Make Something Up (5 page)

Most people, instead of saving me, they pull out their telephones and start shooting video. Everyone's jockeying for the best full-on angle. It reminds me of something. It reminds me of birthday parties and Christmas. A thousand memories crash over me for the last time, and that's something else I hadn't anticipated. I don't mind losing my education. I don't mind forgetting my name. But I will miss the little bit I can remember about my parents.

My mother's eyes and my father's nose and forehead, they're dead except for in my face. And the idea pains me to know that I won't recognize them anymore. Once I punch out, I'll think my reflection is nothing except me.

My uncle Henry repeats, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me, too.”

I say, “I'll still be your nephew, but I just won't know it.”

For no reason, some lady steps up and grabs my uncle Henry's other arm. This new person, she says, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me, as well…” Somebody else grabs that lady, and somebody grabs the last somebody, saying, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.” Strangers reach out and grab hold of strangers in chains and branches, until we're all connected together. Like we're molecules crystallizing in solution in Organic Chem. Everyone's holding on to someone, and everyone's holding on to everyone, and their voices repeat the same sentence: “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me…if you hurt yourself, you hurt me…”

These words form a slow wave. Like a slow-motion echo, they move away from me, going up and down the concourse in both directions. Each person steps up to grab a person who's grabbing a person who's grabbing a person who's grabbing my uncle who's grabbing me. This really happens. It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up whatever you're trying to say.

Voices from other people in other places, total strangers say by telephone, watching by video cams, their long-distance voices say, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me…” And some kid steps out from behind the cash register at Der Wiener Schnitzel, all the way down at the food court, he grabs hold of somebody and shouts, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.” And the kids making Taco Bell and the kids frothing milk at the Starbucks, they stop, and they all hold hands with someone connected to me across this vast crowd, and they say it, too. And just when I think it's got to end and everyone's got to let go and fly away, because everything's stopped and people are holding hands even going through the metal detectors they're holding hands, even then the talking news anchor on CNN, on the televisions mounted up high by the ceiling, the announcer puts a finger to his ear, like to hear better, and even he says, “Breaking News.” He looks confused, obviously reading something off cue cards, and he says, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.” And overlapping his voice are the voices of political pundits on Fox News and color commentators on ESPN, and they're all saying it.

The televisions show people outside in parking lots and in tow-away zones, all holding hands. Bonds forming. Everyone's uploading video of everyone, people standing miles away but still connected back to me.

And crackling with static, voices come over the walkie-talkies of the Homeland Security guards, saying, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me—do you copy?”

By that point there's not a big enough defibrillator in the universe to scramble all our brains. And, yeah, eventually we'll all have to let go, but for another moment everyone's holding tight, trying to make this connection last forever. And if this impossible thing can happen then who knows what else is possible? And a girl at Burger King shouts, “I'm scared, too.” And a boy at Jack in the Box shouts, “I am scared
all the time.
” And everyone else is nodding, Me Too.

To top things off, a huge voice announces, “Attention!” From overhead it says, “May I have your attention, please?” It's a lady. It's the lady voice who pages people and tells them to pick up the white paging telephone. With everyone listening, the entire airport is reduced to silence.

“Whoever you are, you need to know…,” says the lady voice of the white paging telephone. Everyone listens because everything thinks she's only talking to them. From a thousand speakers she begins to sing. With that voice, she's singing the way a bird sings. Not like a parrot or an Edgar Allan Poe bird that speaks English. The sound is trills and scales the way a canary sings, notes too impossible for a mouth to conjugate into nouns and verbs. We can enjoy it without understanding it. And we can love it without knowing what it means. Connected by telephone and television, it's synchronizing everyone, worldwide. That voice so perfect, it's just singing down on us.

Best of all…her voice fills everywhere, leaving no room for being scared. Her song makes all our ears into one ear.

This isn't exactly the end. On every TV is me, sweating so hard an electrode slowly slides down one side of my face.

This certainly isn't the happy ending I had in mind, but compared to where this story began—with Griffin Wilson in the nurse's office putting his wallet between his teeth like a gun—well, maybe this is not such a bad place to start.

