The Oval Office. |
“Morning, Mister President.”
“Morning, Wiener.”
Wiener Capsberger settled into a seat, hitching up
the knees of his trousers in unconscious tribute to the gods of fashion, who
had dictated that tight pants should return.
L.L. William ‘Chill-Will’ Blaine regarded the
Secretary of State in bored fashion as they waited for the Attorney General,
Hope Fargill, a tall, quadraplegic, French-speaking Haitian Lesbian girl and
graduate of Vasser.
She and a tripartisan delegation were expected
momentarily. In some Clancy-esque secret political gambit they had agreed to
keep mum and their respective parties in check on this one special issue
without actually knowing what it was even about ahead of time. All of this had
taken some doing, but the President and his advisors were patient people and
they swung the heavy hammer of federal patronage with some experience after
three years in office.
The senators had been assured that this would be an
important session and well worth their time.
Hope, nuclear wheelchair buzzing and steaming,
ushered in the three senior statesmen, Zeke Beaudoin of the Dems, Nally Parduck
of the G.O.P. and Emerson Smielbmork, the lone Independent.
Some said Smielbmork held the true balance of power
in the Senate, which wasn’t too far at variance with the truth although
Chill-Will liked to think he had something to do with policy himself from time
to time.
Smielbmork had won election in his district, partially bourgeois
working-class with elements of Hispanic NeoPlatonism, and one or two socialists too
boot, 64,921 against, with 64,922 for. Of those who voted against, the split was so near 50/50 as made no difference. Everyone in Brogenville figured old lady
Thickleforp was the real power in the land, but she’d been sweet on him since
grade four and his debut as Jack Sprat in the class play, performed at assembly
on or about October ninth, 1967. They thought she must be the one that tipped
the balance."
“My dear.” Zeke nodded at Hope and settled into a
chair beside Wiener and the others sorted themselves out.
She hated the term and that’s probably why he did
it.
“So, Mister President.” Right on cue, Smielbmork
tried to make it all about him. “What’s this all about?”
He had an air of someone who was expecting a big
time-waster.
“I want you to hear something.” But first he pushed
a button and the door opened again and the chiefs of the CIA, the NSA, the DUI
and the IUD quietly filed in and took seats in the second row, empty up until
now.
Heads craned to get a good look.
Eyebrows lifted all across the political spectrum as
the President shoved his chair back, put his hands behind his head and his feet
up on one corner of the desk.
His assistant, Barney Dibble, glanced at his watch.
He stepped forward with his ingratiating toadying-ness.
“Coffee, tea perhaps?” His eyes rolled towards the
ceiling. “We’ve still got a couple minutes.”
***
The clock ticked inexorably onwards and the
President kept looking at his watch.
The President was looking nervous. It was
ten-oh-three by this time.
“He’s never been late before. But I promise you,
this is worth it.”
Barney looked like he was about to say something,
and Beaudoin was into the second syllable of something hopefully not too
fatuous when it came. The one thing they apparently could not do was to sit
patiently in silence and wait.
“Bill! Chill-Will!”
Even the President twitched at the deep, rumbling
voice that seemed to come from all places at once. The uninitiated threw their
hands up to their ears and almost leapt out of their seats, looking all over
the place, trying to locate the source of the sound.
Hope grinned, looking down at her hands and Dibble
nodded seriously.
“Whoa!” They were unanimous in that.
“Hi, God.”
“Bill. Lookin’ good, bro.”
“How’s it going up there?”
“Very well, thank you.”
Both paused, Chill-Will to let it sink in and God
because it was His way.
There was disbelief and a kind of consternation in
the room. They would need some convincing.
“Ah—ah. What the hell is going on, Mister
President?” Beaudoin was incensed.
They were all talking and gasping and angry, sure it
was some nutty trick or demonstration the president was pulling on them.
“What in the hell
is this?” Smielbmork stood up, red in the face. He was pointing an accusing
finger at the president when a force he could neither comprehend nor resist enveloped
him from head to toe and shoved him back down into his seat.
“Shut up, senator.” God seemed friendly enough.
Firm but fair.
The senator gulped and
looked at the president. Staring wildly around, he pulled out a handkerchief
and wiped his forehead and around his mouth.
“I’m sorry. We thought of warning you, or trying to kind
of describe it.” Barney was speaking for the president, which he often did.
“Yes.” The President eyed them all up, one at a
time. “Sorry about that. God?”
“Yes?”
“Some of these folks might like to say hello.”
“Hello.” Hope was at last week’s meeting, being
introduced to God for the first time.
“Hi, Hope. How’s the daughter?”
“Fine, fine. She’s graduating Summa Cum Laude in the
spring.”
“Ah, wonderful.”
They chatted back and forth. God asked about each
and every one of them, seemingly knowing some personal tid-bit, some little
thing about each of them. He had really been doing His homework.
Smielbmork just said ‘Hi.’ He had no real questions.
Hope had some sympathy for Smielbmork. It was a
devastating experience to be manhandled by God like that. It was embarrassing
enough that on their first meeting, she had demanded that God bring her a shot
of Scotch and then having it materialize right in front of her eyes.
Grabbing it out of mid-air, she downed it in a
single heartfelt snort.
She felt ashamed later, of course.
Smielbmork was shaking his head emphatically, the
other members taking his unspoken word for it initially.
“Mister President. I have a question.”
“Yes?” God answered, the low frequency sound waves
shaking the books on the shelves and the single vase on a side table, with a white
rose in it for some reason, distinctly rattled, then steadied as if an
invisible hand had rescued it from certain destruction.
God had a really deep voice.
“Why? I mean why are you talking to us and not the
Russians or something?”
Chill-Will smiled inscrutably, eyes suitably
downcast and humble. That was one of his first questions.
“Well, Senator Parduck, that’s a very long story.”
And it was, too. They listened intently to His
reasoning. They weren’t all that amenable, with Beaudoin for one convinced that
God probably was talking to the Russians, and the Chinese, and anybody else who
would listen.
He wouldn’t put it past Him! For obvious political
reasons, he kept those observations to himself.
In the end, while not wholly convinced, they agreed
to think on it. It was almost an hour later, when God went back to His more regular
duties. There was quite a bit more discussion, but in the end, they came to an
agreement which would have been insulting to all concerned if it had been
written up and signed as an aide-memoire.
Suffice it to say the tri-partisan committee members
agreed to keep it a secret that the United States of America was talking to God
on a weekly basis, and that they were getting some quite good information from
Him on subjects as diverse as economics, governance, sociology, public policy, psychology,
moral issues, legal issues, the relationships of man with his brothers and
sisters all over the world, and all sorts of good things, really.
It was also
agreed to form a subcommittee under the umbrella of the department of defence
in order to study the nation’s new relationship with God and to assess any
potential threats, as they were all duty-bound and constituted to do. The field
of international diplomacy was well-known, but this was charting new waters and
there was no book of Creator/Man Relations to go by.
Any sort of case law was a couple of thousand years
old, according to the Attorney General.
In the meantime, the President and his advisers were
promising all that the still-stunned gentlemen had asked, which was to be kept
in the loop while they consulted amongst themselves and considered what their
attitude towards this interesting new development ought to be.
It was one of the sweatiest sessions any of them could remember in all of their long
careers.
That sweat, the very uncertainty of what was happening and why, was a measure of its
importance, as they all understood on some intuitive level.
END
*Editor's Note: either one of the two major parties did not field a candidate or Louis has lumped Party A and Party B together and ignored the possibility of a close, three-way split in the voting--in which case old lady What's-'er-name may still hold the balance of power with a single vote.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment on the blog posts, art or editing.