The Funny Man (6 page)

O
UTSIDE THE HOUSE,
two production assistants roll up in the big, white rented van, and double-checking the address, note that there is no oak tree in the funny man’s yard as location scouting had promised. Location scouting is almost always fucking up. It’s like, why bother scouting if it’s wrong? However, there is a nice, shady oak tree, with one swooping, low-hanging branch that makes its residence in the neighboring yard.

“Always something,” production assistant two says to production assistant one.

“Waivers?” production assistant one asks production assistant two. “Got ‘em right here.”

At the neighbor’s door, PA one adjusts the slightly crooked mailbox as PA two rings the bell. The funny man’s neighbor answers.

“Yes?” Seeing the two handsome young men, she pats at her frazzled hair and cinches her housecoat a touch tighter at her throat.

“Ma’am,” PA two says, smiling big. “How would you like that nice, shady oak tree of yours to be nationally famous.” PA one extends the waiver form with one hand, a pen with the other.

The neighbor wonders if she might still be dreaming as she signs the paper in front of her.

T
HE FUNNY MAN
looks at his hair in the mirror. A cowlick towards the rear refuses taming. He snips it, badly, with his wife’s cuticle scissors. The funny man would like to say that the recent months have been like a dream except that a dream is easier to remember and understand than what has been happening to the funny man. Following signing the contract with his agent, a series of very strange and wonderful events have carried him to this morning when his picture is to be taken for the nationally distributed magazine with a circulation of five million.

This is how his agent said it to him: “Five million circulation,” emphasis on the
million
, but the funny man was most interested in the
circulation
word. His picture, accompanied by a three-hundred-word article, would soon be circulating through five million people.
Circulating
is a good word, going round and coming back again. He will be among them, part of them, circulating. If nothing else good happens for the funny man, with the picture he will achieve a level of permanence that he could only have imagined a short time ago. From his new bathroom in his new house he hears the guttural rumble of cargo trucks. They’ve come for him. In the end, it wasn’t so tough to leave the city they both loved so dearly, the crucible in which his act was forged. The new house has three bathrooms and really, the city is a stone’s throw away, provided you can throw a stone like Superman.

T
HE DAY AFTER
his successful appearance at the club, the funny man’s new agent called him and said he’d booked him for a gig that weekend, an opening slot for another comedian, but a good show, good money.

“How much money?” the funny man asked. His agent told him the figure.

“How much?” His agent told him the figure again.

“Say it again,” the funny man said and his agent did so. The gig was out of town, his first gig that he would travel to on a plane instead of the subway. When he told his wife how much he was earning for approximately twenty minutes of work, she looked at the ceiling and moved her lips, doing the math in her head. “That’s ten percent of what I earned all of last year,” she said.

When the funny man received his boarding pass from the ticket agent he thought there must be a typo. 2A. He’d never seen a row number that small. He had spent his life up to that point confined to 24F, 37D. He had a choice of personal videos at his seat and the food was tolerable. He did not anticipate any food poisoning. At his destination, when he descended the escalator to the baggage claim area, he saw a man in a black suit wearing a driver’s cap holding a dry erase board with the funny man’s name on it.

At the hotel they did not ask for a credit card imprint, which was good because he didn’t have one untethered to his bank account, which would not have contained nearly enough to pay for even a couple of hours in this particular hotel. His room was bigger than their apartment and a basket of consumer goods worth hundreds of dollars waited for him on the dining room table, thanking him for something he hadn’t done yet. His hotel room had a dining room table. His apartment did not.

With shaky hands he dialed the phone home and when his wife answered he told her all about the trip thus far. “It’s like another world,” he said.

“I could get used to this,” he said.

A
YOUNG BOY
wobbles down the street on his bike, tossing morning papers onto lawns. (It really was that kind of neighborhood.) The production assistants bounce the tractor tire out of the back of the van and roll it to the neighbor’s oak tree. They throw loops of hemp over the low-hanging branch and lash the hemp to the tire so it dangles several feet off the ground. PA one climbs on.

“Push me,” says PA one to PA two.

PA two grabs the tire and walks backward. “Underdog,” he says, running forward as fast as he can, pushing PA one skyward.

