America was founded upon a dream.
Oh my God, Senator Bubble!
But not all dreams reflect reality alike.
So as you can see, the emergency vehicles…
The dream of individualism
Of self-reliance
And of a free-ranging liberty
A liberty that laughs in the face of king and cleric
All this is a dream that still persists today, of all days.
Dear God! He’s alive…
Oh God, oh God, oh my God….
There are many in this world who say this dream is a delusion.
It’s a miracle. America, hope from amid the ruins!
There are others of whom it can be said
The spirit of liberty beats within their heart
And the swinish iron gates of The Greater Good
And the Evil Spirit of Kollektivismus
Shall not prevail in their grunting
Against the only name given under heaven…
Dear God, it’s a gift from Heaven…
Senator Bubble, oh wait, or is he…
The only name by which any person may be saved…
And where is Adolph Adams?
Adams! Adams! Adams!
He isn’t here….
The individual.
‘How is my hair?’ muttered Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble, as Marta patiently dusted his bruised cheeks.
‘It is better,’ murmured Marta in a voice that only the meagre and petty idealists of fortune and opportunity could have dismissed as mundane. But Senator Bubble was no such cringing shop-keeping fanatic. He was a man of destiny. And like all true great all-American patriots, he didn’t care who knew it!
Senator Bubble also didn’t care if Marta knew that his interest in her was not purely professional.
‘Oh for God’s sake, you frickin’ stupid Mexican!’ he snorted.
‘I told you to be careful with that cheek. Oh, for cryin’ out loud! Are you trying to kill me as well?
‘I coulda decided to die there and go out in a blaze of glory, that would’ve really sent a message out to the terrorists that we have our martyrs, and no stupid Arab fanatic or Manchurian fig-peddler with a suicide belt can ever match us for glory signalling!
‘But I decided to live, because I wanted to love and serve my country: America, the shining city upon a hill, and God’s anointed blessing for all the ages!
‘And here you are, trying to succeed where those dirty little oasis rats have failed!
‘What kind of a cackhanded, shiftless, time-wasting, money-grubbing Mexican Jewess beanerita have they given me this time?!’
Marta withdrew her brush, glaring indignantly at Senator Bubble’s cold, fishy eyes.
‘Well? You got something to say, sweetheart?
‘Whew! You know, you Mexican girls look really hot when you’re angry!
‘Just seein’ you standin’ there with your arms akimbo, that nice way you’ve got that curly hot-ass Latina hair pulled back like that; I can think of quite a number of other jobs I would hire you for if it were up to me!
‘Whoooaaa! Sweet Jesus K. Vivashwana, but aren’t you ladies hot when you’re angry!
‘Well hey, baby! Thank God they aren’t giving me any more of those prissy bitches from that England country, and Norway, and Italy, and other shitty North Europe nations like that.
‘Ah now come on, Marta, don’t be like that. Do you sulk like that in front of your husband when he gives you a compliment? I bet he doesn’t offer you the golden opportunities I offer you; make of that what you will, Marta baby!
‘Waheyyy! Stick that in your pipe ‘n’ smoke it, Marty girl!’
Marty dropped her broom, glaring fiercely at her tormentor.
‘Of course not!’ Marta spat.
‘No, I do not have no husband! But when I will have a husband who shall be treating me the way you do, I just shove this broom handle there up his fucking ass!
‘He will not, no, you can be sure Senator Bubble, he won’t never speak to me like that again the second time!’
Bubble grunted.
‘That’s a clean floor!’
That didn’t work. Bubble attempted a more conciliatory tone.
‘C’mon now, girl, don’t be spoiling your niiice, sooolid, Meeexican wooork ethic with this unclean behaviour. Y’know, believe it or not, I actually kinda like you! But don’t be spitting on this niiice cleeean flooor you’ve made for me?
‘Hm! I mean, God knows what you people could have; I mean, you ever watch the news? I mean the real shit, Fox News or CNN or shit like that, hell even NBC, at a push! Anything but that boring global shit and the absolute downright treacherous crap they are coming out with about our party.
‘Yeah, I mean, they say you Mexican people have got a bit of an Ebola thing coming on, or is it Zeta? Hey, alpha, beta, gammon, alphabetti-sphaghetti-la-la-la, I mean God knows what you crazy-ass Latin folks will be thinkin’ of next!
‘But you know what, Martha darlin’? Please, please, please, please, please, just don’t you be messin’ up my shit, alright?’
Marta flicked her fringe in frustration.
‘I don’t never do it for you nor for no other person else! You see this what I do, it is what is in my contract!’
Bubble roared with laughter. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Gotta love a bit of free contract and economic liberty, huh?
‘Well hoo-heeeyyy, chicken? Guess that’s what we’re all about here!’
Marta, at the point of tears, waved the make-up brush.
