One More Thing (14 page)

The almost-legendary artist Christo was on the verge of completing a dream that he had held close through his entire career: to design an American roller coaster inspired by nothing less profound than life itself—life, the ultimate roller coaster.

Today was an important one for Christo. It was the day that he and his financiers would observe the reactions of the most consequential people who would ever ride the ride: the twelve persons selected at random for a small focus group.

Each member of the focus group took a seat on the wrong side of a wall of one-way glass. (Ah, or was it the right side, when their opinions mattered so!) They were seated along the safely rounded rim of a lacquered oval table, each behind a placard that identified him or her by a bold capital number. (Did numbers have capitals? These certainly seemed to be!)

To Christo, the twelve souls who convened in this dark room on this beautiful day appeared to be a thrillingly, even transcendently average-looking group. But he was careful, even in the privacy of his own mind, not to condescend to them in any way: these twelve were representatives of those whose approval
he sought the most, and it would be an unfair and ultimately unsatisfying hedge on his hopes if he were to diminish them now. After all, who better than they to judge an amusement park roller coaster? Who better than they to judge life?

“All right, everyone,” said Tom, the focus group leader. “What did people think?”

“I didn’t like all the ups and downs,” said 1.

“I wanted
more
ups and downs,” said 2.

“Why did the family part at the beginning end so abruptly?” asked 3.

“I
hated
the family part!” said 10.

“Also, why were there
two
of them?” asked 4. “There was that track that took you out of the family at the beginning, and it was so exciting and sudden but it lasted like two seconds and led you right to another part that ended up almost exactly the same as the first one.”

“It wasn’t
exactly
the same,” clarified 5. “But yeah, it had a lot of the same dynamics.”

“I liked how we kept going in circles,” said 8.

“I actually felt pretty sick from all those loops during the ride,” said 1.

“Me too,” said 12. “But when you’re not right in the middle of it, and you just take in all the patterns, it looks really beautiful.”

“Yeah,” said 10. “When you look back at the end, and you see all the people way back at the beginning, looking so small and everything, about to go on those same loops you just went on? That’s really cool. You forget that when you were on that part of the ride, you were actually throwing up all over the place.”

“Did people like certain parts of the ride more than others?”

“I thought the first half was more fun, but the second half was more interesting,” said 9.

“Yeah,” said 12. “Somehow, in the second half, it felt like I was actually driving the car I was in. Even though of course we were just along for the ride, same as always.”

“Exactly,” said 9.

Exactly! thought Christo.

“It got really boring for a long time,” said 1, 2, 8, and 10.

“Should it be shorter?”

“No!”
shouted 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 3, 4, 11, and 12.

“A lot of the time I thought, ‘This should be moving a lot faster,’ ” said 11. “But then at the end I realized, ‘Wow, I can’t
believe
how fast that was!’ ”

“Yeah, great job, man!” said 7.

“I didn’t design the ride,” Tom reminded the group. “I am from an independently hired research company.”

Thank you
, mouthed Christo.

“I thought about jumping off when it got scary,” said 1—softly, but to be heard.

“That’s crazy,” said 8, turning to 1. “Why would you ever do such a thing?”

“Yeah,” agreed 2. “It’s going to end soon enough anyway. Why not just try to enjoy it?”

“Because it was pointless, and I didn’t like it. So why not?”

“What about the other people in the car with you?” asked 9. “We’re supposed to be doing this ride together or it’s not as much fun.”

“ 
‘Supposed to’
?” exploded 1. “Were there rules to this ride that I missed? What do I owe to any of you? Sorry, but I never asked to be on a ride with you. I just showed up and you were here.
Who says I have to like it? You liked it, and that’s great. But I didn’t. So what? Can’t you respect that?”

None of them understood this attitude, except 6, who understood but kept it to himself.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said 6.

“Can we see a picture of the ride?” asked 2, and Tom handed them each the result of a bright flash they all remembered vaguely now that they were reminded of it, and more vividly each second as the photograph carved its lines into the blur of their memories.

The photograph was from the last moment of the first part of the ride, right when the fear of what was about to happen was inseparable from the wonder of what would come next. Everyone who worked on roller coasters knew that this was the part of the ride where all the best pictures are taken, where everyone looks most foolish and beautiful and fearful and true, and where no one, no matter how brave or wise or vain or camera-conscious, can hide a look that reveals that they truly don’t know what’s going to happen next.

“See,” said 2. “Look. You enjoyed it. Look at your face!”

Tears gathered in the corners of 1’s eyes as he stared at the picture.

“That was so long ago,” said 1. “So much happened after that.”

“What should we call this roller coaster?” asked Tom.

“Life,” said 2.

Everyone got quiet.

“Yeah. Life,” said 8.

“Life,” agreed 1.

“Life,” said 6.

People nodded in silence.

Christo, watching behind the glass, nodded.

“ ‘Monster,’ ” said 5.

“ ‘Monster’?” asked the focus group leader.

“Yeah. Monster!”

“How about
The
Monster?” suggested 10.

“No,” said 5. “All caps. MONSTER: The Roller Coaster.”

“ ‘Monster’ sounds cool,” said 4.

No! thought Christo.

“I like
The
Monster,” repeated 10.

“Me too,” said 11.

No, no, no! thought Christo.

“I still like Life,” said 2. “Always will.”

“Let’s take a vote,” said the focus group leader.

Five people raised their hands for MONSTER, three for Life, four for The Monster, and one person (1) said he didn’t have a preference.

