Happy Lieden's Delaware office. He has offices in Kyiv (closed temporarily), Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Washington, Dakar, Tel Aviv, and Nairobi. Happy manages his father's, former President Moe Lieden's, business interests while the old man mounts a comeback campaign to seize the Democratic nomination from President Dinah Parris.
Today, Happy entertains via Skype General Beak, Space Force Chief, one of the six top military honchos in the U.S. The Clean Half-Dozen they're called by a press convinced that not even one of them is a pervert. Though Chairman General Bomb has had extramarital affairs known about by FBI-connected journalists, the general public doesn't know about his dalliances with President Parris, a noted tramp, according to gossip in the nation's capitol.
Happy (playing with a baseball signed by the Philadelphia Flyers--half the signatures are rubbed off): I'm willing to do whatever dirty work is necessary to get Dad elected. I'm a good son.
General Beak: You are, and I've heard your Dad say it, too. Blast it, you're the finest son of all sons! I ask only that you live up to one-tenth of that expectation on his part.
Happy: One-tenth? That's a cinch! Boy, just watch me! I'll have the press saying the nicest things about me!
General Beak: It's best, Mr. Lieden, that you not have the press discussing you at all.
Happy: But why? I'm colorful. I'm a jolly addition to the political narrative.
General Beak: The publicity isn't going to help your father.
Happy: What publicity?
General Beak: The laptop you left at the repair shop and were too blitzed on crack to remember to pick up. Do you even remember that?
Happy: I remember the kerfuffle. Do I remember leaving the laptop at the repair shop? I don't remember owning a laptop. I have the original pocketknife my good old Dad gave me on my eighth birthday! I stabbed my brother Biff with it when he received one more Christmas present than I did. That Biff! Always topping me! Like when he sneaked into my wedding suite and banged my first wife pretending he was me. I hated Biff.
General Beak: Since he's passed, I'm glad you no longer harbor a grudge.
Happy: Oh, I don't hate him anymore, but I resent him. I think about him every day, especially at night. I can't travel back in time and attack him. He ruined my first marriage. I would give anything, I would even give up crack, to travel back in time and prevent him from entering my wedding suite, entering my wife.
Moe Lieden: (In on the call with General Beak, unbeknownst to Happy till now) You're mistaken, Happy. That was me, not Biff. I fucked my newly minted daughter-in-law Stacy.
Happy: Tracy.
Moe: Tracy! Yeah, that's right. She was something! Felt good! You picked a good one, Happy!
Happy: A three month marriage!
Moe: She treated me right. Did she treat you right, son?
Happy: She scorned my love!
Moe: She had no respect for you! You let her father-in-law fuck her brains out while you were sound asleep next to us. Pathetic. Sometimes I think you're not my son, My son would wake up and pummel the man banging his wife into a pudding and command his wife to obey him and only him. You're not a man, Happy. I raised a wimp. I'm ashamed. I should have spent less time making racist jokes with Strom Thurmond and spent more time crafting the morals of my younger son. Nothing wrong with Biff. He was perfect. Absolute perfection was my Biff. You're no Biff, Happy. Biff would've woken up and clobbered anyone, even his old man, for fucking his wife. Hell, he would've split from her on the spot. Not you, though, cuckold! You stuck around for three months, knowing that who you thought was Biff fucked your precious Emily.
Happy: Tracy.
Moe: Whatever. A woman who cheated on you, Jackson, how does it feel? Used by a woman! Used by your horny father! You're not much, are you! You're a little shrimp of a man. I'd love to arm wrestle you through the computer. Care to try?
Happy: Dad, stop it!
Moe: Little puny man! Didn't even know his Old Man was fucking his wife one foot away.
Happy: Stop it! I want to not think about it!
Moe: Think about what? Your Old Man crawling on top of your beautiful twenty-three year old blonde wife and having his way with her for twenty minutes?
Happy: No more!
Moe: All right, Happy, you chump, I'll give you a break from the teasing. How do you feel about mounting a smear campaign against Cassandra Blade's run for President?
Happy: I'll do it, and Dad, I really would like to not be browbeaten over what happened with Tracy.
Moe: You want me to not talk about the night I fucked your first wife?
Happy: Yes.
Moe: I'll not talk about it then. I won't mention how soft her pubic curls were against my face. I won't discuss the tightness of Stacy's vagina.
Happy: Tracy.
Moe: Tracy's vagina, okay. Her tits were like--
General Beak: Mr. President, please tell your son more about his assignment regarding Cassandra Blade.
Moe: Son?
Happy: Yes, Dad?
Moe: I'll always be on your side. I'll always defend you. I'll always publicly ignore your faults and attack anyone who criticizes you. You're perfectly set up to be a serial killer, with a powerful protector. How does it feel?
Happy: Dad, that's not what you're asking me to do, is it?
Moe: Got a problem with killing?
Happy: I prefer to not do it.
