by Paul Neuhaus
“Is that something to worry about? I mean maybe he’s shacked up with a broad. I could dig around, but I expect he’ll pop back up before I can dig too deep.”
“That would be the best of all outcomes. And guess what? I’d still pay you for a full week. But I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I’ve gotten to know Tad. He even invited me to an Aetheric Concordance membership drive thing. Like I say, crazy religion notwithstanding, he’s salt of the earth. There’s no way he’d drop off the planet the way he did. Particularly since he knows I’d be the one to take the fall.”
“Did you go to the cops?”
Randall laughed. “Hell to the no. Near as I can figure, not even Albright’s family knows he’s out of commission. What I need from you is to find me one triple-A action star and bring him back by 7AM Monday. Otherwise I’m out on my ass.”
“You sure about that? Maybe I could talk to Gary.”
He waved his hands in front of him. “No dice. You think Gary’s gonna take my side over the Exec Producer? I mean friendship with you is only gonna get me so far.”
I nodded. He was right.
After Randall left, I went in to see what Ava was doing. She was lying on top of the comforter with her shoes off watching some bullshit show on Netflix. I laid down next to her and, without comment, she started taking off her clothes. Being no fool, I followed her example. I made love to her from behind, watching the angry red scar on her back as her body rocked with my thrusting.
Wolflsheim’s Deli is on La Cienega, more or least equidistant between The Comedy Store on Sunset and The Improv on Melrose. Comedy Switzerland, we called the restaurant because both clubs had their adherents and we didn’t want to play favorites. Washout’s Anonymous met every Thursday night, and I hadn’t missed a Thursday in over five years. WA was a pseudo-support group for failed stand-up comics, a fraternity I could lay claim to. At the very least, I hadn’t come from somewhere else in the country to fail in a city that was not my home. I’d been born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, so I had that going for me. Every other member of the Washouts had originated in another town—Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Topeka of all places. The funny thing was, only one of us was Jewish, but, given the proud Jewish heritage in the comedic arts, a deli felt like the right place to meet. I say “support group”, but most of us had been out of the game for a long time. Wound licking wasn’t high our agenda. We’d fallen into the rhythm of bitching about pop culture and current events while enjoying some fine corned beef.
As I drove down out of the Valley, I thought about Howard Dunphey, Randall’s dad. Given what he’d done for me, I should’ve kept a better eye on his kid. He’d literally rescued me when I was flat broke and newly married. The comedy game wasn’t going well for me—as it doesn’t for most—and I was floundering, badly in need of a steady income. Howard, an ex-cop and private eye, had taken me under his wing and groomed me. God knows why. He’d given me my five thousand hours of fieldwork, he’d nursed through the Associate’s Degree in criminal justice, he’d gone with me when I’d gotten fingerprinted, he helped me fill out the application packet and he bought me lunch after my certification exam. He’d also insisted I go for the Full Monty with the firearms qualification and permit. To this day, I don’t carry a gun, but I can’t fault Howard for a being a completist. He’d literally saved my life, and now I thought of him only occasionally. That felt like a kind of disloyalty and I wrestled with it until I pulled into the parking lot behind Wolfsheim’s.
Once I got out of the Jeep, I put away my bubble of negativity. I know how to compartmentalize, and I wasn’t going to let whatever it was I was feeling about the elder Dunphey get in the way of sandwiches and camaraderie.
As usual, I was the last to arrive, and I got the requisite shot for it. Darius was the first one to see me since his side of the booth was facing the entrance. “There he is!” he said. “You prioritizing a big case over your boys?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I been working real hard on figuring out who all’s fucking your mother.”
“Shit. That’s a knot you ain’t gonna untangle anytime soon. Might as well investigate who isn’t fucking my mother.”
“It’s a short list,” Loughty said. “Considering the size of L.A. County and the South Bay, I mean.”
“I want it known that I am not fucking Darius’ mom,” Abelman threw in.
Darius placed a reassuring hand on Abelman’s shoulder. “Yeah, but don’t take it personally. She don’t like men who’re cut.” Daris was six foot eight and, somehow, the opposite of intimidating. Unless someone was seriously up in his face, he couldn’t help smiling. It’s an absolute wonder he never made it as a comic.
