One Big Joke Read online

  Pat bit her lip. The thought of doing business with Ted Clifton was extremely distasteful, and the thought of asking him for a favor was even more so. Still, the notion of an endless stream of customers being delivered right to the door…Quietly, she said, “If you wanted to, you could do that anyway. Re-route the train, I mean. I’d pay you a cut.”

  He smiled at that and gave a flick to the tied arms of his sweater. “Everybody pays me. That’s understood. But why would I do that when I want the place for myself?”

  Abashed, feeling soiled that she’d even tentatively offered to pow-wow with this bully, Pat didn’t bother masking her sarcasm. “Ah, I just thought that since you rooted so sincerely for my success—”

  “Did I say that?” Clifton interrupted, as he started backing almost daintily off his barstool. “I don’t think I ever said I was hoping you’d succeed. I just said it was a shame you’re failing.”

  Standing now, he drained his drink and dropped a twenty on the bar. Pat looked at it as if it had birdshit on it, then used a fingernail to push it back toward him. “On the house,” she said.

  He smiled sourly. “Ah, the grand gesture. Just the kind of thing you can’t afford.”

  He tried waiting her out. They both looked at the money. She didn’t reach for it. Finally he picked up the bill and stuffed it into the pocket of his expensive but rumpled pants. “Stubborn,” he said, with a twist of his very pink neck. “Extremely stubborn.”

  12

  When Carla, still glowing from the sheer and simple fun of her tennis lesson, got back to her room at the Harbor Inn, she found Ricky jumping up and down on the bed, playing air guitar. He was wearing a loosely belted hotel bathrobe that he’d sultrily shrugged off one shoulder and he had a washcloth on his head in place of a do-rag. Gyrating, twanging at strings that weren’t there, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that he felt his whole scalp move, he welcomed her home with some raspy improvised rap.

  “Honey, I got this pow’ful craving.

  Felt it first while I was shaving.

  Swelled up right there in the shower,

  Been jonesin’ bad for a long, tough hour.

  Devil tempted me to reach for pills,

  Angel said No, man, wait for thrills.

  Uppers, downers, they’re a hex.

  Fuck that rehab, heal with sex.

  So don’t deny me, be my nurse,

  Lose that upper-downer curse.

  Love me morning, noon, and night,

  Chase the demons, make me right.”

  She put down her racquet and the big pink purse with the patent leather straps, and looked up at him standing on the bed, flushed but very still now in the twisted and tormented robe. His eyes had fallen open; the look in them was boyish, almost shy.

  She said, “Now?”

  He took the washcloth off his head, dropped the rasp and the hip-hop cadence, and spoke in his own real voice, a voice he didn’t use as often as he might have. “Yeah, now,” he said. “Please? I really need to have your arms around me. Please?”

  

  Later, over a room service dinner of conch fritters and steamed lobster, Carla said to him, “Ricky, this hiding out, this paranoia, are we maybe taking it a little bit too far?”

  “Paranoia?” he answered. “Paranoia is like when you imagine that tiny people are putting bombs in your cereal to blow up your teeth. I don’t think it’s paranoia when someone with a grudge comes right out and says he’s gonna rip your heart out. When he hands a dead fish to your doorman.”

  “Okay, bad choice of words.” She’d been nibbling a conch fritter. The outside of it was very crispy and left behind a few delicious crumbs in the striations of her lips. She dabbed them daintily away. “So it isn’t paranoia. But Carmine’s fifteen hundred miles away. Don’t you think it’s safe to go out of the hotel, at least? I mean, without being naked and wearing a fright wig and glasses that Elton John might’ve had in 1982?”

  “There was a reason for that,” he said. “I was reaching out to my old friend Pat. She’s smart. Maybe she could help me out somehow.”

  “Fine, I get it. But I’ve kind of been wondering: You couldn’t call her on the phone?”

  Somewhat sheepishly, he said, “I guess I could have. Yeah. But where’s the impact in that? I wanted it to have some impact. Besides, I was a little hopped up and it was fun.”

