One Big Joke

by Laurence Shames

  Introductions were made. Bert said to Ricky, “What happened to your teeth?”

  “Oh shit, I forgot to take this out.” He reached into his mouth and removed the plastic shield that had blacked out a few canines and incisors. He swept off the goofy-looking flower-pot hat and the cheap mirror shades, and quickly turned into just a normal person. “Minimal disguise,” he said.

  “Not as minimal as the one I saw you in the first time,” answered Bert. Then he looked with some confusion at Ricky’s companion. From what he’d heard, he imagined she must be a real femme fatale, but she just appeared to be a skinny guy in a baseball cap. “And you must be Carla.”

  She reached out a hand and he saw the long red nails. She swept off the cap and shook free her lush black hair. Then she asked Pat if she could slip inside a moment and take off the tight tube-top that was practically strangling her. When she returned, Bert understood things a little better.

  The seven of them plus the dog squeezed in around the poolside table that was really meant for four. Knees touched. Shoulders swiveled to make room. Bert sipped some wine and said, “Okay, someone’s gotta start the meeting. So, first question. Why are we here? We’re here because youse got a problem. Actually, as I understand it, youse got two problems, which, doing the math, I surmise is twice as bad as having one. Question is, which problem do we look at first?”

  Without hesitation, Pat said, “Ricky’s. I mean, his problem is serious. Mine’s just stuff, just my club.”

  Bert petted his chihuahua while, with the other hand, he raised a yellowish, Socratic finger. “Agreed that Ricky’s problem is more serious, as in fatal. But onnee other hand, the scumbag who wants your club is breathin’ down my neck to get it done, whereas, if I understand correctly, the guy who wants to eliminate Ricky doesn’t even know that Ricky is in town. So, by that criteria or let’s say yardstick, the Titters problem is actually more pressing.”

  “Great,” said Ricky, “so I’m supposed to take a number and wait in line like at the freakin’ deli?”

  “Don’t get touchy. You’ll get your turn.”

  Just then Lenny’s phone rang. The tone sounded very loud at the crowded table in the otherwise quiet yard. He glanced at the screen and said, “Sorry, I have to take this.” He looked sideways at Pat. “It’s Morty.” Then he quickly slipped away from the table.

  Bert said, “Who the hell is Morty?”

  “His agent,” said Pat.

  The old man couldn’t help feeling slightly miffed about that. “I’m talkin’ life and death heah, and he takes a call from his agent?”

  “Obviously you’ve never worked in the entertainment industry,” said Marsha.

  In thirty seconds Lenny was back, a little breathless. “Morty spoke with the suits. Says we have three days. If we can get back to New York by Monday, we can still shoot the pilot.”

  Bert said, “Who the hell’s the pilot?”

  “He means the show we were working on together before this whole craziness got started,” said Pat.

  “Ah. So it’s a professional opportunity. A big one, I take it. An incentive to get stuff figured out.”

  “I thought,” said Carla, “that keeping Ricky alive might be incentive enough.”

  “Never hurts to have some extra,” Bert opined. “Plus a deadline. Deadline’s good. Focuses the mind. Um, okay, where the hell were we?”

  “You were just telling me,” said Ricky, “that my little problem is second in line.”

  “Will you please let go a that? Look, when the guy who wants to ice you figures out you’re here, your problem will shoot straight to number one. Now ya happy?”

  Happy is not how Ricky looked. He reached into the bucket and poured himself more wine.

  Carla said, “The way I see it, if Carmine realizes Ricky’s here, Pat catches a break. At least for a while. I mean, the man’s obsessed with getting back at Ricky. The club thing, it’s just a job. And the guy is not a multi-tasker, trust me. So if he’s gotta choose between his obsession or a gig, the gig is gonna wait.”

  “Which would really piss off the little business creep, right?” said Lenny. “He’s all hot to get the club. Does he even know about the bad blood with the boyfriends? And if he does know, why the hell would he care? Him and Carmine, their priorities are exactly opposite.”

  Sam said, “Sounds kind of like a losing doubles game to me.”

