I had an idea and raised my hand. I knew my idea was so good I didn’t even wait to be called on.
Bright Ben, they sometimes called me in name games at the beginnings of school years.
Maybe it had affected me.
“Do you still have it?”
“Have what?”
“The train stationery.”
“Maybe somewhere,” said the man. “Why?”
“You could use it to prove you came up with the problem,” I said. “Plus, you could even maybe sell the original to a museum.”
Mr. Hunt murmured something to himself that sure sounded to me like “Bright Ben.”
The old man coughed to clear his throat, even though it didn’t sound like there was anything to clear. “Yes, it’s in a shoebox. Or I think it is. I definitely know which one it would be in, anyway.”
He acted like there wasn’t anything more to say about this, even though there obviously was, so I spoke again, this time without raising my hand.
“Could you check?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I could. That’s the box where I put … Where I put … Letters, you know. That’s where I put …” There were now longer and longer pauses between each word. “Pictures … that’s …” Then that change in voice again: “June.”
Then just breathing for a while.
“You know, I did go through the box once. And it wasn’t there. But I didn’t look very carefully, though. I didn’t even really look at all. Just put my hand in there and took it out. That’s not really looking.” He paused again. “But I’m not looking again. But maybe it’s there. You know, maybe I’ll look again. That’s not a bad idea.” But he said all of this like he knew he never would.
“Where do you live?” asked Mr. Hunt, gently. “Are you going to need any help getting back?”
“I live in Columbus. I told you that. I have my whole life. I figured I’d start out on the East Coast and then work my way back across the country. See with my own eyes just how big this problem is. Your class is my first stop, actually.”
“You came here straight from Columbus, Ohio?”
“Yes.”
“All the way to Massachusetts? All by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“That’s pretty far,” said Mr. Hunt with concern. “How long did it take?”
“Nice try, nice try,” said the old man. “You want your class to know how long my train took, you gotta pony up.”
Everybody laughed at once, and the laughter seemed to surprise, and then lift, the old man.
“It is … I guess what you said before, it is nice seeing that you all know it,” said the old man. “It’s a reward. Not the only reward, but … you take what you can get. I’ll try to get more, but you take what you can get. It’s done so much good for the world that I do feel like I deserve more. But, yeah, that’s a good thing.”
“It’s a good problem to have,” said Mr. Hunt.
“Huh? What?” said the old man.
“I guess,” said Mr. Hunt, louder and slower, “that in a way, it’s a good problem to have.”
“Oh. Ha,” said the old man.
He walked to the door and put his hand on the doorknob, and we all waited for him to turn it, but he left it there for a very long time.
It’s very suspenseful for someone to put a hand on a doorknob but not turn it, especially if he’s old.
“June … the shoebox … good problem to have, too.”
He opened the door and left.
“What the hell does that mean?” said one of the other Matts.
“Language,” said Mr. Hunt.
Johnny Depp, Fate, and the Double-Decker Hollywood Tour Bus
The universe will tell you what it wants from you, if you listen to it. And one hot Friday in July, the universe told Johnny Depp what it wanted from him—not what it needed from him, because it definitely didn’t need this—but what it wanted.
The sign came in the form of a red double-decker tour bus slowly rounding Mulholland Drive, the winding desert highway that tops the hills of Los Angeles and divides the sporadically glamorous city from the negligibly glamorous valley. Both sides glitter, and the tourists were dazzled by all of it, and Johnny Depp, riding alongside the bus, knew that if he took off his helmet, someone would notice him, and before long, it would be a big deal.
He was right: it was a very big deal. “JOHNNY DEPP!” The bus sped up slightly to match the pace of Johnny Depp, who kept fully focused on the road ahead as cameras flashed and bus riders waved. He was enough of a performer to know that playing it cool like this now would excite them more, in the long run, than if he waved back right away.
When he finally did wave, with a tiny “who, me?” that he saw Sean Penn use once in Mystic River and always envied, the bus went crazy.