Having arrived at a justification for the shittiness of other men, Anton felt suddenly energized, as if he’d finished a long, healthful run. In the dead time before the show began, the other cameramen liked to pass the time zooming in on women’s tits and asses. Anton used the time to scout expressive, unusual faces that might give him a good reaction shot during the show. Knowing it was the last time he would shoot the show, he suddenly found every face that day profound and meaningful. A young woman’s excitement, an old man’s melancholy, the way a couple held tight to each other, he saw his camera as a paintbrush, capturing each moment like a latter-day Daumier. A large woman in aisle ten stood up and began carefully moving down the stairs toward the bathroom. As she passed him, Anton followed the planes of her ass, shifting like dunes of sand in the Gobi Desert. That ought to keep them amused in the control room.
Backstage, Hank, the production assistant, gave “Dr. Davis,” the resident shrink, a thumbs-up. Boyd Davis—calling him “Doctor” was Aaron’s idea, he was only a Ph.D.—put down his copy of The New Republic and climbed into his booth. Like a goddamn toll taker on the New Jersey Turnpike, he liked to say to his wife. It was Boyd’s job to place the polygraph sensors on the clammy skin of the contestants. He hated the acrid smell of adrenaline rising off them like some kind of sickness and the bright lights that made him blink like a convict, no matter how many times Maury had told him to knock it off. But it was the questions that galled him the most: Have you ever cheated on your spouse? Have you ever lied on your taxes? Are you a virgin? Have you ever forced a woman to have sex against her will? Have you ever had a three-way? Have you ever shoplifted? Have you masturbated in the last week? In the last twenty-four hours? Do you ever eat your boogers? Do you like the smell of your own farts? Do you love your husband? Are you proud of your children? Do you like your mother-in-law? Do you think you’re pretty? Questions designed to grab hold of secrets and pull them into the halogen light of instant celebrity, where they lay on the floor, writhing in their death throes for every one’s amusement. Every show, Boyd silently prayed that a contestant would land on rats instead of him.
Hank continued to the rat room, where he saw two tanks of rats—the ugly brown ones and the cute black-and-white ones. But no sign of Marian Blaumgrund.
“Which rats are we using?” Hank spoke into his headset. “The brown or the black-and-white?”
“Fuck if I care,” Maury answered. “You decide.”
Hank leaned down to look more closely at the black-and-white rats. A large female with a black spot over her eyes raised herself up and twitched her nose at him.
“Hey there, Spanky,” he said.
Having done his hair and makeup, Jeannine was giving Harry a back rub when a production assistant knocked once and stuck his head in the room.
“Showtime.”
Jeannine began to pack up her makeup box.
“Last night, I dreamed my face was on a stamp,” Harry said, his eyes still closed.
“How much were you?” Jeannine asked.
Harry opened his eyes and stood up. “I forgot to look.”
As he stepped onto the stage, the roar of the audience, like rain on a metal roof, drenched him once again in the dread of the morning. Lucky, lucky, lucky, he repeated to himself. The stage manager lowered his hands like a conductor, the audience took their seats, and Harry faced the eye of the camera. “I think we need some contestants,” Harry said, unfolding the piece of paper Hank slipped him on his way to the stage. Anton focused on the epileptic twitch of Harry’s leg as he spoke. In the control room, Maury saw the shot but said nothing. In a few hours, the kid would no longer be his problem. A spotlight roamed the audience like police helicopters searching the undergrowth. People moved closer to the edge of their seats, ready to spring forward at the mention of their name.
“Mr. Henry Lee!”
Second row from the front, an elderly Asian man stood quickly and blinked into the lights, both hands moving back and forth in a circular motion as if he were cleaning a window. In the control booth, Maury Shore watched with disgust. “He doesn’t have any teeth,” he said, which was not technically true. Mr. Henry Lee had teeth. He just didn’t have front teeth. Mr. Lee’s wife grabbed his hand and covered it with kisses but he snatched it away. He was on to something new, something better. You could see the force of this idea pulling him forward as he made his way down the aisle, stepping on every body’s toes. As he passed, they all touched him, wishing him luck, yes, but also secretly wishing some of his luck would rub off. What were the chances of two contestants coming from the same row?
