Fucking Jerry Springer Show. The letter's been there for a week, lying between an envelope from the student loan people and birthday card from your grandmother. There's some junk mail too. A couple of mail order catalogs and another of those damned travel magazines you never order but that start showing up anyway. You thumb through it, look at all these pictures of great places, places you maybe once thought you'd get to, but that was a long time ago. So long you don't even remember when. When you lived on your own. The first time before you had to move back in with your father. Before you lived with Austin and then after you didn't. The worst six months of your life.

You're just thinking about this when the phone rings. And you know it's your dad, and you know he just wants to know about the letter, and you don't really feel like talking about it right now, but you stumble over the upturned edge of the rug and stub your toe on the coffee table just trying to grab the cordless before it stops ringing.

"What's the letter?" he says to you, all nonchalant, like he's bored, too disinterested really to even care what the answer is. He only called because there weren't any Andy Griffith reruns on the satellite. "I don't know," you haven't even looked at the damned thing. "Well, they must want you to come on the show," he sounds a little more interested now, then he catches himself. "That's the only reason I could think of they'd contact you, anyway." "They don't ask you on Springer to give you money," you sit on the coffee table and hold your foot in your free hand, squeezing the stubbed toe. "Well, you never know." You aren't going to win this one.

"I'll tell you what's up when I get a chance to read it. I've got a paper due. I'm kind of in the middle of it." "Read it later," he says. "Just let me know what you find out."

You wait, then realize he isn't about to say goodbye.

"Will you be home tomorrow night?" You try to give another hint that you need to get off the phone. You reach for the magazine you dropped in your collision with the rug. "Oh." And he says this like a thought has just been thrust into his skull like a solid object. "Have you talked to Austin?" You wonder - if you pretend not to hear - if he'll move on to another subject or just get that you really don't have time to talk to him. There's a picture of a canal in Venice on page 87.

"He's called here all week." Which is annoying because your dad's probably storing this up, how people still call for you at his house, even though you haven't lived there for three years. He's gonna nail you with that one day when he's in that mood and he has nothing real to call and gripe about. "You haven't talked to him?" "No, Dad." You try to sound disinterested, but not annoyed. "What are you going to tell him?" "I haven't thought about it yet." You lean your forehead onto your hand. "I almost have that bedroom in the basement finished," he says. His voice reveals how much he wants you to be in awe of his handyman prowess. "Cool."

"You could stay here while you finish school." He keeps on talking about how private it would be for you and how much money it would save. The clock in the hall chimes. Ten times. You hate that fucking clock. You don't even know why you have it. It's too formal for any of the rest of your stuff. It's more like something that would fit into your dad's house, which is probably why he bought it in the first place. Ten o'clock.

Virginia and her husband will be at the door any minute now. You trap the phone between your ear and shoulder and look around the room for anything that might give you away for the slob you really are. Your dad's finally paused on the phone, probably trying to think of some other crap to bug you about, so you take the opportunity. "Can I call you later?" You use the bath towel you left on the back of the rocking chair to dust the coffee table. "Let me know what you find out." "I will." You wipe the television screen with the damp towel. It leaves wide streak marks on the glass. Dad says something else and you 'hmm' but you really just want him to let you out of this conversation. By the time he does, you have finished cleaning and started a load of laundry. Virginia and her husband wait for you in the living room. The husband's really Austin's friend even though they met through you and Vee.

Her husband, Stitch, that's what they call him for reasons you don't know. He's a cop. A regular cop. Like a beat cop. You wonder sometimes if it doesn't piss him off being a sergeant when your friend, his wife, is captain. But you never talk about those things. Mostly, it's ghost stories and UFO's. That's what you have in common. He's your best friend's spouse and your boyfriend's old drinking buddy; what else are you going to talk about? The three of you sit around watching Springer. Vee knows about the letter. She thinks it's funny. A whole lot funnier than you think it is. Anyway, the three of you just sit around. They come over sometimes on Fridays, which they have off since they work ten-hour shifts. And the kids are in school then. Great kids. The kind you hope to have someday. Maybe. Of course, you'd have to have a husband like Vee's husband - a good father and all. For right now it's enough to hang out with Vee's family a few days a month.

