by Neal Pollack
The contestants stepped onto the gleaming molded-plastic stage, as wary as cows being let out of the barn after a long winter. Barbara had disappeared for some sort of meeting, or maybe to smoke a cigarette out on the lot. Jeremy Wolf, the guy who’d met them out in the parking garage, herded them. They’d been there almost three hours. The morning’s excitement had been replaced by numbness. Brad’s brain felt slow, but his heart was cranking.
Deep breath, Cohen, he thought to himself. Don’t be stupid. Your moment has arrived. You are a golden god of knowledge.
Jeremy Wolf wrangled them all behind the podia.
“This is where you’re all going to stand,” he said. “Hopefully, some of you will stand here for a while.”
I will stand as champion forever, Brad said to himself.
And then, just like that, it was time to play.
Contestants were chosen by random draw. Brad didn’t get picked for the first game. Instead, he had to watch the returning champion, a DC lawyer, mince apart a “systems account supervisor from Chillicothe, Ohio,” and a graduate student of history from Falls Church, Virginia. Then that game was over, and the lawyer was $23,900 wealthier. The contestant coordinators didn’t call Brad’s name, again, for game two.
Brad sat in his chair, nervously pressing his thumb against his thigh. How was he going to master the buzzer? How was he going to remember everything he knew, from all his lifetimes? The lights were hot, even in the seats. He was sweating.
Game two went fast. The lawyer dominated again, but not as much, and he didn’t have an insurmountable lead going into the final. The question was, “In 1913, this alloy was invented by Harry Brearley of Sheffield, England, a city known for its cutlery since before 1400.” Brad knew the answer immediately. The third-place contestant drew a total blank, bet all of his $5,500, and shanked his way ignominiously out of Jeopardy! history. The second-place contestant, a systems administrator from Fort Worth, Texas, got the question right. She answered, “What is stainless steel?” but incomprehensibly only bet $100 of her $10,500.
Still, it proved smart, or lucky, because the champion wrote down, “What is tin?” He missed the question and lost a lot of money on a big bet. His run was done.
“But we’ll see you in the Tournament of Champions,” Alex said to the lawyer.
Pick me now, Brad thought. Oh, please. I’m so very ready.
Everything was lined up. Brad would face a weak champion. He was going to knock it out.
“Brad?” he heard faintly.
And then again, “Brad!”
“What?”
“It’s your turn,” Barbara said.
“Oh!” Brad said.
“Well, hustle, soldier,” she said. “We’re on a schedule. They’re waiting for you in makeup.”
Brad bolted out of his seat and ran back to the greenroom.
He really had to pee.
A few minutes later, Brad was on set. A makeup lady patted him with a puff. There were three cameras facing him dead-on, with an entire football field between him and the lenses.
“When we introduce you,” Jeremy Wolf said, “look at the middle one. And just relax into it. This is a game. Enjoy yourself. It’ll be over soon.”
The cameras were rolling. Johnny Gilbert introduced the young woman to his left, a stenographer from Park City, Utah. Then he said, “An independent scholar and investor from Brooklyn, New York. Brad Cohen!”
Brad smiled wanly. He had a headache. Johnny introduced the champion, who was still administering systems in Texas. Alex Trebek appeared, looking smooth as ever.
“Thank you, Johnny,” he said, “and hello, everybody. Our returning champion, Sarah, made a savvy bet on Final Jeopardy! yesterday. And she got the question right to boot. That’s why she’s here today. And she’s going to try to do it again. Brad and Kori might have something to say about that. Let’s go to the board and see what happens.”
The categories revealed themselves: Literary Collaborators, Poker Face, Pour Me a Stiff One, “Court” Briefs, Talk Like a Brit, and ’Allo, Governor!
“Sarah, make your selection.”
“I’ll take Literary Collaborators for two hundred dollars, Alex,” said the returning champ.
Alex read suavely, “These brothers first published their fairy tales in 1812 as Kinder- und Hausmärchen.”
Brad hit the buzzer. He saw, from his side of the podium, the light come on.
“Brad?” said Trebek.
“Who are the Brothers Grimm?” Brad said, and he was off and running, ready to play his game. He was going to find the Daily Double early, rack up the points, and leave his opponents gasping.
“Literary Collaborators for eight hundred dollars,” he said.
“OK,” Alex said, and then read, “Sidney Howard helped this author dramatize Dodsworth.”
Again, Brad blew in fast. He saw the lights.
“Brad,” Trebek said again.
“Who is Dickens?” Brad said.
“Oh no,” Trebek said, his voice dropping. Brad saw his number slip to minus six hundred. He was in the red. The dreaded red.
Sinclair Lewis! Brad thought to himself. He’d known the right answer. But he had choked legitimately. He needed to slow down.
Brad picked again.
“Literary Collaborators for one thousand dollars,” he said.
“George S. Kaufman died in June 1961,” Trebek read. “This man, his frequent collaborator, in December that year.”
Brad hit the buzzer. The lights went off.
“Brad?” Alex said.
