The Day of the Donald (21 page)

S
omebody opened the door to the third stall and sat down. Jimmie could see a pair of women’s shoes underneath the stall divider. Nothing unusual about that—to each their own. This wasn’t North Carolina.

What
did
strike him as unusual, however, was that the person to his left didn’t drop their pants after sitting down on the toilet. Shooting up? Maybe. Stall three, man. What the hell.

Jimmie quickly finished his business. As he was zipping up, he heard the warbling of a sparrow. No, not a sparrow—a house finch. It was the same chirping call he’d heard in Clinton Plaza just before Connor approached him.

Either there were birds on the loose in the museum’s restroom, or the Socialist Justice Warriors had found him. Apparently the drop zone was going to be in the drop zone.

He sat down as the toilet automatically flushed, misting the seat of his pants.

“Do you have the tapes?” the man to his right asked through a crack in the stall. The southern drawl in his voice was slight but noticeably there. This was the kidnapper he’d talked to on the phone.

“Is this restroom secure?” Jimmie asked.

“Our people did a sweep of it earlier,” the woman to his left said. “We have someone standing guard out front. We’re not going to be disturbed. We can talk freely.”

“Before we start talking, I need to know who I’m dealing with,” Jimmie said. “You know who I am. It only seems fair that I know your names.”

“You didn’t follow our directions,” the man said. “I told you to put a fern out on your deck.”

“That’s what I did.”

“It was a Ficus,” the man said.

“Fern . . . Ficus . . . what does it matter?” Jimmie asked.

“You’re not good at following instructions,” the woman said.

“And maybe you’re not good at giving them,” Jimmie retorted. “That’s not all on me. Now give me your names, or I walk.”

“I’m sorry we haven’t been up-front about things,” the woman said. “It was for your protection, as well as ours.”

“I’m a big boy—I can take care of myself.”

“Just letting you know what’s at stake here,” the woman said. “My name is Hillary . . . and the man in the other stall is Jeb! We’re the ones who are going to make America great again—again.”

J
immie couldn’t believe it. He stood up on the toilet, nearly dunking his foot in the process. He poked his head over the stall divider. Hillary Clinton waved at him. She was wearing a pink sweat suit, a fanny pack, and dark sunglasses, but it was her all right. A diamond-encrusted Bernie bird brooch was pinned to her top.

Jimmie then peered into the first stall. A man who looked like a bad Xerox of George W. Bush smiled from underneath a blue cap that read MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN (AGAIN). Neither of them was exactly being subtle.

Jimmie carefully stepped off the toilet seat. What were the Clintons and the Bushes doing working together? The Clintons and the Bushes were the Capulets and the Montagues of modern politics. Unless the Bush daughters and Chelsea pulled a three-way Romeo and Juliet, there was no way the two families were ever going to stand united. Trump had done the impossible.

“You’re Socialist Justice Warriors,” Jimmie said. He was stating the obvious, but he needed time to process this turn of events. The stall was spinning around him; he needed to catch his breath and think.

“Check out the big brain on Brad,” Hillary said. Jimmie recognized it as a quote from
Pulp Fiction
. Unsurprisingly, Hillary was still living in the nineties.

“You’re working with Bernie now?” Jimmie said.

“No one’s seen Bernie Sanders in years,” Hillary said. “We’re the ones who have been funding the Socialist Justice Warriors.”

“The Bernie bros said they’d never support you.”

“They have no idea who’s pulling their strings,” Hillary said. “But don’t feel bad for them: They’re a bunch of idealists. Even if they got the ‘change’ they wanted, they’d still find something to whine about. Ah, to be young.”

“We represent the true change America needs,” Jeb! said. “It’s time for the lifelong politicians to take our country back. We’re tired of getting bossed around by these Washington outsiders and their small-government underreaches. Our country should be governed the way the founders intended—by a small handful of political dynasties.”

“The Clintons and the Bushes,” Jimmie said.

