“It was all the fault of that damned dog,” declaimed my friend and former schoolmate Pumphrett as we walked on the Virginia side of the Potomac opposite the Jefferson Memorial. I had always preferred the walk on the District side, with its view of the Custis-Lee Mansion and Arlington. But the Air Force had erected what looked like a gigantic metal coat hook near the Pentagon, forever disfiguring what had been a lovely prospect. My mood wasn’t helped by Pumphrett’s latest non sequitur, and I inquired with some irritation what on earth he was talking about.

“My fall from grace,” he grumbled. I was aware that Pumphrett was no longer in favor at the White House but had hesitated to ask the cause. People rose and fell in that abattoir of ambition like bits of used tissue on ocean tides (this morning’s report, for example, had Bannon up, Jared down, and Spicer out), so Pumphrett’s eclipse was no surprise. Still, he seemed eager to explain, so I let him.

“I think I told you, Cushy, that I took the gaff when the Comey firing went south. But the possibility of redemption was mooted if I could make a success of a most delicate mission: finding a dog for the White House.”

“I thought Trump hates dogs.”

“He does. Unconditional love offends him. But Ivanka insisted, and he finally agreed as long as they kept the smelly thing away from him.”

“And you were to find a suitable one.”

“I knew it had to be an undiscriminating breed. But which? Then, an inspiration! Trump likes blond things. Back when his sap was still running, he always targeted—and sometimes even married—blond women, and lately he has even become a sort of blond himself. So a golden retriever seemed perfect, and I found a nice one.  I admit, I grew quite fond of it. Then another problem arose: What should it be called? Bannon suggested “Rudi,” but the dog wasn’t vicious. Finally, a masterstroke! I proposed “Blondie.” The name just popped to mind. Instant success! Ivanka gave me an air kiss in the hallway, the unveiling was set, and I allowed myself an extra tipple or two that evening in celebration.”

“So, a triumph.”

“Oh, on the contrary. When I arrived the next morning, no one was willing to meet my bleary gaze, and Spicer was assuring the press that there was no dog, and had never been a dog. I have no idea why. All I know is that Bannon was in higher than usual dudgeon and told me I would have been fired had it not been for uncle Pontius. (Pumphrett’s uncle Pontius Pumphrett had been an early Trump enthusiast, to the point of offering to endow a Pumphrett professorship at Trump University. That offer was withdrawn when his nephew explained to his credulous elder that the University thing was just a money-making scam. Still, the incident had provided Pontius with political pull, which he now apparently had deployed.)

“What happened to Blondie?”

“I heard that young Miller volunteered to dump her, minus tags, somewhere in Fairfax County. He enjoys that sort of thing. But never mind. The important thing is that, as a result, I’ve been given the most thankless task Steve Bannon could devise. I’m to find something to keep Tillerson busy.”

Pumphrett went on to describe his meeting with Bannon, who complained that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was carping about his lack of relevance—and had recently taken to reminding everyone that he had once been a “big man in oil and gas.”

“This was annoying. ‘We pushed him out front to shill for the Muslim ban,’ Bannon had complained, ‘but nothing seems to satisfy the guy.’”

I remembered the scene—three elderly white men in identical dark suits shuffling before the cameras, led by someone I took at first to be the evil king of the pixies but turned out to be Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Tillerson had seemed uncomfortable on that occasion—like a man who had suddenly realized what was being done to him.

Weren’t there a few second-rank funerals to attend, Bannon wondered, or perhaps a meaningless UN conference or two? I said I’d find out and was going out the door when he added: ‘just make sure he gets the slow plane.’

“The first step,” Pumphrett went on, “was to discover what Tillerson was doing now. No one seemed to know, so I betook myself back to Foggy Bottom. The place was deathly silent. My knock on the great mahogany doors of the Secretary’s suite at first brought no reaction, but finally the doors opened a crack and a careworn face appeared—a woman, I concluded. ‘Who are you?’ the face questioned. ‘Pumphrett,’ I offered, thinking my coming had been foretold. Apparently not. ‘Are you from downstairs?’ this Cerberus demanded. ‘If so, buzz off!’ I assured her that I was not a member of the State Department staff, as she seemed to assume, but rather an emissary from the White House. She looked skeptical, but after examining my White House pass she gestured me inside with a jerk of her head. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ she snarled as I walked by.