Stitch brought in a joint, a big one, quality stuff. The two of you pass it and you wonder, again, whether he didn't take it off some perp or something. Then you wonder since when did you start saying words like 'perp' and you figure you've been watching way too many crime shows. Vee washes down the Brie and crackers - leftovers from your last party - with a bourbon and coke. She never smokes with you guys. She's a police captain.

"This house we used to live in," Stitch tells you, his voice booming, bouncing off the walls like thunder rattling, even as he tries to hold the smoke in while he talks. "When I was a kid, I hated the basement in that place." "Boogeyman," Vee says to you, as if she's translating. Her hubby looks at her. Not sweetly. I could hear dogs barking. He tells your friend, and he says it in that way that makes you halfway expect him to add a "stupid head" to it. He keeps talking. To you. But you've heard this story already. You know how he always cried when his parents made him play in the basement, how it pissed off his dad, one of those no-nonsense kind of dads who got so mad he locked Stitch in the basement over night, just to show him there was nothing to be afraid of.

You clean some more bud. Jerry Springer's pole dancer gets a close-up on the TV as they transition to a commercial for a video of uncensored "Jerry Springer Show" outtakes. Maybe someday you'll be lucky enough to be one of his outtakes. Stitch is still telling you and Vee about that night. He blacked the whole thing out. All he knows is that in the morning, when his dad opened the door, there was little Stitch passed out on the top step, his tiny hand on the door. It wasn't until he picked him up that he saw the scratches, like claw marks on his arms and back. At this point in the story you always imagine the violin music getting really low and loud, all dramatic like in those B horror movies when the secret terror is revealed. But you never tell Stitch you've heard this story thirty-nine times; you just listen like it's brand new and you can't wait for the next word to come out of his thin mouth even though you stopped listening to the individual words years ago, just listening for certain cues that it's your turn to urge him on.

"When I was older, after my dad left," Stitch leans forward onto his knees. He wears shorts even in February. "My mom told me they bought that house cheap from the bank 'cause they'd repo'd it, and when they took it from the guy, they found all these dogs dead and dying in the basement."

"That's scary shit," you tell him. Or some variation of that. Sometimes you reciprocate with one of your better ghost stories, though none of them are your own, just second-hand stories you've heard along the line. Today you can't think of one you haven't told and you don't feel like talking about ghosts anymore anyway. Sometimes humoring Stitch is a real pain in the ass. "You should be one of those guys," you say. On screen, overstuffed men in jeans and black t-shirts hover around Jerry's stage, waiting for fights to break out between the guests. "I wonder how you go about applying for a position as bouncer." Stitch gives up on the otherworldly canines and the three of you watch as the married lover of the pregnant woman jumps out of his seat and rushes the woman's scrawny husband. A couple of bouncers nab the married lover from behind, but not before the guy lands a couple of punches, but it's just on the husband's shoulder. The bouncers practically lift the guy up and escort him back to his seat. "Jerry Springer's bouncers," you say aloud, though you're sure you only thought it. What kind of cool is that job? You wonder how those guys could not be happy. Vee laughs.

"Was that your dad?" On the phone, she means, "The letter."

"I'm surprised he didn't open it before he sent it on to you."

"He did." You pull the steamroller from beneath your sofa. It's a red denim sofa with big flowers on it. Austin hated it, insisted you bring it with you to school. "He just wants to know how I feel about the letter." The pregnant woman tells Jerry how difficult her life is, living with a husband who puts her on this pedestal all the time.

"Wants me to move home too."

"You told him you're not moving," she says but it sounds like a question.

"I just don't say anything." You stuff the roach into the bowl and take your hit. "Plus, Austin wants me to marry him." You're glad she's not smoking with you because she chokes on her cigarette smoke and all you can think is how you're glad she wasn't freaking holding the steamroller.

You ask her if she's all right and she nods. Then there's a few minutes of silence as another fight breaks out on the screen. You watch Stitch and Vee, how mesmerized they are by the shit, how mesmerized all of you are. Three college fucking graduates and here you spend your days watching grown people smack each other around. The camera pans to the pole dancer, then cuts to a close shot upward from the chick's ankle.

As if the magic piper suddenly stopped to take a breath, Vee turns and says your name. Springer goes to commercial. "Austin asked you to marry him?"

"He wants me to move home," you scoot off the sofa and onto the floor.

