What's So Funny

by Donald Westlake

  Brian.

  There wasn’t anything wrong with Brian, not really. He and Fiona made a very good couple, easygoing, supportive, not demanding. His passion for exotic cookery remained a happy surprise, though somehow not quite as exciting, a teeny bit less of a treat, now that she’d left Feinberg and started a job with normal hours. (She would never mention that to Brian, of course.)

  The problem, which she could barely articulate inside her own head because it made her feel guilty, the problem was class. Brian did not come from the same world as Fiona. His people did not live where her people lived, did not school where her people schooled, did not vacation where her people vacationed, did not buy suits — if they bought suits — where her people bought suits. His was a rougher, scruffier, less settled universe of people who hadn’t made it, generation after generation, with no prospect for future change. When she was with Brian, Fiona was, in the very slightest way, barely noticeable to the naked eye, slumming.

  If she were honest — and she wanted to be — she’d have to admit that her own great–grandfather, Hiram Hemlow, father of her dear grandfather Horace, had come from that same class, the strivers without connections. The stolen chess set might have helped Hiram move up out of the unwashed, but that opportunity was lost.

  What had finally made the difference in the Hemlow family was her grandfather Horace, who happened to be an inventive genius. With the prestige and money he made through his inventions he could cut through the nearly invisible barriers of American class, so that the generation after his, the generation of Fiona’s father and her aunts and uncles, with money behind them, however fresh, could attend the right schools, move into the right neighborhoods, make the right friends.

  The family had moved smoothly into the upper middle class the way it’s done in America, not with family, not with history, but with money. And now, a member of barely the third generation at this level, Fiona could look at Brian Clanson and know, with shame and embarrassment but without the slightest question, that he was beneath her.

  The knowledge had her tongue–tied, and the further knowledge that she must very soon display Brian to Mrs. W as her chosen escort only made things worse. Mrs. W, as Fiona had every reason to know, was about as class–conscious as anyone she’d ever met. That rambling vitriolic memoir the woman was writing reeked of it. Was Fiona, having acted against her better judgment in a moment of weakness, about to make Mrs. W despise her forever?

  Through all of her fretting Brian, of course, remained oblivious, continuing blithely along with his own usual Saturday morning routine, which was to commandeer the big room while he watched the Saturday morning cartoons, an activity he claimed counted as work but which she knew he secretly enjoyed for its own sake, the more childish the better.

  Confined to the bedroom with the door closed — it didn’t help that much — she paced and worried and searched in vain for a route out of her dilemma, and, finally, a little before eleven, she decided to phone Mrs. W even though she had no idea what she intended to say. But she had to do something, had to start somewhere; perhaps hearing Mrs. W’s voice would give her inspiration.

  So she sat on the bed, reached for the phone, and it rang. Startled, she picked it up, and heard Mrs. W’s voice. “Mrs. W!”

  “About this question of costumes,” Mrs. W said.

  “Mrs. W?”

  “I understand, from what you say, many of the partygoers this evening will be in costume.”

  Oh, she doesn’t want to go! Fiona thought, and her heart leaped up: “Oh, yes, Mrs. W, all kinds of costumes!”

  “That doesn’t much help, Fiona, dear: ‘all kinds’, you see. What sort of theme does one encounter at these events?”

  “Theme?” Arrested development, she thought, but didn’t say. “I guess,” she said, “I suppose, it’s popular culture, I guess, cartoon shows and things like that. And vampires, of course.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. W agreed. “Women, I find,” she said, “don’t improve in vampire costumes.”

  “The fangs, you mean.”

  “That would be part of it. I know you won’t be in costume, but your friend — Brian — will he?”

  “Oh, yes,” Fiona said, trying to sound perky rather than resigned. “The same one every year.”

  “Really? And would it spoil things to tell?”

  “Oh, no. It’s Reverend Twisted, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “A cartoon character,” Fiona explained. “From cable, you know. A little raunchy.”

  “His costume is raunchy?”

  “No, the cart — What it is, Mrs. W, he’s a mock priest, he blesses all the bad behavior, he loves the sinner and the sin.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  Beginning to feel desperate, Fiona said, “The joke is, he’s the priest at the orgies, you see.”

  “And what does he do there?”

  “Blesses everybody.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Really, yes,” Fiona said, realizing she’d never before noticed just how small and toothless a joke the Reverend Twisted actually was.

  Mrs. W, calm but dogged, said, “What does he wear in this persona?”

  “Well, it’s not that — Not that different, really. Just heavy black shoes and a shiny black suit with very wide legs and very wide double–breasted jacket with a bottle of whiskey in the pocket and a kind of white dickey and white makeup on his face and a black hat with a flat brim all the way around.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s mostly his expression, really,” Fiona tried to explain. “You know, it’s a leer, he leers for hours, the next day his jaw is very sore.”