“ ‘MONSTER’ it is. Thanks again, and everyone be sure you fill out your paperwork before you leave. Oh, and did everyone get their refreshment-discount coupons to the park?”

Christo was angry almost beyond the borders of the much-surveyed powers of his own comprehension.

MONSTER?!

He did not spend the last nineteen years of his career dreaming that one day he might be remembered primarily as the designer of an amusement park roller-coaster ride called “MONSTER”!
Or “The Monster”! Or whatever the hell they were going to call it now.

But his dream was dead now, murdered by idiot whims, and there was nothing he could do about it anymore.

Oh well, thought Christo. That’s life.

Kellogg’s (or: The Last Wholesome Fantasy of the Middle-School Boy)

It wasn’t like this boy to throw a tantrum in the cereal aisle of the supermarket, and it wasn’t like his mother to give in to one, but here they were, for some reason, both making an exception.

“Okay,” she said, and threw the box deep into the far corner of the main part of the shopping cart. “Okay. Don’t let your father see it.”

The family never bought sugar cereals and never bought name-brand cereals, so this split-second sight of his mother’s wrist flicking an official name-brand sugar cereal into the cart was something he had to keep replaying in his head for the next several minutes until he was literally dizzy on the image of the impossible. The sensation of seeing and reseeing that wrist snap was something he couldn’t make sense of, something that would be best described by words he didn’t know yet: surreal, pornographic.

The boy kept an even pace with the white-dirt-frosted black wheels so he could stare uninterrupted at the creature that he and his mother had captured. Yes: there in the cart, after all
these years, was Tony the Tiger, caged at last. And Tony the Tiger promised even more fun ahead: in a bright blast of words spilling from his sportive expression, Tony the Tiger explained that the box on which he was emblazoned contained not just name-brand sugar cereal—as if that weren’t enough—but also a miniature treasure chest, and—as if
that
weren’t enough—inside the treasure chest was a secret code, and—as if
that
weren’t enough!—the code could possibly lead to a cash prize of
one hundred thousand dollars
.

(When the boy looked closer, as the box rode across the checkout belt toward the outside world, on the way to the arguably more humane captivity of a kitchen cabinet, he noticed that Tony and the text were technically separate, with no speech bubble connecting them: Tony the Tiger wasn’t saying that; he was just next to those words. Somehow, this felt like it gave the promise a touch less credibility, even though, when the boy thought about it years later, it would occur to him that this should probably have given it more. It didn’t matter, though: everything, even this late-breaking potential scandal, rang with the drama of a new name-brand world he knew he never wanted to leave.)

Usually, when the boy got home from grocery shopping, he helped his mother unpack the bags in the kitchen, mainly by reveling in how rich their family seemed to be for this one moment each week and wondering which item he would honor by opening it first. But this time, the boy ran right to his room with the cereal box so that he could keep his word to hide it from his father, who found both the boy and the box only minutes later, drawn by the sobs to his bedroom, where the boy was discovered crying over a torn-apart box of Frosted Flakes.

“I thought we didn’t buy this kind of cereal,” said the boy’s
father, crouching down to look directly at Tony the Tiger, eyeing him as one would an enemy and an equal.

“If you have the right secret code in the box in the treasure chest,” explained the boy, swallowing mucus, “you win a hundred thousand dollars. We’d be rich.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” said the boy’s father.

The boy’s father stood up and pulled a hardcover dictionary from the shelf above the boy’s bed, the frayed sweater he always wore on non-teaching days riding up as he reached.

“If you can guess the word I’m thinking of on this page, I will give you a hundred thousand dollars.”

The boy stopped crying and guessed.

He guessed wrong.

This time the boy was too confused by this whole whatever-it-was to cry.

“What would you have done if I got it right?”

“I have no idea,” said his father, with a smile-like expression the boy had never seen before. “But you didn’t.”

The boy didn’t quite understand how this lesson had worked—he didn’t have the words for this yet, either. There was something odd and cool about his father’s introduction of this consolation contest, something that he would later be able to describe as something like wryness; some offbeat calm about this presentation of a paradoxical idea, the promise of a possibility that couldn’t possibly be kept. For now, while the boy didn’t yet have the words to explain the feeling, he could feel it, and he liked it, and he wanted to be a part of it. So he accepted this as the conclusion of the story of the cereal-box contest.

But not for long.

The next day the boy ran to the supermarket with all the
money he had the second the school bell rang; bought five boxes of Frosted Flakes and another three of Corn Flakes with the same prize offer on the box; and ran back to school in time to catch his bus.

He felt especially grown-up to be riding the bus with grocery bags and desperately hoped that someone would ask him why.

“Why are you carrying grocery bags?” one girl finally asked.

“None of your business.”

The boy got home and started ripping up the boxes, starting with Corn Flakes, so that the Frosted Flakes, which he actually liked, would stay fresher a few seconds longer.

On the first box of Corn Flakes, he lost. On the second box of Corn Flakes, he won the $100,000 prize.

The boy checked the other boxes just in case he won anything else. He didn’t. That was fine. One $100,000 prize was still a good day’s work.

The boy called a family meeting, his first.

“First, I have a confession to make,” said the boy. “I know we don’t buy sugar cereals or brand-name cereals. But I went to the grocery store by myself today, and I bought more boxes of Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes so I could enter that contest again. So I broke two rules. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” said the boy’s mother.

“We understand,” said the boy’s father, with something calm and ironic in his tone again. What was that? Wryness, again? “Thank you for your honesty.”

“Okay, good,” said the boy. “Now the good news: I won the contest. We’re rich!”