"Why doesn't he come out here?" Stitch asks, more for his benefit than yours. It's been pretty hard for Stitch out here all alone. He left his parents, his friends, everybody to follow Vee. You've tried to get Austin to call and talk to him. Even tried to get him to visit a few times. But he never comes. It's always up to you to go home. And it's the same thing every time. You spend a few days in his bed, a few days at your brother's place, and a weekend at your dad's. Sometimes Austin comes with you. Most times, he's too busy with work.

"Every time I get ready to leave," you tell them both, "he tries to talk me into staying there. I'm packing my bags and he gives me some guilt trip about how I'm ruining his life, how he's just put everything on hold for when I come back." And the thing is, you think but you don't say, you don't even know if you're coming back.

"Are you going to do it?" Vee wants to know. Even Stitch looks a little interested.

"Probably." Vee looks at you, the corners of her mouth turned askew, as though she is trying to smile but concern has taken control of the muscles in her face. "Eventually," you mutter, and you mean it. Eventually you will marry him. After all these years together, after all he's done for you and how much he loves you, he deserves at least this. The room gets quiet and you realize you've just made the conversation too serious. On the television, Jerry introduces another guest. This time it's a woman who hasn't yet told her girlfriend that she's not a man.

"How could she not know?" Stitch yells at the first, mannish woman. "She's got breasts." You would have said tits.

The mannish chick tells Jerry that yes, she and her woman have had sex. The mannish chick wore a strap-on and it was dark. "But she had to know." Stitch says again. "She just didn't want to know. How could she have not known?"

"Your hit," you tell him, your voice all tight, like there's too much pressure inside your head.

The duped lover comes out on stage. People in the audience holler and boo. The mannish chick kisses the lover on the cheek, and you think if you were seeing the person, this person who got the Springer show to send you the letter, if you were walking on stage to greet the person who had this secret to tell you, you wouldn't be kissing that person on the cheek. That's for sure.

That's for damned sure.

Stitch watches the screen, his bushy brows pushed together at the center, like one unbroken line. The bouncers stand to the sides of the stage. They probably don't figure on much brawling, it being two chicks and all. Or if they do, they're gonna let them fight a while. They love the chick fights. The audience really screams then.

The mannish one and the other one sit at a table and the first one starts to tell the second one about this lack of penis condition. You know this is just killing Stitch. You know he can't stand the fact that two women have gotten it on. And what's even worse for poor Stitch, he can't even figure out how this woman did not know the person she was doing wasn't a man.

"She relies too much on faith," you mumble.

Stitch turns toward you, leaning again, rocking your grandmother's chair forward. He looks at the screen, then at Vee, who is taking another sip of b&c, then at you again. He's all confused, like maybe he doesn't know what it is he's supposed to be paying attention to. "Vee and I took this class," you tell him, "in college. We read this book, don't know the title, but it was about how there are two kinds of people."

"Skeptics and True Believers," she says.

"Yeah. So there're two kinds. Those who question everything. Like scientific types and poets. People who are always thinking. And then people who just believe in everything." You take another hit off the steamroller, probably not pulling the carb fast enough, because it feels like someone shot the smoke right into your lungs. "Faith based." You cough out a little puff of gray smoke.

"So people with faith aren't always thinking?"

"And it was better to be the first one," Virginia says, now to you, ignoring Stitch's question.

"Right? The Skeptic. You were supposed to be because then there was never real doubt." Stitch looks at you. He has no fucking idea what you two are saying and his inability to understand has caused the bastard to forget all about ganja etiquette. He watches the fine line of smoke rise from your bowl but doesn't bother to take the son-of-a-bitch out of your hand. "Like those people who believe in creationism even though there's all this proof of dinosaurs and there were no people when there were dinosaurs." He's still just looking at you. Maybe he's processing what you said, but the fact that he's not talking compels you to go on.

"Science disproves the creation myth, but people just ignore that fact and go right on believing the world was made in seven days by this mystical being."

"So let them believe," he says, as if it's that simple.

"But they got to know, somewhere inside, that it can't be true the way they believe it."

He hands you the bong and you hold it up to take a hit.

"It's gone."

Probably just as well because things are happening in threes now, like three times in a row, like the thing happens and then it echoes a couple times. You tap the burnt coals out onto the travel magazine, a big pile of black ash in the Vienna sky.

