One More Thing Page 17

  “The voided check to us.”

  The woman sounded perplexed. “I’m sorry, could you explain more … what you mean, exactly?”

  “You buy the twelve-million-dollar certified check made out to us, George and Cynthia Clark, from Hirst LLC. Okay? You give it to Damien Hirst. He writes VOID or CANCELED on it, or stamps or stencils it or however he wants to do it—he can decide that part.”

  “Maybe he could paint it in red paint,” chimed in Cynthia.

  “Shh,” said George. “Then you take that, you frame that—he frames that—whoever frames that—doesn’t matter—the voided check—that he voided, or an assistant voided, or however he does it—then one of you takes that to a gallery, and you sell it for sixty-five, seventy, a hundred million dollars!”

  “I don’t think that would sell,” the woman finally said.

  “Sure it would! It’s almost exactly like the first idea, but better!”

  “What is?”

  “The voided check to us! That we gave to him! And he voided! For the lottery ticket that we gave to him! That he voided!”

  “I’m sorry,” said the woman. “I think I just don’t get it.”

  “That’s okay,” said the husband.

  Just an idea.

  Heyyyyy, Rabbits

  One morning I looked out my window, and I saw a rabbit hop across my back patio.

  Just hopping through.

  It entered from one side, then it hopped around a little, then it left out the other side.

  That was it.

  I loved it.

  I wanted it to happen again and again and again.

  I thought about buying a rabbit as a pet and putting it on the patio. But I didn’t want to have to lock it up in a cage. And I didn’t want to let it just roam free, knowing that at any time, anything could happen to it.

  I would feel so terrible if something happened to it.

  Or if it felt all caged up.

  So I put a bowl of carrots out on my back patio.

  Heyyyyy, rabbits.

  The Best Thing in the World Awards

  Many of the nominees were returning: love, Jesus Christ, Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld, losing gracefully (which never won but was always nominated), sunrises, peace (which was often a finalist during times of war but was otherwise not nominated), summer evenings, the score to West Side Story, laughter, Christmas, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

  Others were new: internet on planes, spicy tuna on crispy rice.

  Beauty had never been nominated. People lived their lives as if it were the best thing in the world, but perhaps in their hearts they knew it wasn’t. The same was true for money. Same for honesty.

  A lot of people said they thought that Jesus Christ was going to come close one of these days, but it was generally nonreligious people who said that. Believers tended to vote for love, and the more casual believers voted for Christmas, and that split the vote.

  Love always won. Everyone knew that and watched anyway. Perhaps even more eagerly, the way that people are more willing to get caught up in a certain type of movie when they have a sense deep down that, of course, love is going to win in the end. The fun isn’t whether love is going to win; the fun is in seeing how.

  “Welcome to the Best Thing in the World Awards!” announced the host, Neil Patrick Harris. He had been the host for the past four years and he was terrific at it. (“When are you going to be nominated?” he was asked each year as he walked the red carpet on the way in, and he’d laugh it off. And so would the viewers at home. “Let’s all calm down” was the general reaction whenever anyone would ask Neil Patrick Harris when he was going to be nominated. He was a fundamentally great host, there was no doubt about that; but it said a lot about how seriously people took the awards that he wouldn’t be nominated, at least not for a long, long time. An awards-show host? No, sorry. We love him, was the unspoken collective answer to this question, but we’re talking about the best thing in the world here.)

  “Your votes—you, the viewers at home—are taken into account along with our confidential panel of experts and judges, all to determine the best of the best of the best …”

  Most people skipped or only half watched the first ninety minutes of the show, which consisted of video segments and live performances celebrating the nominees, all of which had been previously announced. There were dance troupes, some subtitled singing. A man named Louie performed some standup comedy, but there wasn’t too much he could say on network television. Pixar debuted a ninety-second short film that was, everyone agreed, maybe just average for them but great for anyone else. Oprah Winfrey came out and explained in a smart and accessible way why some of the more-boring-seeming nominees—mostly those involving third world health—were actually really exciting to have on the list.

  It was the final half hour that everyone watched intently, when the three finalists were announced and then narrowed down to two and then, finally, a single winner—the best thing in the world.

  The cameras pushed in as Neil Patrick Harris returned to the stage, wearing a crisp blue suit that sharp viewers recognized as the best of its kind.

  “The three finalists for the best thing in the world are: Laughter!”

  Applause.

  “Love!”

  Applause.

  “And … Nothing.”

  People seemed confused, even Neil Patrick Harris (which everyone knew a host was never supposed to seem—so much for his chances at being nominated next year).

  “Uhh … Uh, we’ll be right back after this commercial break.”

  When the show returned, Neil Patrick Harris was smiling again. His smile was so reassuring, conveying such a contagious calm, that everyone quickly forgot how he had seemed so unprofessionally off-balance just moments before.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to say good night to one of the three best things in the world. Good night to …”

  Neil Patrick Harris opened an envelope with the red number 3 on it.

  “Laughter!”

