by Don Cook
Another whoosh-and-white-flash transition preceded Khraa/Astra’s on-the-street interview with an incensed silver-haired elderly woman.
Khraa/Astra leaned in close to her and asked, “I’m Astra Downey of The Bull-Free Truth with Astra Downey. I’m interviewing people and asking, what’s your take on Mallory Stanton’s desire to put a hiring freeze on males in the civil service at federal, state and local levels?”
“Stanton’s a neo-Nazi!” shouted the elderly woman with a thick Yiddish accent. “I’m a Holocaust survivor, and the same kind of thing happened back in Berlin when I was a toddler! Stanton’s worse than Hitler! I’ve voted for her party in the past, but no more! NEVER AGAIN!!”
“And where do you get your news from, madam?” Khraa/Astra asked kindly.
The elderly woman said with grandmotherly softness, “You, dear, and other independent journalists like you. You’re my latter-day Edward Murrow, only much prettier.”
“Why, thank you,” Khraa/Astra said, with a thankful chuckle.
Eggers shouted, avoiding obscene words but using an obscenely loud tone, “That Astra Downey and that old woman! Their kind are messing it up for —!”
“Shut up, boy!” Mike said, with disciplinary condescension, as he looked down his nose at Eggers, “and just you remember who outranks who here!”
Yet another whoosh-and-white flash transition appeared on-screen, followed by another on-the-street interview by Khraa/Astra, as she spoke to a short, young long-haired brunette woman in jeans, red T-shirt, and high-heeled joggers.
“I’m interviewing people today and asking what they think of Mallory Stanton’s plans for a hiring freeze on males in the civil service at federal, state and local levels?”
“I have a mid-50s female boss who’s bad enough to work with!” the woman said, with disappointment-borne hostility towards Stanton. “She hits on us younger workers all the time, both guys and girls! And she loves to fire men who are ten thousand percent better at their jobs than my boss is at hers! Stanton, you’ve lost my vote, your party has lost my support, and I’m voting for Donovan Turnbull!”
“And where do you get your news from?”
“You, Next News, Lisa Haven, Alex Jones, and every other indie journalist I can access! Mainstream media is for those who are mainliners, and I hate drugs! Pot, cocaine and ecstasy almost killed me!”
One final whoosh-and-white flash transition appeared, before the usual white-backgrounded image of “Astra Downey” appeared, as Khraa/Astra said, “Well, there you have it! You, the people, have spoken! Our unscientific poll has revealed that most of you are deadest against Stanton’s no-men’s policy, saying it won’t fly! And if you’re female, and you disagree with her, you’ve also spoken out and just said no! That’s why it’s vital to get out and vote on Election Day, or at your advanced polls on their respective days.
“And I put this challenge out to Mallory Stanton” Khraa/Astra said into the webcam with journalistic daring. “If you wish to respond to today’s on-the-street poll, or the questions I levelled at you at your press conference earlier today and tell the world your side of the story in a one-on-one interview with yours truly, you know how to find me.
“As always, before I close, I want to remind you again to pick up some Freedom Tea from Frank Ben’s Patriotic Foods among other survival stores you’ll need when the manure hits the fan big-time, as well as their helping to pay the shot for these podcasts. Until next time, this is Astra Downey saying, be well, keep safe, stay free and God Bless!”
Mike turned off his flat screen TV, and then his laptop. Eggers was angered beyond belief, but used his con artist ways to try and hide it. Eggers’s smartphone rang. He took it from the cellphone holder on his belt and he answered it.
“Eggers” said the younger geekish FBI Agent. “Yes…? Yes…? Right away!”
Eggers ended the call and returned his smartphone to his cellphone holder.
“Government business!” Eggers said, as he was leaving in a sneering, angry huff. “Anyway, enjoy your date with Mata Hari!”
Eggers stomped to the front foyer, opened the door, and closed it hard enough for his disgust to show, just as Val and Donny walked into the living room.
“Okay, Mike” Mike happily quipped to himself. “Like Eggers said, enjoy your date with Astra Downey.”
“Daddy?” said an astounded Val.
“Hi, baby” Mike said to his daughter, “I didn’t see you guys coming in.”
