Better Late Than Never

Hello there, folks

If you’re looking for Henrietta, you’re a little late. The performance of “Come Together Now” is over. But you’re in luck. There’s another showing… let me see… Right now! Lucky again. Simply select June, then select Henrietta Haribush, and in about a minute or two, you’ll have read to the bottom, where you can select “Newer Post”, and continue in this fashion through the forty-eight chapters.

For those of you who want to take Henrietta to bed, “Come Together Now” is expected to be available in book form soon.

HH

Countdown

“Sunday morning coming down.”

It’s all very wonderful, but Adele has a big problem. What is she going to do? Turn him in and destroy Mercy? That’s what the Democrat would do.

Keep his secret and become part of the subterfuge? That’s what the lover would do. Adele is both.

“If you honestly think gender matters,” Merce says, “then tell your campaign. If you’re post-gender, you won’t think it’s any of their business. I function better as a woman. I should be allowed to be my best.”

“Monday Monday.”

Another of our ladies, sweating a different decision. She could topple the baby-killing bitch, but Danielle can’t forget the look on Brenda Shapiro’s face when she answered “Yes”, to the question of the married man’s baby. She knew at that moment that Brenda knew. Knew it all. And yet, she said yes.

She’s in need of an authority figure, and the closest she’s got is her boss, Clyde Waters.

But first she’ll have to face the dragon in the ante-room. She used to look forward to his being there. Even before they got together. But she doesn’t want him listening now.

When the time comes, she walks up to Jason at his desk, pierces him with the turquoises and says, “Leave.” Jason scrambles out of his chair, grabs his laptop, and gets out.

She doesn’t knock on Clyde’s door. She’s beyond that. She’s distraught. She has nowhere to turn. She barges in as she’s used to doing. He looks up from his worry-work on the desk, and the two stare at each other.

“I’m pregnant,” she says. For a second, Clyde has the distinct feeling she’s going to accuse him of being the father. “I don’t know what to do.” The tears start falling.

Ever the gentleman, Clyde gets up, comes around the side of the desk and helps her into a chair. Kindness often turns tears to sobs, and that’s what happens here.

“It’s…”

“Don’t tell me,” he says. “I know whose it is. Why did you come to me?”

She shrugs, a sight in itself. “I have no place to go, and you were good to me this summer, when I couldn’t arrange decent day-care for my son, and you let me take the mornings off.”

Son! He’d never thought of her as a mother.

Mentioning her other child makes the tears come faster. Clyde, still on her side of the desk, puts a comforting arm on her shoulder. She grabs the arm, holds it tight, and gives in to the sobbing.

Clyde loved his mother, a vulnerable woman. He would do anything for her. And by extension, for this woman, currently vulnerable and, suddenly, a mother.

“I’m sorry,” Danielle says. “I know there’s nothing you can do.”

“But there is,” he says.

Instantly, she lets go of his arm and turns her face up to his. “Oh, no. Please don’t offer me a drug to get rid of the baby.”

“I wouldn’t,” he says, offended. “Even if I had one. And even if I did, you wouldn’t take it.”

“I could bring down Brenda Shapiro’s campaign,” she says. “I could dismantle his marriage.”

“What good would that do?” he asks, alarmed at the possibility.

She shakes her head, but says. “I don’t want to have another child by myself. It’s too hard. It’s not fun. It takes everything. Everything.”

Yes, folks, he’s going to propose. He was going to before the threat. Now he’s doubly anxious that she say yes. And she will. Two people, tired of living alone, coming together. Danielle will have a family and security, and Clyde will have… You know what Clyde will have. Eat your hearts out guys.

Clyde and Brenda will be getting together after all, as will Danielle and Jason. Trust me; this will be an interesting foursome. And more, an interesting extended family. Zeke and Timmy will now be related by more than their love of cars. They’ll soon share a half-sister or brother.

While Clyde and Danielle are buying an engagement ring, Adele and Merce are relaxing in the big bed after a second, long night of talk. And other communication activities.

Tracing his arm muscles, she says, “That’s why you always wear long sleeves.” Her hands travel down to his legs. “And long dresses!” Every moment there was another minor enlightenment.

Mercy lives in the front of the apartment. In the back, Merce creates her. Here’s where he keeps her wigs, her hips, her depilatory cream, and her bosom. The make-up, the clothing, they live up front with Mercy.

“A lot of people would be so disappointed if they knew you weren’t a gay woman,” Adele tells him, taking his leg between hers.

He laughs. “Bigots. This is a congressional election. Mercy’s boobs may not be mine, but her ideas are. Let’s stick to what matters and ignore any historic nature of my election.”

Adele clears out in the early afternoon so Merce can prepare for Mercy’s last speech of the campaign. Dressed in a flag – yes, folks, she did, she wore a long flag. You can make this dress yourself. Simply sew two flags together on the short side, leaving room for your head to fit through. Then sew up the sides leaving holes for your arms, so your hands can peek out. She wore her hair in a cone because Merce had been busy and hadn’t combed her wigs.

Her speech is at the Community College, a Democratic environment. Her audience came to fight, not to cheer. She knows they have mixed feelings about the flag, but it is to mixed feelings that she wants to appeal.

She enters in a blaze of glory, her flag ruffling around her body, the stars on one shoulder, the vertical stripes running down the other. They can’t help clapping. They knew her before she was the Republican candidate for congress.

She gets right to it:

“I am not running against Brenda Shapiro. I am running against Barack Obama.

“The only fault I find with my opponent is that she supports every public position of our president, when I’m sure her heart tells her otherwise.

“Brenda Shapiro is an educator first and a union member second. She would not refuse to allow the poor black children of Washington DC to escape from their rotting, rotten schools.

“Brenda Shapiro is a math teacher. She teaches people to think. She would never have allowed thousand-page bills to be presented to congress, with no time to read them, in the hope that nobody would try.

“Brenda Shapiro is married to a Jew. She would not allow a country that calls for the annihilation of Israel, to achieve nuclear weaponry.

“Brenda Shapiro would not support a medical system that will tell an eighty-year-old woman she can have pain pills but not the treatment that could prolong her life.

“Brenda Shapiro would not feed sectors of America to a federal bureaucracy that will never spit them out again.

“Brenda Shapiro would not stand up for a Honduran would-be dictator.

“Brenda Shapiro probably does not listen to Talk Radio. But she would not take it off the air, because Brenda Shapiro believes in free speech.

“Brenda Shapiro is not considering a national police force.

“Brenda Shapiro would not travel the planet to apologize for America, the country that has done the most good, for the most people, in the history of humanity.

“And why not? Because Brenda Shapiro is an American. Barack Obama is a global citizen. His allegiance to the country over which he presides is diluted by his enthusiasm for world governance.

“And that is why you cannot vote for Brenda Shapiro. This election is being watched all over America and we must let them know that we are unhappy with the heavy-handed reshaping of our country.”

That’s it. With a flourish of her flags, Mercy steps behind the curtains and is gone.

The speech shocks the hell out of everyone. They don’t know what to make of it. Brenda is invited by local TV for an interview. Mary Steele has been invited to lovingly lob the softballs.

Mary gives her every opportunity to clear herself in the eyes of her party. Does she really believe in vouchers? Is she against Obama’s health care plan? Does she think the US is being supportive enough of Israel? All golden opportunities, and Brenda cannot muster the strength to lie.

Everything that Mercy said about her is true. She’s tired of fighting herself. She can only rephrase her ringtone and plead for the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Wagman was very angry. “A Coke commercial,” he says. “That’s your final message. A Coke commercial.” Brenda hadn’t known that’s what it was.

The Day has come.

Chauncey and Nat are making phone calls to push out the vote. They want every single one they can get.

Brenda starts off with a good showing – the stalwart Democrats coming out for the candidate. But by three o’clock, exit polls indicate that Mercy is getting the votes. By seven, it’s obvious. At ten, with a good number of official tallies in, Brenda will call Mercy to concede.

Well, what did you expect, people? I kept telling you it was a Republican district. She was riding Obama’s coattails, and they weren’t wide enough. She fell off. Where are her supporters? Where are the college kids? Did they come out and vote? No. Brenda’s not historic. They don’t get a charge out of voting for Brenda. What happened to the liberal liberals who believe in liberty? Did they come out and vote for Brenda? Did they support the pot candidate? Did you support yours? Or did you have something better to do today. Most people in America did.

She calls on her cell phone, from the steps of the school, her polling place. Clustered around, not even reaching the reseeded lawn, are the people of her neighborhood and other supporters.

“I’ve just called to offer my heartfelt congratulations to Mercy Alexander. She’s been a most gracious opponent. The exit polls and the early tallies indicate that she is the overwhelming choice of the voters.

“She is our congressman. We must give her our support, and we must keep her aware of our concerns.

“Barack Obama is our president. It’s unfortunate that this election has been cast as a referendum. It takes nine months for a woman to give birth. And that’s how long he’s been in office. We now know the look and feel of the newborn administration. Let’s give our support where it is needed, and civilly express our concerns, where we have them.

“I will continue to champion school children. Our public schools must do better, for any vision of our nation to succeed.

“I’ll be very glad to be getting back to my classes. I miss them.”

Tuesday night, Mercy Alexander makes two proposals. Or perhaps we should call them propositions.

One is to Brenda Shapiro, to join her district office as educational advisor, with free run when Mercy is in Washington, and to use Mary Steele as her liaison to the press.

The other is to Adele, to come to Washington, live openly as her gay lover, and secretly as his straight one.

We’ve come a long way baby. “One thing I can tell you is you got to be free.”

The End

Masquerade

It’s Halloween! A scary time. Definitely a scary time for us, it’s just three more days till the election. Brenda’s gained tremendously in popularity, but with whom? Not with the parents, teachers and administrators she hoped to have on her side – they’ve become leery of her – but with the kids. She’s going to go for the youth vote. The young adults.

She’s at the Mall, giving out not candy, but unlightable fake joints filled with chocolate. No she isn’t. She turned down that suggestion. It was Chauncey’s. She’s giving out packs of rolling papers and calling them mini-sticky-notes. No, she’s not doing that either. That was Adele’s idea. And she isn’t wearing a long blue cylinder and dressing as a bong, even though Phoenix and Phil (I never noticed those two Ph’s before; did you?) offered to make her outfit from industrial-size plastic plumbing.

She’s dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Her tack is Freedom with Responsibility. (Now where have I heard that before? Dad?) She’s got the whole panoply of paraphernalia out there. Little models of cracked-up cars with bandaged bodies strewn around. She got these from MADD. And from Planned Parenthood, slews of pamphlets featuring condoms.

