Hair of the dog

fiction

Photo by Josh Johnson on Unsplash

In the dry Georgia heat, the presidential aides and White House press team were buzzing like flies inside the press tent. The sound of desperate pleading and cajoling could be heard from every phone, every Bluetooth headset, as a state of near panic threatened to erupt at any moment.

“What do you mean, you can’t find it? It has to be somewhere dammit!” an aide named Gary slammed down the landline phone, and yanked the collar of an intern who was rushing past. “Have you gotten hold of the supplier yet?” The young intern’s face was pale, and he stammered out a nervous reply:

“n-n-n-no sir, I’m sorry sir, it seems she’s away on vacation. I’m trying to see if there’s a wholesale place we can go to…”

Gary bellowed into the frightened interns face. “we can’t use any cheap crap, you goddam moron! He’s gonna be on national freakin-TV, for god’s sake! Get hold of a bespoke supplier, and do it now!” He released the young intern with a shove, who yelped as he fled through the crammed press tent. Gary lit a crumpled cigarette, ignoring the no-smoking sign above his head as he took in steady, hateful puffs of nicotine. His heart sunk then when he saw the Senator coming in his direction.

Patrick York, the current Senator for Georgia, looked deeply disturbed as he made his way through the press tent. Gary stamped out his cigarette with the heel of his Italian-leather shoes and stood to greet Senator York with a broad, artificial grin.

“Do we have things under control yet, Gary?” said Senator York, dabbing at his neck with a handkerchief. The AC unit had burned out hours ago, and it was like a swamp in the press tent, with so many pressed bodies against one another. Gary nodded up and down like a bobblehead and replied cheerfully:

“All clear for the press conference, Senator. The re-election campaign has run without a hitch so far, there’s no way we’re gonna fall at the last hurdle!” Gary grinned, looking for some sign of relief in the Senator’s gaze. Senator York grunted in reply, and swatted a fly that was hovering just above his head. He then turned on his heel and called out to Gary as he left the tent.

“Well, I’ll believe it when I see it. I backed that sonofabitch all the way back when he was just a no-good, lying, real-estate grifter getting fat off his daddy’s fortune. He owes me. I am not going to be humiliated, not in my hometown.”

Gary scowled as the head of Senator York disappeared among the crowd. Ungrateful bastard, he thought as the old man’s silhouette diminished. The press will be in here in a matter of hours, and all he can think about is himself. Gary reached into his pocket, only to find the packet of cigarettes to be empty. He then muttered a string of curse words as he saw another aide beckoning to him from one of the other marquees outside the press tent. Her name was Laura, and they had been at each other’s throats since the start of the re-election tour. Gary trudged over to her, the sun above baking the asphalt and making the air around them shimmer.

“How the hell did it happen?” Asked Laura, in her nasal Long-Island accent that set Gary’s teeth on edge. She had arrived via the motorcade and had only gotten scant facts as to the incident. Gary smoothed back his hair and replied:

“It was an accident, pure and simple. He- I mean, the President was getting out of Air-Force One, and had begun the escort over to the press tent, when…” he grimaced, and tried to avoid Laura’s probing gaze. “Well, the engines were still running. And the President’s, er, ‘follicle aid’ was sucked into the turbines. We haven’t been able to retrieve it.”

Laura sucked the air between her teeth in irritation. “What? this happened again?! We’ve lost three of the damn things in as many months; you people have to find a new adhesive or something, those things aren’t cheap..”

Laura then stopped in the middle of her diatribe and stared at Gary with a look of sheer panic. “Wait. Please tell me you have found a spare?”

Gary pretended not to have heard her; he looked out onto the runway, seeing the aircrew dashing around Air Force One’s landing gears. Like little ants, they scurried beneath the immense wings of this flying fortress. Gary was then snapped back into reality, as he felt Laura’s hands shaking his shoulders.

“Dammit, Gary, this is no time to space out on me. Do you guys carry a spare hairpiece on the plane?”

