One More Thing Page 3

  After five hours and nineteen encores full of more of his own hits, the concert finally drew to a close. Tim kissed Lynn, and she kissed him back. They felt like they were in heaven. They were, of course; but they felt like it, too.

  Still, even after all that, they didn’t want the show to end, and when they looked down, they realized what was hanging around their necks: backstage passes, all access, VIP.

  “Of course,” said Lynn. “Of course we have these.”

  They went backstage. They showed the badges tentatively to the first person they saw in a uniform, who nodded respectfully and walked them to a wide, clean corridor under the stadium. It was a billion-seat stadium, so the hallway was long, but along the way, not a single person second-guessed their right to be there. Tim and Lynn were escorted along the hallway until they were finally left by themselves outside a single, unmarked door.

  Tim and Lynn looked at each other.

  “Could it be this easy?” asked Lynn.

  “It’s heaven,” Tim said. “No need to guard the door.”

  Tim knocked, but heard nothing.

  He knocked again, harder, and heard nothing.

  He tried the knob of the door and found it was unlocked—of course—and swung open easily. And there, leaning casually against a closet door with his eyes half-closed, was Frank Sinatra. And there, on the floor on her knees, was Nana, blowing Frank Sinatra.

  “You got to understand something, Timmy,” said Nana, glowing and gorgeous and angry and mysterious as she closed her robe with one hand and the door to Sinatra’s dressing room behind her with the other. “And it’s lovely to meet you …?”

  “Lynn.”

  “Lynn. Tim, Lynn, I’m so happy for you both. And I love you, Timmy, so much. But you have to understand. When I met you, everybody was dead. My husband; two of my kids; my parents, of course; my sister; all of my friends—not everybody, but, yeah, kind of everybody, you know? And I was part dead from it. I didn’t know I was at the time. And believe me—I was so happy and grateful for the love I did have in my life, in the form of you and your little sister, whose name escapes me at the moment. Danielle! That was her name, wasn’t it? My, what a beauty.” Nana smiled at the memory. “She was my … I loved you all equally, all so much. That love was real. And it still is. And Lynn, welcome to the family.” She hugged Tim again and kissed Lynn on the cheek. “Oh, isn’t it exciting? Everyone’s here. There’s so much going on!”

  Nana took a drag from the live half of a cigarette, which she had neatly hidden between her fingers by the doorknob.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Nana. “You have infinite time here, and there are infinite things to do, but you still don’t end up doing much of it. You do what you love most, over and over.”

  She took another breath of smoke, which couldn’t kill her now. “There’s something I think about sometimes, when I’m walking through the town, looking at the different concerts. So many of them were so big in their time, and people loved them, but maybe it’s just ’cause that was all they had, you know? There’s this guy, Dan Fogelberg. I recognize the name, I think your mom liked him, he did this song and that song. I’m not saying he wasn’t great or a big deal or worth seeing. I’m sure he was great. But no one goes to heaven to see Dan Fogelberg. You know what I mean?”

  Yes, said Tim.

  Yes, said Lynn.

  “I love you, Timmy. It’s just … I only knew you for nine years. And I’m young here. You know? I have other things to do besides dinner-at-Grandma’s.”

  He got it. And he got her, too, more than ever, and maybe for the first time.

  “I love you, Nana,” said Tim.

  “I love you, too,” said Nana. “Gotta go.”

  Romance, Chapter One

  “The cute one?”

  “No, the other cute one.”

  “Oh, she’s cute too.”

  Julie and the Warlord

  “Okay,” she laughed after three complicated cocktails. “Now, you, sir …”

  “Yes.”

  “You, sir … Now … I am … Okay. I feel like we’ve only talked about me. But I don’t know anything about you. Other than that you’re very, um, charming and, well, very cute, of course. Ha, don’t let that go to your head! Shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I feel—okay, if this is my—well. Okay: what do you do?”

  “What do I do? You mean what is my job?”

