by Neil Gaiman
Here, all the Zeta Delts are yelling. Your phone keeps ringing and ringing.
For your showcase, a supermodel rolls out five hundred pounds of raw beefsteak. The steaks fit inside a barbecue. The barbecue fits onboard a speed boat that fits inside a trailer for towing it that fits a massive fifth-wheel pickup truck that fits inside the garage of a brand-new house in Austin. Austin, like, in Texas.
Meantime, all the Zeta Delts stand up. They get to their feet and step up on their audience seats cheering and waving, not chanting your name, but chanting, “Zeta Delt!” Chanting, “Zeta Delt!” Chanting, “Zeta Delt!” loud enough so it records for the broadcast.
It’s probably the acid, but—you’re battling some old nobody you’ve never met, fighting over shit you don’t even want.
Probably it’s the acid, but—right here and now—fuck declaring a business major. Fuck General Principles of Accounting 301.
Stuck partway down your throat, something makes you gag.
And on purpose, by accident, you bid a million, trillion, gah-zillion dollars—and ninety-nine cents.
And everything shuts down to quiet. Maybe just the little clicking sounds of all those Las Vegas lights blinking on and off, on and off. On and off.
It’s like forever later when the game show host gets up too close, standing at your elbow, and he hisses, “You can’t do that.” The host hisses, “You have to play this game to win…”
Up close, his host face looks cracked into a million-billion jagged fragments only glued back together with pink makeup. Like Humpty Dumpty or a jigsaw puzzle. His wrinkles, like the battle scars of playing his same TV game since forever started. All his gray hairs, always combed in the same direction.
The big voice asks—that big, deep voice booming out of nowhere, the voice of some gigantic giant man you can’t see—he demands, can you please repeat your bid?
And maybe you don’t know what you want out of your life, but you know it’s not a grandfather clock.
A million, trillion…you say. A number too big to fit on the front of your contestant desk. More zeroes than all the bright lights in the game show world. And probably it’s the Hello Kitty, but tears slop out both your eyes, and you’re crying because for the first time since you were a little kid you don’t know what comes next, tears wrecking the front of your red T-shirt, turning the red parts black so the Greek Omega deals don’t make any sense.
The voice of one Zeta Delt, alone in all that big, quiet audience, he yells, “You suck!”
On the little screen of your phone, a text message says, “Asshole!”
The text? It’s from your mom.
The sweatshirt grandma, she’s crying because she won. You’re sobbing because—you don’t know why.
It turns out the granny wins the snowmobiles and the fur coat. She wins the speedboat and the beefsteaks. The table and chairs and sofa. All the prizes of both the showcases, because your bid was way, way too high. She’s jumping around, her bright-white false teeth throwing smiles in every direction. The game show host gets everybody started clapping their hands, except the Zeta Delts don’t. The family of the old granny climbs up onstage—all the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids of hers—and they wander over to touch the shiny sports utility vehicle, touch the supermodels. The granny plants red lipstick kisses all over the fractured pink face of the game show host. She’s saying, “Thank you.” Saying, “Thank you.” Saying, “Thank you,” right up to when her granny eyes roll up backward inside her head, and her hand grabs at the sweatshirt where it covers her heart.
SAMANTHA’S DIARY
Diana Wynne Jones
Recorded on BSQ SpeekEasi Series 2/89887BQ and discovered in a skip in London’s Regent Street
December 25, 2233
TIRED TODAY AND HAVING a lazy time. Got back late from Paris last night from Mother’s party. My sister is pregnant and couldn’t go (besides, she lives in Sweden) and Mother insisted that one of her daughters was there to meet our latest stepfather. Not that I did meet him particularly. Mother kept introducing me to a load of men and telling me how rich each of them was: I think she’s trying to start me on her own career, which is, basically, marrying for money. Thanks, Mother, but I earn quite enough on the catwalk to be happy as I am. Besides, I’m having a rest from men since I split up with Liam. The gems of Mother’s collection were a French philosopher, who followed me around saying “La vide cc n’est pas le nknt,” (clever French nonsense meaning “The void is not nothing,” I think), a cross-eyed Colombian film director who kept trying to drape himself over me, and a weird millionaire from goodness knows where with diamante teeth. But there were others. I was wearing my new Stiltskins, which caused me to tower over them. A mistake. They always knew where I was. In the end I got tired of being stalked and left. I just caught the midnight bullet train to London, which did not live up to its name. It was late and crowded out and I had to stand all the way.
