For Bluthorpe another day
has begun badly. The morning news
includes the story of another American shooting kids,
then himself, this time an Amish school and seven girls,
five of whom have died. He let the boys go free.
Someone, perhaps a police psychologist, a journalist,
or even a stranger passing by, explains it all:
some twenty years ago he molested girls;
it’s a way of blotting out his sin. There’s a note
to this effect, written to his wife, who says
this is not the man I was married to, he was kind.
Bluthorpe, who has been known to complain
about the tendency he sees in American culture
to justify self-expression as if it were a basic
human right, wonders how long it will be before
there’s a film made of this insanity and which child
actors will be asked to simulate the innocence
of Amish girls who’d never seen a gun before this
ejaculated death at them. Perhaps it’s just as well because
as news it sure aint getting a whole lot of notice; already
it’s being consigned to yesterday’s bin, along with revelations
from a respected journalist that the American government
was warned about September 11 before it happened. Viewers
in the meantime are being asked to vote
on-line: do they or do they not think
the war on terror has increased our status
as a target and have they finally had enough of celebrities?
Bluthorpe, whose idea of a celebrity is Bette Davis,
all cigarette and diction, not the local weather man,
thought ricotta cake and coffee might elevate his mood,
even though his doctor is concerned about his intolerance
to sugar. So now he’s sitting in the one café he can rely on,
having had his cake, and is halfway through his coffee, when
the broad and breakfasting businessman he’d seen chatting up
a pretty blonde assistant gets up to pay. He should have seen
it coming, that out of control shoulder bag, no doubt
full of apprehended violence orders, clipping his cup
until it runneth over, with froth and fluid on the article he’s been reading
by an Australian politician who says
he’d like to bring Christ back into politics.
Listening to the businessman ordering him another cup,
Bluthorpe decides if Christ is anything like he imagines him
to be, he’ll have more sense than to accept the offer.