The President was immensely insecure about his receding hair, as he was almost everything else relating to his appearance. And he had tried everything to combat it. Hair plugs, steroid treatment, even acupuncture; nothing had taken. And so, a very expert, very discreet woman in the Upper East Side was tasked with making the Presidential Toupée. Her work was done alone, under strict surveillance, before the end-product was shipped by armed courier to Washington. This had been a closely guarded secret, or at least until today; now half the Presidential staff were out in force, trying to find a suitable replacement for the wig currently jammed between the blades of a Boeing VC-25’s engines.

Laura soon abandoned Gary on the runway, exasperated at his lack of foresight. This was his responsibility, and he blew it. In the rush of the re-election campaign, with all the press tours, and handshaking and baby-kissing, the flags and the ceremonies, he had just…. forgotten. He knew where the ‘spare’ was kept, too; in a locked top-drawer in the Lincoln bedroom, under a hidden panel, wrapped in crepe paper and chamois leather. And now his boss, the President, had to appear on national television sans-toupée. It was almost like a nightmare.

Gary thought back to the new car he’d recently bought. The apartment in the good part of D.C he was renting with his fiancée. All that would soon fall apart, now that he had well and truly screwed up. He could never work in the White House, that was for sure. He’d be a pariah in every department of government; probably wouldn’t even be able to get a temping job in Washington. Gary felt his grip on reality begin to strain, with the baking sun on his back and the sight of panicked white house aides and staffers running around like headless chickens in the press tent. It was then that he received the final insult of the day, the punchline that really stuck it to him good.

One of the aircrew members raced up to Gary triumphantly, holding a ragged, dusty piece of fabric in his gloved hand. He slapped it into Gary’s palm and chuckled. “I’ll tell you what, mister, we ain’t never had to yank anything out the engines as troublesome as that! Not even the flock of geese that hit the Senator’s Lear-jet last month!”

Gary looked into his hand, at the strange, matted thing nestled in his palm like a broken bird’s nest. He shook it, sending dust and gravel everywhere before he finally recognised for it was (or rather had been); it was the hairpiece. Now shredded and mangled beyond repair, looking like roadkill that had dried up in the sun. The aircrewman slapped Gary on the back and walked away, whistling a cheerful tune, as Gary’s inner world collapsed around him.

This was it; perhaps he could run while there was still time? No one would ever know. He could get a boat to Cuba in around eight hours (his fiancée would have to fend for himself) and start a new life as a resort manager. The President’s rage was legendary, and he carried grudges the way other people carried gallstones. Gary might end up on some black site, out in the desert, his memory wiped and all traces of his existence struck from the record.

A million different realities, each more terrible and paranoid than the last, flashed before Gary’s eyes. He clung to the remains of the hairpiece, the brittle strands of genuine alpaca hair twisting in his fingers. Just then, he felt a bump at his side; something nuzzled against his shin, and he heard the sound of a familiar animal whining for attention.

It was Rusty, the White House dog; or ‘The Presidential Pooch’ as the press had dubbed him. He had become the campaign mascot, trotted out at every opportunity to show the President’s ‘gentler’ side as he petted the poor mutt for the cameras. The President detested animals, (almost as much as he did other people) but played along with the charade once the cameras were rolling. He would shove Rusty into the hands of the nearest aide once a publicity stunt was over, only making the hapless dog even more confused as to its master’s affections. As such, the dog was starved for attention, and regularly hung around the press tents, longing for someone to play with it.

Gary patted the dog and looked down into its imploring eyes; ‘Rusty’ was a long-haired labradoodle with a permanently gormless expression, and fur the colour of ginger beer. The White House press and marketing team had been very particular about the type of dog the President should own; it matched its owner’s hair colour almost identically (and was equally prone to nervous fits and displays of unprovoked aggression). For his part, Gary felt sorry for the neglected creature; it was an accessory to the President and his team, a thing that could be wheeled out at convenient moments before being slammed back into the foreground. Gary looked down at the cloying creature:

“What do you say we get outta here, pooch? Just you and me on the lamb, Thelma-and-Louise style?” The dog stared at Gary, its tongue lolling, and its big eyes utterly vacant. He gave Rusty an affectionate scratch under the ears; he could hear the cars rolling onto the runway now, as the press arrived for the televised speech. It would be a fiasco, a calamity of such proportions that they would be laughing at this administration for years.

