In the dream, I'm walking

hands stuffed way into my jeans,

fall leaves whirling on the sidewalk,

lampposts humming white light,

through the town where I went to college.

I'm looking at the rented house windows

and there's a few yellow empty squares—

but there's no parties going on. There's no

CD player blaring reggae, no

guys from freshman sem, no

girls with plaid shirts tied around their waists who want to talk to me, no

piles of crushed plastic cups.

Only the shadows of the boulevard trees from the streetlights.

I realize I'm alone, too. There's no one to

remind the group that 3rd and Elm has a keg,

drop a cigarette in the grass and lose it,

punch a stop sign and clutch their face in pretend injury.

As the raw emptiness and indifference of time hits me

(it's an ache, a squeezing of the eyes)

and I wake, for a moment

I understand Gatsby completely, understand

that there's nothing to make you whole.

Not here.

Let’s say I’m riding along with Chekhov's Marya in the cart on this April morning (it’s not that much of a stretch: I live in a frozen Midwestern town that could easily pass for Siberian countryside, and I’ve also taught for over a decade, which still earns barely enough for a bimonthly cart ride). We are experiencing the same well-worn paths of life, set against the outbreak of spring. But if I’m in the cart, I can’t help but smile into that radiant spring sun, inhale the organic funk of the mud, and tap my fingers along with the incessant, dripping spring thaw. Ah, to be alive!

“Marya,” I might say between tailbone-numbing drops of the cart axle, “don’t you just want to freeze—sorry, wrong word—don’t you want to just pause time right now, and absorb this day?”

I’m assuming she continues to stare, so bleak and so very Russian, out into the woods. It’s not her fault. She hasn’t read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

When you’ve spent time immersed in the blackened and dead world of the man and the boy, everyday sensory experience eventually becomes miraculous. Reading the book is paralyzing; the weeks after, haunting; but, finally and forever, permanently gratitude-inducing. I appreciate life exponentially more after The Road. Every salty, juicy bite of burger; every fresh foot of snow on the ground; every wide smile and open-throated laugh from the lady in the car next to you—The Road makes you feel the absence (the imminent absence) of these things. The charred world that has taken the man’s soul offers nothing but the burnt spindles of dead trees; it is absolutely relentless in its deprivation. What else but the cataclysm could make you appreciate warmth, love, and safety?

Post-apocalyptic novels are my favorite reads. But no matter how much I enjoy Station Eleven, Dog Stars, The Passage, or even that juggernaut The Stand, I have to admit that The Road reveals these books—and again, I say this as a fan—to be silly fantasy. McCarthy's world pulverizes theirs under its weight. It is the utter reality of life after the destruction of our world, and it conveys this with a relentless commitment that I can’t even begin to want to emulate. Where else could these descriptions of the same ashes, the same burned ruins, the same disfigured survivors be so gripping? It’s like Metallica’s Master of Puppets or Kareem’s sky hook: a single skill, performed perfectly, so faultless that it represents the best of its art form. McCarthy does not ask us to imagine this world—he forces us to stumble through it, to breathe the poisoned air, to shiver in the falling ash, to die under a filthy blanket.

Then, having been so deprived, how can we not smile when biting into a sweet, crunchy apple? How can we not sigh when we put our sandals in the cheap plastic pool on a scorching day? Apparently, Marya can, but since I read The Road, I cannot.

“Yeah, I get it. I don’t mind doing it—but do you think now is really the best time to tell him?”

The shorter elf just kept walking. He was adjusting a set screw on the sleigh’s yaw sensor, and the screw was tiny, even by elven standards. After it was set, it’d have to be reinstalled on one of the aft rails; he'd have to remove the time-bender assist and then reinstall that, too. Even though it was a rendundant system, the sled would never run witho—

“Are you even listening to me?”

The shorter elf gave a sideways glance up. “Yes, I was listening. Yes, we have to tell him now. We’re T-minus 68 hours.” He’d lost the screw depth. Time to back it out and start over.

The taller elf ran his spindly fingers over the pockmarked, faded green-and-red concrete walls of the tunnel with one hand, shaking his head in frustration. In his other hand was a giant stack of inventory paper—switching to digital would take over a year, the lady who ran the system said, and anything that couldn’t be fully complete in a 10-month window wasn’t going to happen in the North Pole.

“I get it. You ride the thing as his right-hand elf every December 25th. You fix the spirit accumulators. You’re indispensable. Me, I’m a cog. If he decides I’m out—well, you ever tried to apply for a real job as an elf? How many interviews do you get once they read the name ‘Bgreakffftjthr’ on your application? My cousin’s been squatting in a Houston warehouse since the 70′s. Sells kids’ wishes in some kind of pill form outside a Seven 11.”

“Bgreakffftjthr, you’ll be fine. I’ve done this before. He’ll appreciate your catching the problem and preventing several huge disasters.”

"I just—" He smacked the stack of papers with the back of his hand. "I got this stupid promotion, but I'm still making peanuts. I can't get ahead in this job, this Pole, this—" He smacked the papers again. A bar code sticker fell off a random sheaf. "And these stupid barcodes. Where did they even come from? I mean, Santa's sack, it's one thing after another. And now, he's probably going to pinch his fingers, and I won't be able to breathe, and it'll be all like 'Hooo-per. Apology accepted, Captain Needa' as I die on the floor."

Yrkwquerstyxx didn't answer. He hated the taller elf's constant Star Wars references, as well as his incessant pessimism. Truth be told, he loved fixing things, and he loved spreading the joy. He loved riding as an emergency tech on the big night—solving problems and seeing the Playstations, the bikes, even the vibrators, go out, knowing they were going out because of his work. Saving Christmas, just like the cliché. He gave the set screw a quarter turn to get it restarted, but they had arrived. The tunnel opened into what looked like a bomb shelter.

“Sir, it’s me, Yrkwquerstyxx. We’ve got a problem.” He finally looked up from the yaw sensor, and looked over to his taller partner as a cue to deliver the news. But Bgreakffftjthr was simply staring, tiny elf jaw agape.

Santa was strapped to the vertical gurney, but some of the restraints were already starting to strain under his swelling musculature. Fog covered his tiny gold-rimmed glasses, condensed down his beard in glassy rivulets, and eventually pooled on a midsection that was less “bowl full of jelly” and more “abs stacked like rolls of hairy prime rib.” Bright red and green fluid pumped in tubes into several ports in his arm and side; murky brown and blue gunk flowed out and back into the chugging machine.

“Bgreakffftjthr!” whispered the shorter elf.

“I knew this was how he got ready,” whispered Bgreakffftjthr, still staring. “But every time I see it...What’s in the tubes, again?”

“Caffeine. Vitamins E and C. Kids’ unselfish wishes. But mostly cocaine—Speak up so he can hear you. I’ve got work to do,” spat Yrkwquerstyxx.

The taller elf took a histrionic deep breath. “Sir, it’s about Donner.”

The great bearded head turned down slightly enough to regard the two elves standing on the worn concrete floor. Yrkwquerstyxx could see the screen placed in front of The Big Guy's face; he’d been watching Love Actually.

Thankfully, the taller elf continued. "Donner's wattage fell below the thresholds set by the vet team for 3 straight trials. This triggers an automatic disqualification from the sled crew."

Yrkwquerstyxx understood the elf's predicament: not only was he delivering news given to him by another department, but he also had no solution in place.

Santa, though, did not choke him with The Force. Instead, he smiled. A vein bulged behind his left ear; Hugh Grant danced in his glasses.

"Thank you elves." His voice boomed in the hangar, partly because he was Santa, but mostly from the drugs. "It will not be a problem. I will take Donner's position. I will pull the sleigh!"

"Sir—" began Bgreakffftjthr.

"And who will deliver the presents, you ask? You will help, Bgreakffftjthr! You will ride with us on the hallowed evening!" His face was red with merriment. And stimulants.

The taller elf took one glance at his stack of paper, and looked back up. His tiny Adam's appled bobbed, and he seemed to shrink about an inch.

"Yes, sir."

"Ho, ho, ho!" The voice seemed to shake even the thick concrete of the hangar. "Nothing can stop Father Christmas! Now go, mine elves! Prepare for the ride of your lives!" His head returned back to the gurney.

The taller elf looked straight ahead as they walked back silently. The shorter one got the first setscrew flush with the sensor head, and smiled.

Bgreakffftjthr looked down at him. "Glad you're happy. I'm riding in the sleigh on Christmas Eve. I'll either die or ruin Christmas. Or both."