“I just did my homework, Daddy,” Val said, “and I was showing Donny how to make a bed. We heard you and Eggers fighting like cats and dogs while The Bull-Free Truth was on. Too bad we missed it.”
“I downloaded today’s podcast as an MP4 for you” Mike said.
“Awesome!” Val said. She waxed serious as she asked her father, “Dad… Are you really going out with Astra Downey tonight?”
“Yep.”
“The real one and only Astra Downey?”
“None other.”
“Wow!” Donny said, happy that his father met one of the few women Donny respected because Donny’s teachers and most women gave him a mild snub because Donny was sort of “different” from the other kids.
Donny then asked, “How did you meet her, Dad?”
“Actually, I met her while walking down on the street a few days ago, but it’s work-related, and you know I can’t discuss that with you.”
“FBI stuff?”
“Yep” Mike said. “We met up again at the Urban Gopher after Stanton’s big press conference today. When things got out of hand there, we then had lunch at Digby’s. After that, I went off to work, and Astra went off, I presume, to do those on-the-street interviews. And in a little while, I’ll go out on a date with her.”
“Wow!” Val said. “What’s Astra really like?”
“Well, Val, I only just had lunch with her today,” Mike said cautiously, “but Astra seemed just a wonderful girl-next-door type patriot who loves Jesus. And so, I took a chance, asked her out, reassured her it was okay for her to date me, and she said yes.”
Mike looked at his watch and said, “Whoa! Gotta get ready!”
“Good luck, Dad” Donny said.
“You go, Daddy-o!” Val said with teenage gusto.
APARTMENT 1214, BELLA VILLA APARTMENT COMPLEX
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, USA
“Where in Perditia could Mike be?!” Khraa/Astra said cursedly, as Mike had not shown up yet. She found herself waxing into all-too Earthly North American impatient female behavioral patterns, just as a knock came from the door.
“That must be him!” Khraa/Astra said, her mood skyrocketing to forgiving joy, as she scooted to the door. She looked through the door’s peephole and, to her relief and joy, saw it was Mike. She eagerly slid the door latch, unchained the door chain, unlocked the dead bolt, and opened the door.
When she saw Mike, Khraa/Astra said joyfully, “Mike! Good to see you!”
“Sorry if I’m late, Astra” Mike said. “I was actually watching your podcast, and then was held up a bit in traffic.”
“That’s okay” Khraa/Astra said, forgiving Mike for his understandable tardiness. “So, did you like it?”
“Like you said, the people have spoken! I loved it! There’s still a spirit of America in America after all!”
“Amen to that!”
“Well,” Mike said, quaintly holding out his arm for his date, “shall we go?”
DIGBY’S RESTAURANT
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, USA
6:38 PM CENTRAL TIME
“Really?!” said Khraa/Astra, as she and Mike laughed while he told her about a funny story from the lighter side of the FBI files over a romantic lasagna dinner, while someone played a lounge piano in the background.
“I kid you not,” Mike said. “In fact, if there was a TV show called, say, ‘The FBI’s Dumbest Criminals’, that incident would be part of the opening episode!”
Khraa/Astra and Mike shared another good laugh.
The romantic duo laughed again.
“Touché!” Mike quipped, causing him and his date to laugh some more.
They ate some more of their dinner, often looking up into each other’s eyes with warm fondness.
After a few minutes, Khraa/Astra asked, “So, Mike, you say you’re a father of three?”
“Two sons and a daughter. Glenn and Val are my teenage twins, and Donny’s my eight-year-old boy. Aside from my love for God and my work, they’re my life.”
“Got a wife?”
“No.”
“Divorced?”
“Widowed. Twice.”
Khraa/Astra saddened, and responded, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah…” Mike said, with a reflective sigh. “I met my first wife after I just graduated from Quantico. Leah… Leah Leon. She was a waitress at a coffee shop. She was a plain-Jane type, but boy, did she ever make up for that dozens of times over with a kindness and braininess that is rare among women. She said she loved FBI guys and that she was lucky to have met me. So, we dated, got married a year later, had a family of two, and we were quite happy. Then… They were killed in a terrorist attack.”
“9/11?”
“Oklahoma” Mike said, with sad bitterness lacing his voice. “The Murrah Federal Building.”