“Tillerson, by contrast, was graciousness personified. He rose from behind a pile of briefing books as I entered and, in Trump fashion, painfully pumped my fin. So Steve had sent me, he beamed. That was fine. He hoped good old Steve was feeling better. Well, Cushy, I had no idea what he was on about. Bannon looks like death itself, of course, but that seems to be his natural state. It turned out that Tillerson had left a string of messages for Bannon, and—none having been answered—concluded that Bannon must be at death’s door. He looked disappointed when I assured him that this was not the case. But he rallied. ‘Never mind,’ he said. I was there now, fresh from Steve, and that was timely because he, Tillerson, had just been trying to decipher the latest Trump tweets and wanted to know—not to put too fine a point on it—what the hell was going on.”

“And you told him?”

“Of course not. I don’t know. No one does. But this is Washington, and one can never admit ignorance, so in answer to each of his questions I responded that I was not authorized to say, or that this was a matter best raised with Steve, or that the policy on that issue was under review. Finally he gave up and his shoulders slumped. Here was a man who had beaten his way to the top of the most heartless, grasping corporation on earth—a man who could claim personally to have raised global temperatures a couple of degrees Celsius—and he’d been undone by a jumped up carny barker with a spit combed coife. So I did something uncharacteristic. I gave him good advice.”

“You, Pumphrett!? I find that hard to believe.”

“No less do I, since what I told him can not possibly benefit me. Still, there it is. I told him he must stop asking the ‘why’ questions. ‘Why’ didn’t we confront the Russians, ‘why’ were we alienating the Germans, ‘why’ were we undercutting NATO? The President didn’t like ‘why’ questions, I told him, and anyone at the White House who valued his skin had ceased asking them. ‘But how,’ he bleated plaintively, ‘am I to know what policy is?’ This was exasperating, but I patiently explained that there was no ‘policy’ in the old sense of a consistent plan of action over a period of time leading to some desirable outcome. There were only tweets, each a discrete, redolent bolus of thought unconnected to anything that had come before or would come afterwards. These rained down at odd hours, and the disagreeable work of mashing them together for the benefit of the press could safely be left to Spicer or Huckabee’s offspring. As for Tillerson, he should manage foreign policy.

“‘But I’ve cut myself off from the staff,’ moaned this hopeless dunce. I tell you, Cushy, it was like talking to a child. So I explained to him that 97 percent of foreign policy was conducted outside the baleful purview of the Oval Office by professionals, many of whom actually knew what they were doing. With a little encouragement from him, that could be raised to 99 percent. Look what Mattis was up to at Defense. Did he think Mattis asked Bannon for advice? Indeed, the last thing Tillerson should do was look for guidance from the mouth breathers and lunatics at the White House, who would gut him like a fish for the least advantage and who, in any case, knew no more about the toxic stew of the President’s psyche than he did. In short, better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission

I had to sit down at this point, Cushy. I was little dizzy from the effort, not to mention the celebratory nips of the night before. Tillerson looked thoughtful. ‘But where should I start?’ he asked. Thankfully, I had given that some thought on the way over. He should start with the Gulf, I told him. He had drilled there for years and knew most of the rag-tag royals who had lately fallen out with each other for reasons only Allah understood. The President had dipped a toe in their troubles and made them worse. Why didn’t Tillerson fly out there and mediate—maybe sell all parties a few more guns. The outcome didn’t matter, since the President had come down squarely on both sides, and in any case the rum buggers would just find something else to squabble about.”

This rang a bell with me. I’d heard earlier on Fox News that Tillerson had offered to mediate and might even fly out to the region, provided anyone took the offer seriously. “So that was you, was it, Pumphrett? You’re the one who put starch in Tillerson’s socks. Well done! You know, you seem often to end up at the center of things.”

“Yes, but it’s lonely at the top. Speaking of which, I’ve got to go. My Uber has just pulled up, and I want to beat the rush hour traffic out 66.”

“Sixty Six! But you live in the District. Why are you headed out 66?”

“I’m going out to Fairfax to look for that dog.”