Jared and Ivanka Plan a Summer Trip

JARED has just returned home from his afternoon of leisure — Bocce club at the local Whole Foods. He is thrilled that IVANKA, has suggested they leave D.C. without clarifying that it’s just for the summer. JARED hates their lives as high-level pols. IVANKA, typically very calm, is zealously juicing in the kitchen. She has sent her staff home for the day, with strict instructions to return tomorrow morning and not nose through the trash or the recycling or the plumbing, whatsoever. Her butler, before he emigrated to America, was a plumber for Carlos Slim, and IVANKA is nothing if not extremely careful.

IVANKA [chopping kale]: Did you speak to my father about reducing your workload?

JARED [searching the refrigerator for a bottle of water]: I emailed him.

IVANKA [chopping rhubarb]: He doesn’t have email.

JARED [giving up his search for bottled water and pivoting to the sink]: I emailed Reince.

IVANKA [chopping asparagus]: You should’ve spoken to him directly. He won’t like that you used an intermediary to avoid confrontation.

JARED [turning on the faucet and drinking directly from the stream]: You said — fuck. [JARED has burned himself on the scalding water from the tap. He can never remember which direction to turn for cold.]

IVANKA [evening out a stack of paper]: I said no such thing. Do you want to get out of here or not?

JARED [rubbing his mouth]: Of course I do. I never wanted to move here. I thought we had no choice. [JARED picks up a carrot stick, takes a bite, and immediately gets the hiccups.] What are you juicing?

IVANKA [criminally]: Documents. [IVANKA hands JARED a pair of scissors and a stack of paperwork that confirms she and her husband profited immensely from collusion and money laundering.] Get cutting.

JARED and IVANKA snip away. There are reams and reams of documents, each one more incriminating than the last. JARED removes the pen from his ear and edits one of them.

IVANKA [taking her Vitamix down from the cupboard]: We’re blending them into the fruits and vegetables. It doesn’t matter what they say now.

JARED [accidentally papercutting himself]: You can finally host your conference about women interrupting men.

IVANKA [handing JARED a Band-aid]: The keynote speaker can be whichever male comedian has most recently been booed off of a college campus stage. What should we call it?

JARED [affixing the Band-aid]: The politicization of the word ‘actually.’

IVANKA [violating her own rule to never validate a loved one]: That’s fun, Jared.

JARED and IVANKA continue their cycle of chopping, snipping and juicing. For the first time in a long time, they are happy and balanced and enjoying each other’s company. There is a loud clanging in the hallway. It’s STEVE BANNON, too lazy to walk, gliding along on a motorized scooter he ordered from TOM PRICE.

STEVE BANNON [wistfully]: Look at you two. A couple who destroys evidence together. Our very own Bill and Hillary. Who will be punished for whose sins though?

STEVE BANNON drives his motorized scooter directly at JARED.

IVANKA [playfully, for her]: That’s so smart of you, Steve, to learn how to ride one of those before your feet are amputated.

STEVE BANNON runs over JARED’s cool sneakers as JARED yelps.

STEVE BANNON [sniffing the air]: Why do you smell like the inside of a Subway franchise?

JARED [sniffing his armpits]: It’s body odor.

IVANKA [raising her voice]: Jared!

JARED [feeling strong, for once]: I was at the Bocce court.

STEVE BANNON [awkwardly]: I rode in here to tell you that I’m taking off for the summer. [STEVE BANNON extends his hand to JARED, and does not yank it away when JARED naively offers his own.] Your hand shake is firm, wow. [to IVANKA] How have I never shaken his hand before?

JARED [feeling weak, again]: Why wouldn’t I have a firm handshake?

There’s a loud honk outside. It sounds like a chorus of beached sea lions whose ocean home is inhabitable because of dangerously high concentrations of carbon dioxide. It’s CLARENCE THOMAS announcing his arrival.

STEVE BANNON [making an obscene gesture popularized by pro wrestlers]: Justice Thomas is here. We’re taking a road trip across the fatherland, converting his RV into an opioid clinic, and saving this country ourselves.

[IVANKA says “Yeah right” with her eyes.]

STEVE BANNON [truthfully]: We’re tailgating in the Redskins parking lot until football season. Now that he and his buddies saved the mascot we don’t have to become Chiefs fans.

[The KUSHNER CHILDREN enter, happily singing songs from Hamilton, and unaware that their mother has misrepresented to their father that tomorrow they’ll be moving under the cover of night to an undisclosed location.]

KUSHNER CHILDREN [in unison]: Colluthies!! Yay!!

[IVANKA feeds her children the smoothies containing the paperwork, because someone has to drink them, and because if the children are drinking they can’t discuss their field trip tomorrow, the Smithsonian with Karen Handel. They can’t trigger their father.]

IVANKA [lying, and directing her children to the sun porch where they will play chess until bedtime]: Jared, what country should we move to?

JARED [his own Dog Days just beginning]: Wyoming.

IVANKA [delighting in her own sociopathy]: Wyoming isn’t a country.

STEVE BANNON’s motorized scooter is stuck in the doorway leading out of the kitchen. He backs it out, to renegotiate the frame, and hits the stool where IVANKA is keeping the stack of documents. Paper flutters everywhere, including an email about James Comey’s October’s surprise letter.

JARED [feeling panic as he remembers Election Day, what he and his mother and brother refer to as Hell Day]: Why do you think James Comey sent out that letter?

IVANKA [telling the truth]: Why would I care what Jim Comey does? His letter was only pretext for racists who were never going to vote for her anyhow. [IVANKA pulses the email noting the Comey letter’s timing.] And who taught the children to say ‘colluthie’? You know we want them to use non-abbreviated, intact language wherever possible.

[STEVE BANNON, frustrated his motorized scooter is wedged in the KUSHNER doorway, decides to use his legs, for just a few steps. He gets up, kicks the scooter, and then unplugs the carbon monoxide detector he notices on his way out the door. The device sounds an alarm, briefly, but JARED and IVANKA are too busy arguing about who taught their children to shorten collusion smoothie to ‘colluthie’ to hear it.]

JARED [ingesting a muscle relaxant]: I’ll tell Kellyanne she’s not to shorten words in front of our children ever again. [JARED dumps the last of the shredded documents into the mixer.] I’m going to go lie down. We have a big move tomorrow.

IVANKA [calmly, and then powerfully]: You’ll sleep when you’re dead.

The muscle relaxant hits JARED’s bloodstream, and then his brain, and though he thinks to clarify what his wife means by sleeping when he is dead, he doesn’t verbalize the thought. Instead, JARED walks upstairs, picks up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone from his children’s bookcase and calls his mother’s cleaning lady STEFA, to ask her if she will read to him while he follows along. He can’t get through, because IVANKA has also phoned STEFA, to ensure that she has prepared their Hamptons home, before the KUSHNERS arrive the weekend of the Fourth of July.