A man with his shoe in his hand is called into the office of the president, where he expects to have to explain himself. He is not asked to do so, despite the fact that he opens the door with a disclaimer and the beginning of a story. “Jim,” he says. “I was at this store, Eyes Ajar, up on Fairfield….” He has known the president since they were boys. The president Marcus off, confounded. He doesn’t want to know about the shoe and is more interested in the fact that Marcus is wearing a mask. The mask is nothing obvious, not a Richard Nixon mask or a werewolf or The Shape, but rather a thin transparent film that changes Marcus’s face both not very much and entirely. “Your pleasantness, Marcus,” the president says. “I love that.” What he doesn’t say is that the mask disrupts that. The meeting is short, two-pronged, half about an upcoming diplomatic event that Marcus has petitioned to attend and that Jim regrets to inform him he cannot, the other half two old friends shooting, as it were, the shit. “What?” the President says. “No. I can’t be seen as having used that kind of language. Everyone knows I use it but no one must know. Does that make sense to you? I need for it to make sense to you. I need for you to have a clear sense of what I’m saying. I don’t want to disown you, Marcus. I don’t want to have to disown you. We are brothers, stitched together under the skin. We are two but we are one. I have never loved anyone as much as…” The man with one shoe outbursts. “Shut up, Jim,” he says. “Just shut the fuck up. You weren’t elected to be anything other than this.” He waves his hands around. “This is what now you are. What now you are? What you are now.” The two men, telepathically, stand at the same time and walk out together. Marcus leaves his shoe on the desk. He’s not going back for it. Both of them know this as well as they know each other.
©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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