The auditorium has emptied, the overhead lights burn dim, a microphone hangs limp from the podium.
The twenty-odd collapsible wooden chairs stand in disarray, their ranks broken during the retreat of the audience into the refreshment area.
“How did I get on this couch? Where’s my award? Is Havana Hat Boy still snapping pictures of himself in battle fatigues?”
“No, Bret, everyone’s gone home but you. That is to say: you’re still there where you were when you lost the award that you’d worked half a lifetime and then some to achieve. You probably never dreamed you would get it, and likely never knew there even was such an honor, an accolade, an acknowledgement for war-weary wordsmiths on their last leg in life, fighting the good fight because they couldn’t get another job, pressing on in the face of shrinking ad revenues, slick PR and bird-brained bitches playing Lois Lane.”
“I’ve got a backache.”
“Then go back, Man… back before the couch, before the beating you took underfoot in the very hall of fame you never had a chance to address. Just lower those heavy lids, click your heels together and…”
“There’s no place like Wisconsin, no place at all.”
The middle-aged rake redactor promptly finds himself in a highchair, his much younger mother trying to probe his face with an oversized spoon.
“He looks like a chipmunk. You’ll never get him to swallow that,” says his father, who stands behind the mother in suspenders.
The spoon gets shoved in his face, and Boner awakens at his high school prom dressed in a pale yellow tuxedo with a large carnation pinned to the lapel.
“I suspected all along that you’d rented a motel room for the night, but nothing is going to happen, do you hear? Nothing!” shouts an angry young woman standing in front of him on a school stairwell.
“And if you don’t remove that creepy comment from the yearbook, I’m going to complain to the principal.”
His heels start clicking faster if not harder at the foot of the couch. This time, he ends up in a newsroom, but not in Kyiv.
“Don’t take it personally. These things happen, Bret. Times are tough, and you need to be, too. Now just march out that door like the hard-nosed reporter you always wanted to be and find yourself another place of employment.”
Boner’s heels have stopped clicking because his lower legs are twisted into a knot. Instead, his entire admittedly unimpressive frame is flopping about amongst the cushions like a hot dog amid pancakes on a hot grill.
A dream bubble grows out of his head and hangs clearly visible above the couch. Russian women, Boner slaving over a press release at an East European NGO, more wrinkles, less hair, but the Hollywood good looks somehow hold up. There’s The Ferret rifling off emails from a distant laptop that Boner reads with hope, suspicion and finally secret resolve. There’s Zippy Zamazda, lip curled and quivering in arrogance, then fear. Again, The Ferret now smoking a sissy cigarette and talking on the phone, Saint Stefan, Seth Sundance, The Ferret once more and finally Boner reclined in an office chair with sunspots showing on his forearms.
“Where did that Mississippi Media Medal get off to? It’s such a funny thing… do you think it’s under the sofa,” mutters Boner, now delirious.
“You tell me, Bret.”
…
On a sunny Mississippi sidewalk stroll Rico Soiree, silk hat and cane, and his lovely lady friend Kate Mustard, who twirls a parasol over her shoulder.
“Shall we shop the windows of this fine town, before returning to Kyiv?” she says.
“I should like to get a new face,” says he.
“And I could use a new ass,” she beams devilishly, dropping the parasol just over his eyes as they pass a line of dusty hot men leaning against a store front.
Inside one shop, Soiree peeks over the dressing stall, savoring the opportunity to catch Ms. Mustard in some unexpected stage of undress. She squeals girlishly and he roars like an ogre.
The salesman stands off in affected respect to the playful couple, then he approaches Soiree with a box.
“This one’s from Donetsk, just got blown off an artilleryman.”
Soiree carefully fits the face over his own, glances at the wall mirror, and then peeks back over the dressing stall with a child-like growl.
…
Boner has now found himself a resident at an assisted living facility in Cincinnati. It’s still early morning but he’s awake and thumbing through old clippings from the Kyiv Poster.
Someone knocks at the door and Boner invites the man in. It’s Rob Bobbin.
“Have you not found your award, Bret? Did you not look under the couch?”
Boner struggles to catch the man’s meaning and then clutches, bends and crouches to get out of his chair and onto the floor in front of the couch.
One hand holds onto the couch seat and the other sweeps the floor, at first sluggish, uncertain and frail.
Finally, he resolves to stick his head down there and get a better look underneath. It’s dark and he can’t see a thing. Then everything lights up and he’s back in the Mississippi auditorium, besieged by a thundering roar of applause.
“And now, ladies and journalists, with no further ado, unnecessary adornment of other people’s resumes or the unavoidable ass kissing that invariably accompanies such events, it gives me indescribable pleasure and no less a feeling of moral superiority thinly disguised as propriety and décor appropriate to such and other ceremonies, to announce this year’s winner of the Mississippi Media Medal,” says Rob Bobbin.
The audience continues to clap and cheer, some stamping their feet. There’s a man in urban camouflage and sneakers without a head, a child riddled with shrapnel sitting on his lap, a babushka without hands smiling as she misses every attempt to applaud. Boner sees Rico Soiree and Kate Mustard among the crowd, and others, too.
“It’s a lovely evening, my dear, is it not?”
“And, I’ve got a new ass.”
Filed March 11, 2015