Ice Water

The uneven sheets and rafts of ice covering the Potomac gleamed with an unusual green sheen that left Golden Fawn Vazquez a little disconcerted. She was staring out the window of a Southwest co-op at the frozen river while her husband Marcos Vazquez inspected the apartment itself. The real estate agent again praised the river view--something unimportant to Marcos, who saw the river all the time as a Coast Guard officer, but important to Golden Fawn, who knew she needed to renew her fight against Ardua this year. "It's too small," Marcos pronounced simply, and when Golden Fawn made no reply, he knew that her instincts were also telling her it was the wrong one. "Let's go see the next one."

"Yeah, I know him, so what?" said Dizzy defensively. He didn't like reporters, and he wished he had been over at Urine Park on Wednesday night instead of Lafayette. Washington Post "Metro" reporter Perry Winkle tossed another dollar in Dizzy's basket, prompting Dizzy to give him an are-you-kidding-me? sneer; then Winkle tossed in a fiver. Dizzy put down his trumpet and warmed his hands in his pockets. "It was the ducks--it's ALWAYS the ducks! I keep telling you people, but nobody ever believes me!" (That guy ran up to the White House fence naked because of the ducks?) "They get in your HEAD, man! They're like zombies--all dead and controlled by that evil she-devil in the river!" (But why would the ducks make a man take off his clothes in frigid weather and run up to the White House fence?) "Why do zombies do ANYthing? It's just EVIL on the prowl--don't need to make sense. The Secret Service needs to kill ALL the ducks!" Up on the nearby White House roof, two different snipers had Dizzy and Winkle in their sights (respectively), and a ghost was whispering to them to pull the trigger. One of the Shackled descended on the roof to plead with the White House ghost to cease and desist, and then the two ghosts set in on each other. During the struggle, the Shackled reached out to push one of the sniper's guns to the right (where it would have taken out a duck had the sniper then pulled the trigger), and the sniper shivered and looked wildly around himself. Must have been the wind. (The White House snipers were always telling themselves that.)

Forty feet below, Sasha and Malia brought Bo into President Obama's study to summon him to lunch. Bo took one look at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt bobblehead (a Christmas gift from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) and launched himself into the air to knock it off the desk. "BO!" It was too late: Bo had pinned the bobblehead body down with his paws, ripped off FDR's head, and was preparing to swallow it after a couple more chews. (Bo didn't hate FDR; Bo just hated bobbleheads.) "BO!" (Gulp.) A grim-faced, resigned President Obama told the girls he needed to work through his lunch, and they dejectedly took the dog out. President Obama chewed on his Clif's Builder Bar, stared silently for a moment at the headless FDR corpse on the carpet, then turned back to his Treasury Department explanation of why the "Christmas Eve massacre of the U.S. taxpayer" stories filling up the internet were not true. (See, e.g., http://www.benzinga.com/77007/wsj-the-treasury-department-s-christmas-eve-massacre-of-the-us-taxpayer, and http://www.taxpayer.net/search_by_category.php?action=view&proj_id=3108&category=Wastebasket&type=Project.)

Even now, Obama knew that most Americans had no idea what had happened Christmas Eve, and that the alarmists were ringing their taxpayer bell so shriekingly loudly that the only reasonable response was for people to plug their ears. A gnawing anxiety tugged at his gut, and it wasn't the protein bar stomach irritation the White House physician had warned him about: does Geithner know what he's doing? Geithner had more power than FDR had ever dreamed of. Then a more frightening thought occurred to Obama: what if Geithner DOES know what he's doing...and I don't? President Obama put down the Treasury Department briefing and again picked up the International Monetary Fund report, "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis". Powerful American banks spending lavishly on lobbying are more likely to engage in high-risk lending, and their shares have performed worse than others....Lobbying by the finance, insurance and real estate sector outstrips any other lobbying activity in the U.S. economy....Firms who spend more on buying access to politicians are more likely to engage in risky securitization of their loan books, and have poorer share performance and larger loan defaults. Obama--who thought he had put the smartest guys in the room at Treasury--was losing faith.

A block away, former Senator Evermore Breadman was enjoying another fruit and sausage basket sent by a grateful bank CEO. (The idea for the Christmas Eve Secret Santa giveaway of bonuses and guarantees was not directly traceable to Breadman, but insiders knew.) Of course, some would say that the Secret Santa giveaway simply gave more ammunition to Barney Frank's Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 (H.R.3126), but a grateful banking community was now rich enough to pay Breadman even higher fees for his 2010 services. (You never want to totally solve your clients' problems!) But first he had to telephone Charles Wu to congratulate him on his improved visa status, thanks to the cool million Wu had dropped into the regional business investment center Breadman had set up for the sole purpose of meeting the statutory requirements for foreigners to buy their way to an EB-5 visa. (Breadman hated to admit this, but the Chinese-British mongrel was becoming his favorite client.)

A couples miles away, Angela de la Paz's mother (whose path to U.S. citizenship had been much cheaper, but more difficult) was shivering on the Washington shore of the cold yet mesmerizing Potomac, trying to understand why the arduous journey that had started with her near-drowning in this wretched river had not yet led her back to her daughter.

Back at the White House, Bo whined to go outside, then promptly vomited up FDR's head.