Brad knew the answer. He knew it. But there were lights. Alex Trebek stared at him from behind the podium. Brad couldn’t remember. What was the name? The name!
“Who is Groucho Marx?” he said timidly, credulously, knowing that he was wrong.
“Incorrect,” Alex said.
Neither of the opponents buzzed in. The answer was “Moss Hart.”
“After three clues,” Alex said, “Brad has negative sixteen hundred. The other players each have zero. Maybe someone will answer something correctly before the game is over.”
Burn!
“Brad,” Trebek said. “Pick again.”
Brad’s initial strategy had failed. He was going to have to play slowly and build his money back up.
“Poker Face for two hundred dollars,” he said.
At the commercial break, after fifteen questions, Brad was still at negative six hundred. He’d correctly answered that Stoli is a brand of vodka and had correctly identified the face of Catherine Zeta-Jones. No one was impressed by his intellectual juggernaut. Brad sat in third place, his dreams heading down the bowl in a very slow flush.
At the break, Trebek came over. Everyone got a picture with the great man. Trebek put his arm around Brad as the camera snapped.
“Not as easy as you thought, eh?” he said.
“I’ll figure it out,” Brad said.
“We’ll see.”
Curse you, Trebek!
Then came the theme music, and it was time for the awkward “contestant interaction” portion of the show.
Brad Cohen has been born three times and is apparently cursed to live the first 40 years of his life over and over again until he figures out how to escape the cycle. He’s now 114 years old. Brad, what is that like?
Well, it’s not easy, Alex . . .
“Brad Cohen, an independent scholar from Brooklyn,” Alex said. “What does that mean exactly?”
“Well, I audit classes at various universities to try and learn as much as I can,” Brad said.
“That should help you on Jeopardy!” said Trebek, “ostensibly.”
Double burn!
While Brad hemmed, Trebek asked him, “So how can you afford to do this? Don’t you have to work?”
“We
ll, that’s personal, Alex,” Brad said, “but if you have to know, I invested my bar mitzvah money wisely twenty years ago, so I can devote my life to learning—and to becoming a Jeopardy! champion.”
“We’ll see,” Trebek said again.
He made everything ominous.
Brad had $800 at the end of the first round. His opponents were doing fine. One had $3,500, and the other was at $5,200.
Brad took a deep breath.
No, I am not going to lose, he thought. Not today. Not ever.
Brad got first pick in Double Jeopardy! He went straight for the $2,000 clue in “Science Briefs.” The clue was, “When the stork won’t come: IVF.” He knew the right question was “What is in vitro fertilization?” But he couldn’t get the buzzer to work, and the champ got in ahead of him.
Dammit.
Dammit!
Before Brad knew it, he was down almost ten grand and there were only twenty clues left. Brad got “Who is Captain Nemo?” for $400 and “What is Captain Blood?” for $2,000, and then he went for “Shakespearean Words” at $2,000.
The Daily Double alarm sounded. This was it! Brad’s moment.
“Brad,” Trebek said, “you have three thousand two hundred dollars. You can’t take the lead. But you can move closer. What’s your wager going to be?”
Brad wound up, and then he said: “Let’s make it a true Daily Double, Alex.”
The audience actually gasped. Brad was putting on a show. He would give them their free ticket’s worth.
“OK,” Alex said. “For three thousand two hundred dollars, here goes: ‘The word “fashionable” came into vogue with Achilles’s speech to Ulysses in this play.’ ”
Brad had read Shakespeare. He’d read all the Shakespeare. He knew everything about it. And he definitely knew this answer. Achilles and Ulysses only appeared in one play.
“What is Troilus and Cressida?” he said.
“You are correct,” said Alex Trebek.
That was a champion’s answer. Brad was still in third, but it was a competitive third. Unfortunately, he was still in third place when the game ended. He had $9,200. The returning champ had $11,400. And the other contestant was at $10,200.
“It’s a close game,” Trebek said, “and it’s all going to come down to our contestants’ knowledge of this category.”
He turned to his right. On a screen next to him, a word appeared in white block letters on a royal-blue background: “Cartoons.”
Brad wrote down $9,200 as his bet. He was letting it ride.
Five minutes passed. Trebek did a couple of retakes. The theme music played, the red lights went on, and Trebek said, “Close game today. All three contestants are in a good position. But it all comes down to their knowledge of this category, cartoons. Here’s the clue.”
It appeared. Trebek read, “This Canadian action cartoon from the ’80s had an unsuccessful twenty-five-episode reboot in 2002.”
Could it be? Really?
“What is Battlecats?” Brad wrote.
The music ended. Alex approached the contestants.
“Was it an easy question? Or a hard one? Let’s see,” he said. “Brad wrote . . .”
And the monitor revealed, “ ‘What is Battlecats?’ ” Alex said, “And he is absolutely right. From my home country, the reboot was a bust and featured some disastrously bad writing.”
True enough, Brad thought.
“And let’s see what he wagered: everything he had, bringing him up to eighteen thousand four hundred dollars.”
The contestant in the middle guessed, “What is He-Man?”
“I’m sorry,” Alex Trebek said. “He-Man wasn’t Canadian.”