  “Fun,” she echoed, sipping some wine. “And don’tcha think it might be fun to see some daylight now and then? Go to the beach? Do some sightseeing? You know, leave our little love nest long enough for them to change the sheets?”

  He dipped a chunk of lobster into butter sauce before he answered. “And what if I get recognized?”

  The question put Carla in an uncomfortable position because it raised the issue of just how famous Ricky was, as opposed to how famous he liked to think he was. Was Ricky Reed a household name? No. Had he been the star of anything big? No, not so far. Did paparazzi follow him around? Absolutely not. This relative obscurity might save his life, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be reminded of it. He was a performer, after all; he had his vanity.

  So Carla kept a tactful silence, but Ricky must have picked up on something skeptical in her expression, because he pointed at her with his little lobster fork and said, “It would just take one, you know. One fan sees me, throws a photo onto Instagram. Carmine sees it, he knows where I am, boom, I got all kinds of trouble.”

  “Carmine’s not exactly a social media kind of guy,” said his former girlfriend. “I mean, what’s he gonna post? Here I am in Little Italy. I’m eating meatballs. Can you even imagine him tapping out a post with those gigantic thumbs?”

  “I don’t really need to hear about your old flame’s gigantic thumbs or any of his other digits either. But okay. Tell you what—tomorrow we’ll go out. We’ll do something. Anything you like. Just think about it, what you’d like to do.”

  “I already know what I’d like to do,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it all evening.”

  “All evening?”

  “Well, not when we were making love.” This was a slight but necessary fib. “All evening except for that.”

  “And what is it that you’d like to do?”

  “I’d like us to go together to that funny little park and hit some tennis balls.”

  13

  It was around midnight when Peppers and Carmine crossed the St. Marys River and entered Florida, and the big man behind the wheel started grousing at once about the state.

  “Shit,” he said, “it ain’t even warm here. Dashboard thing says forty-four.”

  “Wasn’t warm two minutes ago in Georgia either,” Peppers pointed out. “Ya think they throw a switch?”

  “Bein’ hot,” said Carmine, “that’s like the one thing the fuckin’ place has goin’ for it, and even that turns out to be bullshit.”

  “The hot part,” Peppers pointed out, “that’s like five hundred miles from here.”

  “Five hundred miles? The fuckin’ state goes on five hundred miles?”

  “Long state. Plus then ya got the Keys.”

  They drove in silence for a while. Carmine scanned the road ahead and the marshes off to either side and shook his head like everything he saw was a personal affront. “Christ, it’s flat.”

  “And what’s New York, the fuckin’ Alps?”

  “New York don’t feel flat. There’s buildings. Ya got, whaddyacallit, shapes. There’s some, I dunno, up and down. Here there’s nothing but fuckin’ sideways. Five hundred miles of fuckin’ sideways.”

  Peppers saw no point in arguing. He looked out the window.

  A few miles later he said, “Here’s somethin’ that might cheer you up a little bit. Know the first thing we’re gonna do when we hit Key West?”

  “Yeah. Get a hotel room, take a dump, and get some fuckin’ sleep.”

  “And first thing after that?” his buddy soldiered on. “We’re gonna have a drink with a living legend. Ever hear of
a guy named Bert the Shirt?”

  “Not really.”

  “Whaddya mean, not really? Either ya heard of someone or ya didn’t. Anyway, this Bert d’Ambrosia used to be consigliere to the Peretti family. Tough bastard when he had to be, but more known as a peacemaker. Got people to talk to each other, work things out. Was really helpful to Fat Lou when Lou was coming up. Lou admits it. Says Bert was kind of a mentor to him.”

  “Mentor?” Carmine said. “So that means he’s even older than Lou? Christ, what are we, the Mafia or a fuckin’ nursing home?”

  “Negative, negative, you’re always negative,” said Peppers. “So happens the guy sounded very sharp on the phone. And however old he is, he must have at least a little juice left in him, ‘cause he asked us to meet him nine o’clock tomorrow night at a strip club.”

  “Strip club?” Carmine said, and for the first time since the Holland Tunnel, he came close, though not that close, to smiling.

  “That sounds a little better, right?” said Peppers. “See some skin, catch a little lap dance action maybe?”

