Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

Charles Wu rolled out of bed, a wee bit hungover from the White House Correspondents' Association dinner and the three after-parties he had attended. He had too many secrets in his brain to drink to real excess, but he had let himself go a bit far last night. He was fairly certain he had made out with Pamela Anderson, though he also recalled Martha Stewart making a pass at him (after Colin Powell had turned her down). Miss America had been a bust, but he had passed his business card to several other women--some because they were hot, and others because they were connected. He sat down in his silk boxers to eat a dryly toasted English muffin and jot down notes about the people he had met the night before.

A few miles away, Henry Samuelson was waiting for the Heurich Society meeting to begin. He was shuffling through the photos he had taken of every person Wu had shaken hands with the night before, but he detected no particular pattern. He put the photos away as the Chair called the meeting to order at the sight of Condoleezza Rice's arrival. First item on the agenda: rising food prices. After considerable discussion, the Society concluded that the media's analysis of the root causes was sufficiently inaccurate not to require correction. And with an 88% rise in grain prices over the past 12 months, the Moon Township Plan was going even better than they had hoped. They were a little surprised about some of the countries showing the first signs of regime collapse, but they were optimistic that the correct repercussions would continue to accelerate--all except Samuelson, that is, who said nothing and sat quietly with his arms folded over his chest.

A few miles south, Golden Fawn opened her Southwest Plaza door to let in her neighbor from across the hall. She had let her in a couple of times before, and Golden Fawn thought this was going to be another one of those times--the call to 911 about the beating from the boyfriend, the three hours of drama, then the decision not to press charges after the man calmed down and apologized for "getting a little out of hand" from "drinking". But this was different--the woman asked in an unsteady voice if Golden Fawn could spare her a couple of dollars to buy some bread. The gaunt woman was swaying and looked extremely weak, but whether the cause was skyrocketing grocery prices or drugs was not exactly obvious. Golden Fawn opened the freezer and pulled out a loaf of frozen bread, telling her neighbor she didn't have any cash on her. The woman mumbled something about needing a special kind of bread and walked out without taking the bread with her.

A couple miles to the north, former Senator Evermore Breadman was in his office at Prince and Prowling, still hungover from the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, irritated that he had to field Sunday phone calls from over a dozen corporate counsel for the members of Breadman's secret client, the American Plastics Council. "I warned you that Congress would catch up on the issue this year," he repeated for the fourth time. "You better have photos of all your top executives feeding their babies with plastic baby bottles." He continued thumbing through his notes from the locked file cabinet, including the minutes of some of the FDA oversight hearings he had chaired. "You know how irrational the American consumer is--they'll stop using toilet paper if somebody tells them it's potentially carcinogenic." After giving a few more words of advice, Breadman hung up and made another billing notation--it wasn't his fault the Council members were collectively making him repeat himself. A spasm in his colon prompted him to open up his bottom drawer of herbs. He reached for the yellow mix and swallowed down a dry mouthful of it with a grape juice chaser. He closed his eyes for a moment, suddenly remembering something Lynnette Wong had once said to him in her Chinatown shop: there is only one carcinogenic--everything else is just an apostate.

About a mile east, Atticus Hawk was downing an energy drink from a #7 BPA plastic bottle and furiously typing up talking points for Monday's meeting about yesterday's media release of the Benczkowski letters and the accompanying statement from Senator Wyden's office that the Justice Department's and CIA's claim that the Geneva Conventions could be selectively applied on a "sliding scale" was "stunning". Hawk's boss was not satisfied with the lack of CIA response, nor was his boss's boss, nor was the big boss. Talking Point 4: there is no binding legal authority on what constitutes "outrages against personal dignity". Inside Hawk's stomach, a few more molecules of BPA leached out into his half-digested McMuffin and began making their way into his bloodstream...ready for activation at any time.

Several miles to the east, Jai Alai received an email telling her she had been selected for a blind date set up by The Washington Post's "Date Lab". She typed up her acceptance of the Terms and Conditions and sent the email out of her clunky old computer into her slow dial-up connection. She leaned back and exhaled for a minute as she waited for the "sent" confirmation, wondering if she was really ready to start dating again. In the background, her child chattered out loud to the array of toys on the floor, but Jai Alai could only hear the voice of her other child--the one that had been killed by him.