Lest this be too exciting, she’s surrounded by pictures of good food and bad food, with the NO circle and slash around and through the pictures of the bad food. A bit of a downer at Halloween, but she’s giving away little boxes of black raisins covered with white chocolate. Never mind that the grapes were all sprayed; raisins are nature’s gift. And chocolate has recently become a health food. Have you had your chocolate today?

Adele is at the Kandy Kiosk having the black and white raisins put into the campaign’s little black and white striped boxes with Brenda’s name on them. It’s Saturday. Everybody is here. Economic downturn or not, it’s the place to be.

In fact, Danielle is here, with her ten-year-old son, Timmy. While she’s browsing in the book store, he’s got permission to go look at model cars. He and Zeke have similar interests. On the way to the store, he’s drawn to the little model cars in the drunk driving display. He stops to look at them, and Brenda offers him a box of raisins. He puts it in his pocket and thanks her – he’s a polite boy. Later that night he’ll take it out and leave it on the kitchen table with all his other treats, for Mom to sort into Okay and Trash. This goes on all over America. Danielle puts it in Trash.

And it’s not just Danielle. Republican district, people. They don’t like drugs. Brenda has lost a lot of the esteem that derived from her being a teacher. Even Republican druggies don’t like drugs. Rush may have become addicted to a pain-killer, but he wasn’t out looking for fun. These people are hard-line when it comes to recreational drugs. They don’t approve of recreational sex, either. The condoms make them angry.

A pinch-faced woman with mousy hair, carrying an infant with ice cream on its face and dragging behind her a whining toddler, stops to say, “Have you no shame? This is disgusting. Sex is sacred. You have no business bringing it to a public place.”

“She’s not exactly screwing,” Adele says, under her breath so the woman can’t hear.

“I’m trying to save some children a lot of heartache,” Brenda replies. Brenda never gets angry anymore, no matter what they say.

“You’re telling them they can do whatever they please as long as they don’t make babies. Sex is for making babies. You’re telling them to defy God’s law.”

“What is God’s law?” Brenda innocently asks.

“Go forth and multiply,” says the woman, equally innocently.

Adele pops up from behind the display and says, “That’s what Brenda’s been doing her whole adult life. Teaching children to go forth and multiply. She’s a math teacher.”

Several people within hearing distance, who have stopped in hopes of a fight, laugh out loud. The woman harrumphs away. Now both her children are crying.

Where’s Jason? We know where he is, don’t we? He’s where Mom usually is, making sure the kids’ costumes are ready, planning out the evening, fighting against bad ideas like “Let’s go to Bailey’s Field. There’s a big party there, with music, and it’s just a few blocks from the parade,” from Sheba, and “I want to go to the Haunted House,” from Zeke, who doesn’t know that’s where the perverts hang out to snatch little children.

No, Jason has made it clear that he will be with them, they’re following the parade route, and that both of them are going. Sheba’s throwing her clothes around in a fit of pique. She doesn’t want to be seen with her father and her little brother. This is a girl who’s had a date with someone who’s maybe a man.

In a tight black dress, with a flare at the ankle, à la Morticia, Sheba is one of the tens of thousands of sexy teenage vampires who inhabit America tonight.

She would be quite alluring. In fact, she is. But she’s meandering along the street, which is closed for Halloween, next to her Dad, who has, on his other side, a cardboard replica of a Smart Car. Not Brenda’s black one, but the red one Zeke wanted. As happens to many parents on All Hallows Eve, Jason was granted great powers of artistry, and ingenuity. He built this Smart Car, made of foam and cardboard, on two skate boards, piece by piece, cutting, bending, taping, and finally painting it, complete with a recognizable facsimile of the Wagman’s little dog in the passenger seat window.

It’s a great night; there’s a little rain in the air, but it isn’t coming down. It’s warmish for the season. Sudden gusts bring whirls of leaves. Capes blow wildly, then flatten against bodies. Hats fly off. It’s exhilarating. People are laughing.

The Moon is almost full. It’s high up there, blessing the parade, which is taking the place of trick or treating. A town alderman, who saw ET, fell in love with the idea of a whole town parading down Main Street. His town has an appropriately wide boulevard. He was elected to public office, and has made his dream come true.

A lot of parents are relieved. The kids aren’t sure what they think. Maybe they’re being cheated. Not out of candy, though. At pre-approved stores, they swarm in to get their pre-approved treats.

Coming down the street is a familiar, slouchy shape. This is no insultingly convenient coincidence. It’s Dracula, come for our Morticia. The blood red hair is slicked back over his ears. His face is powdered white, his lips obscenely reddened, his eyebrows bushed, and his teeth pointed by blackening. He’s wearing a long, satin-lined, woolen cape. He punches his cell phone.

As he passes by the Shapiros, he sticks out his caped arm, and Sheba twirls into it. This was choreographed in cyberspace with the final cue being the ring on her phone tucked at her wrist, into the tight fringed sleeve. Her family goes on without her, Dad staring straight ahead at the goblins, pirates, princesses, witches, spider-men, vampires, devils, and cats coming down the street, while Zeke is mesmerized by the traffic outside his non-existent windshield.

The children of politicians, especially those running for office, often rebel against the demanding love or hate affair between their parent and the public. Kids get jealous. They won’t say so; kids know it’s demeaning to confess. They just go about righting the wrong some other way.

They went to Bailey’s.

Sheba was excited, and felt very grown up. There was beer in the center of the field, and pot around the edges. Neither one of our kids indulged. It was good just to be there, with people old enough to get away from their parents and young enough not to be parents themselves. A big, neighborhood, counter-culture party, with lots of costumes.

Over there is someone dressed as a cop. Very authentic. On closer inspection, we see that it’s not a costume. We know him. We’ve seen his face close up through a car window. He’s the cop who escorted Sheba and Brenda, siren wailing, to Phoenix’s house, with the two ounces.

He’s a good guy, likes this party down at Bailey’s, and doesn’t want to see it get out of hand. He’s looking at Phoenix and Sheba. He’s not sure. But he saw them in silhouette when she delivered the goods, and suddenly he’s looking at the same silhouettes – short, young girl, tall, gangly guy. And that hair.

He ambles over toward them where they stand watching the scene. Now he’s eighty percent sure. Ninety. Bingo. It’s her.

He doesn’t want anyone to hear. He walks up next to her, but she’s fixed on the people in front who are downing beer, laughing, kidding around. “Ms. Shapiro,” he says. Her head jerks around. Some guy dressed as a policeman is accosting her.

“You look lovely,” he says. “And old. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were twenty. But I know how old you are. Everybody does. This is no place for you.” Phoenix has turned to listen. “Or you,” he says to Phoenix. “I ran a check on you after I brought the ladies to your house. You’re dangerous, man. You have no sense of self-preservation. Coming here. With her.”

Within five minutes Sheba is back at Jason’s side, further up the street, where our police officer spotted Zeke’s Smart Car. His plans for the evening dashed, Phoenix takes a ride home from the cop, who knows the way.

Zeke wins a prize. Jason is very proud of Zeke for thinking of the idea, and of himself, for its execution.

Brenda stays on for the evening at the Mall. A lot of people come there to show off their costumes. As predicted, Adele has been asked to cover Mercy’s private party, whose address was sent, by mistake, they think, to Brenda’s campaign.

She goes home to change. She has decided to dress as a man. She thinks it’s brilliant, and feels very much better about going. She’s not afraid anymore. She no longer feels like prey.

She’s small, and she’s dressed as a jockey, her hair under a cap, jodhpurs, tall boots, and a silk vest in her colors: rose and red.

The party’s at The Pub Club in Mercy’s boutique-y neighborhood. Its entrance is an oval of glass. Tonight it’s splintered by spider webs. The gang’s already there when she comes in, and there are plenty of them. Nobody is in costume. There are men and women, dressed quite nicely, sitting at a long polished wooden bar, their reflections mingled with those of the bottles in front of the bar-long mirror. Others are sitting at booths along the other side of the long room, drinking and eating hors d’oeuvres. The space between bar and booths has been turned into a dance floor. Couples, many of them same-sex, are clinching in the narrow space.

A man detaches himself from a group he’s been talking to at the bar, and comes over to greet her.

“Welcome,” he says. “Glad you’re here. Enjoy yourself. I’ll see you in a while.”

Good-looking. She wishes he’d stayed around but he’s back with his laughing friends.

Several women come up to speak to her – something she hadn’t counted on. They’re flirtatious, and extremely forward. After fifteen minutes, she begins to wonder why Mercy isn’t there yet.

She’s getting tired of fending off females and listening to the music with an empty glass in hand. She had only one white wine and is not going to allow herself more. It’s wearing off. Maybe she ought to go.

Just then, the man who’d greeted her catches her eye, crosses the floor, and asks her to dance. Oh, no. He’s gay.

It’s a slow dance. He pulls her to him quite forcefully, considering they’ve just met. And whispers in her ear, “It’s me, Honey.”

Adele’s hears Mercy’s voice. She pulls back her head, looks at the face before her, and gasps. It’s Mercy Alexander.

“It’s a cross-dress party, Sweetie. I thought you wouldn’t come if you knew. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you caught on somehow. And here you are.” Mercy pulls her close again. Very close.

Suddenly Adele pulls away. “What’s that in your pants? What’s that I feel?” she asks. “A dildo? Mercy, did you ask me to dance, wearing a dildo?”

“Of course not,” she whispers in her ear. “Here’s a riddle for you: I am sexually attracted to women. I am not gay. What am I?”

Adele stands stock still and answers the question in her head. You can too. I know you don’t want to hear it out loud.

“Why?” she finally asks. “Why in the world do you masquerade as a woman?”

Mercy nuzzles her hair. “Because I’m so much better as a woman. So much more commanding, with my deep voice – nothing unusual in a man. So much taller. Especially with heels. I’m a giant of a woman. I have to curb my power. As a man I simply don’t have enough.”

She liked him, but she quite agreed. As a man, he no longer enthralled her. As a man, they were equals. How strange.

Folks, I’m as surprised as you are, I swear to God. I didn’t even know who the Republican candidate was going to be when I started to tell this tale. True, she seemed to appear out of nowhere, but that’s how it works in these special elections; the county bosses pick the candidates. And it would be indecent to ask every strong, self-sufficient woman, who wants to run for office, to drop her pants.

Don’t forget to turn back the clock. That gives us time for a nightcap. We need one.