Bubble roared with laughter. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Gotta love a bit of free contract and economic liberty, huh? That’s what we’re all about here!’
Marta, at the point of tears, waved the make-up brush.
‘We do not have the time, Senator Bubble. We shall begin it all again? Or…’
Bubble’s face lit up with the greedy light of the middle-aged establishment lecher he was: young enough to not need Viagra, but old enough to wish he had a use for it!
‘Mmm. More spicy Mexican ah-ah-ah, Senorita! Whew! Saaayyy-na-torrrr Bahhh-bayl!
‘Let’s all hop on board the Marcus Fuckin’ Express-arama-fications, baby! You just have literally no fuckin’ idea how you make me feel when you…’
Overcome with frustration and anxiety, Marta swung her hand.
Although fortunately for the future of His Glorious Nation, her hand collided aimlessly with a week-old whiskey bottle on Senator Bubble’s ‘Dream-Desk.’
(Senator Bubble had never once explained why it was his Dream-Desk, or why, if what Marta had heard was correct, he only called it his ‘Dream-Desk’ to people of certain narrowly-circumscribed demographics. She thought it was better not to ask).
‘Faaaaaack you!’ sobbed Marta, now in utter desperation.
‘Faaaaaack you! I am not a Mexican, no, why, I have been telling you a thousand times I am from the Nicaragua!’
Senator Bubble’s face flushed like a raw ham, and he started panting heavily, as though he were in the middle of some arduous athletic task.
Like going to the second Dominos away because those bastard Jew folks from over there in Creeptown were having some sort of stupid kvetch-party while stupidly pretending the pepperoni was kosher.
Who were these useful goyim trying to fool?
Not one thing ‘kosher’ about these guys, that’s for sure!
I trust these guys about as much as I trust dim sum and fuckin’ chicken balls for Christmas dinner!
Or how about because that creepy black guy from the office across the street was dining there again, and Senator Bubble wanted to save himself the bother of ‘accidentally’ knocking over his drink again and ruining his pretentious suit, which some low-level token office guy like him shouldn’t even be allowed to wear anyway.
Urrrggghhh! What an arrogant, entitlement-ridden, social-climbing bastard!
‘It’s not your look,’ Bubble hoarsely murmured to himself.
Marta stamped her feet in fury.
‘Why you always do not treat me with the respect? I work sooo hard for you, I am working sooo hard every day, I am always on time, I always leave late, my child, she is worried, and the nurses, I have to pay her more and I cannot, no listen to me Senator Bubble, I am angry now, now please listen to me, Senator Bubble, I cannot…’
Bubble finally lost his temper and started banging his chunky New England fists on the solid oak that some stupid Polack loser or whoever the hell that guy was from that Ukraine country had gifted him as a token of… ‘appreciation.’
(Appreciation? Whatever the hell that pretentious claptrap is supposed to mean in purely value-free and neutral strategic geopolitical diplomacy terms!)
Now of course, everybody knew that as soon as Bubble became aware of any intolerable and downright unbearable slight, be it imaginary or otherwise, the only thing he could do was to discipline the despicable traitor against the Greater Georgian Interest of Our Common GOP-Manity by whatever means necessary.
‘Shut the fuck up, you greasy spic!’ he roared.
‘Never, ever talk to me in that demeaning, degrading, and insulting way, alright? Do you realize, not even the Chinese or the Ayyyrahbs talk to me the way you do? So what does that say about you?
‘Oh, and hey, by the way! Check this shit out, young lady! All this crap about Niagara or Ni-caaaaar-a-goooooo-wahhhhhhh, or whatever the hell the greasy Zio-liberal media are calling it in those slick, metropolitan tones of theirs…
‘Well, let’s just say it isn’t precisely… “plumb center on the facts…” as we like to say in politics.
‘Huh? You got anything to hide?
‘Huh-huh-huh? You got anything to hide, Marta chicken?!’
Marta’s face turned pale. ‘Se… senator Bubble…’ she wept, tears streaming down her face in terror.
‘Yup! You got it, girl! I know absolutely everything about you, you stupid, stupid, illegal sack of crap!
‘Don’t you ever dare think I’m as stupid as I look, Marta baby! I know all about you!
‘And believe you me, young lady, I can have you slung out of my glorious nation with nothing in the world to your name but half a shitty Colombian cloth-shoe and that couple of cheap-ass shit-rubbers that Shilton Nixon…’
‘Don’t mention this man’s name, for God’s sake!’ Marta wailed.
Bubble’s face shifted slightly in the direction of a malevolent grin.
He was a fairly dynamic character; albeit, and in accordance with a certain pet phrase of his: ‘within reason.’
‘Oh. Ohhh! Well! Bit o’ guilty conscience huh? Well let me tell you something that might be of interest to you before you go a looong way away to some shitty Third World hellhole across the border.
