Alvin(II)

The first time I saw him, he entered a cubicle. You could hear him straining and muttering curses as I quietly replenished toilet rolls in the adjacent cubicles. I remained loitering silently in one of those conveniences as he emerged, still muttering, to wash his famously tiny hands.

He was bulkier than I had imagined and even from behind I could see how swollen his ankles were. Beyond the restroom door muffled disco music seeped inside from the golden ballroom.

"Beautiful!" he exclaimed to his own reflection as he preened what remained of his weird hair. It seemed amazing that I was effectively alone in that rest room with the bloated forty seventh president of The United States of America who clearly imagined that he was King of the World and perfectly safe in his Florida palace . However, like millions of other earthlings, I thought of him as  a narcissistic fraud, a dangerous fake president whose rampant authoritarianism needed to be stopped in its tracks. He had already caused too much hurt, too much chaos.

Somebody had to do it and I felt that the invisible finger of destiny had pointed my way. I owed it to the world and there was no turning back now.

I continued for weeks as "Good 'Ol Alvin". Other members of the maintenance team sometimes called me Chipmunk for some strange reason but I just kept on smiling inanely and humming those country and western tunes as I had done at The Palm Beach Country Club. I even got to see Dan Gilbert again and thanked him profusely for his "kind reference". What a dolt!

It was a question of biding my time and seizing the moment when it arrived. I had to be prepared. Almost twelve months  passed by with me polishing mirrors and taps, mopping floors, replacing toilet rolls and undertaking minor  plumbing repairs. "Patience", I told myself.

I had heard that He was back at Mar-a-Lago for another long golfing weekend and perhaps I would be lucky after several previous opportunities had had to be aborted - mostly because of other gentlemen using the bathroom facility.

However, on this occasion he was alone. As on the first weekend I saw him, he entered the first cubicle to defecate.  He vocalised as he strained and angrily muttered  unintelligible expletives before emerging.

He stood at the sinks washing his little hands and preening his mane, grinning at himself and saying "Beautiful!" three or four times. 

I waited until he was at the noisy electric hand drier before swiftly grabbing my pre-prepared bucket of extra soapy water from the "Out of Order" cubicle. Silently I flooded the marble tiled floor just behind him and as planned, the magic happened in the very second that he turned round.

His feet went from under him - as though on  black ice - and as he fell onto his back his skull thudded sickeningly against the unforgiving sink in which he had just washed his hands. Then his head hit the hard floor with a heavy scrunch. 

Almost immediately, there was blood.

I had to act quickly before somebody else came in. Most of the slippery water was mopped up in an instant and I put out  the two yellow "Wet Floor" warning cones that I had also stored in the "Out of Order" cubicle.

If he wasn't dead, he was at least out cold. The pool of blood was growing. It all appeared exactly as I had envisioned. A belligerent, entitled old man had entered the restroom, ignored the warning cones and slipped on the floor, fatally fracturing his skull. It had all the characteristics of a "terrible accident". Nothing sinister or suspicious.

I could not resist booting his fat bulk twice. "That's for Renee Good!" I hissed. And in my head I said, "That's for the deaths you caused by defunding USAID!"

With no time for anything else, I got back in the "Out of Order" cubicle with my bucket and mop, locked the  door and stood in silence on the toilet bowl so that nobody would see my feet. I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat as I waited there like a bird of prey on my porcelain perch.

And then the voices came. First an aide yelling, "Help!". Then two or three security guards arguing about what should happen. One said, "I think he's alive! Shut up guys! Call 911!" Others came and a woman - possibly Karoline Leavitt - screamed. Then ambulance personnel arrived with "Make space! Let us through!" There were flashes of photography.

Then after an hour or so, all went silent. I got down from my perch and slipped out through the cubicle door. The bleeding hulk of the odorous tyrant had gone - presumably to Sollis Health Emergency Center at Palm Beach - or maybe, if my luck was in, to a morgue.

Like other staff members, I was questioned briefly by the cops who took down my name and address but when my work shift was over I headed back as normal to my shabby rented room in Roosevelt Estates.

Switching on my secondhand laptop, I checked out the live TV news. A grim-faced Fox News reporter with coiffured platinum blonde hair was in the middle of an announcement: "...passed away ten minutes ago... following a fall in his Mar-a-Lago residence...I repeat..." 

Naturally, I punched the air. "Yes!"

I continued working at Mar-a-Lago for the next month,  during the period of national mourning demanded by President Vance in association with Tesla and the McDonalds Corporation - until accidentally on purpose I knocked over a priceless Chinese vase outside the therapy facility. It shattered into a thousand pieces and I was promptly frogmarched into General Manager Andrew Kiser's office where, to my inner delight, I was fired on the spot.

"I haven't got a choice Alvin!" he said.

Days later, jetting back across the Atlantic, I sat in business class sipping cold champagne while smiling the peculiar smile of a cold-hearted assassin. Nobody else in the world knew what I had done and I determined never to tell anyone. For that, my friend. is the only way to keep such a deadly secret.