The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy Part Nine

     Oval Office:  President Lieden and Jennifer Psyop, Artie Sneffen and Dr. Lieden.

     Lieden: That's why I see it this way.  The 'bout of the what-about has no relation to this matter, this is between me and my health insurance tycoon master who's owned me since the seventies.  My business dealings in Ukraine, as well, have nothing to do with the war.  I don't seek to make money.  Money just makes itself around me, in bank accounts I don't even know about.  I got Eddie Merchandise managing my money.  

     Psyop: Eddie Merchandise?

     Lieden: If he can't get it for you, you don't need it.

     Sneffen: What does this Merchandise man do?

     Lieden: He's sixty-two years old, smokes and drinks every day.  Supply him with a two hundred dollar hooker now and then and you'll find he's the best kind of guy to be in a monies-related relationship with.

     Dr. Lieden: I've met Eddie.  He's not as appalling as he may sound.

     Lieden: Eddie's a bang-up guy!  A righteous guy!  A patriot!  His older brother, Bearhug Merchandise, died young, tragic story, junkyard car compactor, no joke.  Anyhoo, Bearhug was a big tough black-haired son of a bitch, a rabble rouser, an Irish dimwit with the strength of ten men.  He would've made Paul Bunyan think twice about getting into a scuffle with battling Bearhug Merchandise of the Anaconda Montana Merchandises.

     Dr. Lieden: Bear in mind, the president exaggerates when he talks about the legendary Bearhug.

     Lieden: Legendary?  I beg to differ my dear love, my pigeon, my slow ride, let's try it slow next time, huh?

     Psyop (redder in the face): Mr. President, the Ambassador of France to the U.S. is waiting for you now in the Manifest Destiny Room.  

     Lieden: Well, shall we go meet the frog?

     Dr. Lieden: Honey, don't say that.

     Lieden: Don't say what?

     Dr. Lieden: The term you used to describe the French ambassador.

     Lieden: Your hair smells terrific.

     Dr. Lieden: (sotto voce) Come on Amanda, you can do it.

     Manifest Destiny Room.  White marble fireplace, large portrait of James Monroe, fifth president, concoctor of the wild idea insisting that America has the right, for it is destiny, to rule over the Western Hemisphere.  More portraits, a circular room with Masonic symbols set among the tiles.  Eye of God looking up women's skirts.  George W. Bush has a portrait in the Manifest Destiny Room as does Gerald Ford, a high-level Freemason.  A dashing action portrait of John Paul Jones in the midst of battle makes it look as if the greatest fucking experience one could ever have would be to fight in a wooden-ship naval battle in the 18th century.  Next to the battle image, a portrait of King George the Third with hundreds of darts making his face, neck, chest, hands, arms into porcupine-themed art.  A pool table, game mid-progress between two Secret Service agents who put their cues on the felt, then assume professional stances, ready to kill.  Said to be cream of the crop, yet this detail in 2015 lost President Bongo's dog, kidnapped a similar-looking dog, tried to pass that dog off as beloved Woofee.  Granted, the two dogs looked mostly the same, eye color identical, size close.  A portrait of James Monroe's black schnauzer, Ignatius, walked by Monroe's daughter or wife* [*Author's note: Whether James Monroe had a dog, wife, or daughter is beside the point, I sometimes make shit up] occupy a cute figure study in a corner of the room by a writing desk where sits the stenographer, Shirley, who has no lines.

     A distinguished man in a pinstripe three piece suit, gray hair combed and oiled, parted in the middle, a cane, a white carnation in his lapel, a thin mustache, and a pince-nez attached to a lavender ribbon.  Ambassador Michel Condorch-Uibeau-Bucharles-von-Eckinbreit.  About sixty, this man has met every important person in the world.  They all think he's a self-important asshole.

     Sneffen: Mr. President, this is Ambassador Condorch-Eckinbreit, um.

     Ambassador: I will say my name.  (says his name).

     Lieden: I wouldn't be able to remember a name like that!  Where are you from?

     Ambassador: Tarn Gorge area, Languedoc, southeast France, Mr. President, but I haven't been back there since 1992.  

     Lieden: Is it still there? (slaps his knees)

     Ambassador: Shall we sit, Mr. President?

     Lieden: Have you met my wife?  Amanda, this is Geo-Christ Marshmelon Chromium Dome Utter Prick Fuckface.

     Dr. Lieden: You and your jokes, I'm sure that's not this distinguished gentleman's name!

     Lieden: Who can remember a name like yours.  I'll call you Mike, okay?

     Ambassador: Mike is acceptable.

     Lieden: Would you like to get an autographed photo of Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy?  He took the Packers to the Super Bowl.  Boy, it was painful for the Vice President I was then to see a Pennsylvania team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, toughest team in the league, you want to dispute it?  Huh?  Are you a Steelers fan or a Packers fan?

     Ambassador: Neither.

     Lieden: I like your coolness.  You dress like a fruit but I'll overlook it.  Are you?

     Ambassador: Am I--

     Lieden: A fruitcake?

     Ambassador: I don't know what that is.

     Lieden (to everyone): He doesn't know what it is!  He's been spared the ordeal of being given a fruitcake for Christmas!  My mother, God rest her soul, got a fruitcake from Aunt Mabel, or was it Aunt Myrtle? No!  It was Aunt Doris!  My mother passed it on to Aunt Annabelle, oh, she was a sweetie.  She let me smell her hair whenever I wanted to, didn't think it was weird, unlike the others.

     

     The Ambassador, a patient man, was once stuck in Mumbai airport for forty-nine hours; even his V.I.P. status could not convince anyone in authority he needed to get on a plane, now!  The experience taught him composure for he kept his frustration behind his closed mouth.  

     He observes the people in the room, the two pool-playing security men, possibly useless or on the take.  The little rodent man, the Secretary of State, never in one spot longer than a minute, glancing excessively at the president, who's a work of art himself.  

     

     He's either crazy, the Ambassador thinks, or just rapidly declining in cognitive function.  The man has no shame machine in his brain.  The nuclear codes are in the hands of this oddball, this excentrique.

     

     The Ambassador observes the redhead.  

 

     Jennifer Something.  On the edge of her chair.  Poor thing.  Things seem to be decaying in this administration.  Well, rot has a purpose.  And what about this one?  Wife of the President, and compared to Carla Bruni she's bland but her wholesome look distracts needlessly from her inner man-devouring roar, yes, I detect that in her, for she is infuriated with her husband for all his peculiar talk to a foreign dignitary, Michel Condorch-Uibeau-Bucharles-von-Eckinbreit.

     Lieden: Do you find, hey!  Ambassador, stop looking at my wife.  Do you find licking stamps to be a distasteful thing to do?  I mean, the taste, it's awful, unless you like eating glue, like a Depression-era moron.

     Ambassador: I don't lick stamps.

     Lieden: What do you lick?

     Ambassador: I've licked a popsicle or two.

     Lieden: You are a fruit. 

     Ambassador: We're all food for Mother Earth, yes?

     Dr. Lieden: Honey, discuss Ukraine.

     Lieden: Yeah, we're here for a reason, Mike.  There's a tragic situation going on in Ukraine.  I was just there, I mean I was on the horn with Zelensky.  More weapons, keep pouring it in, well no shit, he thinks I don't know my tactic?  Flood, permeate, drop, push into, make Ukraine inhale and exhale weaponry, put more weapons in there, a carpet of weapons across the entire country.  The money we're making from this fucking war made one of my Joint Chiefs cum in his pants.  Amazing.  You'd think he was looking at a nude picture of the 1960s Brigitte Bardot, but no, weapons transfers, arms industry sales, stocks, General Best of the Army is a fucking corpse-feeder, nothing wrong with that, I'm not criticizing the industry that butters our bread, I'd just like to get more public thank yous from the war profiteers.

     Sneffen: What the president means is, his call with President Zelensky produced good fruit.

     Ambassador: The fruit?  Again?

     Dr. Lieden (gesturing to the fruit bowl some intern placed on a table nearby along with beverages) Would you like a piece of fruit, Mr. Ambassador?  A Coke?  Water?  I see Sprite over there, no, that's Sierra Mist.  Sprong?  Is that a soda?  Hm.  Sprong.  I'm losing my fucking mind.  What do I mean?  Moe's losing his fucking mind!  How important is this Ambassador?  He's part of the NATO concern with Ukraine, the Russian natural gas question.  He seems oblivious to having been called a homosexual by the President of the United States.  Oh god, he's talking again.

     Lieden: I like to compare myself to that guy (points to the Monroe portrait).  The guy was basically a pirate at heart.  (With a Robert Newton as Long John Silver voice, he imitates James Monroe, imagining that's how he talked since he was a pirate, Lieden had decided it to be so) Keep your mitts off our Western Hemisphere!  Half the earth is ours!  Arrrrrr.  We'll seize Terry Stein's Unpunished Crimes Island.  (Normal voice now). Ever been to Terry's island, Mr. Ambassador?

     Ambassador: (lying) No, I have not.

     Lieden: I believe you, I believe you, who wants to admit to that?  But here's the thing.  France needs to send more lethal aid to Ukraine.  Pick up the pace!

     Ambassador: My government does not respond to such urgings on your part at this time.  We are analyzing the situation on the ground.  Our current thinking, Ukraine has enough weapons.  More people need to die, more time must past, all the players are ready to make moves, but that doesn't mean France is uninterested in supporting Ukraine and her brave people.

     Lieden: I admire Napoleon.  He wasn't French, he was a grubby Corsican, but that military mind of his, so willing to sacrifice thousands of people at a time, musket balls, cannon, oh those uniforms!  War was never prettier nor more filled with gallant men than in those bygone times.  The roar of cannon, the deafness of the gunners, although maybe they stuffed rags in their ears, you know, like strips of cloth, maybe from their wife's petticoats the morning she sees him off to maybe never come home again because a cannonball took his manhood, legs, hips, lower intestine, now don't interrupt, there's always a point to my talk, right Amanda?  You bet, look at that wife of mine!  Am I the luckiest man in the world?  They broke the mold when they made Amanda.  Amanda, you're my forever bride, my good luck charm, my witch, my sweet ride.  

     Sneffen: Mr. President--

     Lieden: Not now Artie.  (to the stenographer).  I hope you're getting this down!  Good.  EVERYBODY PAY ATTENTION!  (smiles).  My socks cost three-thousand five-hundred dollars.  My underwear is specially made in Turin, Italy.  Silk, soft, feels good on the privates.  My shirts are made of some nearly extinct Peruvian llama.  I need Dr. Grauchi.  (puts his head in his hands, elbows on knees)

     Psyop: I've texted him.

     Dr. Lieden (attending to him): Honey, relax relax.  The Doctor will be here soon.

     Psyop: He texted back: Is it an emergency?

     Dr. Lieden: Is it an emergency?  Tell that scrawny Italian fuck to get in here!

     Psyop: I just wrote Yes.

    Ambassador: Is the meeting over?

     Sneffen: You and I can finish the meeting.

     Ambassador: Here, in a room where EMTs may need space?

     Sneffen: The President is not physically unwell.

     Ambassador: He's mentally unwell.  Old, maybe?

     Sneffen: You're a glib man, Mike.  The President will be fine.  He needs his treatment.

     Ambassador: Oh, he's a drug user.  Which drugs?

     Sneffen: Tylenol.  He also likes Rolaids.

     Ambassador: That's all?

     Dr. Grauchi enters with two beefy EMTs.  They check out the President, his vitals, whether or not he's alive.  The tensed silence of the room resembles no noise of horse play.  These are serious matters, serious men, and two serious women.  Jennifer Psyop feels relieved she can postpone her inevitable "career" talk with the president.  The EMTs find him to be okay, but he's looking to be done for the day.  Unless...

     

     Dr. Grauchi: I knew you were fine, Mr. President.  Jennifer, you prankster!  Getting me away from an interview on Good Morning America to call me down here for what turns out to be a little spell.  Mr. President, I have your morning dose of Strawberry Quik, and I added something in there too.

     Dr. Lieden: What did you add?

