Continued... Trump and the Pandemics
A Play by by Matthew Paris
Lorna- I'm not much of a parliamentarian; I accept your argument, Quentin. It strikes me that for a modern castle of organized power this place is remarkably bare. Look at that bar in the wall. They don't drink saki or fig brandy here, Charley. Thanks to Trump they don't drink anything but Appalachian soda pop, really. Trump's brother, you know was a big boozer. Trump has a horror for the hard stuff.
Quentin- What if the galaxy and more were run by women? Do you think you would be any less a sterling leader at your worst that we are? I doubt it.
Lorna- You never want to know. Quentin, you are all theories and clever rhetoric.
Quentin- Very possibly. Still, nobody ever hugeness for my company because I am tolerably good looking if not quite handsome. They may admire me for my sartorial taste at most. Nobody offers me anything for a simile or a carnal favor. You know, it isn't the worst of situations to be out of direct power as women almost always are, Lorna. One doesn't have to take responsibility for all the stupid things one does when one has power even over a baby cockerspaniel.
Lorna- We women would rather have the choice to be one kind of regal idiot than another one. You men can always be manipulators and attractive frauds like us at our worst. We can never be fools in as many ways as you are.
Quentin- It might be two kinds of rank disasters you could do without.
Lorna- Maybe. This is a hard drinking country. They must be trying to inter something inside them in a tavern.
Quentin- My dear, people in this debased nation imbibe liquor merely to get nastily and incoherently drunk. It's like making love to be sedated enough to watch television.
Lorna- What if they do, Quentin? Being bummed out on sex isn't a crime. Obviously you've never been married. (She hears a rustling sound from the anteroom.) I heard somebody beyond that door. Trump! I know you're in there. Come on out, you son of a bitch.
(Enter Donald from the anteroom.)
Donald- Sorry I didn't greet you as you came in through the window, honey. Believe me, the White House is a more friendly place than you might guess . Sorry, I should have greeted you; I was too busy looking through my library for an interesting novel.
Lorna- Don't patronize me, you clown, you may be not even be Donald Trump, which makes it worse. You're might be for all I know one of the lookalikes. We couldn't find Donald Trump in Florida at Mar El Lago; he wasn't in his secret hideout in Plattsberg either.
Charles- Charnaputra. Hakagupta.
Lorna- We don't know where the hell he is. Maybe you can tell us. Of course maybe you're the real Donald Trump.
Donald-My lookalikes are never the real Donald Trump. If I'm one of them, kid, may in fact not be anybody. W were all was born somebody. We might haves even raised to be somebody if it that somebody wasn't Donald Trump.
Maybe if some recruiter passing through a small town had noticed I might look like Donald with the right make up and hair comb , then gave me a cushy job imitating him I wouldn't any different than anybody else in my town who started out being somebody but ended up being a nobody in an office or a wheor4hosue waiting to retire.
Lorna- Whoever you are, you're one hellova con man. All right, who are you?
Quentin- You might of course be the r4eal Donald Trump masquerading as his lookalike. you are in either case a conniving and brazen popinjay whom we English toffs and even common people would do well to ignore when you try in your vulgar way to cozen us.
Charles- Chandrapustra. Kulisastra.
Quentin- I don't think they have any modern plumbing much less a public men's facility in the Oval Room, Charles. you'll probably find one in the anteroom.
Donald- Yeah, we modern Presidents got a can there.
Charles- Mahaputra. Rupamaya.
Quentin- You wont find any metaphysical felicities in a loo, believe me, Charles. They are purges of offal; waste and human manure in a porcelain plumbing system that whisks these bits of flotsam away to a suitable hellish cloaca. You may be happy to imagine but never know.
There are many uncouth delights in such aqueous facilities that are far from negligible though they may seem leagues from the higher worlds of the more numinous and incorporeal mahatmas. You might find a dark metaphor in your shucking off of whatsoever and whomever might be merely a burden to your spirit in its moonless and mephitic journey .
Charles- Purafakra. Kakastama.
(Charles exits into the anteroom.)
Donald- Who the hell is that guy? Some pseudo-Indian nut?
