The Bones (30 page)

"Are you sure now is the best time to go on tour?" Naomi Glass is not entirely certain Frank has achieved the level of psychological
stability necessary to sustain two weeks on the road.

"I have to spread laughter and cheer."

"Frank . . ."

"There are a few things I need to say before I shuffle off this mortal coil."

"Do you feel your death is imminent?"

"My work here is done. How can I be a legend if I don't die young?"

As a means of coping with the difficult reality of not having achieved his professional goals, Frank has recently begun to
focus on the van Goghs and the Melvilles, the non-show-business artistic giants recently referenced by Robert, men who died
in penury, unappreciated in their own lives yet lionized by subsequent generations, legendary in death; at this point, an
option that is once again sounding pretty good. He jokes about his own death, predicting future fans of comedy will be perceptive
enough to assure his rightful place in the starry heavens. As long as he seems to be joking, the comedy impulse is alive and
Naomi Glass believes him to be getting better.

He leaves the office in Westwood and tells her he will see her when he returns.

Chapter 13

It's an early-November afternoon and Frank sits on a Southwest Airlines jet to Phoenix next to Milo Baylis, his temporary
babysitter. Milo is a twentysomething employee of Nada whose jurisdiction is normally the mailroom. This week Robert has assigned
him the task of helping Frank stay clean and sober during his time on the road. In Phoenix they will change planes and get
on a flight to Tulsa, where Frank has been booked to play two nights in a place called Club Louie.

Since they met at LAX, Milo has been sneezing uncontrollably every few minutes. Frank turns from looking at the pad of clouds
beneath them, saying, "Milo, babe, do me a favor, don't breathe on me." He waves the copy of
Billboard
he's been reading in the air to move the airborne stream of Milo's germs in another direction.

"Sorry," the kid says adenoidally. Frank likes Milo; he is eager and appropriately deferential. Now placing the magazine on
his lap, Frank opens it to the charts, his face darkening.

"Look at this. The CD's been out for a month and it's at ninety-eight."

"Someone's buying it."

"Percy Sledge reissues are outselling me. The record company's not going to let me live off good reviews." Milo leans toward
Frank to look at the pages Frank is examining, gulping air through his mouth. Frank glances at the poor sick kid, asking,
"Milo, could you breathe in another direction, please? I don't want to get plague or whatever the fuck it is you have, and
I say that with genuine concern for your health."

The plan called for the two of them to arrive in Tulsa the day before the first show, get a night's sleep, relax, and then
go to the gig, the whole thing designed to be as low pressure as possible.

"I don't trust a city you can't fly to direct," Frank says, looking at the
Los Angeles Times
Calendar section where a small item catches his eye.

"Happy Endings" May Be Yanked

Highly touted "Fleishman Show" scribe Lloyd Melnick's much ballyhooed series about a Las Vegas massage parlor may be facing
cancellation after a mere two outings. Ratings have been anemic despite heavy promotion by the Lynx Network. The show received
a 2.8 share in its second airing, which represents drop-off of more than three ratings points from its lead-in, the similarly
ratings-challenged "Men Are Tools." "We believe in Lloyd Melnick," said Lynx prexy Harvey Gornish. "And we still believe in
the show. Every opportunity will be given for it to succeed."

Frank puts the paper down and smiles. He recognizes the kiss of death when he sees it and inside he leaps with joy.

"We arranged for me to be paid in cash, right?" he asks Milo. In what is perhaps an unacknowledged reflection of his own inner
turmoil, Frank has become convinced during the past few months that the American republic is becoming somewhat less stable
than it has been at any time during the past 230 years. As a result, he has developed a suspicion of checks and checking accounts,
preferring to deal in cash for the foreseeable future, knowing it to be a more dependable means of payment should some kind
of international disaster lead to a meltdown of the banking system.

"It's been taken care of," Milo assures him.

A large, gaudy neon sign consisting of a palm tree and tropical-hued lettering spelling out TRADE WINDS MOTEL lights up the
Tulsa night, warm for November. The Polynesian-themed, two-story motel is completely congruent with a multicultural highway
landscape that is also home to a Pollo Loco, a Buca di Beppo, and an International House of Pancakes. Frank stands next to
his suitcase in the parking lot, wishing he were back in Los Angeles. He found the Trade Winds by calling the owner of Club
Louie since he no longer has the stomach for Hyatts or Radissons, and this was what he recommended. Frank's taste in accommodations
is puzzling to Milo, for whom a bed is a bed, but Frank patiently explains he is trying to do what little he can to keep the
entire United States of America from being subsumed by one giant corporation. Milo, looking worse than he did on the plane,
appears from the motel office and hands Frank a key, saying, "I'm going to find a doctor. I think this is a sinus infection."

