Guy Novel

by Michael Ryan

  “What I can’t figure out,” I said, ignoring Don’s last bit of literary analysis, “is how it all went click so fast in her brain. I mean, was she planning to pick up some chump at the bank that day? What about the rain and the early closing? Was it all just a spur-of the-moment impulse, or what?”

  “Psycho,” Don said.

  “Yeah, that was the second thing I thought of when I found the money in her purse.”

  Don smiled. “I am not going to ask you what the first thing was. I am not.”

  “My first thought was: gee, I wish I could give this money to my friend, Don. I could commission him to write a tanka in honor of the Year of the Banana.”

  “Your banana. I’m not even going to visit you in the slammer, you dipshit.”

  “When are you going to call this lawyer for me?”

  “I think I might wait until ten a.m. anyway. It is Sunday, you know. Probably triple rates on Sunday. Hope you have some good gigs coming up.”

  “I’ll never work in this town again.”

  “Doris is a player, it’s true. Of course, she’s not at all a vindictive or vengeful person.”

  “Ho ho hilarious, thanks again,” I said.

  “Anyway,” Don said. “She probably got it all out of her system at the Unwedding Dinner.” Don then proceeded to tell me what happened when I didn’t show up at the church. I listened, but it wasn’t fun:

  “Since your lewdness was more important than our friendship and you didn’t deign to call to say you wouldn’t be picking me up, I left late and had to race to the church in the Friday evening rush-hour traffic nearly widowing my wife and orphaning my children. But worth it so you could pork some megababe, really it’s fine, pal. Let me know when you want me to be your best man again.”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I said. “I get the point.”

  “I’m not so sure you do,” he said. He looked at me with concern and took a deep breath before he continued. “I got there at exactly seven o’clock. Everyone—all twenty-five of your wedding guests—were waiting literally at the church door with poor Doris. Thank God she wasn’t wearing a full bridal gown, just a simple white antique lace dress, hand sewn for some Hapsburg princess and worth only about a half a million dollars. By the way, she looked spectacular, you bonehead. Somehow everyone thought I’d know something they didn’t. They thought you might have mentioned it to your best man if you were planning to bail. Of course I was sure you were dead. I didn’t say that out loud. I couldn’t imagine you not showing up otherwise. It was weird standing there believing you were dead and not being able to say it. We didn’t know how long to wait or where to go if we didn’t. Everyone was trying to make little jokes to relieve the tension and kept giving side-glances at Doris to see how she was handling this. Somebody had gotten the yellow pages and people were calling hospitals and police on their flip phones. I had brought mine along too. Doris took charge of it immediately and insisted on calling her home answering machine herself. I was standing there next to her—I think it was 7:10 or 7:15 when she got your message. I watched her for the fifteen seconds it took her to listen to it. The blood left her face. She turned so white her face matched her dress. I thought she was going to pass out. Francine knew what happened immediately, I guess everybody did—except me. I thought the message was from the police or somebody. I just couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t have told me beforehand that you were going to do this, or even that you would do it. So like a bumblepuppet, I say to Doris, ‘Is he okay?’ And Doris says, with great dignity, ‘Oh yes. I think Robert is just fine.’ Then she turns to the group and announces, ‘There will be no wedding tonight, friends.’ That’s when Francine hopped in. She grabbed Doris by the elbow and walked her away. After ten years of marriage, I am still amazed by that woman’s brain. It goes seventy places at once. I’ve seen her at book signings writing personal inscriptions one after another while carrying on three other conversations with three different people. Whereas I’m like what Lyndon Johnson said about Gerald Ford: can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. My idea of multitasking is to look at the mirror when I comb my hair. Anyway, as Francine was steering Doris away, she called back to us, ‘Don’t anybody leave. Please just wait for us.’ As well as I know her, I had no idea what she was doing.