  Bert’s head had been flicking around toward each of the speakers in turn, and the quick movements had made his eyeballs dance around a bit. Now he tried to focus in on Sam and said, “Excuse me, I think I missed something. A doubles game? Like, tennis? Like, now we’re talking tennis?”

  “I’m just trying to boil all this down to something I understand,” she said. “To me, it sounds like the guy who wants the club and the guy who wants revenge are supposedly on the same side but they’re not really playing as a team. And if they’re not playing as a team, then there should be ways to beat them.”

  Bert rubbed his dog’s head while he considered that.

  Ricky rolled his eyes. “Look, these sports analogies are very entertaining but can we please get back to me not getting murdered?”

  “Hang on a sec,” said Bert. “I’m likin’ this. So if they’re not really playing as a team…”

  “Then it’s usually possible,” said Sam, “to get someone out of position.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Ricky. “My life is on the line and we’re babbling away like fucking ESPN when there’s no game on.”

  Ignoring the comment, Bert said softly, “Gettin’ someone outa position. I think maybe we’re onta somethin’ heah. Somethin’ to work with. Could be a start, at least.”

  He rubbed his dog between the ears. Pat poured out more wine. Afternoon shadows in the shapes of overlapping fronds began to stretch across the little yard, a soft breeze came up from the south, and shallow blue ripples chased each other across the surface of the pool.

  35

  “Where’s Bert?” asked Peppers, as he and Carmine were being ushered into Ted Clifton’s too tidy and too perfect office.

  “He won’t be joining us today,” the businessman announced in a blasé and even dismissive tone as he gestured toward a pair of matching chairs on the far side of his desk. “But please, sit down.”

  “Why ain’t he here?” pressed Carmine as he settled his bulk into the seat. His chest and shoulders were still pumped up from his workout and his shirt bound him in the armpits. His muscles ached and he liked it that they ached.

  Clifton didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached into a drawer and produced a box of cigars. “Have one? Partagas. Cuban. The best. Still made in the traditional way. Rolled on the thighs of beautiful women. I hope you have a taste for them. Cigars, I mean. There could be a lot of these in your future.”

  The goombahs each took one. Their host clicked open an alabaster lighter and they stretched their necks out toward the flame. After they’d taken the first appreciative puff, Clifton said, “I thought it might be useful to have a talk just the three of us. In confidence, of course.”

  Peppers squinted through the blue smoke he’d just exhaled. “In confidence, like, from Bert? That makes me a little bit uncomfortable.”

  “Uncomfortable? Why? It’s not like I’m asking you to do anything against the wishes or interests of your boss.”

  “Then why the secret meeting?” Carmine asked, propping a meaty elbow on the desk.

  Clifton tried to smile at that. “It’s not a secret meeting. It’s a private meeting. There’s a difference.”

  “There are also similarities,” Peppers pointed out. “Like for example not everyone’s invited and the guy who isn’t invited isn’t supposed to know it happened.”

  Clifton crinkled an eyebrow and said, “All right, fair enough. Look, I’ll be candid. Brutally candid. Please don’t take offense. This ancient friendship between Bert and Mr. Benedetti, it’s very sweet, their loyalty is touching. But Mr. Benedetti seems to ha
ve no idea how much his old pal has declined. He still thinks of him as with it, even shrewd. Please. The fact is, he’s a doddering old self-important busybody who’s making everything way more complicated than it needs to be and opening up way more opportunities for something to go wrong.”

  Peppers puffed on his cigar and worked at pretending to like it more than he actually did. “Okay,” he said, “that’s your opinion. And who knows, maybe you’re right. Jury’s out. Be that as it may, Fat Lou told us Bert’s in charge. Told us do things like Bert says.”

  Swallowing back frustration, Clifton said, “I understand. But why did Mr. Benedetti do that? Because Mr. Benedetti, who is very far away and probably hasn’t seen his decrepit, rambling, meddling colleague in twenty years, thought it would be best. Except it isn’t turning out like that, is it?”