From the Heart

Brenda’s in trouble. The whole campaign is in trouble. Monday’s paper troubadoured the brave candidate who said what so many believe and so few will say. That marijuana is wrongly classified – it belongs with alcohol and caffeine, both of which are far more dangerous. We spend billions trying to enforce a prohibition while we could be collecting the “sin” tax.

This has made her an instant success in the schools, where the unheard of has occurred. Kids are spontaneously discussing current events. In the halls, behind their hands in class, over lunch trays. Brenda is their new hero.

All the more reason for the press to come down on her. And they do. Republican district, remember? But even the national press is on it. Brenda has been shot down by friendly fire. Mary Steele has a good memory. Every word of the quote was there, and was accurate. There were witnesses, though their memories were impaired by alcohol.

And this isn’t her only problem. Standing offstage is a succulent woman with an incipient babe-in-arms, who could any moment come forward and disclose a lack of family values in the Shapiro household.

That’s all she needs: Husband of Pot Candidate Fathers Love-child. With plenty of pictures of the buxom Danielle. She would drown in notoriety.

Mercy has been sailing calmer seas. For tonight, she had arranged a local appearance at a school, two blocks down the street from her apartment house.

She’d been feeling a little bad about the harsh way she ended the interview with Felicia Livingston, telling her to go find out the difference between a man and a woman.

And the aspiring filmmaker/musician – she deserved to have her say about guns, which she said killed, and abortion, which she said didn’t. Mercy didn’t know how many others were quietly seething. They called her a traitor, a turn-coat. But the worst thing they called her was Republican. They had a special way of spitting out the “p”.

Here are some interesting demographics. The district in which Mercy and Brenda live is a Republican one. It is Brenda who is out of place in the district. But Mercy’s living unit of artists with artistic temperaments, is not only Democratic, it’s downright Liberal, to a man. Or woman. But who’s keeping track of that?

Her neighbors all love Mercy as a person, but they hate her as a politician. They’re angry that she doesn’t agree with them – that though they personally matter to her, their ideas don’t.

She would like to host a private party in the Heart of her apartment, but it’s too small for everyone in the Artists’ Hive to be there at the same time. Hence, the school. The meeting is open to everyone, but she particularly hopes her mates will come.

She’s posted invitations on all the Hive’s bulletin boards. Big, red invitations that can’t be missed. “Get to the Heart of the matter.”

She’s calling it a “wrap” session, to wrap up all the odds and ends for herself – to know where she stands.

Mercy is what you could call a senso-intellectual. She believes if you can captivate the senses, you can captivate the soul. Mercy wants to win the war by winning over the enemy through the magic of the senses and the power of the argument. Open the door and the argument can step through.

She and a few friends have draped the back of the stage in the deep red of the Heart. She’s in a red dress of the same color. With the red foot-lights, she’s all but invisible, except when she moves. Black light completes the effect, her glowingly-made-up face floats mysteriously in the air – a talking head, under a UV-striped, bobbing top-knot.

“I would have invited you to my home,” she says, “but my Heart isn’t big enough.” Laughter from the cognizanti, which make up two-thirds of the hundred-odd audience.

“I believe that I’m going to be elected as your next congressman. Not just because I’m so appealing (pause, laughter), but because of the gerrymandering that created the four democratic districts that surround us. Many of you are among my dearest friends. Before I go off to Washington, I want to resolve our philosophical differences, and find out what it is we really want, what we can really accomplish. I want this to be a coming together.

“I want you to feel at home. Not your home, but my home. I’m going to have them turn off the house lights and let you imagine that you are sitting on a stool in the Heart, sipping tea. Blind yourself to the world around you.”

Just before the lights dim to dark, we see, sitting on the side, coincidentally next to Donna and Felicia Livingston, who will moving to Massachusetts – long live federalism – who but our own Adele Delicia. She’s been sent by the campaign, even though she said she was too tired to go, to hear firsthand what use Mercy is going to make of the marijuana debacle. She looks like she’s trying to hide, making herself small in her seat, slumping so she won’t be seen, but she’s just depleted.

The lights go out, and Mercy continues: “We’re all blind, most of the time, to most of what’s around us. Tonight I would like you to open your eyes to me. Many of you are artists. And I would venture to say that the rest of you are simply unaware that you, too, are artists, who haven’t yet found their medium. Artists come in all races, in all genders, in all ages. But apparently in only one political party.

“A lot of you are angry at me. You think I’m masquerading as one of you. That I’m really The Man.

“There’s been a lot of buzz about my being against gay marriage. So is Barack Obama. But both of us are for gay rights.

“We are all for equal civil rights. Not just for gays, but for everybody. Nobody should be denied coverage, money, jobs, apartments, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, on the basis of their marital status. Why should a married couple have rights that a single person doesn't have? Why should married people get deals, subsidies, tax breaks that singles don't?

“Marriage is not a civil matter. Marriage is a personal matter.

“If you want the government to subsidize your life and protect you, demand that it do so no matter what your marital status.

“Decline the government's indecent discrimination on the basis of genital pairings.

“If we are a society where pairs have perks, let the perks be independent of the meshing of personal parts. Let Joe and his sister unite. Let Mom and niece unite. Let brothers unite. Aunts unite. Let any people who want to declare themselves a couple, unite.

“Let’s drop that word ‘marriage’ from the civil law. Marriage is, or was, a social institution involving a man and a woman. For God’s sake, let the fuddy-duddies have it!

“In some societies, marriage that does not produce offspring is annulled. And there’s a reason for that. A man and a woman are related through their children. Through their descendents, they become common ancestors. No progeny, no relation, though of course there is relationship. Let’s save the word marriage for the mundane practice of procreation between two people. The childless? Out. Parents of adopted children? Out. Marriage is for people who want to pursue the old-fashioned practice of putting their egg and sperm together.

“I know this is a liberal crowd. I know that even the straight among you yearn for homosexuals to have the same rights as heterosexuals. You want to do something. But there’s nothing you can do. Well, my heterosexual soul-mates, I have something for you to do.

“Here's what I propose:

“That every couple tear up that state license and refuse to accept any benefits the government gives to the married. Get the government out of your crotch!”

There is a little bit of laughter amidst a deep silence. Nobody likes what she’s said. It’s not equal rights they want, it’s a form of social validation they’re looking for, and that does not come from others giving up theirs in sympathy.

The lights go on. “And now,” she says, “I see someone who looks as though if I don’t let him talk, he’s going to explode.”

She’s looking at a thirty-something kid in a brown polo shirt – nobody she knows. He’s got a good crop of dark hair on a large head, and the rough start of a good beard. He looks trim and athletic. Mercy intuits he plays tennis. She’s almost right. It’s Ultimate Frisbee that keeps him in shape.

She decides to have some fun. “Come up here, young man, and tell me what’s troubling you.”

He’s embarrassed, and reluctant, but she gets him up on stage, where he stands out against the red backdrop. Mercy’s head floats above him and to the right. He’s on a stage with a talking head.

And he does explode.

“No you can’t!” he parrots her Nobama speech. “There's nothing more stirring than telling people ‘No you can't!’ That's just what people want to hear. The party of No! The party of futility and despair.”

Woo-woo-woo!

The head backs away from him. “Do I look to you, young man, as though I’d belong to the party of No? To the party of Despair?” She wiggles her hips, and suddenly her body appears against the background, shimmying. The audience roars. Then the head moves closer to him, and the voice gets lower, more seductive. “I see it as the party of Yes. Yes to life. Yes to victory. Yes to reaching and striving and letting live. Yes to the advancement of mankind. Yes to individual liberty, without which there is none of the above.”

She takes a sweeping bow, which looks at first as though the head is falling, top-knot first, to the ground. Then it swoops up again.

Someone from the audience yells, “Personal liberty? That’s a laugh. How about the right to smoke dope? Brenda Shapiro’s going to legalize marijuana. Your party is against it.” (Polite people don’t even mouth the word ‘Republican’.)

Mercy comes front and center, almost detaching from the background. “I am running for congress on the Republican ticket. That does not mean I support every so-called Republican issue.

“Specifically, I will propose precisely the same marijuana legislation as my opponent. If anyone is not going to vote for Brenda Shapiro because of her stance on legalization, then they can not vote for me either, because mine is the same.

“It is not an issue in this campaign, except insofar as it illustrates that my opponent has more integrity than most people serving in congress.

“And where are you Libs on this issue? Why so silent? Where’s that passionate voice for control over your own body? You’ll fight for the right to abort a baby but not for the right to smoke a joint.

“What do you think of that, young man?” she asks the much-less-hostile-than-moments-ago guest who is still on stage.

“It must take a lot of energy to burn your own house down,” he replies. “You must be exhausted. This election looks like it's going to come down to who wants it less. Why are you even running?”

“I’m running because our country is in trouble. My party’s gone astray, but your party has gone further. I don’t think you’re all so happy about our handsome, well-spoken – what was that word they used to use? ‘articulate’ president taking over our lives. Throwing away the rulebook and making up his own. You’re afraid to say so, but I’m not. You’re not allowed to, but I am. I, my dear, can call a spade a spade.

“I call Obama a community organizer. He’s organizing the entire United States as if it’s one community. He’s knocking down the people on the top, thinking it will raise up the people on the bottom. It doesn’t work that way. We’ll all be poorer for it.

“Back when he was in Chicago – I knew him, but he wouldn’t recognize me – he was always hampered by the rules. Now he’s doing away with them to put his schemes in place. But they’re small-minded schemes, meant to undo unfairness. They won’t work – theft does not create wealth, and redistribution is simply legalized larceny. People: equal rights and constitutional protection are for everyone. That includes rich motherfuckers, whether you like it or not.

The young man on stage shakes his head. “Makes me wonder what the man-on-the-street is getting from all of this. We're stuck in the echo-chamber, in the crazy cocoons of the candidates messed up lives.”

“We all have messed up lives,” Mercy says. “Every single one of us. Cover your ears, now, I’m about to mention a taboo name. As Donald Rumsfeld said, ‘Life is messy.’”

Knowing laughter.

“You have two candidates trying to fight for you. We have similar wants and different ways, yet you refuse to give either of us a hearing. Like strutting peacocks, you display your pre-programmed reactions. It’s all you partisans who are in the echo chamber. You can’t consider anything you haven’t already heard from your own party. When the opposition speaks, you put up your iron bracelets and deflect all in-coming.”

A glowing hand appears in the air. It’s really at the end of Mercy’s long-sleeved red dress. To the audience it looks as though the disembodied hand has sailed over to the young man, and the young man is pumping it up and down.

He leaves the stage, happier, we hope, than when he stepped on to it. Mercy takes some questions from the audience. They aren’t really questions. They’re accusations, but she turns them into questions and answers them.