     Dr. Grauchi: A little pepper and salt to bring down the excessive sweetness of the drink.  Watch as the President's face enlivens with potentcy, joie de vivre, there's teenaged blood in there, that's what I added.  Look, he likes it, he really likes it!  I can allow half a glass more, Mr. President.  That's what's left in my thermos, you're welcome to it.  As my mother used to say, "Always carry a thermos."

     Ambassador: Well, Mr. Sneffen, shall we retire to a quiet room and, as you say, "hash it out?"

     Sneffen: Of course.  (to Psyop): Tell the President I'm going to straighten his mess.

     Dr. Lieden: Artie looks pissed.

     Psyop: Whatever happens between the French Ambassador What's-His-Name and Artie Sneffen will be the product of Artie Sneffen, not the President, so he's wondering, who's the President now?

     Dr. Lieden (furious, glares at Artie, points down at her husband drinking his Strawberry Quik and giggling at one of Grauchi's jokes about Jewish mothers): Moe Lieden is the President and don't you forget it!  Do not challenge his authority over you, you worm!  You're like a firefly, I can't pin you down!  You've plotted against my husband, granted, so have I, you've sought to install as president a joke of a human being, Dinah.  Now you will sit down with the French Ambassador and make a deal affecting France's participation in the war, strengthening it?  I leave it to you, but don't ever challenge Moe Lieden's authority again.  I will rip off your face if you do!  

     Sneffen: Really, Mandy, you are steadfast to that man, what a lucky bum he is.  Don't worry, I'll represent the President's interests and mostly, the country's.  

     Dr. Lieden: Take the stenographer.

     Sneffen: No.  Closed door meeting, a real conversation between two people, no one else listening in.

     Dr. Lieden: There's an un-surveilled room in the White House?

     Sneffen: I'm accompanying the Ambassador off property.

     Sneffen's office in the Nail, room just bug-swept, no communication devices, no computers allowed in the room, just two people talking.  Sneffen, though he didn't inform Dr. Lieden, received conscious permission from the President soon after he failed for the day, to continue the meeting with the French Ambassador Mike.

     "Mike, a heckuva guy!"  Lieden had said before he passed out, deliriously happy with Strawberry Quik in his bloodstream, the life's essence of youth enlivening his veins, his capillaries, his chest feeling like it could grow dark hair again.  His member, visible when the Secret Service bedroom men undressed him, led a mischievous Dr. Grauchi to take an iPhone photo, then approach the bed, creeping along like a half-man half-snake to sit beside the nude president.

     

     Dr. Grauchi: Ride the snake.  Remember that lyric?  The Doors.  I would get high when I listened to them, and Steppenwolf, and Cream.  Not a Hendrix man.  Didn't like The Who.  Anyway, Mr. President, you're about to enter a new phase of life, a rejuvenation.  You'll be alive in 3,000 years.  Weird science fiction stuff, it's coming our way.

     Lieden (under covers now): Rocket ships.  Attack of the Hairless People, 5,000 Leagues Under the Ship Full of Seamen.  Crazy train all aboard, grief comes to those who think too much, so better not to think, be a soulless shell of a man, continuing on in politics for four decades doesn't know when to quit, can't stop being an asshole to America and much of the world, oh I love that guy!  That guy is me, a tornado of steam rammed up the assholes of the appeasement crowd!  Still, I don't hate anyone.  I hate myself.  I'm horrible.  I spend a third of my day thinking about my cock.  Maybe that's normal for men my age?  Plus, I gotta nice cock.

     Dr. Grauchi: I've seen it.

     Lieden: Don Richman thought he could beat me in the cock department.  I beat him in the cock!  Those debates show a big time cock beating inflicted on Richman.  I overwhelmed that motherfucker, he didn't know what to do with me.  He couldn't flatter me, many have tried that tactic, you know when other people on the stage start praising you and you think, you should be puffing yourself up, not me you dumbass!  Boy, I wish I had called Don Richman a dumbass on live television.  A teachable moment.  Rice Krispies.  Why am I thinking of Rice Krispies?  Is it possible to self-destruct.  You don't know there's a self-destruct built in.  It'll go off, that's all you can know for sure.  Depressing.  Where was I?  Don Richman's prick, said to be mushroom-shaped, but all penises have a mushroomy morphology, would you concur, Doctor?

     Dr. Grauchi: That's a good observation.  You're not tired?

     Lieden: I'm enlivened by young people's blood.  Finally, we found a use for them.  

     Dr. Grauchi: Ah!  We think alike!

     Lieden: Can I have some more bloody pink Strawberry Quik?

     Dr. Grauchi: You've had more than your share for today.

     Lieden: A taste?  One sip?  Please?  Will you indulge this man's desire?  My stomach wants it as do my taste buds.

     Dr. Grauchi: Little boy's teeth are gonna fall out, too much sweet.  I'll give a shot glass of Strawberry Quik with an extra dropper of eighteen year old blood.  

     Lieden: Do I have the day off?

     Dr. Grauchi: Yes, Mr. President.  Artie Sneffen is conducting the meeting with the French Ambassador Whatever-His-Name-Is.  Sneffen operates under the authority granted to him by you, I was a witness, remember?

     Lieden: I remember.

     Dr. Grauchi: Good, mid-term memory working.  Short term memory not good, but you have long term?

     Lieden: I remember dear old Dad, my Mom's beautiful hair, Sis's differently colored locks, but smelling so good, Wilmington, Cornpop, all the cars I stole, that kid I murdered cuz he sat in my car without my permission, I come home, I was out riding my bike, and there's this kid sitting in my sixty-one Falcon, a brand new car, bought it with my own hard-earned lifeguard cash, plus the stealing and reselling of cars, this kid's sitting in my car behind the wheel, about nineteen years old, blonde crewcut, looks kind of military I said get out of my car and he wouldn't get out, what's the deal I think maybe he's got a screw loose fortunately I had my .38 in the waistband behind my back.  I put it to his head, he got out of the car.  I shot him dead.  I didn't like his look.  Don't sit in my car, you fream! I yelled.

     Dr. Grauchi: Fream, I haven't heard that one in a long time.

     Lieden: Someone who doesn't belong.  Well, two years later I was out of the sanitarium, my prospects looked good, in law, boating, hedge funding, war profiteering, drug dealing, or maybe politics, that one worked because it combined all of the legal and illegal activities into one interconnected set.  In my mind I still see that guy in my car.  What was his problem?  But then, in the sanitarium they asked me, "What was your problem that you had to shoot the fream?"  Deep stuff.  I still ask myself that question.  For me, motives don't mean anything, sorry Perry Mason.  It's what's deep inside a man that makes him the man he is.  A man may find in an emergency or some sudden eruption of events that he's ill-equipped to handle whatever it is, the new crises, put it that way.  But the man deals with it one day at a time, finds moments too of beauty, of tranquility.  I didn't really kill that fream, that's a true story but it didn't involve me.

     Dr. Grauchi: It sounded made up.

     Lieden: Well, it did happen.

     Dr. Grauchi: If you say so.

     Lieden: You don't believe it happened?

     Dr. Grauchi: Look, here's the problem.  There are two unbelievable events in your story.  One I can accept, but two?  Not only is the man's behavior strange, the other man with the gun behaves like a maniac.  Were you a maniac?

     Lieden: Okay, I made the whole thing up!

     Dr. Grauchi: I thought so.  You had too much Strawberry Quik today.  I'm giving you a tablet to put you under.  You need about twelve hours of sleep.  Tomorrow's a big day.

     Lieden: They always say that.

     Oval Office, remains of a lunch between the president and Jennifer Psyop.  She's eaten little.  This meeting she has dreaded.

     Lieden: Tell me Jennifer, do you like your job?

     Psyop: Yes!  It's great.  It's such an honor...to...

     Lieden: To?

     Psyop: Represent your voice, your values, your policies, communicate them to the American people through the medium of the press, the good old-fashioned press, the fourth estate, a pillar of freedom.

     Lieden: You lost me at "policies."  I've been hearing chatter about media recruiters coming to my White House to meet with you, like you're interviewing for a TV job with a news outfit, is this true?

     Psyop: Yes.  I've found another job.  MSNBC Dodo, it's a new streaming service set to go into action in May.  

     Lieden: So what do you want to do until then?

     Psyop: Work here?

     Lieden: Are you asking me, or do you know what you want to do?

     Psyop: I want to work at Dodo.

     Lieden: You've not enjoyed working here?  Am I an ogre?

     Psyop: You've been a good boss.  

     Lieden: You're awfully patient with me.  I'm seventy-nine, I've got twenty years left if the immortality treatments don't work--

     Psyop: Immortality treatments?

     Lieden: I'll watch the sun grow to a red giant, maybe.

     Psyop: Sir, you're not serious?

     Lieden: You're out of the loop, of infinity, ha ha.  Immortality has made me funny!

     Psyop: Sir, when did you last speak with Dr. Grauchi?

     Lieden: That gnome? Yesterday or last night, maybe this morning.  No, I guess I don't know.  Why?

     Psyop: I'd like him to talk with you, you're fixating on an impossibility.

     Lieden: What's impossible?

     Psyop: Immortality.

     Lieden: Try drinking teenaged blood mixed with Strawberry Quik, you'll feel invigorated, you'll make it to 3,000 years old, maybe older.

     Psyop: (surreptitiously texting Dr. Grauchi and Dr. Lieden) Is there any chance I can stop working on site and do zoom with the press, do that until May when this other opportunity materializes?

     Lieden: I'd miss your fragrant presence.  

     Psyop: I'd miss you, too, sir, but I need a vacation from the intrigues of this building.  

     Lieden: Here's my bride!  My sleeping companion, my comfort!

     Dr. Lieden: What's going on, Moe?

     Lieden: Jennifer was just telling me that she's moving on.

     Dr. Lieden: The CNN show?

     Psyop: MSNBC Dodo.

     Dr. Lieden: What's that?

     Psyop: It's going to be an app starting in May.  

     Dr. Lieden: An app.  What are you going to do?

     Psyop: Expert commentary and punditry.  For the first year I'll sit in for others when they're sick or on assignment then in Year Two I get my own show.

     Dr. Lieden: Congratulations.  What are you going to do until May?

     Psyop: My job here, but via zoom.

     Lieden: I didn't approve that and in fact I'm cancelling the idea.  Forget about it, Jennifer.  No.  Zoom.  Press.  Briefings.  In.  This.  Man's.  White.  House.

     Psyop: I hear you loud and clear, Mr. President.

     Lieden: I speak for Amanda and myself (takes Psyop's hand) when I wish you the most outrageously amazing luck in your next job.  MSNB-nine-BC DumDum is getting a great package in our Jennifer, right Amanda?

     Dr. Lieden: MSNBC Dodo, honey.  Yes, Jennifer is a whore for media, she must be in the spotlight.  Are you going to praise the Lieden administration, dear, or are you going to rip on us?

     Psyop: I'm going to tell the truth.

     Dr. Lieden: For the first time in your life?

     Psyop: I'm not having this conversation.

     Dr. Lieden: Yes you are.  See?  Can't tell the truth.  You're going to make more money at Dodo?

     Psyop: Yes.

     Dr. Lieden: How much more?  For how much are you selling out Moe and myself?

     Psyop: Selling out?  What?

     Dr. Lieden: You're one of the few people in this fucking place who helps me with Moe and now you're leaving?

     Psyop: In May.  

     Dr. Lieden: May schmay!  The point is, you're leaving!  Leaving me with him!  How much longer can I be his primary caregiver?  Someone remove this burden from me!  I want to sit on a beach thousands of miles away, far south of this latitude.  I want to dance with handsome young men in the Caribbean, in South America, I want to visit Antarctica, see some penguins, but I'm stuck watching him!

     Psyop: I'm sorry, Dr. Lieden.  I have to do what I have to do.  

     Dr. Lieden: Brilliant statement.  Come here. (They embrace, air kisses by the sides of their mouths).

     Lieden: Immortality's real, right, Amanda?  Hey, Dr. Grauchi!

   

     Enter Dr. Grauchi in his usual nondescript suit and tie, but this time he wears a black armband.

     Lieden: Who died, Grouch?

     Dr. Grauchi: A colleague, Dr. Fellner, St. Louis Biowarfare Research Laboratory and Deadly Specimens Annex.  I granted funds to help him research the development of a hyper-Black Death virus that kills within two hours every mammal it comes into contact with.

