The Man Who Cancelled Himself (28 page)

Lulu, of course, was feeling mighty superior. In fact, she was gloating.

If Chad thought the men’s room was bad before lunch, it was positively revolting afterward. Crowded, too. Lyle still wouldn’t let anyone else use his. His was germ-free, after all. Also
ocupado,
the big fella flopped down on his knees, praying to the porcelain gods while Katrina dutifully held his head and wiped his mouth for him. I’d call that true love. I caught a glimpse of this intimate scene because Lyle insisted I visit him in there—when I was capable of it.

The man was boiling. Partly because it was his own damned fault he got sick—he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t sneaked some chili. Mostly because the production, which was already stretched plenty tight because of the revisions and the blockbusters, had to be shut down for the rest of the day. That meant a solid half day of rehearsing and rewriting were lost, as well as the evening run-through.

“I don’t know how the fuck I’m gonna do it,” Lyle groaned, rocking back and forth on his knees. “I don’t know
how
I’m gonna have a quality show ready to tape by Friday.”

“Don’t you worry, Pinky,” Katrina squeaked soothingly. “We’ll be fine.”

“The fuck we will!” he raged. “It can’t be done, I tell ya! I promise ya one thing—I’m bringing the goddamned health department down on that rat-trap for serving us spoiled food. Christ, of all the rotten luck.”

“It wasn’t luck, Lyle,” I informed him from the doorway, where the doorjamb was keeping me vertical. “And the food wasn’t spoiled.”

He peered up at me, his eyes menacing blue slits. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying our symptoms aren’t consistent with food poisoning. No diarrhea, I’m happy to report.”

“He’s right, Pinky,” whispered Katrina.

“I’m saying I tasted something in the chili,” I went on. “Something that wasn’t ground coriander. Something that has made all of us sick enough to foul up production, just like bombing the set this morning fouled up production. I’m saying you’re—”

“I’m getting
rat-fucked,”
growled Lyle, his anger mounting. He was starting to shake all over. His face was purple.

“Royally.”

A huge sob of animal rage came out of him. It was almost a Tarzan yell. Blindly, he hammered the tile floor with his giant fists, once, twice, three times, smashing downward with the force of two ten-pound sledges. And then he blew for real. Trashed the place. He attacked the sink first. Yanked the damned thing right off of its pedestal. Water spewed in geysers from the broken pipes. He raised it over his head, chest heaving, and hurled it with such colossal force at the mirror that he shattered it and the mirror both. Then he went after the urinal, pulling it mightily from the wall, kicking it, punching it, raging at it. The man was out of control, a cyclotron gone amok. A 6.7 on the wig-o-meter, easy.

And then he stopped. Just stood there, panting, surveying the wreckage as if someone else had done it.

“Get the plumber up here right away,” he commanded Katrina, who was watching him in utter horror. “I want this place functioning and spotless by nine
A.M.
tomorrow, understand?” She nodded obediently. Then he turned to me, his thick lower lip stuck out petulantly. “Somebody else has been using this john. I
feel
it! I
know
it!”

Mr. Sensitivity. Me, I oozed on down the road for home. Changed into my shawl-collared silk target-dot dressing gown from Turnbull & Asser and my tattered mukluks. An old work ritual. Writers tend to be superstitious. People who are frightened usually are. I tried to rough out the first two chapters, only I couldn’t make it work. Too many questions. So I did some phone work instead. Spoke to my cousin Tommy in New Haven, among others. Tommy has been exceedingly helpful to me in my second career. Don’t tell him that or he’ll start charging me. He’s a psychiatrist. Also the only member of my family who will speak to me. I don’t know if there’s a connection there or not. After I got off the phone with him, Marjorie Daw phoned to say how glad she was she hadn’t come by for lunch—she’d intended to but got called into a meeting at the last minute. She asked if she could bring me anything on her way home from work. I made the mistake of saying, such as? She made the mistake of saying such as a container of her homemade Wisconsin-style cream-of-corn chowder. And that took care of the rest of the afternoon.

The six o’clock news played up that morning’s bombing of
The Uncle Chubby Show
set big-time. Anything to do with Lyle was still hot. Although there were no facts to support it, the coverage left a clear impression that the bombing somehow had to do with the presence of the protestors out front. This because the reporter delivered her stand-up out there surrounded by them screaming and waving their signs. Visuals. Just one of the not-so-subtle ways television distorts the news.

