Simon Rich - Spoiled Brats - Stories

“All this new technology drives me crazy,” said Mrs. Bender. “Why can’t a phone just be a phone? And these new walls they have now. How you can just walk right through them. I’m sorry, I’m showing my age here, but I liked it better when you couldn’t walk through walls.”

The other ghosts nodded. They’d noticed the strange new walls, too.

“These Millennials use so much technology that their brains are wired differently. They’ve done studies!”

“I read about that,” said Mr. Carr. “In the New York Times. ”

“Our kids are prime examples,” Mrs. Carr admitted. “They’re obsessed with their phones. Last week, we visited Lily’s new place. In, where else, Brooklyn. ”

The other ghosts chuckled with recognition.

“She was so busy texting, she didn’t even say hello to us. It was like we weren’t even there. I got so angry, I grabbed her phone and threw it across the room.”

“What happened?”

“She started screaming and a lock of her hair turned white.”

The Benders nodded. They’d had similar experiences while visiting their own children.

“Speaking of Millennials,” Mrs. Bender said. “We have to tell you about this party we attended.” She nudged her husband. “You tell it, honey. I’ll never do it justice.”

Mr. Bender licked his lips, relishing the anecdote.

“So we show up, and it’s Alice, her fiancé, and a gypsy.”

Mrs. Bender squealed. “Ted, you can’t say ‘gypsy’! It isn’t politically correct!”

“So this gypsy…”

“Ted!”

“She’s decked out in scarves, and rings, and holding a crystal ball.”

“I assume this was in Brooklyn?” said Mrs. Carr.

“How did you know?” Mr. Bender asked sarcastically.

“It was in a neighborhood called Ditmas Park.”

“My God,” Mrs. Carr said. “How did you even get there?”

Mr. Bender’s smile faded. “You know, I don’t remember.” He turned to his wife with confusion. “Do you remember how we got there?”

“No,” said Mrs. Bender after a lengthy pause. “It’s almost like we just appeared in the space, as if out of a void.”

“Anyway,” Mr. Bender said. “This gypsy—”

“Ted!”

“She says, ‘There is a spirit in our midst. Do you know anyone whose name begins with T? ’ And our daughter says, ‘My father.’ And I’m thinking, What is this? What’s going on? So I try to talk to Alice, but she’s giving us the silent treatment, as usual. So I say to the gypsy, ‘Will you please tell Alice to retake the GREs and I’ll pay for it? Because that’s been a source of contention between us for some time.’ And the gypsy repeats what I’ve said, and Alice starts to cry. And she says, ‘Dad, please, we might never get another chance to communicate. I want you to know that I love you.’ ” He shook his head in bafflement. “It’s these new drugs kids are taking. They’re much stronger than the ones we dabbled in. ‘Molly.’ That’s one of them.”

Mr. Carr nodded. “I read about that in the New York Times. ”

The door creaked open.

“Speak of the devil!” Mrs. Carr said as her two adult children, Lily and Brent, entered the apartment. She tried to hug them, but they slipped right through her arms.

“I’ll do this closet,” Lily told her brother. “You do that one.”

Mrs. Carr watched in confusion as her children rifled through her old belongings.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the Benders. “They’re not usually this rude.”

Mrs. Bender shrugged. “Our kids are the same way.”

The ghosts tried to move their conversation forward to other interesting topics, like Obama and the new Woody Allen movie. But it was difficult to ignore the two rummaging Millennials.

“Remember this thing?” Lily asked, handing her brother a dusty Etch A Sketch.

“Sort of,” he said. There were traces of an image on the screen: a few faint clouds and a wispy stick figure.

The ghosts were silent for a while.

“I love your new ceiling,” Mrs. Bender said finally.

Mrs. Carr looked up and gasped. The crown molding was gone, replaced by a shapeless, throbbing whiteness. She couldn’t remember when the men had come to install it.

“Should we go to it?” she asked softly.

“I think so,” said Mr. Carr. They took each other’s hands, and the Benders instinctively did the same. The four ghosts floated upward, past the wine racks and the bookshelves. Mrs. Carr glanced down at her son, Brent, and was surprised to see a bald spot in the middle of his scalp.

“I think we’re ghosts,” she said. And for the first time, they all understood the situation.

“Well,” Mr. Bender said, raising an eyebrow. “I suppose this gives new meaning to the expression ‘YOLO’!”

The ghosts smiled uneasily, confused by the reference.

“Or is it ‘FOMO’?” Mr. Bender said. “Is it ‘YOLO’ or ‘FOMO’?”

His wife kissed him gently on the cheek. “It doesn’t matter, love.”

The ghosts closed their eyes and melted pleasantly into a ball of crystal light.

“Did it get warm all of a sudden?” Lily asked.

“Yeah,” her brother said. “I’m sweating.”

Lily raised her eyebrows. “Climate change. They say this is the hottest January on record.”

“I think I read about that,” said Brent. “In the New York Times. ”

Tim was tuning his guitar backstage when he noticed something odd.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Look.”

Sanjay strolled over, drumsticks in hand.

“What’s up?”

Tim pointed shakily through a gap in the curtains.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

Sanjay’s eyes widened.

“Not at one of our shows.”

Tim could feel his heart speeding up and time slowing down. It was just like he’d always imagined it. An empty chair, in the center of the bar, with a paper sign taped to the seat.

RESERVED

“Who do you think it’s for?” asked Pete, the keyboardist. “Fat Possum? Merge? Gigantic?”

“Indie labels don’t reserve seats like that,” Sanjay said. “It’s probably someone from a major.”

“It could be anyone,” Tim said, trying his best to stay calm. “Anyone from anywhere.”

The house music faded as the lights went down. Tim secured a daffodil to his lapel. He’d been employing this good-luck ritual since their very first show. Now, it seemed, it was finally paying dividends.

“This is it,” he told his bandmates. “We’ve waited five years for this. Don’t blow it.”

As the curtain creaked open, Tim thought about how far the band had come. When they’d first started out, as seniors at Yale, they barely had enough songs for an EP. Now, the Fuzz had four self-released LPs under their belt. Their latest single — a reggae-inflected surf tune — had amassed more than twenty-five thousand plays on SoundCloud. And when they’d needed to raise five thousand dollars to record their latest album, they’d gotten it on Kickstarter in less than twenty days. No one had ever come to see them perform, though. At least, not anyone important.

Tim tried not to stare, but it was difficult. The talent scout was tall and frighteningly thin, in a form-fitting charcoal suit. Club Trash served only beer and wine, but somehow he’d gotten hold of a martini. He sipped from his glass and smirked at the stage, his lanky legs folded at the ankles.

“Hello, Williamsburg!” Tim howled into his microphone.

The crowd politely cheered. He could make out his mother’s voice. She came to every show and her movements were as well rehearsed as the band’s. She began each set with a loud “woot woot” and always shouted “yay!” at the completion of each song. At the end of every gig, when Tim announced their time was up, she booed sarcastically. Sometimes people laughed at her joke. Sometimes they didn’t.