Play Me

  Duh.

  After this post, there are about, oh, a hundred more. Some want to add their favorite satirists to the list. Some purposefully confuse satires with satyrs. Some just want to debate whether Jon Stewart is (a) hot or (b) too old to be hot. Some want to include links to their own videos. But a whole bunch agree with the Tin Man. Riot Grrl is stupid. Boring. Not worth the ten minutes it takes to watch the episode.

  The Tin Man is gleeful:

  LOL. I can just imagine Rochester reading all this stuff. He’s probably crapping his pants right now. His red hair’s probably green. Hey, Rochester, your mom’s whoring herself on a suck-ass TV show for geriatrics. And you make suck-ass TV shows for illiterate teenagers. Like mother, like son. She must be so proud.

  “He knows you,” Rory says.

  “He doesn’t know me.” I have a weird roiling feeling in the pit of my stomach, but if I pretend it isn’t there, it will go away.

  “He talked about your mom.”

  “Everyone knows about my mom.”

  “He talked about you having red hair.”

  “So, he’s seen a picture.”

  “But we don’t have any pictures of you,” says Joe. “Not on MySpace. Not on the MTV site.”

  “We have the one group shot,” I say.

  “That’s black and white,” Joe says. His look is hard to read. His cheek muscles are twitching, like he’s fighting the urge to smile.

  “Maybe it isn’t a guy at all,” Gina says. “Maybe it’s some chick you screwed over.”

  I don’t look at Gina. “I didn’t screw anyone over.”

  Tippi Hedren squawks, “I don’t give a damn what you believe!”

  “Whoever it is,” Joe says, “don’t engage them. Don’t post anything again.”

  “But he’s an asshole!”

  “So?” says Rory. “What do you care? Half these lunatics are babbling about the last time they got drunk. All we need are votes. We don’t need a flame war.”

  “We don’t need you turning them against us,” Joe says.

  I stand up and make a show of gathering papers. “All I did was define satire.”

  “And made yourself sound like an idiot. Made us all sound like that, because they’ll all think we agree with you.”

  “But—”

  “Just don’t post anything else,” says Rory.

  “He’s talking about my mother.”

  Joe says, “Even if you say something reasonable and totally intelligent, people won’t take it that way. If you make any kind of comment, you just give this guy ammunition to go after us again. He knows you’re there. He knows you’ll see it. And now he knows it bugs you.”

  “So I should just let some jerk say whatever the hell he wants whenever he wants?”

  Rory doesn’t say anything, just flips the computer around and points.

  One star, one star, one star, one star, one star.

  Best in Show

  Joe and Rory and Gina tell me that I shouldn’t look at the MTV site anymore, that it will just piss me off. And it does. But days later I’m still looking. I can’t help it. And the more I read it, the madder I get. Who is this guy? Why has he gone off his lithium? And more than that, why do all the flying monkeys come flying out to listen to him?

  What if it’s not a him at all?

  The phone rings. I snatch it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. I’m looking for a Mr. Edward Rochester.”

  “That’s me. What do you want?”

  “Hi, Ed! This is Erin Loder, over at MTV.”

  Right. “Are you the bitch who’s been posting all that stuff online?”

  There’s a pause. “I might be a bitch, but I don’t think I’m the bitch. And I don’t remember posting anything online recently.” She sounds amused. I’m not amused by her amusement.

  “Listen, whoever you are, I’m not in the mood.”

  Some low laughter. “This isn’t a crank, Ed. My name really is Erin Loder, and I really do work at MTV. If you want, we can hang up and you can call the New York offices and ask for me.”

  My guts go cold, but I’m still suspicious. “I’m going to do that.”

  “Great! Talk to you in a minute.” She hangs up.

  I call information and get the number for the New York offices. I ask to be connected to Erin Loder. I am.

  “Um, hello?” I say. “Sorry about that.”