Yrkwquerstyxx started on the second setscrew. "Odds are, you'll be fine."

"Never tell me the odds."

67 hours later, Yrkwquerstyxx checked through his final inspection of the sleigh. The comm panel, located on the front of the "dashboard," was last on his list, but Bgreakffftjthr sat in his way, staring ahead catatonically. The wind howled just outside the heavy doors about 60 feet in front of the sled; maybe that's why he couldn't hear him.

"Move, Bgreakffftjthr. I need to inspect that comm panel."

The taller elf did not respond, except to hug his enormous paper index closer to his tiny chest. At about 6 billion entries, it dwarfed him, making him look even tinier as he say on the bench that was usually occupied by El Jefe himself.

"I can't do this."

"Bgreakffftjthr, I cannot—"

Just then, a hush fell through the crowd of elves working around the sleigh's takeoff prep station. Yrkwquerstyxx didn't immediately see what was going on, but some back part of his brain realized what was happening when he saw a panicked elf pull a giant piece of scaffolding back away from the sled.

"DASH AWAY!" thundered a voice from the crowd, which was parting like blown sawdust. A giant red-and-white missile hurtled toward the sleigh, and in an instant, the heaviest sack in the history of humankind hit the front end of sleigh's seat, barely missing Bgreakffftjthr.

There was no time to strap in. A fully juiced Santa shot into his harness, pushing several shocked reindeer hindquarters in a bobsled start down the ramp, and Yrkwquerstyxx only had time to wrap his arms and legs around the mounts just outside of the sled. Bgreakffftjthr screamed, but Yrkwquerstyxx simply wound his safety catches around himself, patted his toolbox that was also mounted to the outside of the sled, and managed a grin. He looked inside the sleigh at the seat, where Bgreakffftjthr seemed to be calming down. The taller elf set his giant ledger paper under the sack to keep it from blowing away. Both elves' faces were pulled taut from the acceleration.

"First jump start?" Yrkwquerstyxx asked him, yelling into the wind.

Bgreakffftjthr simply shook his head and said something not loud enough to hear, though it sounded like "Bantha fodder." Ahead of them, seven reindeer and one roided-up Santa pulled the sleigh through the winter twilight.

"First drop off in six," the controller's voice came over the intercom, magically augmented to be heard in the wind. Which reminded him—he never got to check that comm panel. He looked over at the panel, and at first couldn't figure out what Bgreakffftjthr was doing. He saw a small light that he didn't recognize (which was positively jolting, to a sled tech) go red, then green under the taller elf's hands.

What in the North Pole was—

"Drop alpha six, hotel mike point three," said the controller. The sled glided down onto a soft snow-covered rooftop, and Bgreakffftjthr, no longer looking to be in shock, hurled the presents out in space. Santa slipped the harness, leaped into the cold air, grabbed them in one smooth motion, and slipped headfirst down the chimney. Suddenly, the night was silent, save the breathing of the reindeer.

And then another beep.

"Bgreakffftjthr," started the shorter elf. "What is that on the comm array?"

Bgreakffftjthr straightened up and looked at him like an elf who's just made a decision.

"I'm scanning barcodes." He no longer looked ill; rather, he looked fervent, like an elf who just demanded one more shot of egg nog and laid another wager on a round of Candy Land. "I'm collecting data."

"Why?" Hanging on his perch on the edge of the sled, the tech elf felt his tiny fingers begin to sweat.

"Why? Are you serious? Do you know how much money this personalized data is worth? Not the stupid online stuff, but who's actually receiving them, and where? And with the time-bending magic we use? They can figure out how to sell presents for this Christmas that are being delivered right now! Amazon's giving me 5%. That's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe even billions."

The night was black around them. The reindeer shifted on the rooftop.

"And you'll get your cut, too. For keeping your mouth shut."

Yrkwquerstyxx tried to speak for another silent moment. He then shut his eyes. When he opened them, the taller elf was still looking at him manaically.

"You set this up. Donner. Not letting me check the comm. Everything."

"Of course I did. This scanner interfaces directly with the satellites; it's got to be on the sled. So I've got to be on the sled. We've got to be. We're in this together." His eyes blazed against the black of winter night.

Without warning, the man in red shot out of the chimney. The reindeer startled as he slid into the harness, and they were off again as a "Ho, ho, ho!" boomed into the night. Had Yrkwquerstyxx not been strapped in, he would have fallen out. His partner was already scanning presents again.

Yrkwquerstyxx didn't think. He just reached up into the sleigh to pull himself onto the bench. This was wrong. It had to stop. If it meant hurting Bgreakffftjthr, then so be it. He reached for his heavy wrench—

The taller elf sliced off his hand at the wrist with a Ginsu knife. Sparkling blue and white elf blood peppered the night air as Yrkwquerstyxx fell backwards, grabbing the rail with his remaining hand. His tiny body jerked toward the endless drop, but his arm held tightly. He didn't hear himself scream, but he did see the tiny hand for an instant, buffeted by the wind as it fell into the abyss.

"Good gifts, these!" yelled Bgreakffftjthr down at him from the sleigh bench, holding up the knife. He then tossed it back into the sack. "Good to know who's buying them! Good for me, for the companies—good for everyone but you!"

"That's not true!" shouted the shorter elf, clutching his stump under his armpit and sliding towards the edge of the rail.

"Join me, and we can rule Christmas together. We can end this pointless conflict, and restore order to the holiday!" He reached out his hand towards Yrkwquerstyxx. Ahead of them, Santa and the reindeer charged into a storm cloud, and the wind howled a notch louder.

Yrkwquerstyxx let go of the rail, and fell into the dark December sky.

The funny thing is, I could start by saying "When you're dead, you can..." or giving some other articulation of "the rules"—but I don't know what it's like for other people, do I? Sorry—other spirits. Entities. Nonexisting former bloodbags. I can only convey my own experience; I can't definitely say, "When dead, you can concentrate like Patrick Swayze and, with a training montage or two, kick a can." Or "If you've passed on, you're allowed to talk to Bruce Willis and interact with red objects." If there's a manual to being gone, it fell out of the cardboard box and is lost in the recycling bin.

So, I can only say this: I'm stuck on the roof.

I used to love the asphalt territory up there. You can get a perspective on a neighborhood, see how humans organize their collective existence, watch kids on rollerblades disappear behind summer-green tree branches. But when you're dead—sorry, sorry; in my experience being dead—I can't see super well. It's not like having bad vision was in the living realm; it's more like having less vision. The sights from up here have very little impact, I guess, in that they don't stick in what used to be your brain.

Down on the deck, I do see her, wiping her tears with the pads of her fingers, pulling them down her cheeks in a way that makes me ache. She's not looking up where I am, probably because this is where I died. It's not clear to me whether it was a fall, or I brushed the 200-amp hot wire without thinking, or maybe I just had a heart attack. Either way, Mike and I were going up and down the ladder one Saturday morning (a few of my attic vents had cracked and were making noise in the wind, and he offered to give me a hand with replacing them), and the next minute I know, I'm on the roof. Permanently, it seems. Obviously, I've tried to roll or jump off. I just can't. Can't squeeze in any of the vents or exhausts, either.

But, yeah—I can't hear in the same way as I did before, but that doesn't stop James Taylor's "Up on the Roof" from playing on repeat in my ex-brain. I can't decide if it's worse, though, to not be able to hear her crying, night after night, out on the deck below my shingled purgatory. (It was a small consolation, though, to note that Mike must have fixed the attic vents, which I've had plenty of time to inspect, as they're screwed down with those fat 11/32" Torx head screws he loves so much).

I can't write notes or any of that creepy phenomena, either. One thing, though, that you read about is true: I am, in some way, on the same electrical plane as the living universe, because any time I accidentally lean against the service drop—the metal pole where the electrical service enters the home—I feel like my soul is filled with burning, expanding gas. If I do it long enough, which is unbearable, the house browns out for less than a moment, which I can see (more like perceive) in the yellow kichen light's slight dip in power on the lawn.

I do this more and more lately. Partially because there's literally nothing else to do; partially because lately, Mike will come over and cry with my wife. Lately, they don't even cry. Lately, they have a drink. And a laugh. And other things I don't notice because I'm filling my essence with the inside-out explosion of 200 amps.

