One Big Joke Read online

  Lenny came back on the line and said, “I think I just crossed over into Maryland.”

  “Wow, that’s really something. Have you considered a gig on the Travel Channel?”

  He said, “Pat, I’m a mess. I really don’t know what to do right now.”

  “I think you do,” his old friend said. “I think you know exactly what to do and in fact I think you’re doing it. You should drive to Key West, spend some time with Sam and me, and figure it out from there.”

  “Jeez. Really? Well, I didn’t mean to…You really think that would be okay?”

  “No, I think it’ll suck. But what can I say? You’re in Maryland. Practically just around the corner. A measly thousand miles, give or take. Of course come stay with us awhile.”

  Gratitude choked him up and for some seconds he just drove down the mostly empty highway in silence. Then, a propos of nothing, just wanting to stay on the line with a friend, he said, “That pilot we wrote a few months ago. It was damn good. Like, six seasons good.”

  “Had possibilities,” she said mildly. She didn’t want to get worked up about it, put herself through the frustration and disappointment all over again.

  “Dog Groomer to the Stars,” Lenny murmured wistfully. Then, leaning forward in that way he had, even when on the phone in his car somewhere in Maryland, he went on. “Had possibilities? Shit, it had everything! The salon setting. Mega-diversity in the ensemble of groomers. Cute dogs. Endless opportunities for cameo appearances. And the head groomer, Alonzo—what an opportunity for a rising comedian, a fresh face. If only that charming asshole Ricky hadn’t picked that moment to go running into rehab.”

  Pat didn’t respond to that. She was trying to give at least part of her attention and sympathy to a comic who was bombing badly with a hip-hop version of a Cialis ad.

  “The weird part?” Lenny rambled on from the lonely darkness of the highway. “His leaving, the rehab thing, it was so abrupt. Like out of nowhere. He didn’t even seem that strung out to me. I mean, not compared to a lot of other guys at least. Did he to you?”

  Pat didn’t reply to that either. She didn’t reply because just then the door to her little club swung violently open and a naked man came storming in.

  The naked guy was kind of short but reasonably buff, and tan from head to toe, though the tan had an unnatural coppery-vermilion sheen to it, especially on his well-toned buttocks. He was wearing a cheap and spiky plastic wig and large round sunglasses with thick white frames.

  Taking long, low steps like Groucho Marx, he bounded up onto the stage, seized the mic from the flabbergasted comic who’d been failing with the hip-hop thing, and sang the first few words of The Star-Spangled Banner to the tune of Happy Birthday. Then he sang the first few words of Happy Birthday to the tune of The Star-Spangled Banner. Then he quietly handed the microphone back, jumped down off the stage and ran out the way he’d entered.

  There was a moment of stunned silence as the door slammed shut behind his tinted posterior. Then, uneasily at first, then more wholeheartedly, people started to laugh. They were in a comedy club, after all, and they were in Key West, and it was nearly one a.m. They thought the crazy naked guy was one more part of the show.

  At the bar, the old man named Bert shook his head, petted his dog, and said, “Christ, never seen an act quite like that before. Gimme Bob Hope any day.”

  Into the phone, Pat said to Lenny, “Look, I gotta go. Something very strange just happened.”

  “Strange, like, how?”

  “Strange, like, bizarre. Like, a naked guy running in off the street and doing a routine that lasted twenty seconds.”

  That cheered Lenny up a little. In such a serious world, how could you not treasure stuff like that? “Open-mic night,” he said. “Gotta love it.”

  “Well…yeah,” said Pat. She hesitated, seemed to be deciding against saying something then said it anyway. “But I got kind of an odd question for you. Our pal Ricky. Ever see him naked?”

  “Ricky? Naked? Of course I haven’t seen him naked. Why?”

  “Well, the guy who just streaked my club reminded me an awful lot of him. Manic like Ricky. Same size and build, except he had an orange ass.”

  “Lots of guys are manic and I have no idea what color Ricky’s ass is, but I know he can’t be naked at your club because he’s in rehab in a fancy detox joint just outside of Princeton.”

