(15) Duet


Snatchel materialized from a snatch of abstraction. El the masculine pronoun trails along after youthful vulgarity like an aging Lothario in a college town. The name lost a letter and became Satchel, as in a small case with a flat bottom. Now he is in the Purple Room with Mona, his security adviser, and he's just plain old Wood Johnson, waiting by the piano to visit a place he goes only with her. "Sing to mama," Mona repeated. Her voice was hard and sharp and her smile had vanished.

Wood's face cracked open into a grin that reflected his intractable nature. There were no alternative routes for the lines to take, so he wasn't animated. He just had these cracks in his face, like erosion, as if he had thought the same things so many times he wore grooves so deep and predictable a black needle like Mona could drop right into them and extract secret music.

She moved closer to him and he could feel her breath on him. Her eyes were dark and sparkled with a steely certainty of what he secretly wanted. He wanted somebody who would not leave anything at all to his decision making process, because it could not escape the grooves. He was no more capable of original thought than a tape recorder. He wanted to be told what to do, and in no uncertain terms. "I learned how to sing when I was abducted by aliens," he said.

The security advisor spoke into her headset. "Activate lockdown of the Purple Room," she said, as Wood Johnson slipped onto the piano bench and began to softly play chords and hum a tune. There was no sound as the locks slid into place. There were no windows in the room. It was the secure room, where the President and his advisors could be assured their conversations would remain absolutely private. There were no microphones, no cameras, no outsiders, allowed through the door. It was swept for bugs after each time it was unlocked. It was the womb of the White House.

A soft purple light came on above the door, indicating lockdown was complete. It was the only thing in the room that was purple, but it defined the room more than anything else. Mona went off line. She took off the little receiver-microphone from her left ear and put it on the piano. "Lights Program Six," she said, and the light in the room slowly dimmed. A spotlight came up near the piano, it's sensor tracking Mona's body heat as she began to unbutton the tailored business suit with a sultry indifference to Wood Johnson's increasingly panicked stare.

She stepped out of the conservative tweed slacks to reveal the stockings and garter belt secreted beneath them. A minute later she was transformed into Mistress Mona, Dominatrix to the President. She stood staring cooly at Wood, absently clapping the riding crop against her thigh. Her breasts were elevated by the red bustier and the heels, hidden before by the length of the pants, lifted her and thrust her slightly forward, toward him, as she said:

"Woody turned on the news, and with a vicious snarl, the news turned on him."

Wood Johnson laughed. He sounded impossibly brittle.

Mona waited. She knew the confines of his intellect were unable to cope with anything too far out of the ordinary expectations of polite society, so that at his breaking point he would simply give up, go into a trance, and become thankful that he didn't have to think anymore. She slapped her thigh a bit harder and the crack of the crop made the President jump from inside, like a Mexican jumping bean. "Get your white ass off my piano bench, bitch."

He let go and flowed like a goldfish from a plastic bag into a fish pond, his knees making a faint splashing sound on the floor as he make room for her, and looked up toward her. "Mama," he whispered, reaching for her as she stood before him. She knocked his hand away, hard, with the crop.

"You're a sick little fuck," she snapped, her mind suddenly filled with the image of Dennis Hopper snuffling around on Isabella Rosselini in Blue Velvet. "You want your mommy?"

"Yes," he whispered hoarsely.

"Undress."

He started to stand up but she caught him square in the chest with her left foot and sent him sprawling backwards. "Did I say you could stand up, bitch?"

"No."

"No what, you disgusting little piece of minnow crap?" She was thinking of Kathy Bates and James Caan in Misery.

"No, Mistress Mona."

She inspected him for a moment. White people could never make the connection between their inability to sing and the awful strictures they placed on their bodies. He was beginning to look loosened up a bit. "What makes you think you can sing, turd blossom?"

"I did it when I was eating the poppies," he said. "I was really good at it."

"What were you singing?"

"Secret Agent Man. You remember it? Johnny Rivers used to sing it."

"Get over here."

The President obediently moved beside the piano, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts and the "Mona's Bitch" t-shirt that he'd been wearing under his dark blue Oxford shirt.

"One day you'll be wearing that and have to go to the hospital," Mona said, "and everybody will know who you really are."

The boxer shorts began to change shape.

"My, my. The great awakening. That excites you, to be exposed as my bitch, doesn't it, you ass clown." Her left hand began to set up a rhythm and her body began to move to it. Then her right hand hit the keys and got hot with the melody line. President Wood Johnson's voice slid into the mix, smooth as butter, but with a dark undercoat of shadowy menace. "There's a man who lives a life of danger," he sang. "To everyone he meets, he stays a stranger. With every chance he takes, with every move he makes, odds are he won't live to see tomorrow."

Mona came in behind him on the chorus, lifting him up and blending him into white chocolate. "Secret, agent man, secret, agent man, they've given you a number, and taken way your name."

Wood Johnson's screws began to loosen and retract from his flesh, which glowed with laissez faire relativism. He spun away from statist imitation of religious law and out into Space. His body began to dematerialize as he approached the realm of pure spiritual existence. "Let's see the Vice President do this!" he shouted over the music, affecting a Jerry Lee Lewis Louisiana drawl.

Five minutes later, Mona was slipping back into her business tweeds. "Was there anything else, Mr. President?"

"No, Mona, that was just perfect, thank you."

"Okay, I have something important, and you have to trust my instincts on this. The abduction story: whether or not it's true has nothing to do with the effect it has on the public. The point isn't whether it happened or it didn't happen, the point is the response it gets. We decide on the response we want, then we shape the reality to elicit that response. Capiche?"

"Shit, Mona ... I know that. But how can it hurt me that I did the same thing Jesus Christ did?"

"Did you notice how that story ended?"

The brittleness came back into his grin for a moment. "He wasn't the Commander in Chief, now was he?"

Posted: Wed - July 13, 2005 at 03:26 PM