Let Them Eat Tea Page 4

  Chapter 4 - LiberTEA Injustice for All !

  A brass band plays a raucous and patriotic but unidentifiable tune. A political gathering is in full swing at the Marriott in Columbus, Ohio. Crowds mill around energetically on the confetti-strewn floor. Tired balloons float near the ceiling.

  As late as it is, adrenaline still fuels most of the guests. They paid good money for tickets to this. They want to get their money's worth by wringing any fun they can out of it. Most also want to be seen. Some want to be caught on photographs.

  Charlie Wilburn, a young Physics graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, is staying with his mother in Ohio for the holidays. He's brought his girlfriend Katrina. His mother is an ardent supporter of the 37th amendment. The mother bought the tickets. She dragged her son Charlie along to the event, and Charlie dragged Katrina.

  The young couple are discussing the speeches they've just heard, or rather making fun of the speeches they've just heard, working on their own never-ending improvisational comedy routine.

  "If you want to call them speeches," Katrina offers. "More like insane soliloquies. My little brother's book report on Harry Potter painted a picture closer to reality."

  He laughs. "So they're more like rants?" he suggests. "I don't know. To me it's more like stand-up comedy."

  "No, more like Jay Leno's Jaywalking bit," she comes back, tilting her head and nodding, looking at him with a sidelong glance and a half smile. She's referring to a late-night comedy bit where the host interviews random people on the street, asking them simple common-knowledge questions, collecting wrong answers that are wrong in funny ways.

  "Battle of the Jaywalk All-Stars," Charlie ups the ante, and they both laugh.

  "No, no, that's the televised debates," she answers, and they laugh again.

  He loves to get a laugh out of her. Of course with the LiberTEA party providing the material, it's pretty easy.

  "LiberTEA Injustice for all!" he offers an ironic cheer. "Want to grab something to eat?" he adds.

  She answers, "Nah, my stomach's upset."

  Angling for another laugh, he asks, "Why would it be upset? Did you get in an argument with it?"

  "Exactly," she picks up the thread, cracking up. "My nose smelled the food and voted to eat something. The stomach said, No way -- I've eaten food like that before, and the results aren't pretty. So it turned into a big row. I had to break it up. The nose is on lockdown now. Stomach is pretty upset."

  "You sure you didn't just catch the contagion of the moment? Nicky Bee's crusade?"

  "I was vaccinated against that by watching Do Bee and Don't Bee in grade school," she answers, smiling, looking at him sideways again to check if she's getting a reaction.

  She shoots, she scores. He laughs again. "Well, Nick and Marie will put a stop to that nonsense," he answers, still smiling.

  "Which nonsense? Vaccinations or Grade school?" She is delighted that she finally gets a turn to pose a question as the straight man.

  "Probably all of the above if they have their way," Charlie supplies the punch line.

  "Well, we're doing our part to help the party. Your mother paid a lot for our tickets," she comes back, hitting uncomfortably close to home.

  "Look on the bright side. They won't be able to develop serious weapons anymore after they put a stop to science education. We could be fomenting world peace! They'll probably just spend the money on more parties like this."

  She does some subdued dance moves and sings, "Par-tee like it's EIGHT-teen ninety-nine."

  "How about 1799?" Doug suggests. "Or maybe 1717. Seventeen something. Decline and Fall of the Polish Empire. Almost a democracy. Religious freedom. Lots of Liberty. Banned slavery. Way ahead of its time. Lasted two or three hundred years," he explains, and the comedic interlude dies as he falls into a brief bout of serious thought.

  "So, not at all like America, then," she says ironically, trying in vain to steer him back to the comedy.

  "Well, I don't think they ever made it as far as getting a president who supported gay marriage," he answers, taking her seriously. "Maybe they would have gotten to that point given time, who knows. They were definitely a beacon of human rights in pre-America Europe. Then the government cut off funding to itself, and over the next few decades the whole empire just fell apart."

  She gives the jokes a brief rest as she pauses to agree. "That's a good analogy," she allows. "Didn't it fall apart when one guy in government was able to use some kind of personal veto power to stop all taxes? I think his name was, uh, Grover Norquist," she devolves into humor again. "No taxes. That sounds like Nicky B. and the gang."

  He smiles but doesn't laugh. "That was part of it all right. Liberum veto put the brakes on that particular birth of democracy. But there were a lot of other things going on. The military declined. The economy was bad."

  "So, nothing at all like America, then?" she says with a straight face, and they both crack up laughing again. "Nothing to worry about there."

  "Nothing to worry about," he comments sarcastically. After a second's pause he adds, "No use worrying about what's already done."

  "Spilled milk," she agrees. "Water under the bridge."

  "And the canasta's even worse," he tries for a joke.

  "Anyway, I thought you were studying Science, not History," she observes.

  "Science is going to be History, with these guys," he answers, laughing again.

  "Nah, we'll still have Creation Science," she offers, laughing right back.

  "Taught in Sunday school," she adds, pausing for comedic effect before concluding, "It's just Monday through Friday school that's at risk."

  "So when America is attacked, we'll just blow those Jericho trumpets, and wait on the Lord to smite our enemies?" Charlie asks, as if it were a serious procedural question.

  "Divine smiting. Divine healing too. That's the ticket," she agrees. "No worries. Just the power of prayer."

  "Good point. And a bible in the shirt pocket can stop a bullet, I hear," he adds.

  "Exactly," she responds. "Bibles are educational AND practical."

  "Where do I get a Jericho trumpet?" he inquires, eyes smiling.

  "Right next to the Armageddon ones," she offers. "I hear they're on sale. Two for the price of one. The Armageddon trumpets are going fast, too. Or is that coming fast? Maybe Armageddon's coming fast. I get confused," she ends with a smile.