My feet are killing me today.
Anyway I have instructed Housebot that I am Not At Home to anyone or anything and hope for a peaceful day. Funny to think that Christmas Day used to be a time when everyone got together and gave each other presents. Shudder. Today we think of it as the most peaceful day of the year. I sit in peace in my all-white living room—a by-product of Mother’s career, come to think of it, since my lovely flat was given to me by my last-stepfather-but-one—no, last-but-two now, I forgot.
Oh damn! Someone rang the doorbell and Housebot answered it. I know I told it not to.
Did I say we don’t give Christmas presents now? Talk about famous last words. Housebot trundled back in here with a tree of all things balanced on its flat top. Impossible to tell what kind of tree, as it has no leaves, no label to say who sent it, nothing but a small wicker cage tied to a branch with a fairly large brown bird in it. The damn bird pecked me when I let it out. It was not happy. It has gone to earth under the small sofa and left droppings on the carpet as it ran.
I thought Christmas trees were supposed to be green. I made Housebot put the thing outside on the patio, beside the pool, where it sits looking bare. The bird is hungry. It has been trying to eat the carpet. I went on the Net to see what kind of bird it is. After an hour of trying, I got a visual that suggests the creature is a partridge. A game bird apparently. Am I supposed to eat it? I know they used to eat birds at Christmas in the old days. Yuk. I got on the Net again for partridge food. “Sorry, dear customer, but there will be no deliveries until the start of the Sales on December 27, when our full range of luxury avian foods will again be available at bargain prices.” Yes, but what do I do now?
Oh hooray. Housebot has solved the problem by producing a bowl of tinned sweet corn. I shoved it under the sofa and the creature stopped its noise.
Do trees need feeding?
December 26, 2233
I DO NOT BELIEVE this! Another tree has arrived with another partridge in a cage tied to it. This time I went haring to the front door to make them take it away again, or at least make whoever was delivering it tell me where the things were coming from. But all the man did was shove a birdcage into my hands with two pretty white pigeons in it and go away. The van he drove off in was unlabelled. I raged at Housebot for opening the door, but that does no good. Housebot only has sixty sentences in its repertoire and just kept saying, “Madam, you have a delivery,” until I turned its voice off.
We have had a partridge fight under the sofa.
I took the pigeon cage outside onto the patio and opened it. But will those birds fly away! I seem to be stuck with them too. At least they will eat porridge oats. The partridges won’t. We have run out of tinned sweet corn.
I give up. I’m going to spend the rest of the day watching old movies.
Liam called. I asked him if he had had the nerve to send me four birds and two trees. He said, “What are you talking about? I only rang to see if you’d still got my wristwatch.” I hung up on him. Oaf.
December 27, 2233
T
HE SALES START TODAY! I was late getting off to them because of the beastly bird food. When I brought up Avian Foodstuffs, I found to my disgust that the smallest amount they deliver is in twenty-kilo bags. Where would I put all that birdseed? I turned the computer off and went out to the corner shop. It was still closed. I had to walk all the way to Carnaby Street before I found anything open and then all the way back carrying ten tins of sweet corn. I had promised to meet Carla and Sabrina in Harrods for coffee and I was so late that I missed them.
Not a good day. And I couldn’t find a single thing I wanted in the Sales.