  “Well, what she did was give Doris a talk. These are strong women, pal. They are another species, not like us. They make us look like crème brûlée: a little thin candy crust and mush underneath. These women are made of plain-carbon steel. Five minutes later, they both come back and they’re laughing. Doris’s makeup is perfect. If she cried, it ain’t showing. And it’s not a brave front. This is who she is, all the way through. ‘Okay, let’s go eat,’ she says. ‘I called Missillac and they’re already setting up for us. We’re going to have a fabulous dinner. The Unwedding Dinner.’ And off they go, the two of them. They walked the six blocks to the restaurant, and we all followed them like Boy Scouts on a hike.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “You ain’t heard nothing yet. So we all get seated and Chef Borchard has outdone himself. We start eating our brains out and drinking Cristal Roederer, which Chef Borchard sold at a discount to you, my friend, for only $400 a bottle.”

  “Me?” I said.

  “Oh yes, this dinner was on you. There was something about a blank credit card slip you left with him like you do when you register at a hotel?”

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Yes, and we drank a lot of champagne. Amazing how much really good champagne you can drink when somebody else is paying for it. Plus Doris insisted on giving every person there a bottle to take home in memory of the evening. She figured you owed us all at least that much.”

  I did some calculation in my head. Twenty-five people at $400 a bottle plus the dinner at $200 a head plus the champagne during dinner.

  “Twenty grand,” I said.

  “You’re not counting tax. Or the tip. Doris felt 20 percent was stingy in these circumstances. She gave the waiters 30 percent. And a bonus for the chef and his kitchen staff. She filled out the slip you signed. Some of your guests were a little drunk at that point and were yelling, ‘Fifty percent, Doris. Give everybody fifty.’ ”

  “I don’t want to know,” I said.

  “You’re right, you don’t,” Don said. “You also don’t want to know about the Robert Roast.”

  “The Robert Roast,” I repeated.

  “Maybe you do want to know about the Robert Roast. I think you do. I think it might be good for you, as you consider your spiritual defects as you enter the monastery. Which may be the only option left to you at this point. It might be a character builder.”

  “My character’s already built,” I said.

  “It got unbuilt at the Robert Roast. Totally demolished, I’d say, along with whatever miniscule reputation you used to have. I hadn’t met some of your guests. Besides Doris’s mother, there were twenty-four people, twelve couples, all people you think are your friends. As I said, we were all drinking a lot of champagne. It was Francine who actually had the idea. She got up to make the toast, which I would have made if it had been the Wedding Dinner instead of the Unwedding Dinner. Francine, who has always loved you, said, ‘Let’s all say something nasty about that miserable shit, Robert.’ Everybody got right into the spirit of it. But once again it was your fiancée, Doris, who was most impressive. After everyone had assassinated your character and reduced you to poopy skidmarks on their napkins, Doris said, ‘I’m really not happy with this. These are just our subjective opinions of this monster that I almost married. Let’s tell his secrets, the ones he’s really ashamed of. I’m going to start.’ ”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that. I admit this is truly impressive. Would you like to hear your worst secrets that your wedding guests have vowed to tell everyone in the entertainment business whom you did not invite to your wedding?”

  “Definitely not,” I said.

  �
�You fart under the covers,” Don said. “You whine doing the dishes. You whine about your career. You bad mouth other comics especially ones more famous than you, which is almost all of them. In your opinion I am pussy-whipped.”

  “I was just mad that Francine wouldn’t let you go to the Lakers game that time.”

  “That’s the cute stuff,” Don said. “You also had sex with your college roommate.”

  “Doris told everyone that?” I said. “It was twenty years ago. I was a little lost freshman. We were both stoned.”

  “You sold cocaine to your middle school debate coach.”

  “That was twenty-five years ago. What can I say? I was fourteen. I was having some problems.”

  “All right, let’s get a little more current. What about this schizophrenic girl? Your landlady’s daughter?”

  “What about her?” I said.

  “You’re screwing her, right?”

  “Wow,” I said, for the third time. “This is evil. I’m only going to say this once, and I’m only going to say it to you. That’s a lie. I’ve never touched her and wouldn’t touch her. I’ve never even thought of touching her.”

