15

Thursday, January 21, 2021, 3:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time

The President awoke long before his staff, as usual, despite the late night of Inaugural Ball events. He was not sure, but he thought he had had the same recurring dream again that he had started having several months before, when he had come down with the virus, of the strange man outside the gate.

The details seemed to fall away as he tried to remember them, but he was sure they were the same as always. He recalled Tuesday night’s version vividly.

***

Sunset… I was walking out of the building, toward the park to the north. The iron gates opened in front of me, without anyone there to move them. No guards with me that time… I don’t need them. No police clearing the space in front of me. No clouds of tear gas; no garbage on the ground from any disgusting protesters; there was no graffiti on the walls or statues.

Then I was walking toward the yellow church at the far right corner of the square. It wasn’t boarded up anymore. The sky got darker…. Then the big doors were opening slowly again at the end of the park, sideways to me… Light, golden light, shining out across the path from the inside of the church. Getting closer…still pretty far away… Then the man came walking slowly out of the church again… heturned toward me… He looked old, he had the same long white beard as always… and he had some kind of long stick in his right hand. He was in a gray-white robe. He turned to me, as I walked toward him; his eyes were… they were staring through me… He was raising both hands, like he wanted me to come to him.

Then it was like I was floating toward him, like my feet weren’t even on the ground…. And then everything not in the light from the church door and around the bearded guy got dark… But I saw hundreds of people on both sides of me, like they were there to see me meet this guy… Then he dropped his hands slow and pointed at me with his left hand while I floated floated floated towards him…

He had sensed the surrounding crowd beginning to chant, lowly at first, then more loudly and faster. With each beat, he felt himself coming closer and closer to the bearded figure. The crowd was pointing at him as well now.

“You. You. You. You.”

I’m almost up to the church now…

“You. You. You. You…”

At this point, Tuesday night, he had been awakened abruptly by Carver, his annoyingly unflappable African-American butler, asking if he needed anything.

He realized he must have shouted in his sleep, and the thought that he had betrayed some weakness annoyed him. But the dream still held him, and as Carver withdrew and closed the door, he had a deep sense that the man in the white beard was important, and he needed to find him.

***

Almost two days later, he still felt deeply moved by the dream, and he was certain that the bearded man was important. But this past night, Wednesday night, he must not have shouted, and no one had opened the door, and he had slept afterwards, and that sleep had blunted the effect of the dream. His eyes remained closed as he blearily came to consciousness. He felt a dull pain in his abdomen, radiating toward his back. He rolled over and the pain subsided a bit.

Eyes still closed, he instinctively reached out in the king-sized bed. In the first days of his administration, he had still expected to find his latest wife in bed beside him; those days were long gone, since her effective move back home with his youngest son, ostensibly to protect him (the President, not his son) from contagion – well, that didn’t work, he thought. But last night she had attended the Inaugural Balls with him, standing stiffly by his side, a terrified look breaking through from time to time, even holding hands with him once or twice, and of course dancing on the three stages.

No kissing, however. Those days were over. He did not miss it. He had never really liked kissing, with any woman; he had bragged about kissing anyone he wanted, but that was about power, about enforcing his will, not romance. That was one upside of the virus pandemic: kissing could be avoided and no excuse needed to be made.

In truth, he did not mind his wife’s absence, or his son’s. Ever since the 2016 election, after which she had suddenly been made humiliatingly aware of one of his tawdrier assignations, she had been unpleasant to have around, much as his previous wives had been before he divorced them.

As recompense, he had intervened to ensure that her immigrant parents were granted citizenship on an expedited basis usually only granted to people with unique and useful skill sets, such as nuclear physicists, infectious disease experts, and Cuban baseball pitchers.

This occurred, of course, during a time when other immigrants with far more desperate reasons to want to become legal residents were being thrown into cages and separated from their families, before being flung out of airplanes back into the very dangerous places they had fled. The thought of those dirty, frightened people being humiliated and punished for daring to pollute his country made him smile. As did the memory of the mumbled thanks expressed by his wife’s parents when they had been granted what the others would never have.

The humbling of his Eastern European father-in-law, a man about his age, had been particularly enjoyable. The downcast eyes, the complete repression of his natural fatherly rage, his complete helplessness. Giving them citizenship, allowing them into his country, was a small price to pay for that lovely moment. His mother-in-law had almost spoiled it with a look of hatred he had caught in the mirrored wall as he was turning to leave. Women. They always ruined everything. But even that was enjoyable, in a way. She couldn’t dare say what she really thought of him. He had the power.

