MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (16 page)

“Indeed it must!” Richards replied. His pronunciation now was quite impeccable. “To which show do you refer, old companion of the boards?”

“In fifteen minutes,”
O’Mulligan
said, “Tarzan up there goes on the air with me as his honored guest. And I intend to be there, or my name isn’t Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
.” He then bent over, picked up a spittoon, and threw it at
Merd
Johnson to attract his attention and to get him down from the chandelier.

“Good shot!” Birdwell Richards cried as the spittoon struck Mr.
Merd
Johnson on the head, causing him to lose what was left of his conscious condition and to tumble from the chandelier into one of the Oak Room’s fortunately softly upholstered couches.

“You’re just going to have to tag along, old boy,”
O’Mulligan
said. “Tarzan is out like a light, and he’s far too fat for me to manage all alone.”

“I will, of course, make any sacrifice for our beloved profession,” Birdwell Richards said. “On the other hand, bear in mind that there are limits to everything. I won’t be forced to perform, will I?”

Dragging
Merd
Johnson by his feet, his head bumping along the polished marble corridors, Mr.
O’Mulligan
and Mr. Richards made their way through the lobby to the entrance, where Mr. Johnson’s limousine and chauffeur patiently waited.

“To the studio,” Mr.
O’Mulligan
cried. “And don’t spare the horses!”

En route to the studio, Mr. Johnson regained consciousness and Mr. Birdwell Richards lost it. When they pulled up outside the studio, studio personnel rushed outside to see just who it was who had driven up on the sidewalk and was obviously seeking entrance to the sacred precincts it was their privilege to guard against the riffraff.

Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
emerged from the car, stood weaving on the sidewalk, and then cocked his handsome head to one side.

“Hark,” he declaimed. “A lark!”

“A what?” Mr. Johnson inquired.

“A lark, you moron, a lark!” He reached inside the limousine and pulled Birdwell Richards out and stood him on his feet. “Straighten up, Birdwell,” he said. “And pay attention!”

Having seen the limousine arrive, Dirty
Gerty
Rumplemayer
had been fully prepared, as she thought of it, to put it in high gear.

“I’ll take you home, again, Kathleen!” she wailed, putting her all in it.

“Hark, Birdwell,”
O’Mulligan
repeated, his voice on the edge of breaking up. “A lark.” A tear ran down his leonine cheeks. “My mother’s name was Kathleen,” he said. “God rest her soul!”

A tear ran down Birdwell Richards’ face, too. “I once knew a Kathleen,” he said. “A delightful female. Second hoofer from the right, third row, in the
Folies
Bergeres
.” Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
walked unsteadily over to where Dirty
Gerty
was singing.

“How would you like to perform for us, my little Irish nightingale?” he inquired.

Some time before, as a result of having business propositions made so often to her by the gentlemen exiting the black marble-sheathed building, Dirty
Gerty
had given the matter some deep thought. She had finally decided that she would be amenable to a proposition providing the offer made was (a) large enough moneywise and (b) that the
offerer
appealed to
offeree
. Condition (b) was obviously met, and then some, by Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
. He was, after all, one of the world’s most handsome men, and Dirty
Gerty’s
heart was all aflutter just being this close to him. That left condition (a).

“What’s in it for me?” she asked.

“
Remunerationwise
, you mean, my wild Irish lark?”

“Money is what I mean, handsome,” Dirty
Gerty
replied.

“Birdwell,”
O’Mulligan
ordered, “see how much money Tarzan has with him.”

Birdwell went through
Merd
Johnson’s pockets and came up with a sheath of bills.

He gave them to
O’Mulligan
, who extended them to Dirty
Gerty
. “I trust this will be sufficient, my little angel?” he asked.

“What do I have to do, and who to?” Dirty
Gerty
said, snatching the money from his hand and stuffing it into her upper undergarment.

Birdwell Richards, whose little nap on the way from the Plaza to the studio had restored at least part of his faculties, now made his contribution.

“Certainly, my dear fellow, you’re not going to give this
physiognomously
fantastic female with the
sepsinously
strident voice all that money?”

“You’re drunk, Birdwell,”
O’Mulligan
replied. “That’s the trouble with you Welsh. One or two lousy quarts and you’re blotto! Of course I am. She’s going to sing for us on Tarzan’s talk show. What did you say your name was, you lilting Irish lassie?”

“Sing
for us?” Birdwell Richards said. “I suppose that would be the lesser of the two evils.”

