The One-Eyed Man Read online

  “Of course you’re not,” Theodore said. “That’s why we’re here to worry for you.”

  The stage manager, who had up to this point ignored us so completely I’d begun to wonder if he was blind, now put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re on in ten,” he said.

  “Ten what?”

  “Ten seconds. Make that seven.”

  “This tie isn’t ready,” Claire said. Her fingers worked like spiders’ legs.

  “No one gives a shit.” The stage manager pushed me toward the set, laying a shoulder check on Claire in the process. “Three, two, one …”

  I heard Meyer say my name, and emerged into a fusillade of applause and blinding stage lights; for all I could see of the audience, they might as well have been seated behind a black felt curtain. Directly in front of me, Meyer sat at a table facing his trio of guests. To his immediate left there was an unoccupied rolling chair, cheap molded plastic and pleather, like something that would come assembly required from an office supply store.

  I sat down next to Meyer. He clapped me on the back and waited for the applause to fade.

  “First things first,” he said. “What’s up with your tie?”

  The invisible audience laughed. I looked down and saw that Claire had gotten only partway through her half-Windsor; the tie was cinched loosely, wide and skinny ends hanging parallel to one another down my chest.

  “We were in the middle of tying it when your stage manager pushed me out here,” I said.

  “Well he’s fucking fired, then,” Meyer said.

  The audience laughed again.

  “I don’t think he should lose his job over it,” I said.

  Meyer stared at me a moment, then remembered himself and got down to business. “K., your new show on Fox is getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, not least because every episode seems to feature you getting your ass kicked at least once. So I’m curious: how did it feel to get beaten up by a Shaolin monk?”

  “Well, it hurt,” I told him. “Have you ever been hit with a bamboo staff?”

  Meyer grinned. “I have not,” he said.

  “While convalescing afterward,” I said, “I learned that bamboo is, by certain physical measures, stronger than steel. Sort of a biological marvel.”

  “That’s really something,” Meyer said. “But if we could get back to the ass kicking.”

  “What’s interesting is the pain doesn’t end when the beating stops,” I said. “It feels like you’re still being pummeled hours afterward. Must be something to do with their technique. The whole thing transcends the merely physical, if you believe the Shaolin.”

  “But you don’t believe the Shaolin,” Meyer said. “Which is why that guy beat the crap out of you.”

  “I was skeptical about one of their central tenets,” I said. “But I’ve always been suspicious of the ‘work for peace, prepare for war’ axiom, whether it comes from Reagan or Vegetius. That said, I’m perfectly open to the possibility that Shaolin practices have a supernatural element.”

  “After seeing what he did to you, I personally am a believer,” Meyer said.

  “Experience tells me you’ll be much safer that way,” I said.

  “But I guess that brings us to my big question,” Meyer said. “I mean, certainly I’m skeptical about a lot of things myself, but even I’m not stupid enough to talk shit in a situation where I could really get hurt. So why do you, over and over again? A cynic might think it’s just some kind of cheap performance art.”

  “The quickest way to explain,” I said, “though this probably won’t do anything to really clarify it for you, is to say that since my wife died facts have become a tremendous comfort to me, and so I’ve been compelled to try and understand everything I can. This compulsion supersedes just about every other consideration. Including personal safety.”

  Meyer stared at me for a moment, then clapped me on the back again. “You’re right,” he said with a laugh, “that doesn’t clarify it for me. But maybe you can give me the long version at the after party. Ladies and gentlemen, K., from the new hit reality show America, You Stoopid.”

  The audience applauded.

  “I don’t care for that title, by the way,” I said.

  “No?” Meyer asked.

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Well, it’s your show,” Meyer said.

  “If it were my show in the way you mean, the title would be different,” I said.

  “Okay, so perfect world, free of meddling producers and test audiences,” Meyer said. “What’s the title?”

  “America, You’re Being Kept Ignorant Through a Systematic and Decades-Long Strategy of Demonizing and Defunding Public Schools,” I said. “Or something along those lines.”

