by Fred Russell

Amalia Knight, M.Sc., was a ghostwriter. She had been ghostwriting since her elementary school days, when she had patched up compositions for her classmates, and then through high school and the university, when she had written them from scratch, and now she had a thriving business advertised on the Internet. But it wasn’t only undergraduates whom she helped out. Not a few of her professors had used her services too, dictating their ideas and leaving it to her to put them together. A few of them had also tried to bed her down, for though she was a stringbean of a girl and black as pitch, she was soft in all the right places and came from a family of professors herself, albeit in the social sciences, with a brother in aeronautical engineering.

The most prominent of her clients was undoubtedly Professor Arthur James, Nobel Prize candidate and originator of a theory of bows that was on the way to revolutionizing modern physics. Bow Theory as developed by Professor James yielded an elliptical model of the universe based on Einsteinian curvature, giving it the appearance of a bow tie or knotted shoe lace hanging more or less in the middle of nowhere. At the heart of the theory was of course the mystery of the knot, single or double, banded or bare. It was clear that all matter followed its course, coming out on the other side to continue a journey repeated an infinite number times as described in unified field theory, but it was unclear how the knot had been formed and what, if anything, was at its heart. Some said God Himself, some said nothing at all.

Their collaboration had begun with the bestselling Brief History of Bow Theory for the popular market, inspired by the Hawking book. This was followed by A Brief History of Knot Theory and then by Unified Field Theory for Beginners. Nowadays the Professor dictated his papers to Amalia, generally outdoors on warm days, preferably in a sylvan setting while standing behind a hedge or row of bushes so that he could urinate at his pleasure while Amalia stood on the other side dressing up his prose. He insisted that the distance between them be precisely eighteen feet and tended to mumble so it was not easy work but the final result was always satisfactory and he paid her well. Amalia shared an apartment with a former classmate, an Asian girl working on her doctorate and always urging Amalia to do the same, but Amalia said she was through with the academic grind and more than happy with the ghostwriting, which paid the bills and left her plenty of time to write philosophical poems that were being published in avant garde journals under a pen name.

Amalia finally had a boyfriend too, an NFL linebacker known as Bumper Jones. Bumper was no dummy, even if he didn’t understand higher mathematics, and appreciated the prize he had won, though he had to be careful not to crush her when he took her in his arms. When he was in town they double-dated with her roommate and then each couple retired to a separate bedroom and made love through the night. Though she enjoyed the lovemaking as well as his company, she had no intention of marrying him. She was still searching for the love of her life.

Bow Theory fascinated her. She had read Kant and for a time imagined that space and time were only in her head. Now she was faced with a dilemma, for like Einstein and just about everyone else, Professor James argued that they were objectively real, albeit bowed and knotted. What then was outside the bow? No one was saying. Was the bow all there was? How could that be?

Professor James said, “The bow is the universe. That is its shape.”

Amalia said, “What about time? Does time have a shape too?”

“Yes,” the Professor said. “It is in the shape of a bow.”

“I heard otherwise,” Amalia said.

“I’m listening.”

“All time is the present time, forever expanding.”

“That may be true, but it expands in the shape of a bow, slower or faster as the case may be.”

“You make it sound as if we’re on a merry-go-round.”

“In a certain sense we are.”

That wasn’t good enough for Amalia, who wished to explore the topic further but was unfortunately unequipped to do so, so she thought about something else. She was always reasoning things out to a certain point and then being stopped cold, lacking the tools to go any further. That was true in philosophy as well. The time expanding business had come from Spinoza, who had said that there was no before or after in eternity. She also went along with Aristotle, who had believed that the universe had no beginning. These were fairly radical positions in the circles she moved in. Had she been accredited she would have been thought of as a maverick. As it was, they were just private thoughts that she occasionally shared with her roommate and tried to explain to Bumper, but he just scratched his head.

Aside from the Bow Theory books she had also ghostwritten a cookbook for working women by a torch singer who called herself Beryl Strange and couldn’t tell the difference between oregano and basil. Neither could Amalia for that matter but fortunately she had a grandmother who could, and much more, though readers wondered how a Jew gal like Beryl knew so much about chitlins and collard greens. She’d even ghostwritten a memoir by General Dudley P. Hartburne, who’d helped get 4,000 Americans killed in Iraq after locating that forlorn country on a map though not before twice going off in the wrong direction. Amalia was versatile.

The new project was a book by Barney Bosh, a “hard-hitting” investigative reporter whose ambition in life was to win the Pulitzer Prize like his uncle Frank Bosh, who had won six of them for reporting from countries whose language he didn’t understand. This time Amalia would be helping out with the investigative part too.

“It’s a senator on the take,” Bosh told her.

“How do you know he’s on the take?” Amalia asked him.

“The FBI is investigating him.”

“Then what does anyone need you for?”

“The public has a right to know.”

“Won’t you be interfering with the investigation and alerting the criminals?”

“That’s how democracy works.”

Amalia wasn’t sure and had wondered from time to time if it wasn’t the journalists whose privacy should be invaded, which would have shut them up fast enough, in her view. However, she needed the money and was curious about how investigative reporters went about their business.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Talk to everyone involved.”

“How will I know who’s involved?”

“Their names have been leaked.”

“By whom?”

“The newspapers. That’s where you’ll find them. But time is of the essence. In this business, you have to be first with the worst.”

