SS The Amazing Quizmo (v5.0) Read online

  But forgoing the tip also means losing face, and if Yukio ever finds out who he is, then he’ll never live this down — not that he could live it down anyway. His days as Quizmo of Portland would be over; everyone would laugh at a seemingly all-powerful man with a brilliant mind who rides a bicycle for a living.

  He tries not to think about the upcoming encounter. He tucks the package in his bag and hurries across the streets. In Portland, drivers obey the rules of the road, so he takes advantage of red lights, stop signs and polite drivers stopping for pedestrians.

  He makes it across the downtown in less than five minutes. When he reaches the outside of the Hanley, Hanley, Combs and Whitmore building, he padlocks his bike illegally to a parking meter, grabs the package and heads for the door.

  Yukio isn’t there. The doorman is middle-aged man whom Darren hasn’t seen before. When the doorman offers to take the package upstairs, Darren lets him, willing to lose the tip to add a few more minutes to his weekend.

  All he has to do is ride back to headquarters, drop off his bike bag and his payment log, and then head home. He has the entire weekend ahead of him — no bars host quiz programs on Fridays or Saturdays; he doesn’t have to be back to work until 9 p.m. on Sunday night and then at the easiest bar on his list.

  He unlocks the bike and sees a movement near the alleyway. Yukio, in his doorman’s blues, tosses a still-burning cigarette into the gutter.

  Darren fumbles with the lock, his fingers suddenly shaking. He has to focus on the combination; for a brief moment, he cannot remember it.

  When he finally snaps the lock open, he looks up. Yukio has gone back inside.

  Darren hates that one of his players is on his regular route. It’d be so easy for the player to out him, and a player like Yukio, who can’t take responsibility for his own losses, is the very sort of man who would do so.

  Darren rides back to headquarters so distracted that he nearly rear-ends a Volkswagen stopped at the light near Waterfront Park.

  On the way home, he picks up a six-pack of Budweiser but forgets to stop at the video store. He’s stuck with O Brother Where Art Thou, which he has already seen twice.

  He watches it again that night, then follows it with the director’s commentary. He listens to the music, looks at the trailer, wonders if George Clooney is too thin, if the Coen Brothers are as whacked as they seem. Over the course of the weekend — a weekend that he had planned to spend in Portland State University’s library, looking up information in newly minted doctoral thesises — he sees O Brother a total of five times (the director’s commentary three times, which really takes his total to eight times).

  By Sunday night, he’s so woozy he considers taking 1930s bluegrass out of the pop culture category and putting it in the general category. Then he realizes his mistake. He’s not sure he can handle a quiz crowd, even a quiz crowd at Buster’s Bar and Rodeo.

  Still, he shows up. He hasn’t missed a night at any of his bars, not even when he had the Martian death flu two winters back — the kind that had him yacking every fifteen minutes or so into a bucket beside announcer’s booth.

  He goes and he works, ignoring the screams from the mechanical bull riders two rooms over, glad that this crowd muffs most of the questions while trying to answer them because that means the contest ends quicker.

  But somewhere around round three, he realizes that one team is getting its questions. He squints through DVD-blurred eyes and sees a woman with a purple kerchief, worn babushka style. She’s toward the back and she’s not ringing in, but she’s supplying answers to her team — the Great American Cowgirls.

  He’s half tempted to get off the chair behind the dance platform, leaving the mike off, and get a drink, just so that he can see if she’s as square as he remembered, her arms as thick, and her breasts as saggy.

  But he shakes himself free of the impulse and continues as if she’s not there at all. While he plays half of Billy Ray Cyrus’s only platinum album during the break after Round Five (Billy Ray in quantity is guaranteed to piss off any good country loving crowd), he pads the Impossible Round with as many esoteric math questions as he can get away with, much more esoteric than the math questions that stumped Cindy at the Triangle.

