Unintentional Insults, Arguments Made Public, and Wildly Unpopular Canadian Cuisine…
Will
“Okay, question three...”Dylan gives us a wide-eyed grin. “If Arabella were onWho Wants to Be a Millionaire, who would her phone-a-friend be?”
I smile back, holding up my card.Me.
Then, I glance at Arabella’s and seeArthurwritten in black ink. Huh. I was not expecting that. I keep my smile plastered on while I set my card down, feeling like a total fool.
“Oh dear,” she says. “You’re zero for three. Bad luck.”
“Your brother? Not me, the know-it-all?” I ask with a playful bump on her arm.
Arabella blanches. “I’mawfulat this. Of course you would be my phone-a-friend.”
Dylan tilts her head. “Then why’d you write down your brother’s name?”
“Can’t you have more than one phone-a-friend?” Arabella’s voice is so quiet, it’s nearly a whisper. “I mean, depending on the question?”
“I’m afraid not,” Dylan says, giving her a mock-sorry look. “For our purposes, it’s just the one and you chose your brother.”
Arabella turns to face me, her eyes filled with guilt. “If I could choose two, you would absolutely be my phone-a-friend. Especially if the question had to do with surfing or survival stuff or nature or filming a television show. No one knows more than you about those things.”
“Or so Will thinks, according to you,” Dylan adds, salting the wound some more.
“I only wrote down Arthur because I was thinking of questions related to foreign affairs, history, politics, or the like…” Her voice trails off and she gives me a sheepish look. “Sorry.”
“That’s fine, really.” I nod and wink at her to cover up the sting of knowing she thinks her brother is smarter than me in almost every way.
The producer appears with a domed plate. When he lifts the lid, there’s a small white tented card on it that reads:Posts of Defeat:you will now complete the rest of the interview while standing on a post with one foot in the air.
“Brilliant,” Arabella says, as we both stand and follow Dylan across the stage where two wooden posts await us. They’re each set three feet off the ground but are only about four inches in diameter.
Arabella looks down at her heels and bites her bottom lip. “We’re in it now, aren’t we?”
“Yup,” I say, watching as she daintily removes her shoes.
I hold out one hand and help her get up onto her pole. Once she seems steady, I step up onto mine, using my left leg to balance since my right ankle is still a little weak from breaking it while we were filming the show.
“All set?” Dylan asks.
We both answer in the affirmative so she fires the next dreaded question at us. “Remember, question four is a two-parter: What’s the best gift you’ve ever given each other. And what’s the best gift you’ve received?”
Flipping my card over, I let the world in on the financial dynamics of our relationship. You know, so I can feel extra shitty. My card says,A shell, a Yacht.
I look at Arabella’s and it says, ‘a yacht, a shell.’
“Yes! We got it!” she shouts. “Well done, us!”
I grin through my humiliation while balancing myself. Is it too much to hope that there won’t be any follow-up questions to that?
“So, you can’t write that type of answer without expecting some follow-up questions,” Dylan says.
Of course.
“So, Arabella, you bought Will a yacht, and he gave you… a shell?”
Arabella wobbles a bit and holds her arms out, trying to maintain her balance. “Yes, well, there’s so much more to it than it sounds. The yacht was because I felt awful about—”