Harry looked at the paper again. “Paula Bane,” he read the name out loud.
A small blond woman in a tight striped T-shirt jumped out of her seat and hopped down the aisle as if the ground were burning her feet.
“Finally,” Harry read again from the paper, “Shawnia Moore.”
Shawnia was the owner of the ass Anton McDonald had followed with his camera, and though she might well be as big as a house, she did not move like a fat woman. Bounding down the stairs; breasts so alive they seemed motorized; arms, stomach, legs aquiver; the audience gasped first and then laughed aloud at the pure plea sure of her. Shawnia shook her hips in appreciation.
“Shawnia,” Harry said, smiling at her, “calm down.”
“No, unh-unh, no”—she shook her head, so much, her thick gold earrings swung back and forth, thwacking her on the cheeks—“I am up and I am staying up!” She lifted her arms, turned to the audience, and began to clap.
Harry laughed. “All right, then, let’s make some money.” He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a card, and turned to face the contestants. “Which of the following mountain ranges is not in the United States of America” he read out loud. “The Ozarks, the Sandia, the Brooks, or the Atlas?” Mr. Lee’s console lit up first.
“Mr. Lee,” Harry asked, “what is your answer?”
Mr. Lee looked confused. “Uh…could you repeat the question?”
“No, Mr. Lee, I’m sorry, that would be against the rules,” Harry answered sternly. Mr. Lee’s face was wet with sweat. People sometimes asked Harry if he felt sorry for the contestants who didn’t know the answer. He said yes, but he didn’t. Not really. Contestants who hit the button as soon as they could—whether they knew the answer or not—were cheaters, people who believed in blustering forward, confident the rules would be bent for them. Finally, Mr. Lee barked, “The third!” Harry frowned. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lee, but the Brooks Range is in the state of Alaska.” The crowd exhaled “Oohhhh.”
Anton had kept his camera on Mrs. Lee for a reaction shot. She did not disappoint. Her mouth an O of agony, she pressed her palms against her cheeks, and howled like a wounded dog. Seeing her face on the bank of monitors in the control room, Maury took the shot. He would miss the kid, nobody had the instinct for bathos as he did.
Harry turned to Shawnia. “It looks like you rang second. Care to give us an answer?”
Shawnia leaned into the microphone. “The Atlas?”
“We have a winner.” Harry held out his hand.
Two buildings away, Marian Blaumgrund sipped her Earl Grey tea in the company cafeteria, oblivious to the death of the quartz battery on her wristwatch two hours earlier. When she checked half an hour before, she had been pleasantly surprised to see how much time was left before taping. Perhaps, she thought, time elongation was one of the perks of menopause and decided to treat herself to a piece of network-subsidized carrot cake, what L.A. Magazine called “the best reason to be an extra.” While standing in line to pay for it, she glanced up at the clock on the wall and gasped, so flustered she dropped the carrot cake to the floor, shattering the china plate. In all the time she had worked on the show, she had never missed a taping. How would the rats function without her?
Harry and Shawnia stood in front of “Sam.” Contestants were allowed two spins, then decided which of the two options they’d “rather” do. The set was high-tech m
odern pierced by shafts of halogen light, but “Sam” was wooden and painted red, like something from an old carnival. Shawnia raised her arms, grabbed the wooden handle, and pulled as hard as she could. The wheel stopped on a large brown rat.
“Oh, shit, I hate rats.” Shawnia put a hand over her mouth. “Can I say that on TV?”
“No, you can’t. The rodent lobby is going to be all over us. Try again.”
Shawnia stuck out her tongue, giggled, grabbed the handle, and pulled.
As the wicket drew close to Rats! again, the audience let out a long “Oooohhh.”
“No, no, no.” Shawnia buried her face in her hands when it landed on Rats! a second time.