I sat down next to Loughty on the side of the booth facing away from the entrance. Probably a violation of the Gunfighter Ethic, but I was on safe ground. “You guys order?”
“That,” Abelman said. “Would violate group norms. Not to mention a dick move.” Abelman, the token Jew, was… disappointing. If you were to sit across from him with your eyes closed, listen to him talk for five minutes, then open your eyes, he’d look exactly the way you’d pictured him in your head. You would’ve pictured the actor Jason Schwartzman, the kid from Rushmore, and you’d’ve been near one hundred percent correct. You’d’ve even been right about the “kid” part. Although Abelman had gone into urology after comedy, he still looked like he was twenty years old.
“Okay, sure, but we still gotta wait for Kowalczyk.”
Everyone furrowed their brow. “Kowalczyk isn’t coming,” Loughty said. Loughty was the polar opposite of Darius. He was average height, average weight, average looks. He was the epitome of “average”—and white, so, so white. Were it not for his blue eyes, you’d swear the guy was an albino.
“The baby thing again?” I said. Doug Kowalczyk and his wife were having a baby. They were taking a class in natural childbirth. He’d missed two Washout meetings already. “That’s it. He’s excommunicated.”
“Who made you pope?” Abelman said.
“The ghost of Shecky Greene. Didn’t you see the smoke?”
Darius nudged his booth mate. “Shecky ain’t even dead,” he said. “You’ve all people should know that.”
“Why should I know that, Darius? Is it because I’m Jewish and Shecky’s Jewish? Is it because all Jewish people know all the other Jewish people?”
Darius laughed. “Yes, that is why.”
“Right. Same with the blacks. You got the news immediately when Denzel Washington died…”
Darius’ eyes widened in panic. “Denzel Washington died?! When?!”
All of us at the table laughed at the black man’s expense. Denzel Washington had not died.
The butt of the joke caught on quickly. “Aw, see now, that’s not even cool. To a black man, Denzel’s like one of the apostles. You don’t joke about Denzel dying.”
I held up the little glass of water in front of me. “To Denzel not dying,” I said.
All four of us clinked glasses and turned at a familiar voice. “The usual, gentlemen?” It was Elchanan. The only waiter we ever got. He was somewhere between eighty and a thousand years old. His white coat and white shirt were always immaculate.
“I don’t see any reason to break with tradition,” I replied, not even picking up a menu.
“Same,” Loughty said.
“Same,” Darius said.
“How’s the blintz?” Abelman asked the waiter. All of us laughed.
Elchanan scowled at Abelman. “‘How’s the blintz?’ Every time you ask me how something is and then you order corned beef. Is there some way we can skip that step? Maybe you could ask yourself, ‘How’s the kugel?’ or ‘How’s the brisket?’ on the way in. Get it out of your system.”
All of us laughed again. Everyone has a breaking point, and our longtime server had finally reached it with Abelman. Abelman said, “Okay. Jeeze. I’ll have the corned beef. You don’t gotta make a federal case out of it.”
Elcha
nan took his leave and Abelman changed gears with a sigh. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve hit a crossroads. Or, actually, another crossroads.”
I sighed, prepared for the melodrama that would come from encouraging the guy across the table. “Okay, Abelman. What’s your crossroads?” Darius kicked me underneath the table, but I ignored him.
“So, this was my first patient of the day yesterday,” the surrogate Schwartzman said. “Nine A.M. Right off the bat. I put on my glove, I spin in my chair and there he is: The guy's fucking Gibraltar. Here I am, trying to do my work, and I'm facing a sand worm. From Dune. Right then, I realized something. Something profound…”
“What’d you realize?” Loughty asked, now fully engaged.
“I realized I fucking hate dicks.”
We all laughed. Here he was, a urologist hating on dicks. His bread and butter. It was like a haberdasher suddenly breaking with habers. And dashers.
“You laugh,” Abelman said, raising a finger. “But for me, all day long - day in and day out - it's dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick. I swear, sometimes I go home and it's like I've got the ghost aroma of ball-sacks trapped in my nasal hair. Like when I'd do a shift at Arby’s back in high school. I'd smell like grease for hours.”
“You're a dick doctor,” I said. “A little dick comes with the territory.”
When Abelman spoke again, his voice came in a wail. For him, this was a true existential crisis. Which made it funnier. “A little dick? At night I have dreams. Like when Dumbo got drunk and saw the pink elephants. Only for me, it's pink dicks. Big ones, small ones. Singing a scary tune, morphing into one another. Chasing me.” He shivered which set off another gale of laughter.
Darius leaned in. “Why’s this guy got wood?”
“Who the hell knows? Maybe he’s queer for exam rooms. He came in complaining of an itch. I gotta check him for a skin condition, and he's aiming this laser cannon at me. It's humiliating.”
The giant next to Abelman burst out in his patented smile. “Humiliating. Right. You're telling me you didn't slop his knob right there? You're telling me you guys didn't engage in brutal—but oh-so-tender—butt love?”
Abelman’s voice rose another half octave. “No. What've I been telling you? I hate dicks. If I see my own dick today, I'm gonna set myself on fire. I've reached my dick threshold. I've passed the point of dick no return.”
“Then why in the fuck are you a urologist?” Loughty said. A rare invocation of the F-word. He’d worked clean back in the day.
“It was my Gram Gram,” Abelman replied, miserable.
“Your grandmother?” Darius said. “Big dick lover was she?”
“No, you know the cliche... Jewish grandmother equals ‘you're a doctor’. The pressure's enormous. And we're not talking any old grandmother here. She was a survivor. She had to hide in a latrine at Majdanek. They fucking killed her brother. And all of this after I’d defied her to become a comic. And failed.”
I looked around, hoping the food would come soon. “I get it,” I said. “So, you became a doctor. But how many specializations are there? You could have been a GP or an internist.”
“Did someone hold the proverbial Dick Gun to your head?” Darius said.
“No,” Abelman said, somehow more miserable. “That I did for a woman.”
“Come again?” Loughty said.
“Heidi Horton. Met her in med school. A real shiksa. I would've followed her into a shit sea infested with shit sharks. She went into dicks. I followed.”
“And where is Heidi now?” I said.
“Hopefully roasting in hell.”
“I thought Jews didn’t believe in hell,” Loughty said.
“In her case, I’m willing to make an exception.”
“Devil's advocate question:” I said. “Why didn't you go into vaginas? Why didn't you become a... vaginologist?”
“Were you not listening? With the shit sea and the shit sharks?” The little man sighed, grew pensive. “I gave it some thought. I really did. Here was my reasoning: I didn't wanna become jaded. I think we can all agree that vaginas are the best evidence for God we have. I never wanted to take such a natural wonder for granted. Plus, it sounds good on paper, but it's not like you're looking at Victoria's Secret vaj all day. You're looking at more Jessica Tandy vaj than anything.”
“Miss Daisy’s meat drapes…” Darius said.
Elchanan, with a helper, brought over the plates of food. We dug in and, after a moment, Darius spoke again. “Hey…Did you ever have anybody with a weird dick disorder?”
I was hoping we’d moved on from dicks, but there it was. “Please, could we not talk about weird dick disorders over sandwiches?”
Abelman ignored me. He did so love a spotlight. “I had a guy with a bifurcated penis once.”
Darius leaned in. “Bifurcated? What's that?”
“You know when you're gonna cook a hot dog,” the urologist said around a mouthful of corned beef. “And you slice it down the middle before you put it in the pan?”
“Alright, alright,” I said, slamming my hand on the table. “I’m declaring a moratorium on mutant penises. Somebody pick a different topic.”
With Abelman derailed, topics fell into distinct percentages. Thirty percent comedy (comics we’d seen, comics we’d known that’d dropped off the face of the earth, old bits we wanted to resurrect for the evening), ten percent personal catchup, fifty percent the shitshow our government’s become, and ten percent stuff miscellaneous.
