Best to Laugh: A Novel

by Lorna Landvik

  The low buzzer blatted.

  “Precia, I’m sorry, you already used the word ‘Gigantic.’”

  One of the rules of Word Wise was that you couldn’t form a verb or adjective out of a noun already used, or vice versa.

  Precia bumped the top of the console with her fist and whispered, “Sorry,” to me.

  Filo and Dorothy were given our remaining time to finish the G round.

  The football player gave “Gassy” and “Gamine” as adjectives and Dorothy “Galvanize” for a verb, but when her category switched to noun and she said, “Greek,” the buzzer rang.

  “I’m sorry, Dorothy, Word Wise does not accept proper nouns.”

  “Dagblast it,” said Dorothy. “I knew that.”

  The rounds continued, and although Filo and Dorothy made a valiant effort with the letter U (“Umbrage” and “Umlaut” were two of Filo’s nouns), at the end of the play Precia and I had three more points, which meant I’d be back the next day as the returning champion.

  Returning champion. Imagine that.

  10

  IT WAS PAST FIVE when I got home. I changed into my swimsuit and found Ed by the nearly deserted pool.

  “Ah, The Warren Commission Sham,” I said, reading the title of the book resting on his Styrofoam cooler. “More light poolside entertainment.”

  Ed didn’t answer.

  “I know you’re not sleeping,” I said, situating myself on the chaise longue next to his. “And by the way, you’re peeling.”

  “Where’ve you been all weekend?” he asked, not opening his eyes.

  “Oh, here, there,” I said casually. “Could be that I was on the ABC lot, taping Word Wise.”

  Ed sprang up in his chair as if a bee had crawled up his swimming trunks.

  “You were on Word Wise?” When I nodded, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come down and watched the taping!”

  “I was going to, but then I got all superstitious. I didn’t want anyone who I knew to watch me if I lost.”

  “And did you?”

  “Eventually. But yesterday I won my first game, and this morning I went back as the returning champion and I won a grand total of four-thousand-seven-hundred dollars and a trip to Tahiti!”

  Ed whooped, causing Robert X. Roberts to stir slightly under his L.A. Times Sunday magazine.

  “Four-thousand-seven-hundred dollars and a trip to Tahiti—Candy, that’s great!”

  My smile stretched earlobe to earlobe.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s not the kind of money you won.”

  “On my first game show, I only won three hundred and a microwave oven. So who were your partners?”

  “Yesterday I had Precia Doyle—”

  “I love Precia Doyle! Not only is she a good actress—she’s smart!”

  “I’ll say. The other celebrity was Filo Nuala and—”

  “—Filo Nuala, the football player? He’s like Superman, a Rhodes Scholar, all-American, goes to the Super Bowl his second year—”

  “—he was pretty good at Word Wise, too, but I never got to be his partner. Today when I went back they had different celebrities.”

  Ed chuckled and lacing his hands behind his head leaned back in his chair. “Okay, Candy, tell me everything.”

  It was my pleasure.

  I told him how my mind had scrambled while playing with Precia Doyle, how fast the lights and beeps and turns were, and how I struggled to remember whether I was supposed to name a noun, an adjective, or a verb. I told him how I had barely slept the night before, so excited I was to go back as returning champ, and that I had won my first game of the day with my new partner, Benjamin Parnell.

  “Benjamin Parnell? He’s the dean of celebrity contestants—he’s been on game shows forever.”

  THE LATE AFTERNOON SUN was losing its potency, and I blanketed myself with my towel.

  “He was nice. I got to go up to the Big Dictionary with him.”

  This was where the real money was earned. The celebrity sat facing his or her partner, behind whom loomed a big screen that looked like an open book, and on whose pages words lit up. The letter at play would be announced, and the celebrity had to give definitions—for instance, when Benjamin Parnell and I played, Yancey announced, “T—noun.”

  A little bell rang and after clearing his throat, Benjamin Parnell said, “Call made by lumberjacks when chopping down—”

  “Timber!” I said.