Moe: But to have it done? (Grinning)
Happy: Yeah, that's best.
Moe: See Beak? Like father like son. Now son, this assignment doesn't involve killing, but it's good to know you're always ready to kill for your Old Man. Someday I may hand you a gun, or a grenade, and ask that you kill with it. Remember, the instrument of death does the killing, not the one who wields it.
General Beak: That's not true, sir.
Moe: It is on my Skype call!
Happy: Dad, I don't think it's wise to talk about matters pertaining to the 2024 election over Skype.
Moe: Why the hell not? Is this platform not good enough for me? Twitter still lets me say things, so does Facebook! I'm still on social media, no problem! I have 601 followers on Instagram! I love making short videos, getting the Lieden word out there and into the ears of the young. It's the young vote I need, the eighteen to twenty-fives! I yearn to conquer that demographic! Happy, you're closer in age to that group, what do you say in terms of ideas?
Happy: Well, I'm fifty-two, not exactly part of that generation.
Moe: Oh, okay, well I suppose I can't expect a cuckold to be thinking about anything except the night his dear old Dad ejaculated inside his newlywed wife.
Happy: Speeches, Dad. Turn on the Lieden charm. Make youth believe you're their Grandpa, like how Ronald Reagan convinced millions he was a benign old man, like an uncle or Grandpa type, a father figure, someone to offer comfort, like when he gave the Peggy Noonan speech about the space shuttle.
Moe: I wept at that speech.
Beak: We all did.
Happy: I was high on crack when he gave it, but I was told it was good.
Beak: As far as smears against Cassie Blade are concerned, we need to take into account the Blades' ruthlessness, extending, perhaps, to murder to silence adversaries.
Happy: Witness Terry Stein.
Moe: Terry's fine. A double was murdered in that poorly guarded prison. Terry's getting set up somewhere else.
Beak: That's our hook. Stein. Stein's paramour, Mathilde de Sade, attended the Blades' daughter's wedding. There's a smell clinging to the Blades. Happy, we want you to sniff it out!
Happy: How about employing that private detective from San Francisco?
Beak: Sam Spade? Not doable. He works for the enemy, President Parris.
Happy: You know, she's a good-looking lady. If I turn on the Happy Lieden charm I may be able to--I'm not guaranteeing anything--but I may be able to convince her not to run in twenty-four.
Moe: How do that, humiliated cock?
Happy: I'll have an affair with her. After all, we're close to the same age. We both grew up with the music of Nirvana.
Moe: Yeah, Sinatra's good.
Happy: Nirvana, Dad.
Moe: Who he?
General Beak: They were a musical group in the 1990s, sir. The singer and guitar player killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head. Gruesome. Homicide rumors abound.
Moe: When I'm President we'll get to the bottom of it!
Happy: And he was twenty-seven.
Moe: Significance?
Beak: Your son refers to the Twenty-Seven Club.
Happy: Musicians who died at age twenty-seven.
Moe: Oh, I see. Like Ringo Starr?
Beak: No, he's well past twenty-seven, and still alive.
Moe: Jimmy Page?
Beak: Too old, sir, and he's alive.
Happy: Jimi Hendrix is a member.
Moe: You don't say.
Beak: And Janis Joplin.
Happy: Don't forget Amy Winehouse, and Pigpen from the Grateful Dead.
Beak: Brian Jones.
Moe: Mozart!
Beak: Mozart was thirty-five when he died.
Moe: How about a thirty-five club?
Beak: This is all beside the point.
Moe: You two brought it up!
Anyone interested in researching a Thirty-Five Club may consider three prominent musicians apart from Wolfgang Mozart who belong to it:
Jaco Pastorius
Phil Ochs
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Hugging himself, First Gentleman Doug Gard prepares for a Sunday morning interview on NBC, with popular host Fuck Todd.
Fuck Todd: Nervous, Mr. First Gentleman?
Doug Gard: When do we go on?
Fuck Todd: Should be about five minutes. Five minutes, Carl? Four minutes fifty.
Doug: Is it four minutes or fifty minutes?
Fuck Todd: I meant fifty seconds. Now it's less. Listen. How about we go over what we're going to talk about.
Doug: You're not going to improvise, Fuck?
Fuck Todd: I improvise only when a guest starts speaking the truth.
Doug: I have dry legs. They itch at night.
Fuck Todd: You want to talk about your legs?
Doug: And my tongue.
Fuck Todd: What about your tongue?
Doug: It feels furry of late, as if it's transforming into a porcupine.
Fuck Todd: Wouldn't it feel prickly, then?
Doug: Pricks in my mouth! Horrible thought! Stop talking!
Fuck Todd: I'm interviewing you in a minute.
Doug: Interview my hand! (holds up his hand palm out). Note the hand's softness. The only tool I've ever held is my own crank. You know, the crank that winds up a man's passion machine. The crank the Lord God bestowed upon his greatest creation, Man, looking upon him sans cock and knowing something was missing. Behold, a great cock appeareth upon the lower abdomen of Man. Boy, does Eve notice this! (lowers his hand).