Harry put a hand on her elbow and walked her toward the rats. “It’s destiny, Shawnia. Don’t fight it.” Shawnia peered into the tank. The Chestnut rats were blinking at the halogen lights shining in their eyes and pawing unhappily at the air. “Are those rats or hamsters?” she asked.
Harry laughed. “You know the rules,” he answered. “One minute gets you a leather recliner. Two minutes, Hawaii. Three minutes, a car.”
“I’m going for the car. I ain’t afraid of no hamsters,” Shawnia answered. She climbed up the ladder next to the tank and gingerly put one leg in, as if she were going swimming in cold water. The audience clapped in encouragement. The rats went still, warily watching as she placed another foot in the tank. Hands on the rim of the tank, she slowly lowered herself in, as if entering a tub of hot water. The rats began to hiss.
Harry looked offstage for Marian Blaumgrund. Why were the rats acting so strangely?
“They supposed to do that?” Shawnia asked.
Anton focused his camera on the rat Hank had called Spanky. Lips pulled back to reveal long, sharp teeth, she was leading the now-steady creep toward Shawnia’s feet.
As Harry lowered the lid, Spanky leaped into the air and landed on Shawnia’s head. “Aaaeeeeiii,” she screamed. Harry was so surprised, he lost his balance and fell backward off the ladder. The audience gasped in horror as all two dozen rats converged on her flailing limbs. Harry scrambled back up the ladder, grabbed the lid, and lifted it off the tank. Blood was running down Shawnia’s forehead. “Motherfucker!” she screamed, knocking Harry over as she scrambled out of the tank.
In the control room, Maury’s mouth dropped open in shock as he watched the debacle unfold in front of him. “Be-yoo-ti-ful,” he said. If he broke down and scored a little bit of blow tonight, there was no one in the world who could blame him. Not after the day he’d had.
5
helen McMartin’s parents were right. In a manner. She did want the car for a boy, but not for the reasons they suspected. She wanted to break up with Bobby Goralnick but felt it would be wrong to do it over the phone. Until a few weeks earlier, Bobby had been the bass player for a band called Highs, Mostly in the ’80s—a joke referring to the marijuana the band regularly smoked and their repertoire of hard rock songs popular in the 1980s. She’d met Bobby at the Salty Cat, a bar in Venice that featured live music on the weekends and karaoke the rest of the time. She and her friend Siri had snuck in using fake IDs they’d ordered over the Internet. She was pretty sure the guy at the door knew they were underage, but they both looked so hot in their handkerchief halter tops and low-slung jeans, he let them in anyway. They ordered drafts of the cheapest beer and drank them slowly. A couple of guys tried to sit with them, but Helen lied and said they were waiting for their boyfriends.
Until just a few months earlier, Helen did have a boyfriend. The son of a well-known rock-and-roll biographer, Roy Beaudell lived three doors down from her in a mock Tudor house with a swimming pool in the shape of a guitar. At fifteen, Helen was so infatuated with Roy, she would scrawl his name followed by a string of hearts moving upward like bubbles from a fish’s mouth in all her books. Just last week, her sister had picked up a once-beloved copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance only to find the title page defaced by:
I Love Roy
I lOve Roy.
I loVe Roy.
I lovE Roy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was hard for Helen to believe it, but there was a time when she had actually gone to Venice beach to tattoo his name on her belly. Thank God for parental consent laws. Her family never understood what she saw in him, but she loved his swimming pool eyes, the way his skin seemed to hold the warmth of the sun even indoors, and the slim, loosely slung muscles of his body. Who knows? If they had never had sex, Helen might still be in love with him, but one November night when the Santa Ana winds had been blowing harder than usual, she finally said yes to Roy’s constantly murmured “Please, baby, please, baby, please.”
“Really?” Roy asked, pulling back. He was so taken aback by her sudden change of heart, he briefly lost his erection.