Last night, I leaned into that service drop long enough that I thought I might disintegrate, and then I lay my ex-head down on the asphalt so that roof eave blocked my view of them down there on the deck. I've inspected lots of the roof this closely in my post-life tedium, but never the service drop, mostly because when I'm over here, it's to gaze/spy upon my wife, which inevitably leads to me zapping myself.

But lying here, I get a close view, and as the orchestral swells of James Taylor's tune once again wash over me, I see it.

The service drop grounding wire has been removed. Cut off, actually. And attached to the metal body of the service drop, with a 11/32" Torx screw.

I curl myself around the service drop. It's been re-grounded thoroughly, in about 3 places.

My first thought is that I will brown out the electricity in patterns, to let her know what happened. She'll notice the Morse code, decipher it, and know the truth! Problem: Neither of us is fluent in Morse. My wife was and is a thoughtful, clever, erudite person who is not a East German spy and therefore does not know Morse. And neither do I. Unfortunately, up here, there's no Internet to look it up, either—

That's actually not true. The cable Internet enters the house three feet below the service drop for electrical. It's true that I can't step off or leave this roof. But, can I reach down and interact with the coaxial cable? I reach, and with my fingertip, I feel it: tiny impulses, much, much more controlled than the fire hose of electricity up top.

So here's my Patrick Swayze training montage:

With my middle finger on the coax, I begin to sense the packets of information flowing over the line. We've never actually gotten cable TV through our cable, so that made it easier to sense. Most people know about the bits and bytes that computers use to transport data, but the security checks that hosts and clients use to communicate? That took a while to figure out. But like I said, I have nothing else to do up here. And so test packets and pings sent in and out of my house—unfortunately, now Mike's house, too—went through my ever-understanding fingertip. Once I got a sense of the email server packets' shapes and protocols, I was close—but then, I needed to add the subtle skill of adding my own data to the server requests.

Again, what else did I have to do? I had my one-song playlist; I had my mission.

At one point, I had composed an email to my wife outlining Mike's guilt. But by then, their relationship was—well, I don't want to think about it. So I took a few more months, or years, or whatever, and I took a closer look at the data. Images are simply hexadecimal data sets, and videos are just sequences of those images. One more training montage later, I had created a video of Mike's murderous act (at least how I imagined it), and I sent it to her, and to the police. It makes one wonder how many videos people have seen that were created by ghosts.

I rolled onto my back and sat up. (Again, this may be just me, but: the dead don't get sore or stiff. No ligaments to freeze up during the years of physical data manipulation). My sight had dissapated enough that I couldn't really sense anything. I felt no breeze on my face, smelled no grass clippings, heard no birds or insects. All my consciousness was

"On the roof, the only place I know

Where you just have to wish to make it so..."

“Well, the good news is,” said Erik as he cleaned a pint glass with his towel, “is that you didn’t lose a kidney. And you got your wallet and keys back, if not your dignity. And, kind of on a technicality, you don’t have to pay double the price for this beer.”

Dave was staring at the bar, and snapped up out of his despondent reverie. “Wait, what? You’re not still doing that, are you? It seems...unethical.”

Erik laughed, his belly heaving under his plaid shirt. Dave couldn’t remember: Did Dave ever wear plaid when he was teaching? Did he have a beer belly? Was he ever this happy? Probably no on all counts.

“It’s all semantics, my man,” Erik proclaimed. “What we tell people is that teachers get half off beers during the school year.” He shook his head as he picked up another glass, the grin still on his face. “We don’t tell them it’s just twice as much during the summer.”

Dave looked around. For a hot July day, this brewery’s Venezuelan pricing on beer didn’t seem to be dissuading anyone from coming. “Seems to be working OK.”

“Oh, man. The sheer—” he waved his hands in the air, seeking a word as only a former history teacher could, “euphoria of summer makes teachers just laugh about it. No visits from the Better Business Bureau yet. Hey, and of course, since you’re sittin’ here waiting for a thanks-for-trying call, first one’s on me, anyway. What would you like?”

Clearly, Dave would end up getting the Staff Meeting Pilsner (“Everyone’s Forced to Drink It!” said the beer listing), but he, of course, hemmed and hawed. Late Start Coffee-Infused Ale? IEP Stout (“Gets to Take Its Time”)? Is this why no one hired him? Did he exude decision weakness?

Erik waited, both hands on the bar, with a coach’s face that had coerced thousands of high schoolers to hurry up and say something. After waiting another beat, he asked, “The Pilsner?”

Dave didn’t look up. “Yes, please.” He waited, not wanting to admit another small triumph of Erik’s will over his own. After all, Erik had been a staff all-star at Oak Valley High when Dave had student-taught under him. Dave would watch him go around the classroom, getting every single kid to work on a Rome essay or Chinese dynasty speech, cajoling and manipulating them with his uncanny connection to every kid, pushing each of them bit by bit without ever spilling the tray. Then, after well-wishing each student at the door, Erik would sit down in the nearest available desk-chair combo and put his forehead against the bacteria-ridden desktop. In the first few days of the experience, Dave would try to pester him about his pedagogical choices and expert differentiation. Erik’s responses were less than enlightening. Or, to take the long view of education, more.

“It’s killing me, kid,” said Erik, more than once.

“If I could teach, like, one-twentieth as well as you—” Dave sat, notepad at the ready.

“It is taking years off my life, Dave. You’re the future. I need to find another line of work.”

“My Secondary Pedagogical instructor says,” and Dave knew it was a dumb, naive thing to say, even as it slipped out of his mouth, “the day you wake up and don’t want to teach, is the day you should quit.”

Silence. Erik had kept his head on his desk.

Dave tried to walk it back, “I mean—”

“Second day of school, kid,” said Erik. “Every teacher would quit on the second day, and the inmates would be running the asylum.”

In the end, Dave completed his student teaching, graduated, and shuffled through various unfulfilling sub jobs. Erik, who could teach ballet to a class of manatees and who probably had to change his number to stop the flood of full-time offers, had quit to start his brewery, The Co-Curricular. And here they were.

“One Staff Meeting, on the house.”

Dave took a long drink. It was good, of course. Actually, it was a great pilsner: clean, with no tinny aftertaste. Not strange that Erik was good at brewing beer, too. If Dave made a beer, they’d use it to feed pigs or something.

“Do administrators ever come in for a beer? Are they offended by ‘Everyone’s Forced to Drink It?’”

“Ah, see, that’s the beauty,” said Erik. “I never have to worry about pissing off a principal. Ever. Again.”

As if on cue, Dave’s phone began to vibrate and ring. A 763 number—it must be Maple Valley. He scooted quickly off the barseat and made for the outside, allowing that brief bit of hope. What if they actually offered him a job? It was better this way, before the phone call started, and the assistant principal told him how impressed they were by his interview, and how sorry they were that it wasn’t going to work out.

But now, in this moment, as he made to angle his way through the door and answer the call at the same time, it was like those Christmas mornings all those years ago, when the boxes under the tree could hold—anything. Mechanical dinosaurs, Star Wars Lego sets—before you got to them, in that instant, your mind contemplated playing with these impossible toys every single day, until you opened up the box and surveyed the digital alarm clock radio, as Mom said from her chair through a puff of cigarette smoke, “Well, you’re always talking about how you love music, so now...you can listen to any station you want. Merry Christmas, and don’t thank me too much.”

He paused for an instant, standing in the sun, taking in the moment, and then sighed as he held the phone to his ear.

After a few minutes, he came back in, eyes on his shoes as he approached his pilsner at the bar. Erik quickly shoved a few pint glasses down at the end of the bar and made his way back over, leaning both arms on the bar in the way that powerful men do.

“Well, d’ya get it?”

Dave looked up, unable to contain his smile. “They offered me the job, Erik. I’m a teacher! Full time! A full-time Maple Valley Mammoth!”

“Hey!” exclaimed Erik, grabbing Dave’s shoulders with both hands and giving a hearty shake. “Congratulations!” Then he paused—strangely so, had anyone been watching in the July heat. “You sure had me fooled for a second, kid. You could be an actor.”

All smiles, Dave picked up his beer, fully intending to swallow the whole thing down in several gulps. After the first one, though, he coughed up beer all over his old Twins T-shirt. Erik reached all the way over the bar and gave him a hearty slap on the back.

“Hey, Mr. L,” he said, “don’t spit up that beer. You’re paying full price for it now—those are the summer pricing rules for real teachers!” He paused, as natural speakers are wont to do before uncorking the heady mix of inspiration and reality. “Remember that a teacher is nothing if society does not continually take a dump on him.”

