Out of Whack

by Jeff Strand

  JACK: Well, your butt is so big it leaves imprints on cast-iron chairs!

  HEATHER: Jack! I have a petite heinie!

  JACK: I know. But if I didn’t use that one now, I’d forget it.

  HEATHER: You bastard! All you care about is the way I look!

  JACK: Now, now, we both know that isn’t true. Remember when I said you had a pleasant voice? Huh? Remember? Remember that time? Huh? Huh? Remember? You remember, don’t you? I know you remember. So I’m not only concerned with your looks. Now I think you owe me an apology.

  HEATHER: I’m sorry.

  JACK: I want a better one.

  HEATHER: I am sorry.

  JACK: Thank you. I love you.

  HEATHER: I love you too.

  JACK: Whoa-mama! Look at the flames flying out of that pasta!

  HEATHER: Oh no!

  [ She throws open the oven and removes the burnt lasagna. ]

  JACK: That shit is gonna burn right through the paper plates.

  HEATHER: I worked so hard on this, and it’s ruined!

  JACK: No, it looks fine. A little crispy and black and ignited, that’s all.

  HEATHER: After all the hard work you put into dish duty, I can’t even get the cooking part right! I don’t deserve you!

  JACK: Yes you do. I never told you this before, but I have a thing for primates in white leather. Anyone deserves me.

  HEATHER: Sweetie, let’s go out to dinner. That way I won’t have to cook, you won’t have to do dishes, and we’ll both be happy.

  JACK: Sounds great. So...whose turn is it to pay?

  * * *

  “This is good,” said Travis, after the script read-through was done. “But it might be too tough to stage. You’ve got a cupboard, an oven, lasagna...”

  “You mime it,” I said. “You’re the actor, so act.”

  OUT OF WHACK ACTIVITY PAGE!!!

  Because I care so much about you, the reader, I hereby give you this mostly-blank page to use for whatever you want. Enjoy!

  Chapter Thirty

  “Happy Times Come to a Screeching Halt”

  I’m going to sort of skim through the next two days’ events, because as the all-powerful writer of this book, I can. I can also reuse the openings of chapters if I want.

  I called my mom and told her the good news. I am, of course, referring to the success of Out of Whack and not the success of my love muscle. She sounded very pleased.

  “Would you like your father and I to drive over and watch the show?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “You’ll especially enjoy the comedy skit about the lady with the tumor.”

  “We should stay home, shouldn’t we?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  Travis and Laura rehearsed tirelessly. During those times when Laura wasn’t around, Travis and I ran through the lines repeatedly, until he finally had them down pat.

  And...I gave myself a role. It occurred to me that performing “Our Never-Ending Love” would not be a difficult task, considering that all I’d have to do was read the poem off the paper. Travis resisted this idea with the argument that I could still stutter or forget how to read, but I won him over by offering to share exactly one detail about my night with Laura. Naturally I cheated and shared the detail that there had been a tacky painting in the hotel room, but I still got the part.

  I went to a couple of classes as well. I didn’t pay attention, but I went.

  Then came Friday night. The manager of Laugh Attack told us to be there by seven-thirty. We were there by six.

  * * *

  Hey everyone, break out them homemade banjos, ‘cause it’s time for the Bartholomew and Zeke show!

  “Welcome, folks. I’m Bartholomew.”

  “An’ I’m Zeke.”

  “We’re here to do a show. As y’all may remember, but prob’ly don’t, last month we done visited ourselves an arts and crafts fair, where this purple-haired old lady went and tried to poke ol’ Zeke with a knittin’ needle. Haw-haw, waren’t that a hoot!”

  “Waren’t no hoot.”

  “Oh, now, don’t go gettin’ the grumpies, Zeke. Anyway, for this show we went on Friday night and done watched ourselves some comedians!”

  “That we did, Bartholomew. You ain’t lyin’.”

  “No, I ain’t. We were at Laugh Attack, which is a peculiar-type place that wants you to pay to get in, and then they go and say you gotta buy two drinks on top of that!”

