Eric Cantor was buried in the middle of a 150-page bill that he’d received in his mail slot, along with a forceful door rapping, at approximately 4 a.m. – that came with a memo saying: Can you have your vote ready by 7 a.m., pretty please with sugar on top? It was sickening how these people operated.
Yet, he didn’t want to show any signs of weakness or those damned Democrats would swoop in like vultures — Nancy Pelosi especially. He just couldn’t bear to hear her say, “Oh you couldn’t get it done, Eric? Not enough beauty sleep for you? Ha! I haven’t slept a wink in 30 years and I don’t look a day over 20.”
The shiny black phone on his desk rang, startling him. Cantor blinked, put two fingers to his temple and closed his eyes a moment. “Good God,” he whispered, taking a breath. “Cantor,” he barked.
“Hello?”
“Excuse me, but is this T-Pain calling me? Because I can hardly understand you.”
“No, this isn’t T-Pain. Never mind who this is,” the garbled voice said.
“Well, okay. I’m not stupid. Clearly, you’ve got some kind of, uh, voice modifier… what’s it called? Auto-tune? ExVoxx? Clearly you are using some sort of program to obscure your voice. Well what do you want? I’m a busy man and I’ll give you five seconds before I hang up.”
“I’ve got information for you. It’s about Ryan… and Joe Biden.”
There was a pause.
“I’m listening,” Cantor said, leaning forward in his chair. Well I’ll be damned, he thought.
“I received a call from Paul Ryan last week and he – he asked me to role play as Joe Biden again… like how we practiced for the debates,” the deep voice said.
“Look, I know — based on context — it’s you, Ted Olson,” Cantor said coolly.
“Uh, no it’s not,” said the grizzled voice.
“Why not just cut with the crap and ditch the voice decoder so we can speak like civilized human beings for a minute here? I need to know everything that you know about Paul Ryan and Joe Biden.”
“Oh, alright,” the voice said. After a brief pause and a series of loud, muffled clicks, it was indeed Ted Olson’s voice at the other end of the line. “I am risking my ass to make this call, you know,” he snapped.
“And I am grateful for it,” said Cantor. “Now, what is this sick obsession with Joe Biden? Has the Young Gun been poisoned with Democrat propaganda? I must know.”
“I wanted it not to be true,” Olson said. “But he did so much research studying for the debate and got inside Joe’s head so much during the process, that I think he started to identify with the man and, by God, even feel some sort of brotherly love for the Vice President. Maybe it’s part envy, part admiration. Maybe it’s Ryan’s way of picking Joe’s brain to find ways to snub out his influence over Congress. I don’t know, Eric. I just don’t know.”
Cantor chewed on the end of his pen. “I’ll get back to you,” he said and hung up.
He popped his black dress shoes off, loosened his powder-blue tie and kicked back in his leather executive’s chair. He had spent far too much time grooming this Young Gun to let all his hard work slip away due to some loquacious gaffe master from Delaware. Now that he knew his suspicions were justified, he could trap Ryan and make him confess that he had a problem. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they say that is the first step anyway.
TO BE CONTINUED…