  “Sorry, I hate that question, too. It’s like, is this a date or an interview, right?”

  He finished his bite of sauce-soaked broccolini and answered, but she didn’t hear him clearly.

  “Hmmmmmmmmmm? All I heard was ‘lord.’ ”

  “Yes.”

  “Ooh! Okay, this is fun. Are you a … landlord? Because I do not have the best history getting along with landlords. My first apartment—”

  “I’m not a landlord.”

  “Are you … a … drug lord?” Julie said, stroke-poking the side of his face with her finger. “ ’Cause that could be a problem.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not … the Lord, are you? Because I haven’t gone to temple since my Bat Mitzvah. Ha, don’t tell my grandma!”

  He laughed politely. She could tell he was laughing just to be nice—and she liked that more than if he had laughed from finding her funny. A nice guy: now that would be a real change of pace for her.

  “Then what kind of lord are you, anyways, eh?” she asked with an old-timey “what’s the big idea” accent. God, she was a bit tipsy, wasn’t she?

  “I’m a warlord.”

  “In-ter-est-ing! Now, I don’t know exactly what this is. But I want to learn. So: what exactly … is … a warlord?” Julie asked, her chin now resting playfully on a V of two upturned palms. “Educate meeeee.”

  “Okay. Can you picture where the Congo is on a map?”

  “Kinda,” she exaggerated.

  “This is Africa,” he said, pointing to an imaginary map in the air between them. “This is the Indian Ocean. This is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is just regular Congo.”

  “What? Hold up—”

  “I know—that’s just how it is. I didn’t name them,” the warlord laughed. “Anyway. This? All this, here? This is what I control.”

  “So you’re like … the governor of it?”

  “No. There are areas of the world where it will show up on your map as a certain country. But in reality, no government is in control of that region, in any real way. They cannot collect taxes. They cannot enforce laws. Do you follow?”

  Yes, nodded Julie.

  “The people that are in charge are the warlords. They—we—bribe, kidnap, indoctrinate, torture, and … what am I forgetting? What’s the fifth one? Oh, kill—ha, that’s weird that I forgot that one—the population of any region that falls above a certain threshold of natural resources but below a certain threshold of government protection. It’s not exactly that simple, Julie, but, basically, that determines where I’m based. Once those conditions reach that level, me and my team, we show up and terrorize that area until the entire population is either dead, subdued, or, ideally, one of our soldiers. Ideally ideally, dream scenario? A child soldier.”

  “That does not sound legal,” said Julie, trying to stall for time so that she could object properly and intelligently, which was going to take a second, because she had had a couple of drinks already and had not anticipated having to debate a hot-button topic like this at the top of her intelligence—especially not with someone who did it for a living.

  “No, it isn’t legal at all—have you been listening?” Julie blushed and rotated her fork on her napkin in a four-point turn so she would have something to focus on besides her embarrassment. “This is a show of force outside the ability of any government to enforce its laws.”

  He went on and on. The words “rape” and “limbs” came up more than on any other date she could remember.

  “What
about, like, the international community?” asked Julie, hoping this was a smart question. Usually this was something she was good at on dates, but tonight she was having more trouble. “Don’t they ever pressure you to stop? Or,” she added, thinking there might be something else there, “or something?”

  “Yes,” said the warlord. “Sure! For example, there was this thing about me on Twitter a while ago—are you on Twitter?” She said she was but didn’t check it often. “Same here!” he laughed. “I have an account, but I can never figure out if it’s a thing I do or not. Anyway. I was ‘trending.’ You know what that is?” She did. “I’ll be honest, it weirded me out. I got into this pattern where I was checking my name every two seconds, and there were like forty-five new mentions of me. All negative!”

  “You can’t let yourself fall into that,” said Julie.

  “Exactly. Anyway, it passed,” said the warlord. “You know Twitter—before long everyone’s on to the next thing.”