Fuck Todd: And we're on in three, two, one, Good Morning, I'm Fuck Todd, your host of Press the Meat. We'll have our Sunday Super Panel, Democratic Strategist Meg Boulevard, Former FBI Analyst Garfield Stormbrother, Republican Congresswoman Valerie Cynax, Washington Gladhand columnist Bert Van Fleet, and Carruthers Devon-Faberhoff, former Deputy Director of Plans at the CIA. Also, an interview with First Gentleman Douglas Gard. A man behind the scenes, married to the nation's first African-American woman President.
Doug Gard, welcome to Press the Meat. What's it like to be married to the President, seeing as how she's female, and Black?
Doug: Thank you for having me on your program.
Fuck Todd: Yes. Your marriage to the President? What's it like?
Doug: Do you want to know how often we engage in coitus? Well, not often enough! When I look into the camera it means I'm looking at my wife, the President.
Fuck Todd: I refer to how being married to the President of the United States has affected your outlook. Do you enjoy the role?
Doug: Enjoy? No. It's work, Fuck. Big work. I get up at seven every morning. I exercise. I drink and eat healthily. I watch a YouTube program or two, maybe a cooking show, get some ideas, maybe. I don't cook, but sometimes these chefs have good outlooks on life. I rip off whatever positive words I can from them and change the channel. I've missed learning how to complete the making of many a soufflé! My attention span is very low. I can comprehend thirty seconds of any given song, but then I forget how it started. I don't remember anything about Star Wars, though according to my diary calendars I've seen it five times and there's a Princess. I research the trivia of my life just in case I ever get challenged by someone who believes I might be a clone of Douglas Gard.
Fuck Todd: Does the President accept any advice from you on domestic and foreign policies?
Doug: She follows everything I suggest.
Fuck Todd: Everything?
Doug: I run this stinking country.
Fuck Todd: I had no idea.
Doug: You're lucky I don't have you shot.
Fuck Todd: I'm sure the President wouldn't want that.
Doug: You know what the President wants, do you? I know she's watching this. Honey, this man Fuck Todd believes he knows what you want. Shall I tell him the truth? That what you want is to lie down on a couch with him? Like how you bed every man in Washington except for me?! Fuck! I'm cucked. That's what it's like to be married to Dinah Parris. (Blubbers, puts his head down on his arms on the table).
Fuck Todd: We'll be back right after this message from Pfizer.
Montage of happy multi-racial faces, everyone wants a vaccine, low risk, tsk tsk.
Fuck Todd and his Sunday Super Panel.
Fuck Todd: That interview with the First Gentleman had to be cut short. He had obligations elsewhere.
Valerie Cynax (Republican Congresswoman, California): That was weird.
Fuck Todd: The First Gentleman was having a little fit, I guess.
Valerie Cynax: More like a grand Mal seizure. The man should be studied in an institute, have papers written about him.
Meg Boulevard (Democratic strategist): Cruel words, Congresswoman. Mr. Gard is a brilliant, articulate man.
Valerie: He sounded positively whacko.
Meg Boulevard: He's under a lot of pressure.
Valerie: To be married to a famous woman? Give me a break. Ben Affleck has it ten times worse in that regard.
Carruthers Devon-Faberhoff of the CIA: Ben Affleck is one of our finest assets.
Valerie: I refer to his marriage to Jennifer Lopez.
Carruthers Devon-Faberhoff: J-Lo does not work for CIA.
Meg Boulevard: Neither does Doug Gard. He works for Madame President. Everything he does is to dignify her.
Valerie Cynax: The erection at the press conference?
Meg Boulevard: As he told us, he loves his wife very much.
FBI analyst Garfield Stormbrother (tittering): He can't hide it!
Oval Office. President Parris turns off the 1968 Quasar color TV, the one President Johnson watched the chaos in Chicago on, and the election returns when "that little twerp" Nixon beat Humphrey.
She spins, magnificent in her fury. Smug Secretary of State Sneffen on the couch and Secretary of Defense Roy Holroyd.
Parris: He can't even get through an interview with Fuck Freakin Todd!
Sneffen: Confidence in the sanity of the First Gentleman is at eight percent.
Holroyd: (Chuckles, shifts his butt) I'm surprised it's not at zero.
Parris: Are you implying, Roy, that my husband is for all intents and purposes persona non grata in American society? He's a joke, a mere will o' the wisp?
Holroyd: I don't know what you mean by that last term in Doug's case. Remember. Doug and I belonged to the same fraternity. We smeared our cum over each other in a coffin. You can't get closer to a person than that.
Parris: Roy, do you think Doug is going insane?
Holroyd: We're all a little crazy these days. War will do that. I took a two week vacation from the war.