In return for not going to the papers with her true and natural feelings of disgust and grievance, the First Lady was allowed to withdraw from all but the most obviously necessary First Lady duties. The private White House jet had whisked her and her son away shortly after midnight to their distant penthouse apartment. Some day he would get them out of that penthouse and take it over again for himself. He had built it, after all. It was his. He would exile them to some lesser castle when the opportunity arose.

But it was all good, he thought. He had never liked having wives or children around. As infants they seemed to do little other than to spew various unpleasant toxic substances and emit piercing cries. Later, they specialized in spreading diseases they got from their schoolmates or cousins, trying to monopolize parental attention, and generally being a pain in the ass. And, of course, when they got older, the boys especially seemed determined to make him look like a schmuck, getting disgusting lowlife girls into trouble and then coming to him babbling and crying so he could clean their messes up.

Even now, when they were allegedly in charge of his business empire, he spent far too much time cleaning up their messes. His eyes narrowed as he thought of the eldest. He never should have given him his own name. He could sense the younger man’s urgency to replace him. He had had a book ghost-written, almost openly claiming the political mantle from his father. The President sneered as he recalled the several times the younger man had Tooted messages seeming to imply that now that “the old man” had won his last possible election, he, Junior, stood ready to replace him while keeping the same name in the White House.

He would enjoy seeing his face when he told him that he would have to wait, because he had no intention of stepping down in 2025. Roosevelt got elected four times. He would do the same. The Constitution could be changed, the Senate Majority Leader had assured him. And his previous doctor had told the entire world that he could live to 200. Junior could wait. And so could his simpering stiff of a Vice President, who obviously thought he was putting in his time in order to take his place next in line. He might have to replace that mope on the ballot next time around.

Of his second son, the less said, the better. He was tall. That was about it. If Junior was an arrogant but moronic shadow of his old man, he thought, Number Two was a shadow of Junior. Junior had all of his old man’s aggressiveness and none of the talent. Number Two was a doofus vainly aping the exertions of his older brother. He would keep his eye on him; but he posed a lesser threat to his old man.

His elder daughter was different, of course. She was perhaps the only person in the world toward whom he had anything approaching tender feelings. While she was growing up, she had given him unqualified adoration, something no one else in his life had ever done. Maybe if he had been around for her puking-and-crapping infancy or her terrible twos, he would feel as little connection to her as he felt toward his other offspring – hell, toward anyone else in the world, now that he thought about it. But thanks to his first divorce, he had missed out on those awful developmental years, and as she reached her late teens, suddenly she had blossomed, and there she was – a beautiful ornament to his empire.

She was everything he was not – smooth, polished, welcomed into the highest social circles. He had not liked it when she married. That she had married a Jewish boy created conflicts within him that he would never resolve. Deep inside, he felt that such a marriage, to what he considered an alien species, was no marriage at all. So, in his mind, he still had her to himself. Her affections toward him had never waned. His son-in-law he saw as a strategic political and financial asset, nothing more. He had not resolved his attitude toward his grandchildren. For the sake of his daughter, he showed them an external affection; but deep down he regarded them as Other, and avoided touching them.

In this, they were not unlike all other human beings, whom he regarded above all as vehicles for germs, to be physically shunned. He never shook hands if he could help it; when he was absolutely forced to, he made sure to have disinfecting gel at hand, and he turned the handshake into an attempt to assert dominance. He jerked the other man (it was almost always a man) toward him violently with a sharp horizontal pulling motion. Most men, even the strong ones, did not expect this, so they were pulled off balance, which made them look dumb. Making any other people who entered his orbit look dumb and ill-at-ease was very important to him.

His daughter was the sole exception to this. She was smart enough to create and maintain her own brand, one that complemented and enhanced, but never crowded or competed with, his own. And she had never made the slightest trouble for him. No messes to clean up. If she had been a boy, she might have been the closest thing he could ever have had to a welcomed heir-apparent.

But there never would be a welcomed heir. None of his children would replace him. No one else would replace him, either. He was staying.

The Inauguration and the accompanying Balls had, of course, fallen into the category of required First Lady duties; but after standing behind him with a waxen smile at the swearing-in, and dancing woodenly with him at three balls, surrounded by young people clapping, some of them extending their right arms toward them in a way that made her very uncomfortable as an Eastern European, she had shrunk away from him, ostentatiously cleansed her hands with the gel that aides always carried nearby for her husband, gone backstage, reunited with her son, and headed for the armored limousine that had been instructed to take them to a nearby Joint Base for her escape flight.

