Saturday evening, after dinner at Del Campo in Chinatown (which paradoxically features South American cuisine, by the way), Cerise, having been given two free tickets by a friend serendipitously connected with the show, and having subsequently promised to go as a personal favor to that individual, went with me to see The Orginalist at Arena Stage. It’s a play about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Yes, international readers of this Web Log, whom the Googlestats tell me are legion, strange as it may seem, here in the USA our playwrights actually devote their creative energies to works concerning judges, in this case one who parses the prose of our Constitution using an eighteenth-century dictionary in order to ensure he correctly understands what it says. And even more incredible, perhaps, is the fact that such plays are actually produced, and even more astoundingly it seems that people – in Washington DC at least – pay good money to attend their performance. After viewing such a work of theatrical art (and here I use the term “art” in its broadest and most magnanimous sense), I’m sure readers all over the world will understand that we were ready for some serious nightclubbing in Georgetown, and, as usual, we were both fast asleep at my home in Great Falls, Virginia at eight-forty five a.m. Sunday morning, when we were awoken by the incessant ringing of the front doorbell. Sliding my new Smith and Wesson fifty caliber magnum revolver (this is Virginia I am talking about, after all) into the custom designed holster pocket of my Louis Vuitton bathrobe, and donning my Gucci slippers, I went downstairs to investigate.
“Who is it?” I demanded, yelling to make myself clearly heard outside over the continuing doorbell and loud banging.
“Tom!” replied the voice from outside on my front porch, “It’s Branch Q. Key, from the NSA!”
A look at the security camera display mounted on the wall in the foyer next to the front door confirmed it was him – a regular client at my consultation practice downtown. For the briefest moment, I wondered how he knew where I lived, then realized what a stupid question that is, since he works for the NSA. Figuring it would be bad for future business if I didn’t let him in, I opened the door, thinking what the hell anyway, I still had the revolver, this is my house, and it’s Virginia.
“My entire career is in jeopardy,” he whined as I sat him down on my living room couch.
“What’s all this noise about?” Veronica inquired, peering around the corner from the hallway, dressed in an Armani nightgown.
“A friend of yours?” Cerise asked, entering from the archway leading to the dining room, wearing her favorite Versace silk pajamas.
“Who… who,” Key stuttered, staring goggle eyed at Cerise and Veronica, “who…”
“This is my girlfriend Cerise,” I said, “and this is Veronica, whom I knew in college.”
“I was married to a Hollywood producer…” Veronica began to relate.
“Actually,” Cerise interrupted, “she was divorced from him.”
“Right,” Veronica agreed, “And I got a very nice house in Malibu out of it…”
“Which you couldn’t afford to insure,” Cerise reminded her.
“Forgot to insure,” Veronica resumed. “So when it burned down during one of those California brush fires, Tom was kind enough to take me in.”
“She pays rent,” I noted.
“Not that Tom needs a room mate, of course,” Cerise added.
“And this,” I offered, gesturing to my surprise guest, “is Branch Key, one of my regular clients.”
“Well,” Veronica suggested while carefully scanning Key, “now that Cerise and I have been formally introduced to Mr. Key, how about the two of us make everybody some coffee?”
“Good idea,” Cerise replied with a sly smile. “And in honor of the unexpected pleasure of Mr. Key’s company, I know just the thing – Kopi Luwak cappuccinos.”
“Made with Evian water,” Veronica embellished, “and steamed organic grass-fed Hereford milk, finished off with shots of Grand Marnier.”
“Or Benedictine,” Cerise offered. “Actually, we have just about anything you could name, Mr. Key. What would you like?”
“You put liquor in your coffee?” Key gasped. “I mean… at nine o’clock in the morning? On a Sunday?”
“We do,” Veronica confirmed, batting her large green eyes at Mr. Key. “What would you like?”
Key gestured uncertainly toward me. “I’ll have whatever Tom has.”
“Chambord,” I responded.
“What’s that taste like?” Key asked as the women disappeared into the kitchen.
“Raspberries,” I told him. “Now, what brings you out to Great Falls so bright and early on a weekend morning?”
“It’s Congress!” he wailed. “They’re about to do something awful!”
“Congress is going to do something?” I exclaimed. “Are you sure? Congress hasn’t done anything since 2011.”
“Well, actually,” he confessed, “Congress is about to not do something.”