  “I know he is,” said Pat. “Or at least I think I know. And I’m sure you’re right. Must’ve been just some other random naked guy…And I guess it’s just a coincidence that he did a riff from one of our old skits.”

  “One of our skits?”

  “Look, I gotta go. Gotta do last call and then I could really use a drink myself. Drive safe. See ya when I see ya.”

  3

  A day and a half later, an unshaven and red-eyed Lenny pulled up in front of Pat and Sam’s little yellow house on Pine Street.

  He’d visited a couple times before and always loved it. Loved everything about it, really: The shady porch with the funky wicker furniture that little curls of wicker were always breaking off of; the way sunlight came in golden horizontal stripes through the shutters on the living room windows; the narrow side yard so choked with crotons and low sedges that it made even the shortest stroll seem like a trek through the jungle. Every time he’d visited Key West, he’d gone home asking himself why he didn’t get the hell out of New York and move down to a little house like that. Though he never quite succeeded in answering the question, he sort of suspected it was because living in a little house like that might make him more relaxed and maybe even happy, and contentment might dull the edge of his subversive tendencies, and apparently that scared him.

  Now he walked up the three cheerily creaking steps that led to the front door. Only the screen was closed and he could see clear through the living room and kitchen to the compact backyard with its buttonwood hedge and small turquoise patch of swimming pool. That was another thing he loved about Pat’s house—that you could look right through it, it didn’t blot out the day the way big houses or apartment buildings did; it was more like just a brief parenthesis in a long flowing sentence with spacious outdoor clauses both before and after it.

  He pressed his nose against the screen and sang out a hello. Pat came through the French doors at the back of the house and gestured him in. They fell into a hug then stood back for a good look at one another. “You look fabulous,” he told her. “Tan and fit in January. Life is so not fair.”

  “And you look like hell,” she said. “Want some lunch? Shrimp and avocado.”

  He didn’t know he was going to sigh at that, but he did, deeply. Shrimp and avocado. Out in the sunshine. In the dead of winter. As opposed to the thin soup and skinny sandwich he might have been eating in the Greek joint on Broadway with everybody sweating in the steam heat beneath their heavy clothes. Just why was he living his life the way he’d been living it? Why was he making it more unpleasant than it had to be?

  A few minutes later, sitting at a small table next to the pool, a plate of chilled pink seafood glistening in front of him, he asked how Sam was.

  “Sam’s great. Busy. On the court six, seven hours a day. Lots of lessons this time of year.”

  Between bites of crisp shrimp and satiny avocado, he said, “Ya know, sometimes it still surprises me a little.”

  Pat had had her own lunch a while before. She watched him eat. “What? You think I’m the first person who ever went on vacation and fell in love with her tennis pro?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t know you liked the game that much.”

  “I didn’t. Then I did.”

  “And I guess I never really thought you’d end up with a woman.”

  “Surprise!”

  “You happy?”

  “Very.”

  “I’m glad. I really am. But hey, remember when we used to flirt? Before Marsha? Before Sam?”

  “Of course I remember. It was fun. Sort of.”

  �
�We even necked a little bit.”

  “Yeah, I remember that too.”

  “Is that what made you go gay? Necking with me?”

  “You’re such an asshole.”

  “No, I just mean, ya know, you didn’t exactly find it thrilling.”

  “Thrilling? Not in the least. You?”

  He chased a slippery piece of avocado around his plate with a fork. “Well, that’s the funny part. I didn’t either. I felt like I should have. I thought you were beautiful and all. But did I find it thrilling? No. Sorry.”

  “I’m not. Want some mango for dessert?”

  “Mango,” he intoned, as though the word were part of some sacred chant. “Pat, you’re killin’ me here. Mango. Avocado. What’s the temperature, like eighty-two degrees? Mind if I take my shirt off?”

  “Make yourself at home,” she said, and went into the kitchen to cut up some fruit.

  By the time she returned he’d shifted his chair to get some sun directly on his shoulders.

  “Christ, you’re pale,” she said. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, I’d say maybe it’s time to renew your gym membership. Get a little tone back.”

