“Of course JFK Jr. is alive,” Joe mumbled.

“What’s that, Grandpa?” Finnegan asked, wiping his face.

“JFK Jr. is alive,” he said more forcefully. “We were going to run him ag-ag-against Bush Jr. in 2000, but Frankenstein Al bullied his way onto the ticket.”

“OK, I need you to lift up your bottom a bit,” she said, wrestling with the harness seat in the jacuzzi tub. She was stripped down to her underwear and sweating, cursing that she had to do this alone, already soaked.

“Jr. vs. Jr.!” Joe said, waving for a flourish and smacking Finnegan in the face. “Two political dynasties locked in a generational battle for the soul of America!”

Finnegan pulled herself out of the tub and strapped Joe’s arms down. “I’m going to get you out now, Grandpa.”

“OK, dear,” Joe said.

Finnegan used the patient transfer system to lift Joe out of the tub, his gray hide sluicing away sudsy water as it broke the surface of the Once and Future Presidental Hot Tub Grande Royale like some starveling whale calf. Finnegan used the showerhead to rinse off his bent and gnarled body, his mottled flesh, and labial folds of loose skin.

“Your Grandma had the best body of any woman I ever saw,” Joe says, his arm on Finnegan’s shoulder as she swung him away from the tub and lowered him into his shower seat. “Like a Playboy bunny.”

“Yes, Dr. Grandma is very pretty,” Finnegan murmured and she dried him, trying to ignore his slow erection.

“No, not her, your real Granma, Neilia,” Joe said.

“Oh. She’s beautiful in all the pictures you’ve shown me,” she said.

“She was my sensuous lover. No one will ever have what we had. No matter how tired I was from campaigning, I always had a Big Biden Bone to feed her when I got home.”

“Yuck, Grandpa, just yuck.”

“I could marry you off to JFK Jr. if you want. That wife of his really is dead. Her teeth and nose just kept growing. It was horrible. I’ve seen the pictures. She basically imploded.”

“Should you be telling me all this, Grandpa? It’s probably classified.”

Joe leaned in and pulled Finnegan close by her underwear elastic. “If Q knows, everybody knows,” he whispered and rubbed his wet, cold face against her warm stomach.