Disappearing Acts

by Byars, Betsy

  “Look,” her mother said in her sensible voice, “you are sitting in your own kitchen, eating a pizza you made yourself. Where’s the danger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Herculeah looked down at the camera beside her plate. “Do you suppose it could be someone else who’s in danger ?”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She smiled. “Well, at least I know it’s not Meat.”

  “Where is Meat?”

  “He’s at Funny Bonz.”

  “What’s that? A new barbecued ribs place?”

  “Oh, Mom. It’s a comedy club. Meat’s learning to be funny. He’s going to take stand-up comic lessons, and I get to go to the graduation.”

  Her mother smiled. “I hope I can come. I could use a good laugh.”

  “Me too.”

  Herculeah tried to smile, but she didn’t succeed.

  “I know there’s more,” her mother said. “What else is on your mind?”

  “Remember when Meat and I went over to Death’s Door to reshelve the books? Remember, after that sniper tipped over the shelves trying to get to me?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, when we were shelving the books, I picked one up, and you know what the name of it was?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Funny Bones—like the comedy club—and I got one of my premonitions.”

  “And I’ve got one of my premonitions. Your pizza’s getting cold.”

  Herculeah picked up the slice of pizza. “Oh, I wonder what they’re doing right now. I wish I could see Meat.”

  “I thought you weren’t worried about Meat.”

  “I’m not. I just wish I could see him.”

  “Meat’s conservative. He doesn’t take chances—not like you do. Meat’s always safe.”

  “Nobody—” Herculeah looked at her mother. Her gray eyes were dark with concern. “Nobody is always safe.”

  4

  MISSING PERSON

  “We’re supposed to have a joke about ourselves,” a white-haired woman at the table with Meat told him. They sat side by side at one of the tables at Funny Bonz. “Did you know that?”

  “Yes, I heard.”

  “I asked her,” she nodded to the girl across the table, “what hers was. Want to know what she said?”

  “I guess.”

  “She said that everybody tells her she looks like Barbie, then she added, ‘Well, I do buy my clothes at Toys ”“ Us.’”

  Meat smiled.

  “I’m worried. I don’t think mine’s any good. Can I try it on you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, everybody tells me I look like Mrs. Santa Claus, so that’s what my joke’s about. Here goes.” She took a breath. “It’s hard living with elves. It’s not like Snow White’s Dopey and Sneezy. Our elves are Gropey and Sleazy.” She gave him a hopeful look. “What do you think?”

  Meat was spared having to answer by the arrival of the teacher, a lanky man who was smiling and rubbing his hands together as if he were drying them.

  All the students broke into smiles—not because the teacher had said or done anything funny, but in anticipation of the funny things they would all be saying and doing before the night was over.

  The teacher, Mike Howard, counted heads and glanced at his watch. “Hey, we’re missing one.” He glanced around the room. “We’ll wait. This is one funny person—just about ready to try the circuit—wanted to sharpen things up a bit.”

  Meat glanced at the girl across the table. She did have a lot of hair like Barbie. And her clothes did look like they might have some from Toys “” Us.

  “So what did you think?” Mrs. Santa Claus asked. “About my joke.”

  While Meat was working up a lie, someone at another table said, “While we’re sweating out the absentee, Mike, tell us how you got started.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He sat on the edge of one of the tables. “I got my start in fourth grade. I had never done one funny thing before, and then one day when the teacher, Miss Parotti, left the room, I was on my way to the pencil sharpener and I stopped at her desk and surprised myself by doing an imitation. ‘Boys and girls—’ Her nickname, incidentally, was Mush Mouth. ‘Boys and girls, will the person who made the bad smell please identify yourself by making another bad smell so that I can send you to the rest room.’”

  His imitation of Mush Mouth brought smiles, and Barbie let out a delighted yell: “I think I had her for home-room. ”

  “So this huge, huge success—the first of my life—led to greater things. Mr. Ledbetter—he was the principal: ‘Now boys and girls, I am just getting over my hook-worm treatment and ...’”

  Everyone—including Meat—laughed this time, and Mike shook his head at the memory.

  “It was instant fame. I mean, kids I’d never seen before would come up to me in the lunch line and say, ‘Do my teacher. Please!’ I’d go, ‘Who is your teacher?’ ‘Miss Prunty.’ ‘Right. Boys and girls, will whoever borrowed my book Laxatives of the Rich and Famous please return it immediately. I need it before the end of the school day.’”

  Mike gave a shrug of apology. Then he added, “They loved it. What can I tell you.”

  All this bathroom humor made Meat decide to go to one. He didn’t really have to go, but when he got up to do a routine—or didn’t they do that this early in the lessons? Anyway, he would certainly have to go then.

  “Rest rooms?” he asked Barbie.

  “I never go,” she said.

  “I thought you just did,” Mrs. Santa Claus said. “You went somewhere.”

  She shrugged. The man at the next table jabbed his finger toward a dark hall beside the stage.

  Meat proceeded slowly toward the unappealing hall, skirting the tables as he went.

