One Big Joke

by Laurence Shames

  Carmine stood there, fists on hips, chest heaving. Peppers looked around, then pointed. Maybe fifty yards away, bouncing and clunking over the planks of the dock, a pink Pedi-Cab was in retreat.

  The two thugs went racing after it.

  

  Seething at the VIP table in the quickly emptying club, Ted Clifton said, “Those asshole losers. Those completely unprofessional asshole losers.”

  “Crime a passion,” Bert said with a man-of-the-world shrug. “Always gonna take priority. Human nature.”

  The businessman said nothing, just grumpily slapped at his pockets as if he’d suddenly noticed that something was missing. “And that dyke bitch walked off with my pen.”

  “Stop wit’ the name-calling, Ted, it stinks a sore losing. Very unbecoming. But come on, ya got no reason to be upset. Your job’s gonna get done. I tol’ ya that. I’m gonna handle it.” He paused a beat, then added, “All you gotta do is hold my dog.”

  The fastidious Clifton looked with loathing at the small creature smugly curled in its master’s lap. He’d seen the dog with its tongue in its ass. He’d seen it nibbling on its tiny penis. He said, “I don’t want to hold the fucking dog.”

  “Look, Ted, I only got two hands, okay? We got the perfect opportunity here. Plenty a people still hangin’ ‘round in front. Pat’s schmoozing everybody as they leave. Nobody’s in back. We slip back there, ten seconds and we’re done, we walk around the side and join the crowd.”

  “Why don’t I just stay here then?”

  “Why? Because I don’t trust you with my dog is why. Nacho doesn’t leave my sight. Look, Ted, you wanna forget the whole thing, no skin off my ass. But this is the opportunity. Here and now.”

  

  The goombahs failed to gain much ground against the fleeing Pedi-Cab until the dock took a sharp left turn and became a steeply inclined ramp.

  At that point the driver in the purple leotard began to strain against the pedals, thighs laboring as his butt lifted from the seat, arms clenching for leverage, and the men on foot started closing distance with every stride. Twenty more flat-out paces brought them close enough to see that there was only a single passenger on the wide back settee. Ten more steps revealed that the passenger was a woman; another five brought Carmine close enough that he could clearly see her black hair shining in the moonlight.

  A burst of adrenaline gave his legs one final push, and with a headlong dive like something out of Ben-Hur he grabbed the chassis of the Pedi-Cab and held on for dear life. His weight and the clicking drag of his pointy shoes against the dock boards slowed the vehicle to a crawl and in another few seconds it stopped dead.

  The driver silently slid down from his seat and moved a little distance off. No one stopped him. He wasn’t part of the scenario; he didn’t count. He was just some local in a purple leotard.

  Struggling to his feet, straining for breath, Carmine looked up and said, “Hello, Carla.” He meant it to sound menacing, but the sight of her had put a lump in his throat. He tried to choke it back but it was like swallowing a shard of bone. “Didn’t know you were in town.”

  “Didn’t expect to see you here either.”

  Icily, afraid his voice might break if he let any warmth creep into it, the big man said, “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Come on, Carla, don’t be cute.”

  “Look, it doesn’t matter where he is.”

  “Matters to me.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t. Not anymore. I’m leaving him, Carmine.”

  The words hung in the damp air a moment, seeming to shatter into tiny grains that gleamed pale orange in the mix of moon and streetlight.

  Then a voice came from a little higher up the ramp. “You what?”

  Ricky had turned to face the little group. His eyes were soupy and too bright and his body looked suddenly shriveled where his legs and torso didn’t quite fill out the leotard.

  Peppers started easing forward to chase down the comedian, then realized that a chase would probably not be necessary. The man who’d stolen Carmine’s girlfriend didn’t seem to be going anywhere. In fact, transfixed with astonishment and affront at being dumped, he was drifting with a dazed gait down the ramp.

  “Sorry,” Carla said, when he was half a dozen steps away. “It’s a shitty way to tell you. Not the way I would’ve picked. But it’s over, Ricky. I can’t be with you. You make me laugh but you’re way too selfish. Like, by a lot. Maybe you don’t mean to be, maybe you don’t even notice. But I can’t fix it and I’m not gonna live with it. I wish you luck.”

  Then, to Carmine, she said, “Don’t hurt him. Please. Okay? There isn’t any need.”

  Peppers sidled closer to the man in the leotard, just in case.

  Carmine looked down at the dock boards and the black water with its oily sheen. He licked his lips. He suddenly felt extremely shy. Without looking up, he said, “You coming back to me, Carla?”

  “I think you know I’m not. We had some good times, Carmine. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”

  There was a silence broken only by the squawking of a nearby gull and the honking of scooter horns downtown. Carmine stared at Carla then dropped his eyes again. He balled his fists and let them relax before clenching them once more. His weight shifted from foot to foot but his body couldn’t seem to decide which way to move.

  Then Ricky started riffing in a manic, improvised staccato. “So these two schmucks meet on a dock in the middle of the night. One’s dressed like a ballerina, the other looks like a Sopranos outtake. One says, ‘Christ, you would not believe what just happened to me. I just got dumped by a woman in, like, a Roman chariot, except it was pink.’ And the other guy says, ‘Holy shit, wait. A pink chariot? Dumped? On a dock? Was she a brunette? Christ, you too? I mean, what are the fuckin’ odds?’”

  Peppers came out with a short quick laugh. He knew he probably shouldn’t laugh just then, but he couldn’t help it. Carmine glared at him in silence for a couple heartbeats. Then, surprising himself, he laughed too. His laugh started as a grudging grunt, more bitter than amused, but it gradually ripened into a chortle, then a rippling bellow that pulsed out of him in waves and carried off his useless rage and suddenly obsolete jealousy to vaporize in the warm night air. Hearing him laugh, feeling the tension ease out of its clench, Carla started laughing too. For a few seconds the three of them all laughed together, then Carmine stopped abruptly and the others followed his lead.

  He said to Carla, “Would you please do that again?”

  “Do what?”

  “Laugh. So I can listen.”

  “Just like that? It won’t sound natural.”

  “Do it anyway. Please.”

  She tried her best. She came out with a sound that was richer than a giggle, more restrained than a guffaw, and whose high notes had the crystal brightness of a bell that has almost finished ringing. The big man closed his eyes to hear. It was a great laugh, a wonderful laugh, but he realized now that it wasn’t the only laugh in the world. It was a laugh he used to love to hear from somebody he used to know. He wanted to remember it and he was pretty sure it wouldn’t haunt him anymore.

  46

  A few knots of people were still lingering near Titters’ front door, chuckling over favorite moments from the show or just saying long goodnights. But mostly the place had emptied out. Mostly what was left was the smell of beer and the sight of stirred-up dust slowly spinning in the spotlights. Still sitting at the VIP table in the nearly vacant room, Bert said, “So come on, Ted, shit or get off the pot. We doin’ this or not?”

  Clifton said, “All I do is hold the dog. Correct?”

  “Right. And b’lieve me, dog’s not gonna like it any more’n you do.”

  Taking one more furtive glance around the doomed club, the businessman said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  They rose. Bert handed over the chihuahua, which immediately took a nip at Clifton’s finger
and began clawing at the weave of his expensive sweater. Skirting the stage, the two men slipped behind the bar then through the low doorway to the engine room where it was pitch dark save for the red smudge of the Exit sign. Feeling their way through the shambles left behind by Ricky’s fleeing and the goombahs’ pursuit, they inched toward it.

  When they’d nearly reached the back door, Bert dug into a trouser pocket and came out with a lighter. “Here,” he said. “Hold this.”

  In the dim light of the Exit sign, the businessman squinted with horror at the object. “No way. You said I only have to hold the dog.”

  “Will you please stop being such a wuss? I’ll take it back once I grab the gas. Won’t be able to reach into my pocket then.”

  With a slightly trembling hand, Clifton took the lighter.