  “What about,” asked Julie, downing the last sip of her cocktail as she felt a premature ripple of seriousness returning, “the ethics of it? How do you feel about that? Doesn’t that trouble you?”

  The warlord gestured to Julie with his fork. “That top you’re wearing. Anthropologie?”

  “H&M,” said Julie, “but thank you.”

  “Even better,” said the warlord. “Do you know the conditions in the factories that made that top that you’re wearing? Do you ever think about that?”

  “Yeah, okay, no. That’s not—nice try. Just because … No. And yes, I know, this phone, right here, that I use every day—but, no. No! You can’t … It doesn’t help anything to equate … Look,” said Julie. “There’s no excuse. But that also does not mean—”

  “Just in case you’re thinking about dessert,” whispered the waitress, dropping off two stiff sheets of artisan paper in front of Julie and the warlord.

  “Remember when they used to ask first if you wanted to see a dessert menu?” asked the warlord. “Now everyone just ambushes you with a dessert menu without asking. When did that start?”

  “I know!” said Julie. “Everyone started doing that at the same time, too! How does stuff like that happen? Everywhere, just”—she snapped—“changing their policy at the exact same time?”

  “Get Malcolm Gladwell on that,” said the warlord.

  “I know, right?”

  They both scanned the menus, each pair of eyes starting in the unhelpful middle of the dessert menu for some no-reason, then tipsily circling around and around until most of the important words had been absorbed.

  “I have never understood ‘flourless chocolate cake,’ ” stated the warlord, finally. “Is flour such a bad thing? I mean, compared to the other things in chocolate cake?”

  “You want to split that?” said Julie.

  “Flour is probably the least unhealthy thing I can think of in chocolate cake,” the warlord continued. “Is that supposed to be the point? That the whole cake is just all eggs and sugar and butter? And anyway, who cares? It’s chocolate cake. We know it’s not a health food. Use whatever ingredients you want. All it has to do is taste good. We don’t need to know how you did it—just make it.”

  “You want to maybe split that?” said Julie again.

  “We will split the flourless chocolate cake,” declared the warlord.

  “Great!” said the waitress, disappearing again.

  “So, do you get to travel a lot?” asked Julie.

  “Not as much as I’d like. Now and then we’ll reach some cease-fire, after some especially big massacre, and things get quiet for a bit. That’s what allowed me to take some time off, travel, meet you, stuff like that. Oh, I meant to say: you look even better in person than in your profile picture.”

  “Oh … Thank you.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to tell you that. Nice surprise. Rare it goes in that direction.”

  “Ha. Well, thanks. Um, same. Don’t let that go to your head.”

  “Thanks. So … Lost my train of thought.”

  “Cease-fires?”

  “Right! So, you know cease-fires—they never stick.”

  “Yes, I think I saw something about that on Jon Stewart. That must be frustrating.”

  “It is! Thank you, Julie. That’s exactly the right word,” said the warlord. “It’s very frustrating!”

  “Flourless chocolate cake,” said the waitress.

  “Thank you,” said Julie and the warlord at the same time.

  “Can I get you anything else? Another drink?”

  “I really shouldn’t,” said Julie. “Are you okay to drive, by the way?”

  “I have a driver,” said the warlord.

  Julie ordered a fourth and final cocktail.

  Discussion question:

  Do you think Julie should fuck the warlord? Why or why not?

  The Something by John Grisham

  John Grisham woke up shortly after sunrise in his large, light-filled house outside Charlottesville, Virginia. He put on a pot of coffee for his beautiful wife, picked up the fresh crisp newspaper from his driveway—he was still a print guy, print had been good to him—and flipped peacefully through the front section as he did every morning until he found something that nearly made him choke on his locally baked bread.

