One More Thing (12 page)

When we can say anything, what do we say? When we can feel anything, what do we feel? When we can share anything, what do we share?

Silence in the room. Lisa Lampanelli faints. Pauly D weeps softly. Visible particles of physical shame fly from the pores of Jeffrey Ross. As the room hovers on the edge of total emotional collapse, Mandela starts to laugh
.

Oh, my—I got you so good! I wish you could have seen that! Did they record that? Do they record the audience at these things? Oh, my … the looks on your faces as Nelson Mandela told you that your lives were worthless? That your existence was a waste of the privilege of freedom?!
(Mandela laughs until he has to clutch his sides and catch his breath, then continues)
I was only teasing. I mean, there was some truth in it, but … you know how these things work, there needs to be a little truth to the sting, correct? I thought I heard that somewhere, yes?
(Mandela laughs again; inaudible expressions)
Oh, my. So much fun. All of it. Thank you. I never get to do anything like that. I’ve been under so much pressure, for so long, and that was just … so fun. So fun. So fun.

They Kept Driving Faster and Outran the Rain

He rented a brand-new, bright yellow Ford Mustang convertible for their seven-day honeymoon in Hawaii. It rained lightly, all day, every day, for the first six days. It wasn’t what they were expecting, but it was beautiful, and they took walks in the mist around the hotel property and looked at the flowers.

“I love the fauna here at the hotel.”

“Wait, what’s fauna?”

“Plants, flowers, right?”

“Right, but ‘flora
and
fauna.’ Isn’t flora flowers?”

“Then what’s fauna?”

“Don’t know. Let’s look it up later.”

“K.”

“K.”

On the last day the rain cleared, and they decided to circle the island in the convertible. It was beautiful, but once they got up in the mountains it started to rain again.

“Should we put the roof up?”

“Okay. But we have to stop to put the roof up.”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“I don’t want to, either.”

Then they noticed that when they drove faster, the rain was deflected by the windshield and didn’t hit them. As it rained harder, they just drove faster.

When they came back they told their friends about the drive they took on their last day and how it ended up being the best day of their whole trip.

Their friends insisted that rain didn’t work that way—it must have been hitting them. All of them agreed. One friend, who taught physics at a university, was particularly insistent. He even drew a diagram and wouldn’t let them change the subject until they promised and swore that they understood, which they finally did.

But no matter what their friends told them, they would always know what really happened. They just kept driving faster, and outran the rain.

The Man Who Invented the Calendar

January 1st—Ha, that feels fun to write! I’m excited. I’ve been thinking about doing this for so long, too—I went through all my old diaries, and it turns out I came up with this idea all the way back on Day After Day After Very Cloudy Day.

January 2nd—I’m still so excited about this calendar thing. It just makes so much sense! One thousand days a year, divided into 25 months, 40 days a month. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

January 3rd—Getting so many compliments on the calendar. One guy came up to me today and said he’s going to organize his whole life around it—literally, someone said that!

January 4th—Best day ever (or at least so far in recorded history)! I was talking to Alice at the bonfire for such a long time—yes,
that
Alice. It seemed like she was into me, but I didn’t want to be presumptuous. Finally I asked if she wanted to come back to my place and hang out more. She winked at me and said, “I don’t know … I guess I’ll have to check my
calendar
” (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

January 30th—People really hate January and want it to be over right away. I tried to explain that it’s just the way we choose to label things and that it wouldn’t make any difference, but no
one got it. Finally, I just told everyone that this would be the last day of January, and months would be just 30 days instead of 40. But there wasn’t enough time to get the word out. So to be safe, we have to make this month 31 days, and then we’ll make the rest 30. Not a big deal. Everyone is excited to see Febuary—including me!

February 1st—Another small fuck-up: I put an extra
r
in all the copies I handed out of the calendar, so it said “FebRuary,” even though I already told everyone the next month coming was called “FebUary.” I felt so stupid—but Alice came up with the best solution! She said: “Just tell everyone it’s spelled
February
but pronounced ‘Feb-u-ary.’ That way,
they’ll
feel stupid!” Alice is the best.

February 14th—Alice stuff weird. Tonight we were having a nice dinner at the same place we always go, but she was being unusually quiet. Finally I asked if anything was wrong, and she said, “Do you know what day today is?” I said, “Yes, of course I do, I invented the calendar. It’s February 14th. Why?” She smiled a really tense smile, said, “Yes. Yes, it is”—and then just walked away right in the middle of dinner! What’s that about?

February 15th—So cold.

February 28th—I hate this month. I just can’t take one more day of it. This month will just have to be shorter than the rest, and if people don’t like it, they can go fuck themselves.

March 1st—Feeling much better! I don’t know if it’s just symbolic, but I’m glad February is over. I have a really good feeling about March.

March 9th—There’s this new type of berry that looks soooo good, but somebody told me it’s poison. Oh well.

April 1st—A lot of shenanigans today, like pranks (which are lies-for-no-reason). People say it has something to do with the calendar, which I wasn’t crazy about hearing, because to be honest
I think the whole thing is kind of lame. It’s just not my style. But I guess that’s good, when your invention takes on a life you never expected. That’s what the inventor of the scarf told me—it was originally supposed to be a weapon.

