Funnymen (77 page)

He's heading for the door now and all of a sudden he's thrown to the floor. This cat is on top of him and tearing his pants down. “He was biting my neck like it was a medium rare porterhouse,” Ziggy said. “And he was trying to slip his
shlong
into my heinie.” But, see, Ziggy was one strong motherfucker. Still. So he throws this creep off his back and he opens the door. But he ain't outta the woods just yet, uh-uh. There's these two junkie slimeballs in leather jackets—maybe they were the hooker's pimps, who knows?—and they start punching and kicking Ziggy, they're kicking him in the stomach and the balls and they break a few ribs. Then they do that Richard Widmark thing, in
Kiss of Death:
They toss Ziggy right down the stairs. He's unconscious and a few hours later some cop finds him and takes him to the hospital.

“They gave me antibiotics and patched me up,” he told me. “I had a few teeth knocked out too. I could hardly walk, every bone in me ached.
Pernilla flew over. She brought over two fresh rugs for me. One day I'm in the hospital room and the doctor comes in, asks how I feel. I say, ‘Doc, I'm havin' trouble gettin' motivated. I got no get-up-and-go.' And this doctor, the spittin' image of Max Von Sydow, says, ‘Pep pills? You want pep pills?' and writes me out a few prescriptions and leaves the room. I look at these prescriptions and I look up and the ceiling and the walls are closin' in on me quick. And I yelled—I yelled so loud, Snuffy, that it cracked the mirror in the room, just like Flo singin'—I yelled out these three words: ‘I HATE MYSELF!'”

Rock fucking bottom, man. Everybody gets there one way or another.

JOHN TIMMONS [orderly]:
Well, I don't work there no more. They can't fire me. I wouldn't have told you nothin' three years ago—they'd have fired me. Can't do that now. Don't work there no more.

Vic Fountain, he checked in first. Had some little Chinese man drive him up in a limousine. This driver started getting Vic's bags from the trunk and I said to him, “Oh no, Vic's got to do everything by himself here and that starts right now.”

Vic was always tryin' to bribe us. The orderlies, the doctors and counselors. Offered me a thousand bucks just to sneak him in some Genoa salami once, offered me a Mercedes-Benz to let him walk out, said something about showgirls in Vegas. I always pretended like he was gonna get to me if he kept upping the offer, but after a while he realized he wasn't gettin' anywhere.

He wouldn't do nothing at first. Wouldn't make his bed, wouldn't clean his bathroom. Wanted his own room. They had him in a room with some twenty-three-year-old kid addicted to heroin. Nobody in Hope Springs has their own room . . . the queen of motherfuckin' France was to be in there, she'd be rooming with some dope addict. Vic didn't like the pajamas, he wanted his own satin ones flown in. Too damn bad. He had KP duty one week; didn't want to do it. Shit, it turned out he'd never cleaned a goddamn dish in his whole goddamn life. Didn't wanna take out the garbage. Well, I got in his face about that. I got in real close and real loud and I let his ass have it. I tell him if he don't take out the goddamn motherfuckin' garbage he'll
wear
the goddamn motherfuckin' garbage and you know what he did? Started to cry. Shit. Seventy-year-old man and he's on his bed and he's cryin' like I just took his goddamn yo-yo away from him. When he was doing that I noticed a picture on his night table—at the clinic that was the only thing you was allowed to have. No books, no radio, no TV. I said to Vic, “Who's that?” He said, “My son.” “He a singer like you?” I asked him. “Nah,” he said, “he was in a rock band. And he's dead.” “You think he'd be proud of his old pops cryin' in his bed?” I asked him.

Well, he wound up takin' the garbage out, and makin' his bed and cleaning plates.

Two weeks after Vic Fountain checked in, who the hell shows up at that rehab clinic but Ziggy Bliss? Now that's some serious fate for you. The director of the place said to me the day before Ziggy come in, he say, “Big John, we might have a little problem here,” and he explains to me about Vic Fountain and Ziggy Bliss. I tell him I don't care about all that Hollywood shit. I don't care if you had Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine or the Hatfields and the McCoys in there at the same goddamn time.

