When Clinton drove, it was so dark, that looking out of the windshield, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque world outside. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when his beeper went off. He checked it. No message. To his great annoyance, the beeper went off once, twice, three times more, and for each, no message. It was past two when he left the house. Who could be trying to contact him at this hour? He threw the preposterous device out the window. He knew where he was going, and would tolerate no further interruptions.
     Monica’s house was in the hills; which hills I cannot say for fear of reprisal. One does not give out such information indiscriminately.  Suffice it to say that were one to ponder the location of the house that Monica lived in, one could do worse than to consider the hills, but don’t quote me.
     As Clinton twisted his way up the spaghetti of roads towards Mulholland (not the real street), he pondered his relationship with Monica over the past ten years of the second millennium, but only until it gave him a hard-on.
     She was waiting for him at the door, flinging it open, spectacularly backlit in a slinky silk dressing gown, thong exposed, coyly murmuring “Who is it?”
     Clinton was suitably stunned, righteously exclaiming “That’s what I needed to see.” He tried to go in but she blocked his way.
     “Unh, unh, unh, you gotta get past me first.” she squealed.
     Before Clinton had a chance to formulate a plan, Monica jumped him, legs firmly around his waist, hands clasped around his neck, Clinton handling it beautifully, not dropping her, carrying her into the living room, and yet somehow managing to close the door behind him. Monica still wouldn’t allow Clinton to put her down, so they were still connected when they fell to the floor. So intent was she upon planting kisses on her prey, and mysteriously oblivious to Clinton’s obvious distraction, it took some time before Clinton could blurt out “Wait a minute, please, can we talk first?”
     She gave the obvious answer if she wanted to get any, “No,” before tickling his inseam.
     “Look, I know it’s weird,” Clinton went on, “completely unlike me, but I want to talk.”
     Oh shit, here he goes again. “About what?” she replied while tearing off his pants.
     “No, hold on. Really. Something strange happened to me tonight.”
     “Oh really? Someone else sue you for sexual discrimination?"
     “No.”
     “Well I’m about to if you don’t help me get these pants off.”
     She was trying to do just that while his shoes were still on, which really brought him back. Nevertheless, he let the truth be known. “I saw Hillary tonight.”
     That calmed Monica down. This was one she hadn’t heard before. “Tell me more,” she politely asked.
     “It was her. I saw her. Hillary,” Clinton explained. “ She appeared in my bed, she tried to, well, you know...”
     “Whatayuh mean I know?” said Monica in a tither. “Have sex with you? Is that what you’re trying to say? Your wife came back from the dead and tried to fuck you? That’s what you’re telling me? Because if so, you’ve got to leave right now. I’ve got a rule against fucking crazy people.”
     “I know it sounds absurd, but it seemed to happen.” Clinton’s face soon betrayed a true concern. “It was real. I don’t know why I’m telling you. I just feel strange, that’s all, not crazy, like everything is changing, like I’m losing control.”
     The old “my life is out of control” bit. She’d heard it all before and knew precisely what to do about it. “Poor baby,” she purred, “let me just see what that bad old Hillary did to you.” Peeking in his underwear, she was motivated to exclaim “Looks all right to me.”
     But looks were deceiving as a liberal politician with a moderate agenda. Clinton still didn’t feel right. There was a scent about the evening that a thousand saunas would not melt away. He asked to go to the bedroom.
     “You have to ask?”
     It was a pretty fancy mahogany king-sized bed hanging from the ceiling, replete with heavy cast iron chains that Clinton and Monica fell into. She sat astride him and took off his shirt. When she leaned back to start on his pants, Clinton looked up at the ceiling. The mirrored ceiling. According to the ceiling, he was alone on the bed, his pants seeming to move down his legs of their own accord. He quickly started up into a half-recumbent attitude, and found himself face to face with Monica, as close to him as I am to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
      “What’s with that look?” Monica asked. “Am I doing something wrong?”
     He looked back up at the ceiling just to be sure. Monica, the seemingly flesh and blood woman above him, still had no reflection. He looked back down at her, depending upon what your definition of the word “her” is, for right before his eyes, Monica’s fabled features seemed to melt away, the face and nose getting longer, till he could swear it was Paula Jones seated astride his hips. He drew back in horror as she whispered “Aw, you’ve guessed our little secret” into his scandalized ear. And as she spoke, her features melted into the visage of Kathleen Willey, then Gennifer Flowers, then another woman he barely recognized, a constantly morphing and looping cavalcade of all his conquests.