Parris: I know. I approved a fortnight for you and Gwen in Guam.
Holroyd: Gwen stayed in Guam. I went secretly to Japan, meeting with my counterpart. Oh, we visited a few brothels, took in a show, went to a Mizoguchi retrospective--Osaka Elegy is still a powerful film. It wasn't all work, Dinah. I mean, Madame President.
Parris: You scamp. I tell you to do one thing and you do another. Artie? Do you plan on taking a vacation anytime soon?
Sneffen: Vacations are for losers. (Yawns).
Parris: This loser needs one (Laughs). Where's my favorite pen, Klondike? I've looked for Klondike everywhere and I can't find him!
Sneffen: Klondike! Oh Klondike!
Holroyd: (falsetto) Klondike, where art thou?
Sneffen: Klondike, gone forever!
Parris: Don't say that! (Thumbs intercom) Ilmatar, come in here, please.
Sneffen: Ilmatar?
Parris: She's a Finn. Hello Ilmatar. Are you enjoying your day? Good. Have you seen my pen, the one I refer to as Klondike? You may have heard me talking to Klondike. I know the pen isn't sentient, but I treat him as if he is. I anthropomorphize him, I hope that's not too difficult a word for you. I try to speak steadily so as not to overwhelm you. I respect foreigners. As long as they keep their distance. Not you! Ilmatar, that's a pretty name. Now, dig into that pretty mind of yours and fish up the location of my Klondike! Stand there until you get it! (Parris sits in the armchair near the couch). Do you know how many secretaries I've gone through since becoming President?
Sneffen: Thirty-nine.
Parris: Thirty-eight. Good guess! I swear, these secretaries they send me are cry babies. Getting yelled at by the Boss is part of the job, it's why the big bucks get paid out--granted, we don't pay the interns, and the low income help makes about six bucks an hour, but you gotta take those licks. Punishment must be swallowed like medicine. Did you get it yet, Ilmatar?
Ilmatar: Not yet, Madame President.
Parris: Maybe you would not like to work here, Ilmatar?
Ilmatar: Oh, don't fire me! I don't know where your pen is, I'm really sorry. I can buy you a new one?
Parris: The President does not accept gifts, would-be lawbreaker. Tempt me not. Do you work for Moe Lieden?
Ilmatar: No.
Parris: I happen to know you don't. We had you thoroughly investigated, and followed too, before we hired you. We know your brother got a D minus in Algebra last semester and your father yelled at him.
Ilmatar: That seems like overreach into private citizens' lives.
Parris: You think? (Laughs with the other two government officials). Ilmatar. You find Klondike and I'll give you a little bonus, say, five bucks. You shouldn't have let Klondike get out of your view in the first place. I can replace you. I can't replace Klondike.
Roy Holroyd: Is this Klondike? This modest Flair red pen, Madame President?
Parris: Klondike! Where did you find him?
Roy: Under my couch cushion. Artie and I agreed it might be possible your Klondike fell out of your skirt pocket one day, or evening, and ended up with the food particles and coins. I understand Ed Musskie found a one million Deutschmark note in this couch left there by Henry Kissinger.
Parris: Klondike! What shall we draw? (Sits at her desk, everything else forgotten and begins drawing with Klondike on blank white paper, getting several sheets going simultaneously).
Sneffen: Madame President. You're exhibiting Moe Lieden-ish behavior.
Parris: What's that, Art? I say art because I'm making art. Put on some music, Roy. Anything but Devo.
Random White House Radio puts into the Oval Office "Circus" by Uriah Heep. President Parris begins dancing in place at her desk.
Parris: Not a bad groove. White House Radio! Identify artist playing currently.
Mechanical Voice: Uriah Heep.
Parris: I was going to guess Blue Oyster Cult. Had I voiced my guess, I would have been wrong.
Sneffen: Madame President, can we shift our talk to a productive channel?
Parris: What do you mean by that, little man? And did you fart?
Sneffen: No, I did not.
Parris: The odor came from your direction. You're responsible for that part of the room. All right. Talk to me about what's so important.
Sneffen: The situation in Ukraine.
Parris: Add more weapons to it. Next.
Sneffen: Confidence in the leader there is collapsing.
Parris: Not our problem.
Sneffen: We made promises.
Parris: We're America. Ask the Indians about our "promises."
Sneffen: My problem is I'm a true believer in Ukrainian autonomy. You and so many others see the situation as one to simply exploit, and damn the country.
Parris: Whose side are you on?
Sneffen: Yours, America's, Foggy Bottom's. I serve your administration with gratitude and utmost faith in your abilities.
Parris: When you kiss ass it feels awfully good. Continue to do so, but know too that I am aware of your true intentions, to work for Gabrielle Bongo. Why do you still work for me?
Sneffen: Gabrielle is not running for President as far as I know.
