So Very Like a Forty-Five-Pound Football
“I can still sleep. You?”
“Yeah, I can. I wake up sometimes, though.”
“Me, too.”
The two friends, Sandy and Sue,1 sat at a low, uncomfortable coffee table at the mall cafe, the only place they could meet and sit for as long as they wanted. After a pause:
“He’s invited Putin to Mar-a-Lago.”
“I know.”
“He wants him to like him.”
“I know.”
“So what do you think he’ll do,” Sue asked, “you know, to get him to like him?”
“You know what he wants,” Sandy responded.
“They say it’s shaped like a football.” A pause. “You think he’ll give him that?”
“Yeah,” Sandy said. “To hold. For a while. Touch a little bit. I do.” A pause. “They call it the presidential emergency satchel.”
They couldn’t help laughing, then silence.
“So you think we’ll know beforehand or will it just happen?” Sue asked.
“It’s not something they’d announce.”
Another pause. They bent to their cups and sipped their coffee. Sue straightened up.
“The lucky ones won’t know what hit them. Just a puff of smoke.”
“Burning gases,” Sandy corrected.
“Burning gases,” Sue repeated. A pause. “Will he care?”
Sandy shrugged. “Does it matter?”
- Not their real names. ↩︎