     “Stop doing that,” Clinton demanded before asking. “Who are you?” Then he remembered. “Are you the Spirit, uh, Spirits, who’s coming was, uh, were, foretold to me?”
     “Yes, I am, and we are.” The images of the women in his life faded back and forth so fast he couldn’t keep up. It was Gennifer, sweet loving Gennifer, who had just said “Yes, I am,” but Paula, bitch from hell Paula, who said “and we are.” It would not stop, GenniferMonicaPaulaKathleen, GenniferMonicaPaulaKathleen, all blending into each other, the voices soft and gentle, then grating and abrasive, singularly low, then high, as if instead of being so close to him, she were at a distance, yet so near he could smell the heat from her/their crotch.
     It was a strange figure - like a woman viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave her the appearance of simultaneously receding and coming into view. But the strangest thing about her was that from her breasts there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible.
     Even this, though, when Clinton looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: she was an infinity woman, being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: a montage of dissolving and melting parts. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; a woman he had penetrated in the past, some of them vague memories of momentary flings, others distinct and clear as yesterday’s paper.
     “Who, and what are you.” Clinton demanded.
     “I am the Ghost of Valentines Day Past.”
     “Long Past.” inquired Clinton: observant of its schizophrenic stature.
     “No. Your past.”
     The blur of faces before him caused Clinton a bit of discomfort. “But you keep changing. I don’t know what the word ‘you’ means. Do you mind if I call you “you?” Because the you I’m talking to is different every second. I realize that I’ve had some form of, ahem, sexual encounter with all of your manifestations, but don’t you think it’s a little unfair to gang up on me like this?” Was she that waitress from Omaha? That vigorous patrolwoman from Des Moines? “Many of you are from so long ago, I confess I don’t even remember.”
     At this point, a writer of journalism might be driven to the point where he felt the desire to betray a confidence of one form or another by disclosing the actual names of some of Clinton’s other lovers, or to be more specific about the exact number of morphs we’re talking about here. But as the novelist, I am allowed to do otherwise, to avoid the subject entirely, to fill in the area around the story while avoiding the actual story itself.
     When filmmakers do this, it’s called “annoying.” Novelists, however, are allowed the luxury of the meander, otherwise how could they fill up all those hundreds and hundreds of pages with stories that could just as easily have been rendered in ten pages were they in the mood to cut to the quick. Films that meander drive us crazy, but books that meander usually take us places we weren’t expecting to go. You can put them down and pick them up, for days and days. We allow ourselves to get lost in a world of thought, stumbling across that one narrative sentence that so transcends the subject matter it cuts to the core of your being and you simply have to put the book down, lie back, and do nothing but think for a few minutes, lost in a cerebral reboot.
     You think you know what I’m doing. You think I’m just a rewrite man, savagely inserting my coy remarks into an already agreeable text, a literary rapist who has invited innocent little “A Christmas Carol” up to his hotel room for a drink, only to savagely throw it down on the sofa bed to have my way with it, delicately plucking off its rich vocabulary, only to insert my hip remarks. I’ve got Dickens where I want him, dead in the ground, making it more literary necrophilia than literary rape. Is necrophilia always rape, or is it just possible that Dickens would consent to the pillage? I have, after all, not only swiped his story but his exact words as well. His novels are full of journalism, which I have updated, but the rest I have left alone. Dickens told truth through his fiction because he learned the same lesson that Bill Clinton did. Sometimes the best way to be honest is to lie like hell.
     Journalists strive to entertain while bound by the limitations of the profession. You can’t call it news unless you deliver some form of actual information that is supposed to be factual. As a novelist, I say of this rule, who needs it. The names already mentioned as cast members for the everlasting morph of Clinton’s lovers known as “The Ghost of Valentines Day Past” were all in the news quite regularly. Their mention could hardly be considered enticing, exploitive, shocking, revelatory, or manipulative, though I reserve the right be any of these things should I, or Dickens, so desire. These women are the ones that everyone in the United States was made intentionally aware of through the common trade of journalism, practitioners of which routinely find out things and subsequently tell the public about them. That’s the job.