  It sounded damn good in the midst of the long and boring drive, but Carmine wasn’t willing to come right out and admit it. “Strippers are prob’ly, like, ninety. Prob’ly need walkers to get over to the pole. Prob’ly give one last twerk and keel over.”

  “All right, stay negative,” Peppers said with a shrug, and decided he’d just go back to looking out the window.

  They were already skirting Jacksonville by the time he spoke again. “Least I think it’s a strip club,” he resumed. “I mean, it must be. Name like that, what else could it be? Titters. Gotta be a strip club, right?”

  

  Pat was wiping down tables with an evil-smelling solution of ammonia and vinegar. Lenny was mopping the floor with a bad mop whose strands kept catching in the gaps between the floorboards. Mopping wasn’t something he was good at, and he felt that he was mainly just chasing hair-balls from one corner to another. It was one-thirty in the morning.

  “Ah, show business,” he said, bending low to pick up a recalcitrant glob of oily dust. “The glitz. The glamour.”

  “That’s what people think, right?” said Pat. “Think it’s all red carpets, klieg lights, and appearances on Late Night. No one thinks about who stacks the chairs.”

  “Ever think of quitting?”

  “Sure. Every night around this time. Doesn’t everybody think of quitting when they’re tired?”

  She wiped down another table. Lenny chased hair balls some more. By way of consolation, he said, “Well, there were some funny bits tonight. Like that guy with the parrot on his shoulder. Except there wasn’t any parrot. He just made you believe there was. The way he looked at it, talked to it. The whole audience started seeing this non-existent bird.”

  Wearily, Pat said, “And I guess that’s why I’m still doing this. So an audience can laugh at a bird that isn’t there. I mean, that could only happen live, right? It’s just different from someone chuckling over a book or laughing at TV. Strangers laughing together at something right in front of them. It’s just different.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Pat threw down her rag, stood up tall, and arched her back. “And I happen to believe there’s value in it.”

  Lenny said, “Who’s arguing?”

  “Guess I’m arguing with myself.” She shrugged and pumped some more ammonia spray. “A guy came in today. Wants to buy out my lease. If he wasn’t such a creep and bully I’d be half-tempted.”

  Lenny said nothing. He wasn’t doing such a fabulous job of running his own life; he didn’t feel like he should say much about how friends ran theirs.

  His silence didn’t matter. Pat, tired as she was, now brought a certain fury to the wiping of the tables. “But fuck it,” she went on, “I won’t do it. Look, there’s fifty, sixty places in this town that have live entertainment. As in music. How many feature live comedy? One. This one. I cave, what happens to the make-believe parrot?”

  “He’s toast,” said Lenny. “But don’t worry, you won’t cave.”

  “You sound pretty sure of that.”

  “I am. I’ve known you a long time.” He leaned on the mop and continued chasing dust into the corners of the room.

  14

  Lenny formed habits easily. The next day, he again had an afternoon nap and when he woke up it just felt like it was time to head to the park and look for some tennis. He pulled on the borrowed shorts, grabbed Pat’s racquet that had already gotten to feel familiar in his hand, and headed down the same shady streets as on the day before toward Bayview.

  But he hadn’t yet reached that stage of habit when even the things one looks at have become habitual, so he noticed different things this time. Window-shutters, for example. It was amazing the way window-shutters defined the personalities of Key West houses. They came in colors like gelato. Lemon-lime, raspberry, blueberry, pistachio. Some were plumb and almost too tidy, others sagged and slouched as if in surrender to the torpor of the almost-tropics. Some made grand statements with little heart shapes cut into the wood, or silhouettes of pineapples, the emblem of hospitality. He also noticed how the shifting patterns of dappled sun and shade seemed to leave a kind of stencil on his skin; where sunshine landed even for a moment, a prickle of delicious heat was felt. He was at that stage of gratitude and wonder—generally it lasted a week or so—when visitors didn’t yet take the sunshine and the warmth for granted. He was still surprised not to be cold in January.

