Yep, Chimpy stopped by our office today. The hardcore software geeks have their own communal cell near the center of the campus circles. I was almost finished painting a mural on the last wall of their cube farm, one of four twenty foot tall stucco constraints with no windows; at least now the poor bastards would have something beautiful to stare at while they longed to be anywhere else but work.
What was really strange about his visit, besides being totally unannounced, was the fact it was sans Secret Service goons; maybe they were in the cafeteria fucking off with the coffee cake. And he was wearing some goddamned silly-assed NASA flight suit getup, so he looked even more like an imbecile than he usually does.
I had a little forced one-to-one time with him. Since no one in the office even looked up when he walked in, he wandered over to the coffee station where I was gettin’ my joe on. It was awkward. One, because he had a fuggin’ toothpick in his mouth, which he kept tonguing from one side of his mouth to the other, and two, everyone in the office stopped and turned to watch what would happen when he got in my personal space.
Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.
“How’s teh java?” he said, avoiding eye contact. I took a long sip and said, “You’re not gonna like it.” He gave one of those classic Jon Stewart “Heh heh hehs,” and reached for a cup. Since he’d caught me with my flask out, I tilted it his way; both his eyebrows did a little simultaneous hop and he thrust his cup forward with an emphatic, “Helll yes.”
I poured a good jigger in, but he gestured for another. “Be my guest,” I muttered, and handed it over; he held it inverted over his cup until a drop formed that refused to fall. “How ’bout a little coffee with that,” I suggested, barely concealing my annoyance with his boorish flash of lushitude.
Another “Heh heh heh” followed another “Helll yes.”
He looked me up and down as he returned the empty flask, and said, “So whutur you, teh resident hippie?” Another chuckle got past his toothpick. Collecting myself with another draught of morning mud, I ventured, “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you— “What do you think you’ll say with your last breath?”
He swallowed a good third more of his beverage, and with a mock grin he turned to acknowledge the software geeks by raising his cup in a mock toast to them. They just stared, motionless. He turned back to me and remarked, “They don’t say too much, do they. I like that.”
Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.
“You probably b’lieve in good and evil, don’tcha hippie guy. Well I do too. But then, then ya got yur evil in yur good, and ya got yur good in yur evil; know wudda mean? There was no pause for me to answer. “But then ya got yur no bad good, and ya got yur no good bad; and there ain’t no good good, and no bad bad— see? He took another long suck on his boozalotte, and, his head cocked to one side, he continued.
“Now— teh good man thinks of teh Devil, and teh evil man thinks a lot about teh God. But if ya think yur thoughts right between teh two ya know— then ya know there’s a day teh be evil, and a day teh be good; so, when ya wake up in the mornin’, ya ask yurself, ‘Who’s day’s it gonna be tehday? Is it teh God’s day, or is it teh Devil’s day?”
His brow suddenly unfurled and he looked really pleased with himself, as if he had just successfully arm-wrestled some enormous cosmic truth down from a lofty heavenly rampart, and was revealing it on the white house lawn for the whole world to revel in. It was then I realized that was all he had to say.
I looked at him as it settled over me like a giant cloud of methane flatulence, that he was totally rat-shit fucking insane. And probably a little drunk, too.
Lots of things raced through my mind, like he never answered my question, like he never even heard it. Like, this man has the blood of many hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children on his hands, and he talks about “teh God” and “teh Devil” as if he were talking about two ordinary shits like Hannity and Colmes. Like, he’s already soul destroyed and spiritually dead, only his body doesn’t know it yet. Like, I’on’t even know.
“Teh God and teh Devil”
I took another drink of coffee as a wave of compassion washed over me in the exact same way a wave of nausea would; Bush had whirled around and was headed over to the locked utility closet, no doubt thinking it was the exit.
I went back to work.