  “Doesn’t have quite the same ring, obviously,” Meyer said.

  “Sadly, no,” I said.

  “Okay, folks,” Meyer said, “back to our panel. There’s been a lot of talk recently about forcing companies to label foods that contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Which is never going to happen for one simple reason: Corporations. Own. This country.”

  The panelist seated to my far left, a man dressed in all black and with a head of black hair that was almost certainly a toupee, said, “But Gil, you work for a corporation, don’t you?”

  “Sure, sure,” Meyer said. “But the corporation I work for operates a bit differently than Monsanto, Dave, I think you’ll allow.”

  Judging by his expression, Dave was not in fact willing to allow this. But he didn’t respond.

  “And just so you don’t think I’m being partisan,” Meyer continued, “this is a conspiracy of both parties. In his first presidential campaign, way back in 2007, President Obama said that he would push for labeling of GMO foods. Here we are now, seven years later, in the middle of his second term: nothing.”

  The panelist on the right, a woman with spectacles and short brown hair who worked in some capacity for MSNBCBS, chimed in. “Gil, it’s worth mentioning that in Europe it’s already common practice to label GMO foods,” she said. “In fact, they label GMO foods in China.”

  Meyer threw up his hands. “China,” he said. “A country where they put formaldehyde in baby formula. Even they have the good sense to slap a label on this stuff. But here? No way. And why? Because it will hurt sales. So shut up and eat your fucking mutant chili, America.”

  The third panelist, a mousy slip of a woman who was reportedly a novelist, stared wide-eyed into the air between me and Meyer, hands in her lap. She looked either too frightened or too snobbish to offer comment, and would in fact remain silent for the entirety of my time on the air.

  Dave, evidently the panel’s token conservative, spoke up in the novelist’s stead. “Gil, there is absolutely no scientific evidence to indicate GMO foods are harmful to people in any way.”

  “But they could be,” Meyer said.

  “Well strictly speaking,” I said, “you could be harmed by just about anything in existence. Given a long enough timeline, you could be eaten by a saltwater crocodile on the lam from the San Diego Zoo. Or you could get sucked up into a waterspout. Or you could bleed to death in a freak bass fishing accident. All these things are possible, in the same way that it’s possible GMOs could be harmful to people. But a reasonable person would argue these aren’t the sorts of possibilities we should have in mind when shaping public policy.”

  The bespectacled woman from MSNBCBS jumped back in as if I hadn’t spoken a word. “Here’s something that never used to exist. They never used to take a gene out of a bacterium and put it in corn, so that the corn grows its own insecticide.”

  “Pardon me,” I said, “but that’s exactly the sort of scaremongering that gives people the impression that there are two valid sides to this debate.”

  The woman looked at me. “Scaremongering?” she asked, affecting a nearly comic indignation.

  “The use of the word ‘insecticide,’” I said. “You know quite well that when people hear ‘insecticid
e’ they picture vats of chemicals that are lethal to every known form of life. The corn you’re referring to simply has a protein that is harmful to a particular insect when ingested. You make it sound like it’s oozing Raid. Which inflames your leftist audience’s distrust of commerce, industry, and anything not quote-unquote natural. Which gets them to tune in. Which is why you do it.”

  “If I may finish my point?” the woman asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “It’s very simple,” she said, placing her palms on the table, a gesture meant to signal that a calm and well-reasoned argument was on its way. “I want to make a decision for myself about whether to ingest that genetically modified organism. If the industry believes that, as a consumer, I’m going to hysterically decide when I see that label not to buy the corn, the solution isn’t to keep it a secret. The solution is to convince me that it’s safe to eat.”

  The audience burst into the sort of enthusiastic, hooting applause one normally hears from the faithful at a sporting event. The MSNBCBS woman pretended not to notice this, pretended not to be pleased by it, pretended not to have quite deliberately angled for it with her comments.

