The Man Who Cancelled Himself

by David Handler

  Katrina swallowed, struggling to control herself. “Look, I don’t think you guys are addressing yourselves to what’s really wrong with this script.”

  “Gee, I could have sworn I just heard Lyle say it was perfect,” Tommy pointed out bitterly.

  “Well, I say you’re totally missing the point of what Uncle Chubby is about now,” she argued.

  The Boys exchanged a look.

  “Which is what, Katrina?” Marty’s voice was husky, with dread.

  “It’s about the six million American kids who will go to bed hungry tonight.” She was back up on the soapbox. “It’s about the sixteen million who have no medical coverage of any kind. It’s about teen suicide and drug addiction and—”

  “I’m, like, don’t get me wrongola, but where do the jokes come in?” wondered Annabelle with fish-eyed confusion.

  Katrina considered this, Lyle beaming at her like a proud parent. “We’re past jokes,” she replied. “We have a public responsibility here. And from now on, we’re going to meet it. That’s what we’re about. We’re not about comedy anymore. We’re about dramedy. Understood?”

  The Boys stared at her in horror. Annabelle’s mouth was open, but nothing was coming out.

  It was Bobby who broke the silence. “I-I think that’s g-great,” he blurted out.

  The Boys shot him a look. So did Katrina. Hers was grateful. Theirs wasn’t.

  “I-I for one will be thrilled to t-tackle serious issues,” he sputtered. “In fact, I-I already have an idea for a story that would be perfect for—”

  “Don’t pitch in front of the network, Bobby,” commanded Lyle harshly. “You’re not good enough.”

  Bobby froze for an instant. Then he jumped to his feet, kicking his chair over, and stormed out of the rehearsal room. Annabelle watched him go with motherly concern. Lyle cackled.

  Tommy stabbed his finger at Lyle. “Exactly who is doing the talking here, Lyle? Is this you talking or is it her? We better get this straight right now. Because the last I heard this was supposed to be a sitcom, not Bill fucking Moyers!”

  “Yeah, Lyle,” Marty chimed in. “What the hell is this?”

  Annabelle nodded in agreement, her lacquered headdress nodding right along with her. “I’m, like, yeah!”

  Sensing mutiny, Lyle held out his gloved hands, palms up. A placating gesture. “What this is is normal, healthy, creative give-and-take,” he replied soothingly. “Something for us folks to work out among ourselves. No sense keeping Marjorie tied up here for it.” He got to his feet with a loud grunt. “We’ll pick this up again later. Right, Katrina?”

  “But, Pinky,” she whined. “You promised me I’d get to—”

  “Right, Katrina?” he thundered, his eyes turning into murderous blue slits.

  Her own eyes widened with fear. Too much fear. She was terrified of the man. I wondered why. “Right, Lyle,” she whispered in her little girl voice. “Whatever you say.”

  “All right,” he said cheerily. “If that’s all, we can break for lunch now and then we’ll—”

  “That is not all, Lyle,” Marjorie Daw stated stiffly: “I still have Godfrey’s notes, as well as my own.”

  “Just give ’em to me after tomorrow’s run-through,” he said, brushing her aside. A bullying maneuver. “That way you’ll be able to visualize it better.”

  “We have serious problems with this script, Lyle,” she insisted, holding her ground. “And they have to be addressed now.”

  He glared down at her. Marjorie glared right back up at him, her jaw firmly set, her back straight. She would not be steamrolled. No cupcake she.

  Lyle plopped back down into his chair. “Okay, fine,” he said with weary condescension. “Let’s hear the word of God. By all means.”

  “On the positive side,” Marjorie reported, enunciating each word clearly and carefully, “we feel very good about that scene in Act Two when the kids are watching TV together. Their scenes test very high with audiences. They would like to see even more of them if that’s possible.”

  Lyle said nothing. Just sat glaring at her like a petulant child. I had no doubt that behind his mask his lower lip was stuck out in a belligerent pout.

