Game Show
Kent Lamar signed the contract and became a game show host in July, to replace his predecessor, Martin James, for the upcoming season. Looking around him, the cold stare of camera lenses reminded him of bug eyes, “Why do they seem so sterile?” he pondered. Fervent activity swarmed around him, and loud cracks from electric malfunctions brought him back from his thoughts.
“Justin, get me another suit, can’t you see the frays? It’s a disaster…”
The young man did not respond, but instead ran to the opposite end of the studio. Kent strode quickly across black concrete floor while a young woman in headphones struggled to keep up. “Kent, you have an hour before the contestants arrive, you’re in makeup in twenty minutes, and we go on at nine-thirty…” her voice trailed.
“Sarah, which do you like better, the brown tie or the blue?”
“Brown.”
The two veered to the corridor under the seats, and above them an applause sign crackled and flickered on and off. There were three men dressed in black jumpsuits examining light bulbs on the cat walk and shouting at the camera men below. Two women from the art department diligently painted touch ups of the pink and yellow set, and the catering company marched in a single file white parade, carrying linens and pushing stainless steel carts.
“Kent, you need to watch the booth for your signals, the light flash will be at one minute, thirty seconds, and five seconds before commercial—but it won’t affect the teleprompter—Cameron decided to go with the Bot 79 lighting for the intro, so make up is going to be a little heavy…but the filters should be fine…take care of it I mean…and…” she looked down at the clipboard, “That’s it, anything else?”
“One thing.” The two turned the corner and found his dressing room. He opened the door and grabbing her by the wrist swung her swiftly into the room.
“We only have twenty minutes,” she threw the clipboard to the floor; “We have to be quick.”
Kent slammed the door and pressed her firmly against it. He bit her neck and she thrust her hand down the front of his black pants. They undressed and he was within her quickly, she pulled a chunk of his graying hair and could feel her nipples brushed slightly by the curls on his chest. A bead of sweat dripped from his neck and landed on the curvature of her soft white breast traveling like a river from a mountaintop, he imagined silently. He made little noise, but she was perfectly the opposite, making it necessary for him to cover her mouth with his hand to prevent the noise from reaching any further than his dressing room door. He closed his eyes and tried to think of someone else, not this game show manager with her polo shirts and loose jean shorts to cover the ever growing fat in her ass. It was the caterers fault, he decided, maybe I can have them make her something healthy. She climbed on top of him and bounced in rhythm, yelping high pitched squeaks every time she hit his lap. I am almost fifty, and this is what I have become…he contemplated.
“EE—EE—EE—EE”
He pushed her off of himself and got up. She sat on the floor sprawled and naked.
“Did you go?” she asked between heavy breaths.
“Yeah, get dressed; I’ve got to go to makeup.”
She gathered her things and stepped into her clothes. She put her headphones back around her neck.
“All right, you have ten minutes before makeup,” she turned to the door and flattened her hair with one hand.
“Do you have it?”
She stared at him blankly for a brief second, then opened her purse and retrieved a small leather pouch.
“Yeah…save some for later, OK?”
She held out her hand and he snatched the small wallet. He turned his back to her and stared down at the thing in his hands.
“Get out.”
Dazed, she blinked twice, then closed her purse and made for the door.
“I got it from Cameron, be careful…” and she left.
He unlaced the string around the pouch and unfolded it, revealing a small syringe, a metal measuring spoon and a quarter sized bag of powder.
Ten miles away, Buck Straighthand, a tall and thin man with tight pulled skin hovered above collection letters and foreclosure notices scattered across his office desk at his home at 34 Wicker St. Something rattled in the ceiling, and a thumping sound rose from the duct above his head. I need to fix the air conditioning, he thought. It had somehow lasted through the summer, but was holding on to its last strings of life. Soon, he would buy another one, as soon as he could find the money.
“Dad, where are you?”
His fifteen year old daughter, the oldest of three. He gathered all of the letters and shoved them into a drawer on his right.
“In here, honey.” He yelled through the closed wooden door. Scuttling feet shifted the floor boards in the hallway and low creaks came triumphantly as she blasted into the office.
“Dad, its Friday night, mom said that you would give me twenty dollars for the movies.”
“Oh, OK.” He reached into his back pocket and produced his brown leather wallet, “How about ten?” he suggested.
“uhh, fine…”
“Thanks Dad, now I can’t even get a drink.”
“Why don’t you just take a can of coke in your purse?”
“Why can’t you guys just give me little bit of money every now and then, I just wanted a drink at the movies!”
“Listen, where the Hell do you think all of that money is coming from? I work all damned day and have to come home to you worrying about getting a drink at the movie theater? Who the Hell do you think you are?”
Her eyes began to fill with water, and her chest caved in.
“Oh, honey, don’t cry, listen, next time, I’ll give you more money all right, I just…”
She turned and departed the room leaving trails of low sobs behind her. He looked at his feet shuffling side to side, and then turned to the desk, to the right drawer.
“Dammit!” he yelled, and kicked the door of the office, slamming it violently shut. “I’ve got to do this…I’ve got to.” He opened the closet and pulling out a blue windbreaker, climbed out of the office window. He wanted no one to know where he was going.
Three streets south of Buck Straighthand’s home were groupings of six-story apartment buildings. In suite 219, in building M, Dorothy Pressman pulled the last curler from her hair, and slipping on her black suede pumps, turned off the television and headed for the cab waiting outside. The air was cooling, this being late September, and she wore a black lace shawl which barely covered her broad shoulders. She was a short, plump woman with tumbling breasts over her protruding stomach. Now, near sixty her eyes were deep sockets and barely visible behind her ebony flesh. She moved defiantly to the cab, “NCB building, please.”
“The television studio?”
“Yes.”
The lobster is Homarus Gammarus, and is a crustacean of the Nephropidae family. The moon takes exactly twenty seven point three days to orbit the Earth. The last mast on a ship is called the “jigger.” The cheekbone’s true classification is the zygomatic bone. She repeated these things in her head, these many things that she studied aggressively. Fool’s Gold is really iron pyrites. She read books in the public library and had the cable man install her computer with the internet, a place she spent several hours a night, alone and desperately searching through piles of information. A djellaba is a loose, hooded woolen cloak worn by Arabian men. She closed her eyes completely when she silently studied, forcing herself to remember things from the deep recesses of her mind. The embryonic leaves on seed bearing plants are the…
“Why are you headed to the television station, you gonna be on TV lady?”
“Cotyledons.”
“What?”
“Nothing, please don’t bother me, can’t you see I’m thinking?”
She retreated back to her mind. It started three years prior, after her children left her. There was a terrible accident; both of her sons were on life support. It was then that she realized her ability to memorize and regurgitate. The doctor spoke candidly about what organs were amiss and the complicated processes needed to be performed. In her youth she had only completed her sophomore year of high school, at which point had become pregnant and devoted her time strictly to her sons. So now, with limited knowledge of medicine was determined to understand what her sons’ condition entailed, though it meant spending nights endlessly devoted to study in the hospital’s library. Unfortunately in vain, her study was unwarranted, for two weeks after the accident both of her children were dead. “Here’s your stop ma’am, it’s eight bucks.”
She pulled nine from her purse, gazed at the man from those deep eyes, turned back to her purse and pulled out another bill. I’ll be fine later, won’t even care about a ten dollar cab fare, she though smiling at the man. The man accepted the money and she stepped to the curb. Stepping up to the large building, she stood still for a moment in front of the doorway. The stairs and glass framed her little stature. Reaching to the handle, she pulled it slowly letting a rush of cool air sweep over her body.
“Kent…Kent…”
It was Sarah, what did she want?
“You were supposed to be in makeup twenty minutes ago. Come on, wake up!”
She pulled the spike out of his arm and loosened the tie around his bicep. He began to come around, though still quite dazed. She put his lifeless arm around her and raised him from the floor. She had seen him much worse than this before a filming, with any luck, he should be nicely in the afterglow by show time, but it would be close. She shuffled him to the door.