Ten minutes later Frank lies on his bed in Room 21 on the second floor of the Trade Winds with the television tuned to the
Shopping Channel. An actress from a seventies cop show is selling her own line of intimate wear specially designed for plus-size
women. Through the cheaply constructed drywall Frank can hear the primal thump of sex in the next room. He debates whether
to bang on the wall to get them to rein in their fervor or, in an if-you-can't-beat-'em gesture, simply buy one of the pornographic
movies available to all Trade Winds guests, providing himself with a visual accompaniment to the jungle sound track pulsing
through the wall. Instead, he does neither, preferring to lie penitently on his bed suffering the torments of a saint. "Who
are these people?" he wonders, despising them.

Overcome with a road sadness familiar to anyone who reluctantly spends time away from his day-to-day life, Frank rises from
the bed and walks to the window where he looks into the moonlit Oklahoma night. Cars speed by on the highway, their headlights
slicing the darkness. The lights of the fast-food restaurants, filling stations, and motels combine with the gaseous streetlamps
to create a glowing canopy over the asphalt world that makes it difficult to see whatever stars are out tonight. Fifteen hundred
miles to the west is Los Angles. New York is the same distance to the northeast. In between is a vast country of mountains,
prairies, towns, and cities that doesn't care about Frank Bones tonight. He thinks about why he's in Tulsa and whether he
even wants to perform anymore, but he already knows the answer. Even if it goes well and he can continue making a living as
a comic, it's no longer a life he can comfortably live; the indistinguishable clubs with their drinks and bad food; the shifting
mosaic of faces belonging to people who represent a world from which he feels himself further and further removed. But what
else is there? The endless road may be over for him but right now there's nowhere to pull off, no oasis at which to rest and
get his bearings. He considers the lessons of rehab; just get through the day, the night. Then go to sleep, wake up, and do
it again.

The noise in the next room has subsided. It isn't midnight yet but Frank, who has been staring out the window for the last
hour, has to be up early to do a radio interview to promote the show. He goes back to bed and falls into an anxious asleep.

Wilson "Wildman" Simms, a shaggy-haired young man wearing thick prescription sunglasses and a satin baseball jacket with TULSA
TRIPLE A TIGERS spelled out in cursive lettering on the back, hunches over a microphone in the studios of WHTZ, a local rock
'n' roil radio station. He is on probation with the station's owners for falsely reporting someone had attached a dachshund
to a helium balloon and floated it over the city, then giving updates on the dog's fate every ten minutes, until finally reporting
a hunter had brought the balloon down with a blast from a high-powered rifle, leaving the nonexistent dog an imaginary blot
on Highway 44. Some listeners were upset, which led to Simms being disciplined by an ownership that was secretly quite pleased
with the attention he had brought to the station, however grotesquely. Frank is seated next to him at the console enduring
Wilson Simms's attempts to live up to his tired nickname.

"When was the last time you were out on the road, Frank? You were opening for Glenn Miller, right?"

Ignoring the age-related dig from the younger schlock jock, Frank says, "I am the road, Mildman, if I can call you by your
real name. I've got tar in my veins."

"That's not all you got in there from what we hear!" Wildman ripostes. Frank does not bother to respond. "Okay, you've just
released a CD—I listened to it on the way to work this morning, and I just want my listeners to know Frank Bones is a very
funny older guy. The critics love you apparently."

"What do they know?" Frank asks, falsely modest.

"So you had some pretty well-publicized problems. Any truth to the rumor you're doing an ad for Hummer?"

"That's funny," Frank observes. "In Tulsa."

"So what's in the future? More crack?"

"I want to achieve mythic stature. Like Bigfoot."

"Don't you have to be dead for the mythic business to kick in?"

"Yeah. And you have to go out spectacularly. I want to die in a flaming car wreck while I'm having unprotected sex with J.Lo.
That's how legends are made. That is what you call a career move."

Their forced banter continues in this vein for another ten minutes, and then it is time for Wildman to begin shilling for
the sponsors, at which point he thanks Frank and starts to read ad copy for a fertilizer store. Frank leaves, relieved at
having done his promotional duty, and wondering how, exactly, is he going to kill a day in Tulsa?

That afternoon, Mercy Madrid stands behind the bar in Club Louie rinsing glasses. She's somewhere short of thirty, and experience
has already begun to chisel away at her lovely features, on which a summer tan has faded. Ripped jeans over black cowboy boots
and a dingy, ribbed V-neck T-shirt that shows off full breasts. Large green eyes and a mouth you want to see bite into a peeled
grapefruit, just to watch the juice run down her chin. Perfection, however, is avoided by her nose, which has a little bump
just below the bridge (broken at some point?). Her shoulder-length hair is a honey-brown mop; she has to shake it out of her
eyes when she looks up to see Tino Suarez walking in. As soon as she realizes who it is, she goes back to rinsing the glasses.

