The Funny Man (35 page)

At about thirty yards we went facedown in the overgrown grass and I peered through my cupped hands at a patio with lounges and low tables arranged in little conversation nooks facing a stage area with a couple of guitars sitting on stands, microphones, keyboards, some small amplifiers. The crowd had apparently moved off.

“Maybe the party’s over,” Bonnie whispered.

But the torches still burned and I could see the red lights on the amplifiers. I told her we should stay.

“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” she said.

This was true. One of the mantras at the White Hot Center, is to “be the moment,” which is the same new-age hokum that any self-help guru is going to peddle, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad advice. I rested my head on the ground and listened to the grass shift. My breathing slowed until it matched Bonnie’s. I pressed her hand to my lips and she rolled to face me and it was too dark to see anything, but I’m pretty sure we were gazing into each other’s eyes.

And then the party returned to the patio.

Even Bonnie, young as she is, knew the names of most: Dean, Hendrix, Joplin, Bruce, Belushi, Farley, Ledger, Cobain, the Princess of Wales, Lennon. None of them aged even a moment from the last we saw them. They drank cocktails and conversed. JFK smoked a cigar with John, Jr., the two men seated, side by side, blowing smoke into the lights. Whatever had bothered them before had been washed away. Hendrix’s eyes were bright and clear. Belushi was still round, but fit. Cobain had a pretty compelling grin.

They circulated around the grounds, clotting together in different groupings before breaking apart and reforming.

“Awesome,” Bonnie said. “No way.”

I nodded, afraid that if I spoke I would break the spell. Thanks to our black clothes and the torches between us, we were invisible in the dark. Bonnie crawled forward and I tried to grab her ankle, but she shook free so I had no choice but to follow. As we got closer and closer I thought that she might just stand up and join them and that’s when I recognized that she could, that she belonged there and I didn’t. Like them, she was a genius in her field, maybe not fully realized yet, but she would be welcomed.

She stayed with me, though, just shy of where the torchlight licked the ground.

Chet appeared and crossed the patio. He hugged and kissed a beautiful blonde with a pleasingly full figure and a beauty mark just above her dimple. I could read his lips in the lamplight:
Hello,
Mother.

Yes, they were talented and I was not, this was abundantly clear, but all of us needed the lightning strike, the luck. Like, for example, the talent agent happening into the malt shop in the case of Chet’s mother or being introduced to the second greatest songwriter of his generation, as happened to Lennon. Everyone on that patio had a story and mine wasn’t so so different. But just as my “talent” paled next to theirs, I realized so did my scars.

While we watched, Belushi and Farley took the stage together to do a routine that we could only half hear over the laughs, but even just watching them made me bite my forearm to keep from exploding.

At the next break, a young man with high cheekbones and soft, shoulder-length hair entered the grounds barefoot and shirtless, wearing only leather pants. He hugged Chet and leaned down to kiss the blonde. The assembled group began a low chant, “song, song, song, song,” and eventually Lennon went behind the keyboards as the young man with the high cheekbones grabbed the microphone. He tossed his hair back and smiled as Lennon started to play. The tempo was slower than usual, sensuous, the melody draping itself over the crowd. The beautiful young man had his share of demons in life, but he’d left them behind on the island. The conversation stopped and everyone sat somewhere. I looked at Bonnie and saw her mouth shaped like an O, just like mine. The lizard king stared at America’s sweetheart and sang in a low, rich tenor. When he closed his eyes, he sang of love and fire.

I heard it, with my ears. Yes, sir.

A
FTER MUSIC FEATURING
every combination of performers possible, the equipment was snapped off and the torches snuffed, leaving Bonnie and me in the full darkness. We couldn’t have been more than an hour or two from sunrise.

“It’s like some kind of retirement village,” she whispered.

“For the most famous people ever.”

“Who are supposedly dead.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “that’s weird.”

“More like impossible.”

“Seems like there’s a lot of impossible things going on here.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“Like this,” I said, pointing to the two of us. “This is impossible, isn’t it?”

“Apparently, nothing is impossible.”