Bifurcated penises notwithstanding, I left feeling refreshed. On the drive home, I didn’t think once about Howard Dunphey, his son’s case or the bizarre state of my personal life.
When I got home, I parked the Jeep and surveyed the complex. Hailey’s car was there, but her apartment lights were out. It looked like I was home free.
I wasn’t home free.
When I reached the back stairs—the ones to the last set of apartments—a voice hissed at me through the darkness. I nearly shit myself.
“How was the meeting of the he-man woman hater’s club?” Hailey, my possibly soon-to-be-ex-wife was sitting on the steps, her eyes glowing in the darkness like a possum’s.
“Whoa. Fuck,” I said, catching my breath. “You scared the shit out of me.” I caught my breath. “Plus, you know those guys. There’s not a lotta misogyny in that group. And there sure as hell ain’t any he-men.”
Hailey shrugged. “He-man woman haters club sounds funnier than bitter ex-comedian’s club. You got a case? You’re back earlier than usual.”
I was annoyed with her—as much for scaring me as for not minding her own business. “Yeah, I got a case,” I said. “I’m gonna make an early start of it tomorrow.”
“Was that Randall Dunphey I saw earlier? Wearing a suit and expensive sunglasses?”
“C’mon, Hailey. You know I can’t get into that. That stuff stays privileged.”
“Unless you need an attorney.”
“Unless I need an attorney, yes.” I should’ve been looking for a new lawyer, but, like most guys, I put things off. If Ava had been reminding me periodically to hire a new shyster, I probably would’ve done it, but organization wasn’t Ms. Amelia’s strong suit. Hailey’d always been the one to handle. Handle it then go out of her way to shame me for not handling it.
“You know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking…”
All of my least favorite conversations with Hailey of late began with the phrase, “You know, I’ve been thinking…” I hadn’t built the reflex I needed yet. The reflex where I say, “Sorry, gotta go! Things to do! People to see!” Instead, I said, “Yeah?” That “yeah?” usually cost me thirty minutes of wasted time.
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking you’re not a nice man.”
I blinked at her through the darkness. Not because she was hard to see, but because I agreed with her. “Yes, Hailey. I’m not a nice man. I threw away a ten-year marriage because I wanted some strange. I’ve never made any claims at upstanding moral character.
I have enough decency left, though, to wish you’d let the idea, the idea of me being an irredeemable dickhead, take hold in your head so you can get on with your life. Yes, I treated you bad. Yes, you deserve better. There’s no question about that. I’ll be the first one to say it. Hell, I am saying it. But, for some reason, you won’t get angry. You won’t assert yourself. You won’t say, ‘Fuck that guy! I’m looking out for number one!’ Instead of doing those things, you move into the back of the building behind me and Ava, you’re still working as my attorney and you lurk in shadowy places, waiting to lunge out and drop a Guilt Blanket. It’s not a good look.”
Per usual, she neither heard nor processed a word I’d said. “I decided you were not a nice man, Jack, because I still love you and you don’t love me anymore.”
I sighed and leaned against the building, tired and nauseous from the corned beef. “You realize that doesn’t make any sense, right? I’m not a bad person because I stopped loving you. I’m a bad person because I took up with another woman and kicked you out of our house—in spite of the fact I didn’t stop loving you. Apart from my curious dick, nothing has changed. If you were okay with me banging Ava on the side, we could still live together. I thought you were stronger than this. You had no trouble telling me off when we were together, and now you’ve got PTSD. You’ve shut down. You’re balled-up inside yourself and you can’t—“ I lowered my head and massaged the bridge of my nose. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before. I mean, we have, haven’t we? I don’t know what we get out of having it again.”
Again, she wasn’t listening. She was waiting for me to stop talking so she could start again. “What does she have that I don’t have?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I know we’ve had this conversation before.”
“Did I not fuck you enough? Did I fuck you bad?”
“No, you didn’t fuck me bad. You were a very generous lover. You’re a beautiful woman.” And she was, too. Red hair, green eyes, a full figure, a horny kid’s wet dream.
