Obama Care

by Jason Scimitar

47

  Dressed in the patrolman’s uniform that he had stolen when he killed the NYPD officer just two days before, Ranger James Stone peeked through the high boards of the theater. Down below he made out the figure of the mayor. He was talking to the cameras. James figured he was using the occasion to sell the city’s many glorious achievements to others nationwide. The mayor’s name was Walter Graham. Mayor Walter Graham had been in the city’s limelight all of his life. He was a blue-blood Graham and an American monarchist whose royal line went back before the revolution. Generation by generation, the wealth of his egregiously wealthy and powerful family was passed down, exactly the way it was for the British Queen and other monarchists in England and Europe.

  Two hours before show time, the mayor’s tuxedo was in perfect shape. It had been picked up, dry cleaned and returned to his apartment which directly faced Gracie Mansion Park. He was a mere walking distance from the Lambrecht Theater, and the ticket had been burning a hole in his dresser for three months. In an hour, he would be there watching the dancing girls amid the opening fanfare.

  The mayor and his wife walked down 42nd street with their entourage of heavily armed NYC police who always accompanied his highness to events like theater openings where the mayor was supposed to attend and make statements about how proud the city was to be the center of the nation’s theater and musical production industry.

  As the lights flashed in his face, the mayor went on and on about the manner in which New York City hosted the finest opening productions in the world and how the successful ones were later opened in cities around the world including London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, and Rio.

  “We are proud to be the center of the world’s musical and theatrical life blood,” Mayor Graham said to the flashing cameras. “New York City is the finest host in the world to these productions. It’s stages are the creme de la creme of drama, music, dance, and comedy. I hope that “Girls!” will receive high reviews and will go on for years right here in New York as well as in our affiliate cities where parallel productions of this fine musical have already been planned. Millions around the world see New York plays without even having to come here, because we come to them all of the time.”

  “Thank you. That has been the mayor of New York City, graciously taking time to be with us at the opening ceremonies for “Girls!” which is one of the most anticipated musicals in New York theatrical history,” said Larry Solomon, one of the top television performers in the New York City area.

  Meanwhile, backstage, the stars and dancers were trying their best to chill. Even so, their theatrical excitement could be heard in all parts of the backstage. After all, they had been practicing the musical for more than three months, and the anticipation of their opening night performance was energizing their brains to the max in these very last moments before curtain time.

  Sitting in the dressing room and applying makeup, one of the singing dancers named Lacey looked at her best friend, Gloria, who just happened to be billed as the top performer and top star of “Girls!” and said, “Gloria, honey, this musical is going to knock their socks off. I can’t wait to read the rave reviews! They are going to love you. You are so amazing on stage!”

  Gloria slowly blinked her overworked eyelids to make their dark markers seem even more coquettish than usual and replied to Lacey, “Listen, honey, let’s just hope the critics like it even a teenie bit. That’ll satisfy me. You know how those media bitches love to cut up the singers in these shows. They think it covers their big fat rolls so no one will notice.”

  “Like it? Oh, they will, Gloria,” Lacey replied. “That’s for certain, baby. I feel it in my heart, and when my heart feels it, I know for sure it is going to happen.”

  Gloria wasn’t too certain about Lacey’s critical prognostications. Besides, listening to prophecy was not Gloria’s strong point. She was more of a show and tell, girl. Gloria wanted to see it in the raw before she’d believe it was for real. She’d lived a life of many disappointments. She’d had even been stood up at the church on her wedding day. She’d lost her mother to cancer. She’d been passed over again and again for the best financed musicals.

  But this was different. Gloria had arrived. “Girls!” was only her third schtick on Broadway, and she had top billing. It was amazing to her that she had finally arisen to this pinnacle of success. This time, she’d show them all. Now, she was the lead girl in the dancing chorus. She sang, pirouetted, and flashed her legs much like a typical chorus girl, keeping her movements in tune with the orchestra pit as she flashed her seductive youthful smiles at the audience in an attempt to rivet them to the whimsically delightful character she played. She was the chick magnet. Out there in the audience were the attentive clowns, the fatties in their suits and negligee, clapping and asking for more from the stage, always demanding, wanting, coaxing her onward and upward to new heights.

  Gloria repeated her favorite cliche, saying, “Every day in every way, I am better and better.” She repeated the line over and over in the hope that its constant recitation would bring magic, love, and success to every aspect of her life. “Every day in every way, I am better and better.” It filled her with happiness, confidence, and the subjective flutter that would propel her to dancing and theatrical greatness. “Every day in every way, I am better and better.”

  Meanwhile, behind the theater walls, James continued to check his wiring to insure that no one had discovered the little deadly surprises he had placed so professionally in wait for them. James knew that this would be the very surprise that would have made his dead son, Brandon, aware of his father’s love. He saw this act of defiance in New York City as the culmination of his revenge, at least for this moment. Others might come later. However, Lambrecht Theater was a noteworthy metaphor for his son’s unfair death. As soon as the theater itself collapsed around its hundreds of patrons, James would feel pride at having again revenged his son’s death over the abstract indifference of Obama Care to Brandon’s painful death as caused by the army’s immoral use of depleted uranium. James Stone felt the NYPD uniform that covered his flesh. In doing so, he felt the immense pride that all the other New York policemen tended to feel every day they patrolled their turf and flashed their metal badges at the city’s generally calm and obeisant citizens.