  We sailed through nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but time ran out before we could get all the way to the last page of the dictionary; twice, Mr. Parnell’s definitions had been disqualified for using the root word, and once, I got stuck on his definitions, causing him to skip to the next page. But I had won fifteen hundred dollars, which wasn’t bad for two minutes of guessing.

  It was when partnered with Sally Breel, star of Sally in the Morning! that I won the most money, and the trip to Tahiti in the bonus round.

  “Sally Breel!” said Ed. “What was she like?”

  “All business. No chitchat at all during the commercial breaks—she’d sneak a cigarette or get her makeup touched up. And her face was weird—sort of frozen or something.”

  Ed laughed. “You’re really not from here, are you? Sally Breel’s the queen of face-lifts.”

  “But she isn’t even that old!”

  “She’s at least sixty,” said Ed. “Which is a hundred-and-two in Hollywood years.”

  Robert X. Roberts had shuffled off to his apartment and Billy Gray Green had fired up his blow dryer by the time I finished telling Ed all about Word Wise.

  “Here’s to you, kiddo,” he said in a fair imitation of Humphrey Bogart. “I’d take you out to celebrate, but I’ve got a date tonight.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Nope.” Standing up, Ed shook his towel. “She’s a stewardess.”

  “Ooh la la.”

  “Well, for just a little regional airline . . . but still.” Anchoring his towel with his chin, he folded it into a neat square. “Hey, what about tomorrow night? I’ll take you anywhere in the world you want to go—or at least anywhere in the greater L.A. basin.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “I know just the place.”

  THE COMEDY STORE looked like a black bunker that had been defaced by graffiti artists with good penmanship. Written in white paint were the names of dozens of comics who’d appeared there, and we busied ourselves reading them as we stood in line for the Monday Amateur Night performance.

  “This is going to be fun!” said Maeve.

  After the night at Ed’s apartment, she had left a little cactus plant on my doorstep with a note of apology—“Sorry for being prickly,” it had read, “and kind of a jerk, too”—and the hokey but genuine gesture had made me want to put effort into a friendship, and I had invited her to join Ed and me.

  “I had a blind date here once,” said Ed. “To see Richard Pryor. A friend of mine set me up with his girlfriend’s sister and she didn’t crack a smile through his whole routine—plus she shushed me when I laughed!”

  “I’m guessing that was the last date as well as the first,” I said.

  “She was one I was glad got away.”

  We were seated near the back at a small table whose centerpiece was a red glass candleholder wrapped in plastic webbing. After taking our order, our bored waitress returned and, reminding us of the two-drink minimum, plunked down our beverages.

  “I don’t think there’s a danger of overdrinking with these,” said Maeve, holding up a glass narrow as a test tube.

  The chatter of tourists, college kids, and couples on dates filled the room, and when the emcee bounded onstage, I might have shivered with excitement.

  “Welcome, welcome,” he said. “Welcome to the Comedy Store’s Amateur Night—where comedians have five minutes to live or die!”

  The slight man wearing a suit, red tennis shoes, and a five-o’clock shadow introduced himself as Danny Hernandez.

  “Yes, my last name’s
Hernandez, and yes, that’s Hispanic. Which means not only am I going to keep things moving on stage, but afterwards I’ll get your car if you valet-parked.”

  “Ba-boom,” Ed whispered.

  “And now without further ado or further adon’t, let’s bring up the first act of the evening—ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ryan Ridges!”

  “SOME SAY MY LOVE IS WRONG, some say I’m kinky,” sang Mr. Ridges, accompanying himself on a banjo, “but I’ll never give up my sweetheart, my little hamster Winkie.”

  “Get a life, weirdo!” shouted a heckler.

  A short sturdy woman—one of only three women to go on—talked about her bad luck with men. “I asked my last boyfriend why he was ditching me for an eighteen-year-old swimsuit model with an IQ of 40, and he said, ‘Because I know what’s important in a relationship.’”