  Bert eased open the back door, checked to make sure the dock was uninhabited, then reached behind the post that hid the gas can. He swung the container over the threshold of the club, and as he did so, he winced, doubled over, pressed a fist hard against his side, and let out an imperfectly stifled shriek of pain. “Christ, my back! Fuckin’ sacro-iliac! Fuckin’ spasm. Shit. I can’t even stand up straight. You better grab the can, Ted.”

  The businessman just stood there frozen, the dog pulling loops out of his sweater.

  “Grab the can! Can’t just leave it sittin’ there. Come on, grab it! Gimme the dog.”

  Panicked, utterly confused, Clifton threw Nacho at its owner. “I’m getting out of here,” he said.

  “Fine, great, terrific,” said Bert, his face tipped upward at a grotesque angle because of his painful hunch. “You leave, I limp away, someone finds the can, everybody knows what’s up and you can kiss your chance to torch the place goodbye. Pat wins. You lose. Zat what you want here, Ted? You wanna lose?”

  Clifton bit his lip.

  “I didn’t think so,” Bert went on. “So come on, grab the fucking can, light up, and you’re outta here a winner. Come on, Ted. Do it.”

  The man’s pink-lidded eyes flicked back and forth between Bert, the gas can, and the doorway. Finally, his greed and spite overcame his cowardly prudence, and he grabbed the can while backing toward the exit, making sure he’d get out of the inferno while leaving the bent old man with the balky spine and helpless dog trapped on the wrong side of the blaze. With unsteady fingers he opened the vent, unscrewed the cap, and poured out a stream of liquid that quickly pooled on Titters’ uneven wooden floor. Still backing, he flicked open the lighter and tossed it into the puddle.

  The fire did not start all at once. It seemed to inhale for an instant before igniting with a baritone pop. Then it burst into a beautiful green flame that threw a perfect light for the guilty photos that Lenny captured as he sprang out from underneath the desk.

  An instant later, Marsha emerged from the locker armed with an extinguisher spewing orange foam.

  Within seconds there was nothing left of the attempted arson but a faint alcohol smell and some gobs of fire retardant that bubbled then subsided over the tops of the businessman’s ruined shoes.

  The shoes gave off a squishing sound as Clifton made a futile grab for Lenny’s phone, slipped on the foamy floorboards, and skidded to his knees.

  “Very undignified,” said Bert, who seemed to have made a miraculous recovery from his backache and was standing perfectly straight and tall above the crumpled figure. “With the lease papers in your pocket, no less. This does not look good at all. The cops, even Key West cops, they’re not gonna like the looks a this.”

  Still kneeling, slipping again as he strained to rise, Clifton hissed, “You set me up, you dago bastard.”

  Bert shook his head sadly. “Again with the name-calling. Where’s it get ya, Ted? You were gonna burn me and the dog to a crisp, but ya don’t hear me callin’ you bad names. I prefer the high road.”

  Clifton finally managed to regain his feet. His pants were torn. His sweater had largely unspooled. He said, “Fuck the high road. How much you want for the pictures?”

  “Us?” He looked around at Lenny and Marsha before he answered. “We don’t want nothin’. But I think ya need to talk to Pat about what it’s gonna cost ya. Ya been callin’ her a lotta bad names, too. But she’s a nice person. Maybe she’ll be big about it.”

  EPILOGUE

  “Amazing,” said Pat, as the exhausted but happy little group clustered around the bar at the otherwise empty club. “It actually worked.”

  “Of course it worked,” said Sam. “Most basic strategy there is. Get somebody out of position. Divide and conquer.”

  “And hope no one burns the place down in the meantime,” Lenny added.

  “Was never any chance a that,” said Bert, rubbing his dog’s head on the spot where the hair was wearing thin. “Not with that stuff. Wood alcohol with a pinch a roach powder thrown in. Bought it off the guy who runs the cats through hoops at Sunset. Got the idea when I was down there with the tough guys. Gives ya that sexy green flame but hardly any heat. Maybe ya could toast a marshmallow over it.”

  “Except,” said Marsha, “Clifton thought he was pouring hi-test.”

  “Oh yeah,” the old man agreed. “Intention-wise, it was arson, attempted murder, roasting a chihuahua, the whole nine yards. Excellent blackmail material.”