They did not report the chili incident. This because they didn’t know about it. Lyle didn’t want “his kids” to know he’d been sick. So the police were not called. Knew nothing about it. At least not officially. Romaine Very knew. I phoned him before I left the office. Even left a Styrofoam container of chili downstairs for him with Tyrone—for purposes of analysis, not consumption. Very acted somewhat put out, but he agreed to check it out. And stop by later.

I was lying there watching Merilee’s favorite show,
Jeopardy!,
when I was buzzed from downstairs. Very, I assumed. I buzzed him in, not bothering with the intercom, which hasn’t been operational since the days when Pat Paulsen was considered presidential timber. I opened my door, turned off the TV, and waited for him.

Only it was Katrina. She’d changed from her sedate office ensemble into a pair of skintight Gianni Versace leopard-skin jeans and a black suede baseball jacket, which she wore zipped to the neck. She stood in the doorway with her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, looking around the place. It doesn’t take long. Then she focused on me, or rather about a foot to the right of me. Her eye seemed to get worse as the day wore on.

“You don’t live very well,” she squeaked, tossing her frizzy blond mane.

“Just passing through. This is strictly temporary.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Nineteen years.” I made room for her on the easy chair, which involved shooing Lulu out of it. “Have a seat.”

Before she did, Katrina unzipped her jacket and draped it over my desk chair. She was wearing a sheer, shimmery bodysuit under it, the sort that a woman might wear with a silk camisole underneath. Or, if she were feeling particularly frisky, a black satin bra. Katrina wore neither of these things. She wore absolutely nothing. Her immense, gravity-defying breasts were just
right there,
the nipples a pale pink and the approximate circumference of a 7 Eleven Big Gulp cup. I stared. I couldn’t help it. They looked as if they might honk if I squeezed them. Or squirt me in the face. Or … oh, never mind.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said, choosing to sit next to me on the couch. “I’ve stopped by to visit a few of the others.”

“That’s very considerate of you.”

“It’s the least I can do. I feel so badly. What I really want to do is take you home and give you crabs.”

I tugged at my ear. “Excuse me?”

“I make them with spices from the Maryland shore. That’s where I’m from originally. Best thing in the world when you’re not feeling well.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second.”

She smelled of lily of the valley, a heavy, cloying scent vaguely reminiscent of a Frank E. Campbell funeral parlor. It made me drowsy. Lulu went over to her and sniffed at her, whimpering weakly.

“What’s wrong with her?” Katrina wondered, petting her.

“She’s hungry,” I replied, trying not to stare at her hooters. Katrina’s, not Lulu’s.

“I can feed her for you,” she offered.

“Please don’t. We’re a team. If I suffer, she suffers. Besides, she was gloating earlier.”

“Dogs don’t gloat,” scolded Katrina.

“Believe me, she gloats. Has Lyle calmed down?”

“Oh, yes, he’s lots better. He can be a little scary when things … boil over. But afterwards, he’s fine. For him, letting go is a really healthy thing.”

“I’m not so sure his plumber would agree.”

“Plus, he had a good, heart-to-heart phone conversation with God, and that made him feel a lot better. See, Lyle wanted to push back the taping a week so we’d have time to do things right. God said no, because that would mean we’d have to push back our air date, too, and we’re a big, big part of premiere week. So then Lyle suggested we bump Rob Roy Fruitwell back to a later episode, so we can give him the attention he deserves. But again God said no. …”

“I thought you said Lyle feels a lot better.”

“Because God agreed to cover the overages,” she explained patiently. “We’ll have to tape over the weekend. That means paying the crew monster overtime. Costs us a fortune. The network never kicks in on that. They consider it the supplier’s problem. But God said he’d foot the bill. That’s a major, major show of support. Lyle really needed to hear something like that. We’ll tape on Saturday. We’ll still have to rush, but at least it’s doable. There’s a writer’s meeting tomorrow at nine. Marjorie will be there.”

“Okay.”

She shot me a nervous sidelong glance. “Actually, Lyle doesn’t know I’m here.” She chewed fretfully on the inside of her mouth.

“Why are you?”

“I told you—to see how you are.”

I nodded. “Me and a few of the others.”