  He starts the round just as the crowd gets surly, and for the first time, he wonders if he’s lost them. A woman down front starts screaming for Alan Jackson until someone shuts her up, reminding her that Request Night isn’t until Tuesday. One good ole boy punches another near the bar, and the bar back, a former high school linebacker nicknamed Dumbbell (for both his weight and his IQ), drags both men out by their ears so that the punches don’t turn into an out-and-out brawl.

  This Impossible Round matches Round Four at the Triangle in degrees of difficulty. Sure enough, Cindy — or the woman who looks stunningly like her — manages to answer the first ten questions covering everything from astronomy to microbiology to the development of the pillow book in premodern Japanese literature.

  But she misses the math questions. All of them. And that oversight brings the only remaining competitive team — the Beer Goggles — into first place. They win a gift certificate for Powell’s Books, some free beers that they don’t need, and five rides on the mechanical bull as well as a little computerized award sheet that looks oddly like a diploma that the manager of the bar insists on making up after each Sunday night competition.

  By the time Darren finishes his announcements on the prizes, Cindy — or her look-alike — is gone, vanished into the crowd or off to try her luck on the mechanical bull.

  Darren feels oddly relieved. He doesn’t want to think about her.

  He doesn’t want to think about anything except tomorrow’s quiz.

  Darren packs up his gear and slides his laptop under his arm, walking out to his piece-of-crap car (no bike on quiz nights) before remembering that he hasn’t gone to the bar manager for his check and his cut of the night’s proceedings.

  He gets woozy sometimes, and he’s gone into the job sick, but never before has he forgotten to pick up his check. He’s still not on his A game.

  ***

  For the next two days, he manages to avoid deliveries to Hanley, Hanley, Combs and Whitmore. He conducts his quizzes, stocking his Impossible Rounds with math questions because he feels like he’s being stalked by Cindy the Trivia Wonder Creature.

  Finally, on Wednesday, he can’t avoid another trip to Hanley. Yukio is there, cupping an unlit cigarette in his hand as Darren locks his bike to the nearest parking meter.

  “You can’t park there,” Yukio says.

  “I can’t park anywhere else either,” Darren snaps. “You people won’t guard it for me.”

  He puts a nasty emphasis on you people that surprises even himself. Yukio frowns at him, and Darren’s breath catches. In that biting sentence, Yukio probably heard the voice of Quizmo. Yukio probably recognized it.

  Yukio puts one hand on his hip, tilts his head, and says, “You’re that bike messenger who snuck in here last week.”

  Darren’s relieved. Yukio has recognized him, but not as Quizmo.

  “I didn’t sneak,” Darren says. “I was doing my job. I showed you my identification.”

  And then because he must retain his power in this relationship, Darren stalks into the building.

  The second doorman, the middle-aged loser, reaches for the package, but Darren doesn’t give it to him. Even though he will only get a seven-dollar tip, even though he will lose time on his next (and bigger paying) job, he must do this. He must show Yukio who is in charge.

  His cleats click on the marble. The package is clammy beneath his arm, probably from his own sweat. He watches reflections in the mirrored glass of the elevator, hoping for Yukio, but Yukio doesn’t come after him.

  As he puts the package in the hand of the Birkenstocked receptionist and takes his paltry signed form, indicating his tiny tip, he realizes just how petty he’s become, playing games no one else participates in, games no one else even knows a
re going on.

  He feels, for the first time in his aimless life, as if he’s trapped in a Coen Brothers’ movie, and he has no idea how to get out.

  ***

  The Brainiacs always show up early at Buzzard Bill’s on Wednesday night. They eat dinner together, have a beer or two, and relax before the quizzing starts.

  As Darren sets up, he stares at their table. Yukio is there, wearing a faded blue shirt over ripped jeans. He seems shorter, squatter, than he does in his uniform — and not as exotic.

  Yukio clutches a book — Great Minds’ Trivia Challenge — something Darren only used in his first year of quizzing and has since moved beyond, preferring to draw up his own questions.

