I was working at the White House. CJ was talking about the job I’d been doing: a temporary assignment as a manager of White House staff and coordinator of events: a position traditionally held by a bookkeeper. She announced that a man had inquired about the job, and everyone gasped, including me, because the man was the equivalent to Martha Stewart. After the press conference, I wandered the halls, deep in thought. I went to see the president, who, in a show of transparency to the people, had moved his Oval Office operations into a common lobby area of the White House. Tours walked by and could see him doing his day to day business. It was Barack Obama. I waited in line to talk to Barack about the new development when I ran into CJ.

“Tough break,” she said, “but you can always dig up stuff on the guy on Juice It. You’ll find something there.” She departed and the president, for whom I’d been waiting, had to dash off to other business. I walked the halls, and ran into Leo. We sat in his office.

“Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” he said. “It’s the same thing: here you’ve been doing a great job and now you have to prove it all over again, just because some guy who thinks he’s Martha Stewart comes along. Now there are two other men up for the job. There’s Alan Hamm, who is an accountant, and you know this job has always been held by an accountant; and then the guy who thinks he’s Martha Stewart. Too bad really, but it was a pretty good run you had. You should check with Seaborne and see if he’s hiring.”

I went to Sam Seaborne’s office, where Sam was pacing and nervous. He looked up only to say, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too. That’s a tough break.” Then he went back to his pacing. I wandered some more, and then into Tobey’s office. He had already heard what was going on.

“If I lose this job it will destroy me,” I told him.

“Good, because that’s the only way you can rebuild yourself completely,” he replied sharply. He took me to a restaurant that looked like a Fridays, inside the White House, and we walked to a booth in the far corner. He introduced me to Piva, who was blind. Before he left he said, “Did you go on Juice It yet? That would be a good idea. This guy who thinks he is Martha Stewart: (latin phrase that means flowering brightly but too soon) that will never happen. Now the other guy, it’s Tippecanoe and Tyler too all over again, he’s an asshole that nobody likes, but he IS an accountant, and you know the job has always traditionally been held by an accountant. Oh well, you will be the last non-accountant or the first non-accountant.” With that, he left, turning back only to ask, “Did you see if Seaborne is hiring?”

“I want to show you my time machine,” Piva said, as she pushed everything off of the table, “just help me clear it off.” Our first stop was ancient China.

As we traveled, she told me the story of Hao Lai, a woman who fellated her husband and then spit his semen into the rifle barrels of her peoples’ army. Evidently, this won them the war. We traveled again, but this time to a poultry farm. “You’ll know exactly what they are:” she told me, “If their faces are long and they turn black when they hatch, they’re of a certain kind and you know you have to kill them. The rest you’ll keep but there won’t be as many. It’s a messy business.”

We traveled back to the booth in the White House, and she asked me to help her stand up on the table. She put her face up to each of the many cuckoo clocks that lined the wall near the ceiling, inhaling deeply. “They smell old,” she said, with a look of deep satisfaction on her face. She then sat on the table, and drew something from her pocket and to her mouth, and started to chew. “It’s the last one, so I’ll have to share it with you,” she said, leaning down putting her mouth to mine and feeding me seeds from her lips.

“Oh, you want me to taste this. I thought you just wanted to kiss me,” I said.

“You’re right. I did, but the seeds are still tasty,” she replied. Suddenly we were of a tiny size, and standing on dirt in a garden that looked like a jungle. She asked me to dig a hole and make a quarter turn, and dig another. she had me do this four times. she then checked the holes and congratulated me on not being consistent. Then I realized the jungle had turned into a graveyard.

She snapped me back to the White House, and I was wearing a white boxer’s robe with a long hood that was perforated so I could see out, but others could not see me. CJ ushered me to where the president was and he gave me a sticker from the inside of his shoe. It read “11″.

“That’s better than a 10,” he said, “Keep it for good luck.” I stuck it to the back of my White House credentials. He told me not to worry. I called him Superman.

Somewhere else, Sam Seaborne was in a room with another young, handsome man and the man’s parents. He took a ring out of a box and said, “It’ll be like we’re married but everyone will still say we’re partners.”

And then I woke up.