Play to Your
Strengths
by Bill Tope
She snapped the
book closed with an
edge of pique. Aaron grinned at her
and nodded enthusiastically. "Hot,
huh, Sarah?" She narrowed her eyes
at him, glared with seething indignance
and distrust. Their new arrangement,
she felt, was not working out
This, she said pointedly, is supposed
to be my autobiography! "Yeah,
yeah,"
he said, nodding some more. But,
she
pointed out, I didn't write it.
"No, of course not," he agreed.
"I wrote
it!" When Sarah said nothing
he added,
"I'm your agent; that's what I do."
She opened the book, pointed to a
passage. Here, she said, you wrote
that
I had an abortion at 17. "So?"
he asked.
Aaron, I live in Texas! They're going to
lynch me for that. This ain't Janis
Joplin's
Texas! And here, she went on,
pointing
out another entry, you say that I had one
Jewish grandmother and one Black
grandmother.
He stared at her blankly. They won't
let me vote anymore, she complained. He
only shrugged. You're going to get
me
shot, Aaron! "No," he
disagreed. "Only
if you go driving around in a car
somewhere...
well, anywhere in Texas," he
conceded.
She frowned.
Wait," he said, "you haven't
got to the good
part yet." There is a good part? she
asked
bleakly. "Sure, sure," he said,
riffling through
the book to the final pages.
"See? It says, when you turned
thirty..." She
cut him off with an icy stare.
Aaron, I'm only
29 years old now! He twisted his
lips wryly,
said, "Okay. When you turn thirty,
you will
relocate to Florida and become a leader
in
Black Lives Matter and join the faculty
at the
University of Miami to teach Critical
Race
Theory."
She shook her head wearily. I don't
think you
understand the new demographic, she
ventured. Who was your last client,
Jayne
Fonda? Aaron was growing frustrated;
time
for a new tack. "Okay, okay, how's
this? You
take up residence at Mar a Lago and the
GOP drafts you to be Trump's running mate
in 2024?"
Aaron, Buddy, she said. Now you're
talkin'.
Can you book me on Fox News? "You'll
be sitting
in Tucker Carlson's lap, maybe you'll
have a
lesbian affair with Laura Ingraham."
Don't get too
carried away, Sarah cautioned.
"Like I always
say, Baby," said Aaron, "you
got to play to your
strengths." |
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