Show of Hands: A Novel

The Contest

1

THE CONTENDERS BEGAN to gather on the car dealership’s forecourt two hours before the official start time. Among the first was a vagrant, fresh from sleeping under a bridge, whose very proximity to the yard’s gleaming, multi-thousand-pound fleet seemed a breach of the peace and an act of vandalism.

Elsewhere, a solidly fat man came onto the forecourt pushing a supermarket trolley full of supplies: clothing, cushions, foodstuffs and very many cans of beer, all he’d need—or thought he’d need—to secure the grand prize.

Then came a third person, and then a fourth. Soon there were ten, next twenty, thirty, forty, by 8:30 more than eighty. Even the well-to-do had shown up, proving once again you can never have too much. By 9:00 a.m. at least a hundred and twenty people stood among a fleet of unsold cars below the WIN A NEW CAR blimp bobbing high overhead, tugging on a fixed wire. Ten minutes later this number had climbed to a hundred and fifty, and soon beyond that, clockwise circling an opalescent blue and ultradesirable Land Rover the way dishwater swirls before it goes down the drain.

The owner of this Land Rover was Terry Hatch Back, from Back-to-Back New Cars (Olympia, Ltd.). He moved among the contestants, clapping strangers on the back, saying delightedly, Hi. Thanks for coming, and We’re going to explain everything soon, or Hi. Welcome. Great weather, before returning to his assistant, Vince, who was just then trying to conduct a rough headcount.

Numbers? Any idea?

Yeah. Too many. Vince shook his head. More every second. What are we going to…I mean, what do you want to do? It’s out of control.

By way of answer Hatch unhelpfully observed, Something for nothing, it’s incredible. People go mad. He ran a slow hand through a hairline with a pronounced widow’s peak or vampire V, which, when joined with the twin receding arcs over the temples, produced the scalloped rim found on the head of a sharpened pencil. Completely mad.

Vince, persistent in his concern, followed Hatch back to his office, repeating three times, We’ve got a problem here. But when Hatch went up to the large window and looked out at the bustling yard he saw only beautiful solutions to all his financial woes.

"I told you. I knew they’d come. I knew it! The small, bunched fists at his sides flexed alternately, two pumps augmenting the work of the heart. And if it’s like this already, then what’s it going to be like in…in—he glanced at his watch—a whole hour still to go. He let go a laugh; an anxiety-discharging laugh. I knew it! I told you! Oh, the relief—the financial weight of the last two years lightening by the minute. It’s gonna be…look! Huge! Look! You can’t buy publicity like this. Can’t buy it. He turned back to his junior salesman. Well, I can’t. Maybe Coke or, or Shell or Tesco can, but…"

"But you are buying it, Vince countered. Buying it is exactly what you’re doing. By giving away a free car. All those people out there, you’re paying for every single one of them."

This comment was ignored; Hatch refused to trade down his high mood. Might even make the evening news at this rate. What do you think?

But before Vince could answer, the dealership’s third-tier salesman came in looking even more bewildered than he normally did. Dan, big-timbered, midthirties. As slow and muscularly overdeveloped as Vince was thin and nervy. (Neither of Hatch’s two employees was a genius, and whenever Hatch asked either of them a question it was with no real expectation of a workable answer.)

"Dan, good. Close. Close the…great. Now listen. The press. Listen. When they come, okay, when they come…if they ask you for comment, for anything, refer them to me, understand? Refer them directly to me. I’ll handle all the—"

Vince tried again. But what are we going to…?

All the…all publicity. To me. Hatch tapped his own chest. Understand?

But we still have to get the numbers down, Hatch. We can’t stage it like this.

Fine. Take care of that. Hatch rechecked his mobile phone. No messages. But refer any journalists to me. Three things: publicity, publicity, publicity.

I have an idea, Vince continued. A ballot. To pare the numbers down to something manageable.

Sure. And then the smile returned. We get rid of a few but not too many. We want to make a statement here.

Vince held up pads of Post-it notes. We write tickets. Forty, say. This is what I’m thinking. We limit the number to forty. Give everyone a number—

But Hatch had already turned to look back at his crowd, this great, hoped-for, four-by-four-crazy crowd. Something for nothing, ha! Look what happens.

Vince: And we need to control this traffic or we’ll have the police down here.

Fine. Great. Handle it. Let’s get moving. This is gonna be great.