Parris: Liar. You lunch with her every other Monday. My spies know you discussed the 2024 race. Gabrielle Bongo's eyes lit up with the possibility of winning the Democratic nomination, of debating Don Richman, or whoever it might be. Some say General Bomb is considering a run on the Republican ticket.
Sneffen: Bomb has the appeal of a bomb explosion.
Parris: Voters like security. He projects security and authority.
Sneffen: I understand he sometimes puts his authority inside you, Madame President?
Parris: You dirty little man!
Roy Holroyd: Is this true, Dinah?
Sneffen: Ha! You too, Roy? Of course she'd bang a handsome devil like you, even if you are a dumbbell.
Roy: I am not a dumbbell! And anyway, I think you're jealous. You obviously never did it with her.
Sneffen: Why obviously?
Roy: You're as gay as Liberace, man!
Sneffen: Madame President, surely you're not going to tolerate this assault on my character. I'm as heterosexual as Don Richman.
Parris: Artie. You're prissy. I don't know if that means you're gay. If you are gay, so what?
Sneffen: I'm not gay. I've had relations with ten women in the last month alone.
Parris: Prostitutes?
Sneffen: If you must know, yes.
Parris: This won't do.
Sneffen: Why does Madame President care?
Parris: Tendrils of scandal potential. If the press finds out.
Sneffen: And your affairs. Will you stop them?
Parris: What I do is my business. I order you to stop fucking prostitutes.
Sneffen: Received and understood.
Parris: Don't be mad.
Sneffen: My respect for you has increased, as has my hatred.
Holroyd: (sotto voce) You must not like him, Dinah.
Parris: (sotto voce) Not like Artie, for intending to join with Bongo? I think he's already helping her. The bi-weekly lunches. Arthur Sneffen was never on board with the seizure of power from Moe Lieden, who was about to destroy the world. (Out loud) The world owes General Bomb a debt of gratitude. He saved the world. Does that make him a worthy candidate for President?
Roy Holroyd: I for one would not vote for him. He has anti-democratic tendencies.
Parris (sputters in laughter): Bill Bomb!? The guy who bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade for no apparent reason?
Roy Holroyd: By order of President Blade.
Parris: Yessir! Nosir! I do what people tell me to do. I'm an appliance. I'm Bill Bomb. I have no will of my own! (Laughs).
Roy Holroyd (Solemnly): There is chain of command.
Parris: Yeah. A symbolic chain. I want a real chain! Something to wear when I make the war! Can you arrange this, Roy?
Roy Holroyd: A war necklace?
Parris: (Slaps her thigh) A war necklace! You got that right, sugar!
Sneffen: Madame President will look like a target of satire if she wears a war necklace.
Parris: Down on the floor, Mr. Downer! I don't like your lack of enthusiasm! Why not display my lust for war in such a necklace? How big will it be, Roy? And will there be jewels?
Roy: I"m thinking a modest size, with a prominent ruby--we have one that just came in from the Congo--
Parris: A ruby...
Roy: Pearls aplenty along the gold and platinum chain. The links will be fashioned like eagle's claws, sapphires pulverized to a mist will float around the necklace inside a flexible transparent tube. We've been wanting to try this out on someone.
Sneffen: What does it do?
Roy: It induces gullibility.
Parris: Really?
Roy: See? She's not even wearing the war necklace and it's already working.
Sneffen: How can it be working if she's not wearing it, and it hasn't been made yet?
Roy: This thing operates outside normal spacetime continuum, Charlie.
Sneffen: Artie.
Roy: Yeah. I'm communicating with it now through an implant that will be put in my cerebellum in 2029, July fourth in fact, just a coincidence that it will be Independence Day when my operation will happen, nice nurse named Kayla.
Sneffen: You're remembering 2029?
Roy: And 2039. Boy, It's a Wonderful Life will make a comeback as most popular movie to show at Christmas.
Sneffen: In 2039? At Christmas time? You gleaned this?
Roy: I remember it well. I remember reading about your death in a headline on my brain phone.
Sneffen: My death? You're toying with me.
Roy: Shocking.
Sneffen: What?
Roy: Your death.
Sneffen: I am to have a shocking death?
Roy: Yes. You fall--do you want to hear this?
Sneffen: Proceed.
Roy: You fall down a gravel slope at a quarry. No one finds you. Several broken bones, legs don't work. You wake up and a vulture's eating your liver, just like with Prometheus.
Sneffen: That's ridiculous.
Roy: So very true will it be, Arthur. You're going to fall down a gravel slope at a quarry. What were you or will you be doing at the quarry, I don't know, but speculation speaks of you meeting someone there but you'll be lured there to be killed, someone making even an old score.
Parris: Sounds plausible. What about me, Roy? How does this beautiful first African-American woman President die?
Roy: You make it to 101.
Parris: What's that song? Only the good die young? (Laughs).