  “I bought myself a couple’a Cokes. They were good.”

  “They sure were, Zeke. Anyway, there was these three people who called themselves Out of Whack. What they did was these short little plays, kinda like what you see on the TV sometimes, y’know, that one show where that one guy pretends to be a dog.”

  “Aw, ain’t he a hoot an’ a half?”

  “Yup. Well, I myself didn’t get all the jokes, but the people in the audience, they was laughin’ pretty decent-like. This one guy, he stood up and read us a poem that rhymed and ever’thing. You could tell he was a mite nervous, but he did jes’ fine.”

  “Hey, Bartholomew, what’d y’think of that one with the guy and that hatchet he done had stickin’ outta his chest?”

  “Now that was nasty. Some folks in the audience was laughin’, but I thought it was just plain distasteful.”

  “Overall, though, I think Out of Whack did themselves a nice ol’ job. I wouldn’t offer ‘em my sixteen year-old daughter, but I might go see ‘em again, if’n the chores were done.”

  “Yup. I gotta concur on that one. By the way, Zeke, I gotta tell you that your daughter looks a lot better now that she’s got that glass eye instead of just coverin’ the socket with duct tape.”

  “Thank you, Bartholomew. Well, there was two other comedians, but since we’re doin’ this show on the same tape as the football game I recorded last week, I think we’re almost out of room.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, ‘cause I was jes’ gettin’ ready to sing my marmalade song. It goes somethin’ like—”

  [ Static. ]

  * * *

  Though we did rehearse a little, our two successful shows on Friday night convinced us that we could relax somewhat on Saturday. Laura relaxed by studying for the classes she’d been neglecting. Travis and I relaxed by sitting in our dorm room, staring at whatever wall struck our fancy at the moment.

  Around 5:30 p.m., there was a knock at the door. Laura was supposed to come over so we could head off to the cafeteria together, so I figured it was her. But (plot twist ahead!) it wasn’t.

  “Seth! How are you doing?” asked the large, muscular guy who I almost but didn’t quite recognize.

  “I’m fine,” I said, trying to place him. One time I’d made small talk with somebody for twenty minutes before I admitted that I didn’t have a clue who they were, so I hoped he’d make it easy on me.

  “You don’t remember me? Kirk Tonnew? You knocked me unconscious in high school!”

  “Oh, Kirk! How’ve you been? You look a lot different!” I braced myself. “You’re not here for vengeance, are you?”

  Kirk chuckled. “Nah. My days as a fat slob bully are over.” He made a very impressive muscle. “See that? This is the new Kirk Tonnew. No flab, and pure of heart.”

  Travis came over and shook his hand. “I knocked you unconscious, too,” he said, helpfully.

  “Do either of you remember John Syphen?” Kirk asked.

  Neither of us did. I had a fuzzy mental image of somebody with braces that seemed to engulf his entire face, and I seemed to remember that he frequently got his fork caught in them, but I wasn’t sure I had the right person.

  “He’s a student here. Well, he called me yesterday, just to chat, and said you two were in a comedy group. I was going to be in Trade Point anyway, so I figured I’d stop by and see if you two would let me buy you some dinner before the show. I know I wasn’t the nicest person in high school, and a lot of people are always going to remember me as a bully, but I figure the more memories I can chang
e, the better I’ll feel.”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “But I already have plans. Maybe we should do something after the show.”

  “That’d be fun. You interested in dinner, Travis?”

  Travis thought about it for a moment. “Sure, why not? It’ll be more interesting than listening to Seth obsess over the one stupid poem he has to read tonight.”

  “Great! My car’s out front.”

  Travis turned to me. “I’ll meet you at Laugh Attack, seven o’clock sharp. Tell Laura it’s not necessary to get there three hours early.”

  “Enjoy yourself,” I said. “Nice seeing you again, Kirk.”

  Kirk nodded. “Good luck tonight, and I’ll definitely see you later.”

  * * *

  7:00. “Oh, sure, he tells me to be here at seven o’clock sharp.”

