The Day He Almost Resigned, But Then Forgot To

He’d had all he could take. He’d had all that any 10 men could take. The fake news media churning out story after misleading story of his incompetence and incoherence and laziness and compulsive lying and misogyny and racism and what have you! Robert Mueller! The treacherous Sloppy Steve, with his gin blossoms and bloodshot eyes and deficient personal hygiene. (And people wondered why the president fretted about germs?) And now, worst of all — by far, by light-years! — his favourite child, apparently laughing with that Jewish writer about his hair! 

Had any great political leader ever had to endure such humiliation? And this at the hands of the daughter to whom he’d actually thought of proposing if Ty Cobb could get Gorsuch to rescind that most onerous of Obama-era regulations, the one that made it impossible for a man to marry his daughter! Ivana thought that pipsqueak Jared a man? Well, he’d have bet the top 20 floors of his gorgeous Tower in Manhattan, the tallest building in the world, that his button made Jared’s look in comparison like Barron’s! 

Or was it Ivanka? 

He pulled his pillow over his head and longed for a Diet Coke. At 20 minutes past four, t was still dark outside. As another might have counted sheep or seen how many NFL teams — sons-of-bitches, every last one, but some even more uppity than others — he could name without looking, the president composed a series of tweets, smiting those who had wronged him, as God had smited (or was it smitten?) the Bakelites, or whatever they were called, in that one passage he’d read in the Bible before meeting with some of the evangelicals who loved him — loved him!

It didn’t work. Sleep was no less elusive than the respect he’d always wanted from Rupert Murdoch. He pressed the little buzzer for the graveyard shift valet whose main responsibility was ensuring there were exactly as many ice cubes in the glass as the president liked, and that they were uniformly shaped. His tray always contained a little dish on which the president would place an ice cube he’d extracted at random, which the valet would hold in his mouth while the president counted to 20. Ice cubes could be poisoned.

Refreshed, he undertook the considerable task of getting all 260 pounds of himself into the bathrooom to void the presidential bladder. Long gone were the days when he was able to suck in his belly and see the appendage with which, after Little Marco Rubio cracked wise about his small hands, he had guaranteed there was no problem. There was now too much belly to contract. But a glance in the mirror confirmed that that which has given the most beautiful women on earth so much pleasure was where it had always been. 

There’d been a time when he’d have turned on the pre-dawn edition of Morning Joe, but those days were gone too. Even Joe and Mika had betrayed him — even they! He instead turned, as he had so often, in recent months, to Deputy Dawg. He’d come to enjoy calling his lawyer Ty Cobb after one of his favourite Deputy Dawg characters, Ty Coon, and Cobb had been amused and delighted. That so few appreciated how endearingly scampish he could be was one of the things that had come to annoy the president most. 

The episode being broadcast was very familiar. When he found himself saying the various characters’ lines before the characters themselves said them, the president muted the TV and phoned Paul Ryan, who he knew loved to disguise himself on a cold winter morning after his daily 3 a.m. workout and torment homeless people in Ward 7, poking them awake with sharp sticks and demanding to know why they didn’t get jobs. There’d been a time when the two men had been deeply suspicious of each other, but since the passage of his tax bill, their interactions had been nothing but cordial. “Hey, dawg,” Rep. Ryan greeted the president merrily. “What up? You’ll never guess who’s with me this morning.”

“I don’t play guessing games,” the president said. “I mean, I do, but only if I’m the one making others guess.”

“Whatevs,” Rep. Ryan said. “Senator McConnell and Mike. And it turns out that Pencildick’s really good at it.”

The president didn’t want to appear ignorant, but not being praised in the same breath used to praise another was one of his least favorite things, and he couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Who’s Pencildick?”

“Only your vice president, dude!” Ryan guffawed. The next voice he heard was Pence’s, not just saying, but...intoning, “Mr. President, it’s an honor both to be serving as your vice president, and to be helping you restore America’s greatness. You wouldn’t believe the laziness on display in the doorways of Ward 7, sir. This fellow here didn’t respond even to Mitch peeing on him.”

“I think that’s because he’s frozen solid, dude,” Ryan said in the background. 

“And yet these people want minimum wage and free medical care and school lunches for the brats they have so many of out of wedlock,” Pence said. “Frankly, it disgusts me, sir.”

The president heard Ryan demand his phone back, but broke the connection before Ryan could make him even more miserable with his annoying Midwestern brospeak. He pressed a button on his console and his valet came in with the president’s traditional three Sausage McMuffins. The president had the first two gobbled before the valet could reach the bedroom door. “Come back here,” the president commanded as he unwrapped the third. “Take a letter.” He would compose a letter of resignation that would fill his critics with guilt and shame. The country would beg him to reconsider, but he’d refuse. They’d had their chance!

The valet shuddered and reminded the president that he wasn’t a secretary, and didn’t even have a pen and paper on him. “Forget that,” the president snapped. “You’ll remember it.” He finished his last Sausage McMuffin, licked his fingers, and stared at the ceiling, as though for inspiration. 

“Why don’t I just go get a secretary while you’re thinking?” the valet wondered aloud.

“Good idea,” the president said. “And as soon as you’ve sent one up here — and send a hot one — you’re fired.” The valet gaped at him. What was his name again? José? Patricio? No, he wasn’t one of the brown ones. Mateusz? Why had it become so hard to remember anything?

It occurred to him that maybe starting his days as he’d started them in his 30s and 40s, when everybody loved him, and there were no Steve…Barrons? in his life might improve his memory. No, that wasn’t right. Barron was his son, wasn’t he? Or was he? His sons were very tall, with hot wives of their own, though none as hot as What’s-Her-Name, with the Rocky & Bullwinkle accent, and Barron was short, and apparently unmarried, though he’d inherited both Marla’s and the president’s own good looks. What if he was queer? Note to self: find out from What’s-His-Name, the white-haired guy who’d turned out to be such a good choice as a running mate (he could just barely keep his lips off the presidential backside!), about gay conversion, or whatever the evangelicals called it. Hadn’t they spoken only recently?

But back to his unforgetful 30s, and how he used to begin every morning deep inside a beauty queen or other hottie. And how they moaned, every one of them! Had the fat little Korean, with his rockets and his little button on his little desk, ever satisfied a woman as the president had? He snickered aloud at the thought. 

Who was that looming over him smiling? Patricio? No, the Polish one, whose name he could never forget — through no fault of his own, mind you, because how’s a normal person supposed to remember a name that’s all y’s and z’s? “Something has amused you, sir?” the guy said, without a weird accent. 

“Didn’t I fire you?” the president asked. God, how he hated this not being able to remember anything, this constant confusion, and the fake media making fun of him for it!

“You did, sir,” the guy said, “but I can’t remember a day that you haven’t.”

Oh, if only the take media could have heard that! Other people — lots of other people — were having trouble remembering. Maybe there was something in the air, or in the water.