     But what if a journalist found out something that was none of their business, something extremely personal, something having to do with bodily functions, like, oh, let’s say that a prominent politician had a boil on his butt, or another had to urinate five times a night. Would this journalist feel compelled to tell the public? Is a boil on the butt important information just because the person involved is an important public figure? Does the public have the right to know how often the President urinates? They might, but that doesn’t mean they need to be told, or indeed that a practicing journalist has to tell them just because he happens to find out. Without the elaborate system of checks and balances existing in any legitimate news gathering organization, without a series of editors to run things past, each individual journalist IS the media. And if a picture of the president, pants down, boil exposed, urinating at midnight, were to be broadcast worldwide by the media, would the attendant embarrassment be the fault of the president or the media?
     Not that there’s anything wrong with embarrassing people. When Christine Lahti got caught in the bathroom upon the announcement of her Emmy, it was undeniably funny. The journalist, however, who asked her afterwards whether it was number one or number two, was an asshole.
     This writer will have no part of it. From now on, it’s fiction for me. If you are a public figure and I happened to see your butt at the Hollywood YMCA last week, have no fear, your secret is safe. Were I wont to describe nothing but the actual offenses I have seen people commit before my eyes, I could fill a book, but it would be a book other than this one. And. likewise, if this particular book contains any TRUTH, it cannot be blamed upon the facts.
     Like most public figures whose every movement had been scrutinized by the media, Clinton could not help but visualize each bit of minutia in his life as headlines: THIS MORNING, PRESIDENT CLINTON AWOKE AND RUBBED HIS EYES , he thought upon awakening and rubbing his eyes, picturing thousands and thousand of copies being delivered to houses across the land. A nation arising to discover THE SECRET SCANDAL BEHIND CLINTON’S BREAKFAST (too much salt). With such a weight upon his imagination, he was to be forgiven for picturing his current situation in the same light; CLINTON CAUGHT IN BED WITH HUNDREDS OF WOMEN.
     Perhaps, Clinton could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but the light from the spirit’s breasts was so blinding he put his hands upon them to be covered.
     “What.” exclaimed the Ghost, “would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give. Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made these ghostly breasts, and force me through whole trains of years to wear them upon my chest.”
     Clinton reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge of having willfully groped the Spirit at any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought her there.
     “Your welfare.” said the Ghost.
     Clinton expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest, or perhaps an orgasm, would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:
     “Your edification, then. Take heed.”
     It put out its well-manicured hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.
     “Rise. and walk with me.”
     “Cute. You gonna sprinkle me with fairy dust?”
     “Only in the movies,” explained the spirit. “In reality, it’s more like a rewind button.”
     It would have been in vain for Clinton to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that the bedroom was air conditioned, and outside the thermometer a long way above freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his boxers, shoes, and argyle socks; and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman’s hand could be, was not to be resisted.
     “Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon her heart,” and you shall be upheld in more than this.”
     As the words were spoken, they passed through the time/space continuum, and Clinton felt a wrenching pull from his stomach, as if he were a tape in a VCR, his life but a movie, playing backwards in fast motion, past the opening scenes, past the credits, the studio logo, the previews, the ads for overpriced popcorn, past the audience is listening, and well into the prequel.
     It was a timeless American landscape that happened to be in Arkansas but could have been a million places across the nation: The sky. The bilious clouds whose description I’ll spare you. Fields of grain lining the country road, a gentle breeze, the scent of juniper.
     “Good Heaven!” said Clinton, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. “This is Arkansas. I was bred in this place. I was a boy here.”
     The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old politician’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten.
     They walked along the road, Clinton recognizing every gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of happy music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it.
     As the two travelers proceeded, Clinton rejoiced beyond all bounds to see the sights. His cold eye glistened and his heart leapt up as they went past. He was filled with gladness when he heard them give each other “Happy Valentines Day” as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for their several homes. But what was Happy Valentines Day to Clinton. What good had it ever done him.
     Suddenly, before the pair, was a 1946 Ford Galaxy parked under a tree.
     Clinton had trouble getting his bearings. “Whoa,” he exclaimed, “this is too much. I’ve got to sit down.” Looking down at the ground, it finally bubbled to the surface of his consciousness that he was in fact not on it but floating above it. “What am I doing up here?” he was heard to say. “Put me down.”
     The spirit offered him a supporting hand, saying “Easy, big boy, I’m sure you can handle it.”
     “Wait a minute. There’s something about that car.”
     “It’s yours.”
     “No it’s not.”
     “Yes it is, just look, it’s a Ford Galaxy.”