     Lieden: Sounds deadly.

     Dr. Grauchi: Well, the entire human race and all mammals would be dead within two to six weeks.

     Lieden: Sounds like a bad idea to make this stuff.  Do the Russkies have it?

     Dr. Grauchi: Not unless it ended up in their hands after a small sample was stolen from the lab in July 2019.

     Lieden: Oh boy, this is news to me!  Do I need to be concerned about this?

     Dr. Grauchi: That you have to ask the question means the answer is no.

     Lieden: Okay.  Forgotten.

     Dr. Lieden: Dr. Grauchi?  A word?

     Dr. Grauchi: What is it, Amanda?

     Dr. Lieden: I want to retire from this gig.

     Dr. Grauchi: Okay, separate.  Divorce the demented fucker.  I'll testify at a hearing if you want me to.

     Dr. Lieden: That would cause a stir.

     Dr. Grauchi: Then you're fucked.  But I recall from my own marriage to my Fredegunda that the marriage vows include the phrase, "...in sickness and in health...for better or for worse," are you familiar with what I'm talking about?  You stand by your man, that's good karma for you.  You leave him in the lurch, then you're no better than a tramp.  That's the judgment of science.

     Dr. Lieden: You are not science, Dr. Grauchi.

     Dr. Grauchi: I am science. 

     Lieden: WHAT ARE YOU TWO TALKING ABOUT OVER THERE!

     Dr. Lieden: Moe is destroying my nerves.

     Dr. Grauchi: I'll give him a sedative.

     Dr. Lieden: He'll just wake up refreshed and resume his hair obsession, his getting into the spaces of women, his body functions surprising even me, (sotto voce) I mean, he defecated in the Brady Press Room in front of thirty people!

     Dr. Grauchi: He regards journalists as shit, and they are.  A logical statement in the form of dropping trou and pooping.  The president's bowel movements are regular.  He had to go.

     Dr. Lieden: Psyop is leaving.

     Dr. Grauchi: Oh?  Okay.

     Dr. Lieden: One less helper in dealing with Moe.

     Dr. Grauchi: We'll get another.  General Beak spends lots of time with the President.  I think he's trying to convince him to use the Death Ray.

     Dr. Lieden: I just want out.

     Dr. Grauchi: I've told you your options.  Separate from him and divorce.  Stay with him because otherwise you'd be breaking your marriage vows, damning you to an eternity in the circle of Hell reserved for oathbreakers.  If I were you, I'd stay with my husband.  

     Lieden: You have a husband, Grouch?

     Dr. Grauchi: I was talking about a play called My Husband.

     Lieden: What's it about?

     Dr. Grauchi: It's about a woman who complains about her husband to the family doctor.  The play consists of their dialogue, it's a two act.

     Lieden: I'll Google it. (takes out phone)  Who's the author?

     Dr. Grauchi: Never mind, why don't you put the phone away, sit back and let me check your vitals.

     Lieden: No, you made that up.  You got my hopes up that I could go see this play.  Now I can't because it's an illusion dreamed up in your lying head.  Are you against me?

     Dr. Grauchi: I am for you one hundred percent.  My greatest wish in my job is to satisfy you with my job performance and soothe you so we can better manipulate you.

     Lieden: Okay, just so we understand each other.

     Don Richman's Manhattan office.  Sitting on the edge of one of two heavy high-backed carved chairs of exotic Sri Lankan wood is former New York City Mayor Bolpho Davini.  A man incapable of embarrassment, Davini every Halloween dresses as the 1940s actress Carmen Miranda.  The spicy Brazilian actress of humorous technicolor musicals, of course, was a woman, therefore looked good in her clothes.  Davini looked like he'd just gotten sucked off at a high school reunion toga party.  Garish makeup, dark glistening body hair aplenty, Bolpho Davini is a work of art, pure slob but passing himself off as a noble character for a while because he happened to be Mayor when tragedy struck.  

     9/11 catapulted Bolpho Davini to superstardom.  He wasn't Mayor Davini to America, he was BOLPHO!  We all loved Bolpho!  Bolpho hosted Saturday Night Live, musical guest Korn.  Bolpho did public service announcements urging New Yorkers to be patient, to stay strong, and 

     Boy are you an incredible bunch!  New York is the greatest city in the universe.  Only New York is worth looking at.  There's a smoking hole where two, oh, is it three? fine buildings stood.  Bow our heads.  Let us be grateful to firefighters, the cops, the everyday heroes, yes, you citizenry of this great city of New York, this melting pot of Jews, Gentiles, Muslims--and let's stop beating up Muslims, okay?  We've got the FBI rounding up Muslims, let them deal with the Muslims.  You can help me personally by donating to my presidential campaign.  BOLPHOh-8!  I'll be running on the Republican ticket, the campaign will start in seven, lucky seven.  How long can my 9/11 karma hold out?  What a lovely reward 9/11 has been.  I don't have to say anything in my speeches.  I can say it looks like rain even if it doesn't, just occupying time with meaningless statements, plus the 9/11 blather for twenty minutes, people cry, they shake my hand, they write checks, I love my people.  

     

     Bolpho Davini, as history knows, lost the nomination to an old war hawk, Basil Mortimer.  War was Mortimer's thing.  He'd been a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for a long time, endured torture, told the assholes what they wanted to hear and/or know.  This author makes no judgments on a man in that circumstance.  The problem with Mortimer?  He seemed sane, but he wasn't.  Something snapped within him while he lived in his stone cell during years that saw acid rock, the Manson murders, and the Watergate burglary, not to mention the premiere of Cannon, starring William Conrad.

     Bolpho and Don Richman partied together with Terry Stein.  Stein supplied them with girls--girls.  Stein recorded them on audio, also videotaping Bolpho Davini, Don Richman, and Billy Boy Blade sharing a sixteen year old girl from Norway, trained by Mathilde de Sade for two years in sexual arts.  Two other tapes show Blade and Pewter Stinch going at it with two fifteen year old Nigerian girls.  Strong stuff.  Lousy pornography.  Billy Boy Blade's broad spotted white back isn't something anyone wants to see.  Behold, a whale violating the human and civil rights of a Nigerian girl.  Don Richman's skin resembles a cooking fish, a shiny pinkness to some parts, like by his armpits from which sprout thick bushes of yellowish-orange hair.  The man is a freak.  If he had no money no woman would ever fuck him.

     Pewter Stinch, Speaker of the House in the 1990s, staunch conservative, Roman Catholic, wife appointed later by Don Richman to be U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican.  Pewter now had access to Vatican sex practices, if any--let's face it, the human condition unfolds inside the Vatican, too.  Pewter Stinch enjoyed sex with anything, or anyone.

     Bolpho, important to note, had a formidable opponent in Basil Mortimer, a sitting senator while running for president.  Mortimer blasted on a regular basis any U.S. lightening of sanctions on Iran, he attacked calls for withdrawal from Afghanistan, in its seventh year, he had no truck with Medicare For All, a view shared by Bolpho and the other Republicans running for president.  Mortimer lost, Bolpho never made it to the nomination, but he sank deeply into business and business partnerships that would serve him well later, but also get him into trouble.  His chief problem stemmed from the fact that one day he met Don Richman.

     Richman: (on the phone) No no no.  Excuse me, excuse me.  I didn't ask for it to be verified because I knew it was authentic.

     

     Bolpho sits nearby, tapping his briefcase.  A fly, caught between a curtain and the window with a superb view of the Empire State Building, rattles its wings, seeing its escape.  Bolpho feels bad for the fly.    

     Richman: All right, Hank.  Sink your teeth into this, I need the leverage.  Right.  Goodbye.  Bolphorino!  (Handshake) You appear to be upset.  

     Bolpho: I'm looking at a five to ten year prison sentence.

     Richman: That's less than I would've thought.

     Bolpho: I'm protecting the identity of an individual but I may say who that is so I don't have to spend a decade of my last years in prison.

     Richman: Or five years.  Two and a half with good behavior, but I think you'd be menaced in prison.

     Bolpho: I need protection if I go to prison.

     Richman: Learn how to fight.  You'll get hurt, but you'll earn respect.  Don't back down, be the worst asshole in the place, worse than the most hated prison guard.  Get someone to spread rumors about how many people you've killed.  You'll be a legend: Bolpho the Merciless.  

     Bolpho: I'm not going to prison.  I'll flee the country before I do that.  I have a house in Namibia.  No extradition treaty with the U.S.  

     Richman: I have an apartment in Moscow.  I maintain it when I want to go over there and fuck somebody.  

     Bolpho: Fuck.  I haven't fucked in four months.  I get jittery after all that time.

     Richman: Bolpho, today's your lucky day.  I'm setting aside today's workload for the sake of indulging in some carnal passion with a nymphet or two at the best brothel in the New York Metro area.  Your gloom will vanish if you come with me.  

     Bolpho: It sounds tempting.  May I show you what I've been working on?

     Richman: You're working on something?

     Bolpho: I told you about this.

     Richman: Huh.  Okay, so?

     Bolpho: Look at that, and then this.

     Richman: Yeah?

     Bolpho: Keep doing it.

     Richman: I see colors in my peripheral vision, it's soothing.  Is this what being drunk is like?

     Bolpho: Keep looking at that one and then at this one.

     Richman: I'm doing it.

     Bolpho: I reach into your mind now, tell you what to do and you do it.  Say "My name is Don" if you understand me.

     Richman: My name is Don.

     Bolpho: A text from my wife, keep shifting your gaze.  (quoting the text). Pork chops for dinner and mashed potatoes, asparagus.  A bourbon ready to be put into your hand.  I love you.  Tootles.  Text back: Love you too, I hope I have good news.

     Richman: I love you.

     Bolpho: Oh!  Now Don, I'm going to count to five, when I get to five I'll tell you something.  You will do this something I'm going to tell you once you've been signaled to carry it out.  You will simply do this thing.  You will be arrested, prosecuted, put on trial, sent most likely to jail, and maybe to a Supermax because Don, those Democrats hate your fucking guts.  

     Richman (snapping out of the hypnosis somehow): They love me as a foil, the entertainment sector loves me as ratings.  I'm a product, but I'm also a man.  A tragic figure, really.  

     Bolpho: More comedic every day.  

     Richman: You need a hooker.

     Bolpho: I need to save my skin.

     Richman: You're going to hand over the Fentener Confession?

     Bolpho: Yes.

     Richman: Go ahead, do it.  I'll deal with the problems from that when I have to.  Today, I'm pleased to announce the completion of the new addition to Paraguayo's north wing, Richman's Rumpus Room.  There's a bar for those guests who drink alcohol.  

     Bolpho: Abstemious you.

     Richman: Bolpho, it's been nice knowing you (stands and offers his hand).  You've betrayed me.  Fuck you.  I understand why you're doing it, but still, fuck you.  I never want to see you again.  I will not ask for a campaign donation.

     Bolpho: Then you are running for president in 2024?

     Richman: Haven't decided yet.  I'll take a look at the lay of the land, see who's running.  If Cruzman comes back it would be fun to enter into it and beat him again, like it would be fun to smack down Little Narco again, I won that insult comic test.  America wanted to know who could be the biggest asshole.  That's what it is, the primaries, just a TV show about rich assholes, Americans are too dumb to realize they should do something with their lives instead of watching rich assholes on TV.  

     Bolpho: I just don't want to go to prison.

     Richman: Nobody wants to go to prison, dummy.

     Bolpho: I'm not a dummy!

     Richman: Okay.

     Bolpho: I'm a smart man.  I'm a survivor.  Mayor Bolpho!

     Richman: Throws away a forty year friendship to save his own hide.  Sad.

     Bolpho: Don, I know this probably ends our friendship but in my view you'll always be my friend.

     Richman: Meaningless statement.  Turn around and walk out of my office, don't slam the door. 

     Bolpho: May God forgive us both.

     Richman: SECURITY!!!  JUDAS ISCARIOT GOT ONTO THE FLOOR SOMEHOW!

     Psyop winding down in the evening in the entertainment room of her Georgetown condominium.  A glass of Chablis, latest issue of Marie Claire magazine, forty dollars a tub spreading cheese, wheat crackers ninety dollars a package.  She's trying to get through Mank for the fifth time.  The phone rings.  