“Now that’s considerably more believable,” I opined. “What is it that they’re about not to do that has you so upset?”
“They’re about to not renew the parts of the PATRIOT Act that allow the NSA to continue bulk collection of telephone information!” he groaned. “It expires at midnight, May thirty-first! Starting in June, the NSA won’t have any legal basis to listen to telephone calls, or even log telephone call metadata!”
“Oh,” I realized, “and that’s what you do at NSA, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he sobbed, “and in anticipation of Congress not passing the re-authorization, yesterday the NSA started closing down the program! You know what that means, Tom?”
“Well, bureaucratically speaking,” I hypothesized, “that would imply inactivation of several branches, if not a division or two, within your directorate.”
“Exactly!” he concurred. “And I happen to be Deputy Division Director for five of those branches. That’s nineteen sections, Tom! Over one hundred and twenty NSA employees! Two of my branch chiefs have called me already – they’re talking RIF! If I lose my position at NSA, it could be disastrous!”
“Disastrous?” I asked. “How so?”
“Well,” he groused, “I won’t be able to hire a contractor to… you know…”
“Do your job while you sell real estate on the side?” I inquired.
“I do not sell real estate on the side,” he corrected, “I deal in antiques.”
“Okay,” I acknowledged, “antiques, day trading, Mary Kay, whatever. True, if you no longer have a job with the federal government, then you won’t be able to have the taxpayers foot the bill for a privately owned federal contractor to provide someone who will actually do the work you’re supposed to be doing, just as most federal employees above GS Grade 12 have arranged for themselves these days. But don’t worry, I’m sure the Agency will give all of you new billets,” I consoled. “Employees cleared at your level are a valuable resource. I’d say a reduction in force action is highly unlikely. You need to keep your head in a situation like this, especially if, as it appears, your staff are losing theirs.”
“All right,” he shrugged, “maybe they are over-reacting. You do have a point. It’s not like we’re a bunch of economists at the Department of Agriculture or something.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “USDA economists don’t have to go through two years of FBI and OPM background investigations before they can look at the soybean crop yields. There’s no way the NSA is going to toss all the investment you and your staff represent out the window just because some people in Congress are grandstanding about violations of our rights to privacy – there aren’t any privacy rights in the US Constitution, anyway; just a prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
“Really?” Key perked up. “Nobody ever told me that. So all that stuff Rand Paul was blithering on about during his twelve-and-a-half hour filibuster was just a bunch of silly crap?”
“It depends on who you ask,” I averred. “I doubt, for example, that Justice Antonin Scalia would agree that the Fourth Amendment prohibits surveillance of email traffic, telephone call metadata, or even telephone calls themselves, since the words ’email,’ ‘metadata’ and, for that matter, ‘telephone,’ can’t be found in an eighteenth-century dictionary. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on the other hand…”
At that point, Key sat bolt upright as the unmistakable sound of an espresso machine forcing live steam through cold milk emanated from the kitchen. “What’s Kopi Luwak?” he asked, throwing me an anxious glance.
“Believe me, you’ll enjoy it more if you don’t know,” I advised.
“Oh,” he winced. “A gourmet item, huh?”
“Very much so,” I confirmed, “and especially prepared in recognition of your visit. So anyhow, those clowns in Congress are probably just bluffing, you know, and this deactivation rigamarole over at the NSA is just part of the Shutdown Minuet that all federal agencies have to perform when it appears that, for whatever reason, Congress isn’t going to fund their ongoing operations. And seriously, as I said, even if Congress never reauthorizes bulk electronic surveillance, the worst that could possibly happen to you is reassignment…”
“But I don’t want to be reassigned!” Key protested. “I can’t be!”
“You can’t be?” I skeptically echoed.
“Well, yeah,” he huffed, “I could be, I know it, but… damn it, Tom… I’m… I guess I’m just… well… addicted to covert electronic surveillance.”
“Addicted?” I repeated, seeking to make sure I had heard him correctly.
“Yeah, yeah,” he whimpered, “we all are, down at the Agency, I think. It’s that feeling of absolute power, Tom – knowing that you can find anyone, anytime, and know exactly what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, who they’re doing it with, where they’re doing it, when they started and when they’re going to stop. It’s like you’re this… giant… this… this… Titan; some kind of god, looking down from the clouds on these… mere mortals… these insignificant, crawling ants! I tell you, it’s the most powerful aphrodisiac imaginable, just thinking about how I have all those tiny little… citizens… right there, in the palm of my hand, where I could just close my fist and crush…”
“Coffee’s ready!” Cerise and Veronica proclaimed in unison.