“Man…” Khraa/Astra said, her stronger-than-average empathy showing in her face and words. “You lost your whole family, in one fell swoop?”
“Yep” Mike said sadly. “I had some business with the ATF at the Murrah Building that day, but I was held up in traffic. I forgot my briefcase but didn’t realize it until after I heard about the bombing.
“My wife knew I was off to the Murrah Building, and saw I had forgotten my briefcase. She headed to the Murrah Building to give it to me, while she was going to take the kids to the doctor. They were all sick with the flu, I forget what they all had. She didn’t want them left alone, so she took them in with her and at 9:02 a.m. local time…”
Mike choked up a little. Khraa/Astra gently put her right hand on Mike’s left cheek, and stroked it reassuringly to comfort him.
“It made me bitter toward women, toward kids, toward everyone…”
A sad hush fell between Khraa/Astra and Mike.
“What pulled you through?”
“Somehow,” Mike said, “I started drinking like a fish, and one night — I think it was at the mid-point of the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal — I was alone in my home, which had become a major mess! After the events of the last two years, I was wondering, what in blazes is this world coming to?! Then, in my grief and anger, Jesus showed up before me in a vision.
“At first, I thought I was drunk as hell! Then Jesus said, and I quote, ‘Mike, you’ve still got a chance with the Bureau. Your family is all with Me. And I still have work for you to do, to comfort your fellow officers who seek My counsel, for the times to come will get both worse and better. Give it all to Me, Mike, and I will carry you through.’ That night, I gave my life to Jesus.”
“Wow,” Khraa/Astra said, her spirits lifted. “That’s wonderful.”
“And so, upon that, I studied to be a chaplain, and met my second wife, a Russian émigré and professor in applied mathematics named Svetlana Lebedeva. She and I hit it off. She was a female scientist, yet still every bit a woman. And her sense of humor — was she ever sauce-ee!”
Khraa/Astra laughed.
“In fact, because I had so much trouble pronouncing her name, she told me to just call her ‘Sweaty!’”
Khraa/Astra laughed more, before she asked, “So you married her?”
“How could I not? We got hitched in a very, very traditional Eastern Orthodox wedding ceremony. When we had Glenn and Valentina, Sweaty wanted to name Glenn Yuri, after Yuri Gagarin, the first man to fly into space. But I told her, ‘Sweaty, if we name our son “Yuri”, he’s liable to get made fun of like crazy for sure! Do you realize this is North America, and what an embarrassing word “Yuri” sounds like?’ She saw my point, and we agreed on naming him Glenn.”
“Svetlana” Khraa/Astra said. “She must have been a space buff.”
“She was. Seven years later, we had Donny. We named him Donald Ian, after Donald K. Slayton, the docking module pilot of the Apollo–Soyuz Mission, where Americans and Soviets shook hands in orbit over France. And, indirectly, also after John Glenn because ‘Ian’ is a form of “John.” She called our Donny our little peacemaker. I don’t know how she knew that Donny could settle arguments so well, but my Donny really does.”
“What happened to… ‘Sweaty?’”
“Years before I met her, Astra,” Mike said somberly, “Svetlana was a researcher who worked a little too close to Chernobyl around the time of the disaster there. No one thought of it for a long time, but Svetlana must have been exposed to enough lingering radiation that she died of cancers of the breasts, ovaries and uterus. It turned out these cancers came about very slowly, too slowly to detect early. And sadly, chemotherapy only made matters worse.
“Before she died,” Mike said, as he waxed into grief, “Sweaty said a tearful goodbye to each of us. Donny was just four, Glenn and Val were eleven when their mom died. But she said a particularly tearful goodbye to me because she knew she’d become the second wife I’d have lost to tragedy. She said a prayer in Russian for me so rapidly that I still don’t know what she prayed, but I sensed it was for me and my kids. Then…”
A brief pause befell the pair before Khraa/Astra, with tons of compassion said to Mike in sad astonishment, “You’ve been hit really hard. Twice.”
“Yeah” Mike said. “But after Svetlana had passed on, I realized that what I went through made me stronger inside, and that when I counsel other FBI Agents, I often quote the Book of Job. I’m not dead yet, and I think what hasn’t killed me has made me stronger, but not heartless.”
