CSI: American Carnage (Tuesday, December 25, 2018)
Donald has collapsed into the lounger. It is deep into night and the West Wing has a ghostly silence. The teevee is blank. It says, No video input. Hector is unplugged and tilted at a perilous angle in the shadows near the fridge in the Executive Lounge. Donald is asleep and he is talking, talking in his sleep, a strange mix of words strung together and salted with intelligibility. He says, I am alone in the White House. What do you want? Are you still a believer? Marginal, right? Donald is restless in his sleep. Moron! he says, and tosses about. There is a clanking in the hallway, a clanking similar to the clanking of chains. But there are no chains. Donald twists and turns on the lounger as the door of the Executive Lounge opens and a woman with a great bundle on her back appears. The Executive Lounge melts away and Donald is observing the interior of a shop. The woman, accompanied by others, drops the bundle on the counter. She says, Ay! He wasn’t natural in his lifetime, why does he need them when he’s dead? If he had been natural, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself. The other woman, with her own bundle says, It’s the truest word that ever was spoke. It’s a judgment on him. The first replies, I wish it was a little heavier judgment, and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Old Joe, the shopkeeper says, Who’s next? Mrs. Dilber, the second woman, steps up to the counter. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. The shopkeeper throws out a paltry sum and says, If you ask me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of being so liberal and knock off half-a-crown. The first woman says, And now undo my bundle, Joe. Joe goes down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, drags out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. What do you call this? says Joe. Bed-curtains! Ah! returns the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. Bed-curtains! Says Joe, You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, rings and all, with him lying there? She replies, Yes I do. Why not? Joe says, You were born to make your fortune, and you’ll certainly do it. His blankets? The woman replies, Whose else’s do you think? He isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I dare say. Donald tosses in the lounger. No, he says, No! No! Those blankets are seamed with golden threads and the spoons are the finest silver, the best! How could a life of the avid accumulation be reduced so quickly to a K Street pawn shop? No! No! But there is no one to hear in the West Wing. The funereal darkness lingers and the ghostly night drones on.