Booping Tahani Al-Jamil update

“So, what’s the big probs?” Eleanor started to ask, but she’d barely gotten out of her house when she was wading into red, white, and blue balloons.

Bunting covered every straight line of the neighborhood, campaign posters plastered the walls, and something like an ice cream truck was circling the streets, insisting “Vote for Tahani Al-Jamil! Make the Good Place good again!” over a loudspeaker. No one was driving it.

“Eeeesh,” Eleanor finished, biting her teeth. “There are election seasons in the Good Place? What’s next, PG-13 horror movies? James Franco being bicurious? Like, dude, just suck a dick already, it’ll be fine if you don’t like it—“

Michael looked as unflappable as ever, even with static electricity attaching balloons like leeches to his suit. He chopped one away. “There are not elections in the neighborhood, this is all some strange anomaly… although, admittedly, at least it’s less caustic than the ones we’ve seen before.”

Eleanor glanced at one of the campaign posters. The images of Tahani included selfies (w/ sparkling smiles), candid shots where was half-heartedly going ‘oh no, no, don’t take a picture of me even though my hair is great and my make-up is on point,’ and what looked like ads from a bridal magazine.

The woman knew how to work a veil.

“So we just go to Tahani and tell her to knock it off.” Eleanor kicked a balloon, sending it flying into a Obamaized poster of Tahani captioned ‘VOGUE.’

“No, Eleanor,” Michael said after a considered pause. “I don’t think Tahani would be responsible for something as brash as this, even inadvertently. It seems more like a fixation on her, like one of you mortals’ shrines grown out of control.” He paused again, finger at his lips. “I’ve always wanted to build a shrine. It seems like such a great way of showing you appreciate Sandra Bullock when box office returns and Academy Awards just don’t say enough.”

“So you’re saying now Heaven is obsessed with Tahani? I mean, I know she’s self-obsessed and she has a heavenly body but geez, what is going on with this sentence I’m talking?”

“Perhaps a side effect of the anomaly,” Michael said. “Many people may find it difficult not to talk about Tahani.”

“Great, she’s being shoved down my throat and she’s not even a reboot of something from my childhood.” Eleanor picked up two balloons and rubbed them together. “Okay, honestly, Tahani isn’t that great. There’s no way this big Matrix of yours is stalking her.” Eleanor crushed the balloons closer. “I mean, I bet she’s a six in real life, the rest is just, like, reputation and make-up and… having an accent…”

“You’re right. Not about Tahani being a six, we have her on file as a nine point four, but that the anomaly is probably smaller in scale.”

“Nine point four?” Eleanor exclaimed. “Don’t you people round down?”

Michael didn’t notice her. She was short. “I’d suspect it was Jianyu, but he’s so centered, and calm, and wise…”

“Do you have him as a nine point eight?” Eleanor needled.

“And plus, he’s her soulmate. The system should be set up to compensate for any feelings he has for her. It’s as if we have some unaffiliated soul here, having some unendorsed reaction to Tahani that’s throwing the whole system off.”

Eleanor laughed. “Really? Because she’s only a nine point four. I gotta think that here, everyone’s a nine and up, so by our standards, she’s a four. So really, me saying she was a six? Waaay generous.”

The campaign truck drove by, splashing them with the balloons it’d knocked out of the way like it had driven through a puddle. “Truth! Justice! Tahani Al-Jamil!”

***

“It is, of course, an honor to be nominated,” Tahani said when she greeted them.

Curiosity seekers had formed some kind of political base for her, standing around on her lawn cum campaign headquarters and staring at giant murals of her face that looked out from the edifice of her house with a somewhat Stalinist gleam. Jason had been press-ganged into serving them refreshments and was betraying a distinct history in the service industry.

A political career had also proven that it was possible to get Tahani to wear a pantsuit. It just had to match her purse.

“You’re not nominated,” Michael told her. “There is nothing to be nominated for. No one is in charge of the Good Place, there are no jobs, no responsibilities, no one has the burden of leadership. It’s a place of complete peace and serenity.”