  “No worries!” she says. “Listen, we’ve been keeping an eye on the entrants in the contest and we just love Riot Grrl 16. We really think you have something there.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, we do. We want you to come into the office and have a chat with us.”

  “You want us to come into the office.”

  “Yes.”

  “To chat with you.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, Eddy. We think we might be able to work with you. We might be interested in producing your show. We’d like to discuss some possibilities.” Pause. “Ed? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” I say. It’s all I’m capable of saying. I think I’m going to puke.

  “Great! How does week after next look for you?”

  Somehow I manage to make an appointment and hang up the phone without pulling an Exorcist all over the room. I sit down at the kitchen table. I can’t believe it. We’re on our way. We don’t need the contest anymore; we don’t need anything. We’re on our way.

  Screw you, Tin Man.

  I know exactly who to call first. I get her voice mail. “Mom. The MTV people want to talk to us about Riot Grrl. They say they’re interested in producing the show. Call me back when you get this.”

  I call Rory and Joe and Gina. The only one who’s not totally over the moon is Joe, of course. “Sounds good,” he says. “But let’s wait to hear what they say.”

  “What could be bad about this, Joe?”

  “I don’t know. What if they want to change Riot Grrl into a badger or something?”

  “So, then we turn her into a badger.” I practically throw the phone back in the cradle.

  “What was that about?”

  This is my dad talking. It’s midnight and he’s just gotten home. He’s putting a casserole Marty left for us in the oven.

  “MTV wants to meet with us about Riot Grrl 16. We have an appointment the week after next.” I wait for him to say something critical.

  “Huh,” he says. “Well, that’s great, Ed. Congratulations. Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No, I can handle it.”

  “Are you sure? Some of those TV people can be pretty slick.”

  “It’s fine, Dad.”

  “If you’re sure,” he says. He pats me on the back. “Just remember that this is only a first step. There’s never a guarantee in this business.”

  I roll my eyes so hard that I think they might get stuck somewhere behind my pituitary.

  “Nice eye roll. I can tell you’ve learned from the best,” he says. He sets the oven timer one minute at a time.

  “Why can’t you ever say, that’s great, Ed, and leave out all the other stuff?”

  “I just want you to be realistic.”

  “You’re going to feel pretty stupid if they hand me a check for a quarter of a million dollars,” I say.

  He laughs. “That kind of stupid I can live with.”

  I meet Lucinda at the courts. I want to tell her about the MTV people too, but maybe my dad has gotten to me some. I decide to wait until I’ve actually met the MTV people and have a firm offer (and that check for a quarter mil). Besides, she’s playing like she’s had fourteen cups of coffee, like she’s under a spell, like she has a date with Orlando Bloom right after the match.

  Between points I say, “Are you in a hurry?”

  “We’ve got somewhere else to be at one thirty.”

  “We?”

  She serves to the body and nails me hard in the chest.

  “We,” she
says.

  She beats me 6–1, 6–3. I don’t do much better than the last time we played, but I go down a lot faster.

  “Come on,” she says. “I’m driving.” She starts walking to the Titanic on wheels.

  “I can drive,” I say. I’m walking behind her because I like the view.

  She glances back over her shoulder. “You don’t know where we’re going.”

  There are little drumbeats in my temples. I’m having visions of motel rooms, bedrooms, backseats, and bathrooms. “Right. I don’t.”

  Her car’s unlocked. She tells me she’s always forgetting to lock it but that it doesn’t matter anyway. She says, “Who would steal it?”

  “You never know. I heard there’s a run on ancient rusting behemoths.”

  “Don’t talk about Snuffleupagus that way.”

  “Snuffleupagus? That’s so…adorable.”

  “Don’t make me smack you around with my racket.”

  “You already did that,” I tell her. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see,” she says. She’s driving as fast as the car can go, which means we’re traveling about 2.5 miles an hour. Wherever we’re going, it will be a long ride. Which is okay with me. I like riding in the car with Lucinda. I like watching her foot move from the gas to the brake; I like watching her fumble for the volume controls on the radio that seems permanently stuck on some talk station.