  “Blackmail?” said Pat. “I never even mentioned the word. Didn’t have to. Just told him it would be a nice gesture if he’d re-route the Choo-Choo so that it made a stop at the front door of the club. And have his drivers include some nice promotional patter in their script. And give us free ad space on his cutesy bullshit locomotives. He was quite agreeable to everything.”

  “A real sport,” said Bert, “once ya got ‘im by the short hairs.”

  

  “Well, it almost worked,” said Ricky, looking back past the twisted shoulder strap of the purple leotard as he drove the borrowed Pedi-Cab through the quiet streets toward Harbor House.

  “Our getaway?” said Carla. “Yeah, it might’ve worked great if that damn ramp wasn’t so steep.”

  “I wasn’t talking about our getaway. I was talking about our love affair. It came pretty close to working.”

  “For a while,” said Carla. She was luxuriating on the broad back seat, her arms spread wide to embrace the endless and uncluttered space of the night. “Pretty short while, really. But hey, who wants a love affair that comes close to working? That almost works. That kind of works. Settling for that, that’s what gets people trapped, I think.”

  Trying his best not to sound bitter, he said, “Well, I guess you’re not trapped now.”

  “And neither are you, Ricky. Y’ever consider the possibility that maybe you’re just better off without a girlfriend? Without a serious girlfriend, at least?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve only had fifteen, twenty minutes to get used to the idea.”

  “Might be worth thinking about. I mean, let’s be honest. What’s the most important thing to you? Being with someone? I don’t think so. It’s getting laughs. You’re very good at it. It lights you up. It’s what you have to give to people. Probably the best of what you have to give. No shame in that. Why not just go with it?”

  

  Peppers and Carmine drove through what was left of the night and into the next morning, hardly speaking until they hit the Georgia line. Then Carmine said, “Fucking Florida. Florida didn’t show me nothin’.”

  Peppers didn’t see the point of arguing, so he just looked out the window at some spindly pine trees sticking up through spirals of mist. A few miles later, he said, “Fat Lou’s gonna be pissed off at us.”

  “If he is, he is. But he shouldn’t be. I mean, we saved him from ending up in business with a real douchebag.”

  They passed a couple more exits before Peppers spoke again.

  “Carmine, I’m glad ya didn’t whack the funny man. Just wanted ya to know I’m glad.”

  The big fellow shrugged and tried to figure why his ins
ides suddenly felt pleasantly warm. Maybe it was just relief about a nasty piece of business left undone. Or maybe it was a kind of secret pride at having found within himself a bit of mercy and, along with it, maybe even a sense of humor. “Yeah,” he grunted. “Killing a clown in a ballet outfit. What woulda been the point? Not much glory in it, right?”

  

  By noon of that January Sunday, Lenny and Marsha and Ricky and Pat were on a flight up to New York. By nine am on Monday the cast and crew and writers of Dog Groomer to the Stars had gathered on a sound stage in Long Island City to begin the shooting of their pilot. Five weeks later, a focus group in Muncie, Indiana pronounced the new show funny and fresh, and the network slated eight episodes for spring.

  While not an outright smash, Groomer was successful enough that when, later in the year, its star, Ricky Reed, finally went into rehab, the entertainment media jumped on the story and gave the show a big boost leading into its second season.

  During the hiatus, Lenny and Marsha, now relatively flush with cash, finally had time to get out and look for the bigger apartment they’d been promising themselves for years. They considered places on West End Avenue and even the previously unthinkable Riverside Drive. Giddily, they realized that fabled precincts—close to Lincoln Center, across from Central Park—were suddenly within their reach, or almost.

  And yet they couldn’t seem to find a place they really liked. A kitchen layout was flawed, a lobby was pretentious, a foyer wasted too much space. Finally, after yet another long day of shlepping around with a realtor, they sat down over coffee and Marsha said, “You know what, Lenny? All these places we’ve ruled out, I don’t really think it comes down to what kind of knobs are on the bathroom sinks or whether the ceilings have molding. I’m wondering if maybe we can’t decide because, deep down, we just don’t want to live here anymore.”