SAVAGE SATURDAY

2) Wednesday, December 30^th – DA HOUSE

In a Washington hotel suite, as aides and supplicants buzzed with anticipation; Fred Meldrim, the former action movie hero turned hedge-fund manager before his election to Congress, elevation to Speaker – then elected Vice President running with President Burke – was on the phone to Arlington, and in a truculent mood. “No! No! We will not appear until they makes their appearance first. Then we go on…” There was a moment’s silence while Arlington appeared to be making some appeal, or explanation… then Ginni, America’s Second Spouse fairly exploded, “…it is like one American goddam rock concert, the loser acts go first, then the main event. Those man is history. You tell me you have him in sight and we’ll be there…”

And where was the President-elect? In the White House, of course, having invited himself into the presence of the lame duck favor-seekers cooling their heels, time forgot, office cleared save for the former President sulking upstairs and chewing on chicken nuggets; mulling over Burke’s agreement to elevate 45 and 47 back into office through strategy, his own wife (conferring with the former President’s new Ukrainian girlfriend), a Dark Eminence in a dark suit (a shadowy profiled scarred and masked counselor in the mien of and mold of a medieval consort like so many Americans since Elihu Root… an Atwater, a Rove, a Schiff) hovering at his left shoulder. Behind him, a 64” HDTV television at very low volume followed the advance of the funeral procession into Arlington until its untimely cessation.

The Dark Eminence, as a consequence of surviving a bomb attack by the left-wing protest people back in Obama’s ‘teens, had a voice like sandpaper…

“Sir, about this – next, the gentleman from the High Tech DTV Coalition…

“Fine men,” the distracted President-elect shook his head. “Fine men… Sig, Stabile… even Haynes, he was one of those of the opposite party who could listen to reason. Sometimes…”

And then, the putative President winced at the implications of terror striking the homeland… again… he was reminded of bookends, and, then, of a book, between the bookends… a history of the Republic in the decade before the Civil War that Rivers, his Vice-President designate until confirmation and the chopping block, had recommended to him. Fortunately, he seldom read books.

“Shouldn’t we be going to the cemetery?” Burke realized.

The Eminence rewarded his patron with a cold smile. “His Governor is one of ours… Haynes,” he added, in case the Chief Executive-elect’s mind had wandered off, again. “They can wait for us,” he assured his sovereign, “protocol dictates that the President arrives first. The losers are trying to steal a cookie on us,” he warned.

“Yes…” the soon-to-be indicted and, perhaps, pardoned POTUS-elect agreed, eyes lingering on the television, where spokesmen for the network favorable to the outgoing Administration discussed the origins of the terror, prompting him to point, “…even my friends are beginning to agree… He’s still in charge! Which means I can’t send a message to Moscow, not yet? But I need to make a statement, and I know how. Steal a page from the enemy’s handbook! Energy independence. Do you remember that show, back in the sixties, Gilligan’s Island?”

“Sir?” the Eminence recoiled.

“A television show…” the POTUS-elect pointed at the screen, and the Dark Eminence smiled and nodded, indulgently “…this little fellow, Gilligan, made all the energy his people needed with a stationary bicycle. Pedaling. Do you know how many overweight old Americans pedal their stationary bicycles, everyday? Millions! And all of that pedaling going to waste, but if…”

His train of thought vanishing (another octogenarian, but two years younger than the Man Upstairs), he glanced up at the Eminence, who clasped his hands behind his back, shrugging… but in a knowing, insinuating way, as if he had gleaned the significance of Gilligan’s bicycle long ago and had only been waiting for the appropriate moment to take steps to write finis to this damned energy crisis…

“And I so needed to make a statement,” he repeated, scowling and looking at his watch. (He was wearing the one from the new British Prime Minister from the neo-Mosely party, and it was still set to Greenwich Mean Time.) “Well, while we’re waiting for that, that… to do the right thing, better send Fred in… he’s got the juice with MLB, tho’ with the NFL Chairmanship on the line… do you think, should I?” The Eminence shrugged, again – this time in a manner indicating that this would be one of those choices that had a pleasant outcome, no matter how he decided.

