Let them eat cake!

It was another emergency meeting of the Federal Reserve Board Camelot Society.

"If Trump blows up the health insurance market, it's game over!" wailed Obi Wan Woman.

"Don't panic!" cried Janet Yellen's representative.  "We have tools at our disposal.  We got through the Great Recession, and we will get through this.

"We got through the Great Recession?!" scoffed Obi Wan Woman.  "What you mean is some very large banks got through it, and AIG survived, and a lot of Americans went into foreclosure and bankruptcy."

"It would have been far worse without us," said Italian economist Luciano Talaverdi Yellen (distantly related by marriage to Janet Yellen, but still toiling in obscurity at FRB despite his legal name change).

"Exactly," said Janet Yellen's representative.  "We need to formulate a drastic plan."

"Well, if you're going to take away people's health insurance, you might as well just kill them," said Luciano.  (Several people seated around the library Round Table gasped.)  "No, I mean it!" said Luciano.  "Sick people with nothing to lose will simply start bombing everything.  The fascists in Italy did not anticipate that, and so the communists--"

"We don't have time to talk about post-war Italy!" cried Obi Wan Woman (who disliked Luciano ever since he got married and stopped having sex with her on this table).

"Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it," he retorted.

"Italy is a mess!" countered Obi Wan Woman.

"Shut up, both of you!" exclaimed Janet Yellen's representative.  "Unpaid medical bills lead to bankruptcies, and the country cannot afford another large-scale disruption of system liquidity.  Senator Rand Paul is doing this precisely because he hates the Federal Reserve Board and wants to trick us into propping up health insurance companies.  We must do it in secret."

"But that is why he hates us!" protested Luciano.  "The secret influence over the economy!"

"That's why it needs to be ultra-secret, so he doesn't have a clue!  If you need to work with Heurich Society, you're authorized.  Now get her a plan!"

"The Heurich Society?!" protested Obi Wan Woman.  "It was probably their idea for Trump to promote fiscal responsibility by condemning three million people to live in the Stone Age on Puerto Rico so FEMA can spend all its money on the Republican hurricane victims in Texas and Florida!"

Meanwhile, up in Cleveland Park, triple agent Charles Wu would listen to his tape of the Camelot Society meeting later because he was hosting his daughter's birthday party in his backyard.

"Mrs. H-C has been a wonderful nanny and governess, but Delia's getting older now, and I'm not doing enough," said Charles Wu, in a rather uncharacteristic moment of weakness.

Lynnette Wong said nothing for a minute as she watched the birthday girl race back into the backyard bouncy castle under the doting eye of Prudence Higgety-Cheshire.  "She's a happy and healthy child," she finally said.

"She's in kindergarten, and her female role models are Mrs. H-C, Liv next door, Angela, you, and Dora the Explorer."

"That's fine!" said Lynnette.

"She doesn't understand Liv's work, or what Angela really does."

"She understands my work:  I sell herbs in a Chinatown shop to help people feel better.  And we're business partners.  What you're really worried about is she doesn't understand your work, and you can't introduce her to most of the people you work with."

Charles turned to look at Lynnette, then turned back to keep gazing at the bouncy castle.  They had dated briefly, then gone back to being business partners with unspoken issues between them:  her Taiwanese roots, his Hong Kong roots, her political outspokenness, his inability to steer her off being suspicious about his actual activities since moving to the U.S.  And yet, instead of remaining circumspect with her, he always found himself craving her encouragement and approval.  "She's just not my little princess anymore.  She's turning into an actual person.  One minute she's asking me for a Barbie dream house, and the next minute she's asking me why Harvey Weinstein was mean to those girls!  Except she said his name as 'Harvey Weiner Schnitzel.'"  (Lynnette burst our laughing.)  "We had just been to Cafe' Mozart."

"She knows how to turn on a television and a computer," said Lynnette.  "You need to be able to discuss things with her."

"Why's it so difficult?"

"Maybe the real question should be why the first decade of your adult life came so easy to you?  Your over-abundance of chi!  You know what was difficult?  When I had to answer Angela's questions at age fourteen about why she had to have a dead mother, an absent father, a monstrous uncle, and an extremely ill grandmother."  (They both turned to look at Angela de la Paz, who was always glad to subsume her own October birthday celebration into Buffy Cordelia's.  Her boyfriend was walking her into the Wu backyard with his arm around her, and the normally somber young woman was laughing.)  "Life is pain, which your chi kept you insulated from for a long time.  Now your chi is flowing to your daughter, as it should."  (He turned his head to look at Lynette.)  "Did you think hiring an English nanny would allow you to go on with the same life path you had before?"

"No, but...."  (He turned back to stare at the bouncy castle, feeling guilty he had been about to ask Lynnette for help mentoring his own daughter.  He sighed and turned back to Lynnette.)  "You would tell me if I were a bad father, wouldn't you?"

"Yes.  The demon is back in the river:  what are you doing about it?"

"Angela says there's nothing we can do about it right now."

"She's said more than that," replied Lynnette.  (Charles nodded.  Angela had been pressuring him about his more questionable espionage activities since the day he hired her.)  "Listen to her:  nobody can protect Delia from evil better than Angela."

The two turned to look back at Angela, who had just picked up Lucas Cigemeier--the boy she had given up for adoption when she was a teenager and the baby's father had been killed in a military operation in the Middle East.  Felix and Liv Cigemeier were happy to share the toddler with Angela, who never asked too much.  (They had no idea that Angela visited Lucas in the Dreamtime every night.)

"She's doing better," said Lynnette.  "Dulles has been good for her."

"He better be," said Charles, remembering the man's father, former CIA agent Henry Samuelson, who had hounded triple agent Charles Wu, and was probably rolling over in his grave now that Dulles had joined the FBI.

"He knows about her gift, and doesn't try to exploit it," said Lynnette.

"I don't exploit it!" Charles said, guiltily.

"You make a lot of money off it," said Lynnette.

"Believe me, Angela vetoes anything and everything she wants to veto!"  Charles was still uncertain how much Lynnette actually knew about his spy life.  "I listen to her!"

They watched as Delia ran over to welcome Angela to her party and get a toss in the air from Dulles.

"Dark forces have always preyed on you, Charles, because of all your chi," said Lynnette.  "You are lucky to have Angela watching over Delia, but you also can't forget that."

"Did Angela tell you she sought out Donald Trump in the Dreamtime and discovered his soul is gone?"

Lynnette shivered.  "Only light can conquer darkness."

Out in the river, Ardua of the Potomac inhaled and laughed in pleasure as she sensed Donald Trump and his evil entourage returning from the golf weekend and drawing closer to the White House...where Character Counts Week was about to launch.

**************************************************** 
COMING UP:    
CIA Director Mike Pompeo gets to know the Cursed Rolex!