  Behind him, Mike warmed to his story. “My comedy career lasted about two weeks. Then Mr. Ledbetter called me into his office and asked me to do my impersonation of him. Talk about your hostile audience. Then he asked if I had any other impressions. I did the entire staff, even the cafeteria workers, and he did not crack one smile. Not even at Mrs. Richards—‘Will whoever took my Gas-Away tablets please return them, or you will be very, very sorry.’”

  Meat had moved out of voice range. The building was old and the hall smelled of disinfectant and urine, as if someone hadn’t quite made it to the rest room.

  There was graffiti on the walls. Meat paused to read the messages as he walked slowly toward the two doors at the end. “D.J. wanted to call 911; he got the nine right but couldn’t find the eleven.” “Call Betty for real laughs.” Maybe he would dial. He needed a laugh more than he needed a rest room.

  Meat was sorry he had come—not just to the rest room, but to Funny Bonz as well. He had a feeling in his own bonz, and he didn’t like it.

  To keep up his spirits, he began to whistle. He recognized the song as that old camping song about the worms crawling in and out of a dead person.

  At the end of the hall, Meat stopped between the two doors. He always doubled-checked the signs on rest-room doors. This was because he had a recurring nightmare of being trapped in the girls’ bathroom at school.

  He had to peer closely because of the dim light. The sign on the door to the right said “Guys.” The sign across the hall said “Guy-ettes.”

  Herculeah would not like that word “guy-ettes.” She didn’t even approve of “Guys” and “Dolls.” He’d have to warn her before she came to graduation.

  He read the signs one more time, just to be sure. They still said the same thing, so Meat, reasonably confident, opened the door to Guys.

  The room was darker than the hall, and Meat felt for the light switch.

  He turned it on and was almost sorry he had. A roach hurried back to the baseboard. The floor was covered with crumpled paper towels, scraps of toilet paper, and various unidentifiable debris.

  The window was open. Meat was grateful for that and for the fresh air that came through it. Ex
cept for the occasional passing car, the room was quiet. A gurgle from the faucet seemed unusually loud.

  The condition of the rest room made Meat decide that he didn’t have to go after all. He glanced down. The breeze from the window disturbed the paper towels, and Meat saw a wallet. It was light blue.

  Meat bent closer. This looked like a guy-ette’s wallet. He thought maybe he should check the door again to make sure the sign said Guys—after all, this was a comedy club and people could go in for sick jokes, like Herculeah did. Anyway, he was getting out of here. This place was giving him the creeps.

  Meat picked up the wallet and, without opening it, put it in his back pocket. He would turn it in. They probably had some sort of Lost and Found department.

  As he turned to go, he noticed a lipstick halfway between where he had found the wallet and the door to one of the stalls. He didn’t pick this up. He just stared at it as if trying to make a connection.

  The wallet ...

  The lipstick ...

  His eyes continued to look.

  A hair brush—a dainty one with speckles like confetti in the plastic.

  The objects began to take on the feeling of a trail, things leading to something.

  And Meat knew that at the end of the trail there was going to be something he wouldn’t like.

  Something that would change his life.

  And not for the better.

  5

  THE GUY-ETTE

  “Herculeah, come away from the window.”

  “I have to make sure Meat gets home all right.”

  “For someone who’s not worried about Meat, you are giving a good imitation of being worried about Meat.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “What time do you expect him?”

  “Nine o‘clock.” Herculeah glanced over her shoulder at the clock. “Oh, not for another hour.”

  “Then come away from the window for an hour. Then go back.”

  Herculeah’s mother was at her desk, Herculeah at the living-room window. The living room served as Mim Jones’s office. She was a private investigator and saw her clients here.

  “You know, it’s funny.”

  “What? I could use a laugh.”

  “No, funny odd. Meat has told me that when I’m away and he thinks I’m in trouble, he stands at the window. Now things have turned around. I’m the one standing at the window, and Meat’s the one in trouble.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Herculeah smoothed down her hair. “I know it,” she said.

  Meat’s eyes continued to focus on the ominous trail. Now he was almost at the door of the stall.

  The wallet ... the lipstick ... the brush ... and now—

  The purse.

  There was the purse, also blue. It lay on its side, with its golden chain broken.

  Meat drew in a breath. He paused. Now his mind had begun to reason out what had happened. A guy-ette had mistakenly come into the men’s room.

  Of course. She had realized her mistake—probably as soon as she saw the urinals—heard him coming and, in a panic, quickly ducked into one of the stalls, hoping not to be discovered. These dropped objects and broken chain were the result of her panic.

  Meat was not up on bathroom etiquette, but he knew that what he needed to do was to leave the room immediately in a gentlemanly way.

  He turned, then hesitated. No, maybe he should quickly wash his hands to show he hadn’t noticed anything. He did that, running a little cold water on them from the dirty tap. He reached for a towel, but the holder was empty.

  He quickly dried his hands on the sides of his pants. He said, “Well, I’d better be getting back to class or they’ll start without me.” He started for the door.

  The wallet! He remembered the wallet. He had the girl’s wallet.

