There was a lull in the action at my office this morning, right around eleven. A client from the Pentagon had to cancel his appointment due to some unexpected, pressing business. I can’t say a whole lot more, except maybe that much is written, but only Allah, blessed be his Name, is omniscient.
I took the opportunity to catch up on some work for another client, figuring there’s no reason to waste ninety minutes of billable time. But as I began reviewing the requirements specification for something I can’t really post about on my Web log, I heard what sounded like a very familiar voice in the reception room – a young man conversing with Gretchen, my private secretary. So naturally, I got up from my desk, padded quietly over to the door, and opened it just a crack. What I saw was my nephew, Henry Palikowski Jr., chatting up Gretchen, and Gretchen batting her long blonde eyelashes back at him.
They would make a handsome couple, to be sure, although Hank Jr. still has to borrow other guys’ I.D. to buy beer, while Gretchen… well, she’s in her twenties and let’s say, quite vivacious. But it’s not like she would qualify as an Older Woman, even though, technically, she is older than Hank Jr. So I held off opening the door any farther until they came to a point in their conversation where they were both staring at each other baring those goofy grins people get when irresistible infatuation gets the best of them. At that point, I opened the door wide and quietly cleared my throat.
Both of them nearly jumped out of their skins. Being half Italian, Hank Jr. managed to blush just a couple of shades less crimson than Gretchen, whose milk-white Pennsylvania Dutch complexion makes her, among other things, a lousy liar and quite prone to sunburns, too.
“Ah… dah… uh… we… duh…” Hank declared.
“I’m sure,” I replied. “What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in some sort of art class or another at Brown?”
“I… I just came down for a couple of days,” Hank explained. “My professors, ah, they said it’s okay. I’m down here to curate an artwork. For a fee.”
“Really?” I replied. “And what artwork might that be?”
“Well,” Hank Jr. explained, “you know how I’m… noted for my garage floors and all…”
“Sure,” I vouched, and regular readers of this Web log would also know that, of course. So far, Hank Jr.’s garage floors have landed him a full arts scholarship in the Ivy League and piled six figures in his bank account. “Who has contracted your services as an expert curator?” I asked.
“The Smithsonian,” he told me with a smile, now over his embarrassment and obviously a bit proud of himself. “There’s an installation on display at a gallery in Northwest. They’re considering it for a show at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art next year.”
“What is it?” I enquired.
“A kitchen floor,” he explained, “from a local French restaurant. The artist covered it with a gessoed canvas for three weeks, then pulled it up and put it on exhibit.”
“Sounds familiar,” I prodded.
“Oh, yeah,” Hank Jr. affirmed, “he’s acknowledged that he’s using my techniques. I think maybe that’s why they called me down here to look at it. The guy’s pretty famous, actually. His work has already been exhibited at the Louvre.”
“Well done,” I congratulated. “These days, people who spend their lives expertly painting pictures that portray the depths of human experience can go on doing that until they’re sixty-nine and never get a single itoa of recognition, while you, with your garage floors, it seems, are going to be a successful, world renowned artist before you’re twenty.”
“Um, yeah,” Hank Jr. shrugged, “my professors all tell me pictorial artwork is pretty much a dead issue these days. So what else can people like that expect, anyway?”
“Good point,” I noted. “Now, what brings you here on a Tuesday morning? There’s certainly nothing I can tell you about the artistic assessment of kitchen floors that you don’t already know, is there?”
“Oh…” he murmured, while glancing at Gretchen. “Maybe we better…” he gestured toward my office. “You know…”
“Absolutely,” I agreed as I ushered Hank Jr. into my office, throwing Gretchen a knowing wink while closing the door behind us. She smiled.
“Have a seat,” I invited, gesturing to the various furnishings. As I expected, Hank Jr. settled into the couch.
“You’re right,” he proclaimed, “I’m not here about art. I’m here about Dad.”
“Ohh… kay,” I responded cautiously. “What’s up with my dear brother-in-law, Hank Sr., these days?”
“He’s developed this… I don’t know, I guess you’d say a total, idiotic fixation with the T.E.A. Party,” Hank Jr. sighed disconsolately. “He’s on the phone all the time, talking to people about it, trying to raise money. He’s been going to T.E.A. Party rallies and stuff; including the one here in Washington on April fifteenth. And when I stopped by the house to visit this weekend…”
“You mean,” I inquired, “that you aren’t staying at home?”
“Oh, hell no,” he exclaimed, “are you kidding? That place is a total zoo! All those kids running around everywhere, Shannon and her husband’s huge family crammed in there with Mom and Dad and all my little brothers and sisters? Forget it! I’m staying at the Hilton.”
“Totally understandable,” I conceded.
“Naturally, when Mom heard I was taking the train down from Rhode Island,” he elaborated, “she insisted I come over to the house for Sunday dinner, and that wasn’t too bad, but afterward, Dad just kept going on and on about the T.E.A. Party and all, and it got to be too much for me.”