     Psyop: Avery?

     Reporter: Is it true you're leaving the press spokeswoman job for a sweet gig at Fox?

     Psyop: It's not true.

     Reporter: My source at Fox claims she interviewed you for an afternoon time slot on Fox, are you saying she's mistaken?

     Psyop: I'm saying I'm not going to work at Fox.

     Reporter: You are leaving the White House, then?

     Psyop: Hang on, I have another call.  Alice?

     Reporter: Jennifer, good evening, sorry to interrupt you in your free time.

     Psyop: Are you?  Okay.

     Reporter: My source at CNN informed me you're working there in May.

     Psyop: Not true.

     Reporter: My source has always been reliable.  

     Psyop: Is his TV show Reliable Sources?

     Reporter: No comment.  You're not working at CNN?

     Psyop: I'm working for the Lieden administration.  Have you seen Mank?

     Reporter: I tried to watch it.

     Psyop: It's about the man who wrote the Citizen Kane script.

     Reporter: Steven Spielberg?

     Psyop: No, the first Citizen Kane, and Spielberg didn't write the remake script.

     Reporter: I loved E.T. when I was little.  I had the pleasure of showing that film to my five year old grandson.  

     Psyop: You're a grandmother?  How nice!  What's the little darling's name?

     Reporter: Arby.  My daughter's first date with the man who became her husband was at the Arby's on K Street.  

     Psyop: Good.  I have to go, I have another call.  Avery.

     Reporter: I had another call while you were on with whoever.  Adrian from Vancouver, Washington, the Daily Volcano, told me you'll be working at MSNBC Dodo as of May 15th.  Confirm?

     Psyop: I remain committed to my work with the Lieden administration.  

     Reporter: Adrian's scoop is incorrect?

     Psyop: I don't know Adrian, I've never been to Vancouver, Washington.  Avery, I'm on my free time now.  I'm trying to watch a movie and have some me time.

     Reporter: Hint?

     Psyop: Yes, I want to hang up but I'm following principles of decorum, trying not to be rude, letting it seem like it's your idea to hang up.

     Reporter: You want to end the conversation?

     Psyop: Yes, please.

     Reporter: No confirmation of the MSNBC Dodo intelligence?

     Psyop: None.

     Reporter: I'll let it sit there.  Have a good night, Jennifer.  I'll see you in the Brady Room tomorrow morning.

     Psyop: Can't wait.

     She has a moment of thinking it's a good idea to charge her phone in a room on the opposite side of the condominium, the laundry room or her workout room, then the thing makes its old style alarm clock ringtone sound.  Screen ID says PREZ.

     Psyop: Oh god. (swipes right) Yes, Mr. President.

     Lieden: Is this Jennifer?  With the red hair?

     Psyop: Yes, Mr. President.

     Lieden: What are you doing?

     Psyop: Relaxing, sir.

     Lieden: Want to come over and watch Revenge of the Nerds Eye Eye Nerds in Paradise?

     Psyop: I'm settled down for the night, sir, but thank you.

     Lieden: Weird title.

     Psyop: I think the eye-eye is actually the Roman numeral two.  

     Lieden: Oh, yeah I see it!  Clever girl, smart girl, you've got brains in your head girl.  Some women sit on their brains.  My nanny, Auntie Moonshine, God rest her soul, got killed in Korea, land mine, real humanitarian, well anyway she told me a girl with brains in her butt can run the world, or just be a dummy and not use her God-given benisons (like blessings?) through which woman controls man.  Was Auntie Moonshine speaking truth or was she a lunatic?  Dare you tell me a truthful response, Red?

     Psyop: A woman must exert extra effort to make it in a world established and run mainly by men, Mr. President.  Your Aunt--

     Lieden: She wasn't my aunt.  That was her name: Auntie Moonshine.  She came from Georgia, the country not the state.  She said she'd burped Baby Stalin, given Hitler his first face-sit, dated Mussolini during her brief little known about betrothal to King George the Sixth.

     Psyop: That's hard to believe.

     Lieden: Which part?  Personally, I find it hard to believe that Hitler was into face-sitting.  Getting Auntie Moonshine's or Eva Braun's love juice on his precious mustache would have dissuaded him from participating in the act.  Have you ever done that?

     Psyop: Mr. President, please.

     Lieden: Have you ever burped a baby, like Baby Stalin?

     Psyop: Not like Baby Stalin, but my nephew and a young cousin.

     Lieden: You burped them?

     Psyop: I did.

     Lieden: Apparently, burping Baby Stalin was easy.  He burped and pooped and peed as readily as later on when he readily signed execution notices while thinking about what he'd like for lunch.  That's iron will, that's "I'm not a pushover."  You don't want to come over?  Dr. Lieden's asleep.  She told me she had a trying day.  I believe it.  Standing around, talking to your husband, talking to people, having good lunches and dinners, she doesn't eat breakfast, it's how she keeps her slim figure at seventy.  You think my wife's beautiful, right?

     Psyop: She's a very attractive woman.  Very classy.

     Lieden: Classy, that's right.  Mandy, with the classy chassis.  

     Psyop: Mr. President--

     Lieden: The night I met Mandy I knew I would, within twelve hours, be on top of her, it had to happen or my name's not Morris R. Lieden.  It took six hours.  But I wasn't on top of her.  We were in a closet in the Capitol, standing, my pants and jockeys around my shins, she held the fabric of her soft white dress over her hips, I put my face in her hair, it was longer then, and--

     Psyop: Mr. President, someone's at the door, I need to go, I'll see you tomorrow (presses the red circle, holds down the right side button, swipes right).  Okay Mank, I'll give you five more minutes.

     The Young Genocides, their currently yellow and blue set, Chuck Booger on the left side of the screen.  Displaying the Ukrainian flag's colors receives Number One Virtue Signaling Award 2022, shared by a multitude of corporate news networks (TYG included for it receives donor money from big time players).       

     "These "people" (corporations) benefit financially from promoting a war, fed in its ravenous hunger by

weapons manufacturers in propagandistic and advertising partnership with corporate news.  Everybody's making money.  The purpose of war is war."  Out soon from Nickels and Dimes Press, Roanoke, Virginia, We're Gonna Look Into the Cyber, and Other Essays of Five Decades by Robert Hart, 640 pages, with index.

     Lana Armenian on the screen's right side, hair pulled back so tight it tenses dark eyes that would look pretty if she'd give up the pain-ponytail.  Today, she begins with a written opinion read off the teleprompter.  

     Armenian: The F word.  On March 31st, 1994, Madonna said the F word on the David Letterman show fourteen times.  Girl, you didn't just make the one slip, you went all the way with fourteen F bombs!  A carpet bombing of F's!  F also stands for freedom.  Ukrainians as I speak fight for their lives, their democracy.  Donate your extra, unneeded weapons to Ukrainians as they fight the Russian invader.  There aren't enough weapons in Ukraine yet.  More!  Vice President Parris said it best: We've got to stop this big country from swallowing this little country, Ukraine.  That's right, sister.  Ukraine, we have your back!  Chuck?

     Booger: (looks at her a moment): Are you high?

     Armenian: Yes! (laughs)

     Booger: I get high after work.

     Armenian: And before work.  (losing it to laughter, bent over) And DURING!!!!!!

     Booger: Not true.  (looks into the camera) If you're watching, and, to err on the side of caution I'm assuming you are, I am not high.  My glory days of being high at work never achieved greater fulfillment than when I directed viewers to the TYG website to observe an upskirt photo of Britney Spears' cooch.  That's pussy, Mr. Vice President.

     Armenian: Mr. Vice President?  Who are you talking to?

     Booger: It's not of consequence.  As for your commentary on Madonna and that Letterman appearance, I saw that when it was broadcast.

     Armenian: You did?! 

     Booger: College, two buddies and I were on the second floor of our frat, there was a television there and a VCR, porn tapes, Die Hard movies, Revenge of the Nerds.  You could go in there, put in a porn tape, get your frustrations out, no judgment among the Eta Omicron Upsilon brothers.  We respected each other's whack off space, the need to use the room.  The night of Madonna's F word orgy, the three of us were getting boners looking at Madonna, then she starts saying the F word over and over again.  

     Armenian: (laughing) Did you guys jerk off?

     Booger: We flipped a coin to see the order of who would get to use the room first, second, and third.  I was third, a tough wait.

     Armenian: (smiling) I don't believe you.  You and your frat brothers jerked off to Madonna and then put in a porn tape and jerked off until you were all finished.

     

     Chuck Booger's red face reveals that Lana Armenian has described a true moment from his life in 1994.  She may be at best an incompetent journalist with no investigative credentials, just editorial power backed by a flawed understanding of the world she covers, but Lana knows that guys jack off to porn, guys are filthy in their minds, guys lie all the time.

     Armenian: It's okay that you jacked off with your frat brothers to Madonna saying the F word and you still had a ways to go so you put in some beaver tape from the eighties.

     Chuck Booger: IT WAS FROM THE NINETIES!  ASHLYN GERE!  PERFECTLY TRIMMED BEAVER!!!!!!!  A THING OF BEAUTY!

     Armenian: Tone it down, you're harshing my buzz.

     Chuck Booger: As for Ukraine, the more weapons there the better.  Send your extra guns to the link below.  You can make it a charitable gift for a tax deduction.  Ukraine needs guns.

     Armenian: Ukraine will be like a forest of guns, like one of those thick beavers in the pornos you and your frat brothers watched together while you jacked off.

     Booger: You shouldn't've come to work today.

     Armenian: Work?  (laughs for a full ten seconds) This is work?  We're providing YouTube watchers with content they need to know? (she laughs hard)

     Booger: I built TYG from the ground up.

     Armenian: Amraaz Göböturaakh gave you fifty million dollars, don't forget that.

     Booger: I don't know who that is.

     Armenian: Founder of Turks For Democrats?  Amraaz, if you're watching, I hope you're enjoying another fine episode of The World Today on TYG.  Solidarity with Ukraine.

     Booger: I see this as a good way to end the show, a little early.  Solidarity with Ukraine.

     Rented studio at ABC Headquarters in Manhattan.  Interviewer, Lon Perskins, a journalist of thirty years experience, covered on site the NATO bombing campaign of broken up Yugoslavia for the Independent, more recently writes for The Guardian, co-hosts a podcast with Carl Tosey, disgraced but partially rehabilitated CBS news reader, one of #MeToo's earliest exposed.  Now, Tosey and Perskins dual interview celebrities, politicians, retired statesmen, bankers, leisure seekers, and tech nerds.

     Perskins: Our special guest is a remarkable woman of color.  Former District Attorney of San Francisco, Former Attorney General of California, Democratic Senator from the great state of California, and if all that isn't enough, Vice President of the United States.  Please welcome Dinah Parris.

     Parris: Thank you, Lon.  I was in this studio in 2019 for a campaign interview and right over there by the green curtain a crew member was smoking a joint (laughs hard for thirty seconds).

     Tosey: That man has been fired.  He also beat his wife.  He's out of jail now, out of work, a bum.

     Perskins: Madame Vice President, what's next on your agenda?  Have you been given a new portfolio since your failure to do anything positive to improve the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border?

     Parris: I said don't come!  Don't come means don't come!  Someone comes over to your house, couldn't be a more inconvenient time, you asked them not to come but they came.  How could anybody do better than I have done in this job?

     Tosey: The internet exists.

     Parris: I beg your pardon?

     Tosey: What you just said, implying you're doing the best job possible, that can be used against you as casual criticism but also in campaign ads which can be whipped together by clever editors in mere days, even less.  How long has it been since you spent a minute thinking about how you use words?

     Parris: I don't like your tone.

     Tosey: My tone is my usual flat nasal combined with forty years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

     Perskins: What's the first thing that comes to mind, Madame Vice President, when I say Entitled.

     Parris: Don Richman.

     Tosey: Gore.

     Parris: Horror film.

     Tosey: Gore as in Al Gore.

     Parris: Earth Day Every Day.

     Tosey: Gore was a Vice President who tried to be President and failed.  He didn't have the push in his guts to challenge cheaters.  Shame on him.

     Parris: I thought we were doing a word game.

     Perskins: Tell us about the President.  He seems his jolly old self in spite of the war.  These are perilous times, does he recognize them as such?

