CELL PHONE NOISE

“Hello, Scott.”

“When you need to do it to it, call Pruitt. Hey, Mags. How’s that tush?”

“Inappropriate. I was expecting your call.”

“Should’ve gotten it about ten weeks ago. I can’t believe I held out this long.”

“No one can.”

“They’re gonna be untangling the shit I pulled for years. You know how many racehorses I bought?”

“No.”

“Six. I bought six racehorses with the people’s tax money, and no one stopped me. Now there’s horses and they’ve gotta be fed. I think that’s the government’s job, and I’ve already brought a lawsuit to prove my case.”

“So you’ve chosen to remain terrible upon leaving office?”

“Oh, yeah. I got a whole plan for the post-service life. Did I mention how much of an honor it was serving President Donald J. Trump?”

“You didn’t.”

“Ooh, doggie. A real treat. That’s what my time as his employee was. A real treat. Lemme say this about the Big Guy: I don’t know if he could beat Jesus in a fist-fight, but I think he could hold his own. I think President Trump would make a real good showing for himself in a Jesus-fight.“

“You guys love the praise.”

“Praise him! Anyway, I’m gonna go on Fox News and say some crazy shit for a while. Have me a book ghost written, so I stay in the news. Then I’m gonna go back to Oklahoma and run for something.”

“Are you kidding me? You’ve left Washington in the biggest cloud of disgrace since…since…”

“Literal child molestors?”

“There you go.”

“You’re right, Mags. Other hand, there’s some real dumb fucks in Oklahoma. Hey! Quiet down there! Shut up-a-shito!”

“Who are you talking to, Former Secretary Pruitt?”

“During my stint holding the EPA credit card, I also bought some Korean boy bands.”

“Some?”

“Six. It’s my lucky number.”

“You bought six Korean boy bands?”

“We all buy shit on Amazon when we’re drunk, Mags. But now I got anywhere from 30-50 Koreans in my basement. Their choreography is so tight.”

“Send them back to where they came from.”

“I don’t know what to feed ’em, but I think they’re used to deprivation. That whole K-pop scene is rife with abuse, Mags. You should reassign a couple reporters from the Dershowitz beat to that story.”

“That wasn’t my decision.”

“You know what I’m gonna miss the most?”

“What?”

“The stealing.”

“Sure.”

“And the motorcades. Man, I loved a good ol’ motorcade. I had a couple of the Korean kids strap sirens to their heads and ride their bikes in front of my car, but it wasn’t the same. No one would get out of our way.”

“Let’s go over your job summary, shall we?”

“I did good for the people, but I did better for myself.”

“You attempted to shake down contributors for a job for your wife.”

“She’s a special lady. She needs a special job. Specifically, a job that pays, like, half-a-million and that she doesn’t have to do too much. Plus, you tell me where it says in the Constitution that the EPA Secratary’s wife can’t own a Chick-Fil-A. You show me the line where it says that.”

“You made your staffers do menial, personal tasks like fetching your dry cleaning.”

“That’s in the short run. In the short run, getting my dry cleaning was menial and personal. But in the long run, it was a fundamental building block in the style of karate I teach. The dry cleaning was like waxing the car. You remember that? Wax on, wax off? It was just like that. I considered myself the sensei of the office.”

“You also made staffers erase or change appointments in your calendar, which is against federal law.”

“Allow me to rebut.”

“Go ahead.”

“Shmederal law.”

“You may have been the worst government employee of all time, and I’m including the Son of Sam.”

“Maggie, I accomplished feats in less than two years that take men decades. You know how people were worried I was going to make fracking legal in National Parks? Well, shit, I made it mandatory. And I took those labels off the spackle. You know the ones: Do not eat. I took those right the fuck off.”

“Why?”

“Because eating spackle is what freedom’s about.”

“It’s not.”

“And because the spackle folks save a couple hundred grand by leaving the warning off the package, so they made me a little ol’ donation.”

“That’s the definition of corruption.”

“You can’t spell ‘corruption’ without EPA.”

“You can, actually.”

“Huh. Yeah, I am incompetent across the board. Says terrible things about society that I was allowed to rise this far. Say, you don’t think I could feed the horses to the Koreans, could I?”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Follow-up question.”

“Don’t feed the Koreans to the horses, either.”

“Well, someone’s gotta pay to keep all these animals alive, and it ain’t gonna be me.”

“Very on-brand ending, sir.”

“Ending?”

DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT