Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! (54 page)

“AND IF ONE NIGHT YOU HEAR CRYING FROM ABOVE, IT’S ’CAUSE” OF THIS, THE TITLE OF A 1976 HIT

And I do
not
know the game’s final $2000 clue.

I let go of the buzzer. I wait. I can only hope. I even gesture surrender.

And Michael and Bruce let the clue go, too.

It’s the single best comeback I’ve ever made, a long march down the field with the clock running out. It’s the best game I may ever play.

And I know it’s still half luck. But so is my presence here in this game in the first place, a dozen ways over, not least being born.

That last clue, incidentally, refers to the song “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel.”

Last time I saw an angel disappear in this book, it was headed for the Taj Mahal. Maybe we should crank down the power on
Howard’s End.

I am breathing. My heart is beating. I know I have an 80 percent chance of winning. Just one more clue remaining, and I can go home.

The Final Jeopardy category—
p-TING!

INVENTED WORDS

IN WORKS BY LEWIS CARROLL, THIS WORD MEANS “FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON; THE TIME WHEN YOU BEGIN BROILING THINGS FOR DINNER”

Merv’s lullaby begins, ticking and tocking, measuring each passing moment as it slips into the past.

OK…OK…

Milliseconds pass.

Where is there a cooking scene in Lewis Carroll? Does somebody cook Tweedledum and Tweedledee?

I do not see the obvious.

Broiling, OK, that’s the clue. Broiling, cooking, roasting, broasting, poaching, peeling…But it’s an invented word. For dinner. For cooking dinner.

I do not relax and slow down.

The second chorus begins. From two other podiums, I hear the familiar
clackity-click-whap-clackity
of light pens on glass. Bruce and Michael have already finished. I still do not see the obvious.

Four in the afternoon. That’s about teatime. Which is British. But that’s also not particularly invented. What am I missing here?

Time ticks away. It goes in only one direction. The final notes finish. I write down
What is teatime?
as the tympani thumps its final
bum-BUM.

In the thirty-two years, one month, eight days, six hours, and forty-five minutes that my father and I shared this planet, Dad must have recited the first lines of Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” to me, just for the sound of the
INVENTED WORDS,
five or six hundred times, including three times in this book.

You already know the correct response. Even if, just like me, you don’t see it quite yet.

The poem begins with this:

’Twas brillig…

“Brillig.” Which sounds like “broiling.” It’s the second damn word.

When confirming Bruce’s response, Alex begins to recite “Jabberwocky.”

My spine comes unscrewed. My head is a torch. It’s not about loss. Not
this
loss, anyway. I just miss my father with all of my heart.

Right…
now.

It’s actually funny to lose in this fashion. It’s perfect, in fact. It’s the ultimate Cleveland. After years of study, far-flung travel, and notebooks filled to the edges, I’ve somehow forgotten the poem that I heard from my crib to my dad’s final bedside and all thirty-two years in between.

I’d have figured it out on the day when I first passed the test. I’d have thought it was easy, something every kid grew up with. “Doesn’t your house have Lewis Carroll?”

When I first came on the show, I was afraid of a failure that in some sense might dishonor my family. This was mostly a joke, but that’s exactly how this feels. I have forgotten my very own dad.

So the poem just erupts, a cathartic explosion.

I finish the rest of the stanza Alex starts, then skip ahead to another small morsel of Dad’s favorite poem, which emerges with every emotion you’ve felt in this book, all at once:

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

I’m trying to laugh.
What a magnificent coincidence. Perhaps the best one of all.
But I see Dad’s broken smile, his laugh through bad teeth, a tired gray face with a child’s soft joy in his eyes. So I spout glorious nonsense with grief in my voice and every inch of my body.

It is a slightly odd moment. Apparently, not many people recite whimsical poetry while grieving their fathers on game shows on national television.

Michael and Bruce are the pictures of sportsmanship. If I look a sore loser, they just let it slide.

Alex, whom you’ll know by his “Oooh,” looks concerned. There’s no way to explain. We just smile and push on.

Center stage, credits roll, we wander off to the bleachers.

Dan Melia is standing there, waiting, the first face I see. The Ivy League Serial Killer hugs me at once.

Outside, on the pavement, rain assaults all of Sony. The sky is filling with my exact mood. It’s cinematic as hell, the trip back to old Max in the Sony garage.

Max is waiting, just as always, in the same space as forever. The same one he was parked in when you opened this book.

But there’s one major difference, in the years that have passed. I find it when I reach for my keys.

I have a coin in my pocket. From the Luxor. Jane’s token. My favorite
Jeopardy!
memento.

I have already won after all. I now win every day.

It turns out, incidentally, that Dan Melia not only knew “brillig,” but has in fact taught a college class in which Lewis Carroll’s precise definitions for each word of the poem were specifically discussed.

This is just how things should be.

The eighteen who advanced from this round were amazing. About half were contestants I’ve played or know well.

Dan Melia and Michael Daunt both lost to Jerome Vered. Jerome then beat Frank Spangenberg (who had beaten Grace Veach) and a woman named Pam Mueller, who was terrific three games in a row. So Jerome made the Grand Final.

Brad Rutter, the Rutterminator, won out over Steve Chernicoff and Mike Rooney. He then defeated two folks I don’t know but am impressed with, John Cuthbertson and Chris Miller, reaching the finals of his second straight mega-tournament.

Jerome, Brad, and Ken played at last for two million. Bradzilla won all three games. The Record Store Record Holder beat the Brigham Thumb in a blowout. Ken’s last Final response also included: “Go Brad.” I think this tells you more about Ken Jennings than do his seventy-four wins.

The Ultimate Tournament brought together more than a hundred old champions. Not just to play, but to play afterwards.

The tone was reflected by Alex himself, moments before the first game of the $2 million final. Jerome, Ken, and Brad had been breaking the tension by kidding about behind-podium nakedness. They didn’t realize their mikes were live, or that ears might be listening.

The connections behind the walls remain unknowable, of course. It’s not clear how the joke current flowed. But when Alex was introduced to begin the first game, he emerged with a straight face, his unruffled demeanor…and no pants.

Boxers, incidentally.

You can see this yourself on the
Jeopardy!
DVD. It is an Easter Egg, fun to find on your own, and it’s pretty damn funny, although the shock the players felt can’t be reproduced. It is only a shame that books can’t include similar things. So for this moment, you’ll have to enjoy the evidence of pants unseen, unseen.

The frat party was on, once the games finally aired. Now every old friendship among us could at last be renewed. New ones could finally begin. There are clusters of players around New York, L.A., and San Francisco, and other small scatterings in most other places. There are dinners and movies, as with any group of friends.

On the night that the public saw Brad win the $2 million, he and Jerome and Fred Ramen and Rick Knutsen got together in New York. A few hours later, when the shows aired in Los Angeles, Mike Rooney and Steve Berman and Jane and I were in a Santa Monica bar. The East Coast called the West Coast, and we passed the phone around.

It’s all ad hoc and informal. I spend a few hours with the frat when I can. There have been several fine evenings out so far.

But the night of my last game is still the one I like best.

In the hotel in Culver City where traveling players usually stay, there’s a place to sit down and relax. It is too bright to be a bar, but even so, we all know it’s where we’re going when we’re done. It’s big and it’s empty and it’s quiet like church. It’s a fine place for a half-dozen tired players to sit together and share time at the end.

Dan buys the first round. His girlfriend Dara is here. She hugs me, a bit sad for my loss. Soon Eric Newhouse walks in. He has fallen, much as I have, and is in need of some cheer. So we trade tiny details and start to let our buzzer hands finally rest.

Fred Ramen comes by and drops himself at our table. The Luxembourgian prince has been hurled from a tower. We get some food, a bowl of nachos that taste a lot more like walnuts. There’s a TV with nothing good on, playing silently in the background. Bruce Borchardt pulls up a chair. He’s changed his shirt, and the new one looks cool. Michael Daunt, who can’t talk to Dan because they’re both still among the living, visits with me on the other side.

When it’s time, we watch the TV, and see Michael win his first game, a match he played a lifetime ago. Soccer happens. We cheer.

By the bar, an old dog falls asleep.

Butter tea, everybody. Let me buy you this round.

My thoughts wander back to a small white house in the Snow Belt.

Last time I visited, Mom showed me a large red hat, which many women her age have begun to wear, inspired by a poem about growing old. She’s doing well. Except her daughter has a tough time coming up.

Connie’s surgery date is approaching. This will be the rearrangement of bits of her skeleton, after which she’ll have to remain very still through months of a difficult recovery.

Even worse, Connie’s old bed, too soft to navigate easily, will be a terrible hindrance, itself a likely cause of much pain.

At least there is one piece of good news.

It would help a great deal to have something fancy that rises, like hospitals have.

Fortunately, you can buy these. You can have them delivered.

And they cost only a little more than the consolation award for the game I’ve just played.

Jane will chip in, because that’s how Jane is. But for once in my life, finally, I have used this small brain for Connie.

So at least that wasn’t a total waste.

Empty glasses. Yawns and stretching. We’ve been here an eternity.

Oh, and Dara and Dan are engaged. Didn’t they tell me?

They didn’t tell me.
We haven’t been able to speak for months.

Where and when?
It’s fantastic.

They’re still planning things now. But that’s the thing. They don’t know. But they do have a daydream idea.

They would like to marry on the
Jeopardy!
set.

No way, not a chance that the producers would say yes. But Dan and Dara will ask. Life’s too short not to try. And sometimes daydreams come true.

Dara asks: So will
I
do it?

Will I do what?

Would I be willing to perform the ceremony, as their minister?

Dan throws back his head and applauds.

From Alex’s podium, we will discover, you are much closer to the contestants than it might appear in the course of a game.

Perhaps you have to stand there to see what I mean.