  7:10. “If he’s out getting drunk with Kirk, I’m going to quit brushing the roaches off his face while he sleeps, I mean it.”

  7:20. “Where the hell is he?”

  7:30. “I can’t believe he would be so irresponsible! We have to go on in half an hour!”

  7:40. “That shithead!”

  “You have no idea where they went?” Laura asked.

  “Just out to dinner, like I said. I don’t know where.” I was pacing around the Laugh Attack stage, getting more and more frantic. “What if they were in an accident? Or what if Kirk has become some kind of serial killer? What if he’s got this twisted evil that’s eating him up inside, and the only thing that can release it is to kill those who humiliated him back in high school?”

  I had this sudden vision of Kirk standing in his bathroom, breathing deeply and wiping sweat from his forehead as he gazes at his reflection.

  The Voices are about to torment him again. He can feel them writhing inside his head, stirring from their slumber. And when they speak, horrible things happen.

  “Please... leave me alone this time...” he whispers. “I don’t want to hear you.”

  Then one of the Voices speaks. It is the one he knows only as Cedric, recognizable by the deep, eerie tone.

  “When variable a is equal to the sum of b and c squared plus 606.0842, then the coefficient of x + y - z must—”

  Now Morgan speaks: “Continuing the list of those graduating Cum Laude... Alan R. Connell, Early Childhood Education... Jennifer B. Conner, Speech Pathology and Audiology... Heidi S. Coogan, Human Resource Management...”

  “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Kirk requests.

  Next comes Bob, the worst of all: “Horses. I like them. Pigs. I like them. Turkeys. I like them. Goats, I like them, but not as much as turkeys. Flamingoes. I like them.”

  Kirk staggers out of the bathroom, hands pressed tightly against his head. “Why must you torture me so?” he wails, falling to his knees.

  Finally the Voices fade. Kirk stands there, breathing deeply for several minutes to regain his sense of well being, then sighs with relief.

  He walks into the kitchenette and grabs his butcher knife. Now that the Voices are gone, he can go out and kill somebody in peace. He pauses to make himself a Rice Krispies Treats sandwich to curb those pre-homicide munchies, and smiles at the vision that has filled his mind for all these years...him clutching the knife tightly in his fist as he stands over the bodies of Travis and myself, our throats slit and our blood soaking into a tacky pastel-orange shag carpet.

  Hey, it was possible.

  “I’m sure Travis is fine,” said Laura. “We still have twenty minutes. He’s probably just trying to make us sweat.”

  I shook my head. “He may be obnoxious a lot of the time, but he wouldn’t do something like that. Not when it’s important.”

  “He could have lost track of time.”

  “I doubt it, but it’s possible. We don’t know Kirk very well...maybe it’s his fault, maybe he got them lost or something. Maybe he found a pile of moldy fruit somebody threw away and wasn’t willing to leave it behind.”

  Laura checked her watch for the third time that minute. “Okay, they’re going to let the audience in any moment now. If we cancel, it won’t be the end of the world, but we’ll never be invited back.”

  “Just what we need. A huge blotch on careers that haven’t even started yet.”

  “We can’t cancel, Seth. And we have to pretend that Travis isn’t going to show up. If he does, great, we’re saved, but until he walks through that door, we have to plan on you taking his place.”

  Yes, that’s right. With two full days to rehearse, I didn’t have what it took to be a performer. With twenty minutes before showtime, I was going to have to learn.

  “I can’t,” I insisted. “I don’t know the lines.”

  “You wrote them! And you’ve gone over them with Travis dozens of times, and you’ve watched us rehearse them into the ground!”

  “I know, but—”

  “The lines won’t be a problem. Even if you can’t do them word-for-word, you can’t tell me you don’t have the basic gist.”

  “Laura, I really don’t want to do this. If we go up there and do a terrible job, that’ll be worse than canceling!”

  “We won’t do a terrible job.”

  “We might! You can’t imagine how nervous I am right now!”

  “You’ll be relaxed. I promise.”

  “How can you promise?”

