Zack strides too far before he thinks to say, "No, a big one." He smirks, pencils this down in his notepad. Bum jokes are always big, people give away laughs like Hail Marys for what guilts 'em.
Zack knows laughs. Zack is the grin behind Tim 'The Grin' McMallis. Yes, yes, the same Tim McMallis who tonight will be making his first appearance on network TV in twenty-three years. McMallis used to be the king of clubs, you'll remember. But then he did a little purple-heart duty in the war on drugs, and for the past few years has been punching his way back into the spotlight, with so much old money lying around he can buy his sense of humor.
When Zack Cantor landed at LAX three years ago (there's an X-LAX joke in there somewhere) he'd expected skies of orange soda, not this blackgrey capuccino swirl. A black pigeon pogos across Zack's path. He hopes it's not an omen. The people and neighborhoods around here are permanently preened, posed, at any given moment they could be caught in the movies.
The restaurant, too, is just another set. Tuxed-up waiters glide across the floor with silver domes, patrons drip jewelry with a neverending supply of animated conversation. At the outside spread of tables, leftmost corner, Dolbry sits crosslegged under the barberpole-striped umbrella. They stick umbrellas in everything here, tables, cocktails, probably because if it ever rained everyone would melt in shock, or maybe they think it slows the fall.
Dolbry grandly rises, sunglasses hanging from the trough of his neonyellow shirt collar. He pulls back a woven iron chair. "Zacky, baby."
"Hey Dolbry." Zack raises his hand for a shake.
"Hey, hey, hey yourself. You're the big man tonight. It's like you're on TV yourself." The agent grabs Zack's forearm, swings him into his seat. "This is just what you need, Zacky. Who's not gonna book you after tonight? Nobody'll have the balls not to book you, not even those dragon ladies downtown."
"Any new bookings, though?"
"Soon, soon." Dolbry has cavernous cheekbones with stunned eyeglasses. His teeth are paved with gold. "Ohh I can look in your eyes and see you thinking of a pun. It's like a disease with you. You think in pun, Zacky baby."
"No, I'm too happy, too excited. What if-- in the strictly hypothetical sense-- McPallik screws up?"
"That's the genius of it. If he nuclear bombs, it's his career. If he rockets, you get to hold on to his toosh. And I don't have to tell you, he's got plenty of toosh."
"Yeah. You... Not everybody would give a break to a schmoe like me."
"Well, he's the one who liked you, Zacky. Yeah it's certainly nice to get in good with big men," Dolbry says. He lowers his lips to his martini, vacuums down an inch. "Imperative. Did I tell you I'm going to India next month, Zack? Without the wife?"
"That's terrific."
"Just for a New Delhi quickie. White man used to travel strange lands to convert others. These days he does it to convert himself. You know what I'm saying, Zack?"
"I hear ya. Well pick me up a new salami on rye."
"Huh?"
"At that new Delhi."
A pinprick of light rises in the bottom of Dolbry's eyes. He blinks a few times and it's just imagination. "Oh Jesus, that's my Zack. Not this early, okay?" He lifts his drink. "I've only had time for two." The agent puts his shades on. "The nice thing, my friend, about a foreign country is that any personality quirks are transformed into 'that crazy American behavior.'"
"Around here people collect quirks like baseball cards, anyway. Sometime I just feel like I got the only Pete Rose."
"What's your girl think, Zacky baby?"
"Oh, Suzannah? She knows which graves to dig for me, man. But it inspires me. I can pick up the rocks of my life and toss them out, it makes people chuckle."
"That's how it goes."
"I mean it. Talking to Suzie's like trying to pull on jeans with your sneakers on."
"Like threading a needle with your toes. Like comedy."
"Exactly, you hear me."
"I'm married, Zack. With me it's like a job, not a hobby."
"Well all I have is hobbies. You should be thankful."
"That's what India's for, Zacky, reminds me what I got."
"What you got?"
