The Three Sisters (54 page)

“I don’t know, Victor. Christ, I didn’t even think I’d be alive a week ago. Now you’re asking for a preview of my life. How am I supposed to know what I’ll be doing a year from now? Do you know what you’ll
be doing?”

“’Course not, but got some ideas. Why I wanted to know your plans. Been in America all my life, too. Not getting any younger. Decided now’s time to branch out, better late than never. Why not go abroad? International business where it’s at today. Jay and I at Virnovak, think U.S. too small for us. Think of all the Catholics in South America, southern Europe. Plan to make products for Protestants too. Give us northern Europe. Who knows where it’ll all lead? Got to have a challenge, girls. Like Jefferson said, merchant has
no country.”

“Are you sure the world’s ready for you, Victor?”
asked K.

“Don’t have choice, do they? Long as we make superior products, decent prices, good clientele, success’ll be certain. Jesus, just noticed what time it is. Listen, gotta get going here. Let me know how things go, write or call. Hope you don’t hold any grudges. Sure you know the address and all that. Actually, have to keep in touch if you three want to get all your money. See how money ties friends together? Oh well, off
for now.”

With that, Victor rushed out of his office, leaving the three sisters behind, surrounded by the smiling autographed faces of dozens of people whom Victor Virga had met and entertained and shot. Coito got up out of her chair and walked over to Victor’s desk. She picked up his dart gun, pushed her red hair out of her eyes, pointed the gun at a picture of Victor shaking hands with a general, and shot the dart straight ahead. It landed squarely
atop Victor.

“Should’ve done that long ago,”
said Coito.

“So why didn’t you do that when he was here?” asked Theodora. Coito said nothing. “You had your chance to tell him what
you thought.”

“Know that. Couldn’t get two words in edgewise,” said Coito, imitating Victor. “I don’t know, I guess if I’d wanted to tell him what I really thought, I would’ve done it a long time ago. But how can you talk to someone like him? He’s so single-minded, he’s…what’s so funny?” Coito asked Theodora who
was laughing.

“You complaining someone else
is single-minded.”

“I guess it is kind of like the pot calling the kettle black,” K added. “But can you believe that? Now he’s going into international business. God, if he can do this for America, what will he do for the rest of
the world?”

“I don’t know, K,” answered Theodora. “But what are you going to do
about it?”

“What do
you mean?”

“Ever since I met you, you’ve been telling me what’s wrong with the world. K, you could probably do more than me or Regina and a dozen other people together if you ever set your mind to it. I remember when we were in the showers the night of the Festivities, I really thought you’d changed, really thought you might’ve tried to do something, but ever since you found out what Victor did, you’ve been your same old cynical self. It’s as if you’d never changed at all, K. You’re back to square one. Remember when we were in the showers together on Festivities’ Eve? I told you how much I admired your creativity, how much I believed in your capabilities, how much I believed you
could accomplish…”

“And how you spend half your time
hating me?”

“But I’m still here, aren’t I, K? I’ve never left. You’ve—we’ve—gotten a reprieve. You should use
it wisely.”

“Look, I’ve spent all my life rebelling against my past. They tried to mold me and shape me and I refused, but I got so hung up with saying ‘no’ that I never bothered to see what I wanted out of life, how I thought things should be. But you can’t expect me to answer all my questions, solve all the world’s problems and mine just like that,” said Coito, snapping her fingers. “I’m not even thirty yet, though I certainly feel a lot older. Give me a chance, and I’ll try to do something constructive for a change.” Coito paused for a second and added in a quieter tone, “Just give me time and I will.” Coito fell silent for a moment. “Oh, come on; let’s get out of here while we still can.”

Returning home from the Kennedy Center, the three sisters prepared a party for their bibacious and vivacious guests, and knowing that they were about to come into a substantial sum of money, the three sisters planned a celebration so extravagant and lavish, so lush with Hollywood excess, so indulgent to the three’s idiosyncrasies, that only intemperate drinking could dull the memory of it all. The three insatiable sisters lavished their money on liquor, foods, musical groups, decorations, caterers, and other necessities with an abandon that would have shocked any of the nuns whom the three had once known, but would have drawn envy from the society matrons of Washington’s parties for the capital’s military-political-economic-social elite, none of whom was invited to
Coito’s
convivium
.

