movie over and over, memorized Audrey's hair and face so that when I went home and pleased myself I'd see Audrey vividly.  Ahhhh, Audrey, Audrey, Audrey...

     Frankbarrhuber: See what I mean?

     Beak: A broken sword can be mended.

     Frankbarrhuber: Like Boromir's sword.

     Beak: Aragorn's sword, Anduril, you numbskull.  Are you going to kill me, too?

     Frankbarrhuber: You're not worth killing.

     Beak: I AM worth killing!!!

     Frankbarrhuber: Okay, you're worth killing.

     Lieden: KILLING IS PART OF MY JOB!!!

     Beak: You don't think I'm worth killing, do you.  Your voice sounded blasé when you agreed I'm worth killing.

     Frankbarrhuber: If the price is right, anyone is worth killing.

     Lieden: See, Beak?  Our Vector here is a realist, a pragmatic optimist, a schizophrenic dialysis, a mendacious apotheosis, a maleficent murmur, a creative gene, a bested team of lizard men, a crack in space letting in anti-versions of us.

     Frankbarrhuber: Lieden.  Our agreement?

     Lieden: Yeah, I'll get you the six-hundred thousand tomorrow, say, eightish.  The p.m.  General Beak will call you around six-thirty, tell you where to meet him for the pickup.  If you fail to show, we keep the money.  We earned it through our ability to convince people to give us campaign donations.  

     Frankbarrhuber: General, I'll tell you a number.  

     

     Artie Sneffen's subterranean office in the Nail.  He's finishing a Jimmy John's roast beef sandwich--the delivery men at that store nearest the Nail have security clearances allowing them to descend deep into the structure.

     Sneffen: (on secure-phone) How goes your mission?

     Frankbarrhuber: Proceeding pace.

     Sneffen: We expect results within a month.

     Frankbarrhuber: Amateurs.

     Sneffen: What?

     Frankbarrhuber: A month.  You think that's enough time?  No, six months, and you pay me the five hundred we agreed per day on top of everything.  You protect me, you don't treat me like Oswald.  You pull me out of any tight spots.

     Sneffen: You have an enormous regard for your own importance.

     Frankbarrhuber: You kill him then.

     Sneffen: I can't do that.  It's not in my moral makeup to kill in cold blood, especially one whom I know and have known for over twenty years.  

     Frankbarrhuber: Well, pussy, if you feel that way, I advise you to call off this hit.

     Sneffen: You remind me of eating a quince.

     Frankbarrhuber: You remind me of a prissy Englishman.  Where are you from?

     Sneffen: Alderknox, Bentonville, Pennsylvania, Alderknox is the name of the house.

     Frankbarrhuber: Sounds posh, sounds like you had an easy life.

     Sneffen: More like Peyton Place and my mother was Lana Turner.

     Frankbarrhuber: Lana Turner, lip smackin good.  Was there scandal in Bentonville?

     Sneffen: Tons.

     Frankbarrhuber: Don't tell me about it someday.  Meantime, I'm off on a fact-finding mission pertaining to the job you gave me.  Six months, or I walk. 

     Sneffen: Six months, then, tedious man.

     Oval Office.  President Parris meets with Foreign Minister Graziani Copelius of Madeupistan, a buffer state between the People's Republic of China and Afghanistan, rich in minerals, ruled by a dictator educated at Cambridge.  Doug Gard sits in, as does Artie Sneffen, Ray Holroyd, and advisor to the President, Cassandra Blade, who knew the Foreign Minister from her visit to Madeupistan in 2012.

     Blade: Your Excellency.  Welcome to our great country.  Your first time to Washington.  You know why you're here.

     Doug Gard (breaking in): We want to arm you.  America is a big loving giving country.  We want to love your culture and learn your country's history, celebrate its arts.  We want to give you automatic rifles, grenades, pistols, bayonets, nets, tridents, swords, spears, whatever it takes!  Dinah, honey, shall we give them nukes?  Why not?  Mr. Copelius, wanna nuke?

     Copelius: Forgive me, Madame President.  Who is this?

     Parris (laughing): This is my husband, the First Gentleman, Douglas Gard.

     Gard: (points at the ceiling) Lord of the East Wing!  But call me Doug, and may I call you Graz?

     Copelius (ignoring him): My country is indeed in need of weapons to hold back the all too likely possibility Beijing will steamroll us in the event of a war between them and the U.S.

     Parris: Boy, you're as serious as a Steinbeck novel (laughs).  Well, Ray, aren't we already supplying these Madeupis with our superior American weaponry?

