The Blue Suit
By Josh Resnek
The mayor left his cell phone inside the jacket pocket of his blue suit hanging in his bedroom closet in his mansion on Abbott Street.
The Blue Suit called me. As usual, we shared quite a discussion about the mayor.
No one in this city knows what the mayor is up to better than the Blue Suit.
“He is so uptight by having to remain inside his home you have no idea,” the Blue Suit told me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He searched all over the house frantically for two hours trying to find his phone. You would have thought his television went on the blink. That’s how crazy he got searching for the cell phone. Thank God he didn’t find it. Thank God he doesn’t have to wear me today. In fact, the past two weeks has been good for me. It is hell when he wears me. When he wears me back to back days I might as well be put on a ventilator, that’s how bad it is for me.”
I asked the Blue Suit to fill me in on the mayor’s psychic life.
“What is he thinking about? What is his state of mind? How is he doing with social distancing?”
“He is not doing well with the social distancing. Let’s face it, he has nothing to do in general. This coronavirus social distancing thing and the city shutdown has made it worse. It worsened dramatically when we had to leave Aruba shortly after he shut down the city from the beach using his cell phone,” the Blue Suit recalled.
In fact, the mayor left the city as the virus multiplied.
“He didn’t want to deal with it. He was happy to go to Aruba. I heard him talking with people at city hall who were begging him to do something, to do anything because the situation was becoming grim. Finally, he made a decision. He shut down the city. He cancelled the rest of his vacation. Reluctantly, he returned to Everett. Boy was he pissed off having to come back to the city,” the Blue Suit told me.
“If he could have, he would have stayed in Aruba until the end of May – and I know he was thinking about doing this.”
“How do you know that?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“I listen in to his cell phone calls, all of them. If I was work- ing for the FBI he’d certainly be indicted!” the Blue Suit joked.
“Is that a possibility, the mayor being indicted?” I asked. The Blue Suit kind of held his breath. He went silent. “Are you OK?” I asked him.
“I don’t know if I should reveal this,” the Blue Suit said to me. “I heard something several days ago. The mayor talking to a friend inside his bedroom behind a closed door.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I told the Blue Suit.
He insisted what he heard was so over the top it was hard even for him to believe.
“He said he had been lying low, trying to clean up his personal business because…” the Blue Suit halted…”he’s going away in November.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I responded.
“Where did he say he was going?” I asked the Blue Suit. “Is he planning to take another vacation to Aruba?” I asked. “No. It didn’t sound like that kind of discussion at all,” the
Blue Suit answered me.
“Who was he talking with?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you that. I won’t tell you that. I can only share so much with you because if he finds out I’m communicating with you, he’ll send me to a used clothing store or he’ll sell me for $25 on the Internet or he’ll have Jerry Navarro give me away to a homeless person and that will be it for me,” the Blue Suit answered.
“In a fit of anger the other day I heard him tell someone that he was considering cutting me up into enough material to make five or ten N95 face masks! How do you think I felt about hearing that!” he asked me.
“Tell me again, exactly what you heard about the mayor going away, please,” I repeated to the Blue Suit.
“All I remember him saying is that he is hanging low right now because he is going away in November. That’s the truth. Whether or not he was being honest, I don’t know,” the Blue Suit said.
“What else has he been talking about?,” I asked.
“Deals and more deals. I can’t get it into it now. I’ve told you enough for one session. Besides, he’s running around the house like a madman looking for his cell phone. Sooner or later he’s going to find it on me and there will be hell to pay,” he added.
“He can’t get over how this virus has screwed everything up for him. It screwed up his vacation. Lately, he’s been on a tear to make the summer appear in his back yard.”
‘What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“He’s going to open his pool early. That’s more important to him than just about anything else.”
“That figures,” I said to the Blue Suit.
“If he goes away, as he’s been saying, he’s worried about the grade of beef he’ll be eating.”
“Really?” I asked.
“He prefers Kobe beef. You can’t get that at McKinnon’s.”
“Do you know what cut of Kobe beef he prefers?”
“Great question, Josh,” the Blue Suit replied.
“His preference is for authentic Japanese Wagyu Kobe Beef Rib Eye steaks. He buys them five at a time. The one pounders are $250 each. He looks at it like this ‘I live in a mansion. I don’t have to go to work. I get paid big money doing what I do. Why shouldn’t I eat good steak?’”
“You heard him say that?” I asked.
“Yes. Every word of this is true.”
“You know Kobe beef is banned,” I said to him.
“He doesn’t give a hoot about the law. You know that, Josh. He gets a kick, a real charge out of organized theft. He considers himself a master at it,” the Blue Suit added.
“I heard him say he can’t get a piece of normal sirloin down his throat. I thought he was kidding but he wasn’t. He gagged on a piece of New York Sirloin from Whole Foods two days ago. He was wild about that. I tried to tell him he shouldn’t pour so much A-1 sauce on the sirloin, that it is filled with chemicals and it might make him sick. He never listens to me,” the Blue Suit said.
“Also, he ate a plate of spicy chicken wings and pork fried rice from the Kowloon before cutting into the Kobe beef. What a waste. Can you imagine?” the Blue Suit asked me.
“Not really. I guess he gets really hungry.”
“Not all the time anymore,” the Blue Suit told me.
“Do you think he’ll get Kobe beef when and if he goes away for a while in November?” I asked.
“I think he’ll have more than Kobe beef being served to him to worry about if he goes away,” the Blue Suit said.
“Listen, I can hear the mayor heading for the bedroom. I’ll talk to you again, soon, Josh,” the Blue Suit said.
“OK buddy, good luck.”