  Marjorie turned a page in her script. She had lovely hands, her fingers long and gracefully tapered. She clasped them before her on the table, as if she were in prayer. I wondered if she always did this when she was delivering the word of God. “We’re also high on the final scene, when Deirdre accepts Chubby for who he is. That’s a very sweet scene.”

  “I wrote that scene,” boasted Lyle. “Every word of it.”

  The Boys stared at him in stone-faced silence. Obviously, they did not agree.

  “But we don’t like how the story gets there,” Marjorie continued. “We feel it’s pitched much too heavily toward Chubby.” At this Lyle began to redden. “Rob doesn’t even arrive on camera until the second act. That seems awfully late.”

  “We can move the act break back a scene,” offered Marty.

  “We want him in much earlier, Marty,” Marjorie said. “We want to see them spend the whole evening together.”

  The door opened. Bobby returned, his eyes red. He had been weeping. But he had his composure back now. He took his seat next to me. Lyle ignored him.

  Tommy scratched his head. “You mean you want to see them eating dinner before the pool hall scene?”

  “We don’t feel good about the pool hall scene, Tommy,” she replied primly. “In fact, we feel there’s altogether too much emphasis on gambling. First, you have Chubby losing forty dollars to Jimmy the milkman on a horse. Then you have Deirdre, who’s our moral compass, hustling the money out of Jimmy at pool. It’s simply not appropriate for an eight o’clock show. Particularly for your return episode.”

  “So, what, the pool hall’s out?” Marty wondered.

  “Godfrey wondered if Rob could take her to a video arcade at the mall,” Marjorie replied, with a perky smile.

  “This is what, the nineties?” Tommy cracked sourly.

  “We also feel how they meet should be more memorable,” Marjorie plowed on determinedly. “Something of an event. What if it’s not a blind date? What if they meet by accident?”

  “I’m, like, you mean a meet cute?” asked Annabelle.

  “I don’t do meet cutes,” Lyle said vehemently, as if he were discussing one of his bedrock personal beliefs, like the right to vote or bear arms. “I don’t do chance encounters of any kind. That’s shitcom.” He shook his head at Marjorie, his anger mounting. “Okay, so far you don’t like the gambling, you don’t like how they meet, you don’t like where they go. What else don’t you people like, huh?”

  Marjorie laid her hands out flat on the table, palms down, fingers spread. She looked down at them. “We’re not happy with Rob. He doesn’t fit in. Marty is right—he needs more attitude. There’s simply nobody there, at least not on paper.”

  “Or in the flesh,” cracked Tommy.

  Lyle’s fists were clenched now.

  “Godfrey feels Rob’s job doesn’t give us enough,” she added. “We’d like him to have one that can bring in stories. A wood shop teacher doesn’t do a thing for us.”

  “Anything else, Marjorie?” asked Lyle, his voice now low and threatening.

  “That about covers it, Lyle.” Swiftly, Marjorie closed her pencil, took a deep breath, and held it, clenching her jaw. She was nailing sheets of plywood over her windows, preparing for the coming storm. It blew in right away. She knew her man.

  “Okay, fine!” he roared. “Now I’m gonna say something! Now it’s my turn! You people are unreal. Totally, absolutely unreal! You take all of the joy out of this business. Every bit of it! Rob Roy Fruitwell was your idea, not mine. You stuck me with him. Now you say he doesn’t fit. Hey, guess what? I told you he didn’t fit! I told you there was no place for him. But did you listen to me? No!”

  “We’re committed to Rob, Lyle,” Marjorie said sternly, rising to his challenge. “Rob is here to stay. Ac
cept him. Grow with him. I believe he can be an excellent addition to this show.”

  “Don’t tell me what you believe,” Lyle huffed at her. “My plumber knows more about good TV than you do. Know what you are, Marjorie? You’re somebody who fucked her way to the middle.”

  Annabelle gasped. There was no other sound in the room.

  The skin on Marjorie’s face seemed to draw tighter against the bone, sharpening her soft features. Red splotches formed on her cheeks. But she held her ground. “I have a job to do, Lyle. And I am going to do it. You are not going to bully me. I am not going to run sobbing from this table. So you can just forget it. What we want is—”

  “What you want is a page one rewrite,” Lyle blustered.