  Something niggles at him, something he’s missed in his assumptions, something that has bothered him from the start. Darren sets his sheets out for the first round as the door opens. In Buzzard Bill’s, the mike stand is only a few feet from the door and early in the evening—particularly in the summer—he gets blinded whenever the light shines in.

  It is no different now. But as the door eases closed, he sees the scarf first—this one a loud yellow and green—and then the rest of her, done up in green pants with a yellow blouse, and weird yellow sandals.

  She grins at him, and he feels surprise. She has tracked him down. For a week — maybe more — she has followed him from bar to bar, playing the quizzes and doing better than most.

  But for the math questions…

  Math questions Yukio usually aces.

  Darren’s frown grows deeper. She walks across the bar floor after waving three fingers of her right hand at him and then slides into the booth beside Yukio.

  There is a resemblance, the resemblance of siblings or cousins, the kind that leaves no doubt that these two people have sprung from the same gene pool.

  Darren’s stomach flops over. Is Cindy somehow involved in Yukio’s obsession or is she just humoring him?

  I heard it was hard, she’d said to Darren that first night. Heard from Yukio? Was she practicing? Scouting? Or trying to show Yukio up?

  In the end, Darren decides it’s none of his business. He’s going to do what he always does: He’s going to put on the best quiz show possible for everyone involved.

  It isn’t until the middle of the first round that he realizes he’s in trouble.

  Cindy has joined the Brainiacs, bringing their number to the requisite six. Technically, that wouldn’t be a problem except that she can answer every question he throws at them.

  Except the math questions.

  Which he has loaded heavily into the last three rounds.

  Math questions Yukio can answer in his sleep.

  Quizmo will no longer be all knowing, the great god of information, champion of the geek Olympics, smartest man in the room.

  He will become worse than his losers—a man who can be beaten at his own game.

  He will become, in the space of an evening, absolutely nothing.

  ***

  By the end of round two, he knows he must find other questions, new subjects, some way to defeat the juggernaut that is Yukio and his sister.

  Darren knows that Cindy is Yukio’s sister because one of the Brainiacs hits on her, and Yukio looms over him, warning the would-be Lothario to leave his sister alone.

  At the end of round three, Darren has exhausted his laptop’s deep files — all the information he’s hidden over the years of running quizzes has risen to the surface, and is now part of the game.

  He cannot use any questions from earlier in the week, because Cindy has participated in every round.

  He is stuck, and he knows it.

  Sweat breaks out on his forehead. His fingertips are slick with condensation from his glass of water mixed with the weird stuff that coats Goldfish crackers. He’s been eating those by the handful, trying to calm himself. All he’s managed to do is turn his hands yellow and make his stomach feel like mush.

  As he heads for the men’s restroom in the now-closed restaurant, a hand grabs his arm. He recognizes the grip. It hits the same bruises that formed a week ago, after Yukio tried to stop him from getting into the Hanley, Hanley, Combs and Whitmore building.

  “We’re going to beat you,” Yukio says. “We’re going to leave your brain battered and bloody, exposed for all to see.”

  Then he releases Darren’s arm and it is all Darren can do to keep from rubbing the newly aggravated bruises. He staggers into the private section of the restaurant, where only employees can go after ten p.m., and disappears into the men’s room. He almost shoves the large metal garbage can against the door, but decides against it. All that will do is show his own fear.

  Why does Yukio hate him so? What has he done, really? All he’s been doing is running a little game.

  At least Yukio still doesn’t recognize him.

  Yet in both places – in the bars and at the Hanley building — they have ended up in pissing contests, and so far, Darren has won.

  At the thought of pissing, his bladder reminds him of the reason for his trip across the bar. He heads to the urinal, braces himself with one hand against the spotless wall because he’s still a little too shaky to remain upright, and relieves himself.

  Threats of violence usually didn’t shake him. He’s small but he’s tough thanks to all those years of cycling. But that image — his brain bloody, battered and exposed — won’t leave him.

  He washes his hands, splashes water on his face, and peers at himself in the mirror. The Brainiacs are going to beat him — Yukio and Cindy are going to beat him.

