A Conversation with the Mann

by John Ridley

  I told Allison yes, I was fine.

  “It was very good to have met you, Jackie. Take care.”

  Allison left me.

  Very, very carefully folding Sid's letter, I put it back into the envelope and the envelope into my pocket.

  After a time I flagged a waitress and ordered some cheesecake with strawberries. The waitress brought me cheesecake. No strawberries. Whipped cream. Politely, I sent it back and had her bring me what I'd asked for.

  I WORK SOME, STILL. When there's work to be had. The comedy boom that started in the eighties—a club in every strip mall, a stand-up show on every cable channel—went bust by the early nineties. The art itself, and I'll call it an art, had gone full circle. Comedians had stopped setting fires and were almost to a man as uninhibited as store-bought mayonnaise, having have-you-ever-noticed themselves out of relevance. That, or they demonstrated an acute ability to slyly, deftly, comment on the state of society by swearing over and over and over again for no good reason except that they could.

  Be real still. You can hear the gyrations coming from Lenny's grave.

  Anyway.

  The venues that are left have little to no use for an old man, his time long gone, cluttering up their stage.

  … But there are casinos.

  America is gamble crazy, and there are casinos everywhere now. Theme casinos, Indian casinos, riverboat casinos. And every casino has a lounge, and every lounge needs an act. A guy of my years who's got roots in Golden Age Vegas; I can pull a decent audience—most times my age or even a little older, trying to relive the past. Sometimes younger, kids who want to soak up the “Rat Pack” vibe wherever they can find it, any way they can find it: sipping highballs and martinis, smoking cigars, but not knowing those were just the extras that guys like Frank, Sammy, and Dino accessorized themselves with. For The Summit, cool was a state of being.

  Whatever.

  I work. I do my shows like always. Like always, but, post Sid's letter, different from before. Before, being onstage had always been about getting ahead, getting over, being famous. Being someone. It was a means to an end. Nothing more.

  Now …

  Now it's about the simplest of things, what it should have always been about but never was, using the little gift God gave me to give people a good time. Make people laugh.

  So I do that now. Ten people, a hundred; I go up onstage and enjoy the moment. Most times the shows are good. Usually entertaining. And sometimes, for whatever reason, because I'm hitting a groove, or maybe the audience is on my wavelength, or maybe it's a combo of those and a thousand other things starting with a butterfly flapping a wing over in China, sometimes I'm on. I'm really on. The jokes are just as crisp and the laughs are coming just as strong as anytime I ever played the Sands, the Copa, or Ciro's. Sometimes I'll say a line, and like back in the day, I'll have to stop and stand and wait for the audience to finish wringing every last laugh they can out of themselves. And somewhere married up with their laughter and applause …

  You can say I'm corny. You can say I'm just a sentimental old man. In my day I've been called everything there is, so you want to call me names, go on. See how much I care. But somewhere in the laughter and applause I hear my mother's voice saying to me like she was right there beside me: “You're a special one, Jackie Mann. Don't let nobody ever tell you otherwise.”

  Maybe age has just made me comfortable with myself, but after all these years, what that voice is telling me, I'm finally starting to believe.

  In memory

  of

  Etta Jennings

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM WARNER BOOKS

  THOSE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS

  by John Ridley

  Cross-wiring genres, boundaries, and audience expectations to stunning effect, John Ridley presents a gritty, brutal vision of a world where comic book icons are real. Officer Soledad “Bullet” O'Roark joined the elite M-Tac squad to kill freaks—metanormals who have amazing powers and are outlawed. It isn't easy to take down beings who are super-strong or super-fast. That's why Soledad has customized some special hi-tech ammo. Soon she's racking up a body count that makes her a legend on the force. But when Soledad guns down a radiant woman with white wings who rescues people and heals the sick, the cop may be starting the final war between normals and metanormals. Because Bullet O'Roark didn't just shoot down a freak. According to all witnesses, she's killed an angel.

  “Thought-provoking… absolutely riveting! I was hooked from the very first page.”

  —Roger Stern, author of The Death and Life of Superman

  “Recalling the work of Alan Moore or Stan Lee, with dollops of Norman Spinrad and Walter Mosley… explosive, exhilarating, noirishly fun, slyly comic, and wound as tight as piano wire.”

  —Steven Barnes, author of Lion's Blood and Zulu Heart

  “Sophisticated cop drama crossed with a post-modern take on comics of your childhood. Ridley's a genius, and his readers are in for a treat.”

  —Dwayne McDuffie, writer/creator of Static Shock