  The question hung for a moment among the wisps and whorls of smoke. The goombahs couldn’t bring themselves to disagree.

  “Look,” the businessman went on, “I’m sure you have lives you’d like to get back to, and you’re just as eager to wrap this up as I am. So the reason I asked you here today is to try and streamline the process. Better for me, better for you. Better for Mr. Benedetti also, even if he doesn’t yet realize it. So here’s my suggestion. A little side-deal. I will pay each of you ten grand in cash to step up and handle this the way it should be handled. Ignore the old man. Humor him. Whatever you think best. But one way or other, get it done.”

  Carmine said, “You’re bribin’ us to go against our boss?”

  “Bribing? No. Absolutely not. I’m offering you a bonus to do what your boss wants anyway, but do it in a way that I prefer.”

  “That bears a certain similarity to a bribe,” said Peppers.

  “Look, it doesn’t get us anywhere to sit here and argue the fine points of the English language. I’m offering you an extra payday. You interested or not?”

  Peppers looked at Carmine. Carmine said, “You still ain’t told us exactly what it is you’d be paying us to do.”

  Clifton flinched then rubbed his hands together in a kind of zig-zag pattern, like he was washing them in a public restroom. “That’s your area of expertise, not mine.”

  Peppers said, “We ain’t roughin’ up a woman. We tol’ you that already.”

  “And no one’s asking you to do that.”

  There was a silent standoff. Peppers stopped faking enjoyment of his big cigar and put it in an ashtray. Carmine’s was clenched between his teeth and his arms were crossed in a way that challenged the seams of his shirt. Finally giving in to simmering exasperation, Clifton went on, “Look, how you do the job is up to you. None of my business. But here’s a piece of information. I don’t need that fucking houseboat, okay? All I need’s the dock space, the frontage. That fucking tub is blown to kingdom come, it’s all one to me. Maybe you should keep that in mind while you consider my offer.”

  36

  Carla was lingering in the shower. She’d already washed the residue of salt air from her skin, already shampooed and conditioned her hair, already shaved her legs. Now she was just standing there under the stream of hot water, letting it hammer down on the nape of her neck. Back in Queens, she’d seldom been allowed the luxury of such long and lazy showers; either the hot water would run out or another family member would be clamoring to use the bathroom. So here at the hotel she savored the endless supply of wet warmth and the rich steam that billowed up around her.

  And, though she tried not to admit it to herself, she was savoring something else as well; she was savoring a little break from Ricky, stealing a little privacy, a little solitude…But wait, she wondered as the almost scalding water cascaded down between her shoulder blades: Why did it have to feel like stealing? Why should she feel guilty about taking a few extra minutes for herself? Was that just how she was, a dutiful, unselfish Catholic girl? Or was Ricky somehow putting that guilt on her, making her feel that even the smallest things she did for herself were things she was depriving him of? And if he was making her feel that way, why the hell was she letting him?

  Eventually she came out of the bathroom with a robe on and a towel wrapped around her head. Ricky was sitting in front of the dresser mirror making faces at himself, practicing impressions of famous people.

  “Okay, who am I doing?” he asked, as he puffed out his lips, stretched them into something like a spastic yawn, and spat out a couple words in an abrasive Cockney accent.

  “That’s what’s-his-name, the really old guy with the band. Mick Jagger.”

  “Right. Too easy.” He eased out of the rocker pose and now sat very still with his hands placidly folded and a rather smug expression on his face. “Okay, how ‘bout this one?”

  “I have no idea.” She perched lightly on the edge of the bed. “Ricky, how long we been together now?”

  Without looking up from the mirror, he said, “Hm? I dunno, a month or so? You really can’t tell who this one is?”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Stephen Colbert.”

  “He just looks like an average white guy.”

  “Exactly. It’s subtle.” He lowered his chin a quarter of an inch, trying to get closer to what made Colbert look like Colbert.

  “Ricky, you think you know me pretty well?”

  “Yeah, pretty well. Sure.”

  “I don’t feel like I know you very well. I know you’re funny. I don’t really know much else.”

