One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(53)

“He’s going to stamp the word VOID on it and sell it for fifty million dollars.”

The wife didn’t get that at all, but the husband said he kind of did, maybe.

“We’ll talk about it,” said the husband. “We’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

That night they looked up the artist online.

“It’s the idea of it,” explained the husband. “See? All this stuff. It’s the idea.”

The next morning they called the woman and told her they’d do it.

“Excellent!” she said.

They signed some paperwork and handed her the ticket, and she handed them a certified check for twelve million dollars.

And even better: nobody had to know they won. They could tell anyone they wanted, or no one if they wanted. No security concerns, no privacy concerns. No sob stories or television cameras or suspicious relatives they’d never heard of.

Just the two of them and the millions and millions of dollars.


The night before they were going to deposit the certified check, the husband awoke so startled by an idea that he had to wake up his wife to run it by her, too.

What if we called the woman back and offered to sell them the twelve-million-dollar check for fifteen million dollars? He could stamp VOID on the check, too!

“I like it,” she said.

The next day they called the woman with their proposal that Damien Hirst could buy back their undeposited certified check for fifteen million dollars.

“Why would he do that?” asked the woman.

“Well, he could do whatever he wants with it,” said the husband. “For example: he could stamp VOID on the check and then sell that for seventy million dollars.”

“Sell what for seventy million dollars?”

“The voided check to us.”

The woman sounded perplexed. “I’m sorry, could you explain more … what you mean, exactly?”

“You buy the twelve-million-dollar certified check made out to us, George and Cynthia Clark, from Hirst LLC. Okay? You give it to Damien Hirst. He writes VOID or CANCELED on it, or stamps or stencils it or however he wants to do it—he can decide that part.”

“Maybe he could paint it in red paint,” chimed in Cynthia.

“Shh,” said George. “Then you take that, you frame that—he frames that—whoever frames that—doesn’t matter—the voided check—that he voided, or an assistant voided, or however he does it—then one of you takes that to a gallery, and you sell it for sixty-five, seventy, a hundred million dollars!”

“I don’t think that would sell,” the woman finally said.

“Sure it would! It’s almost exactly like the first idea, but better!”

“What is?”

“The voided check to us! That we gave to him! And he voided! For the lottery ticket that we gave to him! That he voided!”

“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “I think I just don’t get it.”

“That’s okay,” said the husband.

Just an idea.





Heyyyyy, Rabbits





One morning I looked out my window, and I saw a rabbit hop across my back patio.

Just hopping through.

It entered from one side, then it hopped around a little, then it left out the other side.

That was it.

I loved it.

I wanted it to happen again and again and again.

I thought about buying a rabbit as a pet and putting it on the patio. But I didn’t want to have to lock it up in a cage. And I didn’t want to let it just roam free, knowing that at any time, anything could happen to it.

I would feel so terrible if something happened to it.

Or if it felt all caged up.

So I put a bowl of carrots out on my back patio.

Heyyyyy, rabbits.





The Best Thing in the World Awards





Many of the nominees were returning: love, Jesus Christ, Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld, losing gracefully (which never won but was always nominated), sunrises, peace (which was often a finalist during times of war but was otherwise not nominated), summer evenings, the score to West Side Story, laughter, Christmas, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

Others were new: internet on planes, spicy tuna on crispy rice.

Beauty had never been nominated. People lived their lives as if it were the best thing in the world, but perhaps in their hearts they knew it wasn’t. The same was true for money. Same for honesty.

A lot of people said they thought that Jesus Christ was going to come close one of these days, but it was generally nonreligious people who said that. Believers tended to vote for love, and the more casual believers voted for Christmas, and that split the vote.

Love always won. Everyone knew that and watched anyway. Perhaps even more eagerly, the way that people are more willing to get caught up in a certain type of movie when they have a sense deep down that, of course, love is going to win in the end. The fun isn’t whether love is going to win; the fun is in seeing how.

“Welcome to the Best Thing in the World Awards!” announced the host, Neil Patrick Harris. He had been the host for the past four years and he was terrific at it. (“When are you going to be nominated?” he was asked each year as he walked the red carpet on the way in, and he’d laugh it off. And so would the viewers at home. “Let’s all calm down” was the general reaction whenever anyone would ask Neil Patrick Harris when he was going to be nominated. He was a fundamentally great host, there was no doubt about that; but it said a lot about how seriously people took the awards that he wouldn’t be nominated, at least not for a long, long time. An awards-show host? No, sorry. We love him, was the unspoken collective answer to this question, but we’re talking about the best thing in the world here.)