  At the courts, many of the same knuckleheads were playing in various configurations. Lenny took a seat in the bleachers and waited for an opening in a foursome. While he was waiting, he noticed, three courts away, the pretty, chatty woman who’d taken her very first lesson the day before. Today she was hitting with a partner. Or trying to. The partner was about as bad as she was.

  He was an average-size guy with heavily tattooed arms, a thick black beard that carpeted his face all the way to the cheekbones, and a long-billed baseball cap pulled low across his eyes. He seemed to like hitting the ball really hard and a lot of his shots pinged off the fence. When that happened, the tall brunette would laugh; the partner would put his hands on his hips in mock disgust, then he’d laugh too.

  Finally he launched one clear out of the enclosure. It rolled almost to the softball field beyond. Lenny got up from the bleachers and went to retrieve it for them. He brought it close to the fence so he could toss it over, then, from behind the windscreen said, “Hey Carla, here you go.”

  She looked up and squinted through the mesh of the screen. “Oh, hi. Lenny, right? Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re welcome. Glad you found someone to hit with.”

  Carla hesitated. She didn’t know much about the etiquette of tennis courts but she figured if Lenny had been nice enough to fetch the ball for them, then she should at least introduce her partner. She said, “Oh, yeah, this is my boyfriend, um, Tom. Tom.”

  “Hi, Tom-Tom,” Lenny shouted out. From the tattooed man’s perspective, the other was just a shape behind the screen.

  “Hi-hi,” he answered.

  That was the whole exchange. The partner’s eyes had never lifted beyond the shadow of the cap. The two brief syllables had issued forth from a mere hole in the beard. Even so, there was a vague something in the fleeting contact that nagged at Lenny, something faintly familiar but unplaceable. Something in the fellow’s posture? The timbre of his voice? It was probably nothing, just a symptom of being in a strange town where everyone vaguely reminded him of someone else. He went back to the bleachers.

  A couple of minutes later it was Carla’s turn to hit a homer. Hers landed on US 1, where it was deflected by a passing rent-a-car that sent it rolling just to the edge of a sewer grate. Dutifully, Lenny went to grab it.

  From the street side of the fence he called out, “Hey Tom-Tom, here you go.”

  “Thanks-thanks,” the other man said. They were standing a mere three feet apart by then, the windscreen between
them blurring but not opaque.

  Lenny said, “Sorry, but I keep feeling like I know you from somewhere.”

  That seemed to make the partner nervous. He tugged his cap still lower and spoke into his chin. “No-no. I don’t think so.”

  “New York maybe?”

  “Never been there. Never.”

  “Okay-okay. My mistake.” He started to walk back toward the park entrance.

  Carla’s partner waited till he’d moved away a step or two, then bent low to sneak a look at him from underneath the level of the windscreen. He hesitated a heartbeat more before bounding close and pressing his shoulder against the fence. “Hey, wait a second,” he said in a hissing whisper. “Holy crap. Lenny? Lenny Sullivan? What the fuck you doing here?”

  “Ricky? Ricky Reed? What the fuck you doing here? You’re supposed to be in rehab.”

  “I am. Kind of.”

  “What’s with the tats?”

  “Stick-ons.”

  “And the beard?”

  “Ditto. Basic little disguises. I brought along a suitcase-full. Been feeling kind of paranoid.”

  “So the naked bit at the club the other night. That was really you?”

  “Who else could it have been? I killed, right?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But you still haven’t told me why the hell you’re in Key West.”

  Ricky got a little cagey then. “You haven’t told me either.”

  At that, Lenny quickly crossed over from curiosity to exasperation, and from exasperation to a blame he hadn’t quite let himself admit before. “Why am I here? Okay, I’ll tell you why I’m here. I’m here because I walked out on my wife because we couldn’t stop arguing, and it’s partly your fault.”

  “My fault? Wha’d I do?”

  “You screwed us. You bolted on our pilot, which left me without a job or any prospects, which made me kind of mopey and pathetic, which made my wife start picking on me, which made me really touchy and defensive until I bailed, and now it turns out that your whole story was bullshit, you’re not in rehab, you’re streaking clubs and wearing lame disguises and dicking around on a tennis court like some crazy, selfish—”