     “Yeah, but mine’s the ‘51 convertible” explained Clinton, causing the spirit to wonder if there indeed was a glitch somewhere in the works. Clinton went on to impress upon the spirit the technical differences between the car before them and the one he owned. He did so in such a manner as would have delighted Jay Leno, but which is far beyond the expertise of this poor reporter. Professional writers are reasonably expected to put a modicum of research into their works, so the reader is to be forgiven for assuming that a certain amount of laziness has overcome the author, who maintains that if he stopped the actual act of writing in order to look up some trivia of car lore for Clinton to have uttered, the story would have proceeded without him, and then where would we be, depending, of course, upon what you think the word “be” means.
     The boy and the girl in the car were making out. Clinton and the Spirit listened in. Two teenagers. Male and female. The ‘40s.
     “Come on, baby. You know we’re getting married.”
     “Exactly. It’s just a week away. You can wait a week.”
     “Ma?” whispered Clinton in horror. “Mom? Hello. Is that you?”
     “Oh yeah,” said the spirit. “I forgot to tell you. They can’t hear you. That’s one of the things from movies that IS true.”
     “I can’t wait a week,” continued the boy in the car. “Look at this.”
     “What are you doing? Don’t show that to me. It’s disgusting.”
     “That’s my mother!” shouted Clinton, his words falling nowhere.
     “And that’s your father,” said the spirit.
     “I never met my father,” said Clinton, now curious enough to bend down and peek through the window.
     “Well this is him,” explained the spirit. “It’s all about genetics, Billy boy. You are 50% your father, a man who died four months before you were born. There’s a lot of crap in you that you inherited from him: Things you’ve blamed yourself for that were not your fault. Things that are part of you for no other reason than you got them from this man. As you can see, you share with him certain traits.”
     “It’s not disgusting,” the boy went on. “If you think it’s disgusting, why do you want to marry me?”
     “Well, it’s not that disgusting,” replied the girl, “but...”
     The boy interrupted. “Go ahead, touch it.”
     “Let me out of here,” declared Clinton. “I REALLY don’t want to see this.”
     “Look,” said the spirit.
     “At my dad’s pecker? No way. This really is disgusting. I can’t believe you went to so much trouble, bringing me back in time, to show me this particular moment.”
     “So,” inquired the spirit, “you don’t like it when involuntarily exposed to a man’s genitals?”
     A flood of memories momentary choked back any chance of a flippant response. “Okay, I get it. But those days are over. I don’t do that any more. If I ever did. In any case, now I don’t have to. There are too many women out there who are whole-heartedly willing. I don’t need to bother with surprise tactics.”
     But the spirit was indeed fond of surprise tactics, as Clinton felt that same wrenching feeling in his gut, finding himself now in fast forward through time, arriving in a hospital delivery room where dozens of babies cried in their incubators. One crib bore the name “William Jefferson Blyth IV.” Clinton and the Spirit approached the crib.
     “Hey, that’s me, huh? What a cute kid.”
     “The fourth Blyth. Quite a legacy. Too bad we don’t have time to visit one and two. You’d find it amusing.”
     At that moment, a nurse with enormous breasts came in and leaned over Clinton’s crib to reach the crib next to it. Her breasts went right into the baby’s face. The baby smiled and reached up as Clinton blurted out “Go for it, kid, go for it.”
     The spirit looked at him in disgust, taking great delight in the nausea she caused with her vicious fast forwards.
     This time they landed in a place Clinton barely recognized.
     Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, Clinton’s grandparents who raised him till the age of four, were throwing little Billy a fourth birthday party as Clinton and the Ghost materialized. Dozens of kids crowded around the living room, all with noisemakers and party hats. Confetti was thrown over everyone as they looked up the stairs.
     “Come on down, Billy,” called out Edith.
     “No way!” came a young voice from up the stairs.
     “Come down right now, William,” called out Eldridge in a much sterner manner.
     “No!” came the response.
     “It’s all right, son,” said the grandfather, “it’s Valentines Day.”
     “No way. I look stupid. I won’t come down.”
     Clinton looked at the spirit in disgust, exclaiming “I can’t believe you’re making me relive this. A horrid childhood memory better forgotten. You’ve really got a sadistic streak.”
     “William Jefferson Blyth!” The ultimate. All three names. This time grampa meant it. “Come down here this instant.”
