“I have to say, I really do feel sorry for the guy. Obnoxious as he often acts, it’s apparent that Hunny is basically a good-hearted man who doesn’t deserve all this hideous trouble that’s come crashing down on him since he won the Instant Warren. And he must feel horribly guilty about his old mom being victimized, too. If, that is, her disappearance has anything to do with his own weird situation. Do you think it does?”
“Probably. Her life at Golden Gardens was apparently calm and uneventful until the state dropped a billion big ones in Hunny’s lap. And the Brienings turning up, post-Instant Warren, might also have set something off with Mrs. Van Horn. Panicked her into doing — I don’t know what.”
“The news at six said Hunny was a well-liked and generous worker out at BJ’s. Apparently he’s giving his former coworkers each a million dollars. The manager of BJ’s was interviewed and said he was concerned about a lot of associates — that new euphemism for retail wage slaves — giving notice first thing Monday morning.”
“Yeah, something like thirty or forty people are going to receive a million each. Though Hunny is leaving out the guy who’s suing him for half a billion. Dave DeCarlo must be having second thoughts. Oops.”
“Channel 10 said Hunny was also planning on putting two young people through Dartmouth Medical School. That’s pretty decent of him.”
“Yes, Hunny is apparently concerned about a looming national shortage of podiatrists.”
“Good for him. Podiatrists?”
It was ten o’clock, and I turned up the sound on the kitchen TV. Timmy was on a stool enjoying a late-evening snack of raisin bran with skim milk, and I had made a pot of strong coffee for myself.
A lurid bReAking news graphic flashed on the screen, and then the trumpet-accompanied announcement of a Bill O’Malley sPeCiAL RePoRt. O’Malley soon appeared, American flags flapping electronically to his right and left.
“Good evening, my fellow Americans…”
Timmy said, “My fellow Americans? What is he, the president?
Good grief.”
“Welcome to my special investigative report on corruption at the New York State Lottery.” Staring gimlet-eyed into the camera, O’Malley fulminated for several minutes on the immorality and illegality of the Lottery Commission’s refusal to withhold winnings from a man O’Malley said was not eligible to win the billion-dollar Instant Warren because of the poor example he was setting for America’s youth. A state-run program, O’Malley said, should not be in the business of rewarding same-sex unions like that of Hunny Van Horn and his friend — O’Malley’s fingers waggled a set of quotation marks when he said friend — Art Malanowski. Looking especially sanctimonious now, O’Malley said he certainly endorsed “tolerance for homosexuals,” and he did not support crushing them with stone walls, “as is done in many Muslim countries.” Up came some blurry video of a bulldozer shoving a stone wall over on two men in Arab garb who were lying prone in the sand and tied up and blindfolded.
“However,” O’Malley went on, “government tolerance is one thing and government participation in the radical homosexual agenda is not something any good American is willing to put up with.”
“I wonder,” Timmy said, “if O’Malley thinks the dMv is advancing gay rights by issuing us driver’s licenses. God.”
“Shh.”
It was hard to imagine Hunny sticking around the Focks News studio and participating in this looniness, and in fact when O’Malley introduced an interviewee it was not Hunny at all, but the head of the Family Preservation Association of Albany County. The Reverend Payton Kalafut was a bulbous middle-aged gentleman leaning so far back in his chair that he seemed almost to be reclining and being viewed from above, as in a Busby Berkeley from-the-rafters shot. Looking up, he endorsed O’Malley’s plea for tolerance by saying bulldozing homosexuals was “going too far.” The reverend then argued nonetheless that
“the dollars of tax-paying Christians must never be used to support immorality.”
Timmy said, “Taxes don’t support the lottery. Gamblers do.
Most of them Christians, I’d be willing to wager.”
“You should write O’Malley and demand a correction.”
“I might.”
Reverend Kalafut went on about suing the Lottery Commission, and gave a post office box where viewers could send donations to help cover fPAAC‘s legal expenses. Throughout the interview, O’Malley nodded sympathetically. He then thanked the reverend for “standing up for American family values” and wished him good luck with his lawsuit, which was
“the Lord’s own work.” O’Malley told viewers he would be back after a commercial break, and then an ad came on for erectile dysfunction pills.
“At least,” Timmy said, “by agreeing to participate in this horror show Hunny is going to come across as both brave and sympathetic. And maybe it will even help get his mom back.”
“Let’s hope that’s the way it goes.”
After a minute and a half, O’Malley reappeared, Old Glory waving next to each of his ears, and introduced Hunny, who was seated in the chair previously occupied by Reverend Kalafut.
Slouching in his seat in an ill-fitting jacket and some kind of hand-painted necktie, Hunny looked wan, bleary-eyed and jittery.
“Huntington Van Horn,” O’Malley intoned, “is the first winner of the New York State Lottery’s Instant Warren drawing. Mr. Van Horn took home a check for a staggering one billion dollars last Friday when he appeared on another network to collect his huge check. Not content to simply say how fortunate he was, however, Mr. Van Horn, an advocate for gay rights, so-called, accepted his winnings and then made a suggestive comment about the male host’s anatomy. That was an early tip-off that the New York Lottery Commission had made a tragic mistake, a mistake this taxpayer funded state agency has yet to rectify.”
Hunny shot O’Malley a look that was both angry and injured and said, “This was supposed to be about getting my mom back.
That…that Trinkus woman who works for you said…Trinkus said I could announce that Mom was missing from her nursing home and you’d put her picture on TV. So anyway, who cares about Matt Lauer’s basket?” Hunny’s diction was sloppy — the Jack Daniels had crept up on him — and as he spoke he squirmed in his chair like a child who needed to go to the lavatory.
“Yes, we’ll get to the so-called disappearance,” O’Malley said, arching an eyebrow at the Matt Lauer reference but otherwise charging by it. “Mr. Van Horn’s mother has perhaps been misplaced by the Golden Gardens home for the elderly in East Greenbush, New York, an institution that state nursing home regulators need to take a close look at. I’ll be doing an investigation of state regulators and their failings at a later date.
There is also a good possibility that your mother’s disappearance, so-called, could be a hoax connected to your own desire to obtain a contract for your own reality show on All-Too-Real TV.
But right now, Mr. Van Horn, I have another photograph that I’d like you and viewers to take a close look at. Just look over there at the monitor.”
Hunny flared, squirmed some more and was about to speak, but something caught his attention off to the side, and on our home screen up came a photo of a woman I took to be the actual Marylou Whitney. “Do you recognize this woman?” O’Malley demanded to know.
“Well, of course I do,” Hunny muttered. “That is Mary 108 Richard Stevenson
Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the former vice president and notorious war criminal Dick Cheney.”
“Absolutely incorrect,” we heard O’Malley say. Then the picture changed to the Marylou Whitney who was Hunny’s pal.
“And do you recognize this person, Mr. Van Horn?”
“That rectal vision,” Hunny said in a W.C. Fields voice, “oh, I mean regal vision, is Mrs. Marylou Whitney, the horse fancier and gracious lady of Saratoga and Palm Beach. I rectalize…realize… reck-a-nize Mrs. Whitney because she is a very dear friend of mine. Marylou was telling me just this afternoon how happy she is that now I am even richer than she is. Isn’t that a hoot? How d’ya like them apples, Bill O’Malley?” Hunny held his hand up and burped into it.