  CONGRATULATIONS TO AUTHOR JOHN GRISHAM, declared the full-page ad, which featured a smiling, handsome picture of his face from ten years ago, WHOSE NEW THRILLER THE SOMETHING DEBUTED THIS WEEK AT #1 ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST. CONGRATULATIONS FROM EVERYONE AT RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHING. Then, in smaller letters: CHECK OUT THE SOMETHING AND OTHER JOHN GRISHAM BESTSELLERS AT RANDOMHOUSE.COM.

  Nothing happened for a minute. Birds chirped.

  John Grisham picked up the phone.

  “Dale. John Grisham. Call me back. Call me back ASAP. Thanks. Looking forward to your call. This is John Grisham.” Then a minute later he texted to the same number: Call me. 911. JG.

  A minute later his home phone rang.

  “Hey, Dale.” Dale was John Grisham’s new editor. Art was still his editor officially, but he had handed off most day-to-day duties to this new guy Dale seven months ago, and so far, there had been no problems. But so far only goes so far, as the protagonist of his latest book liked to say; so far only goes so far.

  “First things first: congratulations!” said Dale. If Dale was at all surprised that John Grisham was calling him and texting 911 to his cell phone at 5:55 a.m., he did a very good job hiding it. “Can we pause to appreciate this for a second? I know this is par for the course for you, but: number one for The Something in its debut week? I hope you give yourself a second to really—”

  “Where did you send the galleys?” asked John Grisham.

  “For you to proofread? Uh, we sent them to your farm in Mississippi on, let me check … August fourth. Does that sound right? You always spend July and August on the farm, correct?”

  “Not this August. I was here in Virginia.”

  “Ah. My apologies. Right, the weather, that makes—yeah. Well, we didn’t hear back for a couple weeks, and word around here is that you never really weigh in on galleys anyway, right? I mean, that’s what everyone told me. So after a couple weeks—we were up against this holiday deadline, and, hey, congratulations again, because obviously there could not be a better time to debut at number one than the Christmas season … I’m sorry, John. Obviously, I should have double-checked. I just didn’t want to disturb you and, like, hound you, especially being the new guy here, and again, I was told you really never weigh in on galleys. Is there anything you wanted to change? I can definitely see about changing it for the paperback, or—”

  “The title of the book is not The Something.”

  There was a long silence.

  “What?”

  “The title of my book is not The Something,” said John Grisham.

  “I … am looking at this manuscript right now, sent in by you to us, dated July second: The Something by John Grisham.�
�

  “I just meant ‘The … Something,’ ” said John Grisham—careful to calibrate both his emphasis and his anger precisely, not letting either cloud the other. He then repeated what he had just said with every possible intonation, approaching it like the methodical defense attorney he once was, just so it would be entirely, one hundred percent clear to this person named Dale. “ ‘The … Something.’ ‘The … Something.’ ‘The SOME-thing.’ Do you get it, Dale?! It was going to be ‘The … … … SOMETHING’!!! I was going to decide that part later!”

  “Huh. .… Okay.… I think … Why didn’t … Okay.”

  John Grisham could practically see the excessive blank space between Dale’s words: more typos, these ones over the phone.

  “I gotta tell you, John,” said Dale, finally, starting again: “I gotta say, people have actually really responded to The Something. It feels … deliberately ambiguous. You know? It’s elegantly vague. It basically lets people project whatever—”

  “The book,” said John Grisham, “is about a civil rights attorney who is blackmailed by the El Salvadoran maid he risked his career for in order to sneak her children into the country. Okay? It is not meant to be elegantly vague. This is about right and wrong, about the limits of the law, about concrete legal issues and specific personal actions. A good title would have been, oh, I don’t know, Dale, off the top of my fucking head? The Case? The Betrayal? The Immigrant’s Trial, The Immigrant, The Threat, The Letter, The Lawyer’s Pen, The Blackmail? Just to name a few?! Or,” he said, trying to sneak this one in there, the one he really wanted but was a little shy to bring up, “I thought So Far Only Goes So Far wouldn’t be the stupidest title in the world, if we wanted to go for something different?”