Happy Lieden, General Beak, Hector Farrbarrhuber, Moe Lieden, in the Scranton Lieden Campaign Headquarters. Secretaries busy on the phones in the large outer office. Moe comes in from there having just felt the hair of a redheaded secretary.
Moe: (Grinning) I call it my morning stroll boner.
Happy: Dad's always had a big smile for the ladies.
Moe: Thanks, Hap. You know, Biff was a great son, the best son. Now you're my only son. My son! Fruit of my prick! I made you, son! I created you with a splash of Moe juice into the fertile slick ground of your mother's vagina! Had I not splashed that vagina you would not be here, with your crack and your meth and your whores and your crooked business deals, and your suffocating cologne--
Happy: That's your cologne, Dad!
Moe: And your getting noticed in the news, that's the worst thing you do, sperm load of mine.
Happy: I apologized for the laptop. I truly forgot about it. Yesterday I forgot my name. I'm under a lot of pressure, Dad. I need to plug my escape holes.
Hector Farrbarrhuber: Hey, Happy, I'll take you on a hit. You can grease somebody. It's exhilarating.
Happy: I abhor violence.
Hector: You create a lot of it.
Happy: Direct violence.
Hector: Like going to a Rocky Rococo and sitting at a certain window?
Happy: Did you, cave man, have something to do with Congressman Mitchell-Strong's death?
Hector: I just mentioned it. I've been assigned a new one.
General Beak: Yes, and if you carry it out, I'll give you half a million.
Hector: I'm game. Killing a fictional character, though. Does that make his name disappear from every copy of The Maltese Falcon?
General Beak: Doubtful. He's here in our reality, our 2023. If anything he's more solid in 2023 than in the fictional 1930 of the novel, since that, though based on 1920s San Francisco reality, doesn't exist.
Hector: I think we don't know what we're talking about.
Moe Lieden: (seated) Gentlemen. How do we know it's not 1930?
General Beak: The automobiles, the hairstyles--
Moe Lieden: Oh yes, the hair.
Happy: Look at that laptop, Dad. They didn't have laptops back in 1930.
Moe: No son, I guess you're right. They had em when you dropped yours off at a repair shop and forgot to pick it up. Who knew my possible downfall would hinge on a laptop full of e-mails, proof of my questionable behavior, my criminality, but curiously nothing about the dozens of hammer murders I did in Wilmington back in the late fifties and early sixties. Hmm.
Happy: That was the past, Dad. President Hoover is not President. Dinah Parris is. May she sit on a popsicle stick and melt!
Moe: Now Happy, there's no point in saying such harsh words about our dear Dinah. She has great-smelling hair, I'll give her that. Now this alien threat, Beak. More to report about that incredible threat?
Beak: I don't trust anyone at the Pentagon, Mr. President. I believe at least twenty-five high-ranking officers are Gorka.
Moe: The alien species capable of imitating Man.
Beak: Yes. I believe General Bomb has become mostly Gorka.
Moe: You don't say this because of past enmity between you two?
Beak: Think that not! I say this out of respect for the General, but he's possessed by Gorka, a more terrible fate I cannot imagine.
Moe: What's it like?
Beak: No will of your own.
Moe: Taking a break from the ego. Sounds grand.
Beak: A witness to whatever terrible deed your possessor may commit.
Moe: Free entertainment!
Beak: A slow diminishment of you, the original human being, to nothing, squelched by the Gorka who took control of your body, perhaps while you slept.
Moe: It'll be nice to be completely dissolved. Being sentient gets tiring.
Happy: I want the opposite. I want more life!
Hector: Have you tried fentanyl?
Moe: How do I know any of you ain't alien?
Hector: Maybe you're alien, Moe?
Moe: I feel like myself. I'm thinking about that hair I smelled just now. I'm an alien, I can direct that young lady with my mind, Come here, young lady, forgot your name, sorry, forgot your name, It is I, your President, your god, your savior, your link to power.
Beak: Mr. President, are you all right? You seem to have wet your pants, and your eyes became glassy.
Moe: That wet ain't pee, Beak! (Grins)
Happy: Dad, can I get you a Kleenex? Maybe two? When I have accidents like that sometimes I need three.
Hector: I can't believe I'm sitting here with an old man who just blew a load in his pants, a General who believes aliens are going to invade Earth, and a dipshit who makes a living off of being his father's son.
Happy: Who's this dipshit you're referring to?
Hector: Prince of the dipshits. That was Don Richman, Junior, before the current one.
Happy: I know Don Richman, Junior. I call him my brother from another mother.
Hector: Now that you're wiped up, Mr. President, why don't you give me my orders.
Moe: Here's what you do...what are we talking about?
Hector: The elimination of Sam Spade.
Moe: That's it, exactly! It was on the tip of my tongue. Tongue, lengua in Spanish. I learned that while watching spicy Penelope Cruz. Oh, to be President so I can command a meeting with Penelope Cruz!
Happy: That would be great, Dad!
Moe: It sure would!
