Con man/fake palmist Word Wallace is giving the President a reading when he comes apart in Word’s hands. Terrified that the man with his finger on the button is unstable, Word wants to abandon the grift, but his mistress/manager Alberta tells him to grow up and and just fix him. Because of a favor he once did the President, the mentally challenged Fes is at the center of his security team.
We planned it
carefully. On the appointed day Mrs. President had been in New York all
afternoon having her nose sanded. By ten-thirty she was under several pills and
sleeping the sleep of those who have made it through surgery and for whom it is
now only a matter of rest.
Watching her carefully the President rose and dressed, folded a blanket under his arm and tiptoed into the hall where Fes was on evenings. The President whispered that he didn’t want to make any fuss and wake anybody else up but he had to have a chocolate malted milkshake now and it had to be at an all-night diner he knew of with a fifty-foot counter and a short-order cook with a teeshirt and a white G.I. cap out of his boyhood, and was Fes up to this mission? Could he be trusted?
Fes followed this moving his lips on a kind of delayed broadcast basis. Without the constant flow of instructions from the earpiece he got in the daytime he was more or less open to shaping, and certainly soldier enough to sign on. He went ahead down the hall, told the guy at the elevator to take a long lunch in the kitchen and gave the President the sign. They boarded and dropped to the basement and while the President waited inside Fes got a car and whipped it around to the elevator flush with the door, and the President ducked into the back and covered up with the blanket. “Back in five,” Fes told the sentry, nodding through the open window, and they were out.
The President sat up and said left here, next right, and they Pac-Manned around in the maze. Washington is laid out in a spider web grid, no doubt to confuse invaders, and it’s like trying to pick your way through the center of Amsterdam, there’s just no sense to it.
Three blocks from the White House and you’re in the slums. You won’t see them from the tour bus but they’re right there.
“Is this where the diner is, sir?”
“Pull up right here, Fes. Hey! There’s Word!”
Poor Fes. He peered out past the headlights but I was at his shoulder. I tapped on the aquarium and the fish came over and moved his mouth.
He smiled. “Hi, Word!” The President was already gone.
“Holy shoot!”
“Bye Fes.”
The Capitol area is lit up like a service station but here it was dark. We stood in a doorway under an ARMED RESPONSE sign till Fes got tired of figure-eighting the neighborhood, and then slipped off on our own, light and loose. Fairly sinister scene for a couple of white boys but we were so giddy with freedom we didn’t much sweat it.
“He’ll be too embarrassed to call anybody, sir.”
I didn’t know where we were going.
“I sure hope my wife didn’t hear me, Word! She was snoring like she was asleep!”
“A woman snoring is never faking sleep, sir.” I mean he didn’t know anything! “It’s when they’re not breathing you have to watch it. They’re either awake or dead.”
There were people on the street. Their street. We kept our hands in our pockets and our eyes straight ahead as one does, and kicked right along. I was beginning to wonder if this wasn’t perhaps insane.
I hadn’t worried about the President being recognized. Up close isn’t the same as on TV, was my thinking. In person he was taller, more human-looking.
Now that we were out in the war zone though I wouldn’t have minded a little preferential treatment. If we got in trouble I was ready immediately to introduce him. “The President has picked your family to have dinner with,” I would say.
That thought got me down several hastily chosen streets, turning whenever we saw anything like a group up ahead, and when I couldn’t take the pressure any more I hooked his elbow and pulled him into a bar.
Boom, we were in lights, music, waves of crowd noise, people busy with one another, a whole different thing. Tables everywhere, people eating, sitting back and nodding to the music, a kid going around with a bucket collecting dirty dishes.
We were safer here. White people come into a club, the owner doesn’t want to discourage them, it could be the start of a thing. The musicians don’t want to discourage them, the waiters don’t want to discourage them, the bouncer knows his job. We were cool.
Not that it was upscale yet. We made our way gingerly among the tables towards the bar. It was crowded! The sax man had lost interest in his own pain and was waiting while the guitarist peeled strings.
A guy at a table slapped a woman as we worked past and she came back claws out. He grabbed her wrists and held her off and she got up to leave so hard she towed him to his feet but he wouldn’t let go. Paris pimp dance without the Gauloise and the split skirt.
I mean, right? You pay the dues or you get off the street. It was an arrangement of sufficient longstanding that I wasn’t ready to suggest revising it right there. I made myself invisible and squeezed through but the President steps forward, puts a hand on his arm and one on hers and separates them! Pulls them apart!
“Hey all right, fella, leave the lady alone,” he says.
“Uh, sir?” More of an asshole than insane, really. “Sir?”
They looked at us like this wasn’t really happening.