“None of the others,” she confessed in a soft, intimate voice. “Just you. I was really upset about that little tiff we had on the set this morning. You were absolutely right—it’s not your job to baby-sit Lyle.” She let out a sigh, hooters heaving. “I think I’ve figured out what our problem is.”

“We have a problem?”

“We’re too much alike.”

“We are?”

“We both have trouble trusting anybody. Because we’ve both seen the bad side of other people.”

“You mean there’s a good side to other people?”

“I have one,” she asserted, her eyes meeting mine. Almost. “And so do you. I want us to like each other, Hoagy. We’re on the same side. Lyle’s side. We should be friends. We should be … close.” She put her hand on my thigh.

I glanced down at it. Her fingers were gently caressing my dressing gown. She was no Kewpie doll, this one. She was smart and she was tough. Also pissed off at Lyle for fucking Naomi Leight behind her back. Was this her way of getting even? I took her hand and held it. She let me. She even leaned into me so that her right breast rested on my arm. It was surprisingly heavy. “I’m glad you feel that way, Katrina. Because I do, too.”

“Oh, good,” she whispered, her breath moist on my neck.

I was very warm all of a sudden. Her body heat. Lyle wasn’t kidding. She was a woman to perspire to. “It must not be easy. Being in a relationship with him, I mean.”

Her steamy thigh pressed against mine. “Oh, it’s not. He’s so, so weak. Like a little boy. And he isn’t in the habit of thinking about someone else’s feelings. Not like you are.”

“Is there something you wanted to tell me, Katrina? Something you didn’t want Lyle to know you’d told me?”

She looked at me blankly. “Like what?”

“Has he ever hit you?”

“Oh, no … Well, not really.”

“It’s not a gray area, Katrina. Either he has or he hasn’t.”

“Last spring,” she admitted, gingerly fingering her jaw. “Only he wasn’t hitting
me,
per se. He was hitting God. For cancelling him.”

“And did
you
consider cancelling him?”

She lowered her eyes. “It’s only happened that one time.”

“And if it happens again?”

“I’m not a punching bag, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said defensively. “I have too high an opinion of myself to let anybody do that to me.”

“Good.” I squeezed her hand. “May I ask you something else?”

She ran her fingers lightly through my hair. “You can ask me
anything.”

“Why did you doctor the chili?”

She hadn’t seen that one coming. “What are you talking about?” she demanded frostily, dropping my hand.

“The catered lunch was all your idea. You specified chili. You even helped serve it. You and Lyle. Only Lyle got sick, and you didn’t. Why did you do it, Katrina?”

She shook her head at me in bewilderment. “Are you for real?”

“As seldom as possible. What did you use, anyway?”

“You’re crazy!” she cried, her eyes blazing at me. “The food was sitting there in the hallway outside the rehearsal room for five or ten minutes while we were setting up the tables.
Anybody
could have put something in the chili. And, besides, why would I even
want
to, huh?! What possible reason would I have?” She gazed at me uncertainly. “What is this, some kind of test?”

“No, this is me trying to figure out what the hell’s going on.”

My phone rang. I took it in the bedroom. It was Pam, Merilee’s most British housekeeper.

“Greetings, dear boy,” she exclaimed cheerily. “I trust you are well.”

“That would be something of an exaggeration, Pam.” I flopped down on my unmade bed. “And you?”

“I myself am ginger peachy. But, alas, poor Vic …”

“Something’s happened to Vic?”

“It has indeed. This frightful business between you and Merilee. Oh, he’s putting up the bravest of fronts—men will be men and all. But he’s taking it terribly hard.”

“Look, Pam, if you’re calling about Lulu …”

“Merilee needs her, Hoagy. The poor dear is inconsolable. Weeps at the drop of a hat.”

“Good.”

She was silent a moment. “This isn’t like you, Hoagy.”

“It’s the new me.”

“Oh, dear, I was still trying to fathom the old you. I do wish you’d reconsider, Hoagy. It would be the decent thing to do. You’ve always been decent.”

“That was the old me. I’m sorry, Pam. Also appalled. If she needs Lulu this badly you’d think she’d have the courtesy to ask me herself.”

“But she doesn’t even know I’m calling,” Pam insisted hurriedly. “It was entirely my own idea.”

“Do you and Vic rehearse your lines together, or what?”