The tree limb groans under the weight.

“Wheeeee,” PA one says.

Soon, the production trucks roll up and disgorge barricades for the street, banks of lights, folding chairs, a live llama, and finally a long table of pastries and crullers.

The neighbor peeks through her curtains at the whole scene and wonders if it’s safe to go outside.

T
HE SHOW WAS
the first time he would ever do the thing for such a large audience, the first time he’d do
anything
for such a large audience and the funny man was hella nervous. Trying to bond with the headliner, the funny man asked for any useful tips. The headliner was known as a “comic’s comic,” a bit cerebral, a practitioner of perfectly crafted jokes larded with arcana sometimes so subtle the audience laughed several seconds behind the beat. The headliner had hosted his own series of shows (cable, not network), all of which were critically praised but mostly ignored by viewers, but still, this guy was in television and even a handful of movies here and there in parts tailored to his persona. It was widely said by other comics that the headliner should be more famous than he was, but the other comics did not really believe this because most of them didn’t get the jokes either. The headliner looked up and down at the funny man. “Don’t fuck up,” he said.

The funny man laughed. The headliner didn’t.

The crowd was almost totally silent through the funny man’s opening material. He’d never been on a stage elevated so far above the audience and it was disorienting, and between bits his brain searched for each segue. Full-on amateur hour. “I’m fucking up,” he thought. “I’m really fucking up.” He imagined that it might be possible to jump from the stage and plunge to his death, it was so high. He would at least break a leg, which might engender some sympathy. At least they wouldn’t be silent anymore, he thought. At least he was able to cram all those consumer goods from the gift basket in his suitcase. His wife would enjoy the Swiss chocolates.

But then he turned to the steamer trunk filled with the hook and his costumes for the thing, and dragging it to the front of the stage, it made a hideous squeak that got a few laughs. Working with the moment, the funny man pretended to struggle to get the trunk open, making a show of his inability to raise the lid. He kicked and cursed at the trunk, the sounds of the laughter swelling in his ears, until fully inspired, he invited someone from the front row to come up and help, a frat-boy-looking guy who looked unsure as he mounted the steps to the stage, but gave the full-on dude double-fist thrust salute into the air as the spotlight hit him. Frat-boy-looking guy strolled over to the trunk and braced himself for the effort of raising the lid that the funny man had found so impossible to move, and flinging it open, fell flat on his ass to massive applause.

When frat-boy-looking guy got home he told his parents that the show was “the coolest thing ever.”

T
HE MAKEUP ARTIST
circles the funny man and mutters something about pores. After giving up on the funny man, he turns to the funny man’s wife, and shouts “perfection!” causing the funny man’s wife to blush, which adds just the right amount of additional rouge to her cheeks. Oldest trick in the book.

T
HE FUNNY MAN
could not contain his grin as he left the stage after performing the thing. It was clear that they’d never seen anything like that before and would be going home to tell their friends and neighbors about it. The headliner stood in the wings, arms crossed and frowning. “Nice job, fuckwad. A pox on you and your shitty act.”

The funny man laughed. The headliner didn’t.

Back at the hotel, talking on the phone, his agent said not to worry about it. “You’re never opening for anyone ever again.”

The next week the funny man was booked on the late, late-night show, the one that’s watched by fewer people, and not so much watched, but something that’s on in the background during sleep, or sex, or drinking oneself to death, but still, television! The funny man did a truncated version of the thing. At the end of his act the host came over to shake his hand before throwing it to commercial. “Great great stuff,” he said. “Back after a break!” As the camera light clicked off, while still gripping the funny man’s hand, the host, a former comic himself, leaned in and said, “Everyone else is going to hate you for this. You know that, right?” The host released his grip and patted the funny man on the back, the final pat feeling something like a shove off the stage. Once could be a fluke, twice begins to be suspicious, but a third time is, for sure, a pattern. The funny man was not going to be loved by the other funny men. His rise to comedy fame is to be a solo, rather than a team sport. This is how it always is, though. Even in ensemble situations, all for one and one for all means more for some. For every Rachel, there is a Phoebe. For every Chevy, a Larraine. He is comfortable with this because he has no choice.