‘Now let me tell you something young lady, you were supposed to be here to work hard, not “play hard” with the creepy bankers.
‘Heh heh! Something’s going down, darlin’!
‘And it ain’t the number of Iraqi orphans, that’s one thing for sure. I mean hell, even my colleagues over here don’t trust that guy.
‘And you know what? For what it’s worth these boys are pretty good judges of character. Believe you me, sweetheart!’
Martha had no choice but to tell the ugly truth.
‘The man, the man…
‘The man, yes this bastard, he forces me, he tricks me, and can you just understand…?’
Bubble laughed so hard and long at this, he thought his ribcage would finally cave in.
Yet fortunately, the bruising around his ribs was sufficiently recovered to prevent him from doubling over in agony.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!’
Martha grasped Bubble’s sleeve.
‘Senator Bubble, it is not a joke! And it is not a lie!
‘Never! Never, I swear to you, Senator Bubble, yes, I am swearing to you now, no, I did not have a choice…
‘The man, this man, you see, he blackmails me…’
Bubble finally made a perfunctory effort to stop laughing.
‘Buyer’s regrets, huh?’
Bubble spat out a rather repugnant-looking gob of spittle, narrowly missing Marta’s left ear.
‘Or should that be…
‘Liar’s regrets?’
Bubble laughed even longer and harder at his witty jest.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
‘Oh wow, oh wow, I mean like, oh my gosh, now let me school you somethin’ special, brothers; this girl has some chutzpah!
‘But hey, you know what, baby? That shit was three whole months ago.
‘Now let me say this. I mean, I’m the governor, and I have every right to say what I want.
‘Now listen up, Marta baby! This is Georgia, and we do things a little differently than California.
‘Huh? You see what I’m getting at, Martie chicken?’
Marta’s mouth gaped in horror.
‘No… no… no…’ Marta murmured, her lip quivering in dismay.
‘But it is a mistake…
No, you see, it is surely a mistake…
‘You know this bastard, you know, this Nixon, he has the impotence…’
Bubble roared in triumph, and pointed to a newspaper he had just unrolled.
As Marta stared at the headline, her body was racked with fear and pain and even remorse (although she, quite unlike the vile lothario she had surrendered to, had nothing to be ashamed of).
Her heart hammered like a drill, her skin broke out in a terrified sweat, and vicious, brutal waves of nausea punctuated her guts with endless, remorseless billows.
Yes.
Truly, this was a fear unlike any she had ever known, except for the tragic day she had made that horrendous sacrifice to appease Shilton Nixon, the notorious ‘Wall Street Hornet.’
The headline said:
SHILTON AND PHILOMENA:
‘NUMBER 9? HELL, WE’RE JUST GETTING STARTED!’
Bubble rubbed his hands in glee.
‘Looks like it’s not just you! Shilton and his wife have been just little too bit busy for comfort too, huh?!
‘Well, just as well we’ve got the rule of law in this country. I know what people like you do when you can’t keep your legs together!
‘Well, you know what? This is Georgia baby, the shiniest God-fearing sparkle of all the stars and stripes put together.
‘Oh, and for what it’s worth, let me tell you something, Marta. I tell you Marta, you know, you aren’t the first girl this tricky banker buddy of ours has wangled his way around; and you sure as hell won’t be the last!’
By now, Marta was incapable of saying anything more. She sobbed and sobbed, but she knew, as deeply and as intimately as she had ever known it, that in the presence of Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble, she was not merely dealing with a man with a heart of stone.
For there is no heart of stone that cannot one day, be melted.
Otherwise, why should any human being keep on breathing?
But Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble did not have a heart of stone.
Beneath the innumerable folds of toxic, self-consuming fat and sweat, there was only a bottomless chasm, from which nothing beautiful, true or good could ever issue, and which nothing beautiful, true or good could ever pass by without being sucked in and annihilated in the cold, empty void between his ribs.
Marcus Charleston Bubble, as far as this world is concerned, should have been pronounced dead upon arrival.
…
However, Marta’s child was not.
Months later, the unlamented and friendless Martha was to finally give birth in the kind of ramshackle hut on fowl’s legs that passes for a hospital in Cuba.
Yes, Marta’s child was alive upon arrival.
But that was but little consolation.
Because two months later, Marta and both her children were dead.
Starved of all hope, starved of all kindness.
And most of all…
Starved of love.
But why should you or I care about this?
After all, it is none of our business.
…
And Senator Marcus Charleston Bubble was always a firm believer in the eternal truth that everyone knows their own business best.
But then, not everyone lives out this proverb in the same way.
The distance between Marta’s self-reliance and the self-reliance of Bubble is not a distance of scale or of magnitude.
It is a gulf truly cosmic in scale, an abyss absolute and beyond all comparison.
The difference between imperfect human frailty…
And absolute, unqualified depravity.