“So you challenged his beliefs and opinions?” I presumed.
“Uh-huh,” he nodded. “Ripped right into him.”
“Was there anything in particular,” I wondered, “that set you off? The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back?”
“Damn straight there was,” he grumbled. “When he started babbling about how the liberals were out to sabotage the T.E.A. Party and infiltrate it with traitors who pretend to be T.E.A. Party members and then do messed up stuff at the T.E.A. Party rallies to make the movement look bad, well, that was about all the bull I could listen to, you know? I say, ‘So what’s “T.E.A. Party” stand for, anyway?’ So Dad says ‘It stands for “Taxed Enough Already!”’ Then I say, ‘”Taxed?” What are you talking about, “Taxed?” You don’t even have a job! How come you’re spending thirty hours a week with this T.E.A. Party stuff when you should be out looking for work?’ And Dad says ‘Work? What do you know about work – you’re a [expletive] artist! Let me tell you something: there’s no way a white man can get a job with a [expletive] in the [expletive] White House; and he’s not even a [expletive] American, either, he’s a [expletive] Socialist [expletive] Moslem from [expletive] Kenya, that’s what the [expletive] Barack [expletive] Hussein [expletive] Obama is!’ And I’m like ‘Get [expletive] real, for [expletive] Christ’s sake, will you? It was that ape-faced [expletive] half-wit George [expletive] Dubya [expletive] Bush who let the [expletive] lying, thieving [expletive] on Wall Street [expletive] up the [expletive] economy with [expletive] derivatives, credit default swaps and such [expletive] for eight [expletive] years!’ And then he’s like ‘That wise-[expletive] [expletive] Obama’s been President for fifteen months! When’s he going to start taking some [expletive] personal [expletive] responsibility, huh? We gonna be here three [expletive] years from now, still blaming George W. Bush for the [expletive] mess [expletive] Obama made?’ So I’m like, ‘Oh yeah? You wanna know what I think “T.E.A.” stands for? I think it stands for “Totally Extreme [Expletive]-holes,” that’s what I think it stands for!’ And Dad’s like ‘Just you wait until 2012, punk, when Ron Paul gets elected President, and then you’ll see who the [expletive] [expletive]-holes are!’ And I’m like ‘You and your T.E.A. Party friends think the American people are going to elect that [expletive] Libertarian whack-job Ron Paul President of the United States? [Expletive]! In that [expletive] case, I don’t know who’s a bigger [expletive] paranoid lunatic – Ron Paul or you!’ And then Dad’s like ‘Oh, yeah? You think what I said about liberal agents provocateur infiltrating the T.E.A. Party is paranoid [expletive]? You go ask your uncle, the big policy consultant, he’ll set you [expletive] straight!’ Then Mom broke it up. So here I am. Any idea what Dad was talking about?”
“Yes,” I reluctantly admitted, “I do. It seems that there is at least one person, a certain Jason Levin, who has gone public with the proposition that liberals should infiltrate the T.E.A. Party and commit various acts to discredit them.”
“That,” Hank Jr. opined, “has got to be the stupidest [expletive] idea I have ever heard! What the [expletive] is wrong with this Levin guy? Doesn’t he realize that these T.E.A. Party bozos don’t need any [expletive] help showing the world they run around with their [expletive] heads up their [expletive]?”
“What?” I interjected, “Are saying your own father is running around with his [expletive] head up his [expletive]?”
“Ah, [expletive],” Hank Jr. shrugged, “yeah, him, too. I figure he learned how to do it from [expletive] Ron Paul. So what about this Levin [expletive]?”
“He called me for a consultation,” I divulged, “last Friday.”
“And how come my Dad knew about it?” Hank Jr. demanded to know.
“Because,” I ruefully informed him, “when she called me Saturday afternoon, as she often does, I mentioned it to your mother.”
“Why?” Hank Jr. sat bolt upright.
“Because she was complaining about pretty much the same stuff you are. Having her husband behaving like a complete fool at T.E.A. Party rallies doesn’t make her any happier than it makes you.”
“So,” Hank Jr. pressed me earnestly, “what the [expletive] did you find out that Dad thinks is going to change my mind?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I frankly let him know. “Your father simply assumed that since I spoke with Levin, I would have heard things that confirmed your dad’s preconceived notions and the type of conclusions which he, like all T.E.A. Party members, so rapidly jump – justification forthcoming or not.”
“All right,” Hank Jr. beseeched, “if your consultation with this Levin character didn’t confirm Dad’s suspicions that liberals are planting moles as part of a plan to discredit the T.E.A. Party, what the [expletive] did you find out?”
“That, in fact, Mr. Levin is a mole, planted by the T.E.A. Party, to discredit the liberals and the Obama Administration,” I revealed.
“What the [expletive]?” Hank Jr. shouted, obviously gobsmacked to the wall.
“Yes,” I said, with just a touch of sympathy in my voice, owing to his youth, “the fact is, son, you just can’t make this stuff up.”