You should have seen Ziggy Bliss when we took his wig away from him. Heh heh! “They didn't tell me you'd do this here,” he's cryin' to me, and I yell at him and say, “This ain't nothin', Izzy!” I called him Izzy, Iggy, and Squiggy just to get on his ass. He's grabbin' onto his wig like it's his whole life I'm pullin' away from him. Three other orderlies come by and jump on him and he was a strong little man, but we got that big Brillo pad offa him. He looked just like an old bloodhound dog without that wig. Hell, when we asked for Vic's wig, when
he
checked in, he wasn't too happy either. But we got it. He said, “Must I?” and I said, “You must.” And he handed it over. Looked like a dead raccoon in my hands. A dead
blue
raccoon. He was embarrassed without it, wouldn't show himself for a few days.

I saw them in the dining hall, Ziggy's second day there. Vic was sitting with his young roommate, working on his London broil. Then he sees Ziggy on the buffet line all alone with his tray. Nobody'd told Vic that Ziggy was comin'—he didn't have any idea. You should've seen Vic's face, man . . . thought he was having the DTs all over again. Know what Vic done? Got up in the middle of his meal and went back to his room and didn't show his face again until the next morning when we caught him trying to escape his ass.

“You gotta let me outta here, Timmons,” he said to me.

“I don't have to do shit,” I said to him. “Except force you to clean your bathroom.”

“Look, forget the Mercedes. I'll make it a Bentley.”

“You will? A Bentley? Really, my brother?”

“Yeah. I swear.”

“I still don't have to do shit. Clean your bathroom. Now!”

He and Ziggy ran into each other that day, in the Sunset Lounge. They had Ziggy on medication, to take him off all them pills he was taking. He didn't look any more like the Ziggy I'd seen on the TV than I did. He just looked like a little bent-over bald Jewish man to me. All them freckles he had? They'd all faded and his skin looked like rust. But now in the lounge he was like a zombie. That's what Hope Springs did if you was hooked on pills: They took you off what you was on, put you on something else, then
slowly took you off that, then kicked your ass outside into the real world. And it usually worked.

Ziggy saw Vic settin' there playing cards with someone and he didn't believe his own eyes. Thought he was hallucinating. He was doin' that “Thorazine shuffle” dance, taking two-inch steps and teetering back and forth . . . but when he saw Vic he come to a complete stop. Tilted his head like a dog listening to a police siren. Then he just shuffles on.

I checked up on him that night. He was lyin' in bed on his back, like a dead man, his hands folded over his chest. I said, “You all right?” He said, “I'm alive.” He asked me if that was really Vic Fountain he'd seen, and I told him it was. I asked him, “Who are they?” and he turned to the picture on his night table and said, “They were my parents. And that's my wife.”

“Whoa, she look like that girl in the old towel commercial.”

“Yeah. That's her.”

I was looking at him looking at her and he said, “I let her down. I let everyone I've ever known down.”

The next night Vic didn't even go to dinner 'cause he didn't want to see Ziggy. You know what he done? He had that roommate of his sneak him his London broil dinner, into the room. With the au jus. I told Vic's counselor about that right away and he say to me, “Big John, next time that happens, you drag Vic by his neck into the dining hall and you set his ass right beside Ziggy Bliss's.” I looked forward to doing that and, sure enough, the next night I got my chance.

Me and another orderly carried Vic kickin' and screamin' into the dining-room and we threw him right next to Ziggy. Ziggy was still all zombied out—he had his tray but there wasn't no food on the thing. Ziggy looked at Vic, still thought he was seein' things. Two old bald men who've known each other fifty goddamn years. Vic said to him, “Try the London broil. Heavy on the ‘oh juice.' And the strawberry Jell-O.” And Ziggy Thorazine-shuffled over and got some London broil and extra au jus and some Jell-O and sat right back next to Vic Fountain.

