He was sitting in his big chair with his wide, circular back to his big shiny desk. He was facing a window. A big window. A beautiful window: bright, bedraped, two-story floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass. Glass like that costs money. Big money.
He was shaped like a bean-bag. He was the president. Mister President. It felt good to be Mister President.
"...Mister President?" he heard a voice say, as if from far, far away. The president's mood soured. He had been so focused that he had forgotten anyone was even there. Whose voice was this? It annoyed him. It was nasal. Boring. Yet it persisted:
"...I'll just leave these here?"
The president swiveled around. The nasal man was holding a medallioned folder in his left hand with big pieces of paper and big letters on them. Ugh, the president thought. The president hated signing things because that meant reading. And he hated reading things, especially when the letters were small and close together as these words often were. These words even had serifs. It all fatigued him, especially seeing as he didn't really care, understand, or care to understand practically any of this, as it was not relevant to him.
Yet despite his indifference to words, when it served him to do so, he would put on a serious face and begin to read. His eyes would tumble down the pages, catching for a moment this phrase, or that clause, which he would comment on, question, or even joke about. Although it was a matter of private debate whether the president truly understood what he was reading, the performance still pleased his audience. And had anyone asked him, the president would have insisted that everyone was, in some form or another, performing.
Which made for great television.
The president slowly swiveled back to face the window.
"Not right now," said the president kindly and with a pout. For now, the spectacle would have to wait.
The man looked at the clock.
"But it's two o'clock, Mister President."
"It's one."
"Mister President, sir, it's..."
He looked back at the selfsame clock. And he must have been dreaming. He squinted. He furrowed. The hour hand that had just been inching towards two was now sitting just short of one.
He checked his watch. Same thing.
"What? I, no —" he said, confused. He turned to his aide. "Manny, did we not get here at one thirty...?"
Manny shrugged. He didn't feel like arguing.
"Look," interjected the president, "I'm busy." He unswiveled himself back to the window, quiescent, ruminant, and pouty.
The man shut up, off-balance and bewildered. Manny, on the other hand, had an idea. He was practically face to face with the president. That's not an opportunity you get every day. It wouldn't be imprudent, Manny thought, to speak up now. He was conversationally adjacent, after all.
Manny took a step towards the president. From behind, the high shoulders of his chair looked like tremendous black wings.
"Disregard him, Mister President," said Manny, nudging his boss to the side, "we just got here, like you said, sir."
The president turned back around.
"Did you not hear what I just told the other guy?"
"Yes, Mister President. I did."
The president looked at him up and down. Like Manny, he was also calculating something.
"You know what, I take it back. You're a good guy," said the president after a moment, motioning Manny towards him, "c'mere."
"Yes, sir," said Manny. The president extended his hand. Manny took it. The president shook it, and squeezed hard.
"Listen. You hear that?"
The president squinted at him, analyzing. Manny tried to hear. But he heard very little. Maybe leather stretching. Someone clearing their throat.
"...is this a test, sir?"
"That bird," said the president, pointing out the window, "it's always here. Every day it's here. It shits. It screams."
Manny approached the glass from behind the president. He still didn't hear anything, but he looked anyway.
"Do you mind if I... oh right, yeah. That's a hawk. Red-tailed hawk in fact."
"A red tail hawk!" said the president, suddenly amused, "You know birds? Are you a bird expert?" A few people in the room laughed. The president said it again.
"A bird expert! Birdman!"
Now everyone laughed. A couple people blurted out "Birdman!"
"Birdman!" said the president.
"I know a hawk at least, Mister President!"
"Alright, Birdman, alright. Ha-ha-ha. Birdman. I have a favor to ask you and it would make me very happy if you could do it. Very happy. We have all the worst animals outside this great house of ours — this house, which is a testament to our great country — these animals which do nothing but cause problems... can you do something about that? They whiz around like flies. It's distracting. I'm tired of them. Frankly, exhausted."
Manny thought for a moment.
"I suppose I do hear it now," said Manny, uncertain. "Well, what do you suppose I do Mister President?"
"I don't know, aren't you the bird expert?" Laughter ripped through the room again.
The newly-beknighted Director of Avian Studies looked around the room for answers. But no one said anything. They just shrugged. So he addressed the president again.
"I dunno. Want me to shoot 'em?"
"You a good shot?"
"I mean, I'm not, but—"
His eyes scanned the room and found the Secret Service.
"But I can find you someone who..."
But they all shook their heads, patting their pistols.
"...oh. Hm."
The president wondered if these were all very stupid people.
"Is there nothing we want to do about the — what did you say it was?"
"A red-tailed hawk, sir."
"Sir," a tall, uniformed man piped up, "we can have someone survey the various White House fauna and see if we can clean up the situation a little bit. We do agree it's a bit out of control."
The lone hawk continued circling outside, silently.
"And how long will that take?"
"Sir, a day or two?"
"A day or two. No, I think we're getting impatient. Can't it be right now?"
"I'm not sure, sir—"
"Excuse me. Aren't we getting impatient?" the president interrupted.
"Yes sir," said the tall man.
The rest of the room agreed. And to be sure, the president was getting impatient. That's the thing about being president. The president has many things to get done and very little time to do them. But getting things done is so much work, especially with these people like Birdman who don't do anything but talk about birds.
If only someone would bring him the folder that would let him sign Birdman, and all the people like him, away. Poof.