The two junior salesmen walked out, leaving Hatch at the window. Excellent, he muttered to no one, and then, Come on, my lovelies, and finally, "Look at them. Something for nothing, and just look."

When he saw his wife, Jennifer, and his four young children pushing through the crowd, he turned, sat and waited for them. His right knee bumped against the World War II service revolver taped to the desk’s underside—he had never used the gun, but if the current spate of sporadic vandalism continued, then he’d have no hesitation in frightening someone with it, sending out a message to the neighborhood underworld that he was prepared to defend what was his.

While he waited, he pulled close the brand-new megaphone resting horn down on his desk: flared at the base, the red lighthouse stripes hooping it; atop it a mouthpiece awaiting his first instructions to the contestants outside. He gripped the loud hailer and flicked it on. It barked with electricity so that he held it again at arm’s reach until the squeal of feedback died down. Only then did he move the contraption back to his mouth and speak experimentally, in a low, humid voice, the words: On your marks, get set, go.

TOM SHRIFT SLOWED his car and from a distance eyed the bedlam on the forecourt. What a joke! For a second he thought, How unbelievably pathetic they all look, how sad, desperate, how tragic, until he remembered he was about to become one of them.

He’d come down early to get the jump on his fellow competitors, determined to win this free car, but he hadn’t foreseen this. Who could have guessed: so many lost souls. Jesus Christ, the place looks like some compound for every Londoner in extremis. Riffraff. In bargain clothes. Unshaven men. Unattractive women. The struggling classes. Musclemen in their forties, potbellied, flip-flops on their feet. Level-headed mums in cheesy sportswear clutching water bottles, primed for combat. The old. The young. Workaday victims of brute reality. And now, here he was too, Thomas H. (for Horatio) Shrift, about to stand shoulder to shoulder with these have-nots, fight as they fought, hand to hand. He gripped the wheel of his misfiring Fiat Punto (he’d recently had to sell his beloved smooth-running Volvo). What a numbing and humiliating thought.

But Tom deserved to have once more. And when he’d won this car—and he was more or less certain of his ability to win it—then he’d waste no time in making up the ground he’d so recently lost. He’d bounce back. As he’d always done, he’d bounce back once again.

He turned off the car and angled the rearview mirror toward himself, checking whether he still looked like the type who could beat so many others. Yes, he didn’t look a million miles from being such a person. His bushy eyebrows could use some attention, the odd hair curling into a sigma, but apart from this, he identified a well-groomed man, a man who mattered—or, at least, one who soon would. A special person. Living to some schedule of achievement. A man of unique skills. Tom Shrift still had that winning look—alert eyes, a decent smile, a wide jaw, below it a crisply ironed pure-cotton shirt and the broad shoulders of a tall man…yes, he was still the type to make a stranger think, I’ll put my money on him.

With his forefinger he wet and smoothed down the eyebrow hair. Bachelors often missed such details. With no one to tell them, their breath offended, their underarms stank. Tom was careful not to fall victim to such traps, knew how to breathe into his cupped hands to test for bacterial breath. Perspiring heavily of late, displaying andropausal symptoms already, he washed perhaps too often, used aggressive amounts of aftershave and always took pains to deport himself as someone well loved. A fresh shirt every day. He shot the cuffs. Collars were stiffened by plastic strips. He simply refused to become pathetic. Below his now tamed brows, and separated by the long-profile Shrift nose, were two brown eyes that showed on closer inspection to be hazel—the eyes of his mother.

Should he return her call, the one he’d refused to take the night before? A daily question. No, to hell with his parents. His father or, as Tom called him, the Void, had walked out when he was under a month old, and Tom never had a chance to ask him anything. His mother, now in an old people’s home, accusing him over the phone of betrayal, had been a reluctant mother, all his youth a selfish woman. Only now that she was old and lonely did he hear from her. Daily she tried to reach him, and more often than not he refused to take her call. She had done the bare minimum as a mother; now he would do the bare minimum as a son.

Just as he cleared his phone of alerts and messages, he now cleared his head. The car’s mirror had told him that, in appearance, he had everything he needed to go forward. If he had any problems—and he admitted to only one or two—they began when he opened his mouth. Provocative things always flew out. Fast-talking and sharp-witted, he spoke too candidly, couldn’t stop himself. Perhaps he knew too much. Was this possible? A big reader (his small but immaculately kept bachelor pad was packed with books, the TV aerial sat on a pile of paperbacks, reference works jutted from the shelves, one corner of the broken couch rested on Churchill’s intellectual labors), he refused to hide what he knew—why the hell should he? Why stay silent when a historical date is given in error, a piece of logic flabby, a quote falsely attributed, the wrong actor named in a movie? Who benefits if the foolish are allowed to go uncorrected?