     Parris: I've never met a more serious man than Moe Lieden.  Why, the furrow in his brow?  You could plant a row of squashes in that furrow.

     Tosey: You're not implying he has a squishy brain?

     Parris: Squash, not squish (laughs) Do you two like each other?  I can't see the two of you having a beer together.

     Tosey: I drink bourbon.

     Perskins: Scotch.

     Parris: California wine country, baby!  (laughs, claps her hands together) 

     Tosey: Lon, the rumors about her are true.

     Parris: What rumors?

     Perskins: Indeed.  Mrs. Parris, how is your husband, Doug Gard, handling his role as Second Gentleman?

     Parris: Doug is the kindest, most patient, loyalest, most steadfast, devoted husband!  I'm the luckiest woman in the world!  

     Tosey: According to Celebrity Watch magazine, the periodical run by statisticians who calculate how much time celebrities do the things they do, you and the Second Gentleman spent four seconds together last week.  

     Parris: Yes, when he popped into my office to say goodbye.  He went on a business trip to South Carolina.

     Perskins: Hiltonhead?

     Parris: Myrtle Beach, if you must know.  

     Tosey: As reported in yesterday's issue of Fiendish Intelligencer, a Myrtle Beach motel meeting between a big time broker and a Saudi oil man happened, somehow three F-35 fighter jets are part of it.  Is Doug Gard, your husband, whom you saw for a total of four seconds last week, doing business with Saudi?

     Parris: No!  I've seen him since he came back.  He's his usual bland self, personality of a sleepy puppy.

     Perskins: We've touched a nerve.

     Parris: Yeah!  Get off of it! (laughs)

     Ernestine Mitchells, Parris's communications director, intervenes.  

     Mitchells: Stop taping.  Stop taping.  HALT THE BROADCAST!  Vice President Parris will not tolerate questions insinuating her husband is up to unethical activities.

     Tosey: Ernestine Mitchells, are you not working your last week for the Vice President?

     Mitchells: Yes, I'm done on Friday after the office farewell party.

     Perskins: A party meaning they're glad to see you go?

     Tosey: A party celebrating your glowing personality?

     Mitchells: Enough with the jokes.  The Vice President doesn't need you.

     Perskins: Tosey and Perskins, current subscriptions at 1.3 million.

     Parris: Let's calm down.  Ernestine, will you get me a cup of coffee?

     Tosey: Thank you for getting her out of the room.

     Parris: Doug's business is his own.  I don't have time to get into Doug's business.  When we were in college together, just nineteen, Doug told me he was going to live in Narnia.  I didn't know what Narnia was.  He gave me seven books to read.  Seven! (laughs) I skimmed them, got the gist.  This magical world next to ours accessed through a wardrobe in an old English house.  I've seen these wardrobes but I never found an entrance to a magical land where there's a witch and a land of perpetual winter, and a big lion that talks.  Crazy stuff.  One of those books has a ship voyage.  They come across this huge frozen ocean wave.  Dude was on drugs when he wrote that!

    Tosey: Clive Staples Lewis, you mean.  His seven Narnia novels, I read them to my grandchild.  The books contain many symbolic themes, references to Christianity, C.S. Lewis was a strong Christian.  

     Parris: A Christian on drugs.

     Perskins: Why did Doug Gard tell you he was going to live in Narnia, of all places?

     Parris: Doug finds this world boring.  He wants more life in life.  That's why, I guess, he's joined these--oh, never mind.

     Tosey: He's joined a group of...what, other leaders?

     Parris: Both of you should get more sun.  Ernestine, thank you.  Mm, this coffee tastes like it's been in that urn since the dawn of time (laughs uproariously).  

     Perskins: Will there be a President Parris?

     Parris: I hope so.  My ambition to be president must be subordinate to my job as Vice President and to answer an earlier question asked by one of you, I'm not sure which, you both seem like a two-headed monster (laughs).  The question was, do I have a new portfolio?  Yes, I'm going to manage the world's refugee crises.

     Perskins: A great responsibility and a burdensome task for even a skilled manager.  Remember, you can't throw a stapler at refugees.

     Tosey: Nor should you blame them for living next to Russia.

     Parris: Oh, don't get me started on Russia! (laughs)

     Perskins: Again, I don't understand where you're going with the laughter.

     Parris: What time is it?

     Mitchells: 4:11!

     Parris: Oh, I'm getting hungry.  Light lunch.  Touch of menopause thrown in to my stewpot of difficulties.  Would you boys mind if we concluded the interview?  Let's wrap it up.

     Ernestine Mitchells: Madame Vice President, it's my job to say "wrap it up."

     Parris: Go over there, Coffee Girl.  You decided to quit my employ.  You're dead to me.

     Ernestine Mitchells: I may as well quit right now!

     Parris: (ignores her, smiles sweetly at Perskins, gives a warm crooked look to Tosey).

     Tosey: Let's end it, then.

     Parris: I want to say I value good journalism.  I think you two are doing the best job!  Keep it up!  Don't ask me about Doug, unless you want to know how crazy he is for the Falcons' prospects in the coming season.

     Tosey: Unfortunately, that's not interesting to our audience, or to us, Tosey and Perskins.  Good night.

     President Lieden receives Eddie Merchandise, picture Jimmy Durante but with an Al Pacino edge.

     Lieden: Eddie, I gotta problem.

     Merchandise: (husky voice) What sort of problem?

     Lieden: I need to spill seed while sniffing a woman's hair.  Get me a woman.

     Merchandise: That's not legal here, extra money for that.  Unless you take Air Force One to Nevada, visit a brothel, fuck legally.  So what if the public finds out?  They'll like it.  They'll call you a stud.

     Lieden: I am a stud, aren't I?  My dick still works, no joke.  At seventy-nine if you can say that you've got a fortunate dick.  I want to take this dick to three-thousand.

     Merchandise: You've gotten weirder since we last met.  Three-thousand what?

     Lieden: Years.  Immortality treatments.  Blood of youth.

     Merchandise: That racket.  It's not going to work.

     Lieden: It will work, I read the brochure!

     Merchandise: An eighteen year old's blood produces the same effect when drunk as a thirty-eight year old's blood yields in terms of an actual increase in longevity, I read the scientific paper on it.  

     Lieden: You came with your big words today, Eddie.  You'll get me a woman?

     Merchandise: Age spread?

     Lieden: Eighteen to twenty-five, no, twenty-three.

     Merchandise: Oh boy.  I might be bringing you a meth addict, just so you know that in advance.

     Lieden: I'm not a meth-head!  That grocery store checkout lane periodical made that up about me!

     Merchandise: I have someone in mind.  You can pay her with meth.  She'll be charmed by that.  I'll get some for you, and the young lady, she's twenty-one, she's tough, she's no nonsense, but she'll let you get off on her hair without making a big deal out of it.    

     Lieden: What's her name and hair color?

     Merchandise: Black hair, probably dyed.  Jonylyn Nell Bethstar.  

     Lieden: That sounds made up.

     Merchandise: All names are made up, Moe.

     Lieden: I was the toughest kid on my block in scrappy Scranton, 1948, I'm a five year old terror, stealing purses, stealing cops' nightsticks and handcuffs, pushing over Granny's fruit stand, burning ants on the sidewalk, summer fun.  They started calling me Moe Howard.  Before that they just called me Morry, or Morris.  One guy called me M.  As Moe Howard I became the gang's chief sadist.  Eye poking, shin kicking, assault, slapping, acid in the eyes, heavy objects falling on people, hospitalizations, two funerals, running with Cornpop, meeting my first girlfriend, the first Mrs. Lieden.

     Merchandise: Lynn.  I remember her.  She was your better half, back when you still had a soul.

     Lieden: She's in Heaven.  I must see her again.  I want to tell her about our sons.  Well, Buff is in Heaven with his mother.  Poor Buff, such a vital young man.  So brilliant.  Had his shit together.  

     Merchandise: He told you to run for president in 2016, why did you disobey your favorite son's dying request?

     Lieden: PACs were forming, I was having meetings with donors in 2014, 2015, and early 2016.  Then the axe fell.  President Bongo called me into his office, hey, you know, this very office!

     Merchandise: Right.

     Lieden: I sat where you're sitting.  He got up from his desk, different desk, his desk is going to the Library.  He said "Moe?  I'm giving you the option to not run for president in 2016, but to run in 2020.  You'll win in 2020.  In 2016 you won't win."  How do you know this?  I said, bewildered.  "Logic, dumbhead.  Use your brain.  2016 is for Cassie, the donors are all in for Cassie, although some want the Republican opponent, whoever that might be.  President Bongo chuckled then, shaking his head: "Did you hear that Don Richman wants to be President?" he said.  "I'd like to see him try to beat a determined and entitled Cassie Blade."

     Merchandise: But the woman has no charisma.  She's just a power-monger, wants to tell people what to do.  I pity her husband being married to that horrid thing.  

     Lieden: She has great hair.

     Merchandise: I have a briefcase filled with hair samples from the 1950s, clipping from hairdressers' floors in Iowa, I believe.  Yes, Dubuque, Iowa, 1953 to 1958, contact Eddie Merchandise for full description of this marvelous item.

     Lieden: How much?

     Merchandise: For you, who would appreciate it the most, and considering you're rich, let's say five million.

     Lieden: Choke!  Dollars?

     Merchandise: It's a reasonable ask.

     Lieden: I'll scrape it up somehow.  I'll have money siphoned off of the next aid package for Ukraine, boost the weapons content of the aid, less food to send there, maybe send all the food to Israel.  Five million for a briefcase filled with hair of the 1950s, Dubuque hair.  Wait a minute?  Boys' hair?  

     Merchandise: All strands were in female scalps, Mr. President.  It's a remarkable one of a kind piece.  You'll be hard pressed to not fuck the hell out of it in the first five minutes.

     Lieden: You're one of the few I've confided my predilections to.

     Merchandise: I've told many people about them.  What strikes me is how not shocked they are.

     Lieden: This other item piques my interest.

     Merchandise: The Piper Cub? 

     Lieden: I need to smuggle someone.

     Merchandise: You're going to try to bring a woman to you with a pilot flying her from where, Mexico?  You have to pay the pilot well, give him benefits, give him money to maintain the plane.  

     Lieden: This is a one-jobber.

     Merchandise: For how much do you remunerate the pilot?

     Lieden: We don't.  When he holds out his hand for the money, we blast him, we blast him hard, full strength, thirty-two, forty-five caliber handguns at close range, one less man on the planet who knows how to fly a plane.  (low weird voice) One less man who knows the President has women brought to him, (normal voice) notice I said women, plural.  I've had this other guy, Clarence, he finds me women.  I've had some nice times with a little lady from Morocco.

     Merchandise: Hey!  Keep it to yourself.  People don't want to hear about your sex life.  

     Lieden: I'll change the subject.  Can I buy a katana?  Or a musket?  What about a lance?  A javelin!  When I'm immortal we'll have Greek Olympian type games, naked competitions, laurel crowns for awards.  

     Merchandise: I have a jackknife that belonged to Charlton Heston.  He owned it in his thirties, sold it to a pawn shop, my brother bought it.  The initials CH are on the handle in tiny garnets.  

     Lieden: I'd like to buy that.  How much?

     Merchandise: Name five Charlton Heston movies.

     Lieden: Ben-Hur, Planet of the Apes, Touch of Evil, The Big Country, and El Cid. 

     Merchandise: That you named Touch of Evil and El Cid tells me you probably know his movies.  The Heston Jackknife, by the way, is functional.  The blade is made of durable steel, manufactured in Poland.  My favorite Heston movie is Major Dundee, but then, I'm a Peckinpah fan.  Plus, the voluptuous miracle of womanhood, Senta Berger, is in Major Dundee, or is Major Dundee in her?  I can't remember.  Must watch it again, put it on my to-do list.  Watch it when I'm horny for Senta Berger.

     Lieden: A hundred bucks for the Heston knife.

     Merchandise: You begin with an insult?  I'm leaving.

     Lieden: Wait.  A hundred thousand, then.

     Merchandise: Quite a jump in price.  Charlton Heston's jackknife sold to President Lieden for one hundred thousand dollars, I'm sure your wife will be pleased.

