One More Thing Read online

  He walked me up to the bar in the center of the casino and ordered four tequila shots.

  I said I was too hungover from earlier in the day.

  “Don’t make me drink all four of these,” he said.

  I did what seemed like the less irresponsible action and picked up the tequila shot.

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  I downed the shot and immediately felt better.

  So that’s how that worked.

  “If you ran for president,” said Willie, “and I knew you’d be a terrible president, and you were running against the best president ever—a pro-legalization, pro-gay-rights Reagan—I would vote for you. You know why? Because you support your people. You just do. That’s more important than having a good president—having a country where everyone is going to stand by their people, just because they do. Do you know what I mean?”

  Two more tequila shots arrived. I dutifully took one and swallowed it. “I’m good for now,” said Willie to the bartender.

  He turned back to me. “You made a mistake with Sarah. There are no two sides. There is no justification for something like that.” I know, I said. “And the fact that we all make mistakes—all of us—doesn’t make this one okay.” I know, I said. He pushed the other tequila shot in front of me. “Here,” he said. That’s okay, I’m good, I said.

  “No, you really need to drink this,” he said. “I need you to drink this before I tell you this.”

  Willie stared right at me.

  I felt sick again. I stared at the drink in front of me.

  “Hey. Look at me.”

  I stared at Willie’s forehead.

  “I can’t let you make a decision without knowing everything. I can’t have you thinking everyone’s perfect but you. Hey. Look at me.”

  When I looked him in the eyes, he stared back for a while and either saw something he was looking for or didn’t.

  “I love you guys. I really do,” he finally said. “It’s been a really hard first year out. I know it’s all going to be worth it, but it’s been hard. I know it seems like maybe I have it all together, like I’ve got it all perfectly figured out, and it’s just guys like Dave who are kind of a mess.”

  We both laughed.

  “But yeah, it’s hard for me, too. For all of us. The best thing ever is being here with everybody. We really have to do this more often.”

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  He bumped his forehead into mine, hard. When his head hit my head, I noticed that my headache had gone away completely.

  “Now where the fuck is everybody?!”

  As soon as the room key beeped, Josh started shouting from inside the room.

  “Did you get Advil or Tylenol?”

  I opened the door. The room looked like an absolute mess, the most complicated possible version of pathetic. So did everyone, and everything, except for Willie.

  “WHAT’S THE DINKY-DONK, MOTHERFUCKERS?!”

  Willie lunged for Dave, torpedoing Dave’s stomach with his skull and forcing him onto the bed, coughing. Dave started instinctively defending himself with wrestling moves, which made Willie laugh and break out his own high school wrestling moves.

  Josh looked at me, opening his arms, and mouthed, So?

  I walked to the minibar and opened a beer. Josh stared while I downed the whole thing and threw the empty bottle on the floor.

  Then he shrugged.

  We got wasted in the room. Then we went to XS at the Wynn, Ghostbar at the Palms, and waited in line at Hakkasan at the MGM until we gave up. Willie won $800 at roulette. Josh hooked up. We got back to the rooms at five a.m., slept till ten, pulled the curtain open, turned up some music, smoked a bowl, and went to the Paris buffet for what we all agreed was the best breakfast, lunch, and dinner of our lives in a single sitting.

  “We have to do this more often,” said Willie, in a crisp and brilliant benediction over a bottomless bottle of anonymous champagne.

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  “To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

  The four of us shared a taxi to the airport together, still drunk from the breakfast. My plane was the last to take off. I played slots until my plane was ready to board. I won, then I lost, then I won, then I lost, all at random. I didn’t understand anything, but at least now it was a relief that I wasn’t supposed to. Then the plane boarded, and I went back home.

  It was the happiest weekend the four of us spent together since college, as well as the last. A few weeks afterward, Willie changed his profile photo to a picture of him surrounded by smiling kids at an inner-city after-school program in a T-shirt with the unexplained acronym H.E.L.P. across it in cursive, and things seemed to get a lot better for him after that. Dave committed suicide six months later.

  Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Bicycle

  It was a quiet Sunday. Wikipedia Brown was sipping lemonade with his friend Sally, when all of a sudden their classmate Joey ran in, out of breath.

  “Help!” said Joey. “Someone stole my bike! I left it outside the library this morning. Who stole it?”

  “The modern-day chain bicycle was patented in Germany in 1817,” said Wikipedia Brown. “Ten-speed bikes became popular in the United States in the 1970s. Carrot Top uses a bicycle as a prop in his popular mainstream comedy act.”

  “Oooh, Carrot Top,” said Joey. “Whatever happened to him?”

  “Carrot Top was born Scott Thompson in Big Bear City, California, in 1965,” said Wikipedia Brown.

  “Big Bear City? What an odd name. Is that a real place?” asked Joey.

  “Big Bear City is an unincorporated census-designated location in San Bernardino County, California, with a population of—”

  “Wait! Let’s not get distracted,” said Sally. “Every time we talk to Wikipedia Brown, we get distracted. We spend hours and hours with him, and always forget what we were supposed to investigate in the first place.”

  “Yes, good point,” said Joey. “We have to find my bike. Sally, do you have any ideas?”

  “Sally is a bad detective and a well-known slut,” said Wikipedia Brown. “Citation needed.”

  “Is that true?” asked Joey—his intentions unclear.

  “No,” said Sally, fuming with anger. “I don’t know who told him that. It could have been anyone. Literally, anyone.”

  “The government caused 9/11!” Wikipedia Brown shouted suddenly, for no reason.

  Sally pulled Wikipedia Brown aside. “Are you sure you’re okay, Wikipedia?”

  “I’m not perfect,” said Wikipedia Brown. “I never said I was. But I work fast, and I work for free, and I’m everyone’s best friend. Plus, I’m getting better by the second—and it’s all thanks to people like you.”

  Sally smiled. She liked being part of Wikipedia’s process. “Okay, Wikipedia,” said Sally. “But I have a question for you, Joey. You say you left your bike outside the library this morning? It’s Sunday morning. The library is closed.”

  Wikipedia Brown stood up with a start.

  “George W. Bush is the father of Miley Cyrus’s baby!” announced Wikipedia Brown.

  This story is under review.

  Regret Is Just Perfectionism Plus Time

  They all gathered around his hospital bed to cry and watch him die.

  “Do you have any regrets, Grandpa?” asked the ten-year-old, solemnly, as if he imagined himself wearing a tie.

  “Yes, I do,” said the man. “I bought a lottery ticket in 1974. Once. One ticket. Ten million dollar jackpot.”

  “Did you win?”

  “No.”

  “Were you close?” as
ked the boy.

  “No,” moaned the grandfather. “I got all six numbers wrong. All six! I said 12-5-28-4-17-31—that’s what I put on the form. If I had put 3-16-18-19-34-1, then everything would have been different.”

  Chris Hansen at the Justin Bieber Concert

  His daughter was dying, literally dying, to go to the Justin Bieber concert, and it was only going to be one night, and her mother was going to be out of town, and it was practically impossible to get tickets anyway except, except! He could always get tickets to anything thanks to his connections as the longtime host of the NBC series To Catch a Predator.

  But Chris Hansen did not want to go to the Justin Bieber concert.

  “I just think,” he said, choosing his words to his twelve-year-old daughter carefully, “I just think that my presence there … might make some people … uncomfortable.”

  “Who? Pedophiles?” snapped his daughter. “You’re afraid of making pedophiles uncomfortable?”

  “Yes—no!—I mean …” stammered Chris Hansen. “Look. Anyone who has followed my career knows I am not afraid of making pedophiles uncomfortable. Okay? That’s just Chris Hansen 101. Let’s get that straight right off the bat.”

  “Then what is it?” she challenged.

  Tough girl. His daughter all right.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  “You want to know what it is?” said Chris Hansen. “You really want to know? I go to the Justin Bieber concert, and everybody’s looking at me. You know why? They’re looking at me trying to figure out who I’m looking at. So everybody’s staring at me. And I have to do them the courtesy of not looking back at them, because what they don’t realize is that if I look at them back for as much as a split second, then everybody’s gonna stare at them for the next two hours. You understand why, don’t you? And by the way, do you know who’s not looking at me? There are only a few people at this point who are not looking at me, who are trying to avoid eye contact. Do you know who those people are? That’s right,” said Chris Hansen. “Pedophiles. Those are the pedophiles. So, great, now I know who all the pedophiles are. That’s a fun thing to know, isn’t it? And now, I am morally obligated to do something—but what do I do? How am I supposed to alert someone in a position of authority that these people are definitely pedophiles who are destroying lives, but that the only evidence I can offer to support this charge is that these alleged pedophiles are suspiciously not staring at me? Huh? I’d look like something of an egomaniac, don’t you think? So you know what I have to do, to make it tolerable for myself? There’s only one thing I can do, Kaitlin. I have to stare straight ahead, right at Justin Bieber, never taking my eyes off him, not even for a second. And when people see me at a Justin Bieber concert, staring holes into Justin Bieber, you know what they think? They think, Ahhh, I see. It all makes sense now. And I don’t even care—I don’t have an ego about stuff like that,” he lied, “but besides all that, besides all that, what about the fact that I bust pedophiles eight hours a day, five days a week, and maybe for once in my life I just want to relax on a Saturday night spending time with my daughter without any of this on my mind?”

  She started to cry.

  Dammit, thought Chris Hansen. I shouldn’t have used that tone. She’s just a kid who wanted to go to a concert. I didn’t have to make it all about me. Also, I didn’t need to exaggerate my hours. It’s more like four hours a day, four days a week.

  “You know what,” he said, “I’ll wear a hat or something. It’ll be fine.”

  “You look stupid in hats,” she said.

  “Hey. That hurt my feelings,” he said.

  In the end, he took her to the Justin Bieber concert. It wasn’t as much fun as she thought it was going to be, and it wasn’t as bad as he said it was going to be. The concert was okay, and so were they.