“I’m glad you said it instead of me,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because that means it’s real.”

O
N THE WAY
back to the WHC we made our future plans. When we got out we would be together and that was that, so all we had to do was talk logistics.

“I could stop playing,” she said. “I’ve pretty much had enough, anyway.”

“Pretty much?”

“It does bug me, to be honest.”

“No majors?”

“Yeah, but that’s just the fucked-up brainwashing of the academy and Mr. Popov talking. I’ll get over that.”

“Or you could just go win one.” We had made it back to the lighted paths of the compound and I reached and squeezed her hand.

“There is that,” she replied.

“So, I’ll travel with you. I’ve never been anywhere that I remember. It’ll be fun.”

She sighed. “Can you imagine the coverage? The jokes? The tabloids? It’ll be awful.”

“We’ll ignore it,” I said.

“How’s that gone in the past?” she said.

“Good point.”

“But we’ll figure it out,” she said.

“Yeah.”

We were at the entrance to my bungalow and it got awkward. I had one hand on the doorknob and the other on her elbow as we faced each other. She pulled her cap off and yanked the ponytail holder free and shook her hair and I smelled lilacs.

“Should we say good night?” she said.

“I’d rather not. There isn’t much night left, anyway, from what I can tell.”

“I’m pretty tired.”

“Me too,” I said.

“But maybe I can lie down here for awhile and then I’ll just go back to my place in a bit.”

“I’d like that,” I said, opening the door and leading her in. As usual, the sheets were pulled down waiting for my entry. We didn’t even get undressed, just laying down in the bed with our clothes on, me on my back, her tucked to my chest, one leg slung over my body. I rubbed my hand in circles on her back.

“That feels good,” she said.

It was nothing like the moment Beth and I held each other after we first came together in the library. I was young then and the future stretched infinite, but I also cared only about the moment. It was a gift. She was a gift, a lucky break, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where we made the boy who gifted me my thing, the boy who I’ll probably never see again.

But with Bonnie, I was making the moment. I had created it. Everyone’s got a story and the best ones are those we tell ourselves. I imagined it and then after the imagining it had come true. It is not a perfect substitute for what I had, but it will have to do.

T
HE NEXT DAY
I woke in what felt like my bed, in what looked like my apartment. I knuckled the sleep from my eyes and looked again and confirmed my initial suspicion. My face was stubbled and I needed a shower. Chet walked in from the living room.

“Welcome home, sir,” he said. He opened the slats on the blinds and let the sun stream through. It clearly was morning, but judging from my stubble and my stink, it was not necessarily the morning after my adventures with Bonnie.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“You’ve completed your treatment, so we’ve brought you home.”

“I don’t remember.”

“From past experience, we’ve found that often people are, let’s say, reluctant to leave, so we find it easier to do it with our guests unconscious.”

“You drugged me.”

“Correct, sir.”

The room looked like it had from when I left, clothes strewn everywhere, my curtain loincloth as soiled and stiff as ever. The air was sickbed sour. I’d been barring the maid service while I was present, but at least she could have snuck in during my absence. I saw a firing in someone’s future. The only thing that had changed, apparently, was me.

Chet hovered nearby, nudging some of the debris piles with the toe of his shoe. “Is there anything else I can do, sir?” he asked.

My tongue was thick in my mouth, my throat dry. “I’m thirsty.” Chet nodded toward the nightstand where there was a half-full tumbler of water. Lip prints crusted the rim and there was a thin layer of dust across the top, but I drank it greedily. It was cold and crisp, just what I was hoping for.

“Will I see her again?”

“Do you want to?”

“Of course.”

“Then why should anything stop you?”

I wasn’t sure if he was waiting go be dismissed, what our relationship was now that we were no longer at the Center. I’d tried the servant thing once; it hadn’t worked out. “I’m going to take a shower,” I said.

Chet just nodded. My body creaked as I headed to the bathroom, probably a hangover from whatever Chet had given me combined with my southwest compound adventure with Bonnie. The shower was glorious. I utilized every one of my six nozzles, simultaneously pummeling my body from all directions. I believed that the supply of hot water in my building was inexhaustible. I thought about testing the proposition. The towels smelled a little musty, so I went back into the bedroom naked, letting the air dry me.