It took her just a few days to work up a list. She struck paydirt with the third name, a former aide who was prepared to spill the beans, so she met him in an underground garage and got it all on tape. Bosh was beside himself. Amalia said, “Shouldn’t we inform the FBI and let them take it from here?” “No! No! No!’ Bosh exclaimed. “That isn’t how a free press operates. It’s our story!” Bosh was right and he almost did win his Pulitzer but he was beaten out by James Barker, who got it for withholding information from the police until his front-page story hit the newsstands.

All this was naturally disillusioning for Amalia, who vowed never to go near another journalist for as long as she lived, even though Bosh now had the inside story on a child sex ring which he was keeping to himself until he had enough to show his editor and was willing to pay Amalia big bucks to help him interview the abused children.

The money she made from the crooked senator, who had been indicted without the help of the Bosh book, allowed Amalia to take some time off and vacation in France, where she hooked up with a Croatian footballer who was making $32 million a year on the field and had just been named spokesperson for Grey’s Antiseptic Mouthwash and Bad Breath Purifier. Unfortunately he didn’t use it himself so Amalia had to hold her own breath when he was servicing her and maintain a safe distance at all other times. Bumper had at least used an entire battery of sprays and deodorants so she found herself longing for his embrace. When she got back home she confessed to him that she had been with another man, but rather than being angered he confessed to her that he had been with another woman, so they called things even and got back together. With her domestic life back on track, she went right back to work, starting a book on sumo wrestling and other violent sports. The author took her to Japan to see some matches but she was banned from the arena because she couldn’t stop laughing whenever the blubberboys banged their bodies together. From there they traveled to Thailand for the kickboxing and then to Peking for the executions. The book, called Ballbusters, was on the Times bestseller list for 26 weeks and established Amalia as the leading ghostwriter in the country.

With fame came invitations everywhere and she was even invited to teach a ghostwriting course at Harvard, which she gladly accepted, sending her Asian roommate instead as her own ghostlecturer. No one thought that was funny over at Harvard except for a few of the students and she was nearly sued for breach of contract, which she averted by having Bumper get free tickets to the Super Bowl for the entire senior administrative staff. In the Super Bowl itself, Bumper picked up a fumble and ran 40 yards for the game-winning touchdown, so they both found themselves on the cover of Time as Black Couple of the Year. That was when Bumper proposed and Amalia surprised herself by saying, “Yes I will yes,” remembering something she had read. She got pregnant right away and had a 17-pound baby in the fall. Needless to say, it was a difficult pregnancy and it took her a while to recover though she had a nanny and nursemaid to look after the infant and a big staff to look after the 18-room house that Bumper had purchased from the natives on an island in the Pacific after signing a big contract with Nike. The natives were all hired as gardeners and continued to sleep in their huts.

Once she was fully recovered, Amalia went back to work. Her next book was an autobiography of Bumper himself after he signed another big contract with Needlebaum Noodles, which had recently purchased a controlling interest in four of the biggest publishing houses in America. Bumper had had a tough life. “Thank God for football” was the closing line of the bestselling book, and before long just about everyone was repeating it, from janitors to post office clerks. Bumper let his newfound fame go to his head and was soon telling Amalia that one day he just might run for president.

“I’ll write your speeches,” Amalia said.

“You bet your sweet ass you will,” Bumper replied.

On the whole, they got along pretty well. Amalia was afraid to risk bearing another child, so they stuck with the one they had, whom they named DeRobert for no special reason. DeRobert turned out to be a straight-A student, so it wasn’t going to be football for him, or ghostwriting either for that matter. However, he told his parents that he wanted to raise turtles for a living when he grew up, so they were pretty disappointed and on his case from morning to night, so he ran away from home and went to live on a commune out west. When he was eighteen he came back home, the proud proprietor of the biggest turtle farm in America and part owner of a turtle-racing track in Miami. He also had a stable of snapping turtles that he pitted against pitbulls and proudly told his parents that he’d already fathered a dozen children. Bumper just shook his head and Amalia just shrugged her shoulders. Later she said, “We’ve failed as parents.” Bumper replied that they’d done pretty well in all other departments. They now ranked fifty-sixth on the Forbes List, Bumper with his endorsements and Amalia with a variety of enterprises ranging from movie production to hi-tech startups. When she got her own TV show people started calling her the new Oprah. Bumper was her first guest and the viewing audience loved the rapport between them. They were now America’s first couple, haggling only about which of them should run for president.

Amalia said, “It’s time we had a black female ghostwriter in the White House.”

Bumper said, “It’s time we had an NFL linebacker in the White House.

Even DeRobert put in his two cents. “What about a turtle farmer?”

All three of them vied for the nomination. On the Republican side they had a used-car dealer running against a former anchorman at Fox News. The anchorman won hands down. On the Democratic side the race went right down to the wire with DeRobert in the lead by a nose until Amalia took California. In an effort to unite the Party she announced at the Convention that Bumper would be her running mate and DeRobert her Secretary of State. What is more, thanks to DeRobert’s connections, they were going to have a gangbanger from the hood as Secretary of Defense and a Hollywood rapper as Secretary of Education. The outgoing president, under indictment for groping underage children, declared on Fox, “What is the country coming to?”

That in a nutshell is the story of Amalia Knight, first black woman ghostwriter to become president of the United States. On Inauguration Night, the brothers burned down Harlem. America was making a fresh start.