Then she calls it a night. But not quite. Adele has fallen asleep in her seat. She was played out when she got here, and fell asleep back at Mercy’s repetition of the apt words “echo chamber”.

She’s startled awake by Mercy, who has come down into the almost-empty room to put a hand on her shoulder and say, “Hello, Honey, glad you could make it.” She gives her a wicked, knowing smile. “Come to see if I would turn on your girl?”

“I did,” Adele says, waking up. “You surprised me.”

“I’ll always surprise you, Honey. That’s a promise.”

Adele feels the sexual connotations and is at a loss for words. But Mercy isn’t.

“You doing anything for Halloween?” she asks.

“The Mall with Brenda.”

“Oh. What fun. How about coming to a real Halloween party when you’re through with the Mall? One that won’t start till the trick or treaters are home in their beds. Are you game? It’s a masquerade ball.”

You sure know how to get a girl, Mercy. Adele’s brain, tired as it is, immediately fills with a parade of competing costumes. She doesn’t say yes, but she doesn’t say no.

“I’ll e-mail the address to your campaign. They’re sure to send you. I might do something untoward that will lose the election if you’re there.”

Amaretto

Folks, it’s time to gather the clan. The battle’s about to begin. What we’ve seen so far is skirmishes. The battle is called Election Day, and it’s coming up soon, almost immediately after Halloween.

It’s been a gorgeous fall with golden leaves and spring-like air. People are at their peak, their muscles still intact, their tans still glowing. The Sun’s energy has been building in them all summer.

This sunny Sunday morning Brenda answered the last of the questions she solicited from Sheba’s conservative classmates. You can guess the questions and you know the answers by heart. Brenda has become proficient at the party line.

Did someone say party?

The party is at the Wagmans. Just friends. Mary Steele is invited, as she’s proven to be one. She’s been on the trail with Brenda ever since the Saving of the Swan, the title of her feature article. Barack has MSNBC; Brenda has Mary Steele.

There she is, in her baseball cap, talking to Nat Grogan about the mess in Afghanistan. He’s “if onlying” her, and she’s nodding. Reporters know how to be polite. It’s their bread and butter. Today’s bore may be tomorrow’s source. We hear the tail end of “war we can’t win,” as we leave Mary with her international instructor, and go on to a more fruitful conversation.

Over by the window, where Adele had hoped to escape for a few minutes, Chauncey is going on about Halloween. He wants Brenda to dress as a football player and give a speech about the importance of sports. A lot of schools are cutting their sports budgets, and Chauncey wants her to say that for some kids, school IS sports. It’s what they’re good at. Why should the scholars count more than the jocks? That’s what Democracy is all about. Something for everybody.

Adele is thinking about whether or not the candidate should appear in a Hillary mask and give a fake speech as Hillary, endorsing Brenda Shapiro, and extolling her virtues and ideas. It’s Halloween. They can get away with something, so they ought to think of something to get away with.

She’s tired of the same old things all over again. There must be another angle. Something nobody can see that’s just sitting there waiting to be discovered. Something that would make a difference.

Nina is sitting on the couch facing the big windows, looking out at the water. She sees Chauncey and Adele as silhouettes, and hears them only as part of the buzz of the room. In front of her is a big bowl of scorpions. Not the insect, the drink. The flavor is almond, in a blend of orange juice, lemon juice, and a hint of orange liqueur. What is hidden by the aromatic mix is the payload of rum, gin and brandy. Don’t have too much of this, folks. It’s deadly. Before you know it, you’re passed out in the bathroom of the master bedroom, where you’ve gone for comfort and security, and the hostess has walked in and found you there, coiled around the toilet.

But don’t worry, that’s not going to happen to Jason. Jason is a good boy now. A teetotaler. He’s got the personality of a rabbit, always sniffing for danger, his ears perked awaiting it, or laid back till it passes on by. The approach of a female signals retreat. He’s through with babes, boobs, and bonking. He hasn’t seen his little head in weeks, except when he takes it out to do its more mundane duty. It got him in big trouble.

Nina’s watching him sulk at the far end of the window, hunched over, looking out. Yearning to be free, she thinks. Free of the campaign. Maybe free of Brenda. Certainly Mitchell has nothing good to say about her anymore. And she’s sure he used to like her.

Jason’s staying as far away from Nina as he can. Doesn’t even want to acknowledge her presence, and so far, hasn’t. He’s back in the house of shame. Double shame. Finding his daughter in bed with the pothead son, vowing he’d never set foot in the place again, then coming back and not only entering the house, but entering its owner. Who was that inhabiting his body back then? Why did he have no self-control? Well he’s got it now. Nobody’s going to budge him.

He checks around the room for Brenda. She’s his root. He doesn’t want to stray too far from even the thought of her. He feels loss and panic when he does.

Here comes Zeke! Whizzes right by his father, on the heels of the little dog. He’s so happy to be reunited. And so is the dog. Zeke is the best play-date he’s ever had. He’s already taken him for a romp around the grounds, and now they’re going into the back rooms to see what they can dig up there.

Brenda is nowhere in sight. Where is she? Wagman’s not here either. Suspicious of himself, Jason is now suspicious of everybody. He can’t even tell himself Brenda is spoken for by Clyde. After all, he was spoken for by Danielle when he came for his tantric yoga lesson with Nina.

The guests are on their second drinks now. There’s a lot of laughter. The groups are getting bigger, and some new people have arrived. Brenda and Mitchell are at the door greeting the latest.

Why, it’s Clyde!

He hasn’t seen Brenda since he took her home from the diner and fled down her back staircase. Wagman insisted that he come to this party, that he’s part of the campaign, that he’s done so much work for it on the abortion front, he deserves recognition as a true friend of the candidate.

He’s a surprise Mitchell is holding out on Brenda, who doesn’t know he’s been invited. Mitchell had noticed she seemed partial to him, and he knows the value of a happy candidate. If he couldn’t make her happy, he’d invite the man who could.

We’re always just a little behind the time, aren’t we? Our view of the universe has to be obsolete; it’s based solely on the past. There’s a speed-of-light delay.

Mitchell opens the door and steps aside, happily presenting Clyde to Brenda, whose face once more goes white. The two stare at each other. Then Clyde’s mother saves the day by appearing in his head and telling him to shake hands. Brenda takes the extended appendage gratefully. Pumping each other’s open palms, they renew their relationship on the old grounds. They are once more political cronies. Their moment of passion has come and gone, a memory they can both do without.

In the living room, the party is picking up. Drink number three for some. That’s all folks, I’m warning you. You’ve already had too much.

Nobody quite knows what they’re saying anymore, but they are very much into it. The jabbering is earnest – a mixture of politics and personal. The circles have loosened up; people are sailing in and out of them. Adele and Mary Steele are with Zeke. Now they’re all talking to the little dog, and the little dog, never having had so much attention, is yapping it up.

Clyde’s not the only late guest. Elenora, Brenda’s substitute math teacher arrives just after Clyde. She is not happy to see Brenda and Mitchell coupled as host and hostess at the door.

Elenora is not here for Brenda. She’s here for her own self. She insisted upon coming, and Wagman had no choice. Brenda was wrong; Elenora’s minor physical flaws did not stop Mitchell from trying to charm her, and once charmed, she became voracious, coming to his door between classes, snapping her thong underwear at him. Who does she think she is? Well, we know who she thinks she is, don’t we? She thinks she’s Monica Lewinsky. If the chubby intern can make it with the real Bill Clinton, the horse-faced teacher can make it with his local look-alike.

We skipped it, being interested in more high-minded issues. It was a re-enactment. We’ve all been there – don’t tell me you haven’t – under the desk in the oval office… or sitting in its seat… well, Mitchell has a desk too. Not the President’s, but the Principal’s. Good enough. Close enough. First he laughs, but he can’t resist the offer. Can’t resist the opportunity.

His secretary is guarding the door with orders not to let anyone in; he is having a math lesson, and needs absolute quiet and no interruptions. Poor Miss Moneypenny.

Elenora went home with semen on her blue dress. Yes, she wore a blue dress. Yes, she’s got the blue dress in her closet. Yes, she’s subtly threatened Wagman with disclosure. Subtly enough to get herself two free periods at the end of the day. Subtly enough to get herself invited to this party. Subtly enough so the two still appear to be friendly. These less appealing ladies are cagey. They have a disadvantage to overcome. They’re usually up to the challenge.

Elenora is sitting next to Nina on the couch, making up for lost time. She’s been here ten minutes and she’s on her second drink. They’re so delicious, so sweet. They slide down so easily.

There’s a commotion in the big foyer with the fireplace, as the kids come in. They’ve been outside at a neighborhood bonfire. They tumble into the hallway smelling of smoke. Two kinds of smoke. The whole crowd is here. Phoenix has a lot of sway over his mother. She sent special invitations to Rosalind and Rowena, for them to show their parents.

Now people… you know, don’t you… in every development there is that wooded lot off to the side that serves as green space. In that wooded lot there can usually be found a log, and on that log, anywhere from one to fifteen teen-agers passing a joint.

The teens are far away from the little kids at the bonfire, but they’ll have a good time with them when they get back, having had their childish wonder at the flames renewed, and their social tension eased. When they return to the Wagman house and the adult party, they’ll disdain the messy alcohol, the loud, out-of-control shrieks and gross out-of synch gestures. The doors of their perception will have been opened, and they’ll see the grown-ups for what they are.

God forbid. These are still kids. The adults are of no interest to them. Only they matter. If someone offers them a drink, what the hell, they’ll take it. Nobody does, and they aren’t looking for it. They’re full of robust, out-door, red-cheeked youth. Oh – who’s that with them? Is that Phil? Didn’t recognize him without his beard and suit. He looks like a kid again.

Mary Steele and Adele are slumped back on the couch perpendicular to the windows. They can see the whole room. They’re talking about clothes. Mary Steele, whose signature wardrobe item is her baseball cap – nobody notices anything else – reads Vogue in the dentist’s office. She knows everything, and the girls are having a grand old time.

Watch that, Elenora. That’s your third drink. That is not good. Your blood alcohol is going up and your liver is way behind.

Even Clyde has had a drink. He needed one. He’s looking sheepishly over it, out of the tops of his eyes. A bit morose. Jason is the only unenhanced person in the room.

He watches the kids pile into the big space. The other two girls hover under Sheba’s wing. And that boy – who is he? He acts like he’s her date. Phoenix has disappeared with the girl Sheba calls “the professor.” Jason has an insight. They’ve gone up to Phoenix’s room. He can see them there.