“The secret service men were the only ones who were not close friends who got to come to the party. We had to invite them after they helped us put up the decorations and told us where to get the things we needed,” Regina explained. “But they proved to be useful in more ways than one. Some of our guests got out of hand after they had imbibed to excess, so we just had our protectors take care of them. Secret service men are
great bouncers.”

On Childermas,
1979
the three stuprous sisters celebrated their freedom along with fifty of their best friends in a sinful saturnalia that began Friday evening just as Jewish services were beginning in New York, continued all day Saturday while Catholics and Seventh-Day Adventists visited their houses of worship, and concluded with less than ten people early Sunday morning when the licentious guests, exhausted from their incessant circumincession, finally went to sleep just as millions of Protestants were waking to attend Sunday School on the west coast. Unlike the apostles in Acts, the three were definitely drunk
that morning.

Old friends visited and joined in on the Saturnalia. Joan Dark and Rose Dawn, their friends who had put them up back in May after returning from their cross-country road trip, were both there. As usual Joan Dark got men to burn with desire from her felicific fellatio, while rosy-fingered Dawn provided mentulate manutention that made the sun rise for many a man that weekend; and both were always happy to say “yes” to the rhapismatic requests of
the guests.

Not all was mirth and fun, however, for scientific experiments were conducted as well. “We wanted to find out whether an orgasm was better when the Secret Service men had their sunglasses on or off,” explained Coito. “We conducted experiments testing both methods. Then we retested the hypothesis several times and always got the same result. The results were statistically significant, definitely when the sunglasses
were on.”

The celebration was a success because everything requisite for a party had been procured by the three. Foods were scattered through the house, and the deipnophilic guests ate and drank on the couches and beds as the Romans had done at their own
convivia
two thousand years before.

With live jazz bands, a chamber music group, Bachian Preludes and Fugues, avant-garde experimental music, and a new wave group alternating in the give and take between live and recorded music, much less the unorthodox combination of tastes, the result was a babel of noise which Coito relished, but which most of the guests were too busy to take notice of. Music blasted through the windows of the suburban house, the men and women screamed delights, and Theodora recited Shakespeare. The three’s neighbors soon remembered why they had been so happy when they had heard about the three’s sentencing and why they had been so angry when President Nixon had staged his coup, but none of the three sisters’ guests complained
about anything.

The neighbors tried to stop the strepitous celebration by calling the police, but thanks to Theodora’s reassuring words and Regina’s flirtations and invitations, the police were persuaded that the party would proceed at a quieter pace after they left, which it did…temporarily.

By Sunday the three-day debauch had turned the Rams’ immaculately clean house into a disaster area. The guests, having enjoyed the three’s hospitality, dismissed themselves before any appeals to return the home to an orderly state could be made, and left the three sisters with the job of restoring the house to order. After recovering from the three-day long extravaganza, the now contented Catholics got up late Sunday afternoon and cursorily cleaned up the aftermath of
their celebration.

Sunday would be a day of rest, for the following day was New Year’s Eve. President Nixon had asked them to appear at the White House that evening, and having declined the offer to appear at the Kennedy Center as they had done in the past, they accepted the
President’s invitation.

CHAPTER XXII

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot will
be shot.

– Mark Twain,
The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn

THE TALK OF
THE TOWN

R
ecent events in the nation’s capital have captured our thoughts completely. We have remained mesmerized as the three sisters, the Festivities, and Richard Nixon acted their parts in the bizarre play which unfolded before us on TV. Looking back on the past few months, one truly wonders whether all that happened was but a dream, and whether any moment now we might wake up to the
status
quo ante
.

Slowly, one by one, new developments occurred, and as each new event brought an incredible new twist to the fate of the three and to the nation, we were forced to accept the new reality. With each new development, we were shocked once again and only came back to our senses when we realized that the story of their lives could not take a more unexpected turn. Yet each time we were
proven wrong.