  Don got up from the table and cleared the oatmeal bowls and put them in the dishwasher. He came back and put his arm around my shoulder, and said, “My friend, you’ve got what they call in Washington, ‘a credibility problem.’ Your guests took it kind of personally what you did there. I took it personally. I’ll get over it, I guess. Francine took it very personally, though she’s been looking for years for an excuse to nail your ears back. Doris, now she took it most personally of all. I’d say it was personal in her case. I mean, we’re all adults. We understand that what goes on between men and women is a mystery. Nobody knows the real truth about the private interaction between two people, probably including the two people themselves. Our social arrangements are built around protecting that privacy. If you don’t want to marry Doris, that’s fine. Nobody really gives a shit except maybe Doris. But you do not humiliate another person like that. Especially a person like Doris. I mean, public image is her business, for God’s sake. That was like springing a trapdoor beneath her. Public humiliation. It was a very bad thing to do. And, sorry as I am to say it, I think you’re going to pay for it big-time.”

  That wasn’t news, but what Don said to me about how morally repugnant my humiliating Doris was was news, and that I had not fully realized it was disturbing. Even if I didn’t know I wasn’t going to marry her until I woke up at Sabine’s fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be at the church. It was in fact my obligation to know, and I felt ashamed.

  Emma came in, yelling, “Jeb hit me, Daddy. Jeb hit me!”

  Jeb was three inches behind her, yelling, “I did not! I did not!”

  “See,” Don said to me, “Jeb’s got a credibility problem too. Excuse me, I’ve got to go be a dad.” He picked up one of them in each arm, and walked into the TV room. “Time for a peace conference, kids. This crap is going to stop right now.”

  I looked at the clock. The kennel would be open. I could go pick up Sparky. At least Sparky likes me, I thought. Or maybe he doesn’t. How would I like him if he put me in a kennel?

  Don stuck his head out of the TV room door. “Leave the megababe’s note, okay? If you don’t need it to wank off with. I’ve got to fax it to Johnny Cochran.”

  6.

  Sparky still liked me, unless he’s by far the best actor in LA (which is possible). He came bolting through the swinging door that separated the reception area from the kennel at Madge’s, and leapt up to lick my face, nearly knocking me over backward. He’s a golden lab, seventy pounds of pure muscle with the temperament of Saint Francis of Assisi, but when he wants to investigate a fireplug he can outpull a tractor. Madge followed him, carrying his leash doubled-looped in one hand, a short pigeon-breasted woman with faded blonde hair who favored pink fuzzy sweaters and always wore two pairs of glasses, a rhinestone-studded pair on her face and black halflenses hanging from her neck. She must have boarded Sparky at least a hundred times in the four years I’d lived at Renate’s. At Pico and Lincoln, her kennel was one mile and ten galaxies away from Santa Monica Canyon, in an alley across from Oriental Massage. Madge kept a pot of green tea brewing for “the girls,” who came over at slow times during the afternoon to pet the dogs and cry, teenagers who couldn’t speak a word of English, illegals in permanent debt to a pimp who smuggled them into the country. They were supposedly at least eighteen, but they looked younger than Madge’s twin daughters, who were twelve. They slept on their massage tables and kept their personal effects in a single drawer. Madge met the pimp, who, she said, couldn’t have been more than twenty-five himself and arrived chauffeured in a Lincoln Town Car that waited at her door while he thanked her personally for her kindness to his employees. His manners were as elegant as his clothes, fine silks and cashmeres, but the message was made clear by being completely unstated: if Madge interfered with his business in any way, she would regret it. Madge had no such intentions. She just wanted the girls to come over if they wanted to. He was happy to let them do so since it apparently made them act less depressed for the customers.

  Sometimes a few of them were there sitting around in kimonos when I picked up Sparky, but at nine Sunday morning they must have all been sleeping in after their biggest night of the week.

  “Too early for the girls, Madge?” I asked.

