Percival Everett - Erasure

Tom went back to the table. The first question was: Can you describe the members of the insect family Haliplidae? After this Tom wrote simply “yes.” Then he thought that he was being too literal and so went ahead and also supplied a description. He wrote, “The haliplids are the crawling water beetles. They are small, oval and convex and are usually yellow or brown with dark spots. They may be discerned from other aquatic beetles by their large and plate-like hind coxae.” He knew that he could go on, but he felt he had to continue to the next question.

(2) Who was Ferdinand Albert Decombe? Tom did not hesitate, but answered. “Known simply as Albert, he was made maître de ballet of the Paris Opera in 1829. He produced a number of ballets, among them Le Seducteur au Village, Cendrillon and La Jolie Fille de Gand.”

(3) Please state the Mean Value Theorem. “This theorem is a generalization of Rolle’s Theorem. It states that if the function y = f(x) is continuous for a? x? b and has a derivative at each value of x for a < x < b, then there is at least one point c between a and b where the tangent to the curve will be parallel to the chord through the two points A[a, f(a)] and B[b, f(b)].”

Tom’s brain felt like it was on fire. The answers came easily, though he didn’t know why. But he understood it all and his brain was burning up. He was finally asked to and he did describe the single-point continuous fuel injection system that Chrysler Motor Company devised in 1977. He gave a detailed but boring response to a request for a description of the working of the concept in the Imperial automobile. But the boringness of the answer served to quiet the fire in his brain.

“Time’s up,” the woman called to Tom from her desk.

Tom took the test back to her.

“That’s just fine,” she said. “Now, you go on home and you’ll be called if you’re what we need.”

“I don’t have a phone,” Tom said.

“Oh, my,” the woman said.

“I’ll just wait here,” Tom said and went over to a sofa and sat. The receptionist was visibly troubled by his decision to remain in the office. She took what Tom thought was his test with her into another office. He picked up a popular science magazine and read an article about the army’s new tank which traveled at a rate of more than 90 mph over rough terrain.

Tom was in the NBC building, in the outer offices of Virtute et Armis, waiting on a sofa for the receptionist to reappear at her desk. She did reappear and with her came a man in a gray suit with gray hair and a smile slathered across his face like an infection. The receptionist pointed to Tom and the gray-haired man nodded, then walked to him. Tom watched his confident stride as he approached.

“You did very well on the exam,” the man said.

Tom nodded.

“It says on your sheet that you attended William and Mary. When did you graduate?”

“Actually, that’s not true. I just wanted to put down something.”

“My name is Damien Blanc,” the man said. “I’m the producer of Virtute et Armis.”

“I apologize about lying on the questionnaire.”

“Don’t concern yourself over that. This is television. Who really gives a fuck where you studied or what you studied or if you studied?” He sat down beside Tom on the sofa. “The fact of the matter, Mr. Wahzetepe—” He stopped. “May I call you Tom?”

Tom nodded.

“The fact of the matter, Tom, is that we’ve got a problem. You see, one of our contestants for tonight’s show has taken ill. So, we need a quick replacement. And here you are.”

“I’m going to be on the show?”

“That’s right,” Blanc said. “You’re going to be live on national television. You know we’re one of the few live shows left.” He looked at his watch. “We go on in just a little more than six hours. So, I suggest you go get some rest, get something to eat, and take it easy. Our show can be pretty grueling.”

“Yes, I know.” Tom couldn’t believe his quick and positive fortune. He was indeed going to appear on Virtute et Armis. But as he considered this, he also recalled the ugly ends met by his predecessors. They had been terribly bright people, but had fallen to nit-picking trick questions. Or had they simply been careless, finally not smart enough? Tom decided he would be smart enough. He would answer each question perfectly. He would succeed where the others had failed.

“Are you all right?” Blanc asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, you report back here at seven. Meet me here and I’ll take you up to the fifth floor.”

“Thank you,” Tom said. “Thank you so much.”

“No, thank you, Tom.”

Blanc had a large smile on his pasty face and kept running his long, bony fingers through his gray hair. “Good, you’re here. If you hadn’t made it I don’t know what we were going to do. Come on, I’ll take you upstairs and you can get made up and we’ll even give you a brand new shirt and a tie. I’ll bet you didn’t expect that little bonus. You know, this is television, you’ve got to look good. Virtute is no low-class operation. We’re the big time. I can’t believe how well you did on that exam. Come on.” Blanc grabbed Tom’s shoulders, turned him around and got him walking toward the elevators. “Here we go. Are you excited?”

“No.”

“Well, you should be. This is a golden opportunity for you. There’s no telling where you’ll go from here. The sky is the limit. Why you might even get a recording contract or a sit-com offer.”

They took the elevator up to the fifth floor and got out. They walked down the hall toward some double doors, passing on the way a black man who was mopping the floor. As the man wrung out the mop over the bucket, Tom got a brief look at his face and thought he recognized him. As the doors closed he recognized him as a former contestant on the show.

Now, they were standing in front of a door marked Makeup. “They’ll get you all ready in here,” Blanc said, straightening his own tie. “I’ve got to go check on our other contestant, but you’ll be just fine. You just relax and go with the flow. Just roll with it.”

Tom nodded. He looked back at the double doors, wanting to go back out into the hallway and talk to Bob Jones, but Blanc ushered him into the makeup room. Two women took him from Blanc, spun him around and sat him in a chair in front of a large mirror.

One of the women had red hair and very fat cheeks, though Tom could not see the rest of her. “Just relax, honey,” she said. “We haven’t lost a patient yet.”

The other woman was sick looking, she was so skinny. Her cheeks were hollowed out and looked as if they might meet inside her mouth. “What size shirt do you wear?” she asked.

“A large,” Tom said.

“Do you know your collar size?”

Tom shook his head.

The skinny woman sucked her teeth and said, “You are a big boy. You look like a sixteen-and-a-half to me.”

“Let me see that face,” the red-haired woman said, grabbing Tom’s chin and turning his head this way and that. “You ain’t half-bad-looking,” she said, smoothing his forehead with her thumb. She reached over to the cart which was beside the chair and came back with her fingertips coated with a brown cream.

“What’s that?” Tom asked.

“You ain’t quite dark enough, darlin’,” she said. She began to rub the compound into the skin of Tom’s face. “This is TV stuff.”

He watched in the mirror as his oak brown skin became chocolate brown.

“There now,” the redhead said, “that’s so much better.”

The skinny woman came back with a white shirt. The garment had been heavily starched, but Tom struggled into it with the woman’s help. The collar turned out to be just a tad tight. Tom tried without success to button the shirt at his throat.