Dave tried to smile, but his eyes just watered. He grabbed the beer for another sip, and managed to croak out, “Then consider me the outhouse of the world.” After another drink and some happy not-uncomfortable silence, he added, “I was starting to think I’d never get hired. Like, ever, Erik.”

“Yeah,” said Erik. Dave didn’t want him to mention it, but he did. “Does it give you pause at all that the last time you were there, you tried to leave the school after the interview and got the third-world militia treatment from...”

“From a group of invisible people in a spooky, dark gym?” Dave did not sip now, but stared at the light yellow column of pilsner. “Yeah. But here’s the thing. All those other interviews when I haven’t gotten the job, I’ve had a very conventional, easily explained exit from the building. So if some kind of terrestrial alien abduction is what it takes to get hired, then it’s worth it. I just need to remember not to sub in gym class during power outages, or at 3 in the morning.”

“Hey,” Erik said, catching his eye. Dave wondered briefly what parts of the human brain were dedicated to capturing the attention of other human brains. If there were some anatomical structure, he thought, it must be naturally developed in great teachers like Erik, people from whom you always felt like you were being imparted a critical secret.

“Yeah?”

“Just remember, when you’re getting on your high horse about education: those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” He grabbed another glass to wipe, and smiled. “Mr. Legnagyszerübb.”

Dave Legnagyszerübb backed carefully into the parking space, despite the lot being completely empty. A red-and-white MAPLE VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL sign squatted over the searing blacktop, reminding parents of 2017 Spring Registration Conferences yellow text that scrolled, without any apparent irony, under today’s date: JULY 23RD, 2019.

He reached over and pulled the manila folder—scrounged from his last sub job in Oak Heights—from the worn but clean passenger seat, quickly making sure his resumé and cover letter were there, but just as quickly leaving sweaty thumbprints on the folder. Frantically, he checked the armpits on his best shirt, saw the stains forming, and nearly leapt out of the car, dashing absurdly across the cracked asphalt and into the yawning open doors of yet another faceless suburban high school, from which later in the day would issue a thanks-for-your-interest phone call, and then, a month later, a we-need-subs-and-even-you-will-suffice phone call from someone farther down the food chain.

No, be confident, you worthless idiot, and stop thinking like that, he said to himself, following the inspiring white-on-brown signs to the main office. Seeing as these signs only ever led one to the main office or a gym, he wondered if the terrible teachers who sometimes were hired as head coaches simply showed up to the gym and started playing 21 or something. Hey, Bob, nice jump shot. Wanna teach some English this year? We could really use an offensive line coach, and the only other applicant is a sweaty little Turd Ferguson who parked in the wrong lot.

The main office had the classic high school summer front desk staff of two: lady and oscillating fan. Dave knew that while the teachers were away, this secretary was probably balancing class sizes and ordering building materials through her lunch break, as well as handling any and all asinine parent summer queries on the phone. She looked up from her computer and over her reading glasses (though she was a completely interminable age) and smiled at Dave. “May I help you?”

“Yes, my name is Davi—I mean, Dave, and I’m here for an interview. For the English teaching job. I mean, position,” he stammered. He was trying to smile, but it simply felt as though the corners of his lips were being forced backwards by some invisible orthodontal torture device.

Nervous job applicants did not flap her. Dave remembered a story involving a tech ed student who’d cut his thumb off, screamed, and run from the classroom, the flannel-clad teacher on his heels. Another student had picked the thumb out of the dust collector, walked it into the office, and set it gently on the office lady’s desk before collapsing. She’d packed the digit in ice and calmly called EMS.

“Sure thing,” this particular iteration of Superwoman replied. “They’ll call you in a minute.” She gestured to a set of old chairs with a hand that held three Post-Its and two pens of different colors.

Before he could plaster on another smile and say thanks, her overburdened hand hit a cat-eared coffee mug on the edge of the desk, sending it teetering towards oblivion. Dave’s reserve of twitchy adrenaline kicked in, and he snagged the mug handle between his index and middle finger as the secretary gave an involuntary “Oh—” Hot tea splashed on the back of his hand.

“Got it,” he said, now able to smile more naturally since his hand had been scalded.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Davis!” she exclaimed. “Are you OK?” She was quickly wiping up the desk with one hand while holding bunches of paper in binder clips with another, but she regarded him with kind eyes. “Silly me for drinking such hot tea on a hot day, too.”

“No problem, just glad to help. You know, the ancient Chinese drank hot beverages to cool themselves,” he said stupidly. Now that the momentary success was gone, he was back to his old self. “I’m Dave, by the way.”

“So nice to meet you, Mr. Davies,” she said. “I’m Ellen. And thank you again so much. It looks like they’re ready for you in the conference room through there.”

“Thanks,” he said, pulling his lips back again. He hit his hip on the desk as he made his way back into the conference room, stamping the tea’s remnants into a damp arc near his crotch.

He was introduced to the teachers sitting around the table, though in his nervousness, no identifying features of the individuals interviewing him stuck in his brain. They sat back in their chairs, yet remained leaning forward, like silhouettes of Easter Island statues in their anonymity. The young woman to his right, though, was the assistant principal. She wore complementary earrings, bracelets, rings, and hairpins in her dark, wavy hair. She seemed—

“Young,” she said, smiling with bright, hygienist-office teeth. “I’m Courtney Young, and I work with the English department here.” She made a sweeping gesture over the table at the statues; her bracelets clanged. “Thanks for coming in today.” She pulled the top sheet of paper off what appeared to be a three-foot stack of resumés, and he reflexively crinkled his malila folder between sweaty fingerpads. She regarded it as if for the first time, frowning. Was that a pondering frown or a disquieted one? He couldn’t tell. Her necklaces hung suspended from her neck as she evaluated his run-of-the-mill career objectives, paltry experience, and bush-league font.

“Yes...thanks for coming in today, Mr. Lay...Laydell...”

“It’s Legnagyszerübb,” he said, sweaty finger now rearranging the ink of his resumé. “Kids usually call me Mr. L.” Ah, “kids.” Because he had been teaching nonstop in districts that desperately wanted him.

She plowed on anyway, her brow furrowing as the necklace parts swayed in midair. “Mr. Laganagga...”

“Just ‘L’ is okay, Mrs. Young. The rest of the letters are silent.” One of the statues let out a guffaw of displeasure—it was more like gas escaping a sewer pipe. He almost added “that was a joke.” Almost. Somewhere, in the ceiling, a blower kicked on.

She looked up from his resumé with a determined smile, teeth blasting blue-ice light at him. For a moment, he thought she might just send him home. Dave thought that despite Mrs. Young’s age and winning smile, she did not have time to mince words. Yet, she insisted, in the way that only people who have gone through education classes at a certain period of their lives can, that she say his name correctly. So she tried, again; the Easter Island statues remained motionless; he crinkled his useless folder more. How long would this last?

Eventually, she got to the standard interview questions. Yes, he was able to use education technology effectively. Yes, parent involvement is paramount to a child’s education, despite the fact that it’s the 8-hours-of-gaming-per-weeknight kid, not the 2nd-shift-working parent, sitting in class, drawing rocketlike genitalia that propel themselves into John Proctor’s angry, open mouth on page 576 of the text. Yes, he answered, strangely enough, it was better to pull a student aside for a private, non-threatening conversation about problem behavior, rather than chastise them in front of the class like it was a 70′s movie about how cool high school was, despite that in the 270 seconds it took to passive-aggressively lambast one kid about his (of course, it’s a “he”) behavior, a quarter of the class would be mercilessly bullied, thanks to the teacher’s provided diversion.

The statues responded to his responses with nods of assent, if at all; Mrs. Young smiled hard. At the end, she asked if Dave (“Mr. Leelzelbub”) had any questions about the school.

“No, Mrs. Young,” he said, even though he knew he should have some questions—did he not specifically think of some questions to ask on the car ride over? What was wrong with him? “Unless it’s about us playing a basketball game in the gym to help me get this job!”

The statues didn’t move, but Ms. Young’s face contorted into some hybrid of wince and shrug.

Why? Why did his mouth insist on loosing thoughts that his brain had not properly assembled or vetted?

However, Ms. Young did not let the silence last long. “Okay. It was very nice to meet you, Dave,” she said, extending a hand that was on the verge of bony. Some of her bracelet features got caught under his grip. She seemed not to notice.