"But with the dogs," he says. He says. He says. "I'm not ignoring proof. I had scratches."

"That's not what I'm saying." You look at him, but the means by which to explain yourself escapes you at the moment.

"If anything, I accept the proof even though it flies in the face of what I logically believe to be true." You've offended him now. He won't listen to what you're trying to tell him, and he's getting offended by what he has decided you are saying.

"You're right."

Vee looks at you and laughs. Her glass is empty.

"Another?" She nods and you take the glass into the hallway, to the liquor cabinet that doubles as your entry table. You open the right door even though the bourbon is on the left. You got the cabinet cheap at one of those home shops in the mall. Two ninety-nine instead of seven hundred, just because the left handle was broken off. You just have to pop the door open from the back after you've opened the right.

You hold Vee's glass in the air above the cabinet and pour. You're startled when your dad's clock chimes its little tune. You jump and spill bourbon all over the cabinet and the mail you had on top of it. You curse that fucking clock once again, even though you've heard it chime a million times before, even though you've heard that thing ring and ring and ring every fifteen minutes for the past three years, since the day Dad gave it to you when you left for college, the same day that Austin started working his way back into your life, even though the sound of that chime is so imprinted in your mind, you're pretty sure you hear it every fifteen minutes everywhere you go, sometimes even when you're at home, at Austin's, lying in his arms under the scratchy flannel sheets, wishing you had put on more lotion, listening to him grind his teeth, and wondering what it would be like to fall asleep in the arms of any other man.

"Hey, it's back on," Vee's voice comes from the living room, but it sounds like it's coming out of some tunnel. The letter is on top of the pile. A tiny pool of bourbon soaks into the paper. Good paper. Like linen. You lift the letter and slide the bourbon off. You take it with you to the kitchen and grab the 2-liter of cola.

"What's happening?" you ask. Vee takes the bourbon and 2-liter. She pours her own drink.

"That the letter?" She motions toward the now tea-colored paper in your hand.

"The audience asks questions now. Whoever they want to ask." You sit down on the floor again, your legs folded to the side. You tuck the letter under your thigh, not even thinking that now your jeans are going to smell like pot and Jim Beam.

"Going to read it?" She says to you real low and quiet and at first you don't even recognize it as Vee's voice.

"What else am I going to do?"

"Are you going on the show?" she asks you. Point blank. Doesn't sugar coat the damned thing at all.

"I have to know who it's from." You say.

"Why?" she asks you and you can tell she's serious, not joking in the slightest.

"If I don't find out," you start, but words are difficult to keep in your head at this point. You start again. "There's obviously this terrible secret out there, just waiting to be told to me."

"Let it wait," she says to you. She's always saying shit like that to you. You take another hit. "Mark Twain said he never regretted the things he'd done, only those he had left undone."

"You know that's not what he was talking about."

There's some guy on the show now. The guy's crying about how for years his wife has accused him of having an affair. He can't take it. He loves her, he says. More than anything, he says. But he can't do anything more to convince her. And, and here's the kicker, Jerry, they broke up for about a year a while back, this guy and his wife. The wife left this guy, said she never wanted to see this son of a bitch again, and after a few months of devastation this guy gets lonely, seeks comfort in the arms of some old friend. Only now the wife wants him back. And he loves her. Wants her too. Just doesn't know how to tell her about the other woman, since she'll see this as an affair, some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

"See," Stitch says. He puts his hands behind his head, his elbows stretched to the side. You're pretty sure he has the arm span of an orangutan. "She doesn't need to know. They weren't together. It's not relevant."

"I don't understand." You think about Austin's arms. He has thin wrists. Really dainty. They don't go with the rest of his arm. "What are you saying, Stitch?"

"You people, you scientists and poets and shit, you are always digging. You just have to know."

"What's wrong with knowing?" That pole dancer is twirling around on screen again. "What's wrong with believing?" And his words seem like a ping pong ball, distorted a little in the thwack and hurtled back.

"Science and art are nothing more than a search, ultimately for the same thing," you say. You stuff another bowl. "Both are searches for a truth."

"Isn't science just a way of destroying our basic foundation? One by one, all our beliefs have been explained by science. What do you think people are searching for?"

"A reason. A real reason."