  “It is pretty simple, wouldn’t you say?” Meyer asked me.

  “It appears to be, but it isn’t,” I said. “We know, for one thing, that a majority of those in your audience cheering for their right to be informed could never, ever be convinced that GMOs are safe. No matter how compelling the evidence. No matter how irrational their fear was proven by facts to be.”

  Here and there, members of the audience began to low. Spurred by these evangelists, the rest joined in with rapidly blossoming gusto, until Meyer had to wave his hands to quiet them.

  “That’s ridiculous,” the woman in the glasses said to me, once the audience had gone quiet again. She squared her shoulders and adjusted her cream blazer.

  “People are capable of making rational decisions based on facts,” Dave said. “That’s a rather dim opinion of humanity you have there.”

  “I don’t have opinions,” I said. “I’m only concerned with what is. I don’t care about being well liked, or making money, or sustaining a career in the media. So unlike you, I can tell the truth.”

  The audience booed again.

  “I mean absolutely no disrespect, you understand,” I said to Dave.

  “Oh, of course,” he said.

  “But to get back to your point, people are not at all capable of making rational decisions based on facts. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s a phenomenon known as confirmation bias, and it’s rampant and well documented.”

  “I’m aware of confirmation bias,” the woman with the glasses said.

  “Being aware of it,” I told her, “doesn’t make you any less susceptible. Though I understand why you want to believe it does.”

  The woman stared.

  “Confirmation bias is what allows progressives like you to call Republicans Stone Age troglodytes for denying climate change science, while yourself denying a similar level of scientific certainty regarding GMOs.”

  Meyer, eyebrows raised, let loose a snort of laughter.

  “To use another example, confirmation bias leads your progressives—which I’m starting to get the strong sense comprises the vast majority of the audience here—to decry the evils of fossil fuels, while standing in stout opposition to increased use of nuclear power.”

  “One word, fool,” the woman said. “Fukushima.”

  “Dramatic, for sure,” I said. “Also completely anomalous, much like the waterspout and the bass fishing accident. In half a century of producing exactly the emissions-free power you all claim to want so desperately, the more than one hundred nuclear plants in the United States have harmed no one. And that’s including Three Mile Island.”

  “Fine,” the woman said. “Not that I’m conceding your point at all. But tell me, what is it that makes you so much better? You’re more highly evolved than the rest of us, is that it, Mr. Spock?”

  “It’s not a question of better or worse,” I said. “But yes, unlike every other human being I’ve met, I am no longer subject to the irrationality of emotion. I have hardly any fear. I make decisions and reach conclusions based entirely on fact, insofar as fact can be ascertained. Whether that represents the next step in human evolution, I’m not sure. Though certainly if it did, our chances of survival as a species could only be improved. Because the brand of discourse you all engage in—which feigns interest in facts but relies entirely on emotion—cripples the mechanisms by which we might actually save ourselves.”

  We all stared at one another for a moment. Then a man’s voice, tight with righteousness, came to us from the audience: “Get him out of here!”

  The woman with the glasses offered her approval of this sentiment, gazing at me and clapping slowly, as if applauding a successful putt at a golf tournament.

  Meyer looked in the direction of the voice. “Whoever you are,” he said, “go fuck yourself. This is my show, chief, not yours.”

  But now other voices were raised in anger, undeterred by Meyer’s scolding, echoing the demand of the first man. I found myself suddenly aware of the studio’s small dimensions, of how close the audience was to us despite the fact that we couldn’t see them.

  Meyer frowned into the darkness. “Everybody calm the fuck down,” he said, “before I have you thrown out.”

  “Come on now, Gil,” the woman with the glasses shouted over the crowd. “You’re a populist, right? Well, the people are speaking. They want him gone.”

  Meyer looked at her. “Be careful, Raquel,” he said, “or I’ll toss you out with them.”