“Who’s he here on behalf of this time?” Burke sighed.

“Sonny,” the Dark Eminence brightened, “Big Sonny.”

The President-elect brightened. “Sonny’s a good man, deep with… with, with... what’s-his-name in Tampa, and that guy in Minnesota…”

“And Atlanta!” the Eminence reminded him on his way to the door, which he opened – made an obscure gesture, then stood back as the attorney and eminent lobbyist Fred Faubourg bustled in.

“Fred!” the President-elect greeted him, as if Faubourg were a bosom friend instead of just another fat lawyer with a fatter wallet and cyber-Rolodex.

“Mr. President!” the lobbyist paid homage to Burke, and the tenebrous afternoon. “Terrible… a terrible, cowardly attack on our best and brightest, sir…” he commiserated, and the President-elect shook his head in sorrowful concord. “And the financial markets,” Faubourg groaned, shaking his own shaggy noggin; two men on opposite sides of a mirror, thought the Dark Eminence (who had sold short Friday morning, well before news of the attack broke) “…fortunately, Sonny has a proposal that will get this economy over the hump, short term, and he’ll be appreciative in, you know, the Afterlife? Very…”

The former President leaned forward, brushing Burke aside. “I’m listening…”

“We need leadership,” said Faubourg. “Nothing would gall the terrorists so much as a rapid-fire appointment of replacements for those lost in service – the Supremes, especially – the others, of course, will do the right thing, but I am talking about the FCC…” the lobbyist added, with a crafty, furtive glance at the big White House television.

“Tried that!” The past and future Presidents looked up at their Dark Eminence, who shrugged. “With the House and Senate crossovers – ours and theirs – it’d be fifty-fifty, and with the lawyers still wrangling over whether the recess Vice-President can break ties…”

A knowing glance flashed between the outliers in the President’s presence, almost like lightning sizzling downwards into the laboratory of a mad scientist with a monster waiting on the gurney. “But what if… for the good of the country, of course,” Faubourg suggested, “…the recess Veep was to step down before Wednesday morning for an appropriate consideration… or if something were to happen to him,” he winked, “and the President would be able to appoint, well, someone who’d vote the right way over the next two days… there’s money on the line, sir. Fifteen years ago, the High-Def Coalition estimated up to nearly half a trillion in revenues, with the MAGA people backing the Mega-people in control, we have reason to believe that it’s nearer three trillion by now…”

“Three?” the President repeated, attentive now… Evan Augsberg and the rain, the mourners, even Him, that bastard lame duck in recession upstairs for the moment pondering his Vicely vistas… “well, even I’m impressed. Mega, MAGA… same difference... you just count me in!”

Faubourg leaned forward, almost placing his elbows on the President’s desk but restraining himself at the last minute, “…maybe even four trillion dollars, sir, yes! And, maybe, even more…”

“Some problem!” marveled the Dark Eminence. “Interesting problem… a vote to confirm a new Vice-President that deadlocks, probably requiring the vote of my recess Vice-President to break the tie? It would end up with the Supremes, of course, and since we’re waiting on somebody… anybody… to appoint those three more Justices and get the wheels grinding again, it’d be too late to have any practical effect…”

Faubourg stepped in, as if he and the Eminence had rehearsed their roles… which, of course, they had, as thoroughly as players in an old-time minstrel show.

“Wea…ell, POTUS is an OK guy, but if the President here appointed someone else to step into the Vice-President’s place, somebody with less ambition who’d vote the right way, but has enough personal capital to overcome any opposition to confirmation, someone whose reputation alone all but guarantees anybody who stood against him would be soft on terrorism…”

The Dark Eminence chuckled. “I believe I may know just such a candidate…”

“Gilligan!” the President-elect brightened. “Can you find Gilligan?”

“Huh?” the puzzled lobbyist stepped back…

“Gilligan’s dead, sir…” the Eminence moving to quell the distraction before it could turn embarrassing. “If you meant the actor who portrayed him...”

“Oh! Damn! Darn,” the Chief Executive-elect caught himself, eyes flashing round and round to the Oval Office security cameras, lips twisted into a naughty smirk. “Well how about Ginger? Mary Ann? The Professor?”