"Indigestion. I need another martini. They better have martinis in India."
McPallik bites his cigar so hard it bends as he reads. He usually picks about twenty percent of Zack's weekly crop of stuff, leaving the rest untold, forever untold. He only pays for what he uses, ten bucks or so a chuckle, and fifteen-percent of that goes to Dowlbry. "Fine, kid," McPallik utters. "I'll add this rated-G routine on. They're gonna be expecting my old crap, this'll make 'em sit up. We're gonna knock 'em dead tonight."
Zack taps his fake Rolex. "Rehearsal's when? Four hours? You'll be able to memorize it all okay?"
"Shit... nah." The comedian absently sips his Scotch, ice cubes jingling. He wouldn't be caught dead with a martini. Zack sips a Scotch, too.
"Hey, I don't get this one." The line McPallik points his cigar to is one of Zack's favorites, typed: PAPA WAS A ROLLING INVESTMENT BANKER, WHEN HE DIED ALL HE LEFT US WAS A LOAN.
"Oh, it's a parody of that song, I think it's by the Temptations, 'Papa Was a Rolling Stone.'"
"Nobody will get that."
"Really, sir? Well. Well, you know funny."
"Damned right I do."
Zack bows his head.
"You got an apartment, Cantor? Here in the city, eh?"
"A few miles down the road."
"How much's an apartment here cost?" McPallik had a modest mansion full of columns and orchards an half-hour limo drive away, somewhere in the cleavage of the hills.
Zack told the truth, "Six hundred, cheapest."
"No. You jest. That's fucking insane."
"Yeah. Especially my place. It's so small... You're supposed to say, 'How small is it...?' sir."
"Yeah how small is it?"
"So small I have to step outside if I get sexually aroused."
Tone changes. "It's like I told Carson," McPallik grunts, "listen to the jokes for the truth and the lies for the person." McPallik stares so long at Zack's face that Zack wonders if the old man just up and croaked.
McPallik continues, "They had a talk show in studio six a couple hours ago. Talking to four types of prostitutes."
"Four types?"
"Ya, you know. The five dollar Boulevard crack-whore who gets into cars and does it while her customers drive around the block. Then they had just an escort, no real sex right, for a nice two hundred bucks an hour. Then they had these professionals, one who just does the regular duty and gets five hundred bucks an hour. The last one was the freak, some fat lady who pretends she's the man and all."
Zacks waits for the punchline. "It's as crazy a profession as any other."
"Can you imagine it Zack, five hundred dollars just for a few minutes work?"
"Yeah but it's illegal. You chance jail."
"Naw. Even if you get caught, they never do nothing. That's what they were saying on this show. They can't prove anything without entrapment."
"I'm sure there are downsides."
"You can get fucked up if you listen too much to other people's kinks," he said. "Fucked up. People are sick. But if you just do whatever you do and please em fast you'll be fine. Fine."
With McPallik's horn-rimmed glasses and nose, and the track lighting shining straight down on him, a shadow of what appears to be a duck's face bobs on his paunch.
"Mmm. It's unbelievable," Zack agreed.
There is a certain range where the eye of one human focuses into the eye of another, and the action of the moment, singing, angrily talking, joketelling, is interrupted while a deeper human speaks. Zack quickly, very quickly looks away.
The old man reaches into his pocket, he pulls out a gold-clipped fold of bulls, lays a hundred dollar bill on the table. Then five more. "Six," he confirms. He rises.
Zack feels his cheek pressed against the nontexture of McPallik's silk shirt. Zack feels each of McPallik's fingers skate over his nose, eyelid, earlobe, hair. Zack feels his career in McPallik's hand. He wonders if he's supposed to give Dowlbry fifteen-percent.
Generic happiness music.
The man waddles out, waving, already pinching his juicy nose. The studio audience is a thunderstorm, plaster toothy-smiles, loving him. The first time Zack got on a stage, Denver, he tittered nervously. His words danced like a paraplegic. He couldn't move, could hardly speak. He had to finish the routine though, each damned word, while they sat there staring up straightfaced, mean, merciless. He remembers it like a loved-one's death.