  Still, amid the laughter, anxiety had settled in among many viewers and especially those in the live studio audience. What did “nothing” mean? Who had nominated it, and how did it make it all the way to the finals on its first time? When love did inevitably win in the end, what would it mean to have “nothing” in second place? Maybe it would enhance the victory for love by placing more distance between love and everything else: “nothing even comes close to love”? Or would it mean that love was only “better than nothing”?

  Some of the minds in the room more practiced in anxious thinking were able to wander even farther. If “nothing” were to somehow win—which it wouldn’t, but if it did—what would that mean, exactly? Could that still be a victory for love? Would it mean that nothing was better than love? Perhaps it would function as a gentle and welcome reminder that of course, on some level, this entire competition was meaningless—because nothing, no one thing, could really be the best thing in the world? And perhaps that would be profound or even inspiring? Or would it mean something darker than that—perhaps it would mean that all the things that had been thought of as the very best things in the world were still, on some deeper level, less than nothing?

  Or maybe this was all a game of semantics: maybe everyone knew what love meant, and everyone knew what nothing meant, and it really was that simple, and that’s why everyone was so unsettled?

  But it wouldn’t even come to that. Love always won, right?

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” said Neil Patrick Harris, laughing elegantly as part of his incomparably seamless transition from laughter’s highlight reel to the next award, “now, as we wind down another unforgettable night of miracles big and small, it’s time to say goodbye to the second-best thing in the world. Ladies and gentlemen …”

  Everyone watching, even the people secure in their knowledge that love always won; even those who talked themselves into believing that the infinite vagaries of the word “nothing” meant
that its win could mean anything they wanted it to—everyone—held their breath in the hope that the next thing they saw would be recognizable, somehow, as nothing.

  Neil Patrick Harris smiled and began to unpeel the envelope with a red number 2.

  “Everyone having a good time? Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to say good night to the second-best thing in the world. Good night to—”

  Screens smashed to pure black, and raw, relieved cheers flew up around the world at the appearance of the highlight reel for nothing—as well as in the television studio, where the lights had short-circuited, and the smart, modern orchestral music subtly omnipresent throughout the broadcast had been replaced with a loud, hollow buzz.

  As minute after minute passed, though, collective anxiety started to regroup and return. Why was this taking so long? How long was it going to last? This was already far longer than the other highlight reels, and if it went on much more, the show would be out of time before it was able to play the annually updated highlight reel for love, the much-anticipated traditional ending of the show.

  And why, some wondered, had the cut to the highlight reel for nothing been so abrupt? It was a curiously crude transition for a show, and a host, that had never made a misstep like that before.

  With less than a minute left in the scheduled program, the lights and broadcast were suddenly back on.

  Neil Patrick Harris stood alone onstage. There was no introductory music, no dramatic camera sweep through the crowd. Just a static shot of Neil Patrick Harris and the steady buzz of the microphone soundboard, which had been on the whole time but only now was audible on the broadcast. Neil Patrick Harris stared straight ahead, pale and determined, looking both intensely focused and intensely disoriented at once, as if a pair of hands had reached inside him, shook him by something as deep and untraceable as integrity itself, and then placed him back exactly where he had stood, the same but forever different.

  He also looked, in less abstract terms, as if someone were holding a gun to his head from offstage and forcing him to say something he didn’t want to say, which would eventually become a prevailing rumor about the night, backed up over the years, as rumors like this always were, by more and more people with less and less of a connection to the original event.

  “The best thing in the world is love,” said Neil Patrick Harris. “We’re out of time. Good night.”

  The next year and in all the years that followed, “nothing” was disqualified from competition.

  The official statement put forth by the contest organizers explained that the competition was a competition for the best thing in the world, and that nothing was, by definition, “no thing,” the absence of a thing, and therefore had “no relevance to the competition.”

  The logic was sound, even though it did nothing to explain how nothing had come to be nominated that one year; let alone become one of the three finalists; let alone become one of the two finalists; let alone—allegedly, possibly, apparently—come to have its name inside the final winning envelope; let alone who had nominated it, or what in the world it was supposed to have meant.

  Whenever anyone asked Neil Patrick Harris about what had happened on that night, he would simply say, flatly, with a voice he seemed to have long ago deliberately emptied of whatever emotion he might have once had on the subject, “Love won.”

  Or maybe he was just tired of being asked about it.

  Love always won in the end. No matter how it happened, no matter what it took, no matter what it meant. Fair or not, true or not, love won.

  If it was a conspiracy, at least it was the best of its kind in the world.

  Bingo

  “I’m three away across,” said Ali, “three away up-down two different ways, and two away diagonal.”

  “I’m four away up-down four different ways,” said Lisa.

  “ ‘Four away’ isn’t a thing,” said Brian.

  “Yes it is,” said Lisa.

  “I-29,” said the announcer.

  “Three away!” reported Lisa.

  “That just makes you normal with us,” said Brian.

  “N-44.”

  “Three away two different ways!” said Lisa.