And so he let rip. Tom had a head full of premium gasoline and out poured his knowledge: names, quotes, the pertinent facts. He couldn’t resist setting people straight, or helping them out of a lifelong delusion. While this was damaging to his dealings with ordinary others, it was especially disastrous romantically. What woman wanted to be lectured? Told she was wrong, on the wrong track, and by a man so certain he knew what was right? Yes, he’d talked himself out of more fucks than he cared to remember, but what could he do? Dumb down, just to get a woman into bed? If this was the smart game, his mind was too rare a gift, and it wouldn’t be sold short.

Back in his twenties Tom had sat a Mensa test, pitting himself against geniuses. The test confirmed that upstairs he was no dunce. Far from it. The score put him in the top one percent of humanity, among the elite! So how was it possible that a brainiac, that a true bel esprit, should be under such incredible pressure simply to survive—and be reduced to such solutions as this?

The Russians. Yes, they were to blame. Just back from St. Petersburg, a major business deal had gone sour thanks to them. Tom had excitedly flown east, planning to license images from the Hermitage for use on his Masterpiece Cards—a young but sufficiently liquid business (he knew a lot about art too)—except that he couldn’t convince the apparatchiks to release reproduction rights to the old Russian masters, or at least not to an unknown. The Russkies screwed him badly in the end, suggested there wouldn’t be a problem, made him front everybody’s expenses and then dropped him like a hot potato. He now owed sixty-seven thousand pounds to his banks and credit card companies, more in debt every day. The barbarity of the business world was stunning, even to a natural pessimist. He’d thought himself a good businessman, but his IQ proved no protection against lies, sharp practices, low cunning and samovar tea that was surely drugged.

He started his car again. Ignoring the waving marshals who were turning vehicles away, he crept forward and found a superb spot in a residents-only lot for which he had the correct permit. But as he reached out to open his door he hesitated. How terrible to descend so low in society as to enter an endurance contest. Perhaps he could sell this old Fiat Punto instead? No, it would cost him money to have it destroyed. What else could he sell? His ideas? Ha, some joke—where were the takers for these? How about his extensive library of books, then? Sell them? Negative. Near worthless—who wanted the collected writings of Winston Churchill these days, especially with their margins defaced by his own verdicts of bravo and big mistake!? How about a regular job, then? Why not just try again to find one? Strike that too. Yesterday’s interview had confirmed once again why he must work for himself. So what was left? Sell his blood? Not tradable in Britain. And so, with Sir Bob Geldof not likely to stage a relief concert for him, he was stuck with this option—with this cheap, debasing, but richly prized option.

His eye rose reluctantly to the advertising blimp floating high over the dealership, the words vivid from this range: WIN A NEW CAR. Yes, he would do just that. Win it, then sell it quickly, netting him twenty to thirty grand. Lowering his eyes once again, counting the (hundred or so) people already swarming in the dealership, he decided he would send someone to oppose them. That person? Himself. One against the many, as usual.

And so, from his trunk he gathered up his gadgets, the provisions he’d need for this campaign—clothing, reading materials, a few medical supplies and personal effects, all meticulously selected and double-checked. He recalled the British military’s term for urban warfare: FIBUA (Fighting in Built-Up Areas) or, unofficially, FISH & CHIPS (Fighting in Someone’s House and Causing Havoc in People’s Streets). Well, Tom was ready to fight in this built-up area now. He walked toward the car dealership with a full backpack, shaking his head, amused at the sheer mathematics of the task ahead.

Reaching the yard, he avoided eye contact. It was clearly already a case of every man for himself, and every woman too. No smiles. No nods of recognition. So be it. The war had begun, and he knew already that it would end up being a mental war. Yes, the fittest, most resilient mind would take the car. He’d done his research on this—read about how psychological these contests were. Minds cracked quickly under the strain of going without sleep, soon fell prey to delusions, absentmindedness and negative thinking. Yes, where you placed your thoughts was the big key, how well you marshaled their patterns, how well you prevented malfunctions and how deep the reserves of calming, steady, stabilizing thought. Well, he doubted this crowd could contain a tougher or steadier mind than his. Whatever qualities a person needed to outlast their rival, he had it, and in spades. His counteroffensive had begun.

