The Dealer
What a way to spend a Saturday night. Stuck at work, reviewing a three-hundred-page bill on agriculture subsidies. Is this what his life had come to? Why he’d run for office? To spend his weekend considering corn, cotton, and kale?
Tossing the behemoth tome aside, he stared out his office window, looking out into the dark at the enormous, well-lit phallic symbol that was the Washington Monument.
His desk phone rang. He checked the readout. It was the assistant chief of staff from his Fort Worth office. He picked up the phone and put the receiver to his ear, summoning the grandfatherly persona that had served him so well all these years. “Hello, there. What might you be calling about on a fine Saturday night such as this?”
What he heard next made him want to throw the phone against the wall. “She what?” he cried, his throat so tight he could barely get the words out.
His chief repeated the message. This couldn’t have come at a worse time.
“Book me on the next flight out of Dulles.”
He slammed the phone down and turned to look out the window again. The Washington Monument no longer looked like a phallic symbol. Nope, it was the world, giving him the finger.