The President’s Dark Eminence grasped a still-uncomprehending Faubourg by the arm as he nodded to his boss. “Certainly we’re in the right corner of the world… Hollywood… we still have a few friends out there. I’ll look into it… but right now, you’d better freshen up for the ride to Arlington. Meanwhile, Fred and I can work on the details outside…”

“That Gilligan!” Burke sighed, straightening his blood-red necktie. “All the great ones are gone…” and he clicked the remote, obsessively, looking for the little buddy, but finding only the ubiquitous Augsberg.

The newsman, wet and… apparently… hungry, Growled: “…still waiting on the arrival of the embattled President-elect, the elderly former Speaker and her successor, the putative minority… soon to be majority… leader Meldrim and the recess Vice President. Mrs. Prater and the families are putting up a brave front… we see FCC Commissioner Yunis, rumoured to be in line for the Chairmanship, Commissioners Timothy Houlihan and Tyleta Jackson, now the only opposition member of that important body. And, under those trees, the marching band from Dennis Tooker Middle School in Michigan, chosen to pay tribute…

Exasperated, the Dark Eminence opened his cellphone to call Meldrin’s hotel and work out some sort of deal before the whole goddamn day blew up in both parties’ faces. Meanwhile, General Westmoreland Soames cracked a few more peanuts on a stool in sparsely-populated Feargal’s Tavern, and finished his beer as Augsberg rambled on and the manager, Leo, rapped knuckles on the tap.

“‘Nother one?”

“Better not,” Westy grimaced. “House full of women, trouble just waitin’ to start.”

He pointed. “There comes a helicopter – must be the President… or one of those other Presidents they talking about…”

“Think they’d be more careful with all of them drony things those Arabs have, firing into the air,” Leo opined…

“Can’t stop a world…” and Westy squinted, he’d left his glasses back on Grape Street. Feargal’s wasn’t exactly a bucket of blood, but a man with glasses was a man with one strike against him on the streets of Purley. “Say man, that one of them new sets?” he realized.

“What it is,” Leo beamed with a pride of ownership. “Two hundred sixty a month… coulda bought a car for less, but what’s a modest publican to do. Old sets shuttin’ down, so I made my move back on Black Friday. You see your boy Raoul, tell him to plunk somethin’ down on his tab so’s I can make my payments…

Westy answered with a sour grin. “Says he got a new job. New hustle, more like it…” and he squinted harder, “…looks like the same as that ol’ set, sound the same?”

“Cost four thousand, out at that Giga-Plex with the coupon,” Leo replied, “new, bigger ones, were going for seven and up… this ain’t Georgetown, you know, but the sound works…”

So he turned the volume up and they listened to Augsberg for awhile… Leo pouring two inches of hard red for the little man at the end of the bar and replenishing Dora’s appletini. She nodded at Wes, and he winked back.

“I am informed that the President, with his entourage, and the Vice President and her First Man, as well as the incoming Chief Executive will be arriving simultaneously; they will greet members of the victims’ families separately, and the Marine Band will perform three patriotic selections…” the old warhorse nodded twenty minutes later.

“Sounds the same…” said Westy…

“Oughta get you some glasses…” Leo suggested. “President my ass!”

“Glasses, root canal, new liver… all that shit, not covered,” Soames picked up his glass, waved the half-inch of dregs around, downed them. “Three ninety-one a month co-pay and they don’t cover jack.”

“Osamacare’s for suckas. Bulldada care! No wonder the bastards left it in place. Why I told mine take a flyin’ fuck… put me in jail, Hell with it…”

“You ain’t covered?” Westy sat back.

“Katrina, man. Remember Katrina… always. Harvey. Irma. Vidalia... that onion storm and our little twister, Dora, That one over in Hawaii with the fires and California? You dropping by tomorrow night… we’ll have plenty of wings.”