Quentin- We're hardly Indian nuts, Donald. We're all escaped from the Happy Trails Asylum for the Criminally Insane, Donald, if I may call you that.
Donald- Call me Donald. It won't kill me.
Lorna- We were a rock group that maybe had some nihilistic tendencies. We robbed a bank and copped a plea. Why not? They told us we'd be happier in a loony bin than in a prison. Maybe they're right. Even a maniac is happiest when he's not in stir.
That's why we broke out through the kitchen and escaped. We always had a job on the outside as a rock group. You must have heard of us. We're the Pandemics.
Donald- Yeah, maybe. Maybe you're okay. You look like good people. I've got a nose for folks with a gift for warm hearted camaraderie. Sometimes they go to jail or the crazy house but we all have our dry days, don't we? I think a criminal record prosecuted by the wrong bunch in front of a comatose judge might be a badge of honor sometimes.
Lorna- We aren't crooks according to the law, Donald. We're just violent and bonkers..
Donald- We need more people like you in America, Lorna, if we're ever going to be great again. You've just been a victim of a conspiracy of Liberals, a bunch of creeps that are queer for socialism. I don't think robbing a bank is crime myself. Hey, I've stiffed a lot of banks in my time. You very discreetly sack the company of all its assets, then declare bankruptcy.
I've done it twelve times. Nobody ever called it fraud, kid; it was just smart business.
Lorna- Sometimes you don't declare bankruptcy because you have no assets to steal. We blew a lot of dough on cocaine.
Quentin- We Pandemics are hardly the only Insane asylum rock band that has never toured much because we preemptively too dangerous ever to be let out of our padded walled environment. We often broadcast our ditties from our lock ups. We're oddly famous on the tube. We call ourselves the Pandemics. It's a sinister name for a run of felonious lunatics.
Donald- I get it.
Quentin- Charles de Boeuf I'm afraid is mortally afflicted with galloping Asiatic redemption. It's a disease an especially gluey virus that lives off the living and manifests itself naively as a viscid black ooze from a Calcutta cloaca.
Donald- You must know your way around public sewers. I hire people to tell me things like that. Frankly, when you talk about buried cisterns you do sound a little sinister.
Quentin- Perhaps you need enemies like us. A clever leader like you needs more than friends; he should be the covert manager of his very antagonists. I might be your perfect nemesis. I'm only dangerous if you you let me be, Donald. If you are cunning you might find me a job as a television host. I reek of prestige.
By the way, we English are not the worst of slavers. We of course have disdain of your Hottentots in the veldt. We aren't Spaniards. We never try to convert you to a set of colorful absurdities.
We confine our punishment for mutinies to a few public hangings. It doesn't give us any pleasure to garrote or strangle anybody with a rope. We have to do that occasionally only to protect the glory of the Royals.
Donald- Am I supposed to believe any of this? Who the hell are the Royals?
Quentin- The Plantagenets and the Kardashians. The Windsors. The Mountbattens. The Kardashians again.
Donald-I see. Do you owe all of them a favor?
Quentin- My coarse subhuman friend, somebody has to embrace the White Man's burden of managing the surly rabble. It is admittedly a crass labor. Believe me, there are worse monarchs in the world than English kings.
Donald- I'm sure they're your friends.
Quentin- Hardly. I hope you never have to live under their very invasive rule of the more alien regents of this world. They are mad for mayhem, massacre oodles of their innocent subjects as we talk.
Donald- Maybe you aren't who you are either.
Lorna- What the hell do you mean?
Donald- Maybe there is no Happy Trails Insane Asylum. Possibly you aren't escaped lunatics. You might be lookalikes of them, or it could be the originals don't exist in the first place.
Lorna- How the hell would you know that? You're just guessing, Donald.
Donald- I am somebody who is running a similar vaudeville, kid.
(Enter Charles from the anteroom.)
Charles- Brahmaputra. Sakuntala.
Donald- Sounds like you found the can.
.
Charles- Raptapustra. Makasastra.
Donald- That must have been some dump. Well, if that's what it takes to take the dump of dumps, do it, kid.
Lorna- Charles experiences a great deal of metaphysical ecstasy. Don't think you're just looking at gastric relief.