     Slowly, the four-year-old Clinton emerged from upstairs. He was dressed like Cupid, looking unbearably cute to the grandparents, but totally ridiculous to little Billy’s friends, who just laughed, totally humiliating him, causing a permanent, and altogether convenient lifelong aversion to cherubs.
     “Hey, thanks a lot” Clinton spoke again to the spirit. “I needed to relive that like I need a third ball.”
     And so they continued forward on their journey, arriving at a high-road, by a well-remembered lane. They soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large schoolhouse, but one of broken fortunes; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast.
     They went, the Ghost and Clinton, across the hall, to a door at the back of the school. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room. The fifth grade grammar school class was sitting attentively, awaiting the arrival of their teacher. The Spirit touched Clinton on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a woman, in dowdy garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at, came through the door, with chalk in her hand, and stern glint upon her brow.
     “Why, it’s Ms. Baba.” Clinton exclaimed in apathy. Clinton and the Spirit followed her as she invoked that it was time for the class to share their Valentines, so each and every student got up to exchange cards. A cute little girl coyly handed a young plump ten-year-old Clinton a Valentine. He opened it and read the inscription, “My Chubby Valentine.” He sadly looked up to see her giggling with her friends.
     The elder Clinton confessed to the spirit “That’s pathetic. I can’t believe I let that get to me.”
     “You had a crush on her,” said the spirit.
     “I did? You’re right, I did,” Clinton reluctantly confessed to the spirit. “She broke my heart. Look at me, I’m a wreck. Telling a woman that you love her is like handing her a dagger pointed straight at your heart. You know, this was a pivotal moment. It changed the whole way I look at women. Good choice. Who did you study with?”
     And then, it is more than apt for me to fulfill a previous obligation by mentioning that Clinton was once again moved forward in time and made to witness himself stealing a Playboy Magazine in a scene already adequately described, save for the fact that when his stepfather and namesake, Roger Clinton, did find him with such magazine, it was immediately confiscated  but not discarded.
     At that moment, or perhaps the next, Clinton found himself in fast motion again, slowly coming to a stop at his old High School locker room, which was clearing out as Clinton and the Spirit entered.
     “You know those fast forwards are making me dizzy,” complained Clinton. “Isn’t there any other way we can do this?””
     “I’ll think about it,” said the spirit.
     The locker room was emptied except for three: the fourteen-year-old Clinton and two others.
     “Hey, I know them,” exclaimed Clinton. “It’s Bill and Joe Newman. Joe was a great drummer, Bill played piano, I was on sax. We formed a trio, The Three Kings. Played together for years. Bill and Joe. It’s good to see them”
     “Watch,” said the spirit.
     “I’m telling you it’s true. You can see right through,” Bill spoke softly into the young Clinton’s ear.
     “Bullshit,” came the reply.
     “I saw it myself,” said Joe.
     Bill got momentarily peeved, saying “Are you calling me a liar?”
     “No,” said the young Clinton, “it’s just that, well, it’s impossible.”
     “No it’s not,” said Joe.
     “Should we let him see?” asked Bill.
     “I don’t think so.”
     “Yeah, he’s too young. He couldn’t stand the excitement.”
     All this had no effect upon the skeptical child, who said “I still don’t believe you.”
     At this, Joe and Bill looked at each other, then grabbed Clinton and took him to a locker, which they opened. On the back was a poster, which they lifted up, revealing a hole in the wall. Clinton peeked through the hole. His eyes widened. He could see into the girl’s locker room, where dozens of teenage girls were dressing, undressing, and taking showers.
     “Now do you believe us?” boasted Bill.
     The young Clinton was suitably impressed, leaning back and giving a hearty exhale, allowing the older Clinton to peek through the hole. “You know,” Clinton said to the spirit, “I hate to say it, but this is still a turn on.”
     The spirit, in excited spirits, was heard to mutter “What a pig.”
     “What was that?” asked Clinton.
     “Nothing,” came the reply.
     “You called me a pig.”
     “You are a pig.”
     “Okay, look,” cried an exasperated Clinton, “I get the picture here. You don’t get to be president by being stupid, you know.”