Fantastic choice, he told himself. Finish the interview by nervously referencing a humorous observation you made in your own head.

He shook hands with the statues. One of them, an overweight man who appeared to have been painted into a MAPLE VALLEY VOLLEYBALL track suit, said, “It was nice ta meet ya. Have a good life scrapin’ away at some charter school.” His handshake was...it was mean. Later, drinking a beer by himself, he would go through all the ways that comment made him feel terrible, and think on the different students who regularly had their souls lanced by this puff ball, and then he would think that Rotundo (as he called him) not only had been hired and earned tenure at Maple Valley High, but had probably climbed to the top of the salary schedule and been given a teaching assignment that allowed him to avoid instruction in order to get to away volleyball games earlier—you know, to truly dig into the process of cutting up young girls’ souls, assigning value to their ability to hit a overweight tennis ball over a levitating tennis net.

Plus, Dave thought, his face burning even hours later at the thought, he had looked at some charter schools while student teaching, and they seemed to be doing some pretty cutting-edge instruction, so...think about that, Coach Rotundo, even though you never would.

Luckily, Dave only smiled, turned, and left, and proceeded to thoughtlessly take several random turns in the small back office hallways, before he spotted the secretary—Ellen—behind her front desk. He gave a sweaty wave and told her to have a great afternoon.

“Oh, and you too, Mr. Legnagyszerübb! It was nice meeting you!” Ellen went back to sorting, marking, referencing attendance boundaries on the computer. All the work to run a school while Mrs. Young was balling up his resumé and banking it into the recycling bin in the back room, while she allowed Rotundo to keep on desecrating children and the institution of education.

He exited the office, and looked up at the brown-and-white sign in the hallway. But after several strides in the direction of the exit, he found the fire doors for that hallway closed. He regarded his now creased and sweat-fingerprint-stained folder. Maybe this was hell: trying to leave the interview you just blew, stuck in a building that did not want you there in any way, shape, or form. Except the secretary did say his name right. After calling him Davies earlier. Weird. Well, he had given Ellen a chance to show she had a linguist’s tongue after all, and he’d given Rotundo a chance to throw a jab. Everyone had been served. He needed to get out of here. Now.

He followed the signs towards the gymnasium, hoping there’d be a side exit. Instead, the hallway led directly into more brown doors: the basketball court, dimly lit, in the way that only old high-school gyms can be dimly lit, as if they’re concealing missed free throws and sprained ankles in the shadows. He let out an audible “Huh,” and nearly turned around. But would he wander back into the office to ask someone for directions, someone who would not be able to rein in their laughter after the return of the day’s worst interviewee? Nope. There’d be a side exit in the gym, or at least a custodian to ask.

His “interview shoes” rapped loudly on the wood floor. The lack of full lighting revealed the shadows of backboards in the perimeter darkness. He swallowed and contemplated a sprint-walk through the darkness to an exit—surely, he could walk right out of one of these anonymous gym doors in the dark perimeter and leave this school forever. His shoes made too much noise as he turned to look—

With almost no sound, a basketball rolled out of the darkness at him. He could not look up or look away from it, and since he could not move, he stood and stared. It rolled up his foot like a small dog, its tiny rubber pat-pat dribbles shooting throughout the otherwise silent gym. They were so loud.

His heart made the sound of the ocean in his ears, beating at full speed, as he stood, completely frozen, somehow looking only now at the glare off the only illuminated part of the gym floor. The ball’s dribbles came to a stop.

Okay. Okay. Stop. What is happening? Just turn around calmly and leave. Do not run. Because running would mean we’re panicking, and there’s clearly no reason at all to panic.

He turned on his heel, and as he faced the yellow square of light around where he had entered, he heard a whoosh behind his left ear. Before he could even think a conscious thought, his arms were pulled back behind him, and tight cloth was pulled over his head. There were no “Where are you taking me?“s, or anything other than a few breaths forced out of his chest as he was slammed down on his chest. Blinded and restrained, he felt himself being dragged across the floor. He would remember later that there several sets of footsteps on the gym floor around him, but no conferring or interrogating voices.

As soon as his conscious mind had decided to do something, he was moved into a sitting position, and the cloth was pulled from his face. The heat from the parking lot seemed to hit his forehead as soon as it was exposed; the summer afternoon light shimmered against the dry grass where he sat. He turned to look behind him, just as one of those metal exterior gym doors closed with a slam.

His poor-teacher-interview shirt, he determined, had been pulled down past his hands and used to restrain him. His poor-teacher-interview tie had bound his feet together, and the cloth pulled over his head had been the stretched collar of said poor-teacher-interview shirt. Dave stood up, felt inside the pockets of his poor-teacher-interview khakis, and swore. No keys. No wallet.

He wriggled free enough to run, in an escaped-man-in strait-jacket sort of way, and then jogged around the suburban brick perimeter of Maple Valley High School, towards where he figured he might have gone into the building for the interview.

But when he got back in, what would he tell them? “Yes, Ellen, I got lost on my way out of the interview, and believe it or not, I was robbed in your gymnasium. By some ghosts. Call me about that job!” He slowed his jog as he approached the front entrance.

It was locked, with the lights out. He peered inside, trying to see if the office light was on. Nothing but darkness. No doors open. If he had been the last interview of the day...which he was pretty sure he hadn’t…

He turned around, and saw his car, sitting normally.

Except for it wasn’t backed into the spot. It was 180 degrees from where he’d left it.

He walked slowly towards the driver side, and saw that the windows were down. Too shocked to think, he noticed his keys and wallet placed neatly on the driver’s side door seat. Just on top of his sweaty manila folder.

Chapter 2 – The Offer

Greetings, Trident Media Group! Those Who Can't is an 85,000 word novel that mixes action, mystery, and humor in a three-pronged literary attack (sorry—couldn't resist). My project fits well in the Trident Media universe because I have never won a Hugo or Pulitzer, nor have I ever been short- or long-listed for any award, so I would diversify TMG's holdings in the "achievements" criterion.

Those Who Can't is for educators looking for an accurate depiction of their work in an entertaining setting. Its creation was inspired in part by an interview with Matt Damon in which he describes the role of Jason Bourne: It's every middle-age man's fantasy to wake up suddenly and speak 5 different languages and be a martial-arts expert (I'm paraphrasing here) and be part of a secret mission. It led the author to wonder (both aloud and in a 85,000-word, 9-month project): What if you were accidentally hired to teach at a clandestine school for assassins?

Here's a quick preview/synopsis: Dave Legnagyszerübb wants desperately to be a full-time high school teacher—to ignite a passion in students, to steer them on a path to learning, to change kids’ lives. Unfortunately, since he’s been kicked around the long-term sub circuit and his interviews are mostly dumpster fires, the dream remains a dream.

Until one hot, summer day he gets an interview with one of the many interchangeable suburban high schools that ring every metro area. As usual, he’s a wreck, and in his post-interview daze of depression, takes a wrong turn down a wing of Maple Valley High School, where he’s briefly—assaulted? Kidnapped? Pranked? He doesn’t know.

And he’s prepared to forget it all when he gets the call: after so many rejections and false starts, Maple Valley wants him to teach English. Of course, there’s the strange event of his interview to consider, but that’s easily forgotten in the excitement of a teacher’s first real job, and soon Dave is fulfilling his destiny, sharing that unblemished vision of education with some very—very blemished students and staff at Maple Valley.

Amid the pressure cooker of the first year of school (including managing a stress-crush on the new music teacher, Sarah), Dave is subjected to a few more unsettling experiences, including being attacked by a group of students during what seems to be a lab, watching a fellow new teacher named Nassir escape arrest during a morning meeting, and being accused of ordering the murder of a social studies teacher and volleyball coach.

The author is a high school teacher from St. Paul, Minnesota, with no previous publications, unless you count the $20 he won by writing a creepy story in a lit mag over a decade ago. He enjoys playing music, weightlifting, making up games with his biological and classroom children, and reading fiction (currently, book 8 of the absolutely spellbinding Expanse series). Writing, for him, is a way to try to combine the heady What-Ifs of speculative life with the concrete, vivid sensations of reality.