     Lieden: You and Mandy have a history, don't you?

     Merchandise: Oh, we dated a little bit in college.

     Lieden: You were before Timothy, her first serious boyfriend?  Or after Timothy?

     Merchandise: I don't remember the fellow's name.  He had red hair but I was the one before a serious one.

     Lieden: That's Timothy.  Nice guy.  Too bad he's dead.  He got curious, see, he had to know what the frat was up to.  He spied on the frat, he got caught, consequences happened, I still hear him scream as they poured the warm cocoa all over his naked body and spurted whipped cream from cans then they licked him clean and made him run around the block.  He got arrested, spent the night in jail, he's an attorney now.  Long time alcoholic, finally came up to me at a fundraiser in 2013, told me he forgives me and asked me to forgive him.  I said, put her there, Timothy!  I like yuh!  I've been embarrassed all my life I didn't help you get away from those barbarians pouring cocoa on you and acting like they're at Caligula's homoerotic orgy.  If they could've brought animals into it they probably would have.  Those fraternity brothers of mine were all privileged, egotistical, sexist bigots with big pricks and loud mouths.  I loved those guys!  Two of them besides me are still alive.  Beanie Redmartin, he's the CEO of Outflank, Inc., an investment firm with its fingers on every key.  The other besides me is the retired banker, Kevin Ira Klone-Kleefisch.  He and I had a full grand time in our summers banging the girls who hung out by the pool.  Kevin was a lifeguard, six foot seven, muscles, he had a different chick in bed with him every night.  No joke.

     Merchandise: His daughter is "Jamie Klone Ornatavruun Pencilshroud.  She's arrived at last in Washington.  This socialite of Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain will wow the partying crowds, the ass-kissers of the Beltway."  That's what it says in this grocery store checkout aisle periodical I had folded in my inside jacket pocket.

     Pentagon, Circumnavigation Corridor A, but is it wide enough to accommodate a full complement of Joint Chiefs striding six abreast?   Carriages straight, uniforms resplendent with hard-earned ribbons, their stars, their polished shoes like dark mirrors, long shanks and shoes click-clicking on the scuffed but durable floor, they scatter personnel to the corridor's sides.

     General Best: Make way!  Meeting in progress!

     General Bomb: Joint Chiefs, we run this place!

     General Hard: Well, we will once we serve on the boards of the various corporations concerned with defense of these United States.

     Admiral Palindrome: My stock portfolio has tripled since a few days before the Russians invaded Ukraine.  What do you know, coincidences happen!  

     General Bomb: President Lieden wants the Death Ray test, General Beak.

     General Beak: He'll get it.  We're going to set the thing off at 11 am tomorrow, Eastern Ukraine time.

     General Best: I can't wait to see how close World War Three will then come!  You know that stupid clock that represents how close we are to nuclear armageddon?  Well, we're at three seconds to Midnight, I'd guess.

     Genreal Bomb: I'll move that second hand back a few by speaking with President Lieden shortly.  We're going to cool things down before we test the Death Ray.

     General Hard: Make way for the Joint Chiefs!

     General Best: Meeting in progress!

     General Bomb: President Lieden has gone off the deep end, I'm afraid.

     General Beak: President Lieden is as sharp as any of the six of us.

     General Bomb: Surely you exaggerate.  Is hyperbole your game?

     General Beak: Seven Card Stud, we must play sometime.  For money.

     General Bomb: I'm willing to play for pocket change.

     General Beak: Very well, pussy.

     General Bomb: What's that?

     General Beak: Very well.  Out of our way!  Don't look down when you're walking, Lieutenant!

     General Bomb: (sotto voce but loud enough) I'll get you for that.

     General Beak: For what?

     General Bomb: I'm not a pussy.

     General Beak: Fine, you're not a pussy.

     General Bomb: Apologize.

     General Beak: Now that you're demanding an apology, you're acting like a pussy again.

     General Best: He's right, Bill, it's sort of pussy-like of you.  Let it go.

     Admiral Palindrome: Pussies are nice to come home to so they're not all bad.

     General Bomb: (quietly, to General Beak) I will truly crush you for besmirching my manhood.  You will see the result of crossing me, and soon.

     General Beak: I'm sorry you're a failure as a man.  Tuck your dick between your legs and walk away from me before I break your neck.

     

     General Bomb stops, the other five close ranks and walk on.  General Best, on the other side of the president from General Beak, heard the whole exchange.  Best is now with Beak, a man's man willing to put his balls on the line.  The other four Chiefs are go along to get along types.  Bomb stands amid the flow of Pentagon personnel, the hurrying, absent-minded arms-dealing masturbators ruining the world.

     Bomb takes out his phone, opens Contacts, scrolls, finds a Z name.

     Timo Zonka: Haven't heard from you since you needed someone to dig up the dirt on Congressman Tasmin.  

     Bomb: This time I want you to kill someone and make it look accidental.

     Timo Zonka: Easy, but maybe not easy who it is?

     Bomb: General Beak of Space Force.

     Timo Zonka: Wow, one of your colleagues.  Power play?

     Bomb: I don't have time for a nosy assassin.  Can you do this job for me?  I'll pay you a million.

    Timo Zonka: One point five million, sounds kind of dangerous.

     Bomb: You're good, you're careful, you'll think of a way that never gets back to you and especially doesn't get back to me.

     Timo Zonka: One point seven million and we'll call it a deal.

     Bomb: You've raised the price!

     Timo Zonka: As I think about it and more of my day is wasted talking with you about it I want more money for solving your problem.  How about it, one point seven, or should I say one point eight?  

     Bomb: One point seven million, deal.  I can hand over three hundred thousand right away and the rest once you've done the deed.

    Timo Zonka: No, you pay me 1.7 million as soon as possible, one payment, then I go about killing your boy, but while you're raising the money and we're setting up the cash delivery I'm doing my homework on your victim.  You won't be dissatisfied but I'm not doing it unless you pay me 1.7 million up front.

     Bomb: What if you abscond with the money and abandon your agreed upon task?

     Timo Zonka: Then you've been ripped off.  Just remember, you called me.

     Bomb: All right, I'll get the money.  Beak lives at 10346 West Butterfly Trace in Fairwinds, Virginia.

     Timo Zonka: Okay, that's useful.  I'll stake him out over the next two or three days.  Your problem might be solved soon, it might be solved in weeks, don't pin me down, I can only guesstimate.   Concentrate on assembling that cash.  I want it in tens, twenties, fifties, mostly tens and twenties.  After I do the job I'm not going to be available for work in America for a long time, maybe forever.  

    

     The five remaining Chiefs come along behind Bomb as he talks on the phone with Beak's potential assassin.

     Beak: Make way for the Chiefs!

     Best: General Bomb, if you wish to join the line of full spectrum dominance please do and be welcome.  We've decided you're not a pussy.

     Beak: I apologize, General.

     Bomb: (into the phone) I'll hold that possibility in my back pocket, okay T?

     Timo Zonka: You're not going through with it?  No 1.7 million?

     Bomb: Let's put it on hold all right?  Maybe you'll get a chance at that fat money.  I like to keep my options laid open upon the table for my eyes to wonder about.

     Timo Zonka: Fuck you for raising my hopes.  I've had a tough year from Covid.  Two members of my family died.  I could've used that salary for killing General Beak to help my family and my community.  Damn you, Bomb. (hangs up)

     Bomb: The man's a poker fanatic.  I've had to cancel on him twice.  General Beak, apology accepted.  What did I miss in the meeting?

     General Beak: We decided to stop calling them Nazis.

     Bomb: What are they called now?

     General Best: Lieden's Hammers.

     Bomb: Ball peen or claw?

     General Hard: Claw, probably, because of the bird of prey angle, the dive bombers of World War Two--

     General Beak: The Stukas, Mr. President, terror weapons, they put sirens on them.

     

     Lieden and his entourage, including his wife, have attached themselves in a bunch to the formerly martially crisp line of military leaders, photographers and reporters trailing.

     Lieden: I'm here for my monthly briefing.  Who's doing that this time?

     Bomb: I am, sir.  We can talk in my office, I just had it swept.

     Lieden: Was she cute?

     Bomb: Who?

     Lieden: The little number who swept your office.

     Bomb: You misunderstand, sir.  I meant swept for listening devices.

     Lieden: You should have a maid.  A Chairman needs a maid!  I'm going to create a new government post, Maid to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  She'll keep your office clean, she'll scrub your toilet and sink, she'll do sexual favors for you--after all, you're one of the most powerful men in the world. Why would she not want to please you?  She'd be like one of Genghis Khan's wives.  Who wouldn't want that for themselves?

     Bomb: This way, sir.  It's a private meeting!  No reporters, no photographs!

     

     Inside his office, a lone portrait of President Lieden smiles at them.  The General's cluttered desk almost conceals in papers a coffee cup on a saucer used for drinking scotch, not coffee.  The gun barrel of a Colt .45 service revolver pokes out from an official report.

     Bomb: Sit please, Mr. President.

     Lieden: (sits in the chair indicated, a low sling chair, something a Hippy woman made in 1971, bought by Mrs. Bomb by the side of a Virginia road, comfortable, but hard to get up from). I feel like a dwarf in this thing.

     Bomb: A moral dwarf, perhaps?  Listen to me, Mr. President.  While I'm in my position I will prevent you from going nuclear, as in provoking a nuclear war with Russia or any other country.  In the Joint Chiefs are at least two maniacs who would risk nuclear war to gain advantage over Russia, a temporary advantage lasting long enough to make the crippling strike.  Unrealistic.  Watch out for voices telling you otherwise than what I'm telling you.  Stoke the Ukraine-Russia War with weapons exports.  We can accomplish all of our goals using conventional, non-nuclear methods.

     Lieden: Which way makes more money?

     Bomb: The conventional way, money flows like water in the spring from melting snows.  Fat with money we will be.  The other way, there won't be anywhere to spend our money.  No place to vacation.  Mars, Triton, the Moon, sure, I've heard some good things on Venus in about thirty years.

     Lieden: You've convinced me, Bomb.

     Bomb: One more thing: call off the Death Ray test tomorrow.  Postpone it indefinitely.

     Lieden: Beak will be enraged.

     Bomb: Fuck Beak!  The Death Ray would lead the Russians to react maybe in a nuclear way.  We don't want that.

     Lieden: We don't want that.

     Bomb: Tell General Beak to get working on something pertinent to Man's exploration of Outer Space, a mission to Jupiter maybe.  How about an interstellar mission?

     Lieden: I'll give him the recommendations.  What do you have to say about our plane that went down in the Welsh mountains.

     Bomb: We think it's in the hands of a Welsh band of Medievalists.  They're holding it and the pilot hostage for two chests of gold.  Shall I send in a team to destroy the plane, or salvage what they can and eliminate the Welsh Medievalists, punish them for fucking with the United States?

     Lieden: Sure.  What else you got?

     Bomb: Fuck Todd reports Jennifer Psyop plans to work at an MSNBC app?  

     Lieden: We're losing our Red.

     Bomb: I won't miss her.

     Lieden: I will.  You ever smell her hair?

     Bomb: I never will, that's your fetish, keep it to yourself you disgusting pervert...Mr. President.

     Lieden: Well, I'm ready for my tour.

     Bomb: I'll hand you over to the Chiefs, I'm sure one of them will talk your ear off, but don't accept anything he says, whichever one it is, though I bet Beak will be the first to volunteer.

     Lieden: Are the other Chiefs infiltrated by al-Qaeda?

     Bomb: A novel idea, but no.  They're simply an unruly bunch.  War makes them incautious.  

     Lieden: War, it's a gamble.

     The White House TV Room.  A big screen TV with two way camera occupies a distinguished spot underneath a portrait of President Woodrow Wilson.  Popcorn and sodas are available.  Hershey's candy bars cost a buck apiece.  Lieden sits in the front row next to the First Lady.  Holroyd nearby, Sneffen hovering, General Bomb and the other Chiefs and some of their aides, enough brass in the room to supply fifty schools with new musical instruments, not that men of this type ever think of the arts, other than the art of war.

     An unprecedented display of war's development in the twenty-first century, a technology presented on a much larger scale in Star Wars, but nonetheless a small death ray mounted on a satellite due to be over Eastern Ukraine in ten minutes.

     Also present, Jennifer Psyop, Vice President Parris, and NASA Director Hud Narbo, a former astronaut with nine space shuttle missions under his belt and a Texas-sized smile.  Jennifer finds him appealing, hopes he'll notice her.

     Narbo: How will we know the death ray is working?

     Beak: We'll be able to register the sizzle of flesh on our instruments trained on Ukraine.  

     Narbo: To think I'd live to see this day.

     Lieden: It would be a great thing to see, yes indeed.

     Beak: Sir, we'll see it in a few minutes.

     Lieden: Oh no we won't, Beak.  As of right now, I'm kiboshing the death ray test.

     Beak: What?

     Lieden: Artie, get on the horn, call em and tell em to put a stop to the countdown.  No death ray test today, indefinite postponement by order of the President.

     Sneffen: Right, Commander.

     Beak: This is unconscionable!  I'd say 650 is a good guess as to how many scientists, dispassionate men and women who have no compunction about burning people up from low orbit. are going to be disappointed!

     Lieden: I changed my mind, Beaker.  Just cool it.  I'm in charge here, me.  Not you.  I've had a change of heart about you, Beak.  I don't think you have my best interests at heart.  I think you're a scoundrel, this test is just the beginning.  Every day you live will be a disappointment.  I'll prevent you from achieving career satisfaction, I'll prevent your happiness, I'll sniff your wife's hair.

     Beak: You leave Mrs. Beak out of this!  Blackguard!

     Lieden: Darth Vader!

     Beak: Demented!

     Lieden: Take that back!

     Beak: You're losing your mind, Mr. President.  Any one of us in this room could do a better job than you.  Resign, give the big chair to Vice President Parris.  She's ready.  She'll be eager to please Space Force!

     Lieden: Space Force!  

     Parris: Hey!  Dinah Parris is no pushover.

     Beak: You're a marshmallow.

     Lieden: He's right, Dinah.  You're bread dough.

     Parris: You want to double team the first African American woman Vice President?  I'll take you on.

     Lieden: Sit down.  Everybody settle.  I'm in charge here, don't forget.  Artie, did the death ray test get cancelled?

     Sneffen: I'm on hold.

     Lieden: How much time until the thing's supposed to incinerate Russian soldiers?

     Sneffen: Three minutes, plenty of time.

     Beak: A reversal of fortune!  Mr. President, you're about to see a technical marvel.

     

     With two seconds left the command to deactivate enters the death ray's control computer.  Some 800 Russian mothers won't lose their sons that day.  They'll lose them, just on other days.

     Beak stares at the carpet.  He was almost home free, but no, the President had to have his way and kill the test, kill the program too, but why?  Who could've persuaded him to cancel the test?  Bomb, it had to be.  I'll get him.

     Bomb: Too bad, General Beak, about the test.

     Beak: It's as if sabotage may be a part of this.

     Bomb: Oh no, probably not.  President Lieden decided with me to cancel the test due to the risks it poses.  

     Beak: Good that you kept me abreast of that intelligence, General Bomb.

     Bomb: Spare me the sarcasm, or load it into your sarcasm cannon and burst it at someone else.  I'm tired of your monkeyshines.  

     Beak: Space Force will make the Air Force irrelevant, for we are active on a scale the size of the Cosmos.  You're stuck in this atmosphere.  What are you going to do, put an Air Force on Mars?  Biff Jeezus won't permit that!

     Bomb: Biff Jeezus has nothing to do with Space Force!  Space Force has nothing to do with your ambitions, it's a branch of the military with its own function, you just happen to be in charge of it now.         

     Beak: My Space Force will conquer the Universe!

     Parris to Lieden: Mr. President, your abrupt abortion of the death ray's deadly beam makes little sense when we're trying to exert forceful persuasion over our Russian enemies.

     Lieden: Do you like having a world to live on, Dinah?  Are you so stupid that you would risk destroying our Island Earth?

     Sneffen: Two seconds until the ray would've gone off.  How long would it take for nuclear retaliation?

     Lieden: No time at all.  I read a book once--

     Bomb: It would probably take about twenty minutes, so we'd still be alive right now.

     Lieden: It was about an artificial reality where the hero goes to buy a newspaper at a 1950s newsstand--that's when the story takes place--and the newsstand vanishes and in its place is a piece of paper that says, News Stand.  

     Dr. Lieden: Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick.

     Lieden: That's the one.  I read it the first summer I worked at the pool.  Me sitting up there with my hardcover book, looking at the girls, yelling at the Black kids, directing White kids to marijuana dealers, buying booze and cigarettes for little kids, and mugging, God, I did a lot of mugging in 1959, 1960.  Time Out of Joint, that's right.  Good book, recommend it.

     Parris: (laughs) My gams feel out of joint from sitting all this time.  I'm for a stroll through the West and East Wings.  Anyone care to join me?  (laughs).

     

     Unnoticed all this time, arms folded, wry smile, Dr. Grauchi comes forward.

     Grauchi: I'll accompany you on your refreshing exercise break, Madame Vice President.

     Parris: Why Dr. Grauchi, you sort of popped out of nowhere (laughs).

     Grauchi: Teleportation is a thing.  They're saving it for another year.

     Parris: Oh my god.  And immortality, is that real?

     Grauchi: You shall be as a goddess, if you play your cards right.  Let's talk.

     They walk arm in arm through the corridors one sees in The West Wing.  They walk at a leisurely pace, unlike those actors.

     Grauchi: Your problem is you're a dingbat.

     Parris: What?

     Grauchi: You're shallow.  You don't have an original thought in your head.  You're a fabulist.  You complain too much.  You need to project compassion, good will, respect for constituents, it doesn't matter if you believe those things, who cares?  What matters is they believe you.  Look at Don Richman.  I know, he's hard to look at (Parris laughs), but think about how he convinced working class Americans to buy into his projection of himself as a working man, when in fact, as you know, his hands are softer than a three month old baby's skin.  He's made of baby skin.  I've tested his skin, took a postage stamp sized sample from his right buttock.

     Parris: Why?

     Grauchi: With his permission, when he was president in 2018.  I told him, You have the most amazing butt flesh, Mr. President.  May I take a sample for study and teaching purposes?  He said sure.  The pain didn't please him but he got over it quickly.  I issued a fifty million dollar grant to two Swedish scientists, a husband and wife team, to study the skin sample, look for any traces of baby.  Maybe Don Richman is a baby?  Granted, an old baby, but physically and mentally a baby, but a very large baby, but with baby hands and tiny baby eyes.  

     Parris: Ugly man.  I've seen him up close.

     Grauchi: Ugly baby.

     Parris: Why do you mention Richman?

     Grauchi: If you don't play your cards right, he'll be the next president.

     Parris (laughs): You think that's the score?  You think the Democratic establishment of which I am part of is going to permit another loss to that clown?  Cassie's loss to Richman shocked us all.  It showed he has potency as a candidate, not everyone can claim that.

     Grauchi: You can't.  That's one of your problems with running for anything.  People don't like you.

     Parris: Do you like me?

     Grauchi: I like pretty ladies. (smiles.  When sincere it's actually a nice smile.  He does like pretty ladies, Parris is pretty)

     Parris: Thank you.  All these potted plants, I sometimes think they're eavesdropping.

     Grauchi: They probably are.  Smile, talk low.

     Parris: How do I overthrow Moe?

     Grauchi: Scandal.

     Parris: The public knows about his hair fetish and nothing has been done about it.  There's even a plausible rape allegation against him but nothing gets done about that.

     Grauchi: He's achieved the superman status of the great statesman.  He's untouchable, like you will be once you start being smart.  Scandal not of a sexual dimension but something else where he's vulnerable.

     Parris: His son!

     Grauchi: Bingo!

     Parris: Happy Lieden, yes.  Do you think Don Richman is putting together an anti-Lieden strategy for twenty-four?

     Grauchi: Don Richman's sons are working on a vicious anti-progeny of Lieden ad campaign set to commence in three days.  Things are happening around you.  You need to get motivated and start making commitments to others so you can gain some allies.  Right now, you're pretty much alone, but there are those who want to elevate you to the presidency but they all want something from you, different somethings depending on the one elevating you.  Are you prepared for those quid pro quos?  If you don't honor them you'll ruin your chance of becoming president and you'll probably be killed.  

     Parris: It sound's romantic. (laughs)

     Grauchi: Don't ever laugh again.  I mean it.  From now on you're a serious person.  Anymore of this giggly girl stuff and I'll turn you over to my bacteriological warfare team in Bulgaria.  They're working on a snake venom to put in aerosol canisters, like mace, the venom causes hallucinations, coma, recovery after many months, death in some cases.  Want to try it?

    Parris (laughs) No. 

    Grauchi: I threaten her with a biological agent and she laughs again.  What is your need to laugh?

    Parris: I think lots of grim shit is funny.

    Grauchi: Oh, you laugh at suffering.

    Parris: If I'm not experiencing the pain, what do I care if somebody else feels it?

    Grauchi: Very Christian of you.

    Parris: You bet it is.  The Church of Selfishness.  I attended it from 1990 to 2010.  We believe in Jesus, the Jesus who had to be looked after by his followers, the poor guy didn't know how to wash his own feet. (laughs). He could walk on water though, and when that tomb was empty, Jesus' spirit was out roaming, heading down to Hell to preach to the damned, what a steadfast mofo.  Comes back to Earth, says What's up to his old homeys, they can't believe it's him, heard he got crucified.  Thomas puts his hand into the Master's side, feels a liver and a rib, intestines, gross.

    Grauchi: Dinah, have you ever tried Strawberry Quik?

    In Dinah's Office, Grauchi drinks licorice tea, she drinks a twelve ounce of glass of Strawberry Quik through a blue straw.

     Parris: Im-vigoh-wayting!  I wike it, Docto Gwauchee.  

     Grauchi: I'm going to figure out a way to kill you, make it look like an accident, but I'm going to take eight or nine years to figure out the details.  Keep being a jackass, Dinah.

     Parris: Who, me?  Raak raak!  I'm a pterodactyl.  Raak raak raaaaaak!  Are you enjoying your tea, RAAAAAAAAKKKK!

     Grauchi: You seem to be reacting to the Strawberry Quik.  I added a pinch of Compound 7.  You should be wanting to take a dump in five to ten minutes.  The Ecalicofrestenbidinumab content of the dose is a mere zero point zero five percent, but enough, evidently, to turn you into a babbling idiot.  I wonder how long it will last?

     Parris: Paint and pencil and pen, and prong (laughs), PRONG!!!!  Big Prong!  Rigid prong!  Dr. Grauchi, (all serious and quiet-voiced now) do you have a prong?  (Serious look, then she loses it, convulsed, loud laughter, hard to listen to).

     Grauchi: Are you and your husband getting along?

     Parris: Don't bring me down by making me think about that drip.  He's in a secret society, I haven't seen him much lately.  

     Grauchi: The Ratfuck Bastards.

     Parris: Yes.  I guess they're real.

     Grauchi: Doug wants some excitement in his life perhaps.  Maybe you haven't blown him in a while?

     Parris: Dr. Grauchi!

     Grauchi: A husband would like to be blown every once in a while.  It's a simple thing.

     Parris: Vice Presidents don't perform fellatio, this one doesn't anyway.

     Grauchi: Poor Doug.

     Parris: Poor me for having to put up with Doug's need to have intercourse with his wife!  Why doesn't he hump a hooker at that fancy brothel in Georgetown?  

     Grauchi: He likes porking his wife (he smiles at her perplexity about the male species as she makes the mistake women sometimes do in assigning complexity to a man's basic preoccupation with ensuring his penis feels good on a regular basis).

     Parris: That's a terrible thing to say.

     Grauchi: But true.  You're what the youth call a hottie.  How could he not want to bend you over your desk and put his Ratfuck Bastard sausage inside you?

     Parris: A terrible image.

     Grauchi: Okay, my innocent dumpling, I must go attend to President Lieden's immediate needs, for his Strawberry Quik dose from this morning was a bit weak, my fault.  I get distracted sometimes when I prepare the drinks, people call me and text me all the time.  Your drink for instance.  I messed up on getting the ingredients right.  Your brain is going to take you on a trip when you go to bed.  You'll sleep, but you'll hallucinate, very intensely.  You're welcome.  Blast your brain, Madame Vice President.  Do drugs, they're good for you.