Key nearly jumped off the couch and threw me a fearsome look. Settling nervously back into his seat he turned to gaze at the women, who had materialized as silently as wraiths at the archway leading to the dining room, each bearing two cups of fragrant, fresh Kopi Luwak cappuccino.
With the air of gracious hostesses, each set a cup on the coffee table in front of the couch – one for me and one for Key. “Two doppio ristretto Chambord corretto Luwak caps, scuro, extra foam, dark chocolate dust,” Cerise announced as she and Veronica primly took seats with their own coffees on the chairs facing the couch.
“You… you… you,” Key stammered, “you weren’t… that is, uh, you didn’t…”
“Overhear you?” Cerise teased, sipping her cappuccino.
“Telling Tom,” Veronica snarked, “all about how much you… enjoy your work?”
“How,” Cerise mocked, leaning over the coffee table toward Key, adopting a breathless tone, “excited it makes you?”
“I wonder,” Veronica asked, looking contemplatively up at the ceiling, “what Mrs. Key would think if she heard all about how Mr. Key needs intense high-tech voyeurism to… crack her code, shall we say?”
“We were having a private conversation!” Key indignantly asserted. “What makes you think it’s okay to eavesdrop on it?”
“You came to Tom’s home uninvited,” Cerise observed, “and proceeded to engage in a discussion with him in the living room while two other people whom you knew were also in the house – because you had just been introduced to them – left, went into another room, and proceeded to prepare coffee with the full expectation that they could return at any moment. Which part of the Fourth Amendment covers that?”
“I… I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’m not a lawyer.”
“Neither am I,” Cerise dryly responded. “But I do know that if Veronica and I don’t tell anyone what we overheard, the question of whether we were invading your privacy when we overheard it will be moot. So not to worry – try your coffee before it begins to get cold.”
Key took a sip, somewhat apprehensively. “My God,” he exclaimed, “this is really good!” He took another, longer draught and smiled as the Chambord hit. “Okay, ladies, I’ll rely on your, um… discretion. Look Tom, maybe what you say is true. But what if it isn’t? If Congress cuts off the money for bulk electronic surveillance of the intimate details of people’s lives, and the NSA simply can’t afford to keep me on with a reassignment – or even if they can and my new job involves something like decrypting ISIS secret messages instead of doing what I like… hell, what I need to do – what then?”
“No-brainer,” I vouched. “Go to work for Facebook.”
“Facebook?” Key’s eyes lit up as he took another substantial quaff of his spiked coffee. “How’s that work?”
“Like this:” I told him, “NSA spies on unwilling, innocent citizens for the sake of national security as part of the Agency’s mission. Facebook spies on willing, innocent citizens for the sake of profit as part of its business model. There’s hardly any difference, really.”
“Well,” Key ruefully remarked, “the fact that the members of Facebook agree to be spied on takes some of the… um… juice… out of it, if you know what I mean. But I do understand what you’re talking about.”
“So,” I shrugged, “maybe you’d have to buy something for the wife at Victoria’s Secret.”
“Or some nice… toys… from one of those naughty on-line Web sites,” Veronica taunted.
“Or get a prescription for Cialis,” Cerise japed.
“It would still be a paycheck,” I continued, “and, as a matter of fact, definitely a bigger one that you’re getting from NSA at the moment. Probably large enough so you wouldn’t feel like trading antiques anymore – you could collect them instead.”
“Oh, thanks, Tom,” Key effused as he finished his cappuccino, rose from the couch and shook my hand. “I’m going home right now and looking up how to apply for a position at Facebook, poking around in people’s private lives for an organization that can truly appreciate my talents!”
“You’re very welcome,” I told him as he made a rapid and excited exit. Shortly after the front door slammed, Cerise leaned over to Veronica and whispered in her ear, after which both of them began giggling uncontrollably.
“What’s so funny?” I inquired.
“Just wait,” Cerise squeezed out between mutual bursts of laughter with Veronica, “until that creep gets done with his Facebook application and Googles ‘Kopi Luwak!’”