Gary felt the panic rising once again, and he looked desperately for a break in the perimeter; the secret service agents beyond the fence looked bored, standing next to their black SUV’s and adjusting their radio earpieces. Maybe he could steal a luggage vehicle and storm his way out of here. Though it was more likely that he would mope back to the press tent, tail between his legs, and await the wrath of his boss; the leader of the free world.

In the back of his mind, the flicker of an idea stirred. It was something so wild, so unbelievably outlandish that it just might work. Gary looked at the remains of the toupee in his hand; then he looked down at Rusty. No, nobody would ever buy it. But maybe?

Dog hair isn’t that dissimilar to alpaca, thought Gary. And he could probably find scissors and glue on Airforce One, or inside the press tent. All he would need is a few minutes alone with ‘The Presidential Pooch’. Rusty rubbed up against Gary’s ankle, his tongue lolling as if anticipating a game of fetch. It could have been the heat that fried Gary’s mind, or perhaps there was a madness in him that had always been present; all the same, he reached down and grabbed Rusty’s collar, and began to pull the hapless dog toward the press tent.

It had been an effort getting the dog to sit still, but at last, Gary had triumphed. He soon handed the ‘rescued’ hairpiece to Laura, who rolled her eyes at him. “Took you long enough,” she snapped and made her way to the VIP area of the tent. She disappeared behind a curtain flap, and Gary sighed with relief. All he needed now, was to keep that damn mutt on Air Force One, and out of sight.

The press assembled in the tent, sat on metal folding chairs, or stood at the small stage’s sides. Secret service agents cleared a path through the crowd; There was a hush as ‘the VIP’ entered. He looked flustered, and like everyone else was wilting in the summer heat. His aides helped him up the ramp to the podium, and he gave a grimaced smile to the assembled audience. Holding the stand as if it was the only thing keeping him upright, the President began his re-election speech.

Gary sat at the back of the tent, smug in the knowledge that everything seemed to be going smoothly. The speech was, well… it was the usual, a load of dog-whistle jingoism and fire-brand rhetoric, with a dash of empty promises and a pinch of nostalgia for good measure. Same as all the President’s speeches, really. But you could hardly tell that his hairpiece had only recently been wrenched from a plane’s engine. In fact, it didn’t look bad at all. Maybe I’ve found my new calling, thought Gary. ‘Emergency wigs, handmade to order’.

The speech was coming to a close, and Gary saw the President make ‘the sign’ with his right arm to signal that he wished to leave this hick town and be back in time for a few links at the golf club. The secret service began to advance towards the stage, when out of their midst a familiar red shape dashed between their legs. There was the sound of panting, and an animal whining for attention from its master. Gary went pale, as he saw Rusty the White House dog darting towards the podium. How the hell had it managed to get out of the locked bathroom stall on Air Force One Gary had stuck it in?

The press began to chatter, and a few flashbulbs went off from the photographers. Sensing an opportunity, the President reached down and scooped the dog up in his arms. It slobbered all over his face, leaving smears across its master’s spray-on tan. Still, he gave a pained grin and cooed over the frantic animal as the press clamoured to see them together.

Suddenly, there was a tittle of laughter. Small and shy, but slowly growing. People in the audience began to point at the stage; there were a few gasps from the aides who stood beside the podium, which were shortly drowned out by full belly-laughs from the press members. Someone had noticed a great bald patch right across ‘Rusty’s’ back; as if someone had clumsily shaved the animal while in a hurry. And the missing patch of red, shaggy fur, just happened to be the exact length and thickness as that of the ‘hair’ on the President’s head.

The President smiled earnestly, unclear as to what the audience was laughing at. Then he looked down at the writhing dog held in his arms. He saw the bald patch on its back; he soon put two-and-two together. And Rusty, almost ecstatic with emotion from being held by his master, reached up and snapped the President’s toupee off his head, pulling and shaking it like a rag before the assembled press.

As Gary watched the press falling over in fits of laughter, and the cameras flashing like strobes, he tried his best to appear very small, and very far away. Perhaps, if there was still time, he could make it to the ferry crossing to Cuba before they found him.