  “Three away vertical two ways,” said Danielle, the oldest cousin. “Three away across one way, two away across one way.”

  “Two away diagonal one way, three away diagonal another way, two away vertical two ways,” said Brian.

  “Just two more,” said Ali. “Two more, baby.”

  “G-60.”

  “One away!” yelled Brian and Ali simultaneously. “One away!” “One away!”

  “Two away three different ways,” said Danielle.

  The prize was one hundred dollars, which was a lot if it was 1996 and you were nine, eight, also eight, or eleven and a half years old. This was a hundred dollars that no one even knew existed before Danielle had discovered the sign on the resort’s recreation-room door that afternoon and then, in a second miracle, convinced her aunt and uncle that this was the kind of activity that looked like it might be fun for the whole extended family. A hundred dollars, before taxes had been invented and exactly two weeks before the school year was to begin, meant different things to each of them but everything to all of them.

  “G-52,” said the announcer.

  “One away!” said Danielle.

  “One away two different ways, two away three different ways, three away a ton of ways,” said Ali.

  “Two away two different ways,” said Lisa.

  “One away one way, two away two ways!” said Brian.

  “Wait!” said Ali. “The middle space is a free space? I’m one away three different ways!”

  “B-35.”

  “Bingo,” said their grandfather from the back.

  Marie’s Stupid Boyfriend

  No one didn’t play the guitar “on principle.” Either you can play the guitar, or you can’t.

  You don’t “don’t.”

  Remember him?

  Pick a Lane

  “Pick a lane!!!”

  The driver behind me swerved to both sides of my car, leaning his head out the window to scream at me as he honked.

  “PICK A LANE!!!”

  Here was the thing: both lanes were identical. How was I supposed to decide?

  “PICK A LANE!!!!!!”

  They were both the exact same width and had the exact same smoothness to the pavement. And there was no one in either lane, either.

  Except for me, half in both.

  “PICK A LANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  There were little differences, though. The right lane bordered some woods, which were pretty. The left lane was closer to the divider, which made a calming whoosh sound as you drove past it.

  The thing was, I liked both of these things equally, too.

  “PICK A LANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  I didn’t know which one to pick!

  Discussion question:

  Which lane should the driver pick?

  “Everyone Was Singing the Same Song”: The Duke of Earl Recalls His Trip to America in June of 1962

  The Duke of Earl, raised in privilege and ensconced in luxury, but recently agitated by the achingly beautiful tones of Technicolor in the movies of the palace theater and by a glamorously faded silhouette of the Marlboro Man on the back of a once-glossy magazine that had somehow made its way to the coffee table of the family lake house, decided that it was finally time to see America.

  He requested funds for an official state visit, and his request was immediately granted. But he was nervous as he flew in his well-appointed private airplane to the vast and open and young and casual and confident nation. He already knew he liked America, but he didn’t know if it would like him.

  He went first to the capital, Washington, which was the perfect place to start, as its proud and polished formality spoke a language reassuringly familiar to the duke in him. Then to smart and unruly New York City, and its lovely suburbs in deep and shallow Connecticut
; then to Chicago, the tall city in the middle of the wide country; and from there he was taken to a representative handful of farms, big and small, in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. He visited a rodeo in the state of Texas, which to his extreme delight was almost exactly as he imagined it; he saw the Grand Canyon of Arizona; and he traveled by train among the optimistic and neatly dressed middle classes to San Francisco, a city so light in every way that he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. This must be what gave them the idea for Technicolor, he thought, looking out at it; it even made him chuckle out loud now and then, girlishly and by himself, at how pretty it was, yes, but more than anything else how light, its hills and its colors and bridges and water and attitudes and people and skies. It made him feel he might somehow float up out of his heavy black shoes into one of the many clouds sitting atop the sunny city, but not just any cloud, a cloud from a children’s drawing, puffed and friendly, right next to a sun wearing a movie star’s plastic sunglasses and smiling.

  And everywhere he went—everywhere—when he introduced himself as the Duke of Earl, the people he met would burst into a wide, friendly grin. He had been nervous, and for fair reason: Americans had no royalty, of course, but beyond that, as every student learned in school, the nation had in fact been born out of a rebellion against royalty! And, while anyone in the world might be naturally expected to be at least a little starstruck by, say, the queen of England or the princess of Monaco … who, to be honest, had ever heard of the Duke of Earl?

  But the Americans, it seemed, to his deep and enduring relief, could not have been more delighted. “Are you really the Duke of Earl, now?” they would ask with that bright, true American smile. One could see the charm lighting up their eyes from some source deep inside them. “Well, isn’t that something! The Duke of Earl! I can’t wait to tell people I met the real-life Duke of Earl.”

  And then came the most incredible part: always—inevitably, invariably—within a few moments of being introduced to them as the Duke of Earl, he would catch the Americans humming or gently singing a happy little tune to themselves. But the even more magical part was this: no matter where he was in all of America—the wide streets of Texas, the lawns of Ohio, the pubs of Boston or Philadelphia—everyone was always singing the same song.