His head bounced off the green steel of the dumpster

like a nine-ball

Eyes fuzzed over as his back arched and he screamed wordlessly up from the alley so

like crossing the finish line

I planted the ball of my first foot in a dimple of asphalt

like a pole vaulter

and my heel hit his big tooth sideways

like an asteriod ricochet

YOU BIT MY FU—

like a fury, stinging dying screaming wasp

No athletic soccer plant for the next kick—a whip with my foot—and his big tooth lodges in MY big toe

like a thick shard of enamel fully under a toenail

(not a simile. That's real)

So I kick, kick kick, kickkick to KILL YOU YOU F—

like two molars on a hot dog

Speaking of, my corned beef of a foot is now stuck in his mouth

like, pivot on his skull and land my OTHER FOOT IN YOUR FU—

Stuck, too; I should have learned to kick properly when my taekwondo instructor

I WILL BASH YOUR BRAIN INTO ATOMS YOU FU—

Stuck again

Like a wet mud hole

I can't

I—mrner—twist my—leg—to—kick again

All the way in the back of his throat

Teeth scattered inside him

like diamonds on a blade

I cannot stop kicking, but I'm stuck farther in

ankle

knee

femur

The inside of him is the absence of the universe

neon pulsing, sucking light instead of giving it

a throbbing star of nothing

stripes scraped from the skin of existence

hip bones

shoulders

eyes

it is

like

a void, flushed emptier

it is

like

what

I

deserve

″‘Work sucks,’” sang Herb, as he threw his keys down among the empty wrappers and used napkins on the counter, which took up about 1/3 of their tiny kitchen.

”‘I know,’” responded Nate, who didn’t peel his eyes away from the screen, even when the gust of cold air hit him from Herb’s entrance. It was one of those Minnesota afternoons in which February invaded the lobby, and by 4 pm was already seeping under the entry door of every crappy ground-floor apartment, including Herb and Nate’s.

“How’s the campaign?” Herb asked, sitting in a second-hand Ikea chair with a practice pad and sticks.

“The world is frozen,” said Nate, “but the armies of Etan are red-hot. With blood. And lust, I think, but the game doesn’t track that stat.”

Herb blew into his hands and began to slap out some slow paradiddles and rolls on his pad; any drummer could hear the icy lack of feeling in his fingers. Nate looked away from the game for the first time, glancing at the pad and sticks, and then up at Herb’s clean-shaven face.

”My game’s all made of blood and lust/But this next raid is going to just/Make you afraid—” Herb sang out in an improvised falsetto.

“No,” said Nate. “You are not warming up for this gig. There is no gig.”

”There’s a gig, bro/It ain’t big, bro—”

“Stop it. It is minus twenty-four outside. In the sun. We are not getting in that cold-ass van and unloading in the tiny-ass entryway to the empty-ass Durf Club. No. Way.”

Herb ramped up his sticking, as if his internal metronome had clicked up. His glasses were still fogged from outside, but a smile had crept onto his face. “We are, though. I just had the worst day at work. Traffic’s up because everyone’s inside with the deep freeze. Servers and redundant servers failing all day.” He emphasized this with a quick four-stroke roll; Nate could almost hear his hands thawing out. “We told the guy we’re good to go. I’m good to go.”

“But the campaign—”

“I’ll buy you Arby’s on the way over.”

“OK.”

Two hours later, Nate leaned into the microphone, addressing the concrete floor lit by what appeared to be only two and a half CFL bulbs. “We’re The Quintessentials, and thanks for coming out tonight. This first song’s dedicated to you, my man.” He pointed at the custodian-cum-barkeep, a shadow with a broomstick across this way, almost out of reach of the lights. He leaned into the handle like a microphone, pointing back at Nate. “I love you too!” he shouted. “And you!” he continued, pointing at Herb with the broomstick. The three men laughed. They were the only people in the place.

It was still easy to lose themselves into their first song. Herb played keys with one hand, and drums with the other three limbs; Nate played guitar or saxophone, depending on the song, and sang. With no one to watch, they played fast and added fills in every spot, and were going full steam when an cloud of cold air hit the stage.

The place was so poorly lit that Nate could barely make out a group of people at the bar. Why was it a mass of people when there literally could not be more room to spread out? Was he missing something? Then, as the song wound down, a few individuals made their way towards the stage, and Nate’s brain could not quite process what he saw, though possibly because he was trying to continue to take this sax part to another level. It was the unmistakable walk of a woman in a short cocktail dress. Her thighs and cheeks bore the signature burn of the Minnesota air, and she was signaling for her crew to get closer to the stage. The song ended as the woman turned toward the mass at the bar.

“Rachel, there’s a band here! WHOOOO-hooo!” She raised her plastic cup to the ceiling.

Rachel also walked/slid over the red concrete toward the stage, and promptly dropped her cup on the floor. She was tall, with long brown hair, and her eyes shone under the two-and-a half bulbs with a sort of—

“Oh boy,” he heard Herb say away from the microphone.

Rachel reached out like a grizzly snagging a salmon and grabbed the first girl’s arm. “You got me a band, Cindy? Oh shit! Oh shit! You are my best fucking friend! I fucking love this! I hoped there’d be, like, music, but fucking this—” The drink spilled all over her sash—

“It’s a bachelorette party,” said Herb.

“It’s my best friend’s fucking bachelorette party!” This was a new girl—short blond hair, same wind-burned skin (They went out like that? Tonight? Nate wondered). She wild eyes. “She’s getting married tomorrow because she’s a bitch and she got a deal on the most beautiful fucking venue in Hider Falls and we all took off work for the week and her husband’s the nicest fucking guy I’ve ever seen and oh my God PLAY SOMETHING WE CAN DANCE TO!” Now the formerly empty floor was filled with overdressed women. Their bartender friend was in the shadows, suddenly making drinks frantically.

“Ladies, welcome to the Durf Club,” said Nate. “Let’s play something you can dance to.”

Two hours later, the dance floor was nearly empty, save for slicks of spilled alcohol, and a few women’s fancy shoes. The stage, though, was full, as Nate and Herb chugged through another four-on-the-floor improvisation, drenched in sweat. And not just their own sweat.

Two women danced frenetically in front of Herb’s kit. A third pumped her fist in the air, hitting his crash cymbal with a giant blow-up penis. The first woman—Cindy?—had her hands in Herb’s greasy hair as he played. Several feet in front, Rachel and two other friends danced—well, as only women at a bachelorette party can dance. They were a gorgeous blur of purple sequins, green fabric, women’s deodorant, and shiny, flying earrings. Nate kept a three-chord romp going, his hands so slick with sweat that it was a miracle his fingers didn’t fly off the fretboard. And if they had, the two pair of delicate underwear now hanging from the headstock might have at least dried them off.

Carefully, so he wouldn’t hit anyone’s whirling head, Nate stuck the guitar neck up so Herb could see that it was time for the finish. The women’s shouts were louder than Herb’s cymbals. When Nate turned to face the empty bar, he noted that the bartender was making out with one of Rachel’s bachelorettes, and that condensation was running freely down the windows.

“Oh my fuck, Jesus Christ in a sidecar, THIS IS THE BEST MUSIC ANYONE HAS EVER HEARD!” Rachel shouted into the mic, to the deafening approval of her crew.

Nate played a little run to punctuate her proclamation. When he turned to look at Herb, Cindy was pulling his hair back while another woman readied a shot to pour into his mouth.

“But now, ladies, we have to go. It’s midnight, and we’ve got our next stop to—”

“Bring these guys with!” shrieked Cindy, who had let Herb’s hair go. Herb was now trying to both process the cheap vodka he’s just drank and formulate an objection. “I’ve—I’ve got work—” he began.

“You do have work to do,” interrupted Rachel. Her hand was on her hip as she stood next to Nate, and again, her eyes shone. Nate was starting to think that wasn’t the lights that made her eyes do that. “Your job is to come with us.”

Herb tried to protest. “We’ve got to load up—”

“Ladies,” she said, no longer shouting. With no one else in the club, it was possible to hear every word. “We’re going to load up these guys’ equipment in their van. Then, we go meet my dad for some food.”

“Wait, what?” said Herb, right before Cindy grabbed his hair again, and placed her lips on his, to the cheers of the women.

An hour later, Herb leaned over to Nate. “Okay, dude, I know I’m the one who insisted we leave the aparment tonight. But this is—”

“OhmyGod,” Nate said, eyes closed. Herb, though seated right next to him, could have been in another galaxy. Every bite of the ribeye steak elicited another blasphemous proclaimation, regardless of Herb’s attempts to talk. How could it not? It was transcendant. It was tender and red and juicy, but that in no way could begin to describe the lushness of it. It was salt and fat and glory.