The show still looks exactly like when you were sick with a really high fever and you stayed home to watch TV all day. It's not
Let's Make a Deal.
It's not
Wheel of Fortune.
It's not Monty Hall, or the show with Pat Sajak. It's that other show where the big, loud voice calls your name in the audience, says to “Come on down, you're the next contestant,” and if you guess the cost of Rice-A-Roni then you fly round-trip to live for a week in Paris.

It's
that
show. The prize is never anything useful, like okay clothes or music or beer. The prize is always some vacuum cleaner or a washing machine, something you might maybe get excited to win if you were, like, somebody's wife.

It's Rush Week, and the tradition is everybody pledging Zeta Delt all take this big chartered school bus and need to go to some TV studio and watch them tape this game show. Rules say, all the Zeta Delts wear the same red T-shirt with printed on it the Greek Zeta Delta Omega deals, silk-screened in black. First, you need to take a little stamp of Hello Kitty, maybe half a stamp and wait for the flash. It's like this little paper stamp printed with Hello Kitty you suck on and swallow, except it's really blotter acid.

All you do is, the Zeta Delts sit together to make this red patch in the middle of the studio audience and scream and yell to get on TV. These are not the Gamma Grab'a Thighs. They're not the Lambda Rape'a Dates. The Zeta Delts, they're who everybody wants to be.

How the acid will affect you—if you're going to freak out and kill yourself or eat somebody alive—they don't even tell you.

It's traditional.

Ever since you were a little kid with a fever, the contestants they call down to play this game show, the big voice always calls for one guy who's a United States Marine wearing some band uniform with brass buttons. There's always somebody's old grandma wearing a sweatshirt. There's an immigrant from some place where you can't understand half of what he says. There's always some rocket scientist with a big belly and his shirt pocket stuck full of pens.

It's just how you remember it, growing up, only now—all the Zeta Delts start yelling at you. Yelling so hard it scrunches their eyes shut. Everybody's just these red shirts and big-open mouths. All their hands are pushing you out from your seat, shoving you into the aisle. The big voice is saying your name, telling you to come on down. You're the next contestant.

In your mouth, the Hello Kitty tastes like pink bubblegum. It's the Hello Kitty, the popular kind, not the strawberry flavor or the chocolate flavor somebody's brother cooks at night in the General Sciences building where he works as a janitor. The paper stamp feels caught partway down your throat, except you don't want to gag on TV, not on recorded video with strangers watching, forever.

All the studio audience is turned around to see you stumble down the aisle in your red T-shirt. All the TV cameras, zoomed in. Everybody clapping exactly how you remember it. Those Las Vegas lights, flashing, outlining everything onstage. It's something new, but you've watched it done a million-zillion times before, and just by automatic you take the empty desk next to where the United States Marine is standing.

The game show host, who's not Alex Trebek, he waves one arm, and a whole part of the stage starts to move. It's not an earthquake, but one whole wall rolls on invisible wheels, all the lights everywhere flashing on and off, only fast, just blink, blink, blink, except faster than a human mouth could say. This whole big back wall of the stage slides to one side, and from behind it steps out a giant fashion model blazing with about a million-billion sparkles on her tight dress, waving one long, skinny arm to show you a table with eight chairs like you'd see in somebody's dining room on Thanksgiving with a big cooked turkey and yams and everything. Her fashion model waist, about as big around as somebody's neck. Each of her tits, the size of your head. Those flashing Las Vegas–kind of lights blinking all around. The big voice saying who made this table, out of what kind of wood. Saying the suggested retail price it's worth.

To win, the host lifts up this little box. Like a magician, he shows everybody what's
underneath—Just
this whole
thing
of bread in its naturally occurring state, the way bread comes before it's made into anything you can eat like a sandwich or French toast. Just this bread, the whole way your mom might find it at the farm or wherever bread grows.

The table and chairs are totally, easy yours, except you have to guess the price of this big bread.