  To James, revenge itself had become his turf. The uniform was a trophy of the passing of an innocent cop on the street who was merely another bonafide speck of the immense collateral damage caused by Obama Care and how it had destroyed Brandon’s life as well as his own. One thing was for sure, the world would pay for what they had done to his son, Brandon, and what ex-ranger James Stone was about to let loose in New York any moment now was just a shred of the damage the entire nation was going to suffer to right the horrible wrong that it had done.

  He heard the orchestra building toward the final curtain pull when the dancers and actors would strut across the stage for their final and most famous performance in history. He swelled with almost devilish pride knowing that his hidden surprise would soon be sprung. He was a few minutes from the implosion from the point that marked the theatrically booming beginning of the musical. Once the curtains opened, he would set the first part of the fuse which would start the entire implosion into action. The timer in his hand was set to twenty-five minutes after he pushed the button to begin his deadly orchestration of destruction that would bring down the entire house stone by stone and brick by brick. His scene would completely rewrite and trump what the playwrights and composers of Broadway had intended.

  What James was about to cause would be what historians would remember for all of time. This gave Ranger Stone greater comfort than all of the protesting in the world. The irony was that he worked in stealth. No one knew that Brandon’s death was the reason for what was going to happen.

  It had to be that way. After all, if they knew, James’s work would be over. The system would come crashing down upon him like a Godzilla stomping through the Bronx.

  The curt
ain opened below him, and James saw the dancers frolicking across stage center to the delight of the doomed audience. James chuckled. What these stupid people who were insensitive to his son’s suffering didn’t know would not hurt them until it was far too late to do anything about it or even to save themselves. The world would be crashing down upon them and nothing could be done to stop it. James moved to the trigger point and reached for the device.

  “May I help you?”

  The voice came out of the dark like a sound in the night.

  James turned around. The voice belonged to an elderly gentleman dressed in police uniform. The medals on his chest and the colored ribbon identified him as a very important person on the force. He was the police commissioner of New York City.

  “Everything is just fine, here, commissioner,” James said. I have swept the entire backstage area on three levels. I can honestly report to you that absolutely nothing is out of order here.” He saluted, and the commissioner returned the salute.

  “The mayor is here,” the commissioner said. “I’d hate it if anything disturbed his evening.”

  “That’s two of us, sir. Everything seems in order. There is nothing to worry about, commissioner.”

  “Fine.”

  The commissioner smiled, then turned and walked around the corner to disappear forever into the shadows of New York history books.

  James swallowed. He immediately plugged in the trigger device, tucked it neatly where the sun didn’t shine, and left. He then tiptoed down the stairwell, until he came to the side door which led to the alley. He opened the latch and stepped outside onto the fire escape. It was a long way down, and eighteen feet above the street, the fire escape mechanism teetered and reached out like a huge metallic arm extending itself outward from its elbow as it carried James downward into the final depths leading him into the darkened alley below. James noted how it emitted a screeching sound like fingernails descending down a blackboard, a sound of surreal pain that would have been just loud enough to awaken most of the dead from their slumber. As he stepped off of the mechanism, he heard footsteps behind him and a voice demanding that he stop. James turned and saw a young officer with his gun drawn. James raised his hands.

  “At ease, officer,” James said. “I’m making final checks of the security areas. The fire escape was one of the final things on my check list.”

  The young man eyed James’s police uniform and checked his badge number. Everything was in order.

  “Just checking it out,” the young man said.

  James smiled.

  “There is a place over there that needs to be looked at. You may accompany me in the inspection, if you’d like.”

  The man needed to be silenced. He had seen James’s face. If he survived the implosion, he’d be able to identify him. Then, his revenge killings would be over, and there’d be hell to pay. James went through the narrow hallway, and the young and very naive policeman followed him.

  “There is a problem,” James said.

  “What’s that.”

  “Hold on a second. Something’s on your shirt.”

  Jamesl reached up to assist the youthful cop, then grabbed the man’s head instead and wrenched it to the left rapidly causing his neck bones to crack. His spinal cord broke instantly, and the young cop fell to the floor. His arms and legs spasmed for a few moments and were soon stilled forever. His life was over.

  Collateral damage was a bitch.

  James would get over it. This young cop was just a part of the mix. There was nothing else he could have done. Down to the crunch, it was either the cop or James. Such was the tragedy of a man’s life in the surging Obama revenge business.

  “Sorry, son. It wasn’t anything personal, you understand,” James said to the young cop’s lifeless body.

  He bent down and kissed the young man’s forehead. “You were very brave, son, and I want you to know just how much I really appreciate your service to the city.”

  Jamesl walked away slowly, hoping to leave without encountering another cop. He didn’t like killing them this way. Just like them, he had worn uniforms most of his life. In James’s mind, there was a deep connection between almost all uniformed guys including cops, soldiers, football players, and cowboys.

  In a few minutes, James passed the alley’s darkly confined walls. Now he walked the city’s back streets where things seemed safer and more comfortable. Since he was still dressed in the uniform of a dead policeman whom he had murdered, so he tried his best to act the role.

  He strutted proudly, glancing this way and that, as though he were looking for criminal activities along the way.

  Playing the role of a cop, James knew he could never be too careful.

  After all, crime was everywhere.