Fine by me, he thought, though her coldness still rankled. He hated anything that did not instantly yield to his every desire. She had some time ago fallen into that category, though he had to admit his desires had for some time had less and less to do with her. He wondered whether it was age or his job that accounted for this. It couldn’t be the job – he had never had an easier job in his life. But it couldn’t be age either – his doctor had assured him he could have been mistaken for a man twenty or thirty years younger, simply by reading his chart. Maybe it was the Fake News that had caused him to be less concerned with women. And had caused the dull ache in his midsection.

Did she look older last night, he thought? Has the virus turned her into an old lady? He shivered at the threat to his image.

The lights were still off. He reached for his phone before opening his eyes. He opened the Washington Tribune site and prepared for his first lovely pre-dawn rage jolt. The headline did not fail to satisfy.

INAUGURAL CROWDS OUTNUMBERED BY PROTESTERS

He sat up in bed, a thrilling surge of self-pity radiating through his body. He clicked on the story and began to read.

“…The President’s second inauguration lagged even his first inauguration’s lackluster attendance, relative to those of his immediate predecessor, who broke all records…”

A strange, guttural cry arose from deep inside his body and broke from his lips. At this, the door opened and Carver, who was a fixture of the White House through seven presidents, entered.

“Would you like your breakfast served now, Mr. President?”

The President’s eyes narrowed at this intrusion, and he waved him off. “Coffee,” he muttered.

“I can bring the papers in for you if you wish.”

The President was about to reject this suggestion harshly, but something made him reconsider. On the one hand, he wished to show disapproval of the intrusion. He wished he could fire this long-serving staff member who possessed several qualities – blackness, mainly, he could admit to himself alone – that distressed him. Nothing represented “the Deep State” to him more than this suspiciously reserved and smooth elderly black man who seemed to appear whenever he awoke or felt need of anything.

On the other hand, nothing, aside from his required daily full pot of coffee, got his “morning routine,” as he called it, going better than reading about a series of unwarranted attacks upon his person by the elitist press. Now, imagining the delicious pile of Fake News sitting on the wheeled Presidential Toilet Media Table, one of his innovations, his insides quivered palpably.

“All right, Carver,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Put ’em in the usual place. But disinfect your hands where I can see you do it.”

“Certainly, Mr. President,” the aide replied, squirting gel onto his hands from the holster all White House personnel now wore, on Presidential orders. “But you can call me Leon, sir.”

This butler was constantly presenting him with the kind of unappetizing choices that he liked to present to his own enemies. It felt strange calling him by his last name. But if he called the man “Leon,” it would be what his hated predecessor had called him. He wondered if they ever met and talked about him. Subconsciously he imagined all black people as acquainted, and meeting regularly at some southern-style juke joint, laughing about the white people they served. He would never call this man the same thing his predecessor had.

Impossibly quickly, Carver returned with an armful of newspapers. He loaded the bathroom tray, wheeled it into the Presidential Bathroom, came back out, and waited quietly for direction.

“That’ll be all.”

“Very good, sir.” Leon exited as quickly and silently as he had entered.

The President picked up his phone again to get a preview of what might await him in the now gold-appointed private bathroom. The headlines were like seismic soundings for his internal organs: “HISTORIC INAUGURATION OF 269-269 PRESIDENT PROCEEDS DESPITE LEGAL CHALLENGES.” “SECOND INAUGURAL SPEECH MET WITH JEERS, SOME VIOLENCE.” “PRESIDENT CALLS FOR UNITY; AT LEAST TWO DEAD IN INAUGURAL RIOTS.”

One particular story had a uniquely strong effect: “Three-Judge Federal Panel Orders Recount of Nebraska Congressional District Thought Won by Razor-Thin Margin by President.” The President could not restrain an expletive at this. His stomach gurgled.

The President rolled out of bed and into the official gold-embossed White House slippers he had ordered for the Presidential Bedroom. He shuffled toward the private bathroom and began Tooting before he had even reached the door.

–<() Angry Democrat Sore Loser Judges Are Stealing the Election! These are Three Evil Angry Democrats who have been Out to Get Me for Decades! They must here from Real Americans before they can Pull Off this Evil Recount Hoax! Don’t let them do it!

He was fully awake now, and focused on his one compelling quest, ever since he had been impeached: revenge. It was all about revenge now, against everyone who had blocked and obstructed and marred his first term. Revenge. If anything, his recovery from the virus had redoubled this within him.

The President’s gut happily rumbled and rocked. He stumbled through the threshold just in time.

The peristaltic rhythms of the White House began to lurch to life.