McPallik squints straight into the camera, he knows who his real audience is. "Don't you hate comedians that start their bit with rhetorical questions?" A few chuckles. Too highbrow. McPallik leans forward, ready for takeoff.
"Yeah, yeah, I know I'm talking too much about hate. I know we should all love one another and get in one big wet hug and fondle and all that. Great. Yeah, great. If I did that to you kind folks they'd probably slap another harassment suit on me, and this time it wouldn't be three-piece."
The drummer hits twice, tilts his head.
"I think people are too damn obsessed with love, don't you ladies and gentlemen? It's over-rated, 'specially since mine's always rated G."
Zack's words. This McPallik's larynx forms Zack's words into vibrations which shake the audience. They shake and shake... Zack's own mouth tastes of chlorine, of drowning.
"No but really, really, oh come on. I'd like to see some real-life shows on television. None of this family togetherness crap. I want reality. Like 'I Hate Lucy.' Let's see that spick Rickie Retardo whatever his name is punch Lucy's lights out, let's see if the audience laughs at Lucy's 'Waaaaa' baby-bawl then. 'Waaaaaa, Ethel. Rickie's a wife-beater!' Or how about 'The Hating Game.' Yeah. Yeah."
The APPLAUSE sign squirts like gasoline over the kindling of hand-claps. You can pinpoint people in the audience. They're unsure how to respond, not exactly stupid. They know they're just noise, but it's mass, it's contagious, you can't be the only one to stand out. And they never fail to point at themselves and tug at their spouses when they're exposed on the monitor.
"It'd be great, ladies and gentlemen. I can see it now. The pretty young girl in her slinky dress asks questions to these three schmucks and picks the one she hates the most. Then the host hands her a Magnum, and she gets to shoot him. Instead of blowing us a kiss, they'll blow us away. 'We got a date in hell, Chuck.' BAM.
"No, but really. I love hatred. Really, that's really what I love. But I hate preaching to you more than anything else, so I'll close my yap before I grow a white collar. I just want to say how I hate you all! Yes! No, no, calm down, that was the joke, that was the only joke. You, I love. I do. So remember..." he closes one eye and touches his finger to the camera, huge, gives his trademark tagline, "shtick around."
Far behind the glass pane of the monitor Zack watches backstage, pretty girls brush off McPallick's dolphin-blue suit, fix his hair, he makes lewd faces. He's a dancing puppet, another mouth to fill; I'm the star, Zachary Cantor tells himself. Tim 'The Grin' McPallik is a half-moon. Zack stands.
"Where ya moving?" Dowlbry yanks Zack's arms.
"In my bowels. Gotta go to the bathroom."
"Hurry back, you're his boy. He might forget himself and use more of your jokes during the interview."
Zack winds through the labyrinth hallways, everybody he passes, even the whistling janitor, is excited to be there. He finds his Honda in the infinite lot and drives West onto the beach.
There's almost a glowing seam where the sea meets night, where Earth no longer wishes to show itself. As the boardwalk's restaurant lights betray the blackened surfaces of waves, Zack kicks through the sand drunkenly, carrying his joke notebook.
Two men lean against a far pier. One, a tall gangly one, tries lighting a cigarette, but the wind is in a playful mood. The man cups the flame with his hand, still no luck, finally tucks the lighter under his lapels, gets the darn roll of cancer lit. The two men walk away.
Zack scrawls in his notebook and rewards himself by lighting a cigarette of his own. The air splashes Zack in cold wet waves of its own. TAKE A LONG WALK WITH A SHORT PEER, he wrote.
A plane of light slides over the sea, so quick Zack might've imagined it. Maybe soon I'll be rescued from here and returned to my deserted island, Zack thinks. Then he gets into his Honda and speeds back to the studio.
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