Tino is a feral-looking man hovering somewhere in his forties. Dressed pimp casual today, silk shirt open one button too far,
gold bracelet, several rings on his fingers, and a gold chain around his neck. He's the kind of guy who moves when he sees
opportunity, nothing more than money motivating him. He opened Club Louie during the comedy boom of the eighties and has ridden
it to its conclusion, Tino having no love for comedy or comedians. If magicians had been the happening thing, he would have
been in the magic business, every entertainment trend just a way to sell drinks. As the comedy boom waned, Tino's fortunes
waned with it. Not many acts could fill his room anymore, and no new genre of live entertainment had appeared to supersede
comedians, so he was left nursing a faltering business as it reeled into the sunset. Recently, other ways of making money
had begun to present themselves.

He sits at the twenty-foot-long bar, placing a package in front of him.

"Put this thing under the floorboard."

"Sure," she says, accustomed to enigmatic orders.

"I don't want my wife to see it."

Mercy takes the package. Knowing Tino is waiting for her to bend over so he can stare at her ass, she squats on her haunches
to remove the floorboard, taking great satisfaction in disappointing him. She lifts it, places the package in the space, then
replaces the board.

"Give me a Jack and Coke, baby," he says in a way she doesn't like. Turning around, no way to keep him from staring now, she
pulls a bottle of Jack Daniel's off the shelf and begins to mix her boss a drink. Finishing, she hands it to him, still holding
the bottle. Tino tastes it. He tells her, "You mix a weak drink, Mercy. That's good for the customers, but bad for me." Mercy
makes to top up the drink but Tino stops her, placing his hand on hers, which causes her to recoil slightly. He says, "That's
alright. I'll get it." And he does, pouring another jigger's worth of whiskey into the glass. Mercy returns to her work, hoping
Tino will take his drink to his office as he sometimes does. Instead, he stands up and walks to the waitress station at the
end of the bar, lifts it, and walks toward her saying, "Mercy, how you doing?"

"Just fine."

"Haven't seen you in a while." He's fifteen feet away.

"You see me five nights a week."

"That's not what I mean. Do I have to spell it out?" Starting to move.

"Spell what out, Tino?"

"I got a cabin up on Cherokee Lake . . . " Slowly. Sliding.

"You told me that, like, fifty times."

"We could go up there." Smiling. Slick.

"I don't think so."

"Mercy, Mercy . . . I got a thing for you." Ten feet.

"You got a thing for what's in my panties, man. Don't get confused."

"That's not true." Five feet away.

"Get offa my cloud, Tino."

"Come on, sugar, we married a couple of lowlifes. Vida's cheating on me."

"Call a lawyer." He's close enough now to reach out and touch her. As his hand comes up to stroke her face, she pulls a switchblade
out of her pocket, flicks it open, and holds it up. "I hear Otis Cain's a good one but I don't know if he does divorces."
Otis Cain is a guy much in the local news lately because of a high-profile lawsuit he's filed against the police. The celling
light glints off the blade, which has momentarily arrested Tino's forward motion. Mercy looks at him with eyes that say,
I will drive this knife into you and the judge is gonna let me walk.

"What's this,
Blackboard Jungle?"
Frank asks, backlit in the doorway, the guy knowing how to make an entrance.

Tino tells him, "We're just fooling around," as he backs away from Mercy. "What are you doing here? Show doesn't start for
a few hours."

Frank walks into the half-light of the bar, saying, "I don't have a life. My road manager, who's supposed to be driving me
around, is such a wussy he's in bed with a sinus infection, I drove the rental car over here myself without a driver's license,
ladies and gentlemen . . . don't tell anyone . . . I'm in a town I've always flown over and I've got no one to bitch to. That's
what I'm doing here. I didn't catch your name."

"Tino Suarez. You want a drink or something?"

"You're the owner?"

Tino nods as Frank looks around the room. God, this place is depressing with its neon beer signs and retro jukebox and fuggy
air, as if it were all expectorated by a computer program designed to produce the standard-issue American bar for the new
century, the bar with no regional signifiers, the place you could just walk in and feel as if you were in the Minneapolis
airport; or the one in Pittsburgh; or Orlando. He wonders how it has come to this, how he, His Royal Bonesness, has descended
from the lofty perch of a personal HBO special, as if he were nothing more than a playing piece in some diabolical game of
Chutes and Ladders, and landed in this sticky-floored, beer-reeking circle of hell. It's all he can do to keep from collapsing
into a grand mal, but instead he says, "No thanks," to the proffered libation.