     It was an age old problem. When Clinton saw generals and heads of state portrayed in fiction and film as boobs and Neanderthals, he could not help but compare it to his own personal knowledge of generals and heads of state, who were never stupid. There was no way to rise through the bureaucracy of the United States army, or any government for that matter, making it all the way to general, without betraying a glimmer of intelligence. One could be savage and bloodthirsty, backstabbing and manipulative, but never stupid. Clinton had not met one head of state who was a nincompoop, so he hated it when the media in general, and satirists in specific, portrayed powerful people in general, himself in specific, as stupid.
     “These aren’t just random events you’re showing me,” he said, bestowing upon the spirit an inkling of his smarts. “They all have to do with sex.”
     “Is there anything in your life that doesn’t have to do with sex?” asked the spirit. “Your life seems to be governed by an attitude towards women that I personally find revolting.”
     “And you think that showing me this stuff is going to change anything?” replied Clinton. “I know what I did and I know who I am. I like who I am.”
     “You like treating women like objects?”
     “Oh, please.” Clinton went on. “Women ARE objects. We’re all objects. Do I have to get out the dictionary to show you what the word ‘object’ means? I’m an object. You’re an object. Everyone is an object. Women are objects that every straight male on earth uses for sexual gratification. What’s so wrong with that? If women weren’t sexual objects, the species wouldn’t perpetuate.”
     “Women are much much more than objects for male sexual gratification.”
     “Granted. God bless Madame Curie, but if she had a nice butt, I’d still wanna do her. Look, if I see food that’s prepared right, it makes me hungry, and if I see a woman who is built right, it makes me horny. That’s the way a guy’s stomach works and that’s the way a guy’s genitals work, and believe it or not, I’m a guy. You know who got voted into the office of the presidency? A guy. None of us are any different. If you had any idea what we think when we look at you. It’s much worse than you could ever imagine, and too widespread to stop. It’s in our genetic make-up. There’s nothing you can do about it. Changing me, Bill Clinton, ex-politician, is not going to change anything. Why don’t you pick on a biologist?”
     The agenda for the Ghost of Valentines Day Past had been set long before this pathetic rewrite, and so the evermorph of presidue depositories posing as our first spirit took the opportunity to visit elsewhere, using a travel technique that closely resembled a slow cross-fade rather than the customary fast-forward. Clinton found this mode of travel much less stressful, and told the spirit such, causing much gaiety and laughter in a nearby parallel universe.
Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and re-passed; where shadowy skateboards and limos battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city was upon them. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Valentines Day time again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up with taffeta chocolates and neon hearts.
     The Ghost stopped at a certain office door, and asked Clinton if he knew it.
     “Know it?” said Clinton. “I was apprenticed here.”
     They went in. At sight of an old southern gentleman in a dapper manner, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Clinton cried in great excitement:
     “Why, it’s Senator Fullbright, the old non-interventionist. Bless his heart; it’s Fullbright alive again.”
     Old Fullbright laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious vest; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:
     “Oh Lee, would you come in here please.” Presently, his administrative assistant entered the office, to be asked “Is everything ready?”
     Just then, Clinton’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in. “Sorry to interrupt,” he interrupted, “but I just wanted to thank the Senator for his recommendation to the Rhodes Committee. I got my scholarship.”
     “Lee Williams to be sure.” said Clinton to the Ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. Lee got me my first job in politics.”
     “Yo ho, my boys.” said Fullbright. “No more work to-night. Valentines Day Eve, Lee. Valentines Day, William. Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fullbright, with a sharp clap of his hands,” before a man can say Jack Robinson.”
     You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged to the windows with the shutters -- one, two, three -- had them up in their places -- four, five, six -- barred them and pinned then -- seven, eight, nine -- and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.
     “Good work!” cried old Fullbright, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here. Let’s go, Lee. Get a move on, William.”
     There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fullbright looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for ever more; the floor was swept, the plants watered, the lamps were trimmed, candy hearts was heaped every bowl; and the office was as festive and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.
     In came three scandalously clad women, one with a portable record player, who went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, by playing a scratchy platter of burlesque music. The three men looked at each other. You didn’t have to be a Rhodes scholar to figure out what was on their minds as they walked towards the women.
     During the whole of this time, Clinton had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and the senator were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light through its breasts burnt very clear.
     “A small matter,” said the Ghost,” to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”
     “Small.” echoed Clinton.
     The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were hauling out their ashes in praise of Fullbright: and when they had done so, said, “Why does he receive such gratitude? He has spent but a bit of your mortal money for nooky. Is that so much that he deserves this praise.”
     “It isn’t that,” said Clinton, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. Fullbright had the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then. The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
     He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.
