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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 34 SUNDAY the NINTH - 10:28 PM Nelson squinted, pushing looky-loos
away from the monitor, squinted harder at the blurry, bouncing images, taking
the cigar out of his mouth. "I
can't see shit!" the News Director bellowed. "What is
that... a man, a woman? A cop? What's that crap on the audio?" "It
was the Guard," Billy sniveled. "Sort of. And others with some kinda attitude... spooks around, private
militia. Everyone blaming someone else for the violence. Tried to smash my
camera!" |
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The photojournalist shuddered.
"What
militia?" Nelson pushed him. "Tillerman's? Parnell's? Those bozos in Wisconsin or Antifa? Black lives murder? That's a fuckin' body, out there, under the tarp. Billy, somebody's responsible for murder!
Who?"
"I
don't know!" Billy said, and made a gesture of crossing his heart. "Dunno! Honest!"
“The
victim, the killer…” the Director replaced his cigar, and repeated, “Who? And why? Half an hour to find out. Anybody?”
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SATURDAY the EIGHTH -
Andy
Morrison sat at a table by the window in the Oak Room of the Hotel Ivona, fidgeting in his "best clothes"... a pair of
tan, Goodwill chinos and a dark urine-yellow corduroy jacket with imitation
suede elbow patches. He was nursing his second drink, drained down to the water
and detritus floating among ice cubes, playing a little game of trying to
decipher the paper sign that had been placed in the window.
"Un-Conventional Dining!" the backwards lettering trumpeted.
Delegates, panhandlers, police and lovers out for an evening's stroll passed
this window and, beyond the portals of the Oak Room, Andy saw the same hostile
security guard saunter pass the closed Coffee Shoppe again, perhaps for the
fifth time since he'd seen Andy entering the restaurant.
He
removed his papers and tobacco, scattered the flakes and began to roll another
smoke again. He'd rolled three cigarettes already within twenty minutes... not
smoking them, of course, because there were the rules and
regulations… the repetitive ritual slaking, somewhat, his need for
nicotine. Perhaps he'd absorbed enough through his fingertips... to have gone
outside to smoke might have been misinterpreted as running out on his tab.
Finishing, he placed the handroll with the others in
an empty packet of GodMartTM house brands
that Rael had gifted him with on some occasion, some minor holiday before the
circus came to town, put the packet back in his jacket pocket and glanced,
again, at the Urinal he'd brought... open to the editorial and Op-Ed pages.
Opposite the Parnell column of reminisces about wascally
Washingtonians was the Journal's own editorial about Mayor Potter's capitulation
to the protests: "SNIVEL RIGHTS!" in forty point
bold... but the small pleasures of publicity were fading fast.
"Friends
a little late?" a sudden,
helpful waitress manifested. "Refresh your drink?"
Andy
craned his neck to check the time on the Oak Room's cuckoo clock, feeling, at
the same time, into his pocket with a furtive hand to check the money remaining
from his day's missions... every Washington and Lincoln already spoken for,
check that, quarreled over.
"Not
yet. Don't want to get too much of a head start," he chuckled, falsely.
"But come round soon as my friends get in."
"OK,"
she said, tossing her curls. Probably not even old enough to drink, legally...
but his amusement vanished when he saw her move towards the door in answer to a
gesture from the security guard. He whispered a few words in her ear, she
looked at Andy and said something back; he turned his head towards the clock,
still watching from the corner of his eye. When he blinked, the waitress and
guard were gone.
He
lifted up his glass, scooped up an ice cube with his tongue and slowly chewed
it to bits; half-hoping, half-not-hoping that they’d try to Starbucks him. Emil’s number flickered through his thoughts,
vanished behind Leo’s.
The
pain of the ice crunching against chipped, rotten molars caused him to close
his eyes; when he opened them Glenn and Anne were settling in amidst a bustle
of clothes being thrown off amidst Conkish chatter.
"Sorry
we were late," Anne said, mock-helplessly. "It's just... well you
know how ko-rayzayzee things get when you’re having
fun… not..."
"You
must be mighty busy yourself, being concierge for all those people coming here
on such short notice," Glenn added with a spurious jollity, nodding
towards a table of CNC delegates with a formality that marked them part of Tillerman's great bespokening.
"Not
really," Andy answered. "There's lots of meetings, but I've learned
which to stay away from... most of them. Or, if I can't get out of going, try
to make sure all the important business gets handled and voted on, or consensed... whatever... first. Then, when the busy people
leave and all the meeting junkies and crazies get up and take over, I can slip
away without being responsible for anything which might get changed later on.
It helps if people think you're busier than you are, right?"
"Smart,"
Glenn complimented, "smart! I never could get into pacing myself that way,
one reason why I left the left. I'd always be finding some excuse to stay and
argue with the crazies..."
"What's
to argue? Some are experts at what they do, and they're all experts in their
own mind, so mostly I just stay out of their way. I mean... I don't know jack
about Palestinians, animals or even the war in Costa Rica. It's fuzzy, like
Iraq in the beginning, not like Vietnam and Selma and the Ukraine. Everybody’s lying. What's worse is that I find it increasingly
hard to care. Shocking! Those Russians
making a half-assed patriot out of me; maybe if your Catfish gets elected and
does bring back the draft things will heat up at the U. but getting permits
from those cocksuckers at the City Hall I can handle... excuse me... even tho’ I know Pinhead's some big, secret fifth wheel with the
CNC. Not my problem. Shit like that I
understand... sometimes I get lucky, like today, mostly not. What's happened to
the shelters..."
He
shrugged, took out his tobacco pouch and the pack from GodMart
(most of whose outlets were owned and staffed by Islamists patiently poisoning
the decadent American devils) and plucked one of the handrolled
cancer sticks out, regarding it fondly and with regret.
"Andy,
your problem is the way you and people like you have spent all of these
miserable decades since LBJ and Nixon resigned when you were kids. By the time Reagan wandered off into his
sunset you had spent a decade or three getting your asses hideously kicked and
kicked and kicked over and over again.
The cynics went to Wall Street.
The smooth operators went to the foundations and law firms and
universities or into government work and pocketed their salaries while preserving
their virtuosity by fighting language –
mortal threats towards decency like Captain Underpants, Doctor Seuss and Mister
Potato Head and Superman, for Satan’s
sake! – vile and powerful enemies whom the
establishment was happy to let you wage war on.
“Hey,
that's not altogether fair," Andy responded, jabbing the handroll at Glenn like a blade. "We got our permits,
after all, a settlement, cash... we’re winners, man, like Trump, like President
Joe. Winners! Like those Black Lives Matter people after
the George Floyd trial. Like Charlie fuckin’ Sheen!"
"Oh
yeah, read about that... Don Jones, isn’t it, I always get him mixed up with
the green Martian? He’s finally getting into that JLA movie together with whatzername…"
"You
did?" Andy looked up, towards Anne, then back. "It wasn't in the
Journal."
Glenn
cleared his throat. "Well, must have been in some convention broadside
from renegade Hollywoodens who haven’t given up on
Sanders. A few Beto-philes. There's hundreds floating round...
ours, Tillerman's, rags from the caucuses. Garbage
in, garbage out. Thousands of trees killed for that crap... Earth Day coming
up, tell your ecology protestors! Look... freedom of speech doesn't include the
right to be listened to. That, you have to earn. And what I meant
was that all you ever do when you do win is hold things up from getting
worse a little longer or benefit some sleazebag Dixiecrat
like Jimmy Carter or the Clinton-Obama-Biden mafia who jump when Wall Street
tells ‘em to do. I really don't mean to
sound like Sean Hannity or Bill f-in’ Buckley, Satan
roast his yacht-riding, medicinal pot-smokin’ soul,
but the reality is that the organized left is bankrupt...
"Worse..."
he added as Andy's eyes lifted to find the waitress, "...it's
cowardly. This whole obsession with
victims and misery proves it. Ann
Coulter is right as often as a broken clock, but the movement did deflate after
Kent and Jackson State surprised and paralyzed the social justice warriors who
never believed that the system really would
kill them. And it turned reactionary in
the truest sense of the word... you just sit around whining and backstabbing
each other until something miserable happens. Then you, well react...
march around a bit, maybe someone goes to jail, maybe even gets a head kicked
in, making them victims and the
powers-that-be happy as pigs in slop or… speakin’ of
the pigs, they’ll sacrifice a Capitol police officer or two when circumstances
warrant. Or in New York and Berkeley let
you occupy and sleep in a park with the katheads and
the restaurants that cater to rich liberals give you their five-star slops out
of their pig-slop garbage cans and, from time to time, some alt-right stooge
comes round and people get to shout and wave signs and wrestle with the
cops. That Nazi Milo fellow had it
right… its just call and response, a minstrel show. Then winter comes and all
the student-adventurers melt away, the media lie about everything and the whole
result is diddly-squat. If you’re ashamed of being white, do the
right thing and kill yourself. Preferably in some gruesome, excruciating way and with lots of
cameras around to record your ultimate commitment to social justice."
"Glenn,
that's unfair!" Anne objected. "You're beginning to sound like those
Democrats still holding a grudge against Sanders and The Squad. Like Ratso! Who knows how far right
"Protest
doesn't even enter into the decision making process anymore," Glenn
scoffed, "except for its theatrical value, and usually to the benefit of
the elites. Look at all the great white
riots of the new millennium: Seattle, Portland, Providence!
All reactionary! The
tea party that turned out to be nothing for a front for the Moral Majority and
NRA. The assassinations of that
one Democratic Senator where the governor appointed a MAGA-head and of Justices
Kagan and Sotomayor after
RBG… where the Republican Senate is holding up their replacements until Trump or
somebody can slither back into the White House and appoint this alt-right kid
out of George Washington U. and one of the President’s lawyers, not the father
but the thirty-something son whose dictator pals from Africa behead gays there? Breyer was the last
honest Supreme standing but the black girl?
She’s in over her head! Nazis marching in Virginia.
In Rhode Island! All the left
ever does is shoot itself in the foot and make sarcastic puns about hedge-fund
managers and Generals that wind up in the enemy targeted direct mailings. They
pretend to be like Libyans or Egyptians, want to lead the masses in smashing
the state, but the masses only go along as far as smashing a few windows and
looting their share of the American Dream, which is perfectly understandable...
as is the reaction-to-the-reaction of the middle class in calling for an
American Hitler."
"Yeah,
a popular, charismatic leader." Andy balanced the unlit handroll between his fingers, looking at it wistfully.
"Sound familiar?"
"Hey...
charisma's not half bad when it's positively motivated. Look how it worked for
Jesse Ventura, Ahrnuld Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan,
even!... how it worked for Obama, in the beginning,
when nobody knew what he stood for and, then, The Donald. Bernie, even though he hadn’t a ghost of a
chance against Biden and that good ol’ Wall Street cash – at least he raised a
lot of money… oh, yes, we're ready to order. Is the fish fresh tonight?"
Glenn looked up.
"Of
course, sir," the waitress replied evenly.
"Excellent.
I'll have the sole, but with baked
potato, not fries. Don't think small, Andy, get a steak or something
nutritious. You look like you've been starving on rice and beans and generic Cheetos too long..."
"Hey,
got us through hard times at the U., didn't it? Uh...” he pointed to the menu…
“I'll have the lamb, that one..."
"Chicken
salad," Anne finished.
"And
a carafe of Riesling," Glenn added. "Alright with everybody? But
first a couple of martinis... vodka, dry... and he'll have..."
Andy
pointed down at his empty glass and tried to smile winsomely - the waitress
gathered their menus, closed them with a snap.
"Got
it!"
"You
know," Anne said, once she'd brought them their drinks and departed again,
"I surprised him once, last year, with a plate of old University hash. He
ate it!"
"For
strictly nostalgic reasons!" Glenn said, "...she got me drunk first.
Beans, rice and canned mackerel. Ugh! To think we ate that crap every day,
almost, for two whole years until my grants came through!"
"It
wasn't always," Andy remembered. "There were soup bones. Liver – cheap in those days.
Lamb ribs, nineteen cents the pound, not nineteen dollars like now, and
that all comes from Australia. What happened to the American sheep? Pizza from Caffio's
when it was on special, from their dumpster when it wasn’t. Ramen, with those
little envelopes of MSG. Mac and cheese
and peas..."
"Now
you're trying to ruin my appetite!" Anne warned. "Those candy bars,
sort of like Milky Way but not... six for nineteen cents. Not the fun size either, big ones! Expired donuts! Porto Rico soda..."
"What's
important to remember," Glenn said, "is that we did eat that shit,
but really didn't taste it. Decades before Covid! And we survived. I mean... can you think of a time we didn't
have at least a joint or two before dinner?
"This
was true," Andy admitted. "I mean... beer was a luxury. Dope
though... what, twenty bucks a lid, thirty for the good stuff? Colombo? And raggin' on those rich coke sniffers, hiding out from Nixon
in their North Rome Avenue discos? We were the methedrine socialists, the serious streetfighters holding a tab of
genuine Owsley acid against the day the world caught fire. Now everything's
backward... gotta be a CEO to afford weed, even in
the legal states, while anybody able to boost a car radio can get a fifteen
minute boost on crack or kat..."
"I
don't know what's gone up more, dope or real estate," lamented Anne.
"At least the latter came down again, for a couple of years after the
crash anyway... we could afford a house and a mortgage, you know, if we could’ve agreed on where to live…"
Andy
nodded as Glenn winced, glancing beyond her through the stained glass
separating the lobby of the Ivona from the Oak Room.
The security guard waited out there, staring mindlessly, malevolently back
towards him. He picked up his cigarette, shook another from the pouch.
"Any of you remember that speed and acid dealer, worked the dorms? The one
who had that dog, looked like the one in Annie? Ate nothing but those damn
dumpster donuts and wouldn't go away, talking and talking and talking; one
night three of his teeth just fall out..."
"Good
God!" Anne laughed.
"One
of our regulars, now, at the Sanctuary!" Andy smiled as a party of four
Turks in uniform... chattering in Dutch or something... removed their berets as
they entered, a deep and hostile silence crashing down around them. He sniffed
the air then... so good, so full of the rich smells of
food and of belonging that the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
"Need
a smoke!" he told Glenn and Anne. "Back in five..."
"Seriously
though," Glenn insisted once he was gone, "I only ate the crap
because we didn't have the money. Back then, we didn't have the money. Now, we
usually don't have the time."
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