“Cameron, get your ass over here!”
“Oh, what the Hell, I told you not to give it to him before the show.”
“He asked…What was I supposed to do, listen, just drop him in makeup, and just remind them of the lighting you’re using.”
Cameron swung Kent’s body across his back and charged across the studio. “Where am I…”
“Just shut the Hell up, Kent, I’ll sort you right out.”
Cameron strained against the weight and adjusted Kent’s body slightly as he shuffled across the black cement. The door to the makeup room was open and Cameron laid Kent against the wall just outside.
“Here you go, big dog.” Cameron took a bag of cocaine and a long Volkswagen key out of his pocket. “Just breathe in when I tell you, all right?” He dug the key into powder and slowly aimed it for Kent’s nose precisely, like a docking space shuttle. “Ok now one, two three…Go.”
Kent’s nostril flared, and his eyes bulged at the rush of energy overwhelming him. “OK, now the other one…one, two…Go.”
Again, the fire swept through his veins and covered his body with chills. “Let’s get you into makeup.”
Cameron took him by the arm, but this time Kent was more capable of walking on his own. He stumbled slightly and fell into a black leather chair in front of a floor to ceiling mirror. Now, after the torture of the drugs, he was forced to sit amiably by and watch his own reflection as a woman with pink spiked hair and deep blue eyeliner covered his face with a thick layer of pig fat and minerals. What have I become, a victim, or a victimizer?
Cameron turned back to the set; it was time to brief the contestants. In a white washed room with tube lighting, three hundred men and women crowded around one another, occasionally stepping on toes and brushing elbows. The smell reminded Dorothy Pressman of the stale yellow squash her mother prepared when she was a girl. There were young and old people, some in suits, and others in torn jeans and faded t-shirts. They all, however, held one thing in common, they were all the bearers of small postcards they had received in the mail after applying to appear on the nationally syndicated game show, “How to Earn a Buck.” The show was popular even when Dorothy herself was only ten, and though the hosts continued to change over the years, the allure of the game never faltered, spanning generations. Cameron came through a north facing door, and stood at a small podium near the front of the busy room.
“All right, well you all I’m sure know how the game gets started, all of your names will be entered into a lottery bin, and the names that our hostess pulls will then proceed to the game stage and stand in booths facing each other. One hand will be placed behind your back, and the other will be resting atop the table next to the buzzer. As soon as Kent Lamar asks the question, the first contestant to hit the buzzer will have five seconds to answer before it gets passed to the other contestant for a rebuttal. Is that all clear? Good, now, after a series of five questions, the contestant who has answered the most correctly will be kept on stage for the lightening round at the end of the game. The winner of the lightening round, which works exactly like the previous round, will take home twenty thousand dollars.”
The crowd murmured to each other, “Twenty thousand dollars?” Dorothy heard, “Isn’t that more than usual?”
“Today’s performance I would like to remind you is our first ever live taping of ‘How to Earn a Buck’ and therefore the prize is high than normal. In addition to the money awarded to the winner, you will all receive a Spencer-Johnson four slice toaster courtesy of our sponsors for agreeing to be on the show. Now if there aren’t any more questions, if you would please follow me to the stage to take your seats.”
The crowd shifted towards the exit.
“When do we get to meet Kent Lamar?” Came a voice from the back of the room, from a man in a blue windbreaker.
Cameron paused, “You will all meet the host after the show when we have the photo-op and autograph session, now please, all of you follow me.”