  Great Writers Steal

  “What if they have an alarm?”

  “I told you. We’re going to get out too fast for that to matter.”

  “I don’t know. Something feels off.”

  “Hey! Nothing’s off, okay? It’s what we’re doing. Remember what the book said?”

  “ ‘Good writers borrow, great writers steal.’ ”

  “You want to be a great writer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure? Because you don’t sound sure.”

  “I want to be a great writer!”

  “You want to be a great writer?”

  “Yes! I want to be a great writer! I want to be a legend!”

  “Damn right. We’re both going to be legends. Kerouac, Burroughs, Bukowski—they probably stole all kinds of stuff.”

  “Bret Easton Ellis probably still robs places.”

  “Liquor stores, probably.”

  “Who knows! Probably. I pictured maybe banks. The point is, we never hear about any of it.”

  “Right. Right.”

  “Right?!”

  “Right!”

  “Ready?!”

  “Let’s do it!!!”

  Neither of them ever got anything published. In fact, those who read their writing went so far as to say that they misunderstood literature on an unusually fundamental level.

  But after a few years, they got to be pretty good thieves.

  Confucius at Home

  “I’m hungry,” said Confucius to a nearby servant. “Is there any food around? Some noodles, maybe?”

  “CONFUCIUS SAY: BRING NOODLES!” shouted the servant to the cook.

  “Hey, hey, please calm down,” said Confucius. “It’s just a question. Only if it’s convenient.”

  “CONFUCIUS SAY: CALM DOWN!” shouted the servant to the rest of the household.

  “Stop it, okay?” snapped Confucius. “Not everything is a thing.”

  “CONFUCIUS SAY: NOT EVERYTHING IS A THING.”

  Dammit, thought Confucius, and he was about to interrupt him again—but didn’t. That one sounded pretty good, he had to admit. And the one before wasn’t so bad, either, if interpreted in the right way.

  “You get those last two?” Confucius whispered to his scribe, who was sitting in the corner. “ ‘Calm down,’ and the other one?”

  The scribe nodded.

  “I don’t know, maybe.” Confucius shrugged. “Not the noodles one, obviously.”

  But if the scribe wanted to write those other two down … well, Confucius wasn’t going to stop him.

  War

  The two children began a game of war.

  This is a good idea, thought both children. Soon, I will win. Then the game will be over, I will be happy, and we can both go do other things.

  But no matter how many times they played war, they always forgot how tedious, how tiresome, how emotionally debilitating, how devoid of reward, and how maddeningly left to chance the game was; and how they always regretted having started the contest well before the time it was over.

  In that way, it wasn’t too unlike the game of bridge.

  If You Love Something

  If you love something, let it go.

  If you don’t love something, definitely let it go.

  Basically, just drop everything, who cares.

  Just an Idea

  When the couple won the $18 millon Powerball jackpot, they found out they had two options. They could accept the state’s default payout structure, which would come to $600,000 a year over thirty years; or they could let a company buy the ticket from them for a single upfront payment of ten million dollars.

  Both options sounded good.

  And they didn’t have to decide right away, anyway.

  They spent the weekend celebrating in secret with lots of champagne and side dishes.

  Rich, forever.

  On Monday morning, as they walked up the steps of the Ohio Lottery Commission headquarters, a woman in a business suit intercepted them and presented them with a third option.

  An artist named Damien Hirst was in the market for a lottery ticket just like this one, the woman explained. Would they be interested in s
elling the ticket to him, through her, right now, for the flat fee of twelve million dollars?

  “What’s he going to do with it?” asked the husband.

  “He’s going to stamp the word VOID on it and sell it for fifty million dollars.”

  The wife didn’t get that at all, but the husband said he kind of did, maybe.

  “We’ll talk about it,” said the husband. “We’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

  That night they looked up the artist online.

  “It’s the idea of it,” explained the husband. “See? All this stuff. It’s the idea.”

  The next morning they called the woman and told her they’d do it.

  “Excellent!” she said.

  They signed some paperwork and handed her the ticket, and she handed them a certified check for twelve million dollars.

  And even better: nobody had to know they won. They could tell anyone they wanted, or no one if they wanted. No security concerns, no privacy concerns. No sob stories or television cameras or suspicious relatives they’d never heard of.

  Just the two of them and the millions and millions of dollars.

  The night before they were going to deposit the certified check, the husband awoke so startled by an idea that he had to wake up his wife to run it by her, too.

  What if we called the woman back and offered to sell them the twelve-million-dollar check for fifteen million dollars? He could stamp VOID on the check, too!

  “I like it,” she said.

  The next day they called the woman with their proposal that Damien Hirst could buy back their undeposited certified check for fifteen million dollars.

  “Why would he do that?” asked the woman.

  “Well, he could do whatever he wants with it,” said the husband. “For example: he could stamp VOID on the check and then sell that for seventy million dollars.”

  “Sell what for seventy million dollars?”