  . . .

  After a time, Katrina excuses herself to go to the Ladies room for a few minutes. Charlie has nobody left to laugh with, and his eye wanders, looking for entertainment.

  He sees Marie Mallon chatting up supporters and, she hopes, donors.

  Charlie looks at her. He remembers having heard guys refer to her as Marie Melons. She isn't that much older, he thinks. Well, okay, she's probably a lot older. She is fascinating though, and his lady friend Katrina has disappeared for the moment. He may as well have one of those little sandwiches Marie is passing out. He ambles over to her, moving with the crowd.

  Marie gives him the same cheerleader smile she gives everyone, and offers up a tray of tomato and cucumber crustless mini-sandwiches. He takes one. "Did you make these?" he asks, to make conversation. It seems unlikely that she did.

  "Well," she laughs, "the bread is from a bakery. But I did assemble the sandwiches myself."

  "Amazing. Beautiful AND a good cook," he remarks. Surely a line like that can't get far, but it's an opener, and he isn't terribly adept at social situations. Anyway, she's proven repeatedly that she isn't very bright.

  She smiles broadly and returns the weak compliment. "Good to hear from a young man who's both charming AND has good taste in sandwiches."

  "And in ladies," he adds.

  They both laugh.

  "So you're raising funds for the 37th amendment campaign?" he asks, to keep the ball rolling. "I mean, people paid for tickets to this thing tonight."


  "So they did. Meet the candidates AND support the cause," she answers.

  "You could do a fund-raising dinner," he suggests. "If you can actually cook, people would probably pay good money for that."

  "I can bake bread," she offers. "My cooking skills are fairly limited."

  "Baking bread is good. People love that," he encourages her. "You can advertise it as a joint effort, and make a big deal out of the fact that you're baking the bread. Good for the wholesome image, too. How much bread do you think you could bake, in an afternoon, say?"

  "If all I had to do was bake bread?" she laughs. "And had a place to do it? It isn't so easy on the road like this."

  He's a little thrilled that this celebrity lady is responding to him, even though he doesn't agree with her cause at all. In fact he thinks she's ridiculous. But attractive. "You just have to recruit some of the wives of your dairy farmer supporters," he says. "to provide the kitchens for the baking, and also to help with the actual preparation."

  She looks hesitant, and says nothing. She's considering it.

  He calculates how much money she might bring in by charging some arbitrary amount for tickets to the dinner. "If you charge maybe $10,000 per guest for 50 guests, you take in half a million right there," he presses it.

 

  She lights up at the thought of bringing in that much money. "Really, would it be that much?" she asks, questioning his math. Obviously she can't do the calculation herself.

  He assures her his math is correct. "Sure, look. You have 4 zeroes in $10,000, right? Three zeroes for the thousand, and that's times ten, so four zeroes for ten thousand." He pauses to be sure she's following. "When you multiply that by the 50 guests, you've got your 4 zeroes from the ten thousand, and the zero from the fifty gives you five zeroes. A five with 5 zeroes after it is 500,000. That's Five hundred thousand, which is half a million."

  She doesn't follow the numbers. But he sounds convincing. "It's a good angle," she concedes, "cooking something myself."

  "Sure, and you can get the farm wives to do most of the work. You just advertise that you're working together with your supporters preparing the meal, which will include the homemade bread that you bake yourself, from your own private recipe. Or it could be an old family recipe."

  "Family recipe," she announces, as if that finalizes the deal.

  Hey, she's going to run with this, he thinks to himself. He'll have good dreams that night. He eats a few more little handmade sandwiches, and then sees Katrina coming back. He waves to her.

  "Marie Mallon, meet Katrina Lundgren," he introduces the two.

  "Nice meeting you," Marie greets her. Neither woman offers to shake hands.

  Katrina smiles. She declines the offer of sandwiches. "I've had enough already," she says simply. After a pause she adds, "but it is a rare opportunity, getting to meet you. You and Nick have done so much to keep America safe from democracy."

  Charlie's jaw drops slightly and his eyes open wider. Marie doesn't notice the sarcasm.

  "Christianity as well," Katrina adds, pushing it. Charlie's head tilts and he grunts inaudibly.

  "Well, everybody does what they can," Marie answers, thinking she's being complimented, feigning humility.

  "Whose idea was it to pack the Supreme Court like that, anyway?" Katrina continues. "Did you come up with that, or was it Nick?"

  "Pack?" Marie asks.

  "To increase the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. So they could appoint a majority of LiberTEA supporters. Two years ago."

  "Oh, that's old news," Marie answers, understanding the question at last. "That was President Sheppard, and Nick. They're very close."

  Before Katrina can come up with some cutting rejoinder about closeness, maybe about being in bed with Nick, Charlie grabs her arm.

  "It's time for us to go," he interjects. "We have an early morning tomorrow. You understand," he nods to Marie, and so saying pulls Katrina away from her unwitting victim.

  Katrina laughs lightly as they walk away. "Early morning?"

  "Yeah, we're past the solstice, so the mornings are coming earlier every day," he tries to justify his loose treatment of the truth.

  Katrina laughs again. "Maybe you should stick to physics," she suggests. "The nights are actually getting longer. The sun is rising later. Oh, wait, that is physics. Maybe you missed your calling as a historian after all."

  "Well, if it's staying dark longer, then the mornings will seem to come earlier, because we have to get up while it's still dark. So we have an early morning because it will seem early because it'll still be dark out. I don't know. Let's go home," Charlie suggests. "You were starting to get KATty."

  "But I was having such a good time."

  "We can have an even better time at home alone for a few hours," he answers suggestively, putting an arm around her waist and pulling her close.

  "What will you tell your mother?"

  "That you had to leave because your stomach's upset," he ends on a joke.