  “Oh, thank you. Thanks a lot.” He stabbed at a chunk of mango. It slid off his fork, as mango will.

  She picked hers up with her fingers. “So I have to ask. Have you spoken to Marsha?”

  “Sure. I called last night from the road.”

  “She upset?”

  “Yeah, I guess she’s upset.” He said nothing more. Saying nothing more was very unusual for Lenny.

  “Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it…”

  That made it irresistible to go on. “I just wish I knew what the hell to say. We’ve been arguing a lot. Not the usual friendly sparring. There’s been an edge to it. And at some point I guess I got the feeling…” He paused as though a bit of mango had stuck in his throat even though he knew that the mango had slid right down. “I guess I got this deathly feeling that maybe she just doesn’t love me anymore.”

  Pat reached over and touched the back of his hand. “I doubt that, Lenny. I’ve known the two of you a long time.”

  “She doesn’t laugh at my jokes.”

  “Maybe they’re not funny.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Or maybe she’s just not in the mood to laugh. A lot of people aren’t these days. It’s one more wedge. Black and white, rich and poor, young and old. Now we’ve also got the laughers and the non-laughers.”

  “Fine. But she’s my wife and making people laugh is what I do.”

  “Right, and she’s a professor, and taking things very seriously is what they do. It’s just a different approach to feeling helpless. You know what I think, Lenny? I think giving yourself a little time away is the right thing to do. Get some perspective back. Remember how well you two balance each other. Yin and yang.”

  “Which of those is the funny one? I can’t ever remember.”

  She let that pass and came up with an abrupt segue instead. “But in the meantime, I think we need to talk about this business of Ricky possibly showing up naked at my club.”

  Lenny leaned forward to meet the change of subject and crisply volleyed it back. “Which didn’t happen. Which couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have been Ricky.”

  “Okay, it couldn’t have been Ricky. But there’s this small coincidence that needs explaining. Do you remember the day, oh, maybe a year or so ago, I was up in New York, we were working over at your place, and stuff just wasn’t coming, wasn’t building, wasn’t funny.”

  “That could’ve been a lot of days.”

  “Yeah, but this day was especially bad. Really frustrating. So we just started pissing around, trying anything. At some point you sprang out of your chair and started singing The Star-Spangled Banner and I started singing Happy Birthday, and we realized that the lyrics were exactly interchangeable.”

  “Right!” Lenny recalled, perking up at the memory. “Six syllables a line, pretty much all the way through. Oh-oh say can you see…Happy birthday to you. It was scary how well they fit together.”

  “Exactly. So you sang the anthem to the tune of the birthday song, and I sang the birthday song to the tune of the anthem, and the funny part was that after a while we both lost track of which song was which. The swapped versions just got stuck in our heads. So we started messing around with how to turn that into a routine, remember?”

  “Course I do. Like what if they did the Happy Birthday version at football games? Would anyone give a shit if they took a knee? Or what if four-year olds at a party had to sing the anthem before somebody cut the cake? Could’ve been some funny stuff.”

  “Could’ve been,” said Pat. “But remember what happened to the idea?”

  “Do I remember?” Lenny echoed, with more than a trace of bitterness. “Sure I remember. The studio shot it down. Thought it might be seen as unpatriotic. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, please, folks, lighten up. I tried like hell to sell it. Got us nowhere.”

  Pat pushed aside the last of her mango and leaned across the little table. “Do you remember who was at the meeting when that happened, Lenny?”

  “Yeah. Us. A couple other writers. The suits—”

  “And Ricky. The suits had called him in because he’d been dissing some of the sponsors, remember? He was next on the agenda.”

  “So?”

  “So Ricky knew about the song routine. Which never aired. That no one ever heard. That never got beyond that conference room. Cut to last night at the club. A naked guy about the size and build of Ricky, except with a crazy wig and giant shades, comes barging in and does basically that same routine. Coincidence? I mean, really, what are the odds?”

  Lenny said, “You really think no one else ever noticed how well those two songs go together?”

