With apologies to Ernest Hemingway.
He was an old man who had started a war in a faraway Gulf, and he had gone one hundred and forty-three days now without reopening the Strait.
After forty days, a tentative ceasefire had been reached. Then another one. Then another one after that. Then another one that the old man had bragged about but that the enemy claimed no knowledge of. Then a memorandum that should have been a permanent ceasefire but lasted just eight days.
It was not the first time the old man had encountered such a setback. His entire life had been beset by similar misfortune.
That is the wrong word, he thought.
It was something worse than bad luck.
The Strait was rigged.
The old man recalled the many ways his life had been rigged against him. Rather than being born a Kennedy, or a Rockefeller, he had been born to a family of modest centimillionaires. Having a Kennedy in his employ could not make up for those humiliatingly humble roots. Besides, the Kennedy working for him was the lowliest Kennedy. The one who bathed in filthy rivers and spoke like a dying truck motor.
The old man did not want to think about that Kennedy. Especially because of the lettuce that summer. The lettuce had also somehow been rigged.
Instead, the old man thought about how he had grown his father’s modest $400 million fortune despite all of the losers who had been out to get him. The bank that had foreclosed on his casino simply for failing to turn a profit. The regulators who had shut down his university simply for failing to provide students with a degree. The women who had accused him of rape simply for failing to get their consent. And, of course, the Congress who had refused to declare him the winner of the election against the other old man simply for failing to receive more votes.
The old man thought about how everyone was constantly rigging things against him. The Strait must be another one of those things. There could be no other logical explanation.
“I did everything right,” the old man said to himself. He considered himself a very stable genius.
After all, he had tasked his top military advisor with waging the war. The advisor was the sharpest military mind the president had ever seen on television. Or, at least, the sharpest mind willing to swear fealty to the old man. The advisor had tried many good ideas. He had injected the soldiers with hormones so that they would fight the way men used to fight before men had become soft. Yet the advisor could not open the Strait.
The old man’s top negotiator had tried to reason with the enemy. His negotiator was a Yale man who, despite his Brown wife, showed some promise. But the Yale man had also failed to open the Strait.
“The enemy refuses our terms,” the Yale man had said. “They say their position is now stronger than when your predecessor negotiated with them.”
The old man had rebuked the Yale man for mentioning his predecessor.
After those attempts had failed, the old man had taken matters into his own hands. He had spoken sternly, the way men must speak in times of war.
“Open the Strait, you crazy bastards! Or you’ll be living in Hell. Praise be to Allah!” the old man had told the enemy. He had thought that invoking the enemy’s God and threatening to end their civilization would subdue them.
And yet, the enemy had not surrendered.
Thinking about these failures made the old man tired. So the old man decided to rest. He was, after all, an old man. As he closed his eyes, someone whispered, “Sir? Sir?”
The old man opened his eyes. The Yale man was gently shaking his shoulder. The old man looked around the Cabinet Room at his advisors. They were gathered there for an intelligence briefing.
“Do not bother me,” said the old man. He reclined in his chair and closed his eyes.
As the old man slept, he dreamed of another body of water. The water was a smooth mirror of American-flag blue.
It was nice to dream. In his dreams there were no failures. No war. No inflation. No disapproval ratings. No algae.
Besides, the actual Reflecting Pool was rigged.