“Dude, I have to work in four hours, and I may be in a food coma for a week. It’s a freaking Wednesday. Actually, Thursday. What happened?!” Herb was done with his steak, and the magic must have been wearing off for him.

He looked up, chewing, savoring. The cathedral ceilings allowed the women’s laughter and stories and oaths to bounce around the city’s finest steakhouse, which was apparently open until 3 am if you were Rachel and you were getting married tomorrow. Also, apparently, if you were in a sweat-soaked Pixies long-sleeve, you could eat here without question as long as you were escorted in by a gaggle of handsy, beautiful women dressed to the nines. The women splashed more drinks and spilled desserts and occasionally rubbed Nate and Herb’s necks and arms, like good-luck charms. But everything seemed tangential to this ribeye, at least for Nate. So much so that when he opened his eyes again, the women were clapping and cheering, and Nate didn’t immediately see why.

“Daddy!” shouted Rachel, standing to greet a man who looked like George Clooney with a snow-white beard and glasses. He took a seat at the head of the table, thankfully far away from Nate and Herb.

“So glad you could make it to dinner, girls,” he said. His voice seemed to cut through the din—maybe through the whole evening. Nate swallowed and sat up.

“And who are your friends, sweetheart?” Now the food seemed to coil in Nate’s stomach. He thought he heard Herb trying to duck under the table. Dad’s face, all warmth and benevolence at the sight of his daugher’s friends, steeled a bit. Nate felt like he might end up paying for this steak, perhaps with his testicles.

“Daddy,” she said, “this is Nate and Herb. The Durf Club was the only place we could find with live music tonight, since it’s so cold out. And these guys were playing there, and they were awesome, and I wanted to bring them along!”

The bachelorette party’s cheers at this, though, were a bit sober and sudued. Nate could feel Herb shrinking next to him. He could only smile stupidly at his plate. They’d done nothing wrong, but in the presence of someone like Rachel’s dad, that detail seemed irrelevant.

In the painful silence, a young man set down a steak and highball in front of Dad, the white glove placing it perfectly in front of him. He did not look up or change his expression, but offered a quiet “Thank you, Mikkel.”

“Daddy?” asked Rachel, stopping her expensive-looking drink halfway up to her lips.

“I’m just thinking,” he said. Again, Nate could only look down at his plate.

“I was thinking that I had a little three-piece band in my youth,” he said, a smirk coming to his face. “Those were some of the best times I ever had. I’ll bet,” he began, raising his own drink, “that when this party continues at my lake home after this, Rachel will want you two gentlemen to keep playing right through the dawn hours. Because my girl’s never been one for sleep. Even as a baby.”

As a chorus of “Aaaaaws!” swept the table, Nate could feel Herb’s objection coming, but before he could, the Godfather (as Nate had begun to think of him) asked, “So are you full-time musicians? I wish sometimes that I had pursued that dream.”

“Actually, sir,” said Herb, his voice higher than usual, “we both work for an IT firm.”

The man raised an eyebrow as he chewed a piece of steak. The women went back to laughing and shouting again, but the Godfather’s voice still cut through the clamor. “Ah, I’m involved in a few local IT ventures by way of business management. Who do you gentlemen work for?”

Before Nate could signal to Herb not to ruin the evening by talking about work, Herb piped up. “Stackdump. I run support for—”

The Godfather interrupted with laughter. “You work for Stackdump?”

“Yes,” said Herb, “and I actually have to be at work in a few hours, so—”

“My boy, I own Stackdump. And if Rachel wants you to come break the windows on my lake home for the rest of the night and/or morning—well, then, you won’t be at work tomorrow. How does two weeks’ paid vacation sound?”

Herb smiled. The roar of the party pitched higher, and Nate laughed.

“Sir, that sounds like a fantasy.”

Nate started to smile, but Rachel grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer. “Get another drink, get dessert, and get a few espressos, because the night is young, and it’s my bachelorette party.” The light in the steakhouse—so different from the light in the Durf Club—could not dim that ferocious light in her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Dalton leaned forward at the hips in the expensive red office chair, using his fingertips to push the tiny folds of his skin down from his hips and into the waistband of his bright blue pants. This helped the channels between his abs, sharpened by several days without water, reveal themselves in even deeper relief against the glare of the television lights.

A bit of bronzer rubbed off on the ridge of the waist; almost unconsciously, he removed it with two clean knuckles. This prevented any from getting on his Stars and Stripes tie as he adjusted its length and drew in a deep breath, arcing his back so that both nipples stayed safely behind the lapels of the blue blazer.

“Mr. President,” came a voice from beyond the shield of white light, near where he could almost make out a blinking red dot. “You’re on in four, three, two...”

He put one hand on a bare hip, just behind the blazer, and leaned in with a raking gaze.

“Ah-Mehrrrrica!” shouted the disembodied voice-over. “You’ve voted, and the Elec-Score-al College is pleased to give you our 51st President, Mr. Tom Thunder!”

“Hey,” Dalton nearly growled, and the pumped-in screaming-middle-aged women sounds were loud enough to nearly make him cringe. Instead, he sat straight up and smirked at the camera; if he were flexing any harder, he might cut the fabric of his gaudy tie. “I’m honored to be your choice as Pec-sident—” he bounced his mountainous pectorals around inside his blazer, like two buoyant beach balls— “and head of the Sexecutive Branch!” One massive pec had a pig tattooed on it, which appeared to leap for joy until he bade it stop.

He stood, combing his blond hair from his eyes and flexing his quads, which were visible through his bright blue pants, if you were looking. And right now, most of America was. This was the easy part—his body contracted and stretched on its own, an intersection of hundreds of now-subconscious ways to show off his physique.

“We’re gonna have a blast, America, in the next day and a half. And that can’t happen if you’re all busting your fiiiiine rear ends. So my first sexecutive order is to give every page and intern working on Capitol Hill the rest of the day off!”

The feed switched to a “live” shot of a mass of pages, the oldest of whom appeared to be about 22, in a random marble-and-mahagony hallway in DC. As Dalton’s voiceover completed, they screamed in joy. Several tore off the shirts, while others procured beach balls and beer cozies, seemingly from nowhere.

“Put these men and girls to work in the halls of Beer Bongress, right?” Dalton flashed the full smile at the blast of canned cheers and shouts from the speakers, and upped his flexing another step, to where he thought he saw the glare off the top of his abs in the bottom of his field of vision.

“America, I got a long list of legislatory goals,” he growled again, grabbing his crotch in case the point was lost. “I’m going to start pounding the pavement—” he hip thrusted and hit the expensive chair with the First Pelvis, “but I’ll be back to respond to your comments and questions before you can sing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. Pecsident!’”

He held the pose for a beat, and the lights went down. The mass of muscle that was his midsection slumped in exhaustion. A young woman in hip, huge purple glasses with hip, curly NPR hair appeared with a bottle of water.

“Thank you,” he said with a genuine smile—so different than the fake high-wattage smirk of "Tom Thunder”.

“Of course, Mr. Pryzowski,” she said. “Anything else I can get you? This is one of your longer breaks—about 35 minutes in all, with a few promos to record in the interim, too.”

He paused before unscrewing the water bottle. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Nevaeh,” she said, almost turning it into a question.

He finished a swallow, and looked at her with his eyebrows slightly up. “Nevaeh, I’d like a meeting with Senator Murtry before the day’s over. Maybe 10 or so hours from now.”

Nevaeh looked at her clipboard, and then at him, her cheeks blown out in a slow exhale. She tapped her clipboard with a fat purple pen.

Finally, she let out a “Why, exactly?”

“To do my job,” he said locking eyes with her.

“Ohhh....kay,” she finally said. Thankfully, she didn't ask if he was joking.

"Fantastic," he said, resisting the urge to clap his hands together. "Nevaeh, can you actually get me that meeting with Murtry?" Now, he resisted the urge to sit up straight, to smile, to let his body get him what he wanted. That wasn't how he was going to do it, though.

"With the head of Ways and Means commitee? With the senior Senator from Louisiana?" She said "Louisiana" with a fantastic upper-Midwestern accent. "With the third most powerful person in DC?"

"Yes."

"On a day you just sent all the pages home to party?"

"Yes."

"Hey," she said. "You're the President."

"Pecsident," he said. An excitement spread through his gleaming chest.

"Anything else, Mr. Pecsident?"

"Yes, Nevaeh. I could really go for a few cups of black coffee, a pack of Marlboros, and—" Thirty-six hours, he thought to himself. And about 32 minutes until the next video shoot. "And a tin of Copenhagen."