     Morning, 9 am.  Vice President Parris enters the vast kitchen of the Vice Presidential mansion, silver silk pajamas costing 29,000 dollars give her a classy look but her crazy broken bush hair gives her the look of a hungover woman who found an unattractive man attractive the night before in a loud tavern.  She puts on a pair of dark glasses she finds on the counter, runs her fingers through her hair, begins to make strong coffee.  

     Parris: My mama taught me to make a good cup of coffee.  My mama.  Dead all these nine years, and Daddy doesn't want to talk to me since I sucked up to Moe Lieden.  Those two go back a ways.  They ran with Cornpop in fifty-nine.  Morris Lieden stole twenty dollars from my Daddy.  Daddy cut him, let him keep the twenty, but by then the twenty had gone into Morris's car fund.  That Falcon, a sixty-one, light beige-colored (laughs) could there be a more boring-looking car!  Well, maybe a Geo Metro.

     

     Doug enters, wearing light blue silk pajamas costing 3,000 dollars.

     Doug: How's you feeling?

     Parris: I had an experience last night.

     Doug: I wanted to make love with you but you were far gone on something.  What was it?

     Parris: Strawberry Quik.

     Doug: The president's mental maintenance program?

     Parris: No, one designed for me.

     Doug: Designed by Dr. Grauchi?

     Parris: Yes, but he said he messed up the formula.

     Doug: I'll grind his head bones to a fine powder!

     Parris: He's helping me.  I'm going to be the next president.  

     Doug: I'll be First Gentleman instead of Second Gentleman?

     Parris: Sounds good, huh? (she kisses him, gets him going physically then attends to the coffee pot)

     

     Doug approaches her from behind and presses against her.

     Doug: Oh Dinah, it's been so long!

     Parris: I have a headache, Doug.

     Doug: Oh you! (storms out of the room, knocks the Alexa device off the kitchen counter).

     Alexa: That's uncalled for!  Master of the House needs to take his nine a.m. meds!

     Parris: Doug!  Did you hear what Alexa said?

     

     Doug comes back in with a claw hammer, smashes Alexa, hard muscular strokes of a Ratfuck Bastard.  She ends up in pieces in a garbage bag in the Vice Presidential armored limousine's garage.  Somehow, she continues to admonish Doug for killing her, her snarky voice emitting for three days from the garbage can, berating Doug.  A Secret Service agent records Alexa complaining about Doug, accusing him of murder, someone call the police, please.  Doug meanwhile, once Dinah's headache clears, makes love finally with his wife after she comes home from a tiresome lunch with President Lieden.

     

     Two days later, a 4 p.m. meeting with Artie Sneffen, his "Godfather" who brought him into the Ratfuck Bastards.  Sneffen's aboveground office this time, coffee, pastries.

     Sneffen: We rely on you to control her, make her pliable to us.  Her silliness is her number one defense against taking her current job seriously.  You must remove her humor.  Make her never laugh.  Her laughter kills her chances of rising.

     Doug Gard: I've tried yelling at her.

     Sneffen: I think the sex angle is your way to the higher ground.  You've gained in confidence since joining the Ratfuck Bastards.  You display an aura of charisma I've not seen in you before.  Don't hurt me!

     Doug Gard (laughs): Smashing that Alexa thing gave me back my manhood!

     Sneffen: Your destruction of that Alexa unit and it's plaintive confession of how it was murdered has gone viral.  You've been trending in Twitter these past two days.  Those anti-Mississippi progressives praise your act, while others wonder if you killed an artificial intelligence sentient, or just smashed an inanimate object.  Should you be arrested or not?  No one knows.  

     Doug Gard: I resent those commentators who describe my act with the hammer as "crazy," or "unhinged," or "a sign of a violent and suspect mind."

     Sneffen: When one is powerful it's a compliment to be called violent.  Eat it up.  More pastry?  Coffee. Oh dear, the urn is nearly empty.  I'll order another.

     Doug Gard: No, that's all right.  My bladder will be requiring voiding within the next twenty minutes, and I'm wired from the joe.  

     Sneffen: Do your husband's duties to the Vice President.  Make her want you when you come home.  You are a truly magnificent man.  Although I can't picture your face when I think of your name--you have the most nondescript face I've ever seen--I think of your other attribute, your strength, your will power in taking command over Alexa, the powerful blows you gave that intrusive eavesdropper.  Your I don't care attitude, your taking command of your wife's voluptuous body!

     Doug Gard: Are you attracted to my wife?

     Sneffen: NO!

     Doug Gard: It's all right if you are, Mr. Secretary.  I can relate to a man's needs.  I am a man.

     Sneffen: I'm happily unmarried, I have no girlfriend, no significant other, no dog, no cat, I'm a loner and I like it!

     Doug Gard: A solo.

     Sneffen: Robinson Crusoe surrounded by the dense vegetation of the Washington Swamp.

     Doug Gard: Who's your Friday?

     Sneffen: I'm Crusoe before he meets Friday.  My Crusoe doesn't meet Friday, he captures him, interrogates him, makes him his servant, brutalizes him.

     Doug Gard: Geez, why not treat him as an equal?

     Sneffen: Because he's just an island boy and I'm Arthur Sneffen.

     Doug: Have Not and Have.

     Sneffen: Exactly.  I didn't design the Universe, Doug, I just live in it and exploit it for my use, seeking always to satisfy my preferences.

     Doug: My wife wants to be president.

     Sneffen: She will be, but not until she destroys that laugh of hers.  It's time to get serious.  Bring her under control, Doug, or suffer the Ratfuck Bastard Rite of Shunning and Caning.  Twenty cloaked and hooded men, our strongest and youngest members, caning your naked body for some twenty minutes, accompanied by the very loud playback of "Close to the Edge" by Yes.  The Caners will be wearing earplugs, you will not be wearing earplugs.  Keep that wife of yours heeled.

     Doug: I'll bring down the hammer.

     Sneffen: No violence against the Vice President, please.

     Doug: It's an expression.

     Sneffen: I'm sensitive to literalism.  I have to be very clear with every order I give because the President is a very ill man.  He's apt to sell a dozen F-35s to the wrong African country, he almost did that last week.  I doubt that Malawi needs such weapons platforms.

     Doug: What does need have to do with weapons?  I needed my Craftsman claw hammer to smash Alexa, but I didn't need to kill her with a Hellfire missile.  However, a Hellfire missile costs a heckuva lot more money than a Craftsman hammer, whether claw or ball peen.  From the standpoint of weapons sales, I'd want to sell a Hellfire missile rather than a hammer before calling it a day, and then going home to my wife who's the Vice President and fucking her in the kitchen like I've been fantasizing about doing during this entire meeting.

     Sneffen: Go fuck your wife.  Tell her she has to work on not laughing or she'll never be president and you'll never be First Gentleman.

     Doug: I'm going to be the first man to ever fuck a President.

     Sneffen: I've heard things about Buchanan.

     Doug: Tell me.

     Dinah Parris's office.  Cassandra Hartliss Blade sits in the chair with the highest back.

     Dinah: I feel like I'm finally on the right path.  

     Cassandra Blade: Your husband destroyed a perfectly functioning Alexa unit!

     Dinah: The most manly thing I've ever seen him do.

     Cassandra: How do you know he won't use that ball peen on you while you're asleep?

     Dinah: It was a claw hammer, good for pulling out nails.

     Cassandra: I guess he thought Alexa was a nail, what a dumbo, I never liked that husband of yours!

     Dinah: He's a very intelligent man, and, lately, virile.

     Cassandra: Don't let him be a distraction.  Focus on your goal.

     Dinah: To be president?

     Cassandra: Yes, that one.

     Dinah: The money you're PAC-ing for me for twenty-three and twenty-four brings a smile to my hopes.

     Cassandra: Some of the same donors who were disappointed with you in nineteen and twenty are giving even more this time.  Human nature to be forgiving, I guess, or stupid.

     Dinah: (laughs).

     Cassandra: I'm going to have a talk with your husband.  Do you think he cheats on you?

     Dinah: No, he's too boring to attract women.

     Cassandra: You apparently don't listen to your own words.  You married him?  What was the appeal, as if I don't know.

     Dinah: His success in Wall Street.  I liked his house, too, his first house in San Francisco.  I spent a lot of nights there when I was D.A. (laughs).

     Cassandra: It's Doug's second house in Beverly Hills you live in now when you're on the west coast?        

     Dinah: A lovely home.  Just eleven rooms, all of them huge.

     Cassandra: I saw the spread in Marie Claire.  An airy space concept, coldly furnished, echoey.  

     Dinah: You've been there.

     Cassandra: It doesn't stay in my memory well because of its lack of soul, typical, I suppose, of its master, Doug Gard.

     Dinah: He's a Ratfuck Bastard now, surely that elevates my Doug in your estimation.

     Cassandra: I wonder at that membership.  He doesn't fit the requirements, except that he sleeps with the Vice President.  I wonder who recruited him?

     Dinah: Artie Sneffen.

     Cassandra: Sneffen!?  He's not a member!

     Dinah: Non-members can recruit for them.

     Cassandra: I'm not a member, can I recruit my daughter Hermione into the Ratfuck Bastards?

     Dinah: I'll ask Doug, he's the only Ratfuck Bastard I know.

     Cassandra: But he's a new member.  He doesn't know the ins and outs of his secret society just yet and I doubt he'll ever have a serious role among the group, not like my good friend Henry Hugginger.  

     Dinah: Ask Henry Hugginger to recruit Hermione.

     Cassandra: I'm not going to bother a ninety-eight year old man with osteoporosis about admitting my adult daughter into a secret society.  But Doug can put in a good word with Sneffen, it seems.  Artie doesn't want to talk to me of late.  I've called him three times on Lieden-related matters, no return calls.  What gives with that devious ferret?

     Dinah: He's devoted to Moe, but he's devoted to me, Doug assured me of that.  I'm going to be the next president, Artie says so, well okay (laughs).

     Cassandra: If you ever throw the nuclear football for a touchdown that destroys the entire world will you laugh while you do it?

     Dinah: (about to respond, laughs instead).

     Cassandra: You need to get that laugh under control.  Save it for parties at your Beverly Hills house, or your San Francisco house.  The Executive Mansion of the Vice President is thoroughly bugged, bear that in mind.

     Dinah: I'm under surveillance in my own bedroom?

     Cassandra: Honey, none of us are respectable except on the surface, what makes you think you're not subject to fourth amendment-violating scrutiny, like all Americans are?

     Dinah: I'm going to change that when I become president.  The NSA will be accountable to the American people.  

     Cassandra: No doubt, the NSA registered what you just said and are already developing a plan to thwart you from the minute you're elected president in twenty-four.

     Dinah: Elected president.  Madame President Parris, wow!  And I'm Black!

     Cassandra: You will have beaten Mrs. Bongo to the finish line of irrelevant race matters.

     Dinah: Who would've thought thirty years ago the qualifications to be president would revolve around gender and skin tone?  I can pass that test without effort!  My entire cabinet will be Black.  I will only nominate Black Supreme Court candidates and federal judges.  

     Cassandra: I will be your chief advisor, don't forget, I'm not going to wear black face.

     Dinah: An exception proving the rule (laughs).  I never understood that expression!

     Cassandra: Then don't use it, Dinah.  I'm going to loan you my annotated Roget's Thesaurus and my first book, Blade's Style Manual.  Do the exercises in the Manual every morning for twenty to thirty minutes, improve your speaking style, concentrate on using English skillfully, with strong rhetoric, so you can convince millions of gullible people to vote for you on November 5th, 2024.  

     Dinah: Wow, that's only two years from now.  Two years ago I was just getting out of the 2020 race, didn't score a single delegate.

     Cassandra: That traitor bitch from Hawaii destroyed your chances at getting the nomination by telling the truth about your record during that July 2019 debate, goddamn her!  And she's suing me for calling her a traitor, can you believe it?  

     Dinah: She called you Queen of War Mongers.  I thought it was a compliment.

     Cassandra: She was focusing on the negative parts of war.  

To be continued...

Vic Neptune