  He didn’t answer that, just kept working toward a more perfect version of Colbert’s snarky deadpan, which seemed to start with a slow and shallow lift of one eyebrow.

  She unwound the towel from her hair and lightly rubbed her scalp with the dry side of it. “I sometimes wonder if we know each other well enough.”

  Now he was trying to get the curl of his lips exactly right. “Well enough for what?”

  “Well enough, you know, to really believe we can make a go of it together.”

  He didn’t look up. He finally thought he had it. The trick was in smiling with the teeth while smirking with the eyes alone. He said, “Sure we can. Of course we can. Why not?”

  She shrugged and went off to dry her hair. He wiped the Colbert expression off his face and started doing Jimmy Kimmel. That one always got a laugh.

  

  At Titters, Pat and Lenny and Marsha were sharing the dull but comforting afternoon chores that paved the way for every evening of triumph or disaster at the club. Replacing chairs around the tables. Tapping fresh kegs of beer. Testing microphones and mopping last night’s sweat from the corners of the stage. When the place had been made as presentable as it was going to get, they sat down for a drink, though the mood was hardly festive. As they clinked glasses, Pat said, “Well, here’s hoping we win one out of three, at least.”

  “One out of three?” said Marsha.

  “Keeping Ricky alive. Keeping the club alive. Keeping Dog Groomer alive. All things considered, if we win on one out of three I’d say we’re doing good.”

  “Nice spin,” said Lenny, “but if we win one, we lose two, and that would suck. Even losing one would kind of suck. You know what wouldn’t suck? Hitting the trifecta. That wouldn’t suck.”

  Marsha said, “Ever the optimist. Ever the dreamer. Then he wonders why he’s always disappointed and ends up in a funky mood.”

  “Maybe not this time,” he protested.

  There was a silence, long enough for the three of them to notice that the club smelled different before people started bringing in their scents of after-shave and residue of suntan lotion. Empty, it smelled like the ocean, or at least like a shallow, sluggish corner of it, with a hint of dry shells and rotting seaweed and just a whiff of diesel.

  Finally Pat said, “Beating these guys, I just don’t see how we could pull it off.”

  “Probably not,” said Lenny. “But I do have kind of an idea. Well, okay, more like a piece of an idea.”

  He stopped talking and went back to his drink.

  His wif
e said, “You can’t just leave us hanging, Lenny. What’s the idea?”

  He gave a half-shrug and a half-shake of his head. “I dunno. Maybe I shouldn’t even say it. Maybe it’s just really dumb.”

  “Never stopped you before,” said his sometime writing partner.

  “Okay, okay. It’s sort of a hybrid between what Bert was saying about the socks and the liver and what Sam was saying about playing doubles.”

  It was clear from the women’s expressions that they had no idea where he was going with this. He didn’t have much of one himself. But he sprang up from his chair and started pacing, leaning forward from both waist and neck.

  “Okay, here’s what I got so far. The socks and liver part: If we want to distract the goombahs from hassling you about the club, we have to let them find out Ricky’s in town. But if we want to keep Ricky alive, we have to set it up so they can’t just go right out and kill him. Which brings us to the playing doubles part: We have to make sure they go chasing after him, which will get them out of position.”

  “Out of position for what?” asked Marsha.

  “How the hell should I know? I’ve gotta figure out everything? Whatever they were in position for before.”

  Pat said, “Maybe let’s back up a step. Letting the bad guys know Ricky’s in Key West. Just how do we manage that?”

  He blinked at her. “You really need to ask? Shit, that’s the easy part. That part’s obvious.”

  “Not to me,” said Pat.

  He gestured toward the low and unlit stage. “Look, here we are in a comedy club. A public venue. With witnesses. And a back door to escape through. So we have Ricky do a show here, and we make sure the goombahs are in attendance.”

  Pat thought it over, not for long. “A show? Here? No. It’s the worst idea I ever heard.”

  Lenny sat down again, elbows propped on knees, head sagging, his voice deflated. “I offered not to say it. You guys goaded me into saying it. Then you say it stinks.”