I came home—my Stiltskins were killing me—to find, dumped in the middle of my living room, yet another tree with a partridge tied to it, a second cage of two white pigeons and a large coop with three different birds in it. It took me a while to place these last, until I remembered a picture book my second stepfather had given me when I was small. Under H for Hen there was a bird something like these, except that one was round and brown and gentle looking. Not these. Hens they may be, but they have mean witchy faces, ugly speckled feathers and a floppy red bit on top that makes them look like some kind of alien. When I got home, they were engaged in trying to peck one another naked. The room was full of ugly little feathers. I shrieked at Housebot and then made it take the lot out onto the patio, where I made haste to let the beastly hens out. They ran around cackling and pecking the partridges, the potted plants and the three trees. They were obviously hungry. I sighed and got on to Avian Foodstuffs again. Problems there. Food for which kind of bird? they queried. Hens, I tapped in. Pigeons. Partridges. They have just delivered three twenty-kilo sacks. They are labelled differently, but they look suspiciusly the same inside to me. I know because I opened all three and scattered a heap from each around the patio—and another heap indoors because I have had to rescue the partridges. They all eat all kinds.
Exhausted after this. I phoned Carla and Sabrina. Sabrina was useless. She had just found some Stiltskins half price in pink and couldn’t think of anything else except should she buy them. “Toss a coin,” I told her. Carla was at least sympathetic. “Help!” I told her. “I’m being stalked by a flutter that keeps sending me birds.”
“Are you sure it isn’t one of Liam’s practical jokes?” Carla asked. Shrewd point. He probably rang with that nonsense about his watch just to make sure I was home. “And haven’t you told your Housebot thingy not to let any of this livestock in?” Carla said.
“I have, I have!” I cried out. “But the darn thing takes not the blindest bit of notice!”
“Reprogramme it,” Carla advised. “It must have slipped a cog or something.”
Or Liam reprogrammed it, I thought. So I spent an hour with the manual, pushing buttons, by which time I was so livid that I rang Liam. Got his answering service. Typical! I left an abusive message—which he probably won’t hear because of Housebot trying to clean up feathers and making the howling noise it does when it chokes—but it relieved my feelings anyway.
December 28, 2233
I SPENT A GLORIOUS morning at the Sales and came back with six bags of Wonderful Bargains, to find I have four parrots now. Plus one more partridge (and tree), two more pigeons and three more of those unspeakable hens. Housebot has ignored my attempt at programming as if I’d never tried. The patio is now a small forest full of droppings. The pigeons sit on the trees and the hens rush about below. Indoors are four scuttling partridges and four of those large rings on sticks where parrots are supposed to perch, not that they do. The red one has taken a liking to my bedroom. The green one flies about all the time, shouting swearwords, and the multicoloured two perch anywhere so long as it isn’t their official perches. I have put those in the closet because Housebot stops whenever it runs into one. I have ordered a twenty-kilo sack of Avian Feed (parrots), which is actually different from the others and which the parrots mostly consume from saucers on the kitchen table. I walk about giving a mad laugh from time to time. I am inured. I am resigned.
No I am NOT!
Someone has taught those damn parrots to shout, “Samantha! I love you!” They do it all the time now.
I put on my most austerely beautiful clothes and my Stiltskins and stormed round to Liam’s flat. He looked terrible. He was in his nightclothes. He hadn’t shaved or combed his curls and I think he was drunk. His flat was just as terrible. I saw it because as soon as he opened the door I marched in with Liam backing in front of me, shouting at the top of my voice. I admit that the nightclothes made me angrier still because it was obvious to me he had a woman in there. But he hadn’t actually. He was just lying about. He said, “Just shut up and tell me what you’re yelling about.” So I did. And he laughed. This made me furious. I yelled, “You are stalking me with birds!” and to my great surprise I burst into tears.
To my further surprise, Liam was almost nice about it. He said, “Now look, Sammy, have you any idea how much parrots cost?” I hadn’t. He told me. It was a lot. “And before you get suspicious that I know,” he said, “I only know because I did an article on them last month. Right? Since when did I have enough money for four parrots? And I don’t even know where you buy hens, let alone partridges. So it’s somebody else doing this to you, not me. He has to be a rich practical joker, and he has to know how to get at your Housebot to make it ignore your orders and let these birds in. So think about all the rich men you know and then go and yell at the likely ones. Not me.”
