The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Never fall asleep reading Mickey Spillane.
I’d been waiting in the bar near the Capitol for an hour when the dame finally showed. A cross between Gwen Stefani and Velma from “Scooby-Doo,” the eyes of every boozehound in the bar were on her like flies on fair-trade syrup. “Right on time,” I said. I pulled out a barstool for her. “Kyrsten, right?”
“Senator Sinema to you. You’re the gumshoe that wanted to talk to me?”
Every two-bit dick in D.C. wanted to question her, this mystery cloaked in a mind-boggler wrapped in a riddle shrouded in an enigma.
“Word on the street was you shivved ‘Sleepy Joe’ in the back and threw Philly ‘The Buster’ into the Potomac. Same day a mug named ‘Voting Rights’ Bill, a kid with a lot of promise, was found face down in the gutter. Up on The Hill. With your knife in his back. DOA.”
People are also reading…
Her lips were sealed tighter than Tupperware. “You said John Lewis was your hero?”
She waved the bartender over. “Pour me a slug. Wheatgrass. No ice. Dirty.”
Sen. Ziggy Stardust was known for zigzagging around the truth.
“Why did you do it, sister?”
“Are you all deaf? For the millionth time, to save us from worsening the disease of political division.” She tossed back her drink, slammed the shot glass on the bar and ordered a second round.
“Disease, huh? You’re saving us from the sniffles by siding with the bubonic plague. You’re nothing but a patsy for the most diseased divisive conmen and grifters in the history of the republic. Something’s hinky, sister. What’s your racket? Don’t you want to be reelected in 2024?”
She laughed. Like I was nuttier than a Payday. “Reelected? To the Senate? I got my sights on bigger things.”
“If you’re singing, I’m listening. What could be bigger than the Senate?”
She lowered her headlamps and glared over her cranberry cat-eye glasses straight into my peepers. “I’m way beyond that daycare for dimwits. Didn’t do your research about me, did you?”
I’d touched a nerve. She was putting me wise. Spilling her guts. I could smell the smarts on her. This dame was a cross between Bjork and a brainiac. A real intellectual.
“Look. I have more college degrees than Pelosi has blue-chip shares of stock. McCarthy? Schumer? Biden? Suckers. I’ve played them all like a carny playing hicks at a midway game of ringtoss.” She ordered a third Wheatgrass. ”And you know why? Because I can. That’s why. Look it up. I’m a genius. Verified.”
“I’d heard you had an ego the size of the Hindenburg. That’s the blimp that blew and burned in ’37.”
“I know what the Hindenburg was, you moron. It was named after President Von Hindenburg, a political weakling. You know I could have united Germany. I could’ve saved that polarized country from Hitler and prevented World War II.”
That had to be the wheatgrass talking.
She yammered on like a Republican “Blade Runner” replicant. I had to know why. “Word is you’re in the pocket of “The Turtle.” That your McConnell’s moll.”
Senator “Gaga” rolled her eyes.
“Word is you’re in the fanny pack of Big Pharma—and the hedge fund gangs, too. You’re rolling in dirty dough. What happened to the dame with a dream who once called it bribery?”
“She woke up. She was a sap. A sucker. A rube.”
“If you want to fly the Senate, what’s the nest egg for?”
“I want to be president of the United States.”
The bartender’s head exploded. I spilled my martini. The bar hushed.
“Only I can unite the country. By 2024, you’ll all be begging me for my audacious brand of brilliantly crafted bipartisanship. And I will win. And united, we will solve our problems. Together.“
As Goldilocks in Gucci was coming clean, the mesmerized drunks next to us started guffawing and singing “Kumbaya, my Lord.”
They froze when she turned and purred, “I preferred ’Bridge Over Troubled Waters’. Know it, boys? That’s my 2024 campaign song.“
The wheatgrass must’ve been fermented. “Give Republicans a choice between Trump or me and they’ll pick me. Offer Democrats the usual losers and they’ll pick me. Independents love me. I’ll win so much you’ll be sick of winning. I wouldn’t expect a cisgendered sexist primitive like you to get it.”
My head was spinning like a pinwheel in a hurricane.
She fished a tip out of her bag. “The country’s coming apart. Only I can fix it.”
Only I can fix it. Sick of winning. Genius.
Before I could speak she curtsied and walked out into the night. And at that moment I knew I’d met the Amelia Earhart of politics. A dame on a solo flight to glory who was totally lost.
