The Mighty

How far the mighty have fallen! Cedric was reading the Washington Post editorials and laughing at Henry Kissinger's plea for military intervention. Give it up, old man! You don't have any more armies to command! You don't have any more CIA assassins at your beck and call! You can't control ANYTHING! Then social worker Hue Nguyen came by to give him his meds, and he recalled that he was living at the Arlington Group Home for the Mentally Challenged. How did I get here?

Across the river at the Heurich Society meeting, Henry Samuelson knew full well how Cedric had ended up there, but Samuelson didn't think too much about Cedric these days. He examined his cupcake critically but said nothing about his preference for good old-fashioned doughnuts because the last time he had complained about how cupcakes were taking over Washington his daughter had told him he sounded like an old coot. The doctor had told him to start mega doses of vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin!) and he would start perking up, but it was hard to deny he was getting older. This morning he had nodded off right in the middle of the phone call with Angela de la Paz briefing him on the latest schisms within the Egyptian military ranks. All in all, Project Prometheus and Project Cinderella were both going very well, but it was a lot of balls to keep in the air. He had thought by now the world would be more the way he wanted it and he could enjoy a peaceful retirement, but things just kept getting more complicated. The other day his daughter had commented on how the world's population would hit nine billion this year, and you just couldn't control that many people no matter what you did--but then, how was he to live in such a chaotic world? Samuelson felt old and...weak.

A couple miles away, Golden Fawn's grandmother was also feeling old and weak. They were picnicking on Theodore Roosevelt Island after using her strongest medicine to counteract Ardua's evil influence, but she had already admitted to Golden Fawn that she now believed the Warrior was right--it was somebody else's destiny to fight this demon in the Potomac, as well as her spawn Eeteebsse. She hated to leave her granddaughter like this, but she needed to go home where she could do some good. "Help the girl," she told her granddaughter, "together there is hope."

Back in the city, Dr. Ermann Esse was evaluating his newest patient, Congressman John Boehner. When Boehner had heard about the radical psychiatrist who did not pander to sissies by prescribing drugs, he hadn't known that the psychiatrist also considered cigarette smoking a drug addiction. Boehner was sitting on the edge of the couch, tapping his foot furiously on the oriental carpet and squeezing stress balls in both hands. "I thought people would respect and love me in this position!" Boehner sighed. "But I can't make anybody happy! Nothing I do is good enough for anybody! Tell me, how do you deal with Tea Party members yelling 'cut it or shut it!' on the one hand and four-dozen Representatives on the other who are demanding earmarks? Every option is lose-lose, I tell you!" It felt good to admit that to somebody: carrying around the bravura had become exhausting to Boehner.

"Tell me," asked Dr. Esse, "when did your mother stop kissing you?"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" replied Boehner, getting redder in the face than usual.

"It is a crucial period in every man's life and of fundamental importance to understanding their psychological maturation process," said Dr. Esse. Actually he was not entirely certain of that, but he was working on a book about it, so he needed to keep collecting responses. If only he could attach the real-life names to the responses! Still, he thought it would be a good book anyway. He had already collected "after I accidentally dropped the dog out of the upstairs window" from Henry Samuelson, "after I refused to continue piano lessons" from Didymus (the ghost of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara), "after I told her I would rather wear a potato sack than wear the neon pink polyester Easter dress she had bought me" from Bridezilla, "after she saw me staring at Mrs. Hardy's cleavage" from the SEC attorney fired for downloading porn on his office computer, "after I refused refunds for neighbors complaining there were flies in the lemonade I was selling them" from the Prince and Prowling partner, and "after I denounced her asparagus casserole as a communist conspiracy" from the White House staffer in the last Administration.

"Well," said Boehner, pausing to think back. "I suppose it was after I hit that Little League game-winning RBI, and she tried to give me a congratulatory kiss after the game, but I wouldn't let her kiss me in front of the guys." He looked at the psychiatrist with hope that this courageous and raw admission would be the breakthrough necessary to get himself back on track.

How utterly ordinary and uninteresting, thought Dr. Esse while jotting down the statement. I may have to put this one under hypnosis to find out what's really going on in there.

"What's going on in there?" Over at the Federal Reserve Board, members of the Camelot Society were waiting inpatiently for Luciano Talaverdi and his secret lover ("Obi Wan woman") to come out of the Governor's office with the special files for the meeting, but just the sight of that large smooth Governor's desk where they had first made love had already sent them into a spasm of making out until the shout reminded them what they were doing. Talaverdi picked up the files as his secret lover smoothed out her hair, then they walked out to join the others in saving the world of liquidity as they knew it.

Over in the Tidal Basin, the Beaver quietly watched the continuing throngs of tourists gazing at the cherry blossom trees and wondered about the times to come.