     “What is the matter.” asked the Ghost.
     “Nothing in particular,” said Clinton.
     “Something, I think.” the Ghost insisted.
     “No,” said Clinton,” No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to two gentlemen who visited me earlier today. That’s all.”
     His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Clinton and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.
     “My time grows short,” observed the Spirit. “Quick.”
     This was not addressed to Clinton, or to any one whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Clinton saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
     He was not alone, but stood in a hallway by the side of a fair young Hillary in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Valentines Day Past.
     “It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”
     “What Idol has displaced you.” he rejoined.
     “An oral one.”
     “That’s how the world works, babe.” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so difficult as horniness; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of sex.”
     “You fear the missionary position too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of an eager young mouth. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion took hold. Have I not.” She shook her head and continued. “Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both horny and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”
     “I was a child,” he said impatiently.
     “Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “But I am. I am what I was. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.”
      “Have I ever sought release.”
     “In words. No. Never.”
     “In what, then.”
     “In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If you had known from the start that I could never do that, that thing you want me to do,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him, “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? I don’t think so.”
     He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You’re wrong, babe, we can work this out.”
     “I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows. When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, I believe that you would choose another, one with longings such as those you have confessed to me. And so I release you. Orally copulate with your young women, but keep the rest for me. This will vouchsafe our marriage vows. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.”
     He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, she resumed.
     “The pain will be brief. I understand. I have longings of my own you can never fulfill. So, I say let’s get married. You’ll forget about all this, recalling it only as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. Come on, darling let’s be happy in the life we have chosen.”
     And with a nice, leisurely cross-fade to a church, Clinton witnessed himself getting married to Hillary. It was an elaborate wedding that Clinton felt no need to live through again, though he found great delight in witnessing himself winking at one of the bridesmaids, who winked back. “This is too much,” he spoke to the spirit. “Can’t you just show me something happy?” Together, he and the spirit cross-faded to Hillary’s funeral, causing him to exclaim “That’s better.” The spirit ogled him in horror, making him shrink back and say “Just kidding. Look,  show me no more. Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me.”
     “One shadow more.” exclaimed the Ghost.
     “No more.” cried Clinton. “No more, I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more.”
     But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next.
     Finding his feet on the ground, Clinton perceived that he was standing on a city street sometime in the recent past. With a shuddering rush of adrenaline, Clinton noticed he was in jeans, and standing in front of a parked car. He recognized it immediately.
     “Oh, come on, not this.”
     “You’ve got a problem with my curriculum?” said the ghost.
     “This was during my real down period. Man, don’t show me stuff from the six months I spent seriously drunk. I remember it too well.”
     “We shall see the quality of your recollection.”
     Together, they peeked into the car in question where Bill Clinton sat with Molly Adams, a lovely if distraught young girl in her 20s.
     “Come on, Molly, I thought we already agreed on this,” declared the corporeal Clinton.
     “I know, it’s just that I think we have other options” cried Molly.
     “I should have known you’d show me this,” said Clinton to the Ghost. “You’re torturing me. Did I notice Torquemada among you?”
     “I’m really starting to regret getting this assignment,” said the spirit.
     “What other options?” asked the Clinton in the car. “Maybe in a few years there will be time for babies, but not right now. The timing couldn’t be worse.”
     “The timing couldn’t be better,” said Molly. “I’m pregnant. What better time to have a baby?”
     “My God,” whispered the ghostly Clinton. “Look at her. I forgot how beautiful she was.”
     “I’m sorry,” whispered the other Clinton. “I’ve got a million other things on my mind,” he said while reaching into his pocket, pulling out his wallet, and handing her a stack of bills. “Here is the money.”
     “I don’t want it,” said Molly.
     At this, Clinton started to half-heartedly cheer on his younger self. “Oh look, don’t listen to her. You know what she’s doing. She’s just taking advantage.”
     Seeing Clinton try to influence past events, the Spirit threw in her two cents by cheering on Molly. “Girl, you do not have to take any of this young man’s bullshit, you understand?”
     Clinton looked at her. “I thought you said they couldn’t hear us.”
     “No,” said the spirit, “I said they couldn’t hear you.”
     “Take the money,” said Clinton in the car, “I’m telling you, it’s the only thing to do.”
     “It’s not,” said Molly.
     “You can fight him on this,” said the spirit to Molly “You really can. Be strong, Molly.”
