The salesman watches you intently. “I can see you are not finished with us yet,” he says. “A true connoisseur! Your knowledge is magisterial! Do you wish to meet the Maestro?”
“Yes,” you say, wilting a little inside.
The Maestro is a man in a fancy hat who is perched on a rolled-up carpet. When you come in, he gazes at you solemnly. “You are a man who knows what he wants,” he says.
“That’s me,” you say.
“That is what she tells me.” He gestures to the carpet next to him. “She sensed your presence,” he says. “She will go home with you, she tells me.”
“She,” you say. You swallow. “That is, the carpet?”
The other salesman has appeared at your elbow with a glass of pricey champagne. “We will drink this to toast her new home,” he says.
“Er,” you say, feebly, “actually, I think I’m about carpeted out. Got what I came for, as it were.”
“Mais non!” the salesman says. He is speaking French now, which makes everything sound twice as expensive as before. “Jamais!”
He unlocks a further door and leads you into an even more opulent room. It is full of carpets so beautiful you want to weep. They smell like home. The one in the middle is the finest yet. Looking on it, you know joy for the first time. A tag informs you that it was made lovingly by hand with entirely pure motives by the only good human being who remains in the world. It shows. “Climb on,” the salesman says. “Together, you will fly.”
You climb onto the carpet, feeling rather foolish.
“Look!” the salesmen cry, in raptures. “You are flying!”
You don’t think you are flying, but the salesmen seem so impressed that you do not have the heart to disabuse them of this notion either. You mime flying around for a little bit and in the course of it you knock over an expensive lamp, lighting three carpets immediately on fire.
“I will add them to your bill,” the first salesman says.
“Yes,” you say. “I guess you’d better.” You are blind with panic. All you want now is to get out of this store before you cost yourself any more money. In your haste to get up you knock over two more lamps. The whole room is on fire.
“That will be $934,350,” the salesperson says.
“Ah,” you say. “I will wire the money to you slowly over a period of years, how does that sound?”
“Fine,” the salesman says. “Do you want over half a million dollars’ worth of bespoke suits?”
You shrug. “I might as well, at this point,” you say.
And that is probably how Paul Manafort wound up with those expenses that we now see listed. This is a perfectly logical explanation that involves no money laundering at all.
October 31, 2017
Melania Trump Wants to Spend Christmas on a Deserted Island (With Her Family)
Q: My name is Andy . . . I am 10 . . . If you could spend the holidays anywhere in the world, where would you go?
FLOTUS: I would spend my holidays on a deserted island, a tropical island, with my family.
—WHITE HOUSE POOL REPORT, 12/7/2017
IT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE CHRISTMAS on the island.
It is full of nothing—only sand and miles and miles of wind-swept ocean.
(And of course, your family is there, too.)
There is no bullying on the island.
You can walk down the beach and feel the sand in your toes and admire each tiny shellacked toenail, perfect as a shell, and listen to the waves.
There is solitude on the island, and rest.
(And, of course, your family is there, too.)
The island is green.
It does not look like the White House does, like someone heard the phrase “white Christmas” and thought that it meant all color had been purged from the world and all joy had been forgotten.
It is just green and blue, and it is warm, so warm. You can feel the sun on your face.
(Your family is there, too.)
There are no ballerinas on the island performing only for you, as if you had sleepwalked into a child’s nightmare of The Nut-cracker. No one is performing for anyone. There is no one there at all, so everyone is kind.
(Well, of course, your family is there, too.)
At first you will eat the food you have brought with you, but later you will strike out for the middle of the island to see what bounty it offers. You will find a spring and drink from it, laughing at its coolness.
You will climb a tree and harvest its fruit, and you will sing with the joy of labor. One morning, as you awaken by yourself with the sunrise, you will see a lizard lazing by your foot and for a moment the thought of how it might taste, the crunch it might make as you bite into its tiny bones, will cross your mind. But you will settle back in the sand to sleep.
Your tan will be flawless.
(And, of course, your family is there, too.)
There is color here in the sky—red and blue in the birds’ wings, but it does not mean anything in particular.
You use your red hat for fetching water. The writing fades.
Everywhere there is a great stillness.
You catch up on your magazines, but only the most cheerful ones, unhooked from time and the news. There is no cell reception here.
You read: Meghan Markle is getting married. To a prince, even! That’s nice. You feel nothing but happiness for this Meghan Markle, marrying her prince, somewhere in a cold city far away where the flashbulbs paint cages with their tiny lights.
You are alone, at peace, with no eyes to see you but your own, and they will not disturb you again.
And, of course, your family is there, too.
December 8, 2017
The Day Donald Trump First Became a Stable Genius
Actually, throughout