I gave in. “So I’ve walked all this way for nothing,” I said. “And my feet hurt.”
“That’s because you wear such silly shoes,” he said.
“I’ll have you know,” I said, “that these are the very latest Stiltskins. They cost me thousands.”
He laughed, to my further indignation, and told me, “Then go home in a taxi.”
While I was waiting for the taxi, Liam put his arm round me—in an absentminded way, as if he had forgotten we weren’t still together—and said, “Poor Sammy. I’ve had a thought. What kind of trees are they?”
“How should I know?” I said. “They haven’t any leaves.”
“That is a problem,” Liam said. “Can you do me a favour and let me know if what your stalker sends next is something quite valuable?”
“I might,” I said, and then the taxi came. I don’t like these latest taxis. A mechanical tab comes out of the meter that says TIP and it’s always huge. But it was probably worth it to know that Liam hasn’t been doing this to me.
December 29, 2233
WHATEVER IDEA LIAM HAD, he was quite right! The usual tree and avians started arriving, one more partridge, more hens, more pigeons and four more parrots, noisy ones. I left Housebot, who had traitorously let them in, to deal with the damn creatures—although I have to feed the things because I can’t get Housebot to get it through its circuitry that living things have to eat: Housebot simply goes round clearing up the piles of birdseed unless I order it to stop. Anyway, I left it shunting coops and the latest tree onto the patio and set off for the Sales. I was halfway down the steps outside when a courier arrived and made me sign for a smallish package.
Someone’s sent me a book now! I thought disgustedly as I went back indoors. I nearly didn’t open it, but, because of what Liam had said, I thought I might as well. What are valuable books? I thought as I tore off wrapping. Antique Bibles? First editions of Winnie the Pooh? But it wasn’t a book. A book-size jewel case fell on the floor. I picked that up quickly before Housebot could clear it away. I gasped a bit when I opened it. There were five rings in it, all of them very flashy and valuable looking. One bulged with diamonds—or what looked like diamonds—and the rest looked like sapphires, emeralds and equally valuable stones, all in gold settings. And there was a note on top, not in real handwriting, if you see what I mean, but in that kind of round, careful writing that shop assistants use when you ask them to include a message. It said: “From your ardent admirer. Marry me.”
“Blowed if I will!” I said aloud.
The rings
are all too small. I think that proves it wasn’t Liam. He once bought me an engagement ring, after all, and he knows that my fingers are rather wide at the base. Unless he’s being very cunning, of course. Whoever sent the rings seems to have very flashy taste. They all reminded me so much of the kind of glass-and-plastic rings that people give you when you are a little girl that I took the whole case of them with me when I went out to the Sales and had them checked out by a jeweller. And they are real. I could buy five more pairs of Stiltskins if I sold them. Well!
I meant to tell Liam, but I met Carla in Oxford Street and I forgot. When I told her, she wanted to know if I was thinking of marrying the unknown stalker. “No way!” I told her. “My mother probably would, though.”
December 30, 2233
OH MY GOD! I have six geese now. As well as another tree, another partridge, further pigeons, more hens and four extra parrots (making twelve of them and bedlam). I couldn’t believe these geese. I got to the door just as a whole team of men finished handing them indoors. The last one rode in on top of Housebot. They are big birds and not friendly. At least they are too large to attack the partridges under the sofa, but five of them went out onto the patio and started subduing the hens at once. The shrieks and cackling out there actually drowned out the yells from the parrots. But one goose stayed indoors and seems to have gone broody on the sofa cushions. She stretched out a long, angry neck and tried to peck me when I made an effort to persuade her to join the rest outside. So there she sits, large, boat shaped and white, with her yellow beak swivelling about to make sure I don’t disturb her and her shoe-button eyes glaring unnervingly.
The only good thing about this morning was that the same courier turned up with another parcel of rings. He is a nice young man. He seems awed by me. He said hesitantly while I was signing for the delivery, “Excuse me, miss, but aren’t you on that media clothes show? Catwalk?” I said yes, I was, but we weren’t filming at the moment. He sort of staggered away, thoroughly impressed.