"Wow. Okay."

She turned and walked off, leaving him in that familiar feeling of isolation that comes from having a crew hustling around you while you—well, for him, it'd been a few jobs dancing. Stripping, really. Then playing strippers in awful movies. And then a gig as a fake candidate for President in an online voting contest that promised to pay $200 plus a day of meals on set. Sure.

Now, he could change the world.

Neveah returned, already with a coffee and a tin.

"Oh, you're good," he said. "Thanks."

"Of course. Cigs are on their way. You're on again in 25."

He took out his cell phone and handed it to her. "Can you start putting in the numbers of representatives from the House who could talk sometime in the next 35 and a half hours?"

She raised an eyebrow above a purple frame. "Like, put them into your phone so you can—what, schmooze?"

He gave her genuine smile—the giant arc of white. "I'm looking for opportunists. Like myself."

Nine hours later, Dalton leaned back in front of the bright lights again, and howled, revealing a topography formed by lots of heavy lifting and few carbohydrates. The pumped-in applause was mixed with catcalls.

"Hey," he purred at the camera. "Keep sending in those comments and questions, I can't get enough of you, my con-spit-uents." He let a globule of saliva drop slowly down to his exposed left nipple, then pursed his lips at the camera. The fake audience howled.

"Last question, from Tammy in Bethesda. She wants to know about my legislative a-men-da for my term as your Pecsident." He bounced his chest, and the pig leapt with joy.

"Well, Tammy, my love," he began, putting one leg up on the chair, "my list of legislative goals is long." He pulled the expensive chair towards him with his heel, putting the back rest squarely against the front of his pants. "Squeezing these bills through the legislative body might cause some screaming in the Lower House, Tammy." He now thrust his groin against the chair with each crass entendre. "And Lord knows my filla is about to buster, but I'll ram this legislation down Congress' throat to see the climax of my sexecutive vision!" The last hip-pound sent the chair flying, and the shocked-yet-titillated screams from the fake audience filled the room.

He brushed his sweaty hair off his forehead, and reached just off-camera to grab his phone and the tin of tobacco. His hands shook with exhaustion, and before he could put both objects to good use, Nevaeh was holding out a cup of coffee.

"Mr. Thunder—"

"Just Dalton, Nevaeh," he said, packing the chaw in his upper lip where the cameras would never catch the residue even as he reached for the coffee. He then held up a finger in a wait gesture as he snapped out a text.

"Nevaeh, I got Rep. Holden to agree. If I can get Senator Murtry, the rest of the Southern Caucus will line up." He was still panting from the last performance.

"Sir—"

"Yes?" He looked up from his phone.

"The Senator's on his way." Now it was her turn to flash a smile. "Si—I mean, Dalton. I've only been in this town a few years, but I have to be honest. I've never seen anyone work like you over the last day. I mean, to do your little on-camera thing and still—still make these meetings happen?"

He grinned and nodded. "I get one shot, Nevaeh. I've got to make some kind of move. Now, I have a few requests for our meeting with the Senator."

One more hypersexualized piece of television trash later, Senator Latraim Murtry of Louisiana strode through the studio with three aides and a security detail. Dalton sat alone in the middle of the filming area. The low lights were on, and Dalton rose to greet Murtry. Murtry's hand, like everything else about him but his cutthroat intellect, was soft and pudgy. His smile was wide and permanent.

"Well, well, Mr. Pecsident. What an honor!" Murtry's accent made well into weah and honor into annah. But the timbre of his fake laugh hinted at simple amusement and a chance at a look-at-how-I-don't-take-myself-too-seriously photo op.

"The honor's mine, Senator. Have a seat. I don't have much time, so before we get to the TV ops, I was wondering if I could have a bit of time to talk. Just one-on-one."

Dalton looked up at the bland aides, who were, of course, looking at Murtry. Who, of course, would never deign to look back at them.

"Yes, yes, Mr. Pecsident. My people tell me you've been quite busy today makin' phone calls. But I don't have time for some sideshow prez-for-a-day, so let's take a photo and leave, shall we?"

Dalton had one shot at this, so he leaned forward, abs unflexed in supplication to the Great and Powerful Senatah. Tears didn't quite well up in his eyes, but he squinted in helpless resignation.

"Senator," he said, "you're the only one who can help me. This contest I won gives me full presidential power for a day and a half. But I just want to ask you a few things. One-on-one." He raised his eyebrows pleadingly. "I need your help."

The senator's flab shook with a guffaw, and he smiled a can-you-believe-this-crap smile at one of his aides. But he didn't answer. Dalton's heart stopped.

"Oh, why the hell not," said Murtry. He waved, and the aides disappeared.

Dalton said a silent thank you to whomever was listening above, but he didn't crack. Instead, once the aides had left, he offered Murtry a cigarette.

"Any cameras on, Mr. Pecs-i-dent?" Again, the mocking.

"No sir," said Dalton. "Just you and I. Crew gets a break after this ten-hour stretch." He held the cigarette between his fingers, and when Murtry took it from him, their skin brushed slightly.

Dalton lit Murtry's cigarette for him, and the two men leaned back. "Don't tell my wife," said Murtry, the cunning smile still on his face.

"Don't tell mine," said Dalton.

"Okay, fake President. What on this side of Galilee do you want my help with? And—" he took another drag— "why in'a hell you send my pages home?"

Now, it was Dalton's turn to pause. He blew a cloud of blue-and-gray smoke around his head.

"These pages," Dalton said. "These boys."

"Yes, what about them?" asked Murtry. The smile was waning, replaced by a suspicious stare. But there was something else in that stare, too. Something behind the hazel eyes.

"It must be hard getting by without their...accompaniment." He slid his left foot forward, tightening his pants around his thigh and waist. "I know I feel that same helplessness now that my camera crew's not here."

Murtry swallowed, and his cigarette burned between his fingers, unheeded. He said nothing.

"So I thought I'd invite you down to meet me in person. Maybe what you'd seen on TV looked a bit better...close up."

Murtry's mouth was now partially open. Dalton could barely supress a grin. Had this man no self-control? Was it this easy?

"You're sure these cameras are off, sonny boy?" Murtry's jowels quavered.

Yes, it was this easy.

Fourteen hours later, Dalton lay in repose on a fake Oval Office desk. He loosened his tie and sighed at the camera.

Just to his right, a prominent adult film star wore a journalist's fedora and chunky black glasses with no lenses, as well as a skin-tight pantsuit. She held a microphone about an inch from her own mouth. Of course, they were mic'ed almost everywhere in here. But it was still a good prop.

"Mr. Pecsident," she began, "your term is about over." A chorus of boos filled the room.

"Yeah, News Chick," he said. "What a long and hard term, right? I'll need to ice my...um, ankles after this one." Canned laughter erupted as the two of them mugged for the camera.

"Maybe I'll ice them for you, Mr. Thunder," she returned. "But sir, let's talk about your accomplishments in the last 36 hours." She read from her phone. "It says here that you actually managed to sponsor some serious legislation that your successor has promised to sign into law."

His smile faltered a bit. He wasn't expecting this from Naughty Nicole, aka Nicole Fitzgerald, the woman playing the journalist. She went forward.

"The legislation allows migrant farm workers to begin a path to citizenship, and in a huge surprise to many, has the support of Senator Latraim Murphy, a known anti-immigration legislator." She read the words off her phone, probably from a news site—but he wasn't prepared for this. He looked over at Nevaeh. His smile was completely gone now.

Off-camera, she just shrugged, but in her hand were two phones. One, he knew, was his own. The other was Nevaeh's, and it had been used to film one short clip of otherwise private news today.

The porno journalist was still reading off her phone. "I'm sorry, what?" he said, the facade slipping completely. He wanted a chew.

"CNN is commenting on the impact this will have on undocumented workers on hog farms across the country. They've mentioned that in the little background they've found on you, it appears that you spent your late teens and twenties working with these migrant families in commerical porcine farms across Oklahoma and Arkansas. Is there a personal connection there?"

He pulled his lapel over his chest defensively. He breathed through his lips, stopping any tears from coming to his eyes. Instead, he thrust his pelvis across the table, shooting a BUCK STOPS HERE replica off the desk. He then grabbed a miniature flag from its stand on the corner of the desk, and shoved the pole down the front of his pants.

"'Merica," he growled into the camera, "my only personal connection is with each and every one of you!"