“But if someone were in charge,” Tahani said, “I would be leading in the polls.” She gestured to some polls standing on easels. The lines going from left to right also seemed to be going from down to up. Assuming Tahani had them the right way, that looked good.

While Michael was taken aback, Eleanor fixated on the polls. “So these just appeared this morning with everything else?”

“The polls don’t lie,” Tahani said.

“They also don’t mean anything,” Michael said.

“Michael!” Tahani gasped, aghast. “Think of what it would mean to a have a female, minority voice in political power here.”

“Yeah, it’d be a real blow to the systemic inequality in Heaven,” Eleanor stressed.

“There is no political power,” Michael told Tahani. “This is the Good Place!”

“Even better! The first President… or Prime Minister, if you prefer… would be a brown woman—“

“In Heaven,” Eleanor interrupted.

Michael interrupted her interruption. “Eleanor, could you go pop some of these balloons? I’m worried what will happen if more of them show up. And Tahani, I just wanted you to know it’s nothing personal, but we must correct the defect in the system that led to this… campaign! There is no position for you to fill. No one is in the lead here.”

“So it’s socialism, then?” Tahani asked. “Oh, Father won’t be pleased to learn that when he arrives…”

***

“So you don’t find any of this the least bit suspicious?” Chidi asked when Eleanor got back from popping balloons. Janet had provided her with a BB gun, a morning star, and a flamethrower, so the afternoon had flown by.

Eleanor put her feet up. “Hey, life’s weird! Why should the afterlife make sense?”

Chidi sat down across from her and her feet, resting his elbows on his knees and kneading his hands together. “A few hours after you bond with Tahani, an entire election campaign springs up to give her a position of trust, not to mention power, which has always been considered an aphrodisiac…”

“Hey, I love the guy, but Michael’s kinda a newbie when it comes to playing God. We had the giant shrimp, the rain of trash, the big sinkhole. Let’s face it, Dr. Frankenstein was more on the ball.“

“That was you! Those were all things you did! Because you’re not supposed to be here!”

Eleanor put her foot down, along with her other foot, and sat up to face Chidi. “Hey, Jason’s not supposed to be here either, and he’s the one all up in Tahani’s grill! I bet he wants her to get elected Vice President so she’ll get out of the house more and he can pretend to be Tom Cruise in Cocktail.”

“Jason’s never—“ Chidi paused. “Vice President?”

“Wherever she’s elected, she won’t have any actual power, so—“

Chidi raised his hands about his face as if shielding himself from Eleanor’s diversions. “We don’t know of any anomalies that Jason’s caused, and they don’t tend to be subtle. I just don’t think he has enough going on mentally to influence this place the way you do.”

“Oh, so his Midichlorian count isn’t high enough?”

Chidi chalked up another reason why Eleanor hadn’t really gotten into the Good Place. “I think you have some repressed feelings toward Tahani and that’s distorting the neighborhood, the same way your previous actions have.”

“WHAT?” Eleanor demanded. “WHAT? ME AND TAHANI? WHOA. WOW.” She practically shook a fist at Chidi. “This is such a typical guy thing for you to say. Everything’s about either lesbians or ninjas with you, isn’t it?”

Chidi turned it around on her. “You don’t have something against gay people, do you?”

“Hey, I may be an asshole, but I’m a 21st-century asshole, thanks. But if I were gay—which I’m not when I haven’t been drinking—Tahani is the last woman I’d be gay for. Well, maybe not the last, but it would go Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Paris Hilton, Megan Fox because of those weird thumbs, Tahani, then Kristen Stewart…”

“You are aware that every time we’ve had this discussion, I’ve ended up being right and you’ve been totally wrong?”

“Well, if y’wanna call it ‘right.’”

“What else would you call it?”

“It’s just, y’know, you spent your whole life thinking and being moral and all that, ended up here. Me, I just spent my life doin’ my thang, also ended up here. So maybe there are some alternative worldviews to yours that are equally valid.”

“You got here by accident.”

“And yet, I’m just as well-off as you. Maybe even better, since I got to watch a ton of Bachelor on Earth, zip consequences…”

“Except that you’re spending the afterlife continuously worrying that someone will discover you’re not supposed to be here and condemn you to eternal damnation.”