Beak: You have more legitimate reasons for becoming President, sir. Space, for instance...
Moe: Oh, you're always going on about Space. Space has nothing on Penelope Cruz! I could send a million spaceships into her hair, and I mean sperm cells when I say spaceships. Tiny spaceships you see. I command a fleet of em. Commodore Lieden, Victor of the Battle of Sperm Harbor. I made that up. This is all made up. Penelope Cruz receives the ships. Oooh, you know what I mean.
Hector: Penelope Cruz doesn't do porn.
Moe: Man of little faith!
Beak: We're getting sidetracked again. Why can't we focus?
Moe: Because you're boring, Beak! The sky is falling! Aliens on the way! Any day now! I'm not convinced that information is valid.
Beak: The source--
Moe: Anybody can be bought, you bought man, you.
Happy: I for one don't want there to be aliens. I saw E.T. when I was a lad. The film, I'm not afraid to admit, scared me. The alien looked to me like a puddle of poop with eyes and gross long fingers and when the finger lit up I fled the theater and ran to the Senate floor screaming that an alien had taken over Washington, D.C., remember that, Dad?
Moe: How could I forget? It's the only time a bare ass spanking happened inside the Senate Chamber.
Hector: You were a dumb little kid to believe E.T. was real. The real aliens don't look like that.
Moe: You know what they look like?
Hector: Sure, they look like me.
Beak: Are you a shape shifter?
Hector: That's an exaggeration.
Beak: Do you have more than five senses?
Hector: Twenty-three.
Beak: Twenty-three senses?!?
Hector: Yes, for instance, I feel your bewilderment, and I see how it extends into an insecure part of your psyche, where you store your fears and doubts, the parts of yourself you deny.
Beak: There is such a part of my psyche?
Hector: Yes, I see it, it's like a city. Lots of activity. A police force, even.
Beak: Are there monuments to me?
Hector: Not that I can see. There's a beautiful public park that got turned into a rocket pad. I see lots of you everywhere. Many Beaks.
Beak: You're conning me, Farrbarrhuber.
Hector: I have entered the special room in your mind, General Beak. Ooh, I see it...
Beak: You see nothing! No one outside a number knows the secret!
Hector: The secret of long distance travel to other star systems, other galaxies, even?
Beak: How do you know the secret?
Hector: I saw it in your mind. Twenty-three senses, remember?
Beak: I don't believe that.
Hector: Believe instead that someone outside your circle knows the secret. How? Surely I didn't guess?
Happy: I was thinking maybe you guessed.
Hector: General. I prefer to keep most of myself to myself. Nothing you hear about me, from me or from others, is reliable, although maybe some of it is, but it's hard to know what. I know the secret of your circle. That means the circle is compromised. I'll leave you to guess who the oathbreaker is.
Beak: By God, it must be Bomb!
Moe: Why Bomb?
Beak: He's a filthy treacherous poisonous bush.
Moe: I've seen his bush in the White House gym locker shower room. Brown, with gray streaks, not bad coverage for an old man like Bill Bomb. I asked him about his cruise missile tattoo on his left arm. He flexed it. The nose cone of the missile has a snarling fang-toothed fish face.
Beak: Bomb is the betrayer of the secret, or I'm operating on that assumption for now. I'll consult with Number Two.
Moe: Happy, have you added more tattoos to your handsome one of a kind, son of a gun body?
Happy: Just a small one of a white kitten on my left cheek near my butthole.
Moe: Why there, pray tell?
Happy: It shows I'm innocent, but playful.
Beak: Erring on caution's side, I take what you say, Farrbarrhuber, at face value. If you're Gorka, then others of your kind are on this planet now--
Hector: I didn't say I'm Gorka.
Beak: What are you, then?
Hector: Same as you.
Beak: A human being, you mean?
Hector: Yes, surprised?
Beak: You made all that up?
Hector: Yes.
Beak: Oh, shit on a cracker!
Hector: For someone going into space you must be a superior man.
Beak: In every way.
Hector: Yet, gullible.
Beak: You're going to erase Spade?
Hector: I'll tear him out of his book.
Moe: Goody! I'm in the mood for a successful hit, one I've ordered.
Beak: I ordered it, Mr. President.
Moe: You, me, baby makes three. Say Beak, have you ever noticed how volcanic eruptions make beautiful sunsets? Have you ever watched a humpback whale breach? Are pimples volcanic? What did Paul Newman do in Hud after the screen door closes and he goes back in the house while the kid leaves to find himself?
Happy: My favorite Newman is The Hustler.
Beak: Winning, that's my meat.
Hector: What about Joe Cave?
Beak: What's that?
Hector: The coolest assassin movie ever made, 1962, Paul Newman, Senta Berger, Lorg Pennicos, St. John Blunt, Van Johnson, and a young Bill Cosby. It was directed by George Mencke. He only made the one film. Black and white, seventy-two minutes.
