THE FIRST THING HE saw as he struggled up from sleep was the President’s profile, which, in the dark, reminded him of Alfred Hitchcock’s—only wearing a toupee; the front of which stabbed forward like a kind of blonde horn or uncertain phallus, while the back, duck tailed and wispy, seemed to offer ballast. It surprised him how unkempt the whole affair was; how long, as if he belonged to another decade entirely, another era, and had been “Flash-forwarded”—no less than the dinosaurs—into both the New Millennium and the Presidency.
Mostly, however, Coup was just relieved to find someone alert; for the other night watchers, to a man (Sargent Bo, Cameron the activist, Johnny From Tucson) and one woman (the little girl’s mother, Abbie) were all slumped in their chairs; and the store was silent