“It’s all right,” I said to them. “Sir?” I guided him away hard but he wouldn’t go. “Sir, they can work this out!”
“Just let him apologize!”
I didn’t want to actually bulldoze the President but I could see the other guy getting ready for an exchange of views.
“Sir, it’s not what you think, sir. They really like one another.” I looked at them eagerly. “Don’t you!”
She gave us an up-you-A-hole look and turned away. Had her own politics to consider. The guy’s arms swung faintly and in unison.
“Come on, sir.”
A knot had formed around us but they heard me sirring him and must have figured either we were cops or too crazy to mess with. We shouldered through and made it to the bar, got into a space and ordered double vodka-tonics.
“Shit, sir!”
“Well that’s no way to treat somebody!”
“I think she can handle herself, sir.”
We huddled over our drinks and let the weather clear up.
The singer was scatting around with the lyrics to Summertime. We ordered two more and waited for the vodka to make us gregarious. I put a foot on the rail and did a three-sixty scan. No silhouettes. Ran a glance along the crowd in the mirror and leaned down on my elbows with my arms folded, you know how you do, when I noticed I was shoulder to shoulder with Someone Else.
She had an acne-pitted face and eyes that said buy it or beat it. Metallic-blue eye shadow up to the hairline, matching tank top and nine-ball-yellow hair, one had to presume it was dyed. Kind of woman if she bleeds on your sheet she bleeds on your sheet, she can live with it.
I glanced down past my shoulder at her muffins. The little points poked through the shirt.
“Chilly?”
“Watch it, Steve, you get this glass between the face.”
I sipped my drink and our eyes met in the mirror.
“Hey, you know who that looks like?”
“Yup. Talks like him too. Go ahead, ask him something.”
The President was already watching us nervously.
She twirled her necklace at him in rather an obvious way and then straightened up and tuff-stuff-walked around me towards him. Her platform heels put a certain decision in the strut and she put her hands on her waist and jerked her head to it. Her shorts came up past the cleft in her hip.
The President leaned sideways on his elbow and did his best to look cool but his eyes were frightened. He couldn’t stop fidgeting.
She walked right into his personal space and leaned in close, pinning him to the bar. “You wanna fuck a nigger?”
“Gee!” he said. He looked at me pleadingly. I nodded with my eyelids and he swallowed hard. “Sure!”
She looked him over at close range and led him off into the crush.
“You want to go too, Word?” he said.
“Naw, I got it waitin’ for me.”
I leaned back on the bar and watched her walk away. The bartender watched her walk away. We did not glance at one another.
Watching her carefully the President rose and dressed, folded a blanket under his arm and tiptoed into the hall where Fes was on evenings. The President whispered that he didn’t want to make any fuss and wake anybody else up but he had to have a chocolate malted milkshake now and it had to be at an all-night diner he knew of with a fifty-foot counter and a short-order cook with a teeshirt and a white G.I. cap out of his boyhood, and was Fes up to this mission? Could he be trusted?
Fes followed this moving his lips on a kind of delayed broadcast basis. Without the constant flow of instructions from the earpiece he got in the daytime he was more or less open to shaping, and certainly soldier enough to sign on. He went ahead down the hall, told the guy at the elevator to take a long lunch in the kitchen and gave the President the sign. They boarded and dropped to the basement and while the President waited inside Fes got a car and whipped it around to the elevator flush with the door, and the President ducked into the back and covered up with the blanket. “Back in five,” Fes told the sentry, nodding through the open window, and they were out.
The President sat up and said left here, next right, and they Pac-Manned around in the maze. Washington is laid out in a spider web grid, no doubt to confuse invaders, and it’s like trying to pick your way through the center of Amsterdam, there’s just no sense to it.
Three blocks from the White House and you’re in the slums. You won’t see them from the tour bus but they’re right there.
“Is this where the diner is, sir?”
“Pull up right here, Fes. Hey! There’s Word!”
Poor Fes. He peered out past the headlights but I was at his shoulder. I tapped on the aquarium and the fish came over and moved his mouth.
He smiled. “Hi, Word!” The President was already gone.
“Holy shoot!”
“Bye Fes.”
The Capitol area is lit up like a service station but here it was dark. We stood in a doorway under an ARMED RESPONSE sign till Fes got tired of figure-eighting the neighborhood, and then slipped off on our own, light and loose. Fairly sinister scene for a couple of white boys but we were so giddy with freedom we didn’t much sweat it.
“He’ll be too embarrassed to call anybody, sir.”
I didn’t know where we were going.
“I sure hope my wife didn’t hear me, Word! She was snoring like she was asleep!”
“A woman snoring is never faking sleep, sir.” I mean he didn’t know anything! “It’s when they’re not breathing you have to watch it. They’re either awake or dead.”