Quentin- That describes the soul of your rebellion,doesn't it? It's a bunch of diarrhetic people looking for a commode, pretending they're carnival mahatmas.
Donald- I might like to have you around, kid. You're the kind of Ivy League Liberal that helped to elect me. Ever think of having a political a career as my nemesis? I don't need much but could use an enemy like you, Quentin.
Quentin- I don't believe in the raucous voice of the people, elections, democracy or the rest of your gutter republican cant, my friend. I suspect you don't either.
Donald- Why did you three break into the White House? You aren't out to mug me, are you? If you escaped from a loony bi you'd be better off hiding out somewhere. I may have some nice places in Florida for you to avoid the police. It's always good to be on the lam in a joint with a few naked Bunnies and a big aquamarine blue pool.
Lorna- Goddamn it, we're here to kill you, Donald, if you really are Donald Trump. Don't you understudy? You're the head of a system that locked us up.
Donald- Hey, I'd blame Obama for that. Weren't you put in stir under Obama?
Lorna- Maybe we were. You didn't let us go; you've been here for three and a half years.
Donald- It sounds like Obama's work. He's from Kenya; he doesn't understand American democracy I never let a lot of people go, honey. I've probably got three million people siting in a cage somewhere because they smoked a reefer in a park. I've got people in solitary for jaywalking.
That's what democracy is about, kid. The judges and Congress are just window dressing, big talkers. Everything is all up to me. Hey Maybe Il la pardon you. Just bow your knees a little and let me wave a wand around and formally forgive you.
Lorna- You can't pardon somebody for being nuts. You only can let them go if they've committed a crime.
Donald-Really. Maybe I will be the first President to pardon crazy people , not just bad guys.
Quint-I hear some stenosis form the lawn. I'm afraid we are about to be invaded by a new group of rank marauders.
Lorna-It might be the politicize or the Secret Service. They're always looking for people who are criminally insane.
Charles- Chandrapustra. Hakamutra.
Donald- You can hide in the anteroom. Just don''t flush the toilets. They can get very loud. Let anything you do set there.
Lorna- All right, let's hide in the anteroom.
Charles- Chandrapustra. Sakamutra.
Lorna- Shut up and get going, Charles. We don't want to be locked up again,even if we are nuts. .
Donald- You should have a glass of my excellent champagne before you kill anybody. Revenge and murder is always more enjoyable when you aren't quite sober.
Quentin- Are you some publican in the White House serving us some quaint native liquor to make us as bestial as you are without any inebriates? That is capital impudence.
Donald- My friend, you stake me for a bartender. I'm a little more than that.
Lorna- Sure, we'll take a glass of wine. Why not?
Quentin- None for yourself, Donald?
Donald- I'm a teetotaler. As Bela Lugosi might say, I don't drink champagne. I'm more a cola man.
Quentin- Yet you embrace the vulgar in more ways than most beasts.
Donald- Good. To vulgarity. (He opens a bottle formally and pours them three glasses of champagne. No, let's drink to the future greatness of America.
Quentin- It's only slaves that talk about greatness, you oaf. they are crumpled by low griefs. They never imagine the burdens of freedom and the woes of kings. I'll drink more sincerely to a more covert and subtle indenture.
Donald- I like you, kid. You understand something more than stealing. In this country a lot of fancy people are perplexed because they don't know what to do once they've made a huge pile of money. There are a bunch of obsequies waiting for them like moonlit stalking tigers. They sell them a pouch filled with golf clu7bs. They tell them they should like getting seasick on the right yacht. I hate those bozos. If I drank, I'd run a toast to get them all locked up.
Lorna- They'd be at your whim. You could always pardon them.
Donald- The angels want me to pardon the world. I tell them , I'm a stable genius but I'm not quite God. I'd make a hellova judge though. Maybe when I quit this racket I'll appoint myself by executive order to the Supreme Court. Why not? I might even run another country. I was thinking I could do a great job as king of Mesopotamia. Are the Mesopotamian still in business?
Quentin- They went bankrupt. They had to give away Hammurabi's Code for a few nickels and dimes.