  Like a kid standing in front of a deep-sea aquarium, I was wide-eyed and enthralled, and with the exception of the expensive test tube drinks I loved everything about the Comedy Store. I loved its name, a place where laughter was both merchandise and currency. I loved the convivial darkness we all sat in, softened only by candles, the glowing tips of cigarettes, and a spotlight. I loved watching how each comic approached the stage; one poor guy looked like he was one burp away from vomiting, another strode up like an evangelist, arms held high. I loved listening to their five-minute routines—the bad ones were as instructive as the good ones—and I even loved the heckling—how the audience cringed when a comic didn’t know how to handle it, and how it applauded when he did.

  I was in a room filled with laughter, sitting amid an orchestra of high, fluttering, whining, low, chortling, deep, blasting, staccato laughter. It was literally music to my ears, and more than anything I wanted to conduct it.

  “Hey, have any of you seen that new Woody Allen movie, Interiors?” asked a sleepy-eyed guy in a tie-dyed T-shirt and bowtie. “Man, what happened to Woody? He used to make some funny movies, but if anyone told a joke, I couldn’t hear it over all the whining . . .”

  Hours—but what seemed like minutes—later, Danny Hernandez took his final bow.

  “Thank you all for coming, people, and let’s hear it one more time for all the comics who were brave enough to come up onstage!”

  Which I vow here and now, I wrote later that night in my calendaeium, is going to be me.

  11

  MY COUSIN CHARLOTTE had left the keys to her 1973 Maverick, along with the instructions: “Use only for emergencies—like if the garage catches fire!” Finger wagging like that most often provoked me to do the opposite, but instead of patching out in the driveway, picking up a group of hairy hitchhikers, and taking pedal-to-the-metal joyrides down to Tijuana for tequila shots, I uncharacteristically obeyed.

  I was one of those odd ducks who liked to get around by my good old-fashioned feet or good old-fashioned public transit. At an early age, I had learned to appreciate taking the bus not only for its relative ease and efficiency, but for the world you got to watch on the outside, as well as the one on the inside.

  Once a rumpled guy wearing a pungent street cologne staggered on, plopping himself in the seat ahead of my grandmother and me. I remember Grandma tensing and putting a protective hand on my knee as he turned around to face us, but when he opened his mouth, it was not to ask us for spare change but to break out singing “Blue Moon” in a high, soulful voice. After holding the last note, he nodded and turned around in his seat, as if he’d done nothing more unusual than ask us if the bus crossed Nicollet Avenue. Another time, on my way home from the U, I witnessed a wedding proposal, which, unfortunately for the would-be groom, the would-be-bride didn’t accept, saying, “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  It was usually the passengers who provided the entertainment, but on the bus taking me to my first temp job, they took a literal backseat to the driver who sang out each stop on Hollywood Boulevard with his own personal flair.

  “Highland. Oh, I wish I was Highhhhh-land.”

  “Las Palmas—Las Palmass, ass, ass.”

  When he said, “Bronson! Charlie, Charlie Bronson,” I got off.

  On the corner of Hollywood and Bronson, Beat Street Records occupied a bright blue two-story building and its interior continued the primary color palate. The reception room was painted a lemon yellow and a red curtain hung behind a small desk. Posters of bands were arranged at odd angles on the wall and underneath a white neon sign reading Beat Street was a blue futon couch.

  It seemed fitting that in a room whose decorator could moonlight as a nursery school teacher, a yodeler’s trills came over the stereo speakers.

  “Oh, hi,” said a woman, pushing aside the red curtain. “You must be the temp. If you’re not, we don’t officially open until ten.”

  “I am. The temp that is. But I was told to be here at nine.”

  “That’s when the sane people start.” She reached out her hand to shake mine. “Solange Paul, one of the sane ones. I’m also the office manager—the one you come to if you have any questions, which you shouldn’t, because really, your job’s so easy a monkey could do it.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  She offered a sly smile. “Answering phones, typing letters, serving coffee—how hard is that?”

  “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a monkey answer a phone. Not to say he couldn’t, but I think he might have a problem taking a message.”

  “You’re right. And a monkey couldn’t do the unspoken part of your job and mine, which is to make the men not look as dumb as they are.”