  “One of them hung herself Friday night,” Madge said casually.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “Sweet little girl. Mitchie. Mi-hi. It means beauty and joy. Hung herself on an overhead sprinkler using one of the customer’s belts. She took it off his pants while he was passed-out drunk. When he woke up, there she was.”

  “That’s awful. God. Were the cops called?”

  “No. There’s no record of these girls. They don’t exist. Took her out in a Hefty bag. Sparky is sure glad to see you,” she added in the same tone, as if this sentence proceeded from the previous ones.

  “That’s awful,” I said, again.

  Madge gave me a look like, “What planet do you live on?” then said flatly, “Yes, it is.”

  “Nothing can be done about it,” I said. It was a question.

  “Not about her. That’s for sure.”

  “The others?”

  Madge was behind the counter now, pulling my bill out of her files. The counter was pink and so were the walls. Her complexion was pinkish too. She dropped her rhinestone-studded glasses and put on the half-lenses and spread the bill on the counter.

  “You understand, Robert, it doesn’t behoove me to become officially involved. But just between us, the cops know all about it. You tell me why they don’t do anything.”

  I stood there looking dumbly at her. She saw that I wasn’t willing to become officially involved either.

  “Of course we could call Action News,” she said. “That’s a great humanitarian organization. In for the shoot, out of there, get it in the can for the five o’clock broadcast. They were actually here a few years ago, for about fifteen minutes. I wouldn’t talk to them, so they shot me refusing to talk to them. You know, knocking on the door, I open it and there’s the camera and an anorexic young woman in a nice suit and good haircut sticking a microphone in my face. Everybody forgot about it five minutes after the broadcast anyway. And guess what? Oriental Massage is still here.”

  “How about adding a couple of bucks to my bill for the girl’s family or something?” I asked lamely.

  “Who knows who they are? If they’re alive. But sure, I’ll buy the girls fortune cookies to go with their tea. Hey,” she said, slapping the counter with her hand, “I almost didn’t tell you. I rented your video. I watched it last night.”

  “My video?”

  “That one you did—New Comics: Live at the Improv.”

  “That was eight years ago, with five other guys. I was on six minutes.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever. You were great. I loved that bit about the midget
and the urinal.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, remembering. “That was a good bit.” “It was great. Who thinks of that, how a midget feels when he has to use a men’s room, knowing he’s going to get smacked in the face by a toilet cake.”

  “Stared in the face,” I corrected her.

  “That’s what I mean,” she said. “Where do you guys come up with this stuff? It’s the most I can do to talk to dogs.”

  “You open your mouth and words come out. I work on it beforehand until I could recite it backward. But then you just do it.”

  “Not me. Not in a million years,” Madge said.

  “I’ve actually been wondering if maybe there’s something else I could do with my life besides try to make a bunch of drunk twenty-somethings laugh at bathroom jokes. You need any help around here?”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked, with genuine concern. I was amazed she could care about my career problems for one second with what she had on her shoulders. “I don’t mean working for me, you’re serious about quitting comedy.”

  “About half the time,” I said. “It’s probably other stuff.”

  “Well, you’ve got a gift. You made me laugh. Perked me up on a night I needed it.”

  “Thanks, Madge.”

  “I just wanted to tell you that, so I’m glad I didn’t forget. I think everybody’s got a gift. Mine is animals. I’ve always loved them. My family didn’t have enough money for me to be a vet. I’m probably not smart enough anyway. But I’ve always been good with animals. Other people come in here and they see the cages and it smells like hell and there’s all that barking, and they think, how could anybody stand that? But to me it’s heaven. So this is what I do. My kids don’t go hungry, either.”

  “That’s great, Madge,” I said. I meant it.

  “Yeah, well, I’m bending your ear here, but everybody gets discouraged sometimes. Recession we had here a couple years ago, people didn’t board their animals. We ate a lot of Kraft macaroni and cheese. But hey, we got by. You’ll be okay. Stick with it. You’re really good, you’re really funny. I’m not just saying that.”