Authors: Robert F. Barsky
“This shouldn’t be difficult,” said Steve, assuming a well-rehearsed tone of pure condescension. “You can’t ruffle the market’s feather.”
“More than just that!” exclaimed Fraser.
“But we’re not asking you to do so. We have contributed several billion—”
“Billion?” Fraser looked at Steve in amazement. “Billion? You guys forged several billion dollars? Wow.” He smiled broadly. “Now I am impressed!”
“We contributed several billion dollars to charities and causes we support.”
“You guys support the projects?” asked Fraser.
“We support the people in the projects, unlike this bloody country.”
“Well, we could have a debate about that, Steve!”
“Not to the degree that you should. And every dollar, every single dollar that we put into circulation stayed close to where it had arrived. Not offshore, not in bank accounts of—”
“Of people like you?” said Fraser.
“Right, not in the bank accounts of people like us, and not FROM the bank accounts of people like us either,” said Steve, angrily.
“The president is well aware of this.” Fraser dropped the words like a bomb, and it continued scattering bits of metallic implications through the room for several long moments after detonation. The pause was palpable, tangible, almost edible. “It’s a lot, more actually than he knew.”
“Consider it a reelection contribution,” said Ted.
“That sounds like bribery.”
“It’s what you said, Fraser, it’s a stimulus,” Steve declared. “This country expects that stimuli have to come from the wealthy, that it’s Bill Gates who will vaccinate everyone in Africa, and Guggenheim who built the museums in order to save us all the trouble. It shouldn’t be like that. You,” he paused, “this administration can flick a few levers and shift allocations into things that matter.”
Fraser looked down the list once again. “The Department of the Interior?”
Steve suddenly looked animated. “The Department of Indian Affairs. They have a few bills to pay, and a few recipients waiting for checks. If you look on the next page, there’s a list of treaties, signed by the US government, but as yet not honored. We have helped out with a few of them, but now we want to fulfill our obligation to those people who were here before the white man, and who were slaughtered for the favor.”
Fraser turned the page over and found a long list under the heading of “List of Treaties Between the United States and Native Americans, beginning in 1778 with the treaty with the Delaware tribe, and following along through treaties with the Chickasaw, the Six Nations, the Wyandot, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Shawnee, the Creeks, the Oneida, the Potawatomi, the Apache, the Comanche, the Kiowa, the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and others, sometimes by tribal appellation, sometimes by the place where the treaties were signed.
“Every one of those treatises was broken, in some way or another. We want them fixed.”
“I will have to bring this to . . . well, you know, the appropriate authorities. But we have much more to talk about!”
“Yes, actually we do,” interjected Ted. “We have some unwritten treatises as well, for the environment. It’s on the next page.”
Fraser flipped the page, and then flipped forward to the others, each replete with detailed facts and figures. He closed the book. “I appreciate this. The president appreciates this. You’ve risked around twenty-five lifetimes in prison, and it looks as we’d expected, rather selfless.”
Ted looked at Steve, who was simply staring forward, into, and through, Steven Fraser.
“And,” continued Fraser, “naïve. But you knew this as well. You are going to spill the beans, a few days before the election, and spin it whatever way you need.”
“That’s about it, in a nutshell,” said Ted. “This is not an act of aggression, Mr. Fraser, it’s a stimulus plan that we’re helping to fashion. We’ve even provided the money to subsidize it.”
Steven began to laugh, eventually rather uproariously for the circumstance. “I suggested I handle this myself,” he began, pausing to wipe the tears from his eyes, “because this is what I had imagined to be the case. And everything we’ve said to one other today wasn’t said, and this meeting never happened. I took you in for questioning, and we are now going downstairs for a private luncheon.
Ted and Steve sat motionless.
“You aren’t quite sure if this is a victory. It’s not. But you are going to walk out of here, unlike your friend Tom.”
Ted jumped up. “Did you?”
“We did nothing. The point is, that you were supposed to be three, and you are two.”
Ted sat back down.