     Holroyd: We are, Madame President.  We can sell them more at bargain basement prices.  We're constipated with small arms of late.  Having a tiny turbulent country to dump some of our stock in is awfully convenient right now.  Mr. Copelius, you're a godsend!  

     Copelius: Bigger weapons are also necessary.  Shoulder-mounted missiles, laser cannons, particle beam weapons, sound artillery, the TRELLIS system for precision target location, electromagnetic pulse weapons, wood for coffins, and the right to interrogate prisoners held in U.S. facilities.  

     Holroyd: (smiling at the others) This man has no hesitancy.  Let's give him what he wants, but I must refuse, with regrets, TRELLIS.  We have only one operational now, two in the repair shop.  They're finicky things.  You don't need TRELLIS in any case.  We will provide you with its data so you can best select targets, whether it's a hospital, or a refugee camp, or a weapons dump, or a village you find a little bit suspicious, you can be assured TRELLIS will not fail you.  

     Gard: Are you sure you don't want a nuke?  Honey, can we give the nice man a nuke?  If he shows the Chinese he has a nuke they're not going to want to attack his little country.  

     Parris: We don't give our nuclear weapons to anyone, Doug, except in mushroom shape.  

     Sneffen: Your Excellency.  Your President, Mar Mar Duwanieze, has not been cooperative with U.S. directives about leftists in your country.  That Nobel Prize winner, the Professor, Garmani Googe, he's been in prison in your capitol for five years.  He's a cause celebre.  Sean Penn produced a documentary about him.  FREE GOOGE bumper stickers are available for sale in the White House Gift Shop.  A liberal Democrat automatically supports Googe in spite, or perhaps because of, his proven links to U.S. Intelligence.  Googe's opposition to President Duwanieze is mild compared to that of some members of the President's own Sunshiny Day Party.   

     Copelius: An unpopular man, unfortunately.  Opposition grows.

     Parris: Crush it.  We'll supply the snipers.

     Holroyd: Right on that, Madame President.  I've got DIA men positioned even now in your country, Your Excellency, ready to stir up trouble.

     Copelius: Reassuring indeed, Mr. Secretary.  

     Blade: I would like to point out, IF ANYONE WANTS TO HEAR MY POSITION!  (standing now, breathing hard, not laughing as Sneffen expected) That we should occupy Madeupistan, set up a base or two, train the locals, IMF-loan the shit out of the place, and encourage old man Duwanieze to go into exile.  I'm sure Saudi Arabia would take him.  I have a friend in Riyadh who can put him up for a while.  He's sheltering a dictator already, plus a couple of ISIS leaders.  

     Copelius: My nation would prefer autonomy.

     Sneffen: (laughs in his nose): Too late for that, old man.  Short of declaring war on the United States and defeating our military, you'll never be free of us.

     Copelius: The Taliban beat your military.

     Holroyd: NOT TRUE!  It was the politicians in Washington!  It was the news bureaus!  The journalists and their free thought!  Their editorials!  Their punditry!  We were defeated by punditry!  Lieden, that swine, pulled us out, though not completely.  We'll go back in.  When I primary you, President Parris, I will win in a landslide, Holroyd 2024, Beginning of the Dream.  On Day One we will reinvade Afghanistan, and Madeupistan!  You may be imprisoned, Your Excellency, once Americans have occupied your little land, so watch your mouth!  

     Gard: May I be rude to the foreigner, too?

     Parris: No, you may not.  You may ask him a sensible question, though.

     Gard: You don't want nukes.  How about a MOAB?

     Copelius: That would require a large cargo plane to drop it from.

     Gard: Oh come on, your Air Force has cargo planes, doesn't it?  (smiles at everybody).  I did some research.  Madeupistan's Air Force is equipped with two C-130s.

     Copelius: Both planes are in repairs.

     Gard: Yeah, once they get repaired, put a MOAB on one of them, fly it over China and MOAB the fuck out of it.  Why wouldn't that be a good idea?

     Holroyd: You want to specify a target, Mr. Gentleman?

     Gard: I don't know.  China.

     Holroyd: Big place is China, like a big angry tiger wanting to gobble up little Madeupistan.  You and your country, Your Excellency, are in deep doo doo, that means shit, if you don't receive our help, whatever that might be.  You have to trust us like a child trusts its daddy.  

     Parris: And mommy! (laughs).

     Blade: Speaking as the only mother in the room, I know Mr. Copelius will come through for us, no matter who runs his little country, but who runs it is always a matter of who's running America.  That could be me someday (rubs her fingernails against her lapel symbolically).