  “For his art,” Mrs. W said, with suspect dryness.

  “I suppose. He used to carry a Kama Sutra, you know, the way priests carry a Bible? But he lost it a few years ago and never got another.”

  “We’ll just have to imagine it, then,” Mrs. W said. “Thank you, my dear, you may have been of help.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” Fiona said, and hung up, and gave herself over to despair. Mrs. W was definitely coming to the party.

  Chapter 47

  * * *

  With a table knife, Dortmunder was trying to find a little more mayo at the bottom of the jar, but mostly finding it on his knuckles, when the phone rang. Licking his fingers, he ambled over to the phone and spoke into it: “Yar.”

  “I’m thinking,” Andy Kelp said, “of giving up my answering machine.”

  Surprised, Dortmunder said, “You? You live for those gizmos. Call waiting, call forwarding, call lateraling, all those things.”

  “Maybe not any more. Anne Marie’s out today,” Kelp explained. “Some old friend of hers from Kansas is showing her New York.”

  “Right.” Dortmunder understood. It’s always the out–of–towners who know the real New York. “Statue of Liberty?”

  “Empire State Building,” Kelp agreed. “Grand Central Station. I think they’re even gonna grab a matinee at Radio City Music Hall.”

  “Anne Marie,” Dortmunder said, “has a very good heart.”

  “First thing attracted me to her. Anyway, I was out myself a little, you know how it is.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I come back just now, there’s three messages from Eppick. Three, John.”

  “Maybe he’s tensing up,” Dortmunder said.

  “No maybe about it. Three messages that he wants me to ask you what’s going on. They’re not even my messages, John.”

  “Does he really think,” Dortmunder wanted to know, “anybody’s gonna tell him what’s going on on the phone? You’re not the only one with those gizmos, you know.”

  “You tell him that, John, it’s you he wants to talk to.”

  “Maybe later. Listen, satisfy some curiosity.”

  “Sure.”

  “How come, when you were in there last night, you didn’t go in there?”

  “What? In where?”

  “Maybe,” Dortm
under decided, “we should talk in the open air.”

  • • •

  Open air in March should not be approached unwarily. It was in a small triangular park in the West Village called Abingdon Square — sue me — that they huddled together on a bench near the southern apex, where some of the buses only slowed down, but others across Hudson Street stopped for a while, engines growling, to compete with the traffic going past the park south on Hudson then south on Bleecker Street, north on the other part of Hudson and then north on Eighth Avenue, and east on both disconnected parts of Bank Street. There wasn’t much wind here, with fairly tall buildings all around except for the children’s playground in the triangle just south of this one, so that, if Abingdon Square had been an hourglass, that would be the part with the sand. Not too cold, not too much wind, plenty of ambient noise — some children are louder than buses without even trying — and so a perfect spot for a tete–à–tete.

  Having called this conclave, Dortmunder went first: “You were ahead of me, last night, on that roof.”

  “You went out on that roof?” Kelp was surprised.

  “I had to. The householder come home.”

  “I heard all the fuss,” Kelp agreed. “I figured, it was somewhere else in the building and you took off back outa there, or it was the householder and you went through him and then back outa there. I didn’t figure you for the roof.”

  “Neither did I,” Dortmunder said. “But there I was. And you were already gone.”

  “That was the place to be.”

  “Oh, I know. So I went over and I found those rungs —”

  Kelp was astonished, and said so. “John, I’m astonished.”

  “No choice,” Dortmunder said. “Down the rungs, down the fire escape. What got me was how clean you went through that basement door.”

  “What basement door?”

  “Into Perly’s building. What other way was there?”

  Kelp was now doubly astonished. “You went into Perly’s building?”

  “What else could I do?”

  “Did you never turn around?” Kelp asked him. “Did you never see that humongous apartment house right behind you? You get thirty–seven windows to choose from over there, John.”

  Dortmunder frowned, thinking back. “I never even looked over there,” he admitted. “And here I thought how terrific you were, you got through that basement door without leaving a mark, got through and out the building and not one single sign of you.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t there,” Kelp said. “Where I was instead, I went into an apartment where there’s nobody home but there’s a couple nice de Koonings on the living room wall, so I went uptown to make them on consignment to Stoon, and then I went home. I never figured you to come down that same way. And wasn’t that a risk, you go in there before we want to go in there? Did you leave marks, John?”

  Insulted, Dortmunder said, “What kind of a question is that? Here I tell you how impressed I am how you didn’t leave any marks —”

  “It was easier for me.”

  “Granted. But then, back last night, you were like my benchmark. So what I left was what you left. Not a trace, Andy, guaranteed.”