     Clinton turned on the spirit. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that she can hear you but he can’t hear me?”
     “Look, take the goddam money,” he said, on the verge of anger. “You’ve got an appointment, now go in there and just have it taken care of! Make it go away.”
     “You’re stronger than him,” whispered the spirit in Molly’s ear. “You’re better than he is.”
     “I can’t believe you’re talking to me like this,” complained Molly to her companion.
     “I can’t believe she’s talking to you like this.” complained the ghostly Clinton to Molly.
     “How do you want me to talk to you? You’re being stupid. If you had a baby now I would hate it. I can’t go through that all again. You want a kid to grow up with a dad who hates it?”
     “Did I really say that?” said Clinton taken aback.
     Molly looks at Clinton with new eyes. For a brief second, she felt she could see through him to the older Clinton, and for a moment they had eye contact. She looked away and took the money. “No, I don’t,” she cried. “I can’t believe I ever wanted to have a baby with you.”
     “Good. I’m glad you finally came to your senses,” he said softly as she slowly got out of the car.
     “You’re not coming with me?”
     “Oh come on, you know I can’t.”
     “You wouldn’t go with her?” said the spirit to Clinton.
     “Of course not,” he said. “I’d be recognized.”
     “But I’ll need a ride home,” said Molly.
     Clinton pulled out his wallet again and handed her money for a cab.
     The spirit looked at both Clintons. “She’ll be coming out of general anesthesia and you won’t be there to give her a ride home?”
     “Yeah, well, that was lousy, but I really had no choice,” said Clinton, remembering that he had somewhere important to go but unable to remember where.
     Molly took the extra money, muttering “I love you Billy Clinton” before walking into the clinic. He drove away.
     “When’s the last time anyone said that to you?” asked the spirit. Clinton admitted it had been quite a while.
     “Go ahead, rub it in,” he declared. “I tried to get in touch with her the next day, but she wouldn’t accept my calls.”
     “So, you never saw her again.”
     “No, and I never had to deal with that problem again either. Thank God for vasectomies. Now I can ejaculate without a care.”
     “Or a child.”
     “Please. The last thing on earth I need, at this juncture, is another child. Christ, can you imagine? It just doesn’t fit the lifestyle.”
     The spirit had nothing to say.
     “So,” continued Clinton. “Let’s go somewhere else. Anywhere but the vasectomy.”
     But they went nowhere. They just stood there on a busy sidewalk.
     “Hello?” said Clinton to the spirit. “Anybody home? Let’s get a move on.”
     But the morphing spirit was having problems of its own. It was fighting with itself over whom to be, making obscene threats to itself, but managing to focus most of its anger upon poor Bill. “You’re an obscenity!” the spirit finally choked out in a menacing manner. “You don’t deserve to live.”
     Clinton watched her advance upon him. He knew what a woman could do when she was pissed off, and this was one pissed off ghost. He tried to mollify her. “Look, sweets, everything’s fine. We can work this out.”
     “Oh? You think we can work this out?” she said, reminding him of Jack Nicholson coming up the staircase in The Shining. Where was his baseball bat? “Why don’t you tell me how we can work this out, you scumbag.”
     She got bigger as she advanced. He started feeling real terror. “Come on, sweetheart, uh, sweethearts, calm down. Just stop it.”
     In his face. “And who’s going to stop me, huh? You? Are you going to stop me?”
     In her face. “CUT IT OUT!”
     “MAKE ME!”
     At this intrusion, Clinton pulled back his fist, as though preparing to throw a punch.
     “Go ahead,” taunted the spirit, looking more and more like Paula Jones. “You want to hit me, don’t you? You’ve always wanted to hit me. So hit me. Go ahead. Smack me around a bit. What the hell? I’m not really her, I’m just a spirit, you can get away with it. So come on, smart guy, move it. Let’s see the old Clinton cold cock. Let me have it. That’s what women are for, isn’t it? Venting your frustration?”
     Clinton looked at his fist and talked to it, saying “You can do it, you know,” before dropping his arm to his side. “Ahh,” he grunted at the spirit of spitefulness manifesting before him,  “it probably would have gone right through you. What’s the point?”
     The spirit, not being one to miss out on a chance, hauled off and slugged Clinton in the jaw. He fell to the ground, out like a light.

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Stave 3:  The Second of the Three Spirits
 

How this Book was Written