It would seem that this series of events has finally culminated with an ending which no one, save a madman, could have predicted. That three nuns would be instrumental in catapulting Richard Nixon back into the Office of the President has left us unable to believe what we are told. Yet we saw the coup take place before our very eyes by watching it on TV or participating in the Festivities in Washington. The rapid succession of events and the omnipresent media coverage have loaded our minds with so much information that we accept President Nixon’s position as a
fait accompli
, even though we still find it difficult to believe. Because our our minds have been so preoccupied with the facts, we have had little opportunity to reflect on the ultimate meaning of these events, not only to the United States, but to the rest of
the world.

This century has been one of instability for the nation-state; change has been the rule, and stability the exception. As if set off from the rest of the world, Americans watched governments fall and millions suffer from war, starvation, and other disasters both human and natural. Our nation was not without problems; we went through several wars, all fought abroad, a depression, campus unrest, unemployment and recession, but we persevered, maintaining our faith in the American way of life and in our ability to solve our
own problems.

As a society, we have fluctuated between open confrontation and a very strong unity of national spirit. Earlier this month, despite the admonitions of a few, it seemed as if once again we were a united people working together for a common cause. Yet just as quickly as this had come about, our dream was broken by the actions of a single man who threw us back to doubting ourselves once again. Perhaps the nation had gone too far in its pursuit of justice and in its acceptance of former President Carter’s dictum as President Nixon has suggested, but we felt we were a united nation and had a cause to fight for. We can only hope that our nation can once again pull together after the resolution of this crisis and renew our national spirit as we did two hundred years ago after the revolution and one hundred years ago after the
civil war.

President Nixon’s decision to respect the Supreme Court, the Congress, and other constitutional aspects of our government, and only make the change at the executive level of our government bodes well for the nation. If events had been otherwise, protest would certainly have engulfed the nation. President Nixon has already shown his willingness to work within the Constitutional framework and so has proven to us that we will be able to recover from this unusual change in government and not sink into the political quagmire which has befallen so many
other nations.

We can only speculate where our nation would have been had not President Nixon intervened. No one will ever know what that future would have held for us, so we can only hope that the one which now awaits us will be better. This is one of the unfortunate truths of history that we can never know what would have been; we can only work to create a better future given the present in which
we live.

These were the thoughts which passed through our minds as we entered the White House as guests of the new occupant of the Office of the President at the New Year’s Eve Reception which President Nixon had planned for a select group of dignitaries, politicians, the fourth estate, and other important individuals. The reception was provided to reassure members of the elite, both national and foreign, of President Nixon’s intentions not to make any changes in the American system of government, but only to “finish the term I was elected to serve,” as he has said before. He has indicated several times that he will step down in
1984
, and we all hope that this is the last time a new executive comes into office in President Nixon’s
unique way.

We had been talking with various guests for about thirty minutes on this and other subjects when we caught our first glimpse of President Nixon. He was busy the whole night, so we spent our time conversing with others at the reception. We spoke with dignitaries from the six inhabited continents of the globe and with politicians representing all regions of the United States. This was the most rewarding part of the evening intellectually for we received first-hand evidence of others’ reactions to President Nixon’s new position. Since few Carter supporters were invited, there were only a few who were vehemently opposed to President Nixon, though they were very cordial about their hatred. We received mixed feelings from non-partisan guests. They were happy to have a leader for a President, but they also feared that President Nixon might someday overstep his responsibilities more than he already had, causing dissension throughout the nation. In general though, the mood we sensed more than anything else was one of relief, as if a great danger had been endured and survival was now certain. Understandably, the guests also hoped to hear former President Carter’s own reaction to President Nixon’s new role instead of hearing it through the intermediaries who have spoken for him since he flew back to Georgia on Air Force One. President Carter, however, was not at
the reception.

Later we got a chance to speak with President Nixon. He did not look much older than he had five years ago when he resigned. It seemed as though he had aged more in the five months before his resignation than in the five years since he had left Washington, but from the conversation we entertained, as well as our own brief words with him, we received the impression that President Nixon has changed little in these past years. He is perhaps a bit quieter, more cautious than before, but still independent and suspicious behind his cordial smiles, but then, we thought, perhaps we were being unfair to President Nixon. We must remember that our own nation and the mood of Americans have changed much since
1974
. Perhaps it was only the failings of our own memories which left us with this conclusion about
President Nixon.