  And then a sudden thought made his freeze. The lights had been off when he entered. Off!

  If there were a girl in here, she would have ducked immediately into one of the stalls, wouldn’t she? Particularly if she was in a panic. She wouldn’t have wasted time by running across the room and turning off the light first.

  Now Meat did not know what to do. He decided the best thing he could do was put the wallet back where he had found it and return to the group.

  He reached back to pull the wallet from his pocket, and his elbow hit the door of a stall, jarring it open.

  Meat saw a flash of blue. There was someone sitting inside.

  He was fairly certain it was a guy-ette.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Meat said.

  He spoke as he would have wanted someone to speak to him in similar circumstances. He knew every rest-room nightmare there was, and having a stranger of the opposite sex catch you sitting on the john was right up at the top.

  “My elbow did that. My head was turned the other way. I didn’t see a thing. Go on with what you were—”

  Meat didn’t get to say the word “doing,” because at that moment something fell against the door of the stall, opening it all the way. Meat stumbled backward.

  “I really was looking the other way that time. I didn’t even—”

  This was another sentence that Meat was not going to complete.

  He stepped back quickly. A body had fallen forward from the stall and landed at his feet.

  A girl! A girl!

  Her head was turned to the side, and a ponytail hid most of her face.

  A girl!

  And worse than that!

  Much, much worse than that.

  As bad as it could be.

  The girl was dead.

  6

  STAGE FRIGHT

  Meat backed out of the rest room. The door clanged shut behind him, the word “Guys” passed unseen before his fixed gaze. Slowly he began to back his way down the dim hall.

  Something seemed to be stuck in his throat. It felt like a rock, but Meat knew it was something worse. Meat knew that it was a scream and that it wouldn’t go down, and he hoped it wouldn’t come up.

  He heard something, a noise that seemed to come from inside the rest room. Footsteps? If Herculeah had been there, she would have rushed forward to investigate, but he was no Herculeah.

  He didn’t have the strength to move forward and open the door when all he would see would be a dead body. Or maybe he would see something worse. Maybe the footsteps belonged to the killer. Could the killer have been in the bathroom with him and the body? The thought caused him to shudder. Anyway, he told himself, maybe the noise had come from Guy-ettes instead.

  He glanced hopefully at that door. He would have given a lot to see it burst open and an armed police-woman step out.

  Meat continued his slow backward steps. He heard laughter behind him. He turned, as surprised as if he had never heard the sound before.

  Then he realized that the comedy class had started. He continued his long walk, concentrating on putting one foot directly behind the other, on not fainting. He took deep breaths, forgetting that the air was scented with disinfectant and urine.

  He paused at the telephone, wanting to call someone, but he couldn’t even think of Herculeah’s number, the number he had dialed at least three times a day since they had met. He continued with slow heavy steps, helping himself along by touching the wall first on one side and then the other.

  The distance from the men’s room to the club room where his fellow classmates laughed seemed to be hundreds of miles away, instead of a few feet. He could not remember anything taking him so long.

  He came to the end of the hall. Mike had started without him. “Listen, gang, being funny is no joke.”

  There was laughter.

  Mike went on, “The key to being funny is to find out what is interestingly funny about yourself. That’s what we’re going to start with. What sets you apart. We’ll listen to your voice and help you develop your own style. Individuality is the key. The world of comedy rewards originals big-time.”

  There was a question that Meat couldn’t hear.
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  The teacher said, “I’m going to help you. That’s what we’re here for. What’s funny about you—what works for you.”

  Meat progressed into the room. He found he was standing on the stage, in what was probably the comedy spotlight. He cleared his throat.

  The class looked at him. The teacher turned too, his eyebrows raised in a quizzical way.

  There must have been something comical about him—even though he had never felt less funny in his life—because their faces brightened. They were obviously ready to laugh.

  Meat swallowed. The sound was loud enough to cause actual smiles.

  It was as if they thought he’d gone into the men’s room to work up a routine, and now he’d done it. Now he was ready to start his routine, to crack them up. He shook his head.

  The teacher encouraged him with a gesture.

  “Maybe he’s got stage fright,” Barbie said, and giggled.

  Yes, he had stage fright and every other kind of fright there was in the world.

  Meat swallowed. He didn’t think he could speak because of the rock in his throat—it might have to be removed surgically.

  More smiles, more expectation.

  He finally got out the first half of his sentence. “There’s a girl in the men’s bathroom ...”

  Their faces grew even brighter. Their smiles widened. Meat knew how it would be to be a stand-up comic, to have the entire room waiting for the punch line.

  He wished he had a funnier one.

  “And she’s dead.”

  7

  THE BUSY BODY

  “Is that supposed to be funny? Because I don’t get it,” Barbie said.

  A general criticism of his routine began.

  “I don’t get it either.”

  “I mean, he started out all right. The part about the girl in the men’s room was promising, but a dead body isn’t funny at all.”

  “No, no,” Meat shouted over their comments. “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  He could see that everyone still wanted it to be a joke. Meat did, too.