Dirty
Gerty
Rumplemayer
, whose formal education had ended the day Daddy Dear had carried her and three of the neighbor lady’s cats to Central Park, did not know what “
physiognomously
fantastic” meant and hadn’t the foggiest idea what “
sepsinously
* strident” implied, but she liked the sound of the latter.

(*
Sepsin
: n. A ptomaine causing septic poison; hence, adj.
sepsi
-
nously
= poisonously.)

“
Strydent
,” she said. “Whatever-he-said
Strydent
.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Didn’t you remember what you said?” Dirty
Gerty
demanded of Birdwell Richards.

“
Scher-tainly
, I remember,” Birdwell replied. “You’re not accusing me of being drunk, are you?”

“My name,” Dirty
Gerty
Rumplemayer
said, “is
Shur
-lee
Strydent
!”

“Now that that’s settled,”
O’Mulligan
said, “come along! The show must go on!”

Shur
-lee
Strydent’s
career might have died, as they say,
aborning
, right there had not Mr.
Merd
Johnson insisted, when signing his renewal contract, that he be provided with a key to the executive elevator, for certainly the staunch security force would not have allowed them on one of the other elevators.

But he had the key, and they rose to the fortieth floor of the building, emerging backstage on the set of the “
Merd
Johnson and His Guests” show. Somewhat confused as to the time (he had both dozed awhile on the chandelier and then been unconscious for about fifteen minutes after being struck on the head with the spittoon), he somehow got the idea that he had arrived just in time before the program went on the air. It had, in fact, been on the air, and thus into 12,098,677 homes nationwide and in Canada, for about ten minutes.

A commercial had just ended, and Don
Rhotten
, in his familiar dulcet tones, was in the process of introducing the
next act, Madame Hermione and Her Delightful Dobermans, when
Merd
Johnson sort of lurched out on the stage.

“What the hell’s going on here?” he said. (An alert technician in the control room skillfully bleeped out the “hell,” so what the audience heard was “What the bleep’s going on here?” They were thus free to choose any adjective from “heck” down in the scatological lexicon.)

“Why, hello there,
Merd
,” Don
Rhotten
said. “We didn’t think you were going to make it.”

“What the bleep are you talking about, mush mouth? And who the bleep turned you loose from the bleeping newsroom?”

There is a standard emergency procedure for situations like this. A tape recording of laughter is kept in readiness. When emergency button number one is pushed, the folks out there in TV land are provided with gales of hysterical laughter, cleverly letting them know that what has happened is not only on the schedule, but fantastically funny, even if they themselves are not quite bright enough to get the point.

When
Merd
Johnson heard the hysterical laughter, it began to dawn on him that something was amiss. He looked out over the footlights and saw the audience. At that point one of Madame Hermione’s Delightful Dobermans mistook his trousers leg for a fire hydrant, a sight which genuinely and without subterfuge delighted the audience. They began to laugh and shriek, nearly as loudly as the tape of canned laughter.

Merd
Johnson looked down at his leg.

“Get those bleeping dogs off my set!” he screamed. He grabbed the microphone from Don
Rhotten
, and, swinging it wildly around his head, chased Mr.
Rhotten
from the stage. “I’ll kill you, you show-stealing bleep!”

At that point, Happy Hal Harrington, his commercial reader, foil, and professional Irishman sensed that something was wrong. He turned his normally dour and saturnine looks into the look of jolly merriment that was his stock in trade and took the microphone away from
Merd
.

Finally appearing to get control of his laughter, he said, “Well, old pal, what have you got for us tonight?”

Merd
Johnson had regained some control of himself by then.

“Hi there, Happy Hal,” he said. “That was certainly
fun, wasn’t it? How about a big round of applause for my dear, dear friend, America’s most beloved young television news anchorperson, Don
Rhotten
?”

“That’s pronounced Row-ten,
Merd
,” Happy Hal corrected him.

“Not by me it isn’t,”
Merd
Johnson said.

“Tell us all about this superstar-status surprise guest you’ve promised the folks,
Merd
,” Happy Hal said.

“Oh, sure,”
Merd
said, looking just a little confused. “The superstar-status surprise guest. Ladies and gentlemen
…”
he began but he got no further.

Dirty
Gerty
Rumplemayer
marched up to the microphone, sent Happy Hal and
Merd
flying with deft movements of her well-upholstered hips, and blew a kiss at the audience.

“Hi, there,” she cooed. “I’m
Shur
-lee
Strydent
and I’m here to make you adore me!” It had come to her, in something akin to divine revelation, that this was what she had been waiting for all her life—the chance to be adored.