  “You can’t change the station?” I say.

  “No, but that’s all right. It’s NPR.”

  “Oh,” I say. I get the feeling I’m supposed to know what that is, but I don’t.

  “National Public Radio,” she says, looking at me. “They have some great shows on the station. You ever hear This American Life?”

  “No,” I tell her. I can’t imagine what kind of shows she’s talking about.

  She says, “It’s a radio magazine, where there are reports on weird subjects like what kind of superhero you always wanted to be or what it’s like to be a Christmas elf at the mall during the holidays. There was one story about this guy who had his car stolen only to spot it in his rearview mirror as he’s driving along in a rental car and he decides to chase it.”

  “So, these are made-up stories?”

  “No, true ones. Just weird.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Really, it’s good. I loved this story about an apology line. A man set up an answering machine where other people could leave apologies about anything they wanted. Thousands of people called and confessed.”

  “What did they confess to?”

  “Stealing from stores. Having affairs. Embezzling. Beating people up. All kinds of stuff.”

  “If you called the apology line, what would you confess?”

  “I’m sure you’d like to know.”

  “I would like to know. That’s why I’m asking.”

  For a minute I think she’s going to say something really interesting. But then she says: “When I was six, I took all my mom’s jewelry and buried it in the backyard. She never knew what happened to it and I never told.”

  “She never suspected?”

  “Truth is, by the time she figured out the stuff was missing, I’d forgotten where I buried it. She blamed my brothers. They knew I did it but couldn’t prove it.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I was playing pirate treasure. And I think I was mad at her.”

  “For what?”

  “The usual stuff, I guess. She kept telling me what to do. She still does. Your turn. Confess.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “How many girls have you been with?”

  I force myself not to smile. “I’m a virgin.”

  “Come on, you can tell me.” She pokes me in the leg. “Hello?”

  “I’m counting.”

  “You can give me a general estimate.”

  “It’s higher than zero and less than one hundred.”

  “And speaking of dogs…” She turns into a big parking lot. A sign says, BILLETS ANIMAL SHELTER. “We’re here.”

  “Are you getting a puppy?” I say.

  “You could say that,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  We get out of her car and walk over to the building. Inside, it smells like disinfectant and wet dog and kitty litter and piss and a million other things you don’t want to think about. I must have had a look on my face because she says, “This is a no-kill shelter. The only one for fifty miles. They operate on donations. I volunteer here about ten hours a month. It’s not much, but it’s all the time I have.”

  A middle-aged woman at the front desk smiles up at us with big horse teeth and peppers us with questions that she doesn’t seem to need answers to: “Lucinda! Hi! Haven’t seen you in a while! How’s your mom? And your dad? And Puck? Does Mogget still have that funny patch of fur on his back? What about Mrs. Havisham? And who’s your friend?”

  This, Lucinda answers. “Bonnie, this is Eddy.”

  Bonnie says, “Hi, Eddy! Do you like animals? Dogs? Cats? Have you ever seen a sugar glider? We just got one in—with babies! Gonna need some names for those. You want to come up with names? It’s fun! You pick your favorite book and pick some character names out of it and voilà! So will you be helping us out today?”

  She pauses and we wait a few seconds to make sure she really wanted an answer to this. Lucinda says, “Yeah, he’ll be helping me out today, Bonnie. Mind if we go back? We’ll start with the dogs and work our way over to the cats.”

  “Sounds great!” Bonnie says. She turns to me, frizzy yellow curls bouncing. “I hope you’re not allergic!”

  I have a feeling that if I said I was, she or Lucinda would hand me a box of tissues and tell me to suck it up.

