River of Dreams

It was Labor Day in Washington, and much evil work was taking the day off--but not all.

Coast Guard officer Marcos Vazquez was pulling another body from the Potomac--another fool who went boating without a life vest on. As he glanced to the shore, he could see Dubious McGinty staring at the corpse from the shore. As soon as their eyes met, Dubious started waving his arms and making a commotion. Marcos could not hear him, but he had heard the speech before--all about the evil spirit that dwelt in the Potomac. Marcos knew where Dubious lived. Sometimes he thought about ratting out Dubious, but where was the sense in that? Dubious was the only problem on the Potomac that was not a problem. Marcos cursed his tour of duty on the Potomac. He missed the ocean and Puerto Rico.

Dubious McGinty crossed himself, made a cross of twigs on the ground, spit on that, then resumed his walk home to the suspension bridge. He hated holidays--all the party people jetting up and down his river, keeping him from sleep and his studies. He had spent most of the day collecting food scraps and cigarette butts in Foggy Bottom, and had also found a magazine about the coming apocalypse in Fallujah. The evil spirit had already told him that the apocalypse would be in Washington, but he knew that sometimes the evil spirit lied, so he had to keep doing his studies, trying to stay one step ahead. It took him a quarter hour to climb to the obsolete bridgeman's quarters. Normally he only did the climb home after dark, but he knew nobody would be watching him while a corpse was being pulled from the Potomac. He turned on the TV to "Oprah" and sat down to eat some cold fries.

On Air Force One back to D.C., President Bush put down the magazine with the cover story about the coming apocalypse in Fallujah. "They're doin a heckuva job in Fallujah!" he exclaimed to nobody in particular. His posse exchanged veiled looks with each other. His posse had been instructed to distract him from Iraq--which he was only supposed to discuss with Rummy, Dickie, and Condi. There was a traitor amongst them: somebody had given him that magazine, but they didn't know who! John Smith No. 4 got up, strode over to Bush, cleared his throat, and handed him an article about Katie Couric's debut on the CBS Evening News. "I always liked that Katydid girl!" Bush exclaimed, picking up the article.

Chloe Cleavage minimized the web story on Katie Couric when she heard the knock on her door. Laura Moreno entered with another box of stupid documents to flag, re-shut the door behind her, then walked past the fifty wall photos of ex-Senator Evermore Breadman on her way back to the workroom. It was the 13th day of the dead rat smell in her air ducts, but she was almost used to it now--either that or it really was fading. She usually didn't come in on holidays, but she needed the extra money. At least she didn't have to listen to Bridezilla on the phone making her daily quota of 10 wedding-planning phone calls/day. Bridezilla had been planning the wedding since the day she started at Prince and Prowling six months ago. Laura did not make 10 personal phone calls/day, and had been racking up billable hours for three years, but she did not have a real office because she had not done law review or worn low-cut sweaters every day of the year. Immaculate offices of all shapes and sizes sat unused all over Prince and Prowling, while Laura sat and inhaled dead rat fumes every day. Nobody had even come to investigate the smell until Breadman had wrinkled his nose at it during one of his infrequent visits to the office in between lobbying junkets to the Mariana Islands, (after Laura had walked out to the suite door to let him in, since he had too many important things to do to remember his own key). The investigation had turned up nothing, and Laura still had not been given an office. She popped some antacid and turned off her computer for the day, nearly brain-dead.

Laura walked home past Urine Park, wrinkling her nose. She smiled at the ducks, paddling around the fountain. A mere hop, skip, and a jump from the Potomac, they nonetheless liked to come here and swim in this tiny pond. Sometimes they waddled around, picking up the breadcrumbs thrown to the pigeon doves. Other times they huddled lazily in the shady grass. But other times--like now--they inexplicably swam in the fountain, making occasional head dives for who-knows-what at the bottom. She saw Dizzy lying on a bench, his silent trumpet resting on his stomach as he snoozed--no World Bankers to play for on Labor Day. Seven other homeless men, 200 sparrows, 50 starlings, and a dozen squirrels rounded out the wildlife found at Urine Park this Labor Day. Sometimes after being shut up in the Prince & Prowling workroom all day, she wondered if she would end up in this wildlife refuge someday herself. She was losing her mind.

Dr. Khalid Mohammad walked aimlessly past Laura, strung out from an unexpectedly long overnight shift. He was walking in the wrong direction, but he was not yet cognizant of that. When he started sniffing the urine, he came back to his senses, looked around, realized he had missed the Metro stop, and retraced his steps. He had thought he would learn about emergency surgery during his residency at George Washington University Hospital, but most of the patients were either flat-lined gunshot victims or crazies and junkies needing sedation. He walked down the escalator steps, enjoying the growing coolness as he descended from the air pollution mugginess. On days like this, he could not even remember where he was from, or where he was going. He stared at the signs for a moment before opting to travel west to Virginia, where his wife would have a cold lentil soup ready for him. She was pregnant! He kept forgetting he was happy. The train dove into the tunnel under the Potomac River.

Golden Fawn was riding in the opposite direction, taking a train from the airport into the city. She hated going through the tunnel under the Potomac: she got superstitious every time she went under it, and chills ran down her spine. She tried to tell herself these were rational concerns about an aging subway system, but she knew deep down that she had an irrational fear of Ardua. Too many inexplicable things had happened in D.C. in the past six years. Too much evil. Sometimes she sprung for a taxi when she was really too wigged out to go into the subway tunnel under the river, but she was trying to maintain an extremely frugal budget right now in order to buy a home of her own, now that Mr. Right No. 2 had just broken up with her on their Labor Day vacation. Now she needed another vacation.

Tomorrow would be another staff meeting about budget cuts. Golden Fawn could not understand how the U.S. government could spend $2 billion/week on "nation-building" blood-soaked Iraq, when it had not spent that much in the past decade building up the reservation concentration camps sprinkled around the continent like hell's franchises. With the soaring cost of gas forcing more and more field trip cancellations, the Museum of the American Indian had to turn increasingly to corporate sponsors. At tomorrow's staff meeting, they would decide between cutting another $200,000 from the budget or renaming the auditorium the "Shock Wave Cola Auditorium".

Golden Fawn exhaled deeply as the train entered the station of Foggy Bottom, out of the river. Across the aisle from her, Condoleezza Rice's Assistant Deputy Administrator for Anti-Fecklessness arose to exit the train, clutching the report he would put on Rice's desk at the State Department. He glanced suspiciously at Golden Fawn's black hair, dark skin, and battered suitcase, wondering if she was a terrorist trying to blow up his boss from underground. Golden Fawn smiled at him, unaware of the evil he was carrying with him. His suspicions allayed by the glint of her non-extremist-looking earrings, he exited the train. Golden Fawn closed her eyes and started thinking about the future.