There were people on the street. Their street. We kept our hands in our pockets and our eyes straight ahead as one does, and kicked right along. I was beginning to wonder if this wasn’t perhaps insane.
I hadn’t worried about the President being recognized. Up close isn’t the same as on TV, was my thinking. In person he was taller, more human-looking.
Now that we were out in the war zone though I wouldn’t have minded a little preferential treatment. If we got in trouble I was ready immediately to introduce him. “The President has picked your family to have dinner with,” I would say.
That thought got me down several hastily chosen streets, turning whenever we saw anything like a group up ahead, and when I couldn’t take the pressure any more I hooked his elbow and pulled him into a bar.
Boom, we were in lights, music, waves of crowd noise, people busy with one another, a whole different thing. Tables everywhere, people eating, sitting back and nodding to the music, a kid going around with a bucket collecting dirty dishes.
We were safer here. White people come into a club, the owner doesn’t want to discourage them, it could be the start of a thing. The musicians don’t want to discourage them, the waiters don’t want to discourage them, the bouncer knows his job. We were cool.
Not that it was upscale yet. We made our way gingerly among the tables towards the bar. It was crowded! The sax man had lost interest in his own pain and was waiting while the guitarist peeled strings.
A guy at a table slapped a woman as we worked past and she came back claws out. He grabbed her wrists and held her off and she got up to leave so hard she towed him to his feet but he wouldn’t let go. Paris pimp dance without the Gauloise and the split skirt.
I mean, right? You pay the dues or you get off the street. It was an arrangement of sufficient longstanding that I wasn’t ready to suggest revising it right there. I made myself invisible and squeezed through but the President steps forward, puts a hand on his arm and one on hers and separates them! Pulls them apart!
“Hey all right, fella, leave the lady alone,” he says.
“Uh, sir?” More of an asshole than insane, really. “Sir?”
They looked at us like this wasn’t really happening.
“It’s all right,” I said to them. “Sir?” I guided him away hard but he wouldn’t go. “Sir, they can work this out!”
“Just let him apologize!”
I didn’t want to actually bulldoze the President but I could see the other guy getting ready for an exchange of views.
“Sir, it’s not what you think, sir. They really like one another.” I looked at them eagerly. “Don’t you!”
She gave us an up-you-A-hole look and turned away. Had her own politics to consider. The guy’s arms swung faintly and in unison.
“Come on, sir.”
A knot had formed around us but they heard me sirring him and must have figured either we were cops or too crazy to mess with. We shouldered through and made it to the bar, got into a space and ordered double vodka-tonics.
“Shit, sir!”
“Well that’s no way to treat somebody!”
“I think she can handle herself, sir.”
We huddled over our drinks and let the weather clear up.
The singer was scatting around with the lyrics to Summertime. We ordered two more and waited for the vodka to make us gregarious. I put a foot on the rail and did a three-sixty scan. No silhouettes. Ran a glance along the crowd in the mirror and leaned down on my elbows with my arms folded, you know how you do, when I noticed I was shoulder to shoulder with Someone Else.
She had an acne-pitted face and eyes that said buy it or beat it. Metallic-blue eye shadow up to the hairline, matching tank top and nine-ball-yellow hair, one had to presume it was dyed. Kind of woman if she bleeds on your sheet she bleeds on your sheet, she can live with it.
I glanced down past my shoulder at her muffins. The little points poked through the shirt.
“Chilly?”
“Watch it, Steve, you get this glass between the face.”
I sipped my drink and our eyes met in the mirror.
“Hey, you know who that looks like?”
“Yup. Talks like him too. Go ahead, ask him something.”
The President was already watching us nervously.
She twirled her necklace at him in rather an obvious way and then straightened up and tuff-stuff-walked around me towards him. Her platform heels put a certain decision in the strut and she put her hands on her waist and jerked her head to it. Her shorts came up past the cleft in her hip.
The President leaned sideways on his elbow and did his best to look cool but his eyes were frightened. He couldn’t stop fidgeting.
She walked right into his personal space and leaned in close, pinning him to the bar. “You wanna fuck a nigger?”
“Gee!” he said. He looked at me pleadingly. I nodded with my eyelids and he swallowed hard. “Sure!”
She looked him over at close range and led him off into the crush.
“You want to go too, Word?” he said.
“Naw, I got it waitin’ for me.”
I leaned back on the bar and watched her walk away. The bartender watched her walk away. We did not glance at one another.
Robert MacLean is a bad poet and an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi, Scanbox and YouTube, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a screamingly funny novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a reviewer of films, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, lives Greece, Irish citizen. He is of towering intellect but, as is often the case with such people, not that bright. Here’s more on this splendid fellow.
No comments:
Post a Comment