“On the other hand, you have a friend, a very convincing friend, who will be working with us after we win this election. Provided, that is, that we win this election. She came to us with offers we could hardly refuse. One of them was to place her former boss, John, in our dining hall, along with his partner, or wife, Tina I think it was. They insisted to bring some other assistants as well, um, Nathanial I think it was, and John, or Johnny, I don’t recall. Maybe he was the son of the head chef? Whatever, we easily accepted,” he patted his midriff, “and I have a suspicion that my lunch break may last a whole lot longer than it does now, if you know what I mean!”
Ted grinned, knowingly.
“Yup, it’ll be a whole new day around here! John used to have a restaurant in New York City, just down the street in fact. Actually, I know that you know the place, because I’ve seen you both there before. Anyhow, I rather liked it,” he pointed down to his wide berth, “rather more than I should. And I’m going to like it a whole lot more now that it’ll be part of the perks for working in this place. Oh, and speaking of perks, there is some other guy, too, who is supposed to join the staff, after his wife has her child.” He grinned. “Real advantage to working here, we have great benefits, even a leave of absence for expecting parents. And the other person, well, let’s just say that she will be joining the cabinet.” Fraser looked at Ted.
“Who will, you mean Jessica?”
“Jessica, yes, Jessica. She will be providing raw materials essential to the US government and to the many companies that use those materials to build things, you know, like computers and cellphones.” He grinned. “And since these materials, well, come from the ground, as it were, she’ll be working for us in the capacity of a new cabinet post, as secretary of the environment.”
Ted and Steve sat, dumbfounded.
“Smile! It’s a victory!” continued Steven Fraser. “Or at least I’d like to think it’s a victory for all of us, all Americans. I just hope the voters see it that way. In the meantime, your bills will circulate for a short while longer, maintaining their stimulating effect until they are incinerated, along with every piece of paper money currently in existence. And your friend Jessica will ensure, to use her words, that our particular treaty is honored. For this, you have her to thank, and me. We need to iron out a few things, including the production of some actual wallpaper that looks like money, and to do so we’ll be using the help of some soon-to-be legal Chinese workers.”
Ted smiled.
“Ah!” exclaimed Steve as he stood up. “A smile! How about you, Steve?” Steve stared at Steven Fraser with the eyes of an ancient warrior and grinned a grin of relief and pride. He then brushed his hand up across Ted’s back, almost an embrace, but more like a sustained nudge. It was the strongest show of affection he’d ever offered to his friend.
“I’m starved for a stately dish,” said Fraser. “Sorry if I’m not saying it right, but from what John told me, it’s really good, and called, what did he say? ‘Oeuf de Fabergé.’ Yah, that’s it. Oeuf de Fabergé. What kind of a name is that?”
Steven Fraser rose and headed for the door, inspired it would seem by the thought of the impending feast. Maybe this would be the one that would finally prohibit his passage through the conference room door so that he could go home and engage in something other than this dreadful job.
As the two friends rose to join him, Ted turned to Steve and silently whispered, “Steve, we should suggest that Jude write about all this. He could write a bloody novel based on that name!”
“Yah,” returned Steve, as he reached into his breast pocket for his sunglasses. “True. But which one? Fabergé, or just Oeuf?”
“I don’t know, whichever one came first!”
About the Author
Robert Barsky paid some of his college bills by working in restaurants in Cape Cod and Montreal, and after graduating he moved to Switzerland to pursue a career in skiing, supporting himself by working in an upscale hotel bar. He now enjoys cooking for his wife and his college-aged children, and writing about language, literature and revolution. He is the author of eight books, including biographies of Noam Chomsky and Zellig Harris. This is his first novel, and he is excited (egg-cited?) to work on the next one.
Notes
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Doug Duda, “Poached Eggs at the Revolution,”
Eggs in Cookery
, Devon, Prospect Books, 2002. Image at:
http://www.mis-recetas.org/receta/foto/0000/0884/grande/arzak.jpg.
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