And he’s right. Up to a point. They are not, as he suspects, sitting on the bed with a bong. They are taking some pamphlets out of Phoenix’s printer. Then they come back downstairs and settle down on the floor, in a corner, way across the room from Mary Steele and Adele, looking at the crowd from a different point of view.

Brenda and Nina are sitting together on the couch, played out from talking and drinking. They look like two old girls in their sweaters and skirts, legs out in front of them, leaning back on the cushions. He’s grateful that they’re not speaking, but terrified that any moment they might.

Then Phoenix, his red hair still wild with the wind, rises and comes toward him. But he stops before he gets there, and turns to face Brenda. “Mrs. Shapiro,” he says, in a surprisingly deep voice that, in fact, has come upon him just this moment, “can I ask you a question?”

She fights down the desire to correct him and say, “May I” like her own mother always did, but she’s exhausted. And used to this. Everybody always wants to ask her a question. By now, she’s got all the answers.

“Go ahead,” she says.

Phoenix asks, “Have you stopped smoking pot?”

All those people who were paying no attention suddenly stop in mid-conversation.

It’s the “Have you stopped beating you wife?” question. If she says yes, she’s confessed to past crimes. No, and she’s off to rehab.

But Brenda’s had her three scorpions, and even though she had them half filled with ice, that ice melted and she drank the water. “Yes,” she says. “I married out of it.”

Mary Steele can not stay where she is. She jumps up a little hastily, knocking over her glass – but it’s empty – and sits down next to the candidate.

“As long as this has turned into a press conference, can I ask what you think of the administration coming down on the side of medical marijuana?”

“Of course you can. It’s about time. Everybody knows that. Clinton should have done it. ”

“No!” comes a voice from the passageway to the back, from which Phil and Sheba have just emerged. Phil hurries forward till he’s standing in the middle of the room. “Medical marijuana is a cop-out. It’s safe and it’s beneficial. It should be legal for everybody.”

Brenda stands up, with a swish of her skirt. “Ladies and gentlemen, if elected to congress I will introduce legislation that classifies marijuana as a food. Head food. Legal to grow, smoke, eat, drink, buy and sell.”

She plunks back down on the couch and instantly falls asleep. Mary Steele, invited to the party as a friend, is scrabbling in her bag for her notebook. She may be a friend but she’s also a reporter.

Every drunk guest goes home clutching a copy of the pamphlet that Phoenix wrote and manufactured. On the front it says, “Think Green”, on the back, “Legalize Marijuana”.

Long chapter. That’s a party for you. Time flies when you’re having fun.

And by the way folks it was Elenora, the substitute teacher who was discovered – thankfully, not by Nina, but by Zeke and the little dog, on their tour of the upstairs – keeping cool, coiled around the toilet in the bathroom of the master bedroom.

A League of Their Own

Jason’s been a bad boy long enough. The emergence of a child, possibly two children, who did not exist in his life three days ago, has shivered his timbers, blown his mind, sent him quaking from the apartment he used to enter with a different kind of buckling knees.

What has he done? What is he doing here with a woman who’s been hiding her child from him? Who is the kid’s father? He hadn’t even thought of that. The guy could conceivably be angry. Maybe she’s married. That’s messy.

But wait a minute. He, himself, is married. Somehow that doesn’t seem the same. He’s got that under control. Or thinks he has. And he knows the other party. It’s just Brenda. Someone else’s husband would be a complete stranger.

He has now turned into a terrified soul. His desire for the bombshell has left him entirely. She’s the enemy. He’s afraid of her. She has the power to ruin his life. His kids’ lives. Brenda’s life. What if she goes to the press?
Danielle has been transformed from a love object to an object of fear.

All day at work, he looks up every time he hears a noise, every time someone passes in the hall. He’s at the erstwhile receptionist’s desk. On display. Everyone sees him and notices he’s jumpy. They don’t know the details, but they know who is the cause.

He can’t stop thinking about the possibilities. One thing he knows; he would never be a Dad for Tads. He does not want this child to exist. Wipe it off the face of the earth, however you have to do it, God, I’m begging you.

Ah, yes, we see what kind of man Jason is now. Why, he’s a devoted family man. He would never do anything to really hurt them. Not something like this. Not bring into the world a child from another dimension. He would never do that. Please make it so that he didn’t. Please, God.

God’s got a lot of call-waitings, from Jason alone. And he’s got a few from Danielle, who doesn’t like it any better than he does, but knows what she’s got to do.

Repentant, Jason has thrown himself totally into Brenda’s campaign. Made himself a part of it. Tonight he’s going with her to the League of Women Voters open house. Both candidates will be there.

As if we didn’t have enough women already. Times have changed, people. Remember all those movies with thirty-five men and one woman? And none of the men gave much of a damn about the woman? She was there for the ladies in the audience. Today the women are running the show. The men are out drinking, riding motorcycles and, in the case of the upper classes, literally whoring around.

This is like a sorority meeting but it’s open, men are invited, and a few will come. But not to meet women. You should not try to meet women when they’re in feminist mode.

Jason is going because Jason goes everywhere now. He’s his wife’s best friend. He carries her coat. He takes her out to breakfast. He listens to her rehearse her speech. Remember, he thinks she knows nothing – that he escaped from the diner without her seeing him. But, folks, she knows. And she plays everything he does through that knowledge.

If she weren’t so angry, she’d laugh. But all those little favors, the constant attention, the sacrifice on her behalf, the waiting around, the solicitous bringing of coffee (that is, herbal tea), impresses itself on her spirit. She relaxes; things are being taken care of. She’s not alone anymore.

The League meeting is in a semi-official building. There are large couches all around the perimeter of the room, and rental chairs filling the rest of the space.

Jason is tired. He hasn’t been on the campaign trail long, but he’s exhausted from standing around, talking to people, and then going home to his already assumed, and previously, but no longer, neglected, household duties. While Brenda writes her speeches, and the kids are doing their homework, he’s washing the dishes.

The meeting starts at 7:30. He’s got everything done by 7:00 and they take off in the little car, her signature vehicle, though now he drives while she naps or meditates.

They enter the building, and there they part. She’s one of the stars. She goes “backstage”, to a room behind the big one, and he takes a seat on one of the couches against a side wall, where he can watch the audience arriving and also see the platform in front.

The couch is comfortable. He’s sinks into it and falls asleep. He’s jarred awake by a “Whheeezzzjjj” from the microphone. The room is packed. It’s a Ladies Night Out. He’s never seen so many manless women in one place at once time.

Standing up in front of them all, on an elevated platform, is a lady in a tweed suit, with short smooth blond hair, an upright demeanor, and a stern visage. She’s holding a folder in her hand. She is flanked on either side by two podiums for the candidates.

“Ladies,” she says, scanning the crowd. “And gentlemen. Tonight we will meet the two candidates for congress. As you know, the League of Women voters is a non-partisan organization. But we believe the time has come for us to take a stand, on behalf of women and children, and endorse President Obama’s health care plan. We have to stand up to the lies. Lies told by political enemies who want to defeat a Democrat. Lies told by racists who want to defeat a black president. Lies told by insurance companies afraid of losing their profits.

“Among other things, we will ask our candidates tonight to speak up on the topic of health care. Let me introduce them now.”

Jason watches like the traditional wife, as his spouse comes out onto the platform in the black and white hound’s-tooth pantsuit that he ironed for her an hour ago, because there was no time to take it to the cleaner’s. He has gathered all his concerns and pin-pointed them on her appearance, her delivery, her message. He wants her to be perfect. It will erase the gross imperfection he has brought into their lives.

Mercy Alexander enters from the other side, dressed in a long green gown, her hair wrapped around the top of her head with silver chains. She looks cool. Unflappable.

Each candidate briefly states her message – you’ve heard them before. Brenda wants the world to sing in perfect harmony, and Mercy is for freedom above all. You can see why they’re at odds.

The first question: Is this election a referendum on Barack Obama’s presidency?

Brenda is adamant. “It most certainly is not. It’s about education and serving out constituency. It has nothing to do with the President. It’s about preparing our children for the world they’re going to live in. It’s about our future.”

Mercy counters with, “I can see why you’d want to distance yourself from the President, but it certainly is about him. It’s about what he’s doing to our future. This election is a place for people to express their views. The town halls and the tea parties weren’t enough. They have to say ‘we don’t like what you’re doing, and we won’t vote for your guys. Or girls.’”

A giggle of relief. Everyone is uncomfortable when the talk turns to the President. It’s so delicately personal, his relationship with his country.

The abortion issue comes up. It has to. This is an audience of liberal women. It’s one of their major concerns. It’s the friendliest crowd Brenda can find in this Republican district. She has no qualms about saying, “Abortion is between a woman and her doctor. A fetus is part of a woman until it is not, and she must have complete control over it, or it has control over her. My opponent, especially, can see that this is a matter of freedom. Women must have the right to control their own bodies or they most certainly are not free.”

Mercy’s answer is delayed, because someone from the audience is standing. Someone dressed in a white suit, someone whose long blonde hair is curling all over the back of it, which is what Jason sees from his vantage point on the sidelines.

His insides turn to ice. His face gets hot. He’s going to have a heart attack. A stroke.

“Mrs. Shapiro,” the lady in white says. “Suppose a conservative woman is knocked up by a liberal married man? Suppose she decides to have the baby? Do you think it’s her right, even if he doesn’t want her to have his child?”

Mrs. Shapiro turns as white as Danielle’s suit. Then she looks hard at her questioner, and gives the most recent answer she has given to herself. “Yes,” she says, “I do.”

“Thank you.” Danielle sits down.

The meeting went on and on but Jason couldn’t process any of it, and we’re here with him. He spent the rest of the evening staring at a back he once loved, regretting the ruination of his life.

But that was long-range. Closer, was the ride home with Brenda. Would she remember the question? She’d seen Danielle before, in the diner. Did Clyde tell her who she was? Would Clyde rat him out? Maybe. Maybe he really was interested in Brenda. Maybe the two were getting it on together. Maybe she knew everything. Maybe Clyde told her.

No. Clyde wouldn’t do that. Clyde was too much of a gentleman for that. He wouldn’t even speak to Brenda about sex. But Jason doesn’t know how he should act. He doesn’t want to compound his crime by lying now, but he doesn’t want to lose anymore than he already has.

He needn’t have worried. The campaign has hardened Brenda. She’s been meeting people. She knows that nothing is as simple as it seems. There’s always a surprise, the minute you dig in your spoon.