Donald- Hey, that's the story of so many damned countries. They all end up like Mesopotamia
(They quaff the wine. Then Lorna, Charles and Quentin exit into the anteroom. The phone rings. Donald picks it up.
Donald- Stormy? I. Yeah, I just had some visitors. Ambassadors from a local gutter. Very eccentric, believe me. I poisoned them with wine. They should collapse in the anteroom in a minute or two. A bunch of nuts from Happy Trails Asylum For The Criminally Insane.
You've heard of it? They have one of my generals there? Which one? I've got a lot of generals. Oh yeah? Well, that guy's just a three star general. They're all paper pushers. When was the last time we needed a general in a war?
No,I didn't have to use any of my weaponry here. They're a rock group. They sing; they're also assassins. Some people in and out of bug houses have a lot of assorted talent. No I didn't use the poisoned cheeseburgers and the strychnine wine. Maybe they're hiding from some other bunch that are coming over the lawn right now.
You say somebody who looks like me and says he's Donald Trump just showed up at your home and wants a quick one?
Well, give it to him. Turn over when he says so. Whatever he wants. What's the difference? It's just one more plunk in the dark.
(Enter Lorna ll, Charles ll and Quentin ll through the window.)
Lorna ll- Where are they?
Donald- Were is who? Who the hell are you?
Lorna ll-The damned loonies from the bug house, you idiot. Who the hell are you anyway?
Donald- Don't you recognize me? Have I become anonymous so quickly? Am I suddenly nothing, nobody? The orange hair, the brash look? I'm Donald Trump.
Lorna ll- Quentin,was there anybody who thought he was Donald Trump in Happy Trails?
Quentin ll- Three very demented fellows, in fact. The all had orange hair and talked sort of like this man. He may be one of them. Or he might be a new impostor we know nothing about.
Lorna ll- You think it's fashionable to look like this guy in a dive bar or a horror movie?
Quentin ll- What is acceptable in an Insane Asylum is rarely di rigeur or what is even interrogatively by society elsewhere ,Lorna, my little buttercup. We have three versions of Jesus, two of Napoleon, and five of Genghis Khan in our old home, don't we? If even one few them were whom they have said they were, if they have been incarcerated in a bug house there has been a monstrous mistake.
Lorna ll- Maybe everything has been a monstrous mistake. It doesn't matter; we're in the middle of it.; where'd they go?
Donald- You means my latest assassins? They're currently in the anteroom, maybe taking a dump or hunting down people who are claim to be me or are really me.
Lorna ll- what are you talking about? You look real enough.
Donald- That's good. I want to look real,.
Quentin ll- This is a country of people who are only real when they think of who or what they've lately escaped from. Once the big breakout from the penitentiary is successful they are at a loss to know anything more than they're at liberty, as you say, on the lam.. It's the burden of all ex-convicts looking for a hideout. This country is nothing more than a refuge for elusive villains.
Lorna ll ñ Quentin, shut up. Let's find those impostors in the anteroom.
Quentin- Yes, maybe the real and the false Trumps will be there too, dumping their cheeseburger pocked guts into a fountainous cloaca. Some kind of Trump. Then you'll be satisfied.
Unfortunately it's the burden of all natural slaves to be on the deeply confused side when they're free. The wilderness and its tigers baffle them.
Charles ll- Hastapatra. Chakaputra.
Quentin- We all have such mischievous fortunes to bear, Charles. You might look in contemporary Calcutta for the delights that come to the skeletal faithful for abjuring their more swinish tastes. Has India ever had a republic? Do they value limited government or democracy? what do they know about massive banal wealth?
They might if they have the sense to imitate the labial tepid parliaments and shrugging souls who inhabit my own country. They chased us from their native soil; let them harvest the bitter banquets of their recent mutiny.
God knows I've been autocrat and slave by turns, Charles, I know. I've been called mad, by others merely wicked. Believe me, if we are nobles or kings we have to endure our dominance of rabble we rather openly find not even contemptible. We would like to manage angels. we would cure them of their penchant for metaphysics.
If we are gods we live with our disdain for the oafs, louts and sells than fragrant low beasts that lurk in the starry umbras in most of the universe.
Lorna ll- Quentin, nothing you say or even think is going to help us do what we need to do. You patricians are all fluff, no action. Shut up.
Quentin ll- We never should have made you lead singer in the Pandemics. You've become obsessively tyrannical,
Lorna- At least I'm a transparent despot. You're arrogant without a priesthood or an army. What's worse, you're inept even at doing nothing or less than nothing. I'm sorry I made you the drummer.
I'd move Charles over to percussion; he's too good at running a base line.
Quentin ll- My musical gifts might may be the door that leads me to sanity, Lorna.
Lorna ll- You've got a gun ready?
Quentin ll- Of course. No nobleman ventures beyond his castles without sufficient weaponry. Sometimes he even has a horse.
Lorna ll- That's all I have to know about you, Quentin. Good. Let's clear out the anteroom.
Donald- Would you like some of this American California champagne before you murder somebody or something like me around here? You don't seem to handle sobriety that well, my dear.
Quentin ll- You clown. You must be some sort of failed caterer.
Lorna ll, Quentin ll and Charles ll exit to the anteroom. The hone rings. Donald picks it up.)
Donald- Hello. Stormy? Yeah, some of the current invaders have come and gone. They haven't killed me yet. Sometimes poison doesn't work. Guns don't go off. Knives can't cut butter. Bombs just land and go kerplunk. It might be all socialist produce. What do they care if nothing works?
Don't worry, if they knocked me off, thanks to they Secret Service there's be more of me ready to be Donald Trump. I think I'm going to lock up the whole Secret service and then pardon them. They'll spend a few weeks in a cell next to Obama and Hillary. Maybe I'll pardon everybody. why not? Somebody is going to do it.
What's that? You've had two Donald Trumps show up in your home at the a same time and they say they both want to sleep with you? Well, take them on. It'll pass the time better than playing cards. Just lie on your side, smile, and let them figure it out.
Can't talk right now, kid. I hear somebody coming back from the anteroom. Have fun with my impostors. Sometimes life seems meaninglessness but with the right companions even if it is it can be an a hellova adventure.
(Donald hangs up the hone. Enter Lorna., Quentin and Charles.)
Meet anybody vaguely interesting back there?
Lorna ll- Three corpses who looked vaguely like us. Maybe all corpses do. Dead is dead, kid.
Charles ll- Chatrapurta. Harasastra.
Quentin ll- They appear to be poisoned. You didn't dispatch them yourself by offering then the usually Abyssinian venom in a glass of cheap California wine, did you, Donald?
Donald- I might have. I can't survive even as President of the United States issuing executive orders right and left without some means of protecting myself from my rivals and enemies. Who are my rivals? Everybody. everybody wants to be me. even i want to be myself.
Quentin- You are a strange host, I must say. Perhaps this is Queens hospitality.
Donald- You should talk about morals! You came here not only to kill me but to rob me of my identity.
Quentin ll- My friend, I can't pillage you of what you never have had in the first place. I can appreciative it is a profound humiliation to the spirit to admit that you and your rank country are a pack of slaves and repair to your masters to ask for forgiveness and a few shards of mercy.
I can't say , were I a slave I'd like to do it myself. Nevertheless if your very sanity is your natural portion, an arguable premise, you might do better than to pay some homage to the current English Queen.
Charles ll-Shakaputra. Hakamatra.
Donald- I never had the nerve to rob a bank with a gun. You guys are heroes.
Quentin ll-We didn't have the capital to strip a company and go into bankruptcy like you.
Donald- It's more perilous to stick up a bank. You could get killed.
Lorna ll- We actually held up about thirty banks. They only caught us for robbing two of them.
Donald- I only went bankrupt nine times. I guess you guys have me beat for stealing. I did stiff a lot of my workers. That should count too.
Lorna ll- It's easier for a man to steal. You don't have to be young or good looking to do it.
Donald- You know, I can pardon people for being crazy. It's not as felonious as arson or murder to be bonkers, is it? I might be able to get all of you off. You could walk into the sun and be legit.
Quentin ll- I must say there is a benefice to being a master in a world of slaves.
Charles ll- Achapatra. Mamapura.
Donald- Let's have some champagne to toast our deal. I'll pour you some into these glasses.
Lorna ll- We're teetotalers like you, Donald We don't even drink champagne.
Donald- Well I've got some apple brandy you might like. Give it a try.
Quentin ll- We will be content with a copious dram of apple brandy.
Donald- That's a sensible choice. (He pours three glasses of apple brandy into three glasses.)
Lorna ll- You won't have any?
Donald- I'm not much of a drinker. My brother died of guzzling too much booze.
Lorna ll- I understand. (They drink the brandy.)
Donald- All right, lets' man those machine gun nests on the lawn. I hear some people coming..
Lorna ll- They might be your friends.
Donald- I have no friends. I don't have any lovers either. I've got a couple of allies that somehow manage to get locked up after working with me awhile. Sometimes they sue me. That's okay. I like courtroom drama, don't you?
Lorna ll- I imagine you've been disappointed.
Donald- Not really. Nothing in life is secure, nothing. You have nothing and they even steal your emptiness from you. I've seen it happen. When you have something especially if you're President, they all look to take you don and make you into lunch. You think otherwise, kid. It's a sentimental nice thought coming from an innocent.
En day your lovers turn on you; you see them for the last time in count with their teams of lawyers. Did you really sleep with them? You did. Your friend decide they can sack you on the quiet; you won't notice. Your servants walk off with the tinned crackers in your cellar larders. Your children tell you to drop dead. They mighty show up and try to take you for a bundle. That's why people love dogs, kid. Their kindred need to be chained to the walls. Dog's don't usually stalk you and take up treachery.
Quentin ll- I wonder how you got elected. You certifiably aren't a champion of any notable enthusiasms. I don't really understand republican politics, I'm afraid. I might not be able to make much sense of monarchical governance either. I suppose we are on a planet on its way to the largest slave rebellion in our bloody harlotry, a world of regimes with all the excesses and follies of the vulgar, base and felonious. There might be a place for me in it as a television host or an expert in Armagnac..
Donald- Maybe. There's no place for Armagnac in hinterland America.
Quentin- I suppose it's a small impoverishment. There are more terrible looses than a paucity of taste for some rank recondite pleasure.
Donald- You don't know about loss. You've always got a job as a drummer as long as we churn out rock music, kid. Quentin, baby, I represent a country who doesn't have any sentimental illusion either anymore. They've all been muscled, stiffed, seduced, lied to, dismissed, ignored. They've been told to shut up and take a seat by somebody somewhere. I known my constituency. You may hate democracy but more often than not it gives people they alders they want even if they don't know they want them.
Let's get to those machine guns on the lawn, folks. We might be in big trouble it we don't.
(The phone rings.)
I'll get it. I'll meet you on the lawn
Charles- Sukapastra. Cosanostra.
(Lorna, Charles and Quentin exit through the window.)
Hello? Stormy?
How were those impostors? Not memorable? Sometimes there's nothing to remember.
You'll probably wake up in the morning. The coffee will be fresh. That's enough.
Yeah, I took care of a few gutter intruders. a rock band. They call themselves the Pandemics
Sometimes I don't know who I am either. That's okay. Whatever I am, I get to do it again for a while longer. I don't know whether that's good or bad. Then I don't, My problems are over.
Yeah I have my regrets. I spent too much time playing golf. I hate golf. I am rich enough to play anything I want to play, Stormy. I could b e paling skelly or marbles.
They were a bunch of bums. Can you imagine if I were killed by a rock band? It's not worthy of me.
Mostly poison. Champagne, fig brandy, apple brandy. I like to use three kinds of venoms. May one of them will work. I'm not a gun or knife fan. Guns make noise and attract people. Knives are too intimate.
I have no idea, baby, why they would want to kill me. Maybe they don't know why either. If they knocked me off they would get Pence. Do they think he'd be better for them than I am? That son of a bitch is totally corrupt. He's worse than me. He can't even dare to talk much because he's afraid he might get arrested.
