Simon Rich - Spoiled Brats - Stories

“Come on,” Jeremy said. “Let me see ’em.”

His father reluctantly turned over his rack. He had mostly vowels, predictably, three A s and an E. But one tile stood out, like a clump of gold in gravel: a jagged, ten-point Z.

“Yes!” Jeremy shouted, banging his fist against the table. “Holy shit, I can’t believe it!”

He subtracted his dad’s tiles from his score, added the amount to his own, and scribbled down the final tally.

Dad: 238, Jerm: 255!

He tore off the sheet and pocketed it. He couldn’t wait to show it to his fiancée. She’d read his dad’s textbook in college and considered him a genius. Her mind was about to be blown. He was posting a picture of the board to Instagram when he noticed that his father was undressing.

“Dad?” he said. “What are you doing?”

“I knew this day would come,” he said. He stripped off his shirt and knelt on the ground, his naked arms stretched out in supplication.

“Club me to death,” he begged. “And eat my body.”

“Dad…”

“Eat my weakened body,” his father said. “For I have become too old to live.”

“Dad, come on,” Jeremy said. “It’s just one game. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

But he knew there were no alternatives. The Stromberg family had been practicing this rite for generations. He himself had witnessed his mother shove his grandmother onto an ice floe. They were on a ski trip in Vermont, and his grandmother had forgotten the name of the actor who played Frasier.

“It’s not a big deal,” his mother said through sobs. “Everybody forgets things sometimes.”

The old woman shook her head stoically.

“Bathe me in sacred oils,” she commanded. “And cast me out to burden you no more.”

They’d fed Aunt Susan to a horse in Central Park when she was only fifty. She’d promised to get her niece a summer internship at Bravo. But, when she called up the producer she used to date, he told her he was no longer with the network. Layoffs were looming and he’d taken a buyout. Susan was floored. She’d had ins at NBC for as long as she could remember. She’d dated assistants in her twenties, writers in her thirties, and executives in her forties. Now she didn’t even know anyone who worked there.

“It’s okay!” her niece insisted, as little tears formed in her eyes. “I don’t even care about TV! I just wanted an excuse to live in New York this summer—”

“Feed me to beasts,” Susan interrupted. “For I have outlived my purpose.”

Grandma Edith had walked off a cliff on Thanksgiving after accidentally calling her granddaughter’s black boyfriend Barack.

“It’s no big deal,” said the boyfriend, whose name was John. “I’m not offended.”

But it was too late. Edith had already put on her New Balances and headed for the rocks.

Uncle Mort had taken the rite just two weeks ago. He was making some coffee for his daughter when a fuzzy voice blared from his dusty Dell computer, “You’ve got mail!”

“Oh my God,” his daughter said. “You still have an AOL account?”

Mort’s wrinkled face flushed with shame.

“You’ve got mail!” the voice repeated. “File’s done.”

Mort nodded once at his daughter, and she knew without asking what he wanted her to do. She led him quietly out of his house and drove him through Boca, to the ocean. He kissed her on the forehead and then marched into the surf, his chin held high, proud to be leaving the earth with dignity.

Jeremy didn’t think that his father, though, was anywhere near that stage. He wasn’t young, of course. But he was still pretty vibrant. Just last year he’d published his ninth book. Sure, it wasn’t his most original work. (The Journal of Anthropology had called it a retread of Tribes, his one bestseller, now out of print.) Still, it was a real book, with footnotes and a cover and everything. So what if nobody wanted to buy it or read it?

“I know you’re upset,” Jeremy’s father said. “But you have no choice. You must perform this holy rite.” He rooted around in the living-room closet. “Where is that thing?” he muttered, rifling through a stack of old squash rackets. “Ah.”

He handed his son an oblong slab of wood. The club had been in the Stromberg family for years. It was by far their most ancient possession, even older than the George Foreman Grill.

Jeremy held the club up to the light. The bulbous side was stained with horrible reddish streaks. He looked back at his father and saw that he was kneeling on the rug, his balding head bowed toward him.

“Congratulations on beating me in Scrabble.”

Jeremy clenched his fists with anger.

“Why didn’t you use your Z earlier? You played aero —that could have been zero! ”

“What’s done is done.”

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said, his eyes already glossy. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Yes, you did,” his father said.

Jeremy let out a sob as he raised the club over his head.

“Who cares what Sparklegum12 thinks?” Kayla said. “He’s just some random moron on the Internet.”

“It’s the very first comment,” Gabe said. “As soon as people finish the story, they’re going to see that comment and it’s going to bias them.”

He clenched his fists.

“It’s going to bias them,” he repeated.

“People love your story,” Kayla said. “See? It’s got four stars.”

“Three and a half.”

“Why can’t you just be proud of yourself? It’s the Synecdoche Review. You’ve been submitting there for years.”

“I’m never submitting there again. First they make me change the ending, then they water down the opening paragraph, then they post a nasty comment at the very top of the comments, to make sure people hate the story because of the comments!”

He glanced at his MacBook and gasped. His half a star had vanished. He was down to a mere three.

“Fucking fuck!” he shouted.

Kayla sighed as Gabe paced around his studio, waving his arms at the ceiling.

“It’s unbelievable! They always find a way to fuck me, every time.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The whole fucking literary establishment! They hate that I’m trying to do something new — it terrifies them! I’m sorry I didn’t go to Iowa! I’m sorry my stories are actually original!”

He stopped pacing. At some point during his rant, Kayla had put on her coat.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” she said. “I thought we were going to cook lasagna and have sex. Instead, you threw a tantrum for three hours about a story in an online magazine that nobody even reads. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.”

He reached for her arm, and she shook him away.

“I’m sorry that Sparklegum12 disliked your story,” she said. “I’m sorry you can’t finish your novel. I’m sorry you’re not some famous celebrity writer. It doesn’t mean the whole world’s out to get you.”

“You’re right,” Gabe said. “I’ve been acting crazy tonight.”

“It’s not just tonight.”

“Who are you calling?”

“A cab.”

“He’s onto us,” Kayla whispered as she ran out of Gabe’s building, her iPhone pressed tightly to her ear.

“We know,” said the voice on the other end.

“What do I do?”

“Just get here.”

Kayla scanned the street. There was a phone booth on the corner of Myrtle and Bedford. She ran inside, dialed the secret code, and sank into the depths of Brooklyn.

She emerged minutes later in a torch-lit hall a hundred feet below the borough’s surface. The council was already assembling. Kayla bowed with deference as they took their places on the dais. The bottom row was reserved for the editors of prestigious literary magazines. Above them sat representatives from all the major American publishing houses. On the top tier sat members of Congress, titans of industry, and the president of the United States. A giant flag hung behind them, featuring the association’s logo: a picture of Gabe’s face, bisected with a diagonal slash.