"Joe, pick up!" Viv says to the empty room after she flops on the couch. She kicks off her shoes.

After too many rings, Joey says "WHAT?"

Viv, startled, "Dang Joe, what's that about?"

"Sorry, Viv, it's been a day. I got a bill collector hassling me."

"Joe I gotta rant. I got nowhere else to go with this stuff, so you gotta listen to me."

"Hit me, Vee. Wait, where are you?"

"Home. I just got back from lunch. Had three glasses of wine because that's the only way I can tolerate the pageant contestants. We're supposed to plan the class trip to the capital at the end of their 8th grade year. It oughtta be a completely straightforward, boring thing to do, but I get the feeling that these women have absolutely nothing else to do in their lives, so they go everything in tedious detail."

"Three drinks, huh? That's a lot isn't it?"

"Yeah, I suppose they'll all gossip about how I'm a booze hag later. They're all vipers."

Viv continues. "We went over every mundane detail. The charter bus. The hotel. The tour guides. And we went with all the same choices as every year before. The whole thing was pointless. But these women all act as if they're planning a NASA mission when really they're just stir crazy at home."

"Joe, I'm losing my mind!"

There was a silence for a bit. Joe interrupted it. "Hey, I'm gonna put this on speaker. I'm trying to take apart an old box fan I found on the street last night. Keep talking though."

"You collecting trash?"

"Well, see, I plugged it in here, and it barely works, but it does work. These old box fans are great but the insides get really filthy. I'm hoping I can take it apart and fix it up."

"Tell me about the fan."

"Well, even by my standards, it is pretty beaten up. But I liked it because some kid wrote his name on the side. It says, 'RYAN FAN' and a bunch of stickers make a border. But then another kid wrote 'NO' under it.

"Then there's a whole bunch of stickers on it too. Various kids toys crap. And then also stickers from bananas. And you know how when you get a sheet of stickers, and after you peel them off, there's the outlines of the stickers left behind? They peeled those parts off too and put that on there."

Joe: "The whole thing just really appealed to my aesthetics."

"Uggh these kids must have lived with some smokers because I'm cleaning out the inside of this motor and it reeks like tobacco sludge. This thing is almost tobacco hash. Just straight black tar."

Viv watches her ceiling fan turn over her head. "Speaking of fans, I can tell I'm pretty drunk because my eyes can't follow the ceiling fan overhead."

"Yeah, this fan has to be really old! There's stickers on here from TV shows from when we were young."

Joe goads Viv. "Any of these women looking to meet a dude like me?"

"You know what? You're too good for them. They're awful, awful people. Sure they're rich, and they look the part, but they're stingy tippers even when they spend their husbands' money. Repugnant."

"Nobody says 'repugnant' in casual conversation except for you, V."

More silence. Joe uses a screwdriver to take off the screws holding the fan's safety cover.

"Was the food good?"

"Yes and no. It's hard to relax and enjoy myself when I have to play the role of Garrett's wife. I have to be careful about what I say. I swear it is becoming worse. He wants me to move some paintings before the next fundraiser."

"I told him just to let me keep my fave stuff in here, in the den, and then he can keep guests out of there. It's out of the way anyway."

"Like what paintings? Like any of mine?"

"Joe! Please, I don't let just anybody see your stuff!" Your stuff is in the upstairs hall where the bedrooms are. It's funny. Everyone sees it and they all either love it, or look at me like I'm traumatizing my daughters by hanging these grisly images right outside their bedrooms."

Viv goes on: "Joe, when I got home the other day, I found out that Garrett had rearranged this den. He said he was having friends come over. He took my stuff that was spread around, took all of it down except for the stuff right by this couch, and I found the pieces in the garage against the dryer.

"And then Garrett had hung up a whole bunch of his family photos. Which wouldn't really bug me if it wasn't so obviously a calculated move. See, a while ago, for the campaign, they have been meeting with photographers and image consultants, trying to make his candidate into somebody with broader appeal than he deserves.

"Like, now the guy always wears glasses and often carries books with him when he's going out in public. It's a complete prop, but the weird thing is that reporters don't seem to realize they're getting played"

"Anyhow, now instead of some of those abstract pieces, that were really innocuous, he's got frames of his own life."

"It's like a shrine to himself. A wall of self-aggrandizing shit."

"His JD degree, framed. Photos of Garrett as a boy with his family. Each one seems chosen to show off where he comes from."

"There's one of him and his friends when they were all boys at some sailing camp they all went to as children. They're all in front of a big sailboat and there's an American flag hanging over the side."

Viv gets up and walks around studying the photos closely.

"Christ, every fucking thing this man does is to maintain his image. I'm looking at this picture now, and he can't be even sixteen years old, and he's already got this well-practiced smile on his face."

"You ARE drunk!" Joe laughed.

Viv: "I am. I need to calm down. Tell me what you're working on. In detail."

Joe: "The knob on the fan got ripped off. Maybe Ryan broke if off. Maybe his brother did. I don't know. I can fix it though. Right now I'm turning the fan's knob with some pliers. Later if I get this fan working, maybe I'll put on a different knob. I bet I can find one."

"But why did Garrett put all his stuff?"

"Why did he do it? Why did he toss my paintings in the garage and hang up his own stuff? "He had a bunch of people over for drinks and cigars. They were all guys that were alumni of the snooty private high school he went to and he wanted to hit them up for support for the campaign.

"After I got our daughters to bed, I came back down, and he gave me the strangest look when I went into the study."

"Isn't it weird how really he didn't want me around? Like, we're all attorneys, aren't I worth talking to? I've begun to notice he avoids having me around unless it is to come in, say something prepared that we discussed in advance, and then leave.

More silence while Joe works takes apart the fan. Viv says she'll be back. She wals to the refrigerator, grabs a glass bottle of mineral water, opens it, walks back, picks up the phone and goes back to studying the picture.

"I'm looking at more of these photos from Garrett an sailing camp. Some of these boys were also at the fund raiser. I suppose that's why he wanted to get out these old photos. But see... that's the thing. When I came downstairs, and met everyone, I realized that while Garrett had put up the photos, he hadn't pointed them out to his guests.

"I asked if he had shown the photos to his friends, and then he looked at me and almost winced, like I had said something tactless."

Now Viv stares closely at one of the pictures. All the boys crouching in a huddle on the front steps of a cabin.

Adolescent Garrett and another boy with their arms across their shoulders.

"Also, there's something about these prep school boys. I don't know how to say it, but they all are so clean and well-mannered. Like I'm looking at this photo, and you know what? They're all clean. Their hands and faces and clothes are all spotless. A few of them are wearing loafers."

Viv stares intently for several minutes. "Joe, you can't tell this to anybody. But I'm wondering something."

Viv looks at one photo. Then another. Then back to the first.

"You ever know anybody that's been secretly gay?"