Dorothy moved her body steadily towards the door, using her thick arms and shoving through those taller and stronger than she. No one would interfere with her plans, whosoever did would be graced by the stubbornness of her black suede pump and rough callused feet. The group sauntered towards the stage and Dorothy waded through the lot of them, planting herself in the front row, on an aisle she was sure Kent Lamar would be arriving from. The man in the windbreaker decided to move anonymously to the back of the audience. They would be calling names by lottery, what does it matter if I sit in the back? He pulled off his jacket and straightened his tie in the collar of his white short sleeve button down work shirt. He pulled a comb from his shirt pocket and spitting in his hand guided both across the sides of his head, smoothing his unruly hair. At Princeton he studied philosophy, but had failed after three semesters and dropped out. He still, however, considered himself quite bright, despite his short college career. His living now was made selling used cars on a lot downtown, but two weeks ago, he had been fired for reasons of downsizing he was told. He had still yet to disclose this information to his family, but his funds were drying and the bills steadily rising, appreciating as he sat in the dark of the studio, waiting perhaps in vain for the big payoff, hoping his brain was still reliable enough to answer a few obscure answers on live television for enough money to sustain his family, to feed his children, to comfort his wife. He though of Christina, his eldest daughter and her unrelenting innocence. If I win, I’ll buy her a nice piece of jewelry. Perhaps, he could make her forget about his ineptitude as a father. Maybe he would take them all on a trip, a vision of parkas and the snowy mountains of Colorado. Everything will be all right.
The lighting dimmed, and spotlights trained on the stage. A hushed silence fell over the crowd of possible contestants; the show was soon to begin.
Back in the dressing room, under the supervision of Cameron, Kent dressed in a blue linen suit and a brown paisley tie.
“Martin was better than I am, wasn’t he?”
“No way big dog, this show was made for you—you’re a natural.” Cameron grinned slyly from an overstuffed chair in the corner of the room.
“I knew I paid you well for a reason, Cameron, give yourself a raise.” “All ready did twice this week.”
Kent smirked the beleaguered smile of a man close to death. The make up was having a difficult time covering his emotions.
“Put in some more eye drops, my filters won’t be able to fix those.”
“Yeah, don’t worry, this old polar bear will live to fight another day, I have the burden of time. You…you’re young and stupid, I’m old and disgusting, and for some reason I can’t think of a single time when I was in between. No purgatory in the grand scheme of life, no twist to the end of the story.”
“Oh, come on big dog, you can’t beat your self up like that.” Cameron noticed that Kent’s dressing room was larger than the one they made the contestants wait in before the show. He cocked his dusty blonde hair to the side and out of his face.
“Cameron, how old are you?”
He shook his head and smiled, “Twenty-Seven.”
“And you enjoy all of this?”
“Every minute.”
“Martin was better than I am, wasn’t he?”
“You just need a few more shows under your belt, and then they’ll forget all about him. You know, he was a fag.”
“Really…well that explains it then, doesn’t it? Always full of pep, what did he take?”
“He was a speedball; he shot coke and H at the same time.”
“Junkie, huh…” Kent grinned.
“Yeah, listen, here’s the bag,” Cameron got up and handed him a small plastic sack, “I’m going to set up—take a line and get into position, we’re on in fifteen minutes.”
“Right, right, fifteen…fifteen…”
“And don’t forget the eye drops.”
“No, won’t, and thanks.” He held the bag at eye level.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
The door slammed behind the young man, and Kent turned to his vanity. Pouring a mound from the bag, he stuck his face to it and breathed heavily. One day, this will all be behind you. His nose was dusted white in his reflection, and blood pooled on his upper lip. At the same time he felt a trickle run from his left arm, and down to his thumb. My blood is too thin, low platelets, it won’t…what’s the word?
Coagulate, thought Dorothy Pressman. Coagulation is when blood forms a clot such as a scab. The palms of her hands began to sweat and she dried them on her shawl. A dessiccator is a device for dehydrating specimens. She gazed at the silver time piece on her wrist, a gift from the late Mr. Pressman. Nine twenty-five.
“OK people, we go live in five minutes, shut off your cell phones, get comfortable, and let’s make television. When you see this sign flash,” Cameron pointed to the flickering applause sign, “You cheer wildly and chant and do what ever it is you do, but when the sign is off, keep quiet and just observe the game. If any of you decide to act out or yell during the performance, you will be escorted out and will forfeit the four slice toaster, any questions…no, good…THREE MINUTES!”
Cameron walked to the back of the stage swiftly to Kent’s dressing room. “KENT! Where is that son of a bitch?”
The host stepped out of the room and made a smooth glide over to Cameron.
“Flying high, my friend, flying high.”
“We made a couple of changes to the introduction, here’s your card and the teleprompter will be on as well…”
The two made good pace to the staging area and stood just behind the seats waiting for the cue.
“ONE MINUTE!” Cameron shouted, then to Kent, “It’s you big dog, get out there and do this thing.”
“It’s the great trial of life, live television, and I’m pleading no contest.”
“WELCOME TO HOW TO EARN A BUCK, WITH YOUR HOST…KENT LAMAAAR!”
He trotted down the aisle and waved at a few contestants as he passed, “Good evening folks and who’s ready to play…”
The crowd roared in unison, “HOW TO EARN A BUCK!”
The applause sign flashed and Dorothy Pressman smacked her hands together violently and cupping her mouth let out a howl of delight.
“That’s right folks, and let’s get right down to it, now for you folks at home, this is a first ever live performance of ‘How to Earn a Buck.’ No one knows what might happen, but from the looks of these contestants, it’s going to be quite a show. Well, let’s go to the lottery and see who our first lucky contestants are!”
“LOTTERY, LOTTERY, YEAH!”
With his microphone in one hand, Kent signaled to the woman in a yellow and pink bikini. She was twisting the lottery bin like a pig on a spit and the tiny white balls inside mixed and separated.
“Heidi, who are our first contestants?”
She stopped twirling and reached into the basket emerging with a ball etched with the name Myrtle Jennings.
“Kent, our first contestant is Myrtle Jennings!”
“MYRTLE JENNINGS, MYRTLE JENNINGS, YEAH!”
A woman from the front middle row squealed with delight, and after hugging her husband ran to the stage. Kent showed two perfect rows of with teeth, and the woman kissed his cheek and clapped her hands in between wiping the tears from her eyes. “Heidi, give me our next contestant.”
“The next contestant is…Todd Watterman!”
“TODD WATTERMAN, TODD WATTERMAN, YEAH!”
A young man in leather pants and a flowered Hawaiian t-shirt, hooted from the back row and knocking knees with several audience members made his way down to the stage. Looking directly into the camera, Kent put his arms around these two. He had always hated doing so…these people…they are so coy, so desperate, and so mediocre.
“Let’s play…”
“HOW TO EARN A BUCK! YEAH!”
The two took their podiums and placed their hands near the buzzer.
“Ok, first question. The first person to buzz in with the correct answer will get the point. Now, what mammal is known for its loud mating call known as the honk bark?”
A monkey, Dorothy Pressman thought, it’s a monkey.
Buck Straighthand sat in the back of the studio cursing the lottery for choosing these two before it chose him. That lottery bin and that woman in her bikini, he hated them all. He began to drift in his thoughts and pictured his name called above the rest. I’ll jump up, he thought, no wait, play it cool, just as if I had known all along that this time would come, that my fifteen minutes would outlast this show, everything will be all right.
“Myrtle, you and Todd are neck and neck; this question decides who stays and who goes, are you ready?”
“Yes, Kent, let’s do it.”
“Let’s do it indeed, what film introduced Eva Marie Saint to cinema?”
Todd buzzed, “Rebel Without a Cause?”
“Oooh, sorry Todd, Myrtle, do you have it? For the chance to stay in the game and win twenty thousand dollars?”
“Um…is it ‘On the Waterfront’?”
“Oh, Myrtle…Yes it is!”
The applause sign flickered and the crowd chanted, “MYRTLE, MYRTLE, YEAH!”
A light flashed from the booth above the seats, and Cameron sat with his finger above the cue. Putting his arm around Myrtle, Kent braced for his close up.
“We’re going to take a quick commercial break and be right back with,”
“HOW TO EARN A BUCK!”
The cue went to commercial and Cameron took off his headphones. “Nobody moves people; we’re back on the air in less than four minutes, Emilio, keep an eye on that time.” He exited the booth and hurried down to Kent waiting onstage.
“OK, Kent, solid beginning,” Cameron tossed him a bottle of water, “Let’s just keep it up.”
Through the headphones, resting on his neck, he could hear the warning of two minutes.
“TWO MINUTES!”
Kent felt his forehead begin to sweat, and noticed that the blood had again dripped down to his thumb. Taking out a white handkerchief, he wiped it away. His nose was burning, and the stage lights were making him claustrophobic. In his blindness, He could only make out a few characters in the crowd. His knees buckled, and he swayed violently, almost losing balance, but regaining his steadiness quickly, he righted himself. Just get through this one you old polar bear; they’ve got nothing on you.
“Three, two, and…”
“We’re back with…”
“HOW TO EARN A BUCK!”
“Well, we’ve got Myrtle up here in the lightening round booth and she’s gonna need some company, so let’s go back to Heidi for our next two contestants. This is it, Buck Straighthand was clutching his windbreaker and his heart was beating until it vibrated from excitement and longing. This is what I’ve been waiting for; this is my fifteen minutes, my whole life…
“Dorothy Pressman!”
“DOROTHY! DOROTHY! YEAH!”
At first, she was stunned, unable to move, but her secondary source…her auto pilot guided her legs to rise, to move, and to guide her beside Kent Lamar. Is this happening? Have I been so sure that it would that now I cannot realize the sensation?
“Dorothy, my dear, are you ready to compete for the chance to win twenty thousand dollars?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“And what are you going to spend that money on?”
She pondered for a moment, unsure if she should divulge the secret for which she was truly playing. She decided to lie.
“A new car.”
“A nice new car, now that sounds great, Heidi, what about our other contestant?”
Sweat beaded his chin line, and the windbreaker was held so tightly in his hand that he could feel his blood throb against it.
“Buck Straighthand.”
“BUCK! BUCK! YEAH!”
Like a new lamp freshly out of its box and illuminated for the first time, as was Buck Straighthand’s face when his name rang above the rest.
“That’s me!” he screamed at a man seated next to him.
“Well, you better get down there, man; don’t want to miss your turn.” “Yeah, I suppose so…” He said fixating on the stage.
“Buck Straighthand, where the heck are ya?”
“I’m here, I’m here.” Buck ran to the stage, nearly tripping over the stairs and still retaining his windbreaker in one hand.
“Well, hey there Buck, it’s a little drafty in here, is that why you have the windbreaker,” Kent mused.
The audience let out a roar of fake laughter, Buck looked down at his windbreaker saying nothing.
“Well, all right, Buck, Dorothy, let’s play…”
“HOW TO EARN A BUCK!”
Kent began to see spots of light distorting his vision and making the lights flare in his vision. He was dizzy, fatigued, I need a good night’s rest, maybe a joint…come on you old polar bear…
Dorothy Pressman scuttled across the pink floor to the yellow podium and thought of the answers in her head, basing her winning more so on the ability to buzz in with proper timing as opposed to actually knowing the answers.
I went to Princeton, dammit, I can beat this old woman.
“Ok ladies and germs, let’s get down to brass tacks here, first question: The political work The Leviathan, was written by which philosopher?”
Dorothy buzzed with a deft hand, “Thomas Hobbes.”
“Yes, Dorothy, one point for you…I’d be careful Buck, looks like some pretty heavy competition, question two: This group formed in 1848 and was a coalition of British Neoclassical artists and included members such as William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti…”
“Pre-Raphaelites!”
“Yes, Buck, great knowledge on the subject.”
Dorothy stared from the deep black pits of her eyes, and Buck could feel her coldness surrounding him like a thick fog.
“Ok, you two—who’s going to take the lead? Question three: If a tennis player has tennis elbow, there’s a good chance he has this achy medical condition…” “Synovitis.”
“Yes! Excellent…um…” Kent’s throat was closing, and a deep knife cut away at the lining in his stomach, his ulcer must be returning, and the pain sent him into a haze. “Um…Buck…Yes…”
The studio was devoid of noise, only the faint hum if the electric lights could be heard.
“OK, well, question four then, right…” he moved and relaxed his knees to prevent them from buckling. “What is the final mast on a large scale sailing ship referred to as?” “A Jigger! A Jigger!”
“A jigger, yes, and you…you tied the points…” His enthusiasm was fading in and out, as he would emphasize some words while muttering others under his breath.
“What the Hell is wrong with him Cameron?”
“He’s crashing Sarah, ok guys, be ready to go to commercial if anything happens, and I mean quickly, we’ve got a loose cannon up there.” He turned to Sarah, “Get Martin on the phone, we might need him to stand in if anything happens.”
“Martin…do you think he would do it?”
“Tell him forty K and see what you can get out of him.”
“I’ll see, but you know damn well, that if Kent knew Martin was here…”
“We’ll keep it under wraps; Kent won’t know he’s here unless he has to.”
“All right, well you better get down there next break and get him something to calm him down.”
“I’ll handle it, just get Martin down here.”
He looked down at one of the monitors, “Hang in there big dog.”
“The points are tied, and these two are really competing for this prize, they’re determined, and ready…diligent, smart…and they’re good people…like you and me, pay their taxes, right…question five, the last and final question. I’ll just ask it and then one of you will buzz in and answer it, just buzz right in, and ok, so question five…” He wiped the sweat from his forehead and smeared his makeup down the side of his face. Why must these lights be so bright, his knees locked.
“Question five: The electronic discharge sometimes referred to as the ‘ghost in the machine’ that occurs on Aircraft and large ships during thunderstorms is commonly referred to as…”
“St. Elmo’s Fire!”
“St. Elmo’s Fire…is that the answer…it sounds like a reasonable answer, and it turns out…”
The crowd sat in wild anticipation, watching as Buck’s answer was ruminated upon by their sickly host. Dorothy Pressman, mortified, watched as the fate of the show, and her prize money hung in Limbo, it was as if waiting for the answer from God himself.
“…and Yes! Yes it is, that is correct!”
“BUCK! BUCK! BUCK!” The crowd of people stood and screeched approval. Dorothy took two steps back from her podium. Buck threw his windbreaker into the air, and beamed as he had not done so in many years. I can pay the collectors, take my family away from life, everything is going to work out fine…
Kent lost his footing and began convulsing. His eyes bulged and the lights spun in his skull. Blood from his nose fell to his chest and stained it crimson, reaching down he could see the soft hue of the floor rising. Dorothy had retrieved her purse and searching briefly pulled a .38 caliber revolver. Her face, stoic, her movements fluid, she pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.
Kent heard the shot, but could not place the noise. He fell quickly to the ground and lost consciousness. Here you go you old polar bear; this is it, final round, and game over…
Dorothy took the revolver and pointed it at her temple. Another shot, and her body flopped onto the ground like a beaching whale. Her arm twitched slightly, and she was dead.
“Cameron, what the Hell just happened?”
“I don’t know! Shit!”
The crew from the booth tore down to the main stage and rushed to the aid of their fallen host. The audience was panicked, falling into a frenzy of activity. Cameron came upon Kent first and dropped to his knees. He slapped his face attempting to wake him. “Kent, come on now big dog, come back, come on now.” Cameron examined the body and saw the blood covering his chest. The paramedics, two men, dropped a box of supplies on the floor next to Kent and began to cut his shirt. They pulled away the blue suit and the brown paisley tie. Opening his shirt, one of the paramedics turned back to Cameron, “I thought this was a bullet wound incident.”
“It is, that woman over there shot Kent.”
“But there’s no bullet wound.”
Cameron’s eyes shifted to the back of the set where a skinny man with pulled tight flesh lay still. Cameron gazed in awe. The imprint of death so fresh now in his mind.
“I’m sorry, Cameron, one of the men said, Kent is gone.”
Cameron returned to his host and kneeling shut his eyes with two fingers. Then it happened, the thought finally occurred to him…looking to the booth he saw no one.
“Emilio!” He howled.
From the stage he could read the illuminated sign above the main camera,
“ON AIR.”
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