JESS PODOROWSKI FROZE the moment she saw the size of the crowd. Oh my God.

Second thoughts arose. Many of them, suddenly. With her dodgy back—the L2, third-lowest vertebra was giving her pain already—plus a slight fever (she must have taken something foreign into herself), how was she possibly to win?

She made a short silent urgent prayer: If it is true, Lord, that there are only those who get, and those who miss out, then for once, just once, let me be on the right side of that line…

Jess was prayerful; a solid, throw-everything-in-the-pot petitioner. Everything got laid at the feet of the Lord. And as a widow with a disabled daughter, poorly paid to schlep the city and suffer the very worst forms of verbal abuse, well…there was much, much to lay down.

But she didn’t protest.

In the delivery room, when she was born, the obstetrician had pronounced her mute—three hours later the infant Jess had surprised a nurse with a low-level whimper. As a kid growing up she’d perfected this curious quietness. Dwelled on things instead. Made a martial art of forbearance. Now a pro at withstanding the rage of the people she fined, she kept a light smile on her face and prayed instead. Thought only: St. Paul was despised for his tax collecting, people threw stones at him, and yet God had looked o’er him. Then let God look o’er me too. Her Catholic faith armored her. She attended church on Sundays, faced an altar with an under-worshiped Christ raised high on a cross, a splayed symbol of victimhood—well, her job invited its own minicalvaries also. Verbally attacked, aching to respond, she buttoned her lip instead. Who do you think you are? What a bitch! Get a life, you whore! You cow! In, in went the nails.

After two years she was now a veteran of roadside abuse, doing a job few other Englishwomen wanted to do. In a silly uniform—a peaked hat, a black-cloth suit and over this a Day-Glo green tunic to make her visible from Mars—she approached expired meters up and down both sides of her streets. People and their cars, dear Lord. Walking her beat she often sent this thought to God: how alike people and their cars were. A Mercedes C-Class and its owner; the stockbroker behind the wheel of that BMW 3 Series; the classy woman centrally locking her Jag sports car, both vehicle and driver immaculate, quiet running, safe, well maintained, with power in excess of their actual needs, good things happening automatically, at the touch of a button. She envied them their luxuries, their Lexus freedoms! Imagine: to not care if your meter had expired.

But the meters of the poor—gosh, a totally different story there. The owners of rusting Renaults—their cars entirely manual, underpowered, running on empty, on the cusp of needing emergency assistance at any minute—these people ran toward her, panic on their faces, holding up a solitary coin as if she were some devil and their offering a kind of talisman—desperate to drop their coin into the slot and so escape a week’s bankruptcy.

Guilty, always so guilty about forcing the downtrodden lower still, Jess often showed compassion. Let them off. Her heart was with them. She counted herself among these near poor. No Lexus freedoms for Jess Podorowski either. She knew what a difference an eighty-quid fine would mean in a given week.

Daunted by the size of the crowd, her stomach tightened. There were even a couple of faces she recognized. Oh my gosh. There’s…oh my gosh…remember that guy? Jess said to her mother standing at her side. "That guy from the bank. Remember? I thought he must be doing well. What’s he doing here? And there, there’s—pointing elsewhere, at a man erecting a nylon windbreak as if he were camping on a beach—he’s from our church, passes out the offertory plate. I know some of these people." And then she began a head count. Reaching fifty, she gave up and just doubled that amount. A hundred at least. Way too many for her to win.

Oh my God, I didn’t think there’d be this many people. I thought there’d be only a few.

Good. Then we go home then, Val chimed in, relieved at her daughter’s tone of surrender.

But Jess gripped her mother’s arm strongly. No—no—I have to try, at least.

What?

I’m going to do it. I need to do this.

Why?

You know why. I told you why.

Jess’s eyes flicked to her wheelchair-bound daughter, who was excitedly surveying the action a dozen steps away, her head swiveling this way and that like a Ping-Pong umpire. Jess and Val had taken turns pushing her down here and there was no way Nat was going to let anyone make her miss out on this.

Why? Val insisted.

Please, Mumia. I can’t go over it all again.

Jess turned back to Nat. Useless from the armpits down, eighty percent incapable, the girl wore diapers under those black