Suppose they killed both of us. They'd get Nancy Pelosi. She's a little bit fuzzy and slightly senile. What good would it do them to be ruled by Nancy Pelosi? They're a rock group looking not to be thrown into stir. They robbed a bank. Thirty damned banks.
Yeah, I know banks can afford to get robbed. What the hell is money? It's nothing. It's just a fancy piece of paper. Why did they do it? Maybe they were tired of touring. You can get carsick on those buses. They must have been making big bucks. Only the top in that field has lookalikes. The lookalikes tour too. They font charge as much as the real rock bands. They call them tributes. Everybody is a winner.
How was the sex with those two guys? Not all that wildly or intensely memorable?
Well, they tell me that happens to a lot of people.
Sometimes a porno star like you is really practicing for marriage, honey. You sleep with strangers on salary. You should invite me to the wedding.
I know you value me even if you don't love me, kid. I might put a few bucks in your pocket. It might buy you something that will help you while you wait for death. I'm good for you, stormy. You should cherish me even when you sue me
I'm as safe here a I could be. I surrounded myself with generals but what good are they if they've only clerks presiding over a desk in an office somewhere? We don't really have any enemies. Everybody would like to be like us. That's why they come here at midnight from a tunnel or a rowboat. When they look at the alternatives they all want to be swinish and corrupt. It's not their fault. They certainly aren't protecting me. They move paper, not troops. Maybe I'll last out my term but it won't be with their help, kid. They're too busy stealing munition consignments from the cosmic commissary.
They sell them to people who don't have guns. Some of them don't talk Spanish or Arabic. They'd rather buy from my generals than make it themselves. The people who might work in the gun factories are liable to walk off with the merchandise.
Everybody's a winner in that league, kid. They all go off when they have a revolution to some dumpy principate with a casino. Yeah, like Monaco. Sot of the people at the baccarat table were head of a nightmare country once. Maybe power trains you to be good at losing a bundle at baccarat. Maybe I should be studying Biarritiz and Monaco card playing myself
What the hell am I going to do after I'm no longer President? Am I going to mss the power I have over a bunch of menials in livery or crooks like myself? I doubt it. Is it fun or satisfying labor to be the king of a room of degenerates? They're lucky I'm willing to do it.
Baby, I learned how to manage a nation of gamblers in Atlantic City. They taught me how to scuffle, shuffle and lie. Gamblers have no respect for their victims. They couldn't bilk them out of their change and even like them a little. That's why you like me; why I like you even more. We're both happy when we see other people mumbling to themselves in the gutter. Well, maybe not happy. Let's say: sated. We can't be other than miserable ourselves kicking them into the sewers; they're petty creeps and chiselers who aren't worth our attention. What the hell do we sell them on the way to perdition, Stormy? Porno? Politics?
Hey, what the hell is the world going to do without me? I just met some of my enemies today.. I haven't got any friends, Stormy. Who could be my ally? I con and betray everybody. After a while I run out of chumps. It's the classic tragedy of any hustler in the d,mend universe. Outside of an electronic game there are never enough aliens monsters to kill or at least defraud..
I've been lucky in having a bunch of people who don't like me who are uglier and nuttier than I am. Can you imagine this country run by the jerks who come here over the lawn to knock me off? They'd be begging to be part of the English empire, which doesn't exist, out to castrate men or being muttering fake Indian mantas and claiming to be wise as they did us all in in some other way. I might be a better chose for America's leader than all of them put together.
Hey, I got a shitload of votes for me because Americans couldn't stand Hillary. I don't blame them. She's about as attractive as a leader of America as Al Capone. Some people think I was behind her campaign. Maybe I was. Maybe Ivanka was. Yu can't tell Ivanka what to do. She's one clever cookie, Stormy. She's even a hellova cook. Too bad I don't like food much, even good food. Nobody makes a ratatouille like Ivanka. I never really appreciated her. I like Melania though. I never see her. She's too busy, I don't know at what. Whatever and whoever it is, it's more interesting than me.
That's okay.
Women are mysterious, Stormy, even you. You throw us a quick one and smile at our lack of ambition. Sometimes there's nothing to hope for beyond a cup of cold coffee. That's why I never try to get into women's inner life. It might not be there. You can't be searching for something that probably isn't totally real in the first place. If it is real they don't want us to know it. Believe me, I can live with that. I don't have to know everything.