     Parris: I'm the first woman to be President of the United States. (smiles at everyone, lingering on Cassie).

     General Beak, wearing a sports shirt with an alligator sewn on the breast, expensive dark blue slacks, dark mirror-polished shoes, with a snub-nosed thirty-eight between his belt and right buttock.

    

     Beak (thinking as he waits in the alley off First Street, deserted downtown Wilmington at night, 8:33 pm, Frankbarrhuber three minutes late).  A good sign?  Oh, I'm ready to grease the bitch, to punish the hubristically turgid pile of low class dung that is Hector Bloodfist Frankbarrhuber, the Garbage Collector, well I'll collect his garbage, I'll bang his garbage lid, I'll stroke his ego with praise, then bash his brains with a club, a death stroke, I hope he gives me the excuse to take out my gun and put him on the filthy pavement, bleeding, fading, reliving his sweaty times in the ring.  Fading into nothing.  Come on, Fuck, where are you?  You horse's bleeding anus!  You're seven minutes late!  Where the fuck could you be?  Isn't collecting six-hundred thousand dollars worth your time?  You got better things to do tonight than pick up 600k?  Here it is!  Look, I'm holding a briefcase with over half a million bucks inside!  Real money!  Oh, are you torturing me?  Making me edgy?  Good try, man, good try.  Put me off guard.  Better to be calm.  Okay, stand here and wait.  Sound of cars, glistening walls on either side of me.  That rainstorm had its moments, phew!  I've been drenched in rain a few times, but that was a near-drenching.  Got inside my car then it dumped.  Eleven minutes late, don't look at your watch.  Space travel must be like this.  Boring and filled with anxiety-producing electrified moments of excitement.  Lieden will send me into space.  Surely he will.  I'll be qualified by then.  I've taken the tests, I just need more physical work and training.  I'm not worried, I'm sure they'll pass me.  I'm strong, I'm an immovable block of sixty-two years of age.  I'm impressive, I could take on two out of shape twenty year olds and not break a sweat.   I mean twenty year old men.  Lots of energy in those young men.  I watch them work out in the Pentagon gymnastics room.  I like gymnastics.  I was on a team in college.  I fell off a balance beam, cracked my head, had to quit because the coach didn't want me, said I was too clumsy.  Wait a minute, is that him?  That bloated shape approaching, wearing a white tee shirt and yes, the leather jacket.  Hair a mess.  I'd like to recruit him into Space Force, but he won't be interested after he gets his money.  Pity, though.  The Force could turn him into a man of precision, a star warrior, a Buck Rogers, a shuttle pilot, a technician working on assembling rocket gantries, a cooking staff person on some base inside an asteroid.  Care for some eggs, General Beak?, he asks me.  I say yes, and ask for a refill of my low gravity coffee bulb.  He looks wary as he approaches.  

     Frankbarrhuber: Is that it?

     Beak: (holds up the case): I'll...put it on the ground and step back.

     Frankbarrhuber: I don't bite.  Go ahead then.

     

     Beak puts down the case and steps back ten steps.  Frankbarrhuber approaches at a normal pace, picks up the case, opens it, puts it on the ground, shines a small flashlight at it.

     Frankbarrhuber: Come over here, General.

     Beak: Why?

     Frankbarrhuber: Count the money.  Each time you reach ten thousand announce it.  Come on, do it.

     

     Beak imagines his gun saying, "Come on, pussy!  This tubba lard?  Ventilate the fucker!" 

         

     Beak (kneeling before the briefcase, beginning his count): You're fortunate I'm a patient man.  

     Frankbarrhuber: No patient man would say that.  Concentrate on your count.

     Beak: Ten thousand.

     Frankbarrhuber: Ten thousand once.

     Beak: Are you sticking around America after this?

     Frankbarrhuber: I thought maybe I'd go to Iraq, invest some money into exploiting the citizens, maybe through setting up a phony charity.

     Beak: I detect--twenty thousand--sarcasm.

     Frankbarrhuber: Where I go is not your affair, whether it's a block away from here or two thousand miles.  

     Beak: Thirty thousand.

     On and on, doesn't take long once they stop talking.  Beak rises, curses the damp spots on the knees of his expensive slacks.  Frankbarrhuber clutches the case under his arm, smiles.

 

     Frankbarrhuber: Let Lieden know I have people who would avenge me if he ever tries anything on me.  

     Beak: You have friends?

     Frankbarrhuber: I didn't say they're friends.  Good night, General.

To be continued...

Vic Neptune