  “Well, that’s terrific, you found that way in,” Kelp said. “Is that our route on the day?”

  “We don’t have to do all that,” Dortmunder told him. “While I was in there anyway, I looked around, I picked up some stuff.”

  “Stuff they’re gonna miss?”

  “Come on, Andy.”

  “You’re right,” Kelp said. “I know better than that. Maybe I’m like Eppick, I’m getting a little tense. So what stuff did you come out with?”

  “Their extra garage door opener.”

  Kelp reared back. “Their what?”

  “That they don’t remember they have,” Dortmunder said. “Bottom drawer of the secretary’s desk, way in back, under stuff, covered with dust.”

  “That’s pretty good,” Kelp admitted.

  “Also some other stuff,” Dortmunder said. “Perly’s an organized guy, he made himself a lot of notes about the exact time the thing’s coming down from the bank and all the extra security they’re gonna lay on while it’s there.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He did. Also, he’s got a copy machine.”

  Kelp laughed, in pleasure and amazement. “You got their garage door opener,” he said. “You got their security plans.”

  “Right,” Dortmunder said, going for modesty.

  Kelp shook his head. “And all I got was a couple de Koonings.”

  “Well, we took different paths,” Dortmunder said, now going for magnanimity.

  “We sure did.” Seated on the park bench, Kelp watched a bifurcated bus make the long looping U–turn around the triangle, to go from southbound on Hudson to northbound on Eighth. “So what do you think next?” he asked.

  “I think,” Dortmunder said, “we make a little meet. All of us. At the O.J.”

  Chapter 48

  * * *

  “Oh, I hope it Still fits.” Brian, gazing down at the Reverend Twisted costume now spread–eagled on the bed like a steamrollered Arthur Dimmesdale, was already leering a bit. How he loved to get into that part!

  “Oh, it always fits you and you know it,” Fiona said, trying to sound loving rather than irritated, and the phone rang, yet again. “Not again!” she cried.

  Brian’s leer strengthened. “She’s your boss,” he said.

  This was the last thing Fiona had expected to result from having invited Mrs. W to March Madness. Was this the sixth or seventh call, with hours still ahead before the actual party? Mrs. W had regressed to some antediluvian teenage past, working out her anxieties on the telephone.

  Mostly the calls were about costumes, or, that is, the personae inside the costumes. So far, Fiona had gently but firmly shot down Eleanor Roosevelt, the Gibson Girl, Annie Oakley, and Ella Fitzgerald. (Ella Fitzgerald?)

  But the calls hadn’t been entirely about the conundrum of Mrs. W’s personal disguise for the evening. Should one dine ahead, or would it be a catered affair? Oh, dine ahead, definitely. Then Mrs. W would dine at home and pick up Fiona and Brian later.

  Another issue. Would she be the only person of a certain age present at the party? Actually, no. Among the advertisers and other corporate types who might drop in were people of all ages, though the older ones tended to be more often male than female, and mostly interested in a new young companion to chat with.

  Well, would there be anyone present whom one (Mrs. W, that is) might know? Not a chance.

  Fiona answered the phone in the big room, wondering what the problem would be this time around. “Hello?”

  “Do forgive the intrusion, dear —”

  “Not at all, Mrs. W. Whatever I can do to help. Do you have another idea for a costume?”

  “Well, yes, I do, in fact,” Mrs. W said, “but this time I don’t need advice. From what you have said of tonight’s festivities, I have now decided on the absolutely perfect masquerade.”

  “Really?” Tense, worried, wondering if she could talk Mrs. W out of whatever lunge into the past she’d made this time, Fiona said, “Who, Mrs. W?”

  “No, my dear, that would be telling. You will be quite impressed when you see me. Now, my car shall pick you up at ten–twenty, is that right?”

  “You don’t want to tell me.” Dread clutched at Fiona’s bosom.

  “Let it be a surprise, dear.”

  “I’m sure it will be.”

  “What I was ringing up about, in fact,” Mrs. W went on, “was your friend Brian.”

  Fiona could see Brian, in fact, in the bedroom, just pulling on the Reverend Twisted trousers, shiny black wool with so much extra material and pleating that he now looked, from the waist down, like a half–blown–up Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. “Yes, Brian,” she said. “What about him?”

  “I should have asked this before,” Mrs. W said, and she did sound a bit uneasy when she said it
. “Will your Brian object to, in effect, escorting two ladies to the event?”

  Out of sequence, Brian had put on the flat–brimmed Reverend Twisted hat and was viewing himself in the closet mirror, leering so hard he looked like a Cadillac grille. “He won’t mind a bit,” Fiona promised Mrs. W. “Trust me.”