The Evangels believe God knows everything. Does it do him any good? Why is he always mad at us? Maybe wisdom is just another way to live with a whole lot of disappointment. I dolt say that to the Evangels; they might think it's impolite. Even Leonardo had his areas of ignorance. Melania's pretty unskilled even for me, kid. I'll be she couldn't cook up a good pasta sauce. Melania can't cook at all. None of my wives were tremendous kitchen adepts. They weren't all that great in the sack either. Maybe I wasn't any more memorable.
Stormy. I can't make love in Slovenian. I could fake it but that would be weak, no? No,I don't want or need an immersion course in Slovenian. I don't speak a goddamn word of it. I couldn't even find my way to the can if I were passing through Slovenia. I'm not even sure there is a Slovenia. Maybe she's just babbling infantile nonsense and says it's Slovenian. Would I know the difference? Would I care if it were or weren't Slovenian?
Let her babble. Let the whole world babble. Maybe she'll take on an addiction like candy or scrabble. Maybe checkers. Scrabble might be a hellova game in Slovenian. That's fine with me. Why should anybody be haunted by how much they've missed me in the hay? I don't want to give anybody any reason to make them more miserable than they are. People say I have no charity; I have more of it in me than even you do. Yeah, even you. what do you give other people? A quick one or a look at a quick one in the shadows. I don't charge people to watch me make love. would I have any buyers? It's enough that they vote for me. They like me better operating a hotel or giving them free booze at a casino. Do you miss me? Of course not. What is there to miss, right?
None of my lovers miss me. That's good. They can focus on the present,. Memory can be venomous.
Does Melina ever miss me? If she did I'd be seeing more of her than I do, no? That's okay. She's get around to missing other people.
She might be recovering from plastic surgery. Of course nobody ever really survives that kind of job on your own body intact. We live with the beautiful wounds. If we're lucky we remember what we were, what we looked like, what we once wanted to be. If we ever figure it out, we turn everything over to the Vice President. Then if he has some brains he turns it over to whatever idiot is running the House of Representatives. If they all have some bare sign of sense they pack up and go home. .
Do you knows that the Liberals got me elected? Nobody can stand their damned piety. Do they help anyone? They'd like to put us all on the dole. They're a bunch of fancy crooks. They say I'm a fat liar and degenerate; am I more of a thief and con artist than Hillary? Or any fatter/?She's more synthetic than I am. I'm a liar but I'm not a hypocrite, Some damned choice, no?
The crazy Liberals realized they couldn't run the country and got both of us to cover for them. They went bankrupt and didn't tell anybody. They ran easy bond issues and went into debt; they printed money until their marks had had enough of their promises. Don't you think they put me in power so they could say they never did all the sleazy things I've supposedly done? You bet they have, baby.
They really don't have any vision, kid. They have all the hopes of running plastic surgery in volume in a hospital. They want to make people dependent with a bit of magic from a bogus knife. I'm the only one even among their enemies with an honest program for America. I'd like it to be a luxury hotel. When you've given up on family that's indifferent to you, land that you never own, whores that are busy with other customers, slick drummers for phantom parades and all the phony wise men that are pitching very fragrant malarkey you might want to bask in the sun in a luxury hotel with a warm aquamarine swimming pool as a good place to wait for death.
You'd like to hire me as an actor in some epic? I might be able to play Abraham Linccon if I took off a few pounds and grued on a false beard. I think we could make some money at that. I might need it. When I'm not President I can't print it anymore. Right now I could put my picture on all of it, even the pennies.
Could I do fake home porno? Yeah, I could do that. I'd be the first President in a porno movie if I did it. That might suite me. I could do it under your direction. That's a nice offer. You know my movies. I'd like to make a porno movie but I don't think I make love well enough to be in one.
Also you tend to stiff your actors, don't you? Send me a check I can cash, not one with your picture on it, and we'll talk.
(He hangs up the phone. Donald looks out the window at the lawn and smiles. Then he exits into the anteroom.)
The End