  Bonnie presses some sort of buzzer under the front desk. As we move around the desk, I look under it and see four or five dogs tucked away, sleeping. Lucinda tugs my sleeve and leads me down a hallway where the disinfectant stink is stronger.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “We’re working,” she said. “These animals need some attention and we’re giving it to them. For some of these guys, it’s the only real attention they’ll get all day.” At the end of the hallway is a large room with a row of cages. In each cage is a dog. Lucinda grabs a leash from a peg on the wall and walks to the row of cages.

  Lucinda drops to her knees in front of the first cage. “Hello, you,” she says. A muscular brown pug wheezes at her. She unlocks the cage and the pug waddles out. His black-marble eyes roll around in his head like they’ve been oiled. He barks at me.

  “Shush, Oliver. This is Eddy. Eddy is a nice guy. Well, mostly.” She attaches the leash to the dog’s collar. “He’s going to walk you today.” She hands me the leash. The pug looks up at me as if he’s not certain I’m up to the task.

  “Well,” says Lucinda. “Say hello to him.”

  “Bonjourno,” I say.

  The dog woofs and then sneezes. I’m not used to animals that don’t talk back. And look like they’ve been chasing parked cars. And catching them.

  “His name is Oliver Twist,” Lucinda tells me.

  “What else would it be?”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she says, more to the dog than to me. We pass all the other dogs in cages, who bark and whine and howl their displeasure. Behind the shelter, there’s a fenced-in dog run where we can let Oliver Twist off his leash. Lucinda pulls a toy from somewhere, I don’t know where. Some secret place where she stows all her dog magic. This one is a squeaky ball that Oliver Twist chases around the yard. I pick him up and he gyrates from both ends, his head twisting one way and his butt twisting the other. Lucinda laughs. I love the sound, even if it was the dog that did it.

  So when we go back inside and get the second dog—a black poodle named Inigo Montoya—I don’t protest. We slip the leash on his collar and take him outside for his five minutes of bliss. I play with him and Lucinda gathers him in her arms and kisse
s him and whispers in his ear. I can’t hear what she says, but I want to know. When I ask her, she says, “None of your business.”

  We play with Inigo Montoya for a while. I keep saying, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. Prepare to die.”

  “You read The Princess Bride,” she says. I don’t tell her that I didn’t even know it was a book, only a movie.

  We work our way through the cages: Lily Bart, Queequeg, Elizabeth Bennet, Boo Radley, Bartimaeus, Huck Finn, Hermione Granger, Mary Poppins, Artemis Fowl, even Moby Dick (who is one of those wiener dogs; I tell Lucinda that someone at the shelter has a very literal sense of humor).

  After we’ve walked the dogs, we go to the cat room. It’s every cat for itself in here. They’ve draped themselves all over the place, on countertops and ratty furniture and those tall, carpeted cat motels. Cardboard boxes have been thrown into the corners and the cats pack them, stacked on top of the other. Lucinda gives them fresh water and pets all the ones that want petting and talks to all the ones who demand to be talked to. Her voice is low and soothing when she does this, like she’s hypnotizing them. In response, they blink slowly back at her. I blink at her too, and she calls me an idiot.

  I walk to the far side of the big room where there is a lone lump in a cage. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “Oh,” says Lucinda. “That’s Frank. As in Stein.”

  Frank is crouched way in the back of his cage. He’s missing one eye and his left ear has a notch taken—bitten?—out of it. He doesn’t meow as much as moan as I approach.

  “Hi,” I say, bending and pushing a finger between the bars.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Lucinda says.

  Frank hisses and spits, lashing out. He rips a few holes in my finger. I snatch my hand away and shake it.

  “Ow,” I say.

  “I told you not to do that.”

  “I was trying to be brave.”

  “Nice try. I found him living under my porch. He was starving, so I fed him some table scraps. Scratched me up when I tried to catch him.” She points to faint silvery scars on her forearm. “I had to use a trap.”

  “Do you do that a lot?”

  “What?”