BY
FENNO, 35 MINUTES late for his flu shot, was nonetheless distracted by the display in the window of CVS. “What’s…what is all that?” he pondered allowed, stopped in his tracks. Even as Harvard Square’s homeless population closed in, begging cups in hand, he was all the more oblivious to their pleas. “It’s halfway between Halloween and Christmas,” he was thinking, “and yet…they’ve removed the Halloween decorations…for Christmas ones. Didn’t there used to be some holiday in between? And didn’t it even have some serious, pseudo-patriotic, quasi-religious significance?”
But Fenno’s thoughts dissipated as one of the homeless jabbed him in the gut with a crutch. “Hey, pal,” the rotund tramp chided. “There ain’t no universal health care yet. Can’t you spare a dime? I need an MRI.” Reluctantly, Fenno dug into his pockets. He could not save that mythical November holiday – not yet – and not without the help of his casebook-swelling enemy, the Supreme Court.
To be continued…