  He doesn’t know how to stop them.

  He makes himself breathe. It’s one night. One night of one game. It’s not as if he’s going to lose his entire empire.

  Except that Cindy has scoped out every bar, learned the names of his favorite teams in all of his weekly haunts. If she and Yukio defeat him here, they can — and perhaps will — defeat him everywhere.

  He doesn’t know what to do.

  But he knows he has to do something.

  ***

  By the end of Round Five, Yukio is smirking. Cindy isn’t even pretending to be a part of the Brainiacs’ back-up team. She buzzes in quicker than anyone else, even her brother.

  The other teams have already been eliminated, and so there is no need for the Impossible Round.

  The crowd is getting surly. They want to see a competition, not one team crushing another. Darren’s asked all his most difficult questions, wasting years of the Truly Impossible File on a single game. He can’t even go back to the questions from earlier in the week because Cindy has heard them all.

  Still, he leans into the mike and says, “Believe it or not, folks, we are going to have an Impossible Round. It’ll just take a moment to get it organized.”

  He is so angry that he puts Olivia Newton John’s last album on the sound system, forcing the crowd to listen to whining songs about inappropriate lovers while he tries to come up with a solution.

  Yukio and Cindy are laughing with the Brainiacs. The other teams have crowded the bar, demanding even more alcohol. For Buzzard Bill’s, the night is still good.

  It’s only going badly for Darren.

  Cindy looks up, grins at Darren and then winks, as if they share a secret. She takes the ugly scarf off her hair, and he finally understands why she wore it. Without it, her resemblance to her brother is startling.

  Darren clenches his fist. Yukio and Cindy have made a point to know all sorts of esoteric information about all sorts of things. They have minds that capture inane facts and save them for no apparent reason. They’re smart people with unsmart jobs—at least in the case of Yukio — and they probably wonder, deep down, why they aren’t running the world.

  In short, they’re like him.

  But they’re not like him. A doorman has no practical function. He’s not a janitor or a plumber, someone with hands on skill. All a doorman has to do is scrutinize people who come and go from a building. And when Darren confronted Yukio, even though
Yukio got physical, he backed down.

  “You gonna shut that crap off soon?” The cocktail waitress stands behind him. She sets down a bottled water and a glass of ice, just like he requested at the beginning of the night. And another bowl of Goldfish crackers. “I never liked this stuff when it was popular twenty years ago.”

  “Me, either,” Darren says.

  “So do something, would you?” She makes a face at him, as if he’s the most stupid person on earth, and then she wades back into the crowd.

  Do something.

  Of course. That’s the problem with Brainiacs. People who spend all their time learning useless facts have no practical side. That’s what he’s been groping for, that’s what he needs.

  He has to ask questions smart people will miss—simple questions, questions that are about practical things. Yet they have to seem esoteric.

  If only he can think of questions like that.

  He turns the sound down on that horrible music, then grabs the mike so hard that feedback echoes through the bar.

  The crowd grows instantly silent.

  “The Brainiacs win tonight’s prize,” he says — and there’s a groan from the other teams, who somehow hoped for a lightening elimination round or something — “but we have an extra special prize, a once-in-a-lifetime prize, that goes to the winner of the Impossible Round.”

  He has the crowd now. They’re staring at him.

  His heart pounds as if he’s pedaled all across Portland. If he screws this up, he’s done.

  “Since we all know that the Brainiacs won because of their two team members, Yukio and Cindy, who answered every one of tonight’s questions, I’m making the Impossible Round their round. Only Yukio or Cindy may answer a question. No one may help them. The rest of you Brainiacs, get yourselves a beer and absent yourselves from the team table. If anyone helps Yukio or Cindy, they forfeit and their team forfeits —”

  “What if someone from another team helps?” a Brainiac shouts, clearly worried.

  “Then the team’s barred from the game here at Buzzard Bill’s.”

  The bartender looks up in panic. Darren isn’t authorized to make these kinds of rules or those kinds of decisions. He hopes it won’t come to that.