“Yes” Khraa/Astra said appreciatively, “I can see that.”
“So, Astra” Mike asked. “Your turn. What’s your thumbnail bio?”
“And while I was in college, “Khraa/Astra said, after a half-hour of relating her life story to Mike, “I worked my way through college as the lead singer of an all-girl Moody Blues college tribute band, The Moody Pinks.”
“Hey!” Mike said, his eyes lighting up with joy. “The Moody Pinks. Sweaty and I took in one of your shows when you played in Michigan! You gals were awesome!”
“Most of our fans were older guys,” Khraa/Astra said. “And some younger women who thought girl-power was too strong for them loved us. Our female fans thought women shouldn’t have to be obnoxious to be strong. I only wish more women were like our female fans. I was our group’s ‘Justine Hayward’, and I enjoyed it.”
“I saw that during the show Sweaty and caught.”
“And there was an in-joke in the group and among our fans that I played like Justin Hayward, but prayed like John Lodge. I was the group’s Jesus-nut.”
“Who else was in your group?”
“There was Veronica Andrews, our witty Scottish-Canadian ‘Jane Lodge’ bass-player from T-O. That’s Toronto, Ontario. She performed like Lodge, but prayed like Hayward, if she prayed at all.
“Suzanne Plante, from Montreal, was our group’s lively, fun-loving ‘Michelle Pinder’ keyboard player. Ronda Zheng, our ever-calm, cool, collected Asian-Canadian ‘Rayna Thomas’ flautist, was from Vancouver. And Honey Cummings, our group’s soulful African-Canadian ‘Graemma Edge’ drummer girl-poetess from New Brunswick, rounded out our tribute band’s lineup.
“When we all moved into our landlady Toni Clark’s home — yes, Mike, that is her real name, spelled T-O-N-I, with her ‘Clark’ not having an ‘e’ on the end — we all put our heads together to figure out perfectly legal ways to make some money. As we bounced around some ideas, we learned each of us could sing, play at least one instrum
ent, and we all loved Moody Blues music big-time. And Toni, who had some music industry experience and connections, was crazy about them, too!
“And so, with Toni as our producer-manager-mother hen who got a percentage of our band’s profits equal to the rent, bundled phone-cable-Internet costs, hydro — that’s what Canadians call electricity — and other bills, we pooled our resources, and the Moody Pinks were born.
“I’m still amazed, Mike,” Khraa/Astra said, “that we paid all our bills, tuition, paid off our college loans, and paid for our school equipment and everything else with rock and roll. For five years, we all had a real blast!”
Khraa/Astra and Mike laughed again, as a young Asian-American waitress, delighted at the fun conversation, walked up to Khraa/Astra and Mike and asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Awesome!” Mike said.
“Same here!” Khraa/Astra said, before she and Mike resumed with dinner as the waitress left.
“So…” Mike said. “What happened to the Moody Pinks?”
Khraa/Astra said, “During our group’s dying Seventh Sojourn-type phase?”
“Yeah” Mike said. “I’m a huge Moody Blues fan myself, and I know that things were rough for the original band while they made Seventh Sojourn.”
“That’s when we broke up. What it was like for the Moody Blues during their Seventh Sojourn days was also pretty much the same for us, only far worse.”
Khraa/Astra paused.
“Near the end, Mike,” Khraa/Astra continued, the joy having bled away, “Suzanne went through a religious conversion just about every other week. Suzie was so maxed out by all the nonstop touring, recording and schoolwork that she wanted nothing to do with Fanshawe, or with the Moody Pinks ever again, and went home to Quebec, where she lives to this day. Ronda was going through a messy breakup of her own, which made her go back to BC. Honey went through an even messier divorce and went back to Fredericton. I just hope those three are doing alright.”
“What about Veronica?”
“Pro-Liberal-New Democrat/all-round ultra-leftie Torontonian Veronica and I, a stanch conservative pro-Harper Tory Albertan, fought about everything under the sun day and night! Politics, religion, economics — you name it, we fought over it. It got so bad that before we all went our separate ways, Toni sat us all down for a no-kidding last meeting, especially me and Ronnie — Veronica, that is — because of how we cat-fought like two crazy shrills.