April 12th—Someone should invent a new type of clock. Really simple. No cuckoo, no sun business, just numbers.

April 30th—I think 31 days was a mistake. You can’t divide anything into 31, so you can’t make anything half a month or half a week or anything (because 7 is the same way). There should be a word for numbers like that. So: 30 days it is. Glad to be done with this decision.

May 2nd—Ahhh, now maybe I want months to be 31 days. (Why am I so obsessed with this?)

May 20th—Ran into Alice again, and I played it so cool! She congratulated me on the calendar stuff and asked if I ever thought of putting pictures on it—she could maybe pose for it or something. I said that I’d think about it but that it sounded kind of cheesy. She asked when I could hang out more and catch up, and I told her I was busy, but I’d let her know in August. “What’s August?” she said. “Oh, it’s a month I’ve been kicking around—you’re going to love it,” I said. I could not have played it better!

June 29th—Met this really cool girl Jane at a stoning. Will write more later!

October 9th—Can’t believe I haven’t written in so long! Summer was amazing. Harvest amazing! People keep asking if I can make the days longer during the harvest season, just by an hour or two. I told them that they should just wake up earlier if it was so important to them, but everyone was too drunk to understand, so eventually I just said, “Sure, maybe one hour, maybe someday,” and everyone cheered. “More sleep!” Huh? None of it made any sense.

October 21st—Things are still going strong with Jane. This
year has been so amazing, and it’s only October! So much has already happened, and there’s still November, December, Latrember, Faunus, Rogibus, Neptember, Stonk …

October 26th—Got all excited about the clock thing last night and built an early prototype! I did it in a hurry, though, and I wrote too big and ran out of space for numbers halfway through. Jane tried to be supportive. “Maybe you can just have every number count twice,” she said. Then how will they know which “six o’clock” it is, for instance? I asked. “They … they’d just have to know, I guess. From context?” she suggested. I really liked how supportive she was trying to be, but I knew this was too lazy to be a real solution. Alice would have known what to say.

November 5th—Stuff with Jane getting a little tense. She keeps wanting to push the relationship forward. She says that we’ve been together “forever.” I said that maybe it feels that way, but that I kept track of it on the calendar and it’s actually been less than five months. She just stared at me. Then to change the subject I told her this new idea I was excited about: we’d choose a date in the future to make things official, and then every year after that, that day on the calendar would be like our own personal holiday—for just the two of us. Good idea, right? “You’d never remember it,” she said.

November 6th—Things with Jane getting better. I think we’re going to work this out. I love Jane. That’s all that matters.

November 11th—They sacrificed Jane today. Really happy for the Sun God.

November 12th—Cold.

November 13th—Dark.

November 18th—Turns out those berries aren’t poison. So, now I’m the guy who discovered that.

November 23rd—Alice came by and said she felt bad about the Jane stuff, and that I should hang out with her and her
friends. Then it turned out her friends included this new guy she’s seeing who—get this—invented the diary. Anyway, to be the mature one, I said, “Oh, that’s great, I use that almost every day.” Guess what he says: “Oh, really? I invented that for girls.”
What a dick
. Then he said, “So, what else have you done?” and I said I have been totally distraught about Jane being sacrificed (I kind of exaggerated, but whatever) but that I plan on pulling it together soon and working on something new, maybe something with clocks. He said: “Well, you know what tomorrow is?” I said, yes, November 24th. He said, “No, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.” And everyone said, “Awwww” and I was like
Are you kidding me?! Do you know how long it took me to get people to stop talking like that?

December 1st—I think the key to feeling better is to really just focus on work. Starting tomorrow, I am going to choose a new project to work on every day. It doesn’t have to be clocks; it just has to be something. Let’s go!!!!

December 23rd—It seems like Alice and Diary Guy are really close this week. Really happy for them. Hard to see other people so happy this week for some reason. Ahhhh. Going to focus on work.

December 25th—Why do I feel so lonely today?

December 26th—Why am I so fat?

December 30th—I told everyone I’m ending the year early. I know it was impulsive, but I just had to do it. I was ready for everyone to make fun of me, but it turned out people were way cooler about it than I thought they would be. “That’s great,” “About time,” “Just what I need.” It was actually the most praise I got since I invented the calendar in the first place.

This year just got away from me somehow. Looking back, I realize how much I got sidetracked and how many months slipped by that I can’t even remember. The one nice thing is seeing
how I used to be so worked up about Alice, and now I realize I really don’t care at all anymore. We’re going to be friends in the New Year, and I’m really looking forward to that. And the Jane thing ended the right way, I think—better than some long, drawn-out breakup.

So this year wasn’t everything I hoped it would be, and I didn’t get all the months in that I wanted, but I know next year is going to be totally different. When the New Year starts, I’m going to wake up at dawn every day and get to work—see, I’d love to put a number on “dawn,” that’s why I think this new clock thing could be really big. I have so many ideas for it. For example: I either want seconds to be timed to a blink of an eye so people don’t have to say “in the blink of an eye”—they can just say “one second”—or I want to double the length of a second so people don’t always say, “Can you give me two seconds?!” They can just say “one second.” I have a lot of ideas like that.