"But in the end," Vee says and you had forgotten she was even in the room, you were so focused on convincing Stitch of your brilliance, "you have to know that you will never discover it. You can only go so far before you finally have to let yourself believe that there is something out there, whether or not you ever find proof of its existence." Vee reaches for the bong and you pause, not sure if this moment is real or not. You pass her a lighter and the 'roller. She hits. Really hits. Like you never saw anybody take such a hit. "You'll never stop having questions. You can think," she says and she doesn't even sound like she's holding smoke in. You wonder if maybe you didn't imagine the hit, but then she blows a big ball of smoke that all three of you watch float toward the big screen. "At some point, you just have to have faith."

"In what?"

"Why does it matter?" She looks at you and smiles, like you never saw her smile before, like maybe your mom would have smiled at you. "Believe in something. At least that there's something to be believed in." Stitch passes you the bong and gives you the thumb-and-index-finger-an-inch-apart, there's-a-little-left signal, as he tries to hold his hit. You feel a moment of guilt. You hate yourself for this. You know you shouldn't take another. But. Jerry's audience is chanting. Some fat guy runs around the studio with his shirt in his hand. He spins the shirt around his head as he runs, leaving his big unmanly breasts bouncing around in public. He runs back to his seat and pulls the shirt over his head. They give him beads. Like Mardi Gras. A real party, this Jerry Springer Show. You wonder if you'll have to take your shirt off if you go. Maybe it's because you're high, but you decide if you go on that show, you will take your shirt off. You will. And you'll have a damned pair of beads to show for it. Not to mention a televised broadcast of your glory.

"He's calling sometime today," you tell Vee. But you don't know why you say it.

"Tell him you're not going to read the letter and you're not going on the show and that he needs to butt out of your life," Vee says.

You don't know what to say and Stitch isn't helping, sitting over in the rocker with his mouth open.

"Not my dad," you finally say. "Austin."

"Oh, well, Ditto."

Jerry passes the mic around the audience and some dope tells the pregnant woman he'll raise her kid since neither one of those punks seems man enough. The scrawny guy and the cheater rush into the audience. The bouncers make some half-assed attempt to stop them, but while they're busy with these guys someone hits on the mannish chick's woman and the mannish chick and a few lesbians start in with the wanna-be lover boy. In a moment, it's an out-and-out brawl. You're just waiting for the chairs to fly. Or for someone to lift the pole dancer's skirt.

"He wants to know. Today." You tell Vee, but you don't know if she hears you since she is laughing so hard at this show. "Application deadline is today. If I'm not coming, he's applying to Arizona."

Jerry tosses out some more beads as more people lose their shirts, some seemingly without intent. The fight continues now in little spurts. The black-teed bouncers keep the violence down for the most part, but every once in a while the cheater father-to-be jumps out and throws a punch at the scrawny husband or an audience member and a bouncer. Once he jumps out of line, the others follow, and a little scuffle ensues. You are one of the standers-by. Not even one of the followers.

You didn't know.

"When that phone rings," Vee says. "There's only one decision to make." The clock chimes. You realize it must be a few minutes off because Springer's credits are still rolling. Vee's still talking, but you had tuned out. "All the others need to be made by others. Only one is yours to make." You try to think about it, about Austin and his proposal and school and moving. You try to think about how really it's just about you. It's about you. About you and Austin. And you and school. You try really hard to think about this stuff, but you can't. All you're thinking about is how if you ever got on the Springer show, you'd earn your damned beads, then you'd throw the first punch.

You tap out the rest of the ashes onto the magazine and shove the steamroller back in its hiding place. When you pick up the magazine and curl it in your hand, trying to keep the ashes from spilling to the table and floor, a black smudge forms on the page, a smeared trail where the ashes left their mark. You're smiling. You go to dump the ash in your trash can, but the lid is stuck halfway open again and the ashes get all over it, so you just shove the entire magazine inside the can. You'll have to read about Vienna some other time. Plus, you wouldn't want other people seeing the stains on the cover.

At the last moment, you realize you grabbed the Springer letter with the magazine. You stand, look into the trash. The curled end of the magazine rests between the lid and the edge of the can. Your letter is wrapped around it. The plastic lid snaps hard against its frame when you force it shut. The sofa welcomes you back in the living room, and you lie down. Beads and the first punch, you're thinking.

Author Bio

Melinda Johnson is an Iowa native, now in pursuit of an MFA in English at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond.