Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

“We need them, too. So people are grateful not to be them.”

She was listening.

“We’re choosing contestants tomorrow in Las Vegas for a special episode there. To be broadcast opposite the Super Bowl.” He punched the air enthusiastically. “Why don’t you come see how I do it?”

He could not look directly at the joy in her face; it blazed with a terrible brightness.

HE TOOK HER IN HIS PRIVATE JET, THE JET THAT HE HAD LOCKHEED build for him on a special commission. The earth fell away, the ocean a swath of silver, Southern California suddenly silent and remote; he looked out the window, and he felt a sweet relief blow through him.

He took a break from the planning session and grandly walked her around the plane, making sure the staff was watching. “This is my granddaughter Aurora — I’m telling her how to become a success. Aurora, here is the plane sauna. My staff tells me that anyone of any stature must have one of these on a plane. Over here, the plane game room, this is the biggest pool table in the sky. .”

They landed in Las Vegas and set up their camp on a full floor in the MGM Grand. On the show, the contestants were going to run naked through a large, slippery pit filled with bills, trying to grab as many as they could. However, they would be allowed to use only their teeth. Some of the bills would be ones, but some would be thousand-dollar bills. Most of the plane trip had been consumed with discussion of whether to use olive oil or Crisco for the pit. The contestants would have to look good naked, be adept at sliding on curved surfaces, and have large mouths. Hundreds of people showed up and were funneled into a large conference room, where they were instructed to wait until Lenny arrived. He told Aurora to sit in the room with the contestants so that she could hear his staff prepare them.

The group looked like they’d been up late for too many nights — their eyes were rimmed violet, their hair desert-burned. They had been around the prospect of instant luck for too long, and they looked worn but grimly entitled.

Lenny walked in. “All right!” he shouted. “You want to do Anything for Money? Show me!” Their eyes were set on him. “You, what’s your name?”

“Betty Valentine.”

A slight woman came up. She had the blank, watery expression that meant she had been dragged here by a friend; she was in her forties, with short pink-blonde hair.

“What are you worth, Betty Valentine?” He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket. “Five dollars? Ten? A hundred?” He flicked the bill against her nose; she blinked. “A thousand?” He let the bill fall to the floor. Everyone regarded it with interest.

“Two of those are yours. If you can sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

Betty smiled slightly: this was easy.

“In here.”

He snapped his fingers. An assistant rolled over a ten-foot-high wooden box. He opened a door. Inside, a hundred cockroaches were crawling on the walls. Betty’s face was still.

“Come on, Betty.”

Betty looked around at the others; putting her hands over her face, she slowly stepped inside the box. Her arms were shaking. Cockroaches crawled all over the insides of the box, onto her arms. She covered her face with her hands and began to make a high-pitched sound.

“Sing it!” he said.

Betty coughed. “Ohhh, say. .” her voice trailed off.

“We’re waiting,” he said.

“Oh, say.” She stopped and ran out of the box.

“Stop!” he said. An aide nimbly scooped the thousand-dollar bill off the floor.

“You call that singing? Are you winners or losers?” Lenny shouted at the group. “What are you worth?” His voice boomed. “Betty couldn’t take it, could you?”

There was the sound of someone running behind him; he was appalled that anyone had moved. He whirled around to see Aurora standing up, her hands balled into fists.

“STOP!” Aurora yelled at him, and she ran out of the room.

The room went still; Lenny lunged through the doors. She was walking with stiff steps down the hotel hallway.

“Aurora!” he yelled. “Why did you do that?”

She spun around. Her face was pale. “You were a jerk.”

“Hey,” he said, lightly, “this is my job.”

She began to run away from him.

“Wait,” he said. The sight of her running away — from him — made him start, quickly, to follow her. “Aurora. Stop.”

He remembered how, as a toddler, Charlene would run around the garden, talking to the flowers. “You are Astasia,” she once said. “You are Petunee. You are Clarabell.” Her innocence was so pure it was almost grotesque. He remembered how she would run up and kiss him, her mouth wide open, as though she were trying to consume his entire cheek.

“Aurora. Why did your mother send you to me?”

Aurora stopped. She scratched her leg. “I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“There was nowhere else to go.”

He stood, dizzy, watching her run from him; then he told his staff to take over for the afternoon. He walked through the hotel, past the slot machines, where the sounds of people hoping to change their lives were as loud as a thousand bees. He continued through the cocktail lounge, the cigarette smoke a silver fog. He pushed through the hotel exit and stared, trembling, at the pure blue sky. He, too, believed he had nowhere to go.

IT WAS DUSK WHEN HE FINALLY FOUND HER. SHE WAS SITTING ON a bench, staring at a fountain surrounded by arcs of blue light. He approached her slowly. He did not know what he wanted, but he felt just as he had many years before, when he was about to rob the liquor store — as though he wanted to grab hold of the universe and change it. Then what he had wanted was practical. This universe he wanted to change with Aurora was different; it was abstract, constructed of feelings, and he did not know how to live within it.

“Aurora,” he said.

“What do you want?”

He stood before the girl, an expensively dressed man, worn down, sweaty, against the dark Las Vegas sky. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said.

She shrugged.

He sat down and leaned forward, clasping his hands. “What’s the title of your movie?”

“Why?”

He shrugged. He did not know what else to ask.

“ Danger ,” she said, a thrilled edge to her voice. “This is the poster. It’ll have a picture of an exploding world. There will be huge clouds of smoke. People from other planets will pick up stranded earthlings in their rockets. The saucers will fly through violet rain. .”

“Danger,” Lenny said, slowly; it seemed a beautiful word. “It is a great idea.”

THE NEXT DAY, THE JET TOOK THEM BACK TO THE MANSION. THEY walked the grounds together, and Lenny showed Aurora the whole estate, but mostly he listened to her tell him about her film. The girl spoke quickly, desperately. The plot of Danger was unclear but enthusiastic. It involved runaway missiles, a child army, aunts possessed by aliens, and other complex subplots. Lenny’s contribution to the conversation was to not interrupt. If he did, the girl became furious. Aurora had thought through many of the marketing elements: the poster, the commercial. She wrote the title of the movie on a piece of poster board, decorated it with pieces of red velvet. She became so passionate during her description of the trailer for Danger that she got tears in her eyes.

HE WAS NOT SURE WHAT THEY SHOULD DO TOGETHER. HIS JET TOOK them to Hawaii one weekend where she could swim with dolphins, and to London the next for a lavish tea. He imagined that intimacy would feel like the sensation he had when the jet swung up into the sky, a feeling of airiness, of vastness; but she was not interested in the green sea around Hawaii, the heavy, sweet cream spooned around a scone. Instead, she wanted, strangely, to talk. She wanted to know the smallest, most peculiar details about him. What was his favorite color? What was his favorite vegetable? What kind of haircuts did he have as a child?