“This is bigger than our families,” Hillary said. “We’re talking about the Democrats and Republicans.”

“So wait another two years for the next presidential election,” Jimmie said.

“The United States may not be around in two years if we get drawn into this conflict with Great Britain. They fight dirty,” Jeb! said.

Jimmie folded the brochure. “Your brother got us into that mess in Iraq, and we’re still here. Deeper in debt and less respected around the world, but what else is new?”

“If you’re expecting me to defend my brother, you don’t know Jeb!”

Not many people do know Jeb!
, Jimmie thought.

“What’s done is done,” Hillary said. “The conflict in the Middle East was a limited skirmish. Yes, it destabilized the region . . . but it didn’t destabilize the world. Al Qaeda is wiped out, and ISIS has been contained. But war with the UK is another beast entirely.”

“
Two
beasts. A lion and a unicorn,” interjected Jeb! “Because they’re on the coat of arms over there.”

“Shut up, Jeb!”

“Sorry.”

Hillary continued, “My point is, France took our side in the Revolutionary War. Whose side will they take this time, especially after Trump’s call to resculpt the Statue of Liberty so she shows more leg? Russia, on the other hand, will have Trump’s back. Especially after he let Putin fight to a hero’s death against that panda. That will put America at odds with almost every country we currently call allies. The entire geopolitical map is about to be redrawn, Mr. Bernwood.”

“Unless you take Trump down,” Jimmie said.

“Unless we take his entire administration down,” Jeb! said. “They’re corrupt from top to bottom. We’ll need to clean house—starting with the man in charge.”

“Tom Brady is next in line,” Jimmie said.

“The vice president is in outer space,” Hillary said. “You can’t govern from outer space. It’s in the Constitution.”

“The speaker of the house will be sworn in,” Jeb! said. “Ryan is a party guy.”

“He likes to party, does he?” Jimmie asked.

“He’s a card-carrying Republican,” Hillary said.

“I was making a joke,” Jimmie said.

“I don’t know what those are,” Hillary said.

So the Socialist Justice Warriors wanted what was best for America? Jimmie wasn’t buying it. Hillary and Jeb!’s pitch to him to “save the country” came off as sour grapes. They’d both had their chance against Trump. The American people had spoken—loud and clear. In record numbers. The people trusted Trump to make the right decisions for their country. If you listened to polls, most of them were happy with their choice. Who was Jimmie to argue with them? While the Socialist Justice Warriors spoke about Trump as if he were a dictator, they were the ones trying to force themselves down America’s throat. They were the ones attempting to dismantle the democracy.

No wonder Jimmie fucking hated politics.

“You don’t have a mole in the White House, then?” Jimmie asked, fishing around to see if Christie was part of their organization.

“If we did, we wouldn’t have had to kidnap your girlfriend,” Hillary said. “Since you refused to assist the Socialist Justice Warriors, we’ve had to resort to . . . unsavory tactics. You left us no choice.”

Hillary had known what she was doing when she called Cat his “girlfriend.” He thought about disputing the taunt, but keeping his emotions in check was something he’d just picked up from Trump’s book.

“Set the tapes on the ground and scoot them over,” Hillary demanded.

Jimmie felt the recorder in his jacket pocket but didn’t remove it. “Where’s Cat?”

“She’s safe,” Jeb! said. “Just give us the damn tapes. Time is running out.”

“Tell me where she is, or I drop the tapes into the toilet.”

“You wouldn’t,” Jeb! said. “You wouldn’t dare. You know how valuable—”

“He’s bluffing,” Hillary said. “He probably doesn’t even have them on him.”

Jimmie pressed PLAY on the recorder. Trump’s voice echoed in the stall:
Here’s what you do. You finance a boat, then you buy the boat company and run it into the ground. They close up shop, boom—free boat
.

He paused it.

“God dammit,” Jeb! cried, pounding weakly on the divider. “Don’t do it.”

“He has duplicates somewhere,” Hillary said, unfazed.