Behind you, all the Zeta Delts crowd really close together in their T-shirts, making what looks like one giant, red pucker in the middle of the studio audience. Not even looking at you, all their haircuts are just huddled up, making a big, hairy center. It's like forever later when your phone rings, and a Zeta Delt voice says what to bid.

That bread just sitting there the whole time. Covered in a brown crust. The big voice says it's loaded with ten essential vitamins and minerals.

The old game show host, he's looking at you like maybe he's never, ever seen a telephone before. He goes, “And what do you bid?”

And you go, “Eight bucks?”

From the look on the old grandma's face, it's like maybe they should call some paramedics for her heart attack. Dangling out one sweatshirt cuff, this crumpled scrap of Kleenex looks like leaked-out stuffing, flapping white, like she's some trashed teddy bear somebody loved too hard.

To cut you off using some brilliant strategy, the United States Marine, the bastard, he says, “Nine dollars.”

Then to cut him off, the rocket science guy says, “Ten. Ten dollars.”

It must be some trick question, because the old grandma says, “One dollar and ninety-nine cents,” and all the music starts, loud, and the lights flash on and off. The host hauls the granny up onto the stage, and she's crying and plays a game where she throws a tennis ball to win a sofa and a pool table. Her grandma face looks just as smashed and wrinkled as that Kleenex she pulls out from her sweatshirt cuff. The big voice calls another granny to take her place, and everything keeps rushing forward.

The next round, you need to guess the price of some potatoes, but like a whole big thing of real, alive potatoes, from before they become food, the way they come from the miners or whoever that dig potatoes in Ireland or Idaho or some other place starting with an “I.” Not even made into potato chips or French fries.

If you guess right, you get some big clock inside a wood box like a Dracula coffin standing on one end, except with these church bells inside the box that ding-ding whatever time it is. Over your phone, your mom calls it a
grandfather clock.
You show it to her on video, and she says it looks cheap.

You onstage with the TV cameras and lights, all the Zeta Delts call-waiting you, you cup your phone to your chest and go, “My mom wants to know, do you have anything nicer I could maybe win?”

You show your mom those potatoes on video, and she asks: Did the old host guy buy them at A&P or the Safeway?

You speed-dial your dad, and he asks about the income tax liability.

Probably it's the Hello Kitty, but the face of this big Dracula clock just scowls at you. It's like the secret, hidden eyes, the eyelids open up, and the teeth start to show, and you can hear about a million-billion giant, alive cockroaches crawling around inside the wood box of it. The skin of all the supermodels goes all waxy, smiling with their faces not looking at anything.

You say the price your mom tells you. The United States Marine says one dollar more. The rocket science guy says a dollar higher than him. Only, this round—you win.

All those potatoes open their little eyes.

Except now, you need to guess the price of a whole cow-full of milk in a box, the way milk comes in the kitchen fridge. You have to guess the cost of a whole thing of breakfast cereal like you'd find in the kitchen cabinet. After that, a giant deal of pure salt the way it comes from the ocean only in a round box, but more salt than anybody could eat in an entire lifetime. Enough salt, you could rim approximately a million-billion margaritas.

All the Zeta Delts start texting you like crazy. Your in-box piling up.

Next come these eggs like you'd find at Easter only plain white and lined up inside some special kind of cardboard case. A whole, complete set of twelve. These really minimalist eggs, pure white…so white you could just look at them forever, only right away you need to guess at a big bottle like a yellow shampoo, except it's something gross called cooking oil, you don't know what for, and the next thing is you need to choose the right price of something frozen.

You cup one hand over your eyes to see past the footlights, except all the Zeta Delts are lost in the glare. All you can hear is their screaming different prices of money. Fifty thousand dollars. A million. Ten thousand. Just loony people yelling just numbers.

Like the TV studio is just some dark jungle, and people are just some monkeys just screeching their monkey sounds.

