stories

Hillary Takes a Sweet, Sweet Nap

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Hillary yawned. She had been campaigning all morning, and someone on the bus suggested she take a nap. She slapped the person across the face in a playful, fun way. She didn’t take naps. She slept one to two hours a night, but always sitting up with her hand on her phone and her eyes partially open, like she had either lost her glasses or was in the middle of an orgasm. But Hillary had never napped, not even in college. People said naps made you feel amazing, happy, alive. Some people saw things when they took naps — bright lights or dragons or naked versions of people they work with. Some people said they needed naps to do anything creative. But these people were burnouts. Hippies. They were the kind of people who could list at least five different percussion instruments with almost no hesitation. They could never run the free world. They were Nappers, and she was Hillary Fucking Clinton.

(Very few people knew “Fucking” was Hillary’s real middle name. She changed it at Wellesley, and then spent years hiding it from the Arkansas papers. Huma had managed to bury all documents listing her middle name under a pile of dirt somewhere behind a Red Roof Inn in Missouri. But sometimes, if she knew she was alone, she would unclasp her bra, throw her hands up, and just yell out: “I’m Hillary Fucking Clinton!” Bill heard her once, but he just kept reading a menu for Chinese takeout like nothing had happened.)

Now Hillary found herself sitting in a patch of sunlight on the bus about to dig into an exciting memo on infrastructure reform when she looked up and saw Tim Kaine in the seat across from her, curled up with his eyes closed. Was he … napping? His jaw was slack. Drool pumped out of his mouth like a water fountain at a children’s museum. His hands were resting between his legs. Tim’s kind of touching his dick! she thought to herself, then laughed at her own joke inside her head, then told herself to calm down. Didn’t Tim have anything better to do? Maybe she should have picked Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren wouldn’t be napping right now. She would be eating jerky and doing something fun and annoying like trying to get everyone to sing “One Day More” from Les Miz or making fun of Robby Mook’s pants. Hillary wondered if she should get a Sharpie and draw an obscene picture on Tim’s face, like a butt with a puff of wind blowing out of it, like he was farting into his own ear. But they would be in Colorado soon, and then Tim Kaine would have a farting butt on his face. That was more trouble than it was worth. The bus was rocking gently, and the sun was warm through the window, and Tim Kaine had an insane amount of drool on his neck, and pretty soon Hillary Clinton was taking the first nap of her life.

Huma woke her up with a panicked whisper, “Are you napping?” Hillary shook her head, confused. “No. I don’t nap. That’s impossible.” But they both knew it was a lie. She’d gotten a taste, and now she wanted more.

Things escalated quickly. Huma started to lose track of Hillary, then would find her an hour later in the alley against a wall with her eyes shut. Hillary started taking little naps everywhere — in a locked bathroom, in a locked plane, FaceTiming with her grandkids. When Hillary asked a volunteer in North Carolina where the best place in town was to get some “shut-eye,” Huma had to pay her $10,000 to stay quiet. (“Ten thousand? Really? Okay,” the volunteer said.) One time Huma caught an intern coming back from the store with a neck pillow in a bag. “Who is the neck pillow for?” Huma asked the intern. “It’s for me … to take a nap with …” the intern said, then immediately fired himself.

Huma thought the worst was over, but later that week, when the campaign ran out of petty cash, Hillary blamed Robby Mook. “He’s probably, like, out buying pants again …” she said, avoiding Huma’s eyes. Huma started to rip through Hillary’s luggage, looking for the cash, when suddenly she saw it. There, on top of a pile of thongs and old New Yorkers, was a white-noise machine. Hillary tried to explain: “It just helps me relax, you know? You can choose if you want the ocean or a jungle or just, like, a cow …” Huma kicked everyone off the bus. The two women sat alone for a long time. Neither spoke.

“Donald Trump knows you’ve been sleeping. Sean Hannity knows too. I’m out there defending you, and the whole time, the whole time you’re falling asleep in the middle of the day listening to a rain-forest frog or some shit …” Huma was crying now. Hillary was crying too. They were women, and women are weak and bad at things. This was the end of the line. “What’s so great about sleeping all the time?” Huma asked. “Why don’t you come with me and find out? Nap with me?” Hillary asked. Huma let out a sad, sort of hollow laugh. Sure. Why not? Why not just give up? She held Hillary’s hand and closed her eyes.

Suddenly, Huma and Hillary were flying far above the Earth. Was this a dream? It must be. It was so beautiful, and for the first time, Huma felt free. “Look, Huma! White men don’t exist anymore!” Hillary shouted. Huma looked down and saw that Hillary was right. White men had been replaced with sandwiches. Donald Trump was a sandwich. His rallies were big sandwich parties. Sean Hannity was a talking sandwich. Ryan Lochte was a swimming sandwich. Almost all movies were directed by sandwiches. CEOs were sandwiches playing sandwich games like golf. Cargo shorts were sandwich shorts. Instead of The Bachelor, there was a show called The Sandwich, and it was mostly women trying to have sex with a sandwich.

Idris Elba was flying next to them, fully nude, and talking about his favorite London hot spots. Hillary made a charming joke about The Wire, and he laughed for a long time and then became 100-percent erect. “Secretary Clinton, you’re so funny that it physically arouses me.” “No way!” Hillary said, blushing. His boner was pulling the three of them up farther into the clouds. “I think my boner is the Up balloons!” Idris yelled out. Hillary was beaming now. She decided to tell Huma her secret: “Idris asked me to dream-marry him.” Huma nodded like that was a real thing, and she knew exactly what it was. “I mean I want to do it, but that means I’ll never be able to wake up again for the rest of my life. What do you think?” Hillary asked, searching Huma’s face for an answer. She needed her friend to say it was okay to leave her complicated existence behind and become the flying wife of Idris Elba in a world where all white men were sandwiches. If anyone would understand, it was Huma. But Huma just shook her head and said, “No. You’re going to wake up right now, you’re going to put on a blazer that fully covers your ass, and you’re going to keep fighting. And you know the reason why?” Hillary nodded. Her heart was breaking. She knew the reason, and it was simple. She was Hillary Fucking Clinton. She let Idris’s hand go — finger by finger — and watched as he floated up and away and finally disappeared behind a single beautiful cloud. Then she opened her eyes.

Hillary Takes a Sweet, Sweet Nap