“Strawberry Jell-O,” Ziggy said to Vic. (Sounded like a croaking, dying frog. That's what all the medication did.) “You thinkin' the same thing that I'm thinkin'?”

“Goofin' off on fat Kate Smith's show?” Vic said. “Hell yeah.”

For the next few weeks, until Vic checked out, they was together quite often. I'd see 'em playing cards in the Sunset Lounge. That lounge had a great view, man. Real sunny. Big picture window lookin' out into the desert and the mountains on the horizon and the sun and blue sky. That's what I miss most about that place, that view. That's about the
only
thing I miss. And here they were every day, right near that window, the sun streaming in right on 'em, them just playin' pinochle and gin rummy or talkin' or fuckin' around.
They'd play some jokes on some of the other people and we sometimes had to put a stop to it. One day I caught the two of 'em trying to hustle another patient at pool. We had to stop that. No gambling. There was an exercise room too; the clinic was big on that. I seen the two of 'em on treadmills together once. They wasn't doin' much work on them treadmills, you can take my word for it. Had 'em in neutral or some shit like that. I said to 'em, “Man, these treadmills ain't but hummin'. Why not try moving a little?” I turned the thing up just a little and they got all sweaty and started farting and so I turned 'em back down again quick. Another time I saw Ziggy holdin' a punching bag while Vic took a few hits on it. Vic punchin' that bag in the shape he was in, he wasn't gonna beat up a gnat. But they were funny: Vic would punch the bag and Ziggy, who was holding it, would pretend that he was the one got hit. I know I seen that in one of the lousy movies they did.

Both of 'em cleaned up. Did the therapy. Spoke to the doctors, to the other patients. Did what had to be done. Vic got real close to that junkie roommate he had, that young kid. The kid left before Vic did and I saw the two of 'em huggin' when the car come to take the kid away.

“Man, you was ready to have that kid deported when you first checked in,” I reminded him.

“I was?”

“You don't even remember that, do you?”

“I was all screwy, Timmons,” he said. Said somethin' 'bout ants crawling-over him and eatin' him. Then he looked at the car taking the kid away and said, “He's a good kid. A good kid. I hope he's okay.”

“Did he know who you are?”

“He's got no idea who Vic Fountain is. He thought I was just some old lush. And he was right.”

Few days later, I was playing gin with Vic and he asked me how long I'd been working there. I tell him twenty-five years. He asked me if I remembered a woman name Ginger with long legs who'd once busted out. Tall and strawberry blond. Well, I did. But I didn't tell him I did. Didn't want to upset him. “You sure?” he asked me. And I told him I was.

His doctor told me, just two days before Vic was gonna be released, that Vic's mother had died. But they wasn't gonna tell Vic while he was inside; his ex-wife or someone like that was gonna tell him when he got out. So for two days every time I saw him I was thinkin': This man's moms is dead and he don't even know it.

The limousine come to take Vic away on a Sunday. The Chinese driver pulls in and I had to go get Vic from the Sunset Lounge. What a view. That sun was so bright and big it made the mountains look gold and violet and like they was movin'. I seen Vic, he had his little bag all packed right next to him. The night table picture of his son was in his hands. I said to him, “Your
ride's here.” He stood up, Ziggy stood up, and they hugged for a few seconds.

Vic checked out at the front desk. Got all his personal effects back. He say to me, “Hey, Timmons, all that dough and the broads I offered you? Well, you can forget about it.”

“A thousand dollars for some salami?” I said to him. “Shit.”

“Well, it'll only cost me five bucks now. Your loss. Okay, see ya.”

“You forgot this, Vic.”

I held out my hand and he took the dead blue raccoon from me and he set it on his head. Had it lopsided, the wrong way and crooked, and I straightened it out for him. When I did that I seen him gulp hard, all choked up, like he just swallowed a baseball. I told him, “Okay, man, better get goin'. Now.” And he walked out the place.