The infrastructure bill didn't fail. The Senate did.

It's late. Wire's still going. Same four stories, pushed around the same puddle. A senator, a boat, a bridge that isn't, a number that's good for everyone except the people. I read them so you don't have to lie awake doing it yourself.

They asked me to write something about patience. Here's the thing about patience. It's the only product they never run out of. Everything else is backordered. The bridge, the refund, the report that's coming soon. But patience they'll ship you overnight, free, in bulk, forever. You ever notice you only get told to be patient about the stuff that isn't coming? Nobody tells you to be patient about the bill. The bill's always on time. The bill's the only one in this whole operation that shows up for its shift.

I've worked enough of these to know the tells. We hear you means it's filed. It's a process means there's a room, and the room's empty, and they leave the light on so the building looks staffed from the highway. Thoughts and prayers means somebody upstairs already priced out the alternative, and the alternative was you.

I'm not angry about it. Anger's for the day shift. They've still got the energy, God love them. Down here you take the name, log the hour, wipe the counter, and wait for the next poor bastard who wanders in at 3 a.m. genuinely expecting a manager, like the sign meant it.

Manager's not in. Manager was never in. Between you and me, I'm not sure there was ever a manager. Just this window, this counter, and whoever they could find willing to stand behind it and say soon with a straight face.

I'll be out back. Window's open. Doesn't do a damn thing. But it's open.

Folks, I want to address something head-on, the way my granddaddy taught me, which was to address things head-on, except for the things you address sideways, of which there are, at present, eleven.

There has been talk. I won't repeat the talk. Partly because to repeat it would dignify it, and partly because my attorney has drawn a small diagram showing what happens to me if I do. So I won't say what the talk is. I'll say I've heard it, I've prayed on it, and I've emerged from that prayer with no memory of the events, the envelope, the second envelope, or the boat.

Let me be clear where I stand, which is where I have stood for many years, and where I will keep standing until roughly forty minutes after my party stands somewhere else. At which point I will have always been there, waving, wondering aloud where you were.

Yes, money changed hands. I want to be transparent, transparency being the cornerstone of the trust between a senator and the voter who has not yet reached page forty of the indictment. Money changed hands. Hands were present. I did not personally count it, because I am not a counter. I am a leader, and a leader delegates the counting to a nephew, and the nephew to a shell, and the shell, God willing, to the Caymans, where the sun is warm and the subpoenas arrive by rowboat.

My opponents call this a scandal. I would remind them that a scandal requires a victim, and I have searched the record thoroughly. The only victim I can locate is me, who now has to explain the boat.

In closing, I thank the good people of Place for their support, their patience, and their touching, decades-long inability to seat a functioning ethics committee. God bless you. God bless Place. And God bless the statute of limitations, which my granddaddy also taught me about, sideways, on a boat.