  Her style of dress did not match her brash, teasing manner; her black hair was processed and cajoled into a pageboy and the skirt of her navy blue suit reached her knees. She wore nylons and pumps with little bows at the toes. She didn’t look much older than I, which made me wonder why she dressed like an insurance agent nearing retirement.

  A high and plaintive yodel filled the room.

  “Elton Britt,” she said. “My secret vice. You can’t be black and have a thing for cowboy singers.”

  “Is that a rule?”

  Folding her arms, Solange smirked at me. “Yes, it’s in the ‘Code of Black Behavior’ pamphlet we’re all given as children. Don’t they pass one out to Asians, too?”

  “Yeah, but other than the ‘No chow mein on Fridays’ rule, I can’t say I remember any.”

  We both smirked. Our conversation was like a jousting match, but rather than crying “Ouch” and “No fair” at each other’s jabs, we were enjoying it.

  “Well, in any case,” said Solange, “welcome to one of L.A.’s hippest record companies.”

  “Is this one of L.A.’s hippest record companies?”

  Solange turned off the stereo. “According to our publicity. Now come on, I’ll show you around.”

  A door to the side of the desk opened up into the small break area. Behind the curtain was a big rectangular room and arranged in it were four offices defined by low walls and modular furniture. Unlike the ones in the reception area, the record and band posters hung straight on the white walls. Shelves of albums lined the back wall and to one side of them was a spiral staircase.

  “This is where it all happens,” said Solange, “contracts, schedules, publicity, A&R—”

  “What’s A&R?”

  “Artists and Repertoire. Tony’s our A&R guy—he listens to demos, works with the bands, the songwriters, etc. He also wears leather pants every day, as sort of an homage to Elvis, who he still can’t believe is dead.

  “That’s Ellie Pop’s office—she’s our publicist. Her real name’s Popadopolous—but the nickname fits. Pop, pop, pop—she’s all over the place. You get tired watching her.” Her hand tipped to the right. “This is where you can find me, and this is Greg Wyatt’s office. He’s an attorney and keeps—or tries to keep—things legal.”

  I pointed to the spiral staircase. “What’s up there?”

  Solange sighed. “Neil Thurman’s office. The president
of Beat Street Records. His father’s Ned Thurman.”

  She met my blank look with one of surprise.

  “Ned Thurman runs RCB—the biggest record company in the world, with the best artists. So of course Neil, his spoiled little son, has a job handed to him at RCB, and when the self-same spoiled little son wants to strike out on his own, Big Daddy springs for it.”

  “I take it you don’t exactly care for the guy.”

  “Neil? He’s nice enough. A little too fond of the”—here she toked an imaginary joint—“but on the whole, okay.” With a sudden wince, Solange rubbed her earlobe under her small earring and explained, “Metal allergies.”

  I reasonably asked why she didn’t take her earrings off.

  “Because then the allergies win,” said Solange, with a final tug to her earlobe. “Now, what we were talking about?”

  “Neil the spoiled little son.”

  Solange cocked her head, studying me.

  “I believe I may have been a bit loose-lipped. For all I know, you could be a company spy.”

  I slipped off my shoe and held it to my ear like a telephone receiver.

  “Boss,” I stage whispered, “she’s on to me.”

  Stone-faced, Solange regarded me as I put my shoe back on, and just as I thought she might be considering a call to Security, she laughed.

  “Girl, you are a strange one. Which in this business is probably a good thing.”

  9/22/78

  Dear Cal,

  The highlight of my first two weeks at Beat Street Records: Trevor Dean came in for a meeting and because Neil was running late, he sat down and chatted with me! Of course I had to tell him I listened to his album Soul Station all through the eighth grade.

  “Do you know what my label wanted to call that LP?” he said. “Trevor Dean: Mod Man. Would have finished off my bloody career before it started!”

  Which made me think of my own bloody career, or lack thereof. Am I going to do stand-up or not? If so, how do I actually go about starting it? Guess a little field study is in order, to see what’s out there.

  “Hey,” I said to the curly-haired comic coming out of the Improv. “You were funny.”