“You’re a real ‘dark cloud for every silver lining’ kinda guy, you know that?” Eleanor picked up the nearest remote—even in the Good Place, it took like five to operate a home entertainment center—and turned on the TV.

“Tahani Al-Jamil believes in strong community. Tahani Al-Jamil believes in family values. Tahani Al-Jamil believes in the Good Place. Don’t you believe in her?”

“Oh no!” Eleanor said, throwing down the remote. “I will become a forking zombie before I spend the afterlife watching campaign ads! I am settling this if I have to shove my whole tongue down that witch’s throat, which probably doesn’t even have a gag reflex, because why would it? She is every guy’s fantasy, and friend to the animals, and apparently now lesbian catnip!”

“That’s… not at all what I was pointing you toward doing,” Chidi said.

***

“Well, folks,” Tahani was saying, standing on a soapbox as her supporters and curiosity seekers dispersed. “We ran a good campaign. And I would still like to see how I do as a write-in candidate. But it seems I really must concede. I’ve lost this election. To no one. I lost to no one, who will remain in power. No one. But when you think about it, no one being in power means everyone is in power. And I can’t be expected to run against everyone, can I? That’s just not fair. Even my friend Barry, who wanted to call it Tahanicare before I demurred, couldn’t run against everyone. When you think about it, everyone would include both Republicans and Democrats, so it would be grossly unjust. The people voting against you would be voting for both George Bush and Bill Clinton. And they’d be voting for themselves, when you think about it. Which I’m not sure is allowed. Can we check if that’s allowed? Because if no one who’s everyone is allowed to vote for themselves, but some of the everyone vote for me, then that is allowed, and really, I should be getting a recount, this is absurd…”

Everyone had left her yard but Eleanor, who had just arrived. “You busy?” she asked. Usually she’d assume she wasn’t really, since nothing she was busy with could be more important than Eleanor Shellstrop, but since this was Tahani’s time of need, she took the time to ask, even though obviously Tahani wasn’t.

“Is Mitt Romney busy? Is Al Gore busy?” Tahani’s arms fell by her sides. “Is everyone who ran in that recall election besides Arnold Schwarzenegger busy?”

Eleanor congratulated herself on being right but also considerate. “Taking that as a no!” she chirped. “Listen, I am sorry you didn’t get elected. If it helps, I think it’s just because there was actually nothing for you to be elected to.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself,” Tahani sighed. “I know no one needed for there to be a President here, or wanted there to be a President, but just because people don’t want or need something doesn’t mean it can’t exist anyway! Look at the Ghostbusters reboot!”

“I didn’t,” Eleanor said sympathetically. “I saw the first trailer and it convinced me I didn’t love women enough to watch that movie. But hey, if there were an election, I would’ve voted for you. That’s why…” Eleanor reached into her jacket and drew out a small lapel pin. “I want to elect you to be Vice Eleanor.”

“Eleanor, I don’t know what to say.”

“Hey, it’s cool, you would do the same for me—“

“No, I literally do not know what to say. What’s a Vice Eleanor?”

“Welllll,” Eleanor said, “I figured since there’s all kinds of crazy things going on around here for still undetermined reasons that we’ll probably never know, I might at some point be unable to fulfill the duties of Eleanor. So, if I ever get got, you’d be in charge of important stuff like eating leftovers before they go bad.”

“And helping Michael, of course.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, I do do that, don’t I?” Eleanor pinned the lapel pin on Tahani’s lapel. It was a circle with the letters ES inscribed on it. “So, do you swear to fulfill the duties of Eleanor Shellstrop to the best of your abilities?”

“It would be my very great honor,” Tahani replied, sharing a smile with her. “But speaking of leftovers, I had prepared an exquisite array of cheeses for my victory party. Since the only thing I’ll be celebrating now is my appointment as Vice Eleanor, perhaps you could attend?”

“It’s a date,” Eleanor said automatically.

***

Eleanor barged into Chidi’s bedroom. “DO YOU EVER GET TIRED OF BEING RIGHT, MOTHERFORKER!”