Westy nodded and motioned for another beer. “Not likely. I’ll have already filled up on bird, and Lottie would crackle my ass…”

“She’ll drop off early,” Leo predicted. “No Times Square, woman her age gotta get her sleep… and then Mister Westy makes his midnight creep…”

So the drinkers drank, conspirators conspired; the watchers watched as victims were eulogized and interred… the public commiserating and scheming, politicians (incoming and outgoing) reconciled (for the sake of appearances), tears wiped away and Sam Dreibach, Augsberg and a gross of their competitors waxed sincere and wise, like medieval fortunetellers while the gloom of a December afternoon deepened into winter’s night.

And the first fourteen notes of “Satisfaction” rangled in the twilight. David Lee groaned, picked up his cellphone on the sixth go-round…

“‘Lo…”

“Hey man, you sleeping already?” the chainsaw voice of Mick, Lee’s colleague at the research division of the Federal Communications Commission, sawed through the ether. “It’s only six. Storing up on sleep for tomorrow night? What happened to your cell? D’ja get my messages…”

“Rock climbing all weekend, Mick, and I’m totally bent. Turned everything off…”

“So you didn’t hear? You don’t know?”

“Know what?” David yawned.

“Meldrim used his clout with the old Tea Party gang to squeeze that lame, Russia-loving billionaire into elevating Yunis to Chair and appointing replacements for Kopp and Stabile…”

“What?” A smart light flashed on, revealing David Lee to be a disheveled, somewhat banged-up fellow on the far side of 30, yawning and fumbling for his glasses. “He can’t do that! He’s going to be out of here in… what, a week? Two weeks max! That’s whoever takes over from Meldrim’s job yet…”

“Nobody told him! The new Commissioners…” and Mick fairly gloated as he let his words of confidential information drip over the line, “…not Williams and Patel, they’re Turk Jackson, that loser in Wyoming or Idaho, somewhere, and… get this!… Reverend Snell! Somebody cut a deal! Senate will approve lickitty-quick soon as the liberals are out the door! Word is that the twice and future king agreed because he knew that the Democrats in Congress would filibuster the Reverend without a go-along guy like Turk and, besides, some say he wants to go to Hollywood… run a studio? A network? He was, after all, our entertainer-in-chief!”

David Lee affixed his taped-up glasses to his scratched-up face, giving him… in the weak light of his room… the appearance of an aging Harry Potter. “No way even the new Senate confirms those nuts… Snell believes that the world began in 4000 BC. Said dinosaur bones are fakes planted by Satan… what qualifies him to set telecommunications policy?”

“His Sunday morning programs do rake in a lot of money…” Mick reminded him.

“Swindling little old ladies!” David shot back into the phone. “Check that,” he abruptly reversed his opinion, “…they’ll be confirmed. Wednesday morning – before the Apocalypse. Bring up the T-word and they’d confirm Kim Kardashian and that, what’s his name on the radio… 2 Crazy?… Mick, we’re screwed! The country’s screwed! We thought we’d be saved after last summer, but the maggots came back and now we’re screwed.

“FYI, David, da White House is just another crack house serving another ‘hood. Always has been, always will be. Well, Goblin still runs the Department and Pete’s still manager,” Mick tried to reassure his colleague by mentioning Jack Gobelman, who headed Research, and, over him, the geriatric Pete Myers, manager of the Commission since the Clinton administration. “How much damage can those rotating clowns up top do?”

“Stabile had a year left on his term, and Kopp had three,” David thought, fast, “…the new President can ask for their resignations, but… well, you already see how the holdovers at Justice and Commerce have promised that they’ll hang on while we’re sorting out who’s in charge until the marshals drag them away… oh fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“Sorry I messed up your nap,” Mick ventured.

David sighed, not really angry… now… but pretending to be.

“What you’d expect after Bobby’s boy fired all those disease people. Anything else happen?”

“Plenty… hell, you don’t want to know…”

“Probably not,” David admitted. “A replacement for one of the Supreme Court vacancies? Warren Buffett? Jimmy Buffett? Fuck, he’s dead too... Kid Rock? No, no spoilers… see you tomorrow, then. Breakfast?”

“You’re on… best make it a long one…”

David Lee placed the phone back on its receiver, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes before turning off the light. Sleep, however, seemed a million miles away. Finally there was a sigh in the dark, followed by a diminishing mantra of outrage…

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! _{Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!…}”

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