The fourth excerpt from “Our Putative Couple,” a work in progress. For the first three excerpts, please click (in this order) here and here and here.
■
Standing outside her smeary beige high school at 7:12 AM on Monday, August 25, 2014, the first day of her junior year, Zoey spends a few moments checking out her classmates, the same pathetic nonentities she’s known for-freaking-ever: the concussed jocks, the perky sluts, the woozy potheads, the glowering lezbos, the emotive fags, the thuggish blacks, the white kids imitating thuggish blacks. No one there deserves to kiss her butt, not that anyone has ever tried.
But someone should try. Zoey knows beyond any doubt that someone as upper-percentile as she deserves a following. An upper-percentile following. A following she can cultivate via the greatest technological development ever, the Internet, the best place to attract attention.
She opens her backpack and takes out her phone. She logs into her account on allrighty.com, a blogging platform “FOR REAL AMERICANS”, as its masthead declares, quotes included. She reviews what she wrote the previous night (ellipses in original):
Welcome to The Zoey Zone, a blog by me, Zoey Jennings, a 16 year old girl. Yes, even a girl can have her own blog. What will they think of next?…Anyway, I should warn you, while I might occasionally write about Typical Teenage Topics such as fashion and music, I do plan to write mostly about, gasp, POLITICS. And NOT from a liberal perspective, either. I’ve never swallowed the lies spewed out every single minute by the liberal news media. Even sweet little 16-year-old girls like me can see the immense damage that [United States] President Barack Hussein Obama [in office from 2009 to 2017] and his fellow Marxist radical lunatics have done to this country. And I don’t know about other girls, but when I see damage, I point it out, so people can fix it. I’ve always pointed stuff out. I plan to do a lot of that here, on this little old blog. I’ll tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…with some cute emojis to boot. [Emoji of a woman’s high-heeled red boot, facing right, appropriately enough.]
I do own a pair of cute red boots in real life. Perhaps I could have kicked some sense into Michael Brown while wearing them. Then perhaps he WOULDN’T have physically attacked a cop, trying to go for the cop’s gun. Then perhaps the cop WOULDN’T have shot that dumb-ass dead. And then perhaps all those outside agitators WOULDN’T have made an attempted cop-killer a hero and rioted in his name [a reference to the weeks-long civic unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, that has followed the fatal shooting earlier that month of an unarmed, eighteen-year-old black resident, Michael Brown, by a white police officer; the above sentences present the police department’s version of events—went for gun, thug, outside agitators]. Of course, those rioters would have found some other criminal loser to idolize, but…I own PLENTY of boots perfect for my new career as a kicker. [Four emojis of the above women’s high- heeled boot, facing right, in brown, in blue, in red again, and in yellow, respectively.]
Zoey wants to do more than troll some liberal snowflakes. She wants to discuss vital issues in an engaging manner, the way her favorite right-wing news site, Viddy, does, an unusual site for a teenager to read, even a teenager like her who has taken Gifted Classes since sixth grade.
But, having resumed looking at the kids filing into the school, she admits to herself that if she did discuss vital issues in an engaging manner and thus attract an upper-percentile following, that following would probably never rise above the single digits. Most teenagers, even the allegedly Gifted ones, just don’t care about current events. Actually, most people don’t; they’d rather spend hours each day watching videos about, say, cats riding skateboards, than learn about how this once-great country has turned into a socialist hellhole. Most people find the truth too depressing. She might attract some followers if she dumbed down her content, reducing if not eliminating the news commentary.
No. Her index finger mashes the on-screen PRINT button several times. Someone has to point out this country’s idiocy, even if no one else cares.
The last excerpt from “The Weekly Farm Report,” a story in progress. For the previous excerpts, please click(in this order) here and here and here.I plan to publish the finished story in my upcoming short-story collection—upcoming in a rather leisurely fashion.
■
Two days later, Tuesday, 8:06 AM, on Truth Social. Another message from President Trump.
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!
“You still think this is just his way of negotiating?” Taylor asked a few hours later. “This is much, much worse.” Reading aloud from her phone: “ ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.’ Hitler would have said something like this.”
“Ah yes,” I said, sitting across from her, at our usual Brew Crew table. “In almost every political discussion, no matter the topic, eventually someone brings up Hitler.”
“Well, if you act like a genocidal maniac—”
Taylor sipped her medium peppermint herbal tea, the first time she’d ordered something different at that coffeehouse, at least up to that point in our relationship, though she did still wear the dinosaur hoodie I’d given her.