Truer words were never spoken.
“It all comes down to our champion,” said Trebek. “What did she write down as her response?”
Brad held his breath.
“What is GI Joe?”
He let his breath out.
“I’m sorry, that is also incorrect,” Trebek said. “And what was her wager? Everything she had. And that means that with eighteen thousand four hundred dollars, Brad Cohen of Brooklyn, New York, is the new Jeopardy! champion!”
There was applause. The camera closed in tightly on Brad’s face. He smiled. He also felt sick. He was going to win a hundred games in a row.
Brad walked off the stage, swaying his hips from side to side. His balls would have made a beautiful noise if they’d been made of brass.
“Congratulations, champ,” one of the camera guys said to him, shaking his hand.
On the way back to the dressing room, people praised him:
“Way to go, champ.”
“Good work, champ.”
And, simply, “Battlecats. Nice.”
Jeremy Wolf came up to him and said, “Man, I thought you were going down in flames.”
The universe had sent Brad a message, and that message was: you are a Jeopardy! champion.
Barbara Stevens entered. “Brad!” she said.
“I told you I was going to win,” he said.
“You were right,” she said.
“And I’m going to win again,” he said.
Brad waited for something else. Nothing else came. Barbara was not impressed. Yet.
“First you have to go eat lunch,” she said.
Brad won his second game against a couple of easily intimidated cupcakes, bringing in more than thirty-one grand.
But in his third game, the lawyer from Smyrna, Georgia, who stood to his left, had him by the scruff from the opening signal. His reactions were slow, and his recall dull. Brad felt cooked, and he played that way. He shanked questions about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the Chrysler Building, George Sand, and Franz Schubert. Strangely, he ran a category about birds, including a big-money Daily Double, which left him with $7,500, in third place. He still had a chance to win. The Final Jeopardy! category was “New York City.”
Brad bet it all.
The question went, “Opened in 1937, it got its name in response to the George Washington Bridge, north of it.”
Brad knew the answer right away.
“What is the Lincoln Tunnel?” he wrote.
And he was right. He had fifteen grand.
But the other two contestants got it right as well. Brad finished in third place.
Alex Trebek shook his hand after the show was over.
“Better luck next time,” he said.
“I’m caught in an infinite time loop!” Brad blurted. “It’s forcing me to live the first forty years of my life over and over again!”
It felt good to tell someone at last.
Alex Trebek patted him on the shoulder. “I know the feeling,” he said. “I have to tape five more of these fuckers tomorrow.”
Brad stepped off the stage. They handed him a couple of yellow slips of paper, indicating how much money he’d won.
“You’ll get your check about four months after airdate,” a contestant coordinator said.
He was just going to send the check to United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. They needed the money a lot more than he did.
Jeremy Wolf handed Brad a Jeopardy! tote bag, which contained a Jeopardy! baseball cap. He also gave Brad his suit bag.
“We need you out of here immediately,” Jeremy said.
“OK,” Brad said.
“I called you a cab back to the hotel, but you have to pay for it.”
“Not a problem.”
“You know where the exit is,” said Jeremy.
Brad walked through the door. It clanged behind him and locked. They’d never let him into that room again. He wasn’t going to go down in the annals of history; he was just a guy who appeared on Jeopardy! for a couple of days.
No one would ever call him champ again.
&nb
sp; It was almost 5:00 p.m. The LA sun was, as usual, oppressively gorgeous. Brad put on his sunglasses. A cab pulled up to the steps. Brad told the driver to take him to an Irish bar on Pico.
For the next five days, Brad went on a Southern California bender worthy of Charles Bukowski and John Fante. On the sixth morning, when he woke up in his bed at the DoubleTree with a middle-aged truck-stop waitress from Tustin, he knew it was time to go. He flew back to New York, contacted a real estate broker, and sold his half block in Williamsburg to the highest bidder.
That was more than enough for him to move to Costa Rica, where he bought an estancia with excellent views of both the cloud forest and the Pacific Ocean. For the next six years, he did nothing but drink rum, smoke weed, surf, grow a beard, and bemoan his cursed fate. And that’s where he sat, tanned and lonely, on the night before his fortieth birthday, listening to the monkeys howl in the jungle around him.
The longer Brad lived, the more alienated he became. He’d seen through the facade of existence, had cracked the secrets of time. Not like it mattered. Somehow he’d drifted through life the third time without making any actual friends. There was no one he could talk to about his situation after all. No one could relate. He had no love. He’d forgotten how to feel.
Everything was a lie.
He woke up in the womb.
FEDS INVESTIGATE CONTROVERSIAL INVESTOR
FBI TRANSCRIPT
June 15, 2007
Russo: FBI Special Agent David Russo
Bell: FBI Junior Special Agent Karen Bell
Cohen: Brad Cohen
Russo:
State your name please, for the record.
Cohen:
My name is Brad Cohen.
Russo:
How old are you, Mr. Cohen?
Cohen:
According to my doctor, I’m thirty-seven. But my doctor doesn’t know shit.
Russo:
So you’re not thirty-seven?