One Event Dilemma

mr lloyd evans wrote: When will Bush be on the end of a disillusioned soldier's gun.........

At Home with George and Laura

George Bush strides gracefully into the kitchen, kisses his wife, dips her like Astaire, and in the same moment, reaches behind and flips a crepe with the aplomb of a thousand Frenchmen.

“You almost let that burn, mon cheri.”

“Everything burns with you in the room, George.”

“Now, now, you know how I loathe obvious innuendo.”

“Sorry, hon,” Laura said and handed her husband The Times.

“Read it before five, babe. Anything else?”

Laura began their usual morning ritual of rifling through dozens of newspapers and periodicals, trying to find one her husband had not already consumed before breakfast. “Chicago Tribune, Guardian / Observer, Ha’aretz, Jerusalem Post, London Telegraph, The Independent Times of India, Hudson Review?” She sensed her husband’s impatience and hurried through the stack. “Independent Review, Mother Jones, Der Spiegel, Threepenny Review, LA Times, Anticoch Review?

“The Antioch Review it is!”

Laura watched the man she loved eat his toast while engrossed in the latest Anis Shivani essay, The Shrinking of American Fiction. She watched as he sighed, laughed, or filled the pages with furious marginalia. “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” she made out in a upside down reading of her husband’s bold, but sinuous script.

“Darling,” Laura began tentatively, knowing her husband hated to be interrupted while reading. George put his palm up, indicating he was nearly done with the piece, then closed the magazine and smiled at his wife.

“The man has a piquant wit, I’ll give him that.”

“George, isn’t it time?”

“Time for what?” he asked and winked.

“Time to let the country know?”

George Bush reached across the breakfast table and brushed back an unruly lock of Laura’s hair. They gazed at one another, as secret keepers do. “No, darling, not yet,” he said. “Not yet. We’d lose too many votes.”

“Midterms, then? Promise me after midterms, George!”

“Do you think I enjoy the daily dumdum dance, Laura? Can you imagine how pretending to mispronounce simple words sticks in my craw? I’m a graduate of Harvard and Yale and yet, just to garner a few million NASCAR votes, I’m forced to deny my true self, my very being, in a million different ways, at every single moment?”

The President slipped into his jacket and took a last snap at his toast. He gulped his coffee and brought the cup down to the saucer with meaning. The discussion was over. Laura sat motionless for a moment, then heard her husband greet the Secret Service agent in the hall, “Hiya, Ephraim, how’s the wife? Ya’ll tell her we’re thinking of her while she reciprocates in the hospital.”

Laura slammed her fist on the table, upsetting the dishes and herself. “Damn you, Karl Rove. Damn you to Hell!”