But now was not the time. Right now his mind was, as usual, on the thing directly in front of him. His eyes tracked the bird that had recently made a home of this place, circling, cawing and shitting. He would have signed just about any piece of paper that would let him sign it into oblivion, but apparently no one could produce one. At least not for a day or two.
He sighed. Creakily swiveling on his chair, he felt around under his desk for a small metal toggle switch and flipped it. Then without a word he stood on top of his chair and grumpily climbed to the top of his desk. His soles were leaving little dusty prints on the medallioned folders.
"Be careful, Mister President..." someone muttered.
The toggle he had flipped was firing off relay after relay of switches and circuits, and the entire White House floor began to rumble. Deep in the heart of the White House something was happening. Moving. Shifting.
The entire Oval Office had turned to face the hallways as they, normally dim, had begun to glow. The White House's thimble-shaped dome had fully hinged backwards, its hole letting light pour through the White House as if it were bleach.
As for the president, he suddenly looked much lighter on his feet than before. Almost weightless. In fact his heels, and then his toes, began to peel away from the desk.
Before anyone knew it, the president was floating, right there in the Oval Office, like a limp Jesus. People looked to each other for cues on how to react, but no one reacted at all, apart from the Secret Service who, without a clue about what to do, put their hands on their pistols just in case.
The laws of physics, it turns out, apparently made an exception. The president could fly. Up until this point, he didn't know that he could fly. He simply tried it and it worked, and he wasn't even particularly surprised about it.
The president floated first a little upward until he was over everyone's heads, then slowly rotated until he was belly down. His arms hung towards the floor as he floated right out of the White House through the hole in its roof. Everyone watched him float into the sky, like a balloon.
Once he was out he was truly flying, and fast. His red tie was flapping in the wind behind him like a snake's tongue.
But as fast as he went, his target was getting smaller and smaller.
It must've seen him.
The president sped up, flying, and flapping, and zipping around. The hawk was flying in circles now, cawing noisily over the White House, then flying back again, apparently trying to lose him. It was headed north — no, south. No, north again? But the president maintained his composure and squinted his eyes in the wind. There it was again, making a beeline straight for the woods. These birds aren't as dumb as they look, thought the president, but they are...
"...SLOW!"
He had snatched the bird by its neck. It flapped its wings against him.
"Don't worry, I gotcha," he said to the bird, "You know, I was quite the athlete in my younger days..." The hawk was cawing and biting and kicking its legs at his hands.
"Look," he said, tightening his grip, "I'm not a bad guy. I love birds, I do. I really do. Hawks, birds, whatever. I love them all. My mother had a bird — most beautiful bird you ever saw. My mother was also very beautiful. She loved me a lot. A lot. I didn't have it easy growing up you know, but my mother was there — she was so beautiful..."
The bird looked confused. Then again, birds often look confused.
"...but you're out here all day," said the president, "all day in the sky, shitting and screeching. Like you own the place. But that's my window you're in. And I'm the President. I'm accountable to the People. That means it's also the People's window. You're clogging up the People's window. And the People don't care for that. They don't, they really don't... you know what they want me to do to you? You don't even want to know..."
A crowd had gathered underneath them on the White House lawn. Some cupped their hands over their ears to try and listen. "He's talking about the People," someone muttered. "Sh!" said someone else.
"You realize how much it costs the American People just to keep you damn things alive?" He turned the bird by its neck. "You see that? You could be any-fucking-where but here. The American People need me to work, not play with birds."
The bird said nothing.
"I guess what I'm saying is — and look, I'm a nice guy, I really am — the People can't have you here shitting all over everything. We love the People, don't we?"
The hawk, terrified to the point of incontinence, began to shit all over the people on the lawn.
"If you insist," said the president. He squeezed the hawk's throat so hard that its eyes popped out, and killed it.
After a moment he flipped it upside down and jerked it up and down. It didn't move. The president lost interest, pouted, and let it fall to the ground.
"The things I do for the People."
The scene below the floating president suddenly sprang to life as the insignificant people beneath him unfroze. They started waving their arms and clapping. The president observed some of them had towards the spot where he'd disposed of the fowl. A woman had grabbed onto the legs, and a man was holding onto the neck, and they played a short game of tug-of-war with the corpse before falling backwards, each with their own piece of it.
The spectacle had commenced.
A smaller crowd of people was inside the White House. One man among them, looking out through the hole in the White House roof, was frantically waving his arms to the president, whose flaccid, tick-like body hung suspended in the air.
It was Manny.
The president tried to ignore him. Birdman's desperation didn't bother him — if anything, it was flattering. It was that the president hated — absolutely hated — getting his own hands dirty, and he had to, all because Birdman couldn't do the one thing ever asked of him.
For a moment, the president let his face hang in the direction of the people below him. He was blank. Tired. But the crowd took to this scrap of attention like hungry dogs. They began to grow animated. Some waved flags in his direction. Others chanted, "Mister President!" over and over.
Manny siezed the moment.
"Bravo sir! Bravo-fucking-vo," he called out feverishly, "I can't wait to see what's next!"
The president felt his ears twitch in disgust. That voice was beginning to wear on him. Birdman was alright — he wasn't a bad man — but he was useless. He suddenly remembered shaking that man's little hand and how brittle he felt. How narrow his shoulders were. How fragile his neck looked.
He'd return to those thoughts later. No, now was not the time. He had papers to sign and pictures to take. And it was already nearly two p.m. for the second time today.