Chet was gone. I called out his name, first softly, and then loudly enough that it carried throughout the apartment. I slipped into some sweats and stepped into the living room. It looked like a tornado had blown through. Crusted take-out containers and half-empty cans of beans were splattered everywhere. The coffee table rested on its side and three giant slashes had been hacked through two of the couch cushions. Someone was going to have a lot of cleanup work on their hands.

On the street below my window, the whole world went on as before. I missed her already. Fortunately, my cable package included a channel dedicated entirely to tennis. I punched the on button on the remote and flipped to the guide and saw that, just as I wanted,
Bonnie Tisdale: A Life So Far
was showing. It was a soft feature biography, lots of discussion about her youthful genius, talking head interviews with former coaches and competitors. I realized I’d seen it before, but now, it took on a different light. I put the single undamaged couch cushion back in place and settled in. Tomorrow, I would begin putting the pieces of my new life in place.

42

T
HE NEWS IS
everywhere. Hours after winning her first Wimbledon title and her second consecutive major championship, Bonnie Tisdale was found hanging from the beams inside the ladies’ locker room at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. She left a note, an angry excoriation of her parents and former coach, laying the blame squarely at their feet. I wince at the pictures of her mother, face blanched and distraught. I know something about causing others grief. Even though I knew it was coming, and was necessary for us to be together, I weep softly. I hope it was as peaceful as we thought it would be, that she was transported to the island in whatever way those things happened, quickly and painlessly. I have an urge to call Beth, but I don’t. My disappearance will cause her trouble enough, and a call would only add to that.

The coverage is wall-to-wall. There is nothing to say and yet they spend hours and hours saying it. I flip between the predictable mix of experts explaining depression and pressure and the risks of starting children in ultracompetitive activities too young. I see on-the-street interviews with people clutching pictures of her moistened by their tears and it feels good to know that so many others love her as well, even though they do not know her like I do.

Each of the networks has branded the coverage: “Death of America’s Tennis Sweetheart” or “the Passing of a Court Queen.” Psychological experts say how inevitable such a thing was given the pressures of our day and age. Everything is inevitable after the fact, though.

Mitch Laver has been dispatched to host
Hello U.S.A
. from London. As I see him see me through the television, I wonder if he suspects anything, if he made his own visit to the southwest compound during his time at the Center. I want to get in touch with him, let him know that I’m in on the secret, part of the club now, but I imagine it’s against Center alumni protocol. We know who we are.

The preliminary plans for Bonnie’s memorial service are already out of control. Lyrics to popular songs have been reworked in tribute to her. (It’s amazing how hard it is to rhyme anything to
tennis
.) There will be a charity match in her honor with black tennis balls and the scoring flipped so each game counts down to love, since we agree that’s what we need more of. Some have proposed canceling the U.S. Open in her honor, but most everyone agrees that would be impossible. Tomorrow, she will be relegated back to the sports-dedicated channels and a slice of the hourly loop on the news networks. Next week, there will be bulletins. Next year, there will be a brief mention of the anniversary. So it goes. Bonnie has a day’s head start and an easier route back than me, but her “death” will provide additional cover when my disappearance is discovered, which shouldn’t be for a couple of days, long enough for me to make it to the boat and launch, and at that point I will be a needle in the great haystack of the ocean.

Everything is set, including the funding I may need to bribe my way into the promised land.

I have some pictures in a drawer. There is one in front of the first house after the apartment, Beth and the boy on the front stoop, him resting on her out-thrust hip. With the hand not cradling the boy, she points to the ground at the welcome mat. We’d purchased it on our way to take possession of the place, her telling me to pull over at a home improvement store and declaring she’d be right back. The boy and I waited in the car and I asked him what he thought his crazy mother was up to. She hid the mat behind her back as she returned to the car, and once at the house made me close my eyes as she positioned it on the stoop. She whistled with two fingers in the corners of her mouth.