Fresh out of friends

Low ebb at Palm Beach

Screenshot.

[A lavish suite at Mar-a-Lago, styled and furnished in the old-fashioned gold-and-coral manner favored by its proprietor. The room is dark — moonlight and landscape lights come in through the large windows. A door rustles; PIERRE DUFRESNE, the young fash fellow we met in “Message Discipline,” enters. He wears a trim grey three-piece suit like Jean-Louis Trintignant in The Conformist and has a Robby Soave haircut. He turns on the flashlight of his iPhone and walks carefully around, searching.]

PIERRE: Mr. President? Sir, are you here? Mr. President?

VOICE, nearby: Right here.

[PIERRE gasps, recovers.]

PIERRE: Sir, shall I turn on a light?

VOICE: There’s a dimmer on the wall. Turn it, not too much.

[PIERRE does so; we can make out TRUMP sitting in a well-padded tack-upholstered leather chair. He’s wearing a plush white robe with gold trim and fluffy brown leather slippers; his face is pale and tired, as if he’s missed his spray-tanning, and there are distinct traces of white powder on and around his nose and mouth. His hair is remarkably intact. He is devoid of jewelry, including his wedding ring, except for a silver-colored bracelet on his left wrist. He has what looks like a ten-inch-wide grey ceramic bowl in his lap, decorated with painted roses; it is filled with white powder, some of which has spilled on his lap.]