The welcoming smile Betty Gorman gave her husband when he came home turned nearly immediately into a disgusted frown: Bill stank like a sewer!
“Phew! Where did you go to catch such an awful smell, Bil ?”
Her husband, as fit physically as one would expect from a Secret Service agent, gave her an apologetic shrug while staying well away from her.
“The White House. Didn’t you listen to the news this afternoon?”
“Uh, no! I was too busy vacuuming, doing the laundry, ironing, washing the dishes and preparing supper. What happened at the White House? The sewers backed up?”
“I wish that it would have been as mundane as that, Betty.” said Bill in a discouraged tone while shedding his vest, shirt and trousers where he stood near the entrance door. “To make a story short, Nancy Laplante, the Overseer of Palestine, cursed us and the other governments that have cut diplomatic relations with Palestine and the Time Patrol. The White House, the whole of Capitol Hill and the State Department now stink to high hell, to a point where they had to be evacuated. Nobody can work or visit there without puking his or her guts out.”
Betty couldn’t help laugh then as she mentally pictured that.
34
“Hell, the least you can give that Laplante is that she has a mean sense of humor.”
“Wel , the President is definitely not amused, I can assure you of that.” replied Bil . “Uh, can you throw me an empty garbage bag?”
Betty searched for a second inside a closet and pulled out a large plastic bag, throwing it to her husband.
“And what is the President going to do now? Nuke Palestine?”
Betty’s joking remark brought an expression on her husband’s face that made her pause with worry.
“He is not going to do that, is he, Bil ?”
“I’m sorry, Betty, but I can’t tell you what was discussed by the President and his cabinet.”
“Bil , that woman healed my grandparents, along with tens of thousands of other people. We can’t seriously be thinking about nuking Palestine.”
Bill gave her a cautious look while stuffing his smelly clothes inside the garbage bag.
“Betty, that anti-racist energy burst four years ago cost the lives of half a million Americans. Now, much of the federal government is paralyzed because of this…curse thrown on us by Laplante.”
“Those Americans were racist rednecks of the worse kind. Nobody forced them to commit suicide, Bill! As for that curse, maybe we deserved it after all.”
“How could you say that, Betty?” said Bill, shocked.
“How? By using my head, Bil . Laplante and her Time Patrol brought the war to a stop in 1942, saving us tens of thousands of dead soldiers. What did we do then? We snubbed her. She brings a near end to racism in our country and we get mad at her instead of thanking her. We cut diplomatic relations and put an embargo on Palestinian imports and then act scandalized and surprised when she replies to that. Did you think for a second that maybe God is on HER side, Bil , and not on our side?”
Her husband lowered her head slowly, not knowing what to reply to that.
19:51 (Washington time)
Secure conference room