“I couldn’t risk making a copy,” Jimmie said. “The interview sessions are on a hard drive inside this recorder. No tapes. No copies. This is it.”

According to
Trump: The Art of the Deal
, “the worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.” Right now, Jeb! Bush was sweating desperation. Hillary was playing it cool. Jimmie wondered if she’d colored Trump’s book.

“Your girlfriend is tied up in the
Taken
exhibit,” Hillary said.

That was all Jimmie wanted to know. That was all he
needed
to know.

He unlocked the door.

“You think you’re just going to walk out of here without handing over the device?” Hillary said. “Even if you get past
both of our men at the restroom door, you’ll never make it out of the museum alive. And neither will your girlfriend.”

“You’ll get the recorder as soon as I make sure she’s safe,” Jimmie said. “I’m in charge now. I’m the goddamn man. I’m—”

The overhead lights went out. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in Trump’s United States. You just sort of had to expect the rolling brownouts, as all caps on energy consumption had been lifted. Usually, the backup generators in most buildings kicked in after ten or fifteen seconds. Life would return to normal.

But this time, the darkness did not abate. Really? Did this have to happen right in the middle of his big speech where he turned the tables on the kidnappers?

A loud bang outside of the restroom startled Jimmie. It was quickly followed by another, and another. Gunshots.

“D
id you double-cross us, Jimmie?” Hillary asked in the darkness.

“How could I double-cross you? We were never on the same page to begin with.”

Something landed on the floor outside the stalls with a metallic clang and started hissing like a snake. The room quickly filled with smoke. Jimmie covered his mouth with his T-shirt and crept up onto the toilet seat, where he crouched like Spider-Man.

A red laser cut through the darkness and danced above the stall door. The tiny shaft of light would have only been a red dot if not for the smoke clouding the air. Perched like he was on the toilet, Jimmie Bernwood was a shitting duck.

The red shaft of light passed under the stalls, bouncing off the shoes of his stallmates. He closed his eyes as it passed over the bare tile in front of his toilet. The gunshots outside indicated to him that somebody had taken out the Socialist Justice Warriors standing guard . . . but that didn’t necessarily mean whoever was doing the shooting was after Hillary and Jeb! More likely, they were after the same thing everyone else seemed to be interested in: the Dorset recordings. And Jimmie didn’t need to be alive to hand them over.

He opened his eyes just as gunfire erupted outside of the stalls. In such close quarters, it was loud enough to take what was left of Jimmie’s hearing and leave a ringing in its place. After the first few rapid-fire shots, he stopped hearing them. The shooting was still going on, though, because the flashes of the muzzles were lighting up the restroom. It was as if somebody were throwing a Fourth of July fireworks show just for his private amusement. Some real asshole.

Jimmie braced for the bullets to enter his body and deliver him to the Lord. Although he’d always been an atheist, he prayed to God that the assassins left enough of him for at least a partially open casket. Those closed-casket affairs were just depressing as all shit—you always wondered just how mangled the corpse was beneath the pine lid.

Finally, the light show stopped.

Jimmie ran a hand over his chest and stomach, checking for wounds. Not a bullet hole to be found. He thanked God for saving him and went back to being an atheist.

The ringing in his ears slowly wound down, and he could make out a couple of voices arguing on the other side of the stall door. The lights flickered back on. Jimmie glanced down to see how his stallmates had fared, then quickly looked away. The floor was a mess of busted ceramic from the toilet seats, plaster chunks from the walls . . . and blood. So much blood. One of Jeb!’s loafers had somehow found its way back into Jimmie’s stall. Part of a foot was still stuck in it, but it had come undone from the rest of Jeb!’s body.

There were footsteps across the broken tile outside Jimmie’s stall. Then a pause. He could sense somebody standing there,
contemplating his fate. An assassin. Jimmie decided to go down swinging.

“You’ll never take me alive,” he said, gripping the only weapon he had—the recorder—with both hands. His voice was trembling and weak.

The words had sounded so much better in his head.