“You think Trump’ll nuke Iran?” she asked.
“I don’t think he will,” I replied.
“Why not?”
“Because, uh, wait.” I picked up my large double-caramel cappuccino. I took a sip. I carefully set the cup back down onto the table. “Okay, because—okay, Trump would want us control Iran’s oil production after the war, right? But if we nuked them, that would make the oil too radioactive to use.”
Taylor paused. “You know, that explanation almost makes sense.”
“Almost?”
“Trump’s mind has turned to mush, due to dementia or mental illness or too much fast food or whatever. Maybe he wants to turn his negotiating tactic into reality.” Taylor scrolled through her phone for a few seconds. “Plus right after Trump’s unhinged post, JD Vance”—the vice-president—“could have said ‘Heh heh, just kidding, folks. We don’t reeeally plan to wipe out an entire nation.’ But that would have displeased his highness, Donald the Mad King. So instead, Vance said our nation has ‘tools in our toolkit that so far we haven’t decided to use’ against Iran.” Yep, this war is a home-improvement project. And with the nuclear winter that would result after our attack—”
Taylor placed her phone down onto the table.
“The human race had a nice run,” she said, her eyes trying to crowd out her other facial features, her mouth the extreme opposite of the smiley-faced dinosaur’s mouth, her lower lip imitating hummingbird wings (or one hummingbird wing—that poor amputee bird, or maybe not an amputee, maybe just a creature vigorously waving either hi or bye). I’d never seen Taylor look distraught until now, making me feel distraught, though I managed not to show it by sheer exertion.
“Okay,” I said, reaching across the table and covering my hand with hers. “Whatever happens, please remember—we still have each other. We’ll always have each other.”
Her lower lip stopped quivering. Her mouth slowly turned into the hoodie dino’s mouth again.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too,” I said.
Untold seconds of wordless adoration followed, the other coffeehouse customers partaking of beverages as mellow music—strummy acoustic guitar, plunky piano—flowed from the intercom.
“I have a suggestion,” Taylor said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Let’s blow off classes, go to my place, and, heh heh, consummate our relationship. Let’s consummate it all day. This may be the last day life exists on Earth, so we might as well make the best of things.”
Another excerpt from “The Weekly Farm Report,” a story in progress. For the first two excerpts, please click(in this order) here and here.
■
Easter morning, bright and sunny. I met Taylor outside her dorm.
“Have you seen Trump’s post today on Truth Social?” she asked.
“No,” I replied.
“You should. You might think the post is fake. I certainly did. But it’s real.”
“Okay, hold on.”
I took out my phone and went to the above social-media site, a site Trump owned. He had been publicly threatening for a while to destroy Iran’s infrastructure if Iran didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F—-n’ Strait, you crazy b—–ds, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
(I’ve cleaned up the language a little.)
“So what do you think?” Taylor asked.
“I think Trump didn’t have his coffee first thing this morning, heh heh,” I replied.
“Actually, he’s addicted to diet soda, not to coffee. But right now, it doesn’t matter what he drinks, since it’s far, far, far more important that he threatened to commit war crimes in two days.”
“That’s just his way of negotiating.”
“ ‘Do as we say, or we’ll destroy your country’—a great negotiating tactic.”
“Well, we’re dealing with Iran here. We have to show them we mean business.”
“Yes, we always have to show predominantly non-white countries we mean business. Non-white countries with lots of resources we need, for our businesses.”
“Should we start heading out?”
Taylor paused. “Sure.”
We started walking toward downtown, where we’d planned to have Easter brunch at Taylor’s favorite vegetarian restaurant, Happy Harvest. She’d quit eating meat seven years earlier, when she was thirteen, due to how killing animals for food made her uncomfortable, though she didn’t actually kill them herself or even watch them get killed. She still didn’t like the killing part, but now she also believed that carnivorous diets made you fat and ruined your health. Humans had evolved to the point where they no longer had a biological need to consume animals, she thought. As someone who regularly worked out, she needed extra protein but got it from sources such as tofu, tempeh, and nuts, and sometimes from higher-carb sources such as lentils, requiring her to—
“You don’t deny that even threatening to destroy a country’s bridges and power plants is a war crime under international law?” she asked.
I didn’t respond.
“Well? Do you deny it?”
“I guess not. But—”
“But what?”
Pause.
“Sometimes you have to think outside the box,” I said. “Sorry if this sounds like corporate-speak.”