  “Because I’m going to take you into the bathroom, massage your shoulders, and then give you the most incredible blowjob you can imagine. You’ll feel better.”

  I believed her.

  One most incredible blowjob I could imagine later, I was certainly feeling better. Not quite mellow, but a vast improvement over near-hysterics.

  It was five minutes until showtime, and there was no sign of Travis. I hated at least 90% of the guts in his body.

  But I was also incredibly worried about him.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “A Surprising Success”

  - or -

  “Crash and Burn”

  (I don’t want to give anything away.)

  “They didn’t suck earlier this week or last night, and so everybody please welcome back...Out of Whack!”

  The audience applauded. Fools.

  Laura and I walked up on-stage. I’d like to say that I was feeling a renewed confidence, and that my lines seemed to be floating in the air in 72 point Times New Roman font right before my very eyes, and that the characters I was about to play seemed to be taking over my body like a demonic possession. I’d really, really like to say all that, mainly because I’d already blanked out once before and to have it happen again in the same book would result in a repetitious plot structure, which is one of those things the critics’ll slam you for.

  But if I said that, kind reader, I’d be lying.

  We got into our positions for the “Drawing With Daddy” skit, which could well have been the “Twisting Our Tongues Into New And Exciting Positions Then Yanking Them Out With Red-Hot Pliers And Feeding Them To Yaks” skit for as much as I remembered.

  “Okay, Laura,” I said, calling her by her real name instead of Ashley like I was supposed to. “Do you want to draw Aunt Margaret’s hair?”

  And with one screw-up I’d just thrown our first five lines down the drain. Let’s hear it for Seth Trexler! He’ll be here all week! Don’t forget to tip your servers!

  Laura nodded and began to draw. “No, honey,” I said, “that’s Aunt Margaret’s tumor, not her hair.”

  That got a chuckle from a couple of people and an “Eeeewww” from a heavyset woman in the front row with a face like a flat tire on an eighteen-wheeler (you’re just going to have to trust me on that one). I saw in Laura’s eyes that she knew she’d made rather a poor judgment call in allowing us to proceed with the show. There would be no sex tonight.

  I threw a glance at the Master of Ceremonies. From the expression on his face, I could tell he was mentally rewriting the part in his introduction about
us not sucking.

  We were silent for a moment as Laura tried to figure out a way to ad-lib in character and I tried to figure out a way to remain conscious and upright.

  “All right, stop that immediately!” a loud but slurred voice shouted.

  Laura and I looked at the door, where Travis stood, pointing accusingly at the stage. “This man is an impostor!” he said, weaving his way through the tables, staggering just a bit. He was holding a small paper sack. “He may look as nerdy as a real comedian, but he’s a fraud! And I can prove it!”

  He stepped up onto the stage and turned to address the audience. “If he were truly a member of the universe-famous comedy troupe Out of Whack, he’d have a doggy bag just like mine, which would contain...” Travis paused for dramatic effect as he pulled something out of the bag. “...fuzzy dice!” He turned back toward me. “So, you reprehensible pseudo-comic, do you have a doggy bag filled with fuzzy dice, or am I going to have to kick your ass?” Travis’ eyes weren’t quite focusing on me, and his enunciation left a lot to be desired, but he seemed sober enough to perform.

  “Darn you!” I shouted, filled with so much relief that I found myself able to ad-lib, albeit in a rather lame fashion. “You found me out, but I’ll be back!” I stepped off-stage and stormed back to my table.

  “I’m sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen,” said Travis. “Serial comedian impersonation is a serious problem in our society, and I’m here to combat it wherever possible. Now, back to the show.” He knelt down next to the table. “Okay, Ashley, what do you want to draw? Do you want to draw our house?”

  Laura said her lines without hesitation, and they proceeded with the skit as if nothing had happened. I motioned the waitress over to my table and asked for something with a shitload of alcohol, feeling as if the weight of the world had been removed from my jockstrap. Travis was going to get the chewing-out of his life after our performance was finished, but at least now I could relax.