But she’s not going to let Jason off the hook any sooner than she has to. Let him squirm. As they’re walking to the car, she says, “Did you see that woman who asked about the married man? I’ve seen her before. When I was having lunch with Clyde. Beautiful, isn’t she? She’ll have a beautiful baby, but I pity the poor bastard who got her pregnant. He’s going to have two families. I wonder if his wife knows.”

Close, But No Cigar

You’ve had enough politics for a while, right? That’s what Mercy thought too. But the morning after the Nobama speech, there was a knock on her door. A knock on her actual door. Must be a neighbor. She dragged herself out of bed, slipped a striped tent over her head and went to answer.

It’s the gay couple upstairs. Two women, one black and one white, and the white one is crying. She’s an Alice-in-Wonderland look-alike. Mercy finds her quite attractive, though she would never get involved with such a needy female as Felicia. Donna, on the other hand, was just her type. Practical, self-sufficient, strong, and handy around the house. She gave Mercy a “nothing I can do about it” shrug of the eyebrow, and followed Felicia through the jungle, into the heart of Africa, where a sniffling Felicia folded her languid limbs and spiraled down to a stool. She looked up at Mercy with watered blue eyes, and said, “Mercy, how can you be so mean?”

“Mean?” What was this? The Livingstons weren’t political. They didn’t care one way or another about Obama. The Livingstons were truly post-racial. They thought it was a joke to make such a big deal out of outer qualities. Donna loved Felicia’s vanilla hue, and Felicia loved Donna’s dark chocolate.

“Mean,” she said, lowering her head so her hair hung down to the floor, then turning it left and right. “Mean, mean, mean, mean, mean.”

“She has her period,” Donna explained. “She wants to get married. It happens every month. Like her innards think she lost a child and has to start a new one, and getting married is the first step. She’s an old-fashioned girl.”

So old-fashioned that they called themselves the Livingstons. Felicia took Donna’s last name after they’d been living together for five years. Felicia came from an old-line family who no longer spoke to her. She claimed to despise their values, but those values were in at a very deep level.

Ms. and Mrs. Livingston issued invitations to their parties. But legally, Felicia had a choice of Ms. or Miss. What she wanted was Mrs. “I want my love to be just as shiny as everyone else’s,” she said.

Mercy sat down on a stool next to her. “You make it shiny,” she said, “not anybody else.”

Felicia jumped up. “Oh no, that’s not true. The word ‘lover’ has a totally different tone than ‘husband’, or ‘wife’. One is legitimate, the other isn’t. People don’t send anniversary cards to unmarried couples. They don’t think they’re real.”

“Felicia, why do you even want to have this thing that half the people who get it are so anxious to be rid of?” Mercy was clearly, sincerely puzzled. “Why aren’t you proud that you’re doing something different, because you want to, not because it’s expected of you? That’s the beauty of being gay. It’s your own choice, not society’s. Why do you want to get the government involved?”

Felicia laughed scornfully. “I want the same thing everybody else has. I want people to celebrate with me. I want to sign up for mutual belonging to a life-long companion. I want the world to witness our commitment.”

Donna came to life on the zebra rug. “Don’t you know what that’s for, honey? That’s so I won’t run out on you. Everyone is gathered together to have you point to me and say, ‘This is the person who’s is going to take care of me forever, and if she doesn’t, I want you to come after her with the courts.’ That’s what it’s for. Why do you want that? Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do. That has nothing to do with it. There’s something safe and secure about being married that has nothing to do with the person you’re married to. You’re part of the same deal everybody else is.”

She turned back to Mercy. “I want to have a family. Just like everybody else.”

Mercy shook her head. “You can’t. Not with you and your partner’s genes.”

Felicia’s straightened up on her stool. “Oh yes, I can. Not only can I, but I’ve got it all arranged. Donna’s brother is going to supply the sperm. We’re going to a clinic. They take his sperm and slip it into me, and if the timing’s right, and it should be, I’ll become pregnant with the closest thing I can to Donna’s DNA. And Donna says she doesn’t want to, but I’ve got a brother too. Two of them. We could have children with a mixture of both our genetics, and each of us can have our own biological child.”

Mercy was stunned. “That sounds about as close as you can get,” she said, “but each of you is the aunt of the other one’s child – that makes you sisters, not spouses. Close, but no cigar. And that is my point. There is no cigar between you. There must be one – no more, no less – one cigar in every marriage.”

She stood up, an almost angry look on her face. “There’s more than love involved in marriage. And there’s more than love involved in children. There are men and women in this world, and every child deserves an example of each in his parents. A child is entitled to see how both sexes live.”

Felicia gasped. “How can you say that? And you’re black! You know what it’s like to be discriminated against.”

“I know what it’s like to be discriminated against for being what I am. Not for not being what I’m not. Nobody is discriminating against you for being gay. They are simply saying you can’t marry your same-sex, excuse me, lover. They’re saying you can’t be what you are not. You are not a man and a woman. You are two women.”

“What the difference!” Felicia yelled.

Mercy’s lips pursed hard. Then she said, “Now that might be the problem, right there. You go find out. And now, ladies, I’ve had a tough night. I’m going back to bed. She indicated the way out of the heart, they took it, and Mercy went back to sleep.

In another part of the proverbial town, another drama is unfolding. Danielle has relented on meeting Jason at the apartment. There’s a new development and she’s feeling quite urgent.

I warn you, ladies and gentlemen, never let one worry confound your handling of another. No good can come of it. Keep them separate.

It’s a serious talk they’re about to have, but as the moment draws nearer, Danielle automatically seeks the comfort of body language. They’re sitting in the kitchen, her chair is very close to his, and when she leans over to make a point, her breasts precede her. Jason is tantalized, but he’s also afraid. He’s expecting bad news.

He doesn’t know the half of it.

Now she’s working her index finger around in his ear, as she whispers, “Come and take a little walk down the hall with me.” She stands, and he gets up, his ear following her finger. They walk down the hall with their arms around each other, like they did that very first time. So long ago, it seems.

Jason is melting. Danielle is trepidacious. She has a big surprise for him. She doesn’t know how he’s going to take it. Two big surprises. One is worse than the other. She’s just not quite sure which one.

As they are about to pass a door that is always closed when he’s there, Danielle halts and Jason almost falls forward.

“Here we are,” she says, and very slowly opens the door. It discloses a red and blue room. Red walls, blue bedspread. A desk, book shelves, an aquarium, a globe, a baseball glove, Legos… a kid’s room. Yeah, so whaaaaat? He can’t ask it. He can’t form the question.

“Timmy’s room. My son.”

Thunder booms in his head. Cymbals crash. Noise to take away what’s just been put on the table. But no, he can see it’s true. The scribbled up math problems come into view. The jacket tossed hap-hazardly in the corner, the precision line-up of tiny cars. It’s a kid’s room, all right. A boy’s. What’s that she said? Her son’s?

Can you imagine the force with which this son enters Jason’s universe? Crashes into his life? He’s got no face yet, no personality. A creature that came out of the place that Jason’s been going into. Jason feels crowded.

He doesn’t think he even wants to hear about this boy. He pulls away from Danielle, but she can’t let him go before they get to part two. So she comes after him. “What’s the matter?” she asks. “Does that make me somebody different?”

Is that a guffaw, we hear, Jason?

He says, “It sure does. It makes you somebody’s mother.”

“So’s your wife,” she counters, trying to hold him with argument.

“Yes, but Brenda’s the mother of my children, not somebody else’s.”

Uh-uh, Jason. You just slipped. Big time.

Danielle’s eyes narrow. “Brenda?” she asks. “As in Brenda Shapiro? That baby-killer who’s running for congress? That’s your WIFE? The woman in the diner with Clyde?”

He feels like Jim Morrison in the Doors movie when his wife points to his girlfriend and says, “You’re sticking your dick into that?” He feels the sheepish look on Morrison’s face, on his own.

“Yeah,” he half-laughs with Morrison.

And receives for it a hard, insulting slap across his face.

So folks… who do you think had the worst secret? Who told more of a lie?

They stand there glaring at each other. Then, with no sympathy for his wounded brain and smarting face, Danielle tells him, “I haven’t had my period in two months.”

Fair and Balanced

You know, folks, people think I’m a partisan because I’m always talking about the Democrats. Dad tells me I’ve got to give the other side some representation.

Even you can see that Mercy can’t take this lying down. The historic president, the post-racial president, has gone on the stump for her opponent. She has to fight back, and I’m going to let her do it.

Mercy is moving around her bedroom – her private quarters, and a surprisingly bare affair. Quite masculine. There’s a big bed (she’s a big girl) and a long closet that she built, with the help of a wood-carver downstairs, to hold her dresses. And a few mirrors. Being Mercy Alexander takes a lot of changes. She’s dressing for her fundraiser in the ballroom of the Marriott Hotel.

She doesn’t like this speech she’s about to give, but she thinks it has to be done.

She hates to go after a brother, but if he won’t recognize the tie, she can’t either. All’s fair in love and war, and he declared war – wrong ideas, indeed. Mercy likes Obama. He’s a cute kid. But politically, he’s a child of Chicago. He was nurtured by its system. He drank its “mother’s milk.”

He looks at the world through the eyes of its deprived. That makes him angry, and anger makes you blind. Blind to cause and effect. Blind to complex solutions. Blind to morality and ethics.

It’s what made him turn his head when white voters were threatened at the polls by black heavies. He needed votes in order to right a great wrong. The end justified the means.

A short ride in Mercy’s hired limo. She doesn’t want to drive, and she doesn’t want company.

They have, mercifully, pulled up to the back entrance of the ballroom, so she can steal inside without talking to any well-wishers or skeptics, and not get her make-up mussed by fans trying to touch her.

That is the reception Mercy Alexander got before she was a candidate for congress. And it’s the reception she still gets. But now she’s tired – from time spent thinking.

She steps out into the empty inner courtyard. The orange and blue diagonal stripes she’s wrapped in, light up the space. Her hair is a fat spiraled snake coiled into a squat cone on top of her head. The driver does not presume to escort the lady to the door. Mercy Alexander looks like she can take care of herself.

She’s exactly on time, and walks through the door, on to the stage. The people stand and applaud. Mercy is a pro; she can count an audience. There are three hundred in the ballroom.

They are there for her, not for the Republican Party. She is, therefore, entitled to give them her opinions, and they are entitled to hear them.

She bows the top of the snake to the audience, and as she remains in that position, they slowly quiet down and take their seats.

She begins in a low, deep voice.

“I hate to be bitchy about it, but I have some bones to pick with our President.”

A few isolated titters around the room.

“Some people say our President is a Chicago thug. Now I don’t buy that. But this is a very impressionable young man. He’s falling for Putin’s act as hard as our guy who looked into his soul.

“This is an impressionable young man who has some very questionable friends and mentors. You know two of them. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a racist, and Bill Ayres, a domestic terrorist.

“You see the Reverend Wright when Mr. Obama points his finger at a white policeman protecting a black professor’s house, and uses it to accuse white America of prejudice.

“You see Bill Ayres in the ferocious attempt to kill the private sector and relegate all its powers to the government. You see him in the President’s heavy-handed redistribution of wealth and now health. Nobody can have more than anybody else. This does not engender initiative. The experiment has been tried many times and has always failed.

“I’ll tell you what, Mr. President. We’re all going to have less, including the poor people, because you’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg. You’re killing the impetus to better oneself by one’s own acts. You’re telling people to sit on their asses and wait for the rich people to pay their taxes. But in a very short time, there won’t be any rich people. (Except in congress. And a lot of them don’t pay their taxes.)

“Tyranny begins when someone has an idea that he thinks is so good that it excuses the use of force. That’s what’s happened with the health care idea. The plan won’t work unless everyone is forced to participate. An American may choose to be homeless or hungry but he’s going to jail if he doesn’t want to participate in a government approved health plan.

“I may need insurance to drive a car, but I don’t have to drive a car. And they can tax booze and cigarettes but I don’t have to indulge. However, to tax me for not getting health coverage is a tax on life itself. It’s not pay-to-play; it’s pay-to-stay.

“For the first time in America’s history the government is saying we’re slaves – free to sing and dance, but after the cotton’s been picked. Well suppose I don’t want to pick cotton. I may just not want to plug into someplace official to get money to stay out of jail. Forcing me to do so is involuntary servitude, and I think the Constitution has something to say about that.

“And you know that the evil of plantation life wasn’t just the hard work, they took your children. Well you’re taking the children, too. What was it you said? ‘Cradle to career.’ What happened to Mom and Dad? Oh, a lot of them aren’t too good at the job. It’s much better to have them working to pay their taxes. Daycare, school and more school will do a much better job than most parents.

“With all due respect for your office, I submit, President Obama, that you are hurting America. You are hopping all over the globe promoting yourself and denigrating (it’s a real word, look it up) our country instead of promoting it. But what’s worse, you’re promoting dictatorships. Didn’t I hear you tell Putin that the US would not be interfering in the internal affairs of other countries? Then why are you doing everything you can to crush the people of Honduras who are trying to obey their constitution and remain in control of their government? Why are you a friend of Hugo Chavez?

“I’ll tell you why. You’ve joined the dictator’s club. Uh-huh. It happens to many leaders of the revolution. They become dictators themselves. Instead of letting Congress run the country – Congress, which corrupt as it may be, is still elected by the people – you’re appointing czars, who have total power over their domains.

“My worthy opponent is married to a Jew. She can’t speak up for him, but I can. What are you doing, Man? Squeezing Israel into a corner. Giving credence to holocaust deniers. Supporting the Hamas and Hezbollah rockets and suicide bombers as the moral equivalent of a nation’s defending itself. Israel is our only ally with balls, and you’re trying to cut them off.

“You’re a little too forgiving of Muslims. Christians don’t call for world domination. Jews just want to be left alone. But Muslims are calling for the extinction of a race, and you, Barack, are listening to them.

“You’re taking over, Mr. President, and that’s not the American way. Our children and grandchildren will not know what freedom is.

“America is great because we’re a democracy, and by some magic, the vision of the many is better than the vision of a few. That’s the downfall of top-down solutions like yours. The bureaucracy provides diminished services that cost more with no hope of things ever getting better. This is good for management or enslavement; when by chance it serves the people it succeeds only for a very short time.

Your multi-trillion-dollar Ponzi schemes dwarf Madoff’s. He only conned gullible people to pay off his investors. You’re forcing everyone in the country to support your favored friends – and that’s everyone including the as yet unborn and their children.

“This congressional election is not your typical race between a Democrat and a Republican. It is a referendum on Barack Obama, on his presidency, and on what we think of what he’s done to America.

“Tell your friends, your family, and your co-workers to say no to the takeover of America. Let’s let the world hear us tell this administration: ‘No you can’t!’”

With a deep bow, the snake’s tail protruding from the tip of the conical coil, Mercy holds out her arms, creating a large blue and orange striped rectangle, then drops them back to her body and strolls off-stage. Now the entertainment will begin, the food will come down the rows of tables, and the alcohol will flow.

And who is that we see, sitting at a table surrounded by members of the other party? Well if it isn’t Adele, who has volunteered to come and hear what the opposition has to say for itself.

And she is furious! Mercy Alexander is nothing but a Republican puppet, sent out to discredit Obama. They think they can get away with it because she’s black. Well she’ll show them, Brenda Shapiro has a black spokesperson too, and she’s it. Next time there’s a public appearance, she’s going to be ready to defend her team.

Outside, the limo slips away. In fifteen minutes, the dashiki will be back in the closet, and Mercy will be asleep in the big bed, emotionally exhausted from the strain of having to fight for her country and finding an African in her sights.

POTUS

The town feels like the center of the world. The fourth estate is extracting local color in the hopes that it will air tomorrow, the big day. Plenty has been planned by the town fathers, but that’s going to be boring. Speeches by penny-ante politicians, a marching band gala from the courthouse to the school. Two local bands – one made up of fourteen-year-olds, called TimeDrive, and the other, a sad group called The Stolen Moments – a bunch of oldies playing oldies.

Venders are not allowed on the lawn, which will have to be replaced anyway, but they line the sidewalks on both sides of the street and on the two side streets flanking the school, its parking lot and its sports fields. There’s a brisk business run mostly by kids, between the blankets to the food and drink.

It’s a sedentary picnic. Quite modern. It’s no mean feat to sit on your behind for two or three days, and some of these people are accomplishing just that. Only the strong, the committed, and those with sleeping bags stay overnight – it’s unusually cold for the season.

Our candidate is not here. She will be presenting the President. She is home writing her one minute introduction of a person who needs no introduction. She will be among the guests of honor.

But Sheba has begged and pleaded not to be left out of the biggest event in her lifetime, which includes seeing the lawn-sitters. She has permission to spend the afternoon at the school, and Jason drives her down there, where she meets her friends.

And very shortly leaves them for some other friends. Sheba has no truck with the conservative snobs she goes to school with. Socially, she leads another life entirely. It’s conducted solely on her cell phone, and her parents know nothing about it.

She has invited Rosalind and Rowena, her cyber-buddies, to come down and see the show. An invitation their parents urged them to accept – lucky kids, seeing History. Sheba knows the school and has sent maps with a meeting place. Everything comes off as planned. And now the part of the plan the parents were told nothing about, begins to unfold.

The three girls slowly wend their way to a spot three quarters up the sloping lawn, under the direct middle of the broad stairway leading to the first floor entrance of the school.

Phoenix Wagman is there. Next to him is someone you’ve met before, but you may not recognize. He’s grown a scruffy beard since he was Sheba’s escort to the WondeRock concert. Trying to look a bit older. He’s wearing the suit you saw on the website. Looks quite out of place in this crowd of campers, but he’s hoping to make an appearance again.

It’s Phil. Sitting on an attaché case. When the girls arrive, he opens the case and takes out some green banners that unfold between sticks on each end. In big white letters they say “Think Green” and, smaller, on a second line “Legalize Grass”. Sheba, Rosalind and the Professor each take one to wave and a few more to give away.

Brenda’s watching the local station, which is coming live from the school lawn. She sees a shot of a banner and in the distance, she sees more banners. And there, far enough away so only her mother can recognize her, is Sheba Shapiro, the Democratic candidate’s daughter, one of the banners held high overhead, a stick in each outstretched hand, turning this way and that, for all to see.

Sunday night the Shapiro family watched network news together to see if there was any pre-Obama coverage, and saw, filling the screen, Sheba in her red and blue plaid skirt, arms up in the air, leading the cheer for marijuana.

Even though Brenda thought she was the only one who had noticed, some sharp editor had found her daughter. Sheba’s face is, once again, all over the country. Her family says nothing to her. Not one single word. Mom hardly can, Dad doesn’t want to, and Zeke has seen his sister on television before.

Phoenix told his parents he had no idea what Sheba was doing – he had spent the whole time policing dog wastes and picking up plastic beverage containers. Phil never did get his interview. He wasn’t as interesting as Sheba. But he did get his message out.

Then it was Monday morning. Columbus Day. Heart-in-throat day. He’s really going to be here. Everyone is too nervous to speak at breakfast. Brenda drives to school in her midget Smart Car. The rest of the family takes the real one.

She’s going in the back door, past the Secret Service, into the room through which Obama will pass to come out the front doors of the school. The lawn has been cordoned off, everyone on it screened by the men in suits. Phoenix Wagman, son of the principal, Mitchell Wagman, remains. Cousin Phil and his attaché case are gone. Yesterday was the Peoples’ Picnic. Today, anyone who can’t prove his authenticity is thrown off the lot.

The black SUVs approach. Full stop, an opened door and Obama is whisked into the building through a prettied-up janitorial passageway over the newly polished floors, past the walls with new paint smell, out over a red carpet into the school proper, where he meets, in person, the Democratic candidate for congress.

There she is, in her black skirt and white blouse, with a heavy necklace of African wooden beads, and her highest heels, because indeed, the President is very tall. She looks way, way up into the gleaming teeth and twinkling eyes, and is instantly at ease. He’s looking at her as though they’re sharing a joke.

His long arm reaches out forcefully. His hand is in front of her. She takes it. She is touching Barack Obama, not only the President of the United States, but possibly the most handsome man she has ever seen. It’s more than handsome. It’s like stepping into a movie. He’s bigger than life. His smile is whiter. He’s vibrant. His grin is even more sincere. He looks younger. More full of life than he does on TV.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Shapiro,” he says. “People are our most important product, and you’re the one who makes the people. I’m lucky to have you on my team, and I’m going to tell these people that.” All through it he is holding onto her hand, looking into her eyes as if they’re alone in the room.

The timing is precise. He turns, with his phalanx of men. As he walks away, Brenda sees the smile fade, and a weariness appear in the musculature of his face.

He has a five minute rest in a secure room.

Show time. Brenda walks out onto the landing at the top of the school steps. She stands there while the buzz sweeps the crowd on the lawn.

“Hello, everybody,” she says. “It is my great pleasure to present the President of the United States of America.”

What happened to her speech? It left her, Ladies and Gentlemen, the President took it away. Charmed her right out of her words.

He comes out onto the marble stage the way he used to on Leno, a slight running in his step, with a wave and a great big smile.