Another excerpt from “The Weekly Farm Report,” a story in progress. For the first excerpt, please click here. (Note: the below text contains some political content that might cause the Laura Loomer, Jared Kushner, Kirk Cameron, Nicki Minaj, the MyPillow guy, andeven you to say “Awwwwww, not cool, David, not cool.”)
■
For the next few weeks, Taylor and I spent almost every waking minute together outside of class. We’d eat meals at the dining hall. We’d study at the campus library. We’d go to free movie nights at the student union—Hollywood blockbusters, on Blu-ray (remember that format?), on a big-screen TV, with free bags of popcorn. We’d attend rugby games at the stadium; our college, on American soil, was somewhat Anglophilic, unlike us, though we did like rugby’s ruggedness and, a little facetiously, our team’s kindergartenish uniforms: black shorts, red-and-black-striped T-shirts. (Too bad the team always suffered blowout losses.) And we’d sit at our usual table at Brew Crew, drinking our usual large double-caramel cappuccinos.
“I read somewhere that the Earth used to rotate faster, what, seventy million years ago?” she told me once, mid-cappuccino. “That made the days much shorter. Maybe half an hour shorter? If we’d lived back then, we would have seen thirty minutes less of each other every day. What a tragedy.”
“Yes, but on the bright side, we would have seen a real live dinosaur or two,” I replied.
“Heh heh heh.” She paused. “I used to love dinosaurs as a kid.”
“What kind of dinosaurs?”
“Any kind, as long as they were cuuute.”
A few days later, I gave her a present, something I’d ordered online: a black hoodie with a drawing of a generic-looking dinosaur on it, bright green, with a long neck, long tail, and triangular fins down his or her back. And two black dots for eyes. And a smiley-face style mouth. A really cuuute dinosaur, in other words. Taylor loved that hoodie and wore it everywhere, especially when we’d walk around campus, holding hands, making goo-goo eyes at each other, every so often stopping to kiss for a few seconds—acting the way most first-time sweethearts have acted since time immemorial, probably.
But we didn’t go further than holding hands and kissing. We thought about going further, much further. The furthest we could go. But we were virgins. We wanted to wait for however long it took, to make sure we had a strong, substantive relationship before we gave each other that gift you can give only once, with no returns. Maybe our Catholic upbringings had influenced us more than we’d realized. Or maybe we still would have waited if we’d had different upbringings.
At least we had more time to discuss the news. As you might expect from two political science majors, these discussions could get a little deep. And a little heated. We did have some differences, after all, particularly regarding the news story of the day: Operation Epic Fury, the war that the United States and Israel had launched a month earlier against Iran, to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, or to encourage regime change, or—
“To take the oil,” Taylor contended one afternoon at Brew Crew. “Trump himself has admitted this. He actually said, quote, ‘My favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran,’ unquote. It’s also why he had the president of Venezuela kidnapped, so we could take its oil.”
“All right,” I said. “If it is all about the oil—so what?”
“So what.”
“Yeah. The whole world runs on oil. We can’t have insane, violent nations controlling such a valuable substance, made from dead dinosaurs, by the way, heh heh,” I said, pointing at the dinosaur on Taylor’s hoodie.
Taylor didn’t laugh. “Right. Insane, violent nations, just like—”
“The United States and Israel, yeah yeah.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to call them insane and violent, then maybe they shouldn’t act all insane and violent and war-crimey.” She took a swig of her beverage. “Besides, how much has Operation Epic Fail helped us control the oil? Iran has shut off the Strait of Hormuz, and gas prices have skyrocketed. Trump’s buddies in the oil industry might not care, but—”
She took another swig of her beverage.
“Things will improve soon,” I said.
“I wish I had your level of self-delusion.”
“Why, thank you very much, Taylor.”
“Sorry. I’ve been pretty stressed lately, due to everything.”
“Me too.” I reached for her hand. She permitted me to grasp it.
The third excerpt from “Our Putative Couple,” a work in progress. For the first two excerpts, please click here and here.
■
October 10, 2025:
“We’ve received some concerning reports about you.”
“Concerning reports? Wow, no one has ever written any concerning reports about me before. How many of these concerning reports have you received?”
“More than one.”
“One and a half?”
“Ha ha, sure, okay, one and half. One and three-quarters if it makes you happy.”