  The angry babble continued to intensify. Thick-necked security personnel materialized from both sides of the stage and formed a line between us and the audience. As they moved into place, an empty soda can arced down toward us like a satellite falling from orbit. It hit the desk with a hollow clink, bounced end over end, then rolled off the edge of the desk and onto the floor near my feet.

  Meyer, suddenly furious, pushed his chair back and stood, straining to make out the offending party. “That’s it,” he said. “We’re shutting it down. Get everybody out of here, now.”

  The house lights came up, and the audience seemed to materialize before our eyes. Most of them were on their feet, waving fists and shouting. Arms cocked back and flew forward; more objects sailed through the air and rained down around us. Dave fled backstage, and the mousy older novelist continued to sit and stare at nothing, oblivious to the din. Raquel, the woman from MSNBCBS, rose from her seat and began pulling at her boyish hair in a sudden frenzy.

  “This is the moment!” she screamed. Spittle flew from her lips, and her cat-eye spectacles slanted across her face. “Rise up and stab them with whatever’s handy! Ballpoint pens! Car keys! Soda straws! Be warned, neocons, libertarians, and Tea Partiers everywhere! If you think what we do to fetuses is bad, wait until you see what’s in store for you! We will take your guns and execute you with them! Wrap you in American flags and light a match! If he wants to be called she, you will call him she, or your head will be stuck on a pike as a warning to others! Intolerance will not be tolerated!”

  Raquel clambered up on the table and stood, waving her arms and screaming incoherently. Meanwhile, the audience followed her bidding and began to pour down the aisles toward the stage. This surge collided with the security detail like a wave hitting a seawall. Punches were thrown, chokeholds applied. Someone discharged a fire extinguisher, producing a chalky billow that for several moments completely obscured the scrum. When it came back into view, the weight and righteous ferocity of two hundred progressives had begun to push the security team back toward us. Two of the guards went down and were immediately set upon with fist and foot.

  I looked over at Meyer, who had stripped off his oxford and stood now in a white undershirt tilting his head back and forth and otherwise limbering up. On the table in front of us, Raquel, by this time largely forgotten by those present, co
ntinued to curse and stomp her feet.

  “Should we maybe get out of here?” I said to Meyer.

  “Save yourself, friend,” he told me, cracking his knuckles. “I’ve been waiting years for this fight.”

  And with that he threw himself, snarling like a badger, into the fray.

  • • •

  I knew both the name and the reputation of Francy Finesse when the call came to appear on her show, owing to the fact that Sarah had been a somewhat closeted fan of Finesse’s true-crime program for several years before her illness, and became an unabashed devotee when the cancer rendered her housebound. It occurred to me, sitting in the studio at the Fox News headquarters in Manhattan and waiting for the segment in which I was to appear, that Sarah would likely have been excited to see me on Finesse’s show, if perhaps in an ambivalent, slightly nauseated way.

  For reasons no one ever explained, I’d been asked to weigh in on the case of a woman who’d recently been arrested for drunk driving. I sat to Finesse’s left, trying not to choke on what seemed like mustard gas–based hairspray, as the segment began.

  “And now to Watertown, Mississippi,” Finesse said, glaring into the camera. “A mother of three arrested for DUI. But when she’s arrested, she still has three Jell-O shots stuffed in her pockets.”

  The producer cut to a prerecorded video clip. Finesse and I watched a large screen mounted on the wall behind the studio camera. Still photos of the drunk-driving woman drifted slowly around the screen as a man’s voice narrated.

  “A Mississippi mother of three is due in court following her latest arrest for drunk driving,” the man said, his voice taut with manufactured drama. “She reportedly had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and smelled like alcohol.”

  “Someone made a mistake in the text,” I said, pointing at the screen. “Jell-O isn’t one word. It’s hyphenated. Plus it’s trademarked, so you should probably have the little TM symbol there.”

  “Can it,” Finesse hissed.

  The voice-over continued. “And the mother’s driver’s license had been taken away, but authorities say that this time, not only was her blood alcohol well over the legal limit, but she actually had three Jell-O shots in her pockets.”