  “I have no idea what other people notice. Lots of people notice that South America sort of fits in to Africa. So what? My question is, have you ever actually heard anybody else sing the Star-Spangled Banner to the tune of Happy Birthday and vice-versa?”

  Lenny had to admit that he hadn’t, and that gave him pause. But he still resisted the slim possibility that Ricky Reed was in Key West. He didn’t want Ricky to be in Key West. He had enough troubles of his own, and he thought he should be entitled to suffer through them in peace. He’d fled to Florida because his life was falling apart. Couldn’t he at least have the satisfaction of starring in his own collapse? Couldn’t he savor his personal crisis without competition from a high-wattage and high-maintenance near-celebrity whose shenanigans would probably upstage him? Softly but stubbornly, hopefully, he said, “Pat, Ricky’s in rehab in New Jersey.”

  “Okay. Right. And how do we know that? Who’d we hear it from?”

  “From everybody. His agent. His manager. His publicist.”

  “Exactly. Three polished and well-paid liars who decide what the story should be and then stick to it.”

  “But it was in Variety. It was in The Hollywood Reporter.”

  “Who get their inside info where? I rest my case. Look, maybe he’s really in rehab. Maybe this was just a naked lookalike. But you know and I know that this whole rehab story could equally well be some kind of ruse, some kind of smokescreen.”

  “Smokescreen for what?”

  She shrugged. The shrug showed off the pretty arc of her collarbones and the bounciness of her layered haircut. “Who knows? But in the meantime I have a theory. What happens when a stranger suddenly appears naked in public?”

  “People look,” said Lenny.

  “Do they? That’s what I’m not so sure about. I mean, yeah, people take that first shocked gawk. By reflex. But I think then they get embarrassed and look away. So the nakedness has time to register but the rest of the person really doesn’t. The person’s kind of invisible.”

  “So going naked is a kind of low-budget disguise?”

  “In a way, yeah, absolutely. Who looks at the face? Then you add in the fak
e tan, the weird hair-do, the geeky glasses. It’s a pretty good incognito.”

  “Wait, hold on a minute. So now you’re saying Ricky Reed stormed into your club stark naked because he didn’t want to be recognized?”

  “I’m saying it’s a possibility.”

  “But if you don’t want to be recognized, isn’t it easier just to stay at home with your clothes on? Why would he come in at all?”

  At that she crossed her arms and tilted her head into a posture of slightly exasperated patience. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Obvious? No. Call me slow. Road-weary. Preoccupied with my own piddling problems such as going broke and leaving my wife and losing any sense of meaning or purpose in my life. So excuse me, to me none of this is obvious.”

  “He wanted to be recognized by me,” said Pat. “Me and no one else. Why else would he have done the anthem routine? He knew I’d be the only one to get it. It was a signal, a cry for help.”

  The back of Lenny’s neck was already getting sunburned and he shifted his chair a few inches before answering. “No. Nuh-uh. I’m sorry, I just don’t see where singing The Star-Spangled Banner naked is a cry for help.”

  Softly but firmly, she said, “He’s in trouble, Lenny. I feel it. He didn’t dash up onto that stage for a couple of quick, cheap laughs. He did it to reach out. To make contact. He’s afraid of something. Very afraid. You could feel it all through the room.”

  Lenny considered that. He rubbed his unshaven jaw and savored the feel of the moist and mild tropical air against his newly liberated skin. A light breeze was rattling the palms. White birds and yellow butterflies flew past. The world in that moment seemed pretty well devoid of menace. Finally he said, “Aren’t we getting a little over-dramatic here? I mean, Ricky’s a little high-strung, sure, a little flighty, but basically a nice kid with a pretty damn good future ahead of him. What the hell’s he got to be afraid of?”

  4

  In New York, at the Gatto Nero Social Club on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village, Carmine da Silva was tapping an eight-ball against the thin scuffed felt of the pool table where no one had actually shot pool in years. The cue sticks had warped, their tips knocked off-center by break-shots that were hit too hard but without precision; dried-out cubes of blue chalk, now crumbly in their paper wrappers, littered the table’s rails.