Exactly a month earlier, via a series of posts on X (the social media platform that Livin’ la Vida Locher will call the Spot), the United States Department of Education announced it had frozen US $380 million in federal research grants for Garnetville University, due to, first, the school’s “failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination— all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry”; and second, the school’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs” that have fomented “division and hatred based on race, color, national origin, and other protected identity characteristics” and thus worsened “intellectual and civil rights conditions.” To have its funding restored, the school needed to “enter into discussions” with the government “regarding institutional reforms” the school “should implement as soon as possible to ensure a safe learning environment for all students while safeguarding viewpoint diversity.”
Olivia thought Garnetville University, her employer, should sue the Trump administration on First Amendment grounds. Instead, the school capitulated, which didn’t surprise her, considering its reliance on sweet, sweet military contracts. So bye-bye DEI. And helloooo to the school’s latest employee, on the job for a little over a week: Zoey Jennings, white, cisgender, twenty-eight, bias monitor (a new position), sitting behind a desk, with Olivia sitting across from her, in a cavernous office in the Administrative Annex, a gray two-story slab with a pebbly façade.
“You know what everyone on campus calls this building?” Olivia asks.
No response.
“The cheese grater. It looks like one?”
“Ha ha, yeah, it does,” Zoey says. “According to—”
“I created that nickname.”
“Congratulations. According to the reports I’ve received, you showed a certain film in class a couple days ago.” Zoey, reading aloud from the laptop on her desk: “Doctor Farnsworth [a 1987 British and American coproduction]?”
“Yes, I did show that,” Olivia responds.
“And you discussed the radical gender ideology it promotes?”
“Ah, yes, radical gender ideology. A fair and balanced term.”
“Did you discuss the ideology?”
“If your concerning reports say I did, then yes, I did.”
“You discussed it favorably.”
“Again, if your concerning reports say I did—I trust their veracity.”
The film opens in 1867, when a white, presumably cisgender, eighteen-year-old, orphaned, homeless London resident named Henrietta Grubb, who has always had an interest in what she calls “doctorin’—sorry, doctoring,” wants to improve her socioeconomic status by earning a degree from “the most pres-tee-gee-ous educational institution in good old London town,” the Dillingham University School of Medicine. Only “the crème de la crop” gets into that school. Plus, thanks to “some bloody generous, whaddaya call ’em, scholarships, those croppers can attend grattees—uh, gratis, yes, you drink grat teas at tea time, from the grat bush in Southern Grattonia.”
However, she knows that due to the almost nonexistent education she received, she would never pass the school’s entrance exams. Plus the school does not admit women anyway, due to the male supremacist attitudes that permeate almost every aspect of life during that time. So she disguises herself as a man named Henry Farnsworth (short hair, long trousers, waistcoat, bowler hat, last name derived from Farnsworth’s Rejuvenating Elixir, the patent medicine his Mum used to take); shows up at that school unannounced, first day of the Michaelmas (pronounced “Mih-kull-muhs”) term, the autumn term; and starts attending classes while not formally enrolling, telling professors who don’t see his name on the roster “Oh, yes, well, the good old academic registry must have mislaid my forms, but of course you’d expect that, considering the mountain of documents there—such a huge and treacherous mountain, you need a Sherpa to guide you through.”
Henry performs well in academics, particularly in anything medical-related. He resides in the student dorm, a much better place than the alley where he used to live prior to changing his identity. He forms friendships with most of his (white, presumably cisgender male) classmates, even outdrinking them at the local pub (his classmates vomiting loudly offscreen as calliope music plays on the soundtrack). But then his archenemy, the class bully, Reginald Avington-Trim (white and presumably cisgender male himself), wondering how someone of such obviously low social status could get into that school (“You can hear the stink of the slums in his beastly enunciation!”), does some investigating, from which he discovers Henry had never actually applied to their school. Reginald informs the administration; thus, Henry appears before the school’s (white, presumably cisgender male) disciplinary board, presided over by the dean.
“So, Mr. Farnsworth, based upon the information we have heard here today, please tell us why we should not expel you and have you arrested for fraud,” the dean says.
Henry pauses. “I’ll admit I deceived you, sir. I deceived everyone at this school. But I—I—I didn’t have a posh upbringing. Of course, that doesn’t excuse what I did, but—unlike certain of the wealthy blokes who attend this fine institution, blokes who shall remain nameless—well, unlike them, I don’t think I automatically deserve respect. Sure, I want respect, but I want to earn it. I want to earn it so much, I’ll work twice as hard as the other students. No, thrice as hard. I wouldn’ta chosen this school, a great school, a hallowed school, a demanding school, if I didn’t want to apply myself.” Henry lowers himself to one knee. He lowers his other knee. He clasps his hands. “Please let me apply myself. Please.” Slight pause, then, almost inaudibly: “Please.”