As it turned out, there were two receiving lines at the reception, one for President Nixon, and one for the three sisters. President Nixon remained outside and never once mentioned that the near victims of crucifixion were around, but there was no need to announce their presence, for rumor did an excellent job of informing all present of the three’s activities. The only problem was getting in to
see them.

The two receiving lines were as different as novels by Henry James and Rabelais, in one was the world of
realpolitik
and in the other the world of
fotzepolitik
; each contained its own inner logic; each had a spirit contrary to the other; yet they coexisted perfectly. Mr. Nixon stood by his wife and talked with the guests who had come while the three, being less formal, talked and joked with their guests with little semblance of order. Each of the three sisters occupied a different portion of the room as guests attracted to the different personalities of each joined the coterie that surrounded each of them. All of us were impressed by their natural affability and willingness to meet the demands placed
upon them.

Everyone at the reception wanted to meet the three sisters. After three months of hearing day in and day out about their sexual proclivities, their activities in the Washington Monument, in the Confessional, at their trial, and finally awaiting their crucifixion, reading their publications, hearing about their lives, in a word, being saturated by a media blitz unprecedented in even this day and age, all were curious to see them in the flesh and see whether they deserved all the attention they had received, or whether we had been the victims of a gossipy press whose sole intent was to sell newspapers, news programs, and magazines. Our expectations were so high that we were quite prepared to be disappointed by the real thing; however, we were delighted when each of the three lived up to their incredible reputations and turned out to be as prodigious and capable as had been reported by the most
reliable sources.

Coito bestowed her acerbic wit on the guests to the delight of one and all. Instead of being insulted by her comments, those who were the victims of her
bon mots
bore her criticisms as if they had received her blessing. The victims happily repeated her caustic comments to others with great pride. We were naturally drawn to Theodora, who engaged us in some scintillating discussions about America’s past, present, and future. Regina was as full of optimism and good cheer as any person we had ever met or could expect to meet. As we discovered, when you are around Regina, it is virtually impossible to not be happy and appreciate the wonder of
being alive.

Not only we, but the foreign diplomats were interested to see the women who had turned America upside down, and it was a tribute to the diplomats as well as to the three that this integration of foreign affairs was able to take place so easily. If only the world could get together as easily as people were conversing together in this room, we thought as we passed some time with the three, the fears and uncertainties which daily haunt us would evaporate and leave us in a more peaceful world where we would be able to dedicate ourselves to the aesthetic beauties which move our souls. Our visit, though limited to a few words, was very rewarding and memorable. Their diplomatic abilities came not from smoothly oiled speeches and careful negotiations, but from being able to meet all on their own level. The three sisters, like Francis Xavier, had learned to be all things to
all people.

We left after our visit with the three sisters seeing that the highlight of the evening was over. The three left a very good impression on everyone, and their names will certainly be carried around the globe by those who were present that night. If President Nixon is wise, he will use the three as much as their bodies permit, and if these young ladies are any indication of the future of the White House’s activities while President Nixon resides there, our nation has a bright future ahead
of it.

On January
1
,
1980
, the first day of the new decade, President Nixon called The Three Illegitimate Daughters of the American Revolution to see him in the Oval Office.

“Dickey,”
cried Coito.

“Come right in, girls. So how did things go
last night?”

“We had a great time,” declared K. “Of course, we already knew many of the people from the Kennedy Center, but we’re always willing to add more to our inner circle. We’ve never had an interest in politics, but we do enjoy
international relations.”

“Glad to hear that. If it weren’t for you girls, the true nature of Carter’s regime might never have been brought to light, and I might never have been able to complete the term in office I was elected to.”

“If it weren’t for you Mr. Nixon, we’d be dead,” Theodora
pointed out.

“I really prefer Comedies to Tragedies,” confessed K, “especially in real life. You know what I really like about the
Oval Office?”

“What
is that?”

“You have the most fantastic view of the Washington Monument from here. If I were able to look at that every day for inspiration, I think I could solve all of the world’s problems. By the way, if you ever want us to give you a late night tour of the Washington Monument, we’d be happy to oblige. I’m sure that one word from you to the Secret Service, and they’ll open it up in
a second.”

“It sounds tempting, girls,
but …”

“I really think they ought to put a plaque on the top floor to commemorate our orgy. After all, it’s part of history now,”
said Theodora.