Unfortunately, the sex wasn’t that good. In fact, it was kind of awful. Everybody said the first few times were always lousy, so Helen had reduced her expectations, but with Roy, sex started out bad and remained that way. When they kissed, every thing was fine. She liked his warm breath on her neck, and the growly moans from the back of his throat made her feel powerful—who’d have thought she could transform passive, dreamy Roy into someone so animal? But once their clothes came off, his focus became single-minded, like a dog burying a bone. Lying underneath his huffing body, she felt that she could have been anybody. Or anything. Even his eyes were squeezed shut against her. Afterward, when he said thank you and collapsed sweatily on top of her, she felt even worse. Thank you? She tried to shift her body so that she could breathe more comfortably. Thank you? She had not done him a favor. Giving someone a ride was a favor. Lending him twenty bucks. Letting him use your cell phone. Wasn’t sex supposed to be something they both liked?
Her love began to fade. People talked about what a romantic couple they were. Her girlfriends called her Mr. and Mrs. Roy. She smiled and played along, but inside she was wondering how she was going to get out of it. Then, at the beginning of the summer, Roy’s father was busted for growing hydroponic marijuana in his basement under a set of old klieg lights he’d bought in an online auction. While reading the meter in the basement, a worker for the electric company spotted the plants and reported him to the police. Under the government’s zero-tolerance policy, the Tudor house was seized as the asset of a felon. The arrest sent a shiver through their gently left-leaning community, where it was not uncommon for parents to be smoking marijuana in the master bathroom, windows open, exhaust fan roaring, at the exact same moment teenage children were doing the same in the basement, two stories below. Roy’s father got three years in a federal prison and Roy was sent to live in New Jersey with his mother, an ex-model who had made her own fortune selling dietary herbal supplements. Everybody assumed Helen’s heart was broken, but the truth was, she was relieved. On the eve of his departure, Helen told him he was free to date other girls.
“I don’t want anyone but you,” Roy protested.
“You’re too young to tie yourself down,” she told him. “You should experiment.”
“You think?” he asked.
“I think,” she said, and nodded. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t write.”
“You’re the best,” Roy said, his eyes tearing up.
For her next boyfriend, Helen had resolved to find somebody older, a man of experience. Not a Polanski or anybody like that, more like someone’s older brother. So when Bobby Goralnick approached her table at the Salty Cat, she could hardly believe her luck. “Y’all want to meet the band?”
“Yeah!” Helen answered before Siri could say anything. All night, she’d been watching him at the guitar. He wore a leather vest, faded blue jeans, and a bandanna around his head. The muscles on his arms were long and stringy, like a ballet dancer’s. If she got to pick, he’d be the one. Backstage, the musicians greeted the girls by making the sound of chewing gum.
“Jaysus,” Bobby laughed at the way they blanched in embarrassment, “how old are you two?”
Bobby handed her a beer. A Heineken. “Oh, I think you are, darlin’.” His long, floppy bangs stopped just above his eyes and his smile seemed to engage every plane on his face. He was from a place called Slidell, Louisiana, and could say things like “darlin’” without sounding queer. Somebody lit a joint. When it got to Helen, she passed.
“You don’ smoke?” Bobby asked, inhaling so the end of it lit up and a piece of ash fell on the thigh of his jeans. She reached out her hand to brush it off. Bobby jumped with alarm.
“You had an ash,” she said.
“I’ve got a fire now,” he said. The men laughed. Helen wondered if she was in over her head.
Later that night, Helen and Bobby kissed for a long time in the alley behind the bar. She liked almost every thing about it, from the way he pushed her against the soft leather cushion of his motorcycle to the confident way his tongue moved around her mouth, exploring the nooks and crannies of her teeth as if they were his own. She could see how different it was to kiss a man with experience—like the way he breathed calmly through his nose, so he didn’t have to keep coming up for air, and the fact that there was no extra saliva to worry about the way there sometimes had been with Roy. He wanted her to go back to his house that very night but she said no. It was already long past the time she should have been home.
And Sometimes Why Page 5