The molars inside your mouth, they're grinding together so hard you can taste the hot metal of your fillings, that silver melting in your back teeth. Meantime, the sweat stains creep down from your armpit to your elbow, all black-red down both sides of your Zeta Delt T-shirt. The flavor of melted silver and pink bubblegum. It's sleep apnea only in the day, and you need to remind yourself to take the next breath…take another breath…while the supermodels walking on sparkle high heels try pimping the audience a microwave oven, pimping a treadmill while you keep staring to decide if they're really good-looking. They make you spin this doohickey so it rolls around. You have to match a bunch of different pictures so they go together perfect. Like you're some white rat in Principles of Behavioral Psychology 201, they make you guess what can of baked beans costs more than another. All that fuss to win something you sit on to mow your lawn.

Thanks to your mom telling you prices, you win a thing like you'd put in a room covered in easy-care, wipe-clean, stain-resistant vinyl. You win one of those deals people might ride on vacation for a lifetime of wholesome fun and family excitement. You win something hand-painted with the Old World charm inspired by the recent release of a blockbuster epic motion picture.

It's the same as when you felt sick with a high fever and your little-kid heart would pound and you couldn't catch your breath, just from the idea that somebody might take home an electric organ. No matter how sick you felt, you'd watch this show until your fever broke. All the flashing lights and patio furniture, it seemed to make you feel better. To heal you or to cure you in some way.

It's like forever later, but you win all the way to the Showcase Round.

There, it's just you and the old granny wearing the sweatshirt from before, just somebody's regular grandma, but she's lived through world wars and nuclear bombs, probably she's saw all the Kennedys get shot and Abraham Lincoln, and now she's bobbing up and down on her tennis shoe toes, clapping her granny hands and crowded by supermodels and flashing lights while the big voice makes her the promise of a sport-utility vehicle, a wide-screen television, a floor-length fur coat.

And probably it's the acid, but it's like nothing seems to add up.

It's like, if you live a boring-enough life, knowing the price of Rice-A-Roni and hot dog wieners, your big reward is you get to live for a week in some hotel in London? You get to ride on some airplane to Rome. Rome, like, in Italy. You fill your head full of enough ordinary junk, and your payoff is giant supermodels giving you a snowmobile?

If this game show wants to see how smart you really are, they need to ask you how much calories in a regular onion–cheddar cheese bagel. Go ahead, ask you the price of your cell phone minutes any hour of the day. Ask you about the cost of a ticket for going thirty miles over the speed limit. Ask the round-trip fare to Cabo for spring break. Down to the penny, you can tell them the price of decent seats for the Panic at the Disco! reunion tour.

They should ask you the price of a Long Island Iced Tea. The price of Marcia Sanders's abortion. Ask about your expensive herpes medication you have to take but don't want your folks to know you need. Ask the price of your History of European Art textbook which cost three hundred bucks—fuck you very much.

Ask what that stamp of Hello Kitty set you back.

The sweatshirt granny bids some regular amount of money for her showcase. Just like always, the numbers of her bid appear in tiny lights, glowing on the front of her contestant desk where she stands.

Here, all the Zeta Delts are yelling. Your phone keeps ringing and ringing.

For your showcase, a supermodel rolls out five hundred pounds of raw beefsteak. The steaks fit inside a barbecue. The barbecue fits onboard a speedboat that fits inside a trailer for towing it that fits a massive fifth-wheel pickup truck that fits inside the garage of a brand-new house in Austin. Austin, like, in Texas.

Meantime, all the Zeta Delts all stand up. They get to their feet and step up on their audience seats cheering and waving, not chanting your name, but chanting, “Zeta Delt!” Chanting, “Zeta Delt!” Chanting, “Zeta Delt!” loud enough so it records for the broadcast.

It's probably the acid, but—you're battling some old nobody you've never met, fighting over shit you don't even want.

Probably it's the acid, but—right here and now—fuck declaring a business major. Fuck General Principles of Accounting 301.

Stuck partway down your throat, something makes you gag.

And on purpose, by accident, you bid a million, trillion, gah-zillion dollars—and ninety-nine cents.

And everything shuts down to quiet. Maybe just the little clicking sounds of all those Las Vegas lights blinking on and off, on and off. On and off.