“Hi Guys. I told everybody I was taking the weekend off to spend it with family, and here I am. At a school. I feel at home in schools – I’ve attended so many of them – so I’m going to treat you like family, and complain a little.”

Nervous laughter tip-toes around the audience.

“Would you believe that people have been making fun of me for winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Saturday Night Live said I got it for not being George Bush. Rush Limbaugh said I got it to tie my hands as commander-in-chief. But I’ll tell you why I got it.

“I got the peace prize because I know that we can only have peace if we have understanding.

“Understanding starts in the schools, so let me tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a School Surge headed by my Secretary of Education.”

He pantomimes a left-handed, behind-the-back pass in the direction where we now notice several congressmen are seated. You met some of them at Brenda’s party. Alongside them a tall man stands up, receives the imaginary pass, and pantomimes a jump shot. It’s Arne Duncan, Obama’s six-foot-five Chicago basketball buddy.

“I’m proud to introduce Arne Duncan.

“And… the reason that I’m here… Brenda Shapiro. Stand up, Brenda… When you send Brenda Shapiro to Washington as your next representative, she’ll have Arne’s ear and support.”

A long pause as he looks over the heads of the audience.

“In the spirit of bipartisanship, let me introduce (he points out to the lawn) Mercy Alexander, the worthy Republican candidate. A fine woman with lots of ideas… unfortunately, most of them wrong.”

The crowd laughs at the good-natured jibe. Mercy stands from, and holds aloft, a tiny three-legged African sitting-stool.

Obama gets serious again.

“You know, in spite of the fact that we have the finest and most dedicated teachers in the world, and we address so much of our nation’s resources to the education of our children, we constantly rank low by world standards. Somehow, we’re not getting the job done.

“Some people want to have a lottery, hand out a few vouchers, and then say mission accomplished. But taking care of the few is no way to solve America’s problems. This administration will never abandon the public schools.

“What we’re going to do is stop the talking and start the doing. The congress and the parties, the state governments, the teachers, and the parents are going to come together now to reshape our nation’s education.”

His voice lets them know this is the last line. They begin to applaud. And applaud. And applaud. He waves to the crowd, shakes hands with each of the congressmen, and kisses that cute congresswoman, Nicole Evans. Then he turns his back on the audience and disappears into the school.

By the way folks, every bit of that speech – “family”, the basketball assist, and the location of Mercy Alexander – was there on the teleprompter. Barack’s people are working every minute to bring you the greatest show on Earth.

Hark Hark The Dogs Do Bark

It hadn’t taken Brenda long to realize that she narrowly missed being not Mrs. Edwards, but John himself, running down the back stairs of a hotel, for God’s sake, and finding the media at the bottom. Having to duck through basement doorways to ditch them. That could have been her.

What in the world had she been thinking?

She could no longer go to Jason with any complaint about infidelity, without disclosing her own, and even though it wasn’t up to Jason’s standards, to Brenda it was as good as full-fledged adultery. The man had been in her bed. Their bed. She barely knew him. She did not want to think about it. Just let it go away. And with it, had to go the whole damn diner episode.

Jason thinks he got away free. He was so relieved he swore to himself that from now on he’d be a devoted husband and father. He almost got caught! Thank God they didn’t see him. (It’s in times like this that God enters most lives, and in just this manner.)

At home, both parties have been courtly, solicitous, and anxious to please. Two guilty people.

The kids are enjoying it. They blab about their day and both parents listen. They watch all the TV they want. Dinner’s always good – Dad’s cooking again. The Shapiros seem to have settled down into a picture of the ideal nuclear family.

On Friday morning, Nat the internationalist, calls Brenda at 6:45, breathless with the news that Obama has won the Peace Prize. For a second she resents it, on Hillary’s behalf, but then she realizes that this is good for her own campaign. Some of the glory could rub off on her.

She goes into school for her thrice-weekly meeting in the teacher’s lounge, with her sub, the horse-faced Elenora. Ms. Stapleton gushes about her boss, Mr. Wagman, the finest principal on earth, and enviously tells Brenda that the man has requested her to come immediately to his office.

Immediately? Why immediately? Why does he want her to skip the reason she is ostensibly here? Something’s wrong. He’s found out. Someone saw them. Or Clyde told somebody, and word got out somehow.

She’s been called to the Principal’s office, and all that implies to a little child is working on her poor, befuddled brain. Guilt will do that. It makes a person paranoid. For good reason.

She walks down the hall like a delinquent seven-year-old, trying to think of what to say to the man behind the big desk. She knocks on the door and is ushered in by a grinning secretary. A secretary with a secret. Her secret. He told her!

Wagman’s inner door opens. Mitchell stands in the doorway, also with a grin. These people are relishing her upcoming inquisition. He beckons impatiently with both hands.

She goes to the door. He pulls her into the room, closes it, and takes her completely into his big, bear hug, like he did at the Orange Duck, so long ago.

She can’t breathe. He’s crushing her rib cage.

“He’s coming!” he whispers hoarsely into her hair. “He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s coming!”

Who? Jason? Clyde? What the hell is this? What are they doing to her?

She doesn’t want to give anything away. She’s quickly developing a criminal cunning.

“Who?” she manages to croak into his chest.

Wagman lets her go, holds her at arm’s length and looks fondly down into her eyes,

“HE,” he says. “HE’s coming, and it’s all because of you.”

What a sadistic bastard, Brenda thinks. A mean, sadistic bastard, taking such pleasure, such joy in confronting her. He’s supposed to be on her side, not trying to bring her down. How can he be so happy? It’s his campaign, too. He must have lost his mind.

Wagman has turned around and is walking back to his desk. “There are a million things to do. We’ve got to get this building cleaned up. I’ve started. Two companies are coming in over the weekend – one to do the windows, and another to do the floors. Have you seen what these floors look like? The grime must be from the original occupants on down.

“And you and Adele have to get together to write a speech. There might not be time to give it – I don’t know what he wants – but you’ve got to be prepared.”

What’s he going to do? Hold a party to denounce her? She’s supposed to write a speech to defend herself, and then maybe they won’t even let her do that? And what does Adele have to do with it?

“We have until Monday. The Secret Service will be here at the end of school today, to go over the building and the route from the airport. Some people from the White House staff are…”

White House staff? Surely it’s not such big news! After all, she isn’t Edwards! She isn’t running for President. Did he say Secret Service?

Slowly, her world turns. Secret Service. White House. HE.

“Who,” she asks, “is HE?” She must hear the name from his lips.

Wagman takes a step back and peers down into her face, replaying their “conversation.” Then he giggles maniacally, grabs her in the bone-crushing hug again and spins around. When he puts her down, she’s dizzy, and he’s shouting, “Obama! Barack Obama! The President of the United States! Is coming here!”

“Ohmigod!” she says.

He puts his fingers to his lips. Shhhh. Shhhh. Only the three of us know. He points to the door indicating his secretary. “She took the phone call. Then I talked to someone – a David – I don’t know which one.”

At last, he collapsed in the chair behind his desk. She sat down in front. He leaned over looking into her eyes. “It’s because you’re the Education candidate. My guess is he wants to get back on track, start talking about what really matters. Make them forget the Olympics fiasco.” He leans back in his seat, his face full of dreams. “Now he’s got the Peace Prize. Things will swing back in our direction. We’ve got a chance again! Educate for Peace!” he adds exuberantly.

Brenda is having a tough time morphing from the juvenile delinquent to the heroine. She’s not John Edwards. She’s Joan of Arc. The Education Warrior.

By Saturday morning the school will be secured. Until then they’ve been asked not to inform the public. That includes members of their own family. People will wonder when they see the black suits crawling all over the place, but nobody will be sure. The lines won’t start forming until Saturday morning, when they can expect some people to set up camp in front of the building, waiting for Obama to arrive.

The campers used to come the night before. But on a nice weekend like this, encouraged by the media, they’ll be here. They’ll bring their kids. Kids will come on their own.

We won’t speak of the unspeakable delight with which Mitchell and Brenda went home to their families after their day of immense secret-keeping. Every word was measured. Every word was kind. They felt godly, beneficent, raised up, sitting at his right hand, immortalized. Full of compassion for those not they.

And in the morning… Saturday morning… this morning… it’s Christmas. Even at the Shapiros’. Brenda gathers her clan before her at the proverbial kitchen table. She’s told them she has an announcement to make.

Now it’s Jason’s turn to squirm. Did she see him after all? Has this all been a charade? Is she about to announce she’s divorcing him?

“I have a big surprise for you,” she says.

Still possible it’s the divorce.

“Someone is coming to visit.”

Oh, no. Not her parents. Not now. Not with the campaign going, and Danielle up in the air…

“Barack Obama is coming to my school,” she squeals, unable to contain her glee.

All over town the same announcement is being made. Mitchell wakes Nina the minute his eyes open and it’s tomorrow and okay to tell. At first she doesn’t believe him. She’s used to outrageous lies. But he starts to fill in the details, and now it’s real. Then come the phone calls from satellite radio, from newspapers, from CBS, for God’s sake!

Brenda’s phone, too, is ringing. It’s Mary Steele, who begs to be the first with a statement from the Education candidate.

Brenda has to think fast. “We are thrilled that the President is coming to our school. But we mustn’t let him do all the talking. We know what we want, and if he asks us we’ll tell him. We want every child to have what his kids have. And we don’t want them to have to go outside the public schools to get it. We want schools all over America to do their jobs. Now. And we want him to give them the money to do it. If he can find it for the corporations, he can find it for the schools.”

Rather a rough welcome for Barack. And don’t think the White House staff members who are coming down today won’t buy that paper to see what the locals are saying.

The large lawn in front of the sprawling three-story brick school fills up with blankets and teen-agers, then families with little kids. How are these people going to stay for two days? They’ve got runners bringing them food and drink, going home for sweaters if they need them, taking away sick children. Flu season has started in the schools.

The Board of Education meets at 10 o’clock in the morning, an emergency meeting at which they decide this is the time to take out those old bushes and put in new ones, all along the front of the school. They’re proud of their building. There’s a big clock on top of the three stories, and the rumor, passed down year after year is that given the choice, a former Board decided that the clock would be a better project to spend money on than a swimming pool.

Those camping closest to the building are dislodged by the huge backhoes and the trucks that come bearing the new shrubs. But it gives the picnic a focus, and the “gardeners” are cheered on, questioned, fed, and photographed by the crowd.

One of those dislodged persons is Phoenix Wagman, searching for a new identity. He’s come to see Barack, and to see what he can make of the situation for his own, personal use.