Beak: Short.
Hector: As long as it needs to be. Tight. All films should be that good.
Happy: What's it about?
Hector: Death. Dreams. Night streets. Plans. A Lincoln Continental with a bomb in the undercarriage, a diplomat, the assassin, played by Paul Newman, Joe Cave, killer of men.
Happy: I've Googled this movie and I can't find it.
Hector: That's because it doesn't exist.
Moe: But it should. Hey Beak, I want to see Joe Cave!
Beak: It doesn't exist, sir.
Moe: Gone With the Wind didn't exist until that producer guy, what's his name, Selznick, made it! Well, let's find Paul Newman and the rest of the cast and make the movie!
Beak: (tiredly) Instead of campaign for President?
Hector: Paul Newman's dead, so is Van Johnson. Lorg Pennicos succumbed to Covid last week.
Moe: You don't say? Then who's this Paul Newman who's been writing me obscene e-mails for the past two years?
Beak: He's a crank. We tracked him down and neutralized his voice.
Moe: That guy wanted to fuck me, I swear to God. Said he's my number one crush. What a weirdo, wanting to fuck an old man. I am a treat for the ladies, still, I won't deny it. But men, no. I will not be fucked by them, is that clear to all of you?
Happy: Dad, I would never try to, you know, f you.
Moe: Why not? Is my ass not clean enough for you, son?
Happy: You're my Dad!
Moe: Okay, you don't want to sodomize your old man, fair enough. Would you settle for giving me a handjob? I'll pay for it with crack.
Happy: Don't say crack. I'm just not capable of doing anything like that with you, Dad. Maybe I'm a failure. Maybe I'm in the right. I never know.
Moe: You're a loser, son, it's okay. You don't know the strength of your convictions because the only convictions you have are your love of crack and your pathological need to advertise your love of crack.
Happy: You understand me, Dad.
Hector: We're not getting anything done.
Moe: Right you are, Hector. Spade stays at the Marble Mobile Hotel on 8th Avenue, third floor suite overlooking the Jeff Monument, 340 bucks a night, not even a big place. I think maybe you impersonate the room service attendant and bring up his tray and spray him with lead when he opens the door.
Hector: That depends on Spade ordering room service.
Moe: Or you come through the window, spray him with lead, leave through the main door.
Hector: I'm not Spider Man.
Moe: You disguise yourself as a slice of cake, maybe a chocolate, maybe a carrot cake. I guess that doesn't matter. He opens the door, you spray him with lead.
Hector: What's the purpose of the cake costume?
Moe: People remember the costume, not the man in it.
Hector: Most perhaps, but there's one who may remember a key detail. When I do the job I want to make it happen when he and I are alone. No eyewitnesses, no electronic surveillance. Sam Spade and myself.
Beak: And God.
Hector: Inviting yourself along, are you?
Happy Lieden, on his own initiative, burgeoning with pathological self-confidence and a long ago short-circuited shame mechanism, heads to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there for a scheduled 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. meeting with President Dinah Parris. Alone, with the first African-American female President. Happy tingles inside and his scrotal sac, also, whispers eager anticipation.
Dinah Parris: Now, Mr. Lieden--
Happy Lieden: Happy.
Dinah: Why have you risen from your chair?
Happy: Reflex. I'm a drug addict.
Dinah: I see. Yes.
Happy: You probably know some awkward information about me. It's true enough. I love crack. I have videotaped myself weighing illegal drugs. I once picked up a tart--that's a young loose lady--in a saloon in Wilmington, took her to Dad's house and banged her until I passed out. I woke up in vomit, hers, mine, I'm not sure, and the fifteen thousand in cash I had on the dresser was gone and she took most of my cocaine. Fortunately she missed my emergency stash. I keep that in the glove compartment of my Dad's Corvette. Have you seen my Dad's Corvette?
Dinah: He gave me a short ride in it during Campaign Twenty.
Happy: Did you want to make out with him? Park at Inspiration Point, listen to a romantic 1957 song on the AM radio, AM before it got associated with Rush Limbaugh and other divisive right wingers?
Dinah: Are you for real?
Happy: I'm as real, or unreal as you need me to be, Dinah.
Dinah: That's Madame President to you. Did your father send you here?
Happy: No. I'm a horny man, see. I like female company. I thought, well, I heard you're a bit of a floozy. You did standing fucks in a broom closet with two fictional characters, Mr. Frodo Spade and Mr. Sam Baggins.
Dinah: Those aren't their names. Look. I guess you're here to offer yourself in the way of a tumble, yes? Yes, I thought I read that correctly. Sometimes my half-Black half-White looks forget to remind me of my comeliness to men. You're a man. Prove you're a man. Off with that surprisingly inexpensive-looking suit. Come on, Lieden-spawn, faster with the underwear, don't be shy. I still have twenty-two minutes for you.
Happy: Gosh.
To be continued...
Vic Neptune
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