The board makes its decision. Afterwards, triumphal orchestral music (heavy on the brass) plays on the soundtrack.
The music continues as, over the next two decades, in a montage (every Nineteen-Eighties film features at least one montage, right?), Henry graduates highest in his class; lands a job as a surgeon at London’s best hospital, St. Calder’s, successfully performing risky operations that adhere to the film’s PG rating by featuring not much blood and no visible viscera; rises to the position of chief surgeon; adopts proper English (“The Queen could take elocution lessons from me, gratis, of course”); and moves into a country manor (with loyal country servants who now provide the film’s mispronunciation-and-malaprop-related comic relief). And he falls in love for the first time, with the white, cisgender, much younger, much wealthier Lady Florence “Flossie” Hargreaves and vice-versa.
One afternoon, as they stroll through the Hargreaves estate’s topiary garden (consisting partly of an almost unnoticable matte painting), Henry tells her “I very, very truly much want your hand in marriage, Flossie. But”—forboding piano-and-synth instrumental music starts playing on the soundtrack—“I have a secret. A secret I’ve never shared with anybody. A secret pertaining to, I suppose you could say my essence. Or my corporeal reality, if you want to use more sophisticated language. Years ago, I made certain choices regarding—”
“Do you think taxpayer dollars should pay for spreading transgenderism at school?” Zoey asks.
Olivia chuckles.
“Do you?”
“Sure, sure, whatever.”
“You’ve certainly praised in class what you call ‘gender-affirming care for young people.’ ”
“That I have.”
“So you don’t mind child genital mutilation?”
“You mean gender-affirming surgery? Trans kids rarely have that type of surgery.”
Zoey chuckles. “Sure, whatever.”
“Do you think they should have cosmetic surgery instead? Lots and lots and lots of cosmetic surgery?”
“Onto a different topic.”
“You don’t mind if twelve-year-old girls—”
“What do you think about Israel?”
“What do I think about Israel.” Olivia, scratching her right temple with her right forefinger: “Hmm.” She stops scratching. “Well, speaking as a Jew—and you do know about my Jewishness, right? Of course you do. The government knows everything. Well, Republican governments do. Anyway, speaking as a Jew, I have to say”—pause—“ohhhh, Israel, I love ya, but”—shorter pause—“I think we need some time apart.”
“Ha ha ha, yeah, you love Israel, sure.”
“But I do.” Olivia, languidly chanting while languidly pumping her fist: “Go, go, Israel. Go, go, Israel. Keep committing genocide. Yaaaay, Israel.”
For previous installments of the ALWAYS WITH LOVE saga, please click (in this order) here, here,here, here, here, here, and here. These two sentences don’t count toward the 130-word limit.
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In 2025, I was Senior Advisor on Gender Policy for the Trump administration. I worked in a fancy-schmancy office in DC, writing papers on how our country could promote the biological reality of two and only two sexes. I’ve always opposed gender extremism, before “gender extremism” was even a thing.
Anywho, Stewart Pringle, the White House Social-Media Director, he visited me at work one day. He told me the President had lots to do, what with fighting the migrant invasion and wokeness and DEI, so—would I like to help out by writing the President’s posts on Truth Social? “It’s like you two share a brain,” Stewart said. “I can’t imagine anyone else who’d make a better ghostposter, so to speak. Plus you’d have personal access to him.”
For previous installments of the ALWAYS WITH LOVE saga, please click (in this order) here, here,here, here, here, and here. These two sentences don’t count toward the 129-word limit.
■
Reading Mom’s text today in which she related the news that Trump had turned my sister Bethany into “a Washington bigshot” by naming her “senior advisor for combatting radical gender ideology” didn’t enrage me as much as seeing the emoji Mom had attached: an ecstatic smiley-face, three-fourths mouth, a gargantuan buck-toothed overbite, a somewhat smaller buck-toothed underbite, and no other teeth. Usually, as a survivor of childhood orthodontic treatment, I would find such an image amusing. But not now. I almost texted Mom back that her news had deserved “a poop emoji,” and that she should “TRY not to revel in deranged anti-trans cruelty.” Instead, I blocked her number; I’ve blocked scores of people (including longtime friends) since Trump’s victory last year, regardless of the blockees’ dental status.
An excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Photorealistic Raccoons.
■
Sitting on an old white bedspread under a tree, Gerry looked through his stack of comic books, wondering what he should read next. Perhaps Mekka Lords? Nah, he’d grown bored with the current plotline; Dr. Harmer has taken control of Mekka City’s protektors again? Shouldn’t the chief protektors have gotten fired after the second time at least? Or how about the new Silverquake? Maybe, but leafing through the issue, Gerry could see the story took place in the ghetto. He saw enough blacks in real life, thank you. Or The Mighty Victors? Pretty good art by Dick Dobbins, especially during that quantum matter battle in the Zordonian space station, but Gerry had already read that issue twice. He should have taken the time to choose better comics instead of waiting till the last second then grabbing whatever he could find at home. But even the worst comics were better than this sorry place, Presque Isle, that peninsula jutting out into Lake Erie, near the city of Erie.
His parents sat behind him in folding chairs, his mother reading Newsweek (THE NIXON TAPES), his father reading U.S. News & World Report (BUGGING INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE). Gerry had always had an interest in current events, not as much as his parents, but enough to make him feel more sophisticated than his classmates, whose favorite pastime involved placing ketchup packets on the street, watching vehicles drive over the packets, and—
“Excuse me?”
Two people had walked up: a man carrying a folded folding chair, and a girl carrying an oversized tote bag.
“Excuse me?” the man repeated, addressing Gerry’s parents. “Do you mind if my daughter and I plop down next to you, here in the shade? If I spend more than five minutes out in the sun, I turn into beef jerky.”
“I know what you mean,” Gerry’s mother replied. “I burn pretty easily myself.”
“So you don’t mind if we plop down here?”
“I don’t mind. Do you mind, Roy?”
“Nope,” Roy answered.
“Thanks,” the man said. He unfolded his chair: green mesh fabric on a gray aluminum frame. “What a coincidence we have the same chairs, huh?”
“Uh-huh,” Gerry’s mother said.
“Great minds think alike.”
“They certainly do.”
The man sat down in his chair. The girl sat down next to Gerry on the bedspread and placed the bag between them.
“So, I guess we should introduce ourselves,” her father said. “We’re the Seahorse family. And yes, really, that’s our last name, Seahorse. It’s been in our family for generations. Along with”—he pointed at his face—“my cute little button nose.”
Gerry’s parents laughed. In reality, that guy had a nose like a bloated cantaloupe, like the Screaming Ghost’s nose in Hatchetman, not one of Gerry’s favorite comics, one he’d stopped reading months ago after that boring Battle Renewed plot where the characters spent far more time whining about their lives instead of, you know, battling.
“Anyway, you can call me Jake,” he continued. “And this here’s my perfect peach, my daughter Margot. Margot with a silent T at the end—a T for ‘terrific.’ ” He turned to face her. “Say ‘hi,’ Margot.”
“Hi,” she muttered.
“Tell them how old you are, Margot.”
She didn’t respond.
“Margot?”
No response.
“She’s thirteen. You know how moody teenagers can get.”
“No I didn’t. Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said, staring at something in the distance.
The adults laughed.
Jake and Margot looked alike. They each had light red hair, pasty skin, and a lanky physique. And—ahem—that cute little button nose.
“I’m Roy Blanchard, my wife Helen, our son Gerry-with-a-G,” Gerry’s father said.
“G for ‘Gee, our son’s great,’ right?’ Jake asked.
“Right.”
“How old are you, Gerry?”
“Twelve,” he said.
“He’s growing up fast,” Helen said. “He starts junior high in a couple weeks.”
For previous installments of the ALWAYS WITH LOVE saga, please click here, here,here, here, and here. These two sentences don’t count toward the 128-word limit.
I’d heard rumors for years about Pastor Blake Summers, the ex-rock star. I’d heard he hadn’t quite renounced his sinful ways, that he cheated on his wife, that he liked getting handsy with his female parishioners. Even if those rumors were true, I didn’t care, ’cause we need imperfect vessels to spread God’s word. Donald Trump, the most imperfect vessel of all, he gave us three Supreme Court justices that helped overturn Roe, preventing millions of future preborn babies from getting murdered. And Pastor Summers, he wants to stop transgenderism, same as me. So of course I appeared on his podcast, though I did bring my husband Brandon along. Anyone who bothers me, Brandon gets hansdy with them, in his own way.
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 