  “We want changes,” she maintained.

  “Or what?”

  “We want changes,” she repeated.

  The two of them stared at each other in charged silence.

  Marty stepped into it. “Okay, let’s break it down. See where we are. How do they meet? Do we keep the blind date or don’t we?”

  “Let’s hear from our new guy,” commanded Lyle. “Let’s hear from Hoagy.”

  They all turned to me anxiously. Lulu stirred at my feet. Even she wanted to hear this.

  I tugged at my ear. “Well, what’s Deirdre feeling?”

  “Nausea, if she’s watching this show,” Tommy fired back instantly.

  “A-Anger,” Bobby replied, his voice a choked spasm. “I-I think she hates the whole idea of being fixed up with someone. L-Listen to those words—fixed up. She’s not b-broken. She’s fine. She’s attractive, she’s s-successful, she’s …” He sputtered out, gasping for breath.

  “I like that, Bobby,” Katrina squealed approvingly. “That’s very astute. And so ironic.”

  Bobby ducked his head bashfully.

  “I like it, too,” agreed Marjorie. “Blind dates make you feel ugly and unwanted. I know I hate going out on them.”

  Tommy said, “Well, as it happens, this is a show about Deirdre, not you.” He sat up suddenly, turned to his partner. “Of course, we could do the ultimate blind date gag.”

  “Which is what?” asked Katrina.

  “Hasn’t been used since Taxi.” Marty was warming to the idea. “And that was twelve, fourteen years ago.”

  “What is it?” asked Marjorie.

  “Rob’s genuinely blind,” Marty replied enthusiastically, pitching his ass off. “He’s a blind blind date. Great gag, and it gives Rob just the kind of spin you’re looking for. Plus it gets us into all sorts of serious issues about the handicapped, like Katrina wants.”

  “On the downside,” cautioned Tommy, “we’ll be locked into it.”

  “Unless we want to do an operation at the end of the season to restore his sight,” countered Marty.

  “This coming Monday,” intoned Tommy gravely, “a very special Uncle Chubby …”

  “I love this!” squealed Katrina.

  “We don’t find out until next fall what happens,” Marty went on excitedly. “Helluva summer cliffhanger. What do you think, Chief?”

  Lyle considered it a moment, brow furrowed. “Let’s not do that.”

  “Too limiting,” agreed Tommy instantly.

  “Snap-crackle-flop,” admitted Marty, retreating from it.

  “Okay, he works for the Internal Revenue Service,” pitched Tommy, moving right along. Neither of The Boys was the least bit fazed by Lyle’s turndown. Their job was simply to offer up possibilities, not to believe in one of them. Or in anything. It was scary. It was like being a lawyer. “And Deirdre gets this letter summoning her to headquarters. She thinks she’s gonna get audited. She freaks, because she’s such a stickler for keeping precise records. So she barges in with ten shoe boxes full of papers and really lets the IRS agent have it and—”

  “Rob’s the agent?” asked Marjorie.

  Tommy nodded. “Turns out she just forgot to sign her return. After she apologizes for screaming at him, he asks her out.”

  “Or she asks him out,” suggested Marty, playing to Marjorie’s presence at the table.

  “I don’t wanna do a meet cute!” bellowed Lyle. “How many times do I gotta say it?! Besides, an IRS agent does even less for us than a shop teacher.”

  “Audiences do tend to dislike characters who work for the government,” Marjorie pointed out, as if a survey had been commissioned on the very subject. Very likely one had been.

  “He c-could be an old friend,” sputtered Bobby. “Someone D-Dierdre and Chubby grew up with. She maybe went out with h-him once or twice in high school. They l-lost contact through the years, and now he’s back in town and … and …”

  Lyle started snoring loudly. He was a man who needed a whipping boy. Bobby was it. “I swear to God, Bobby, every time you open your mouth I feel like I’m listening to National Public Radio,” he cracked, taunting him.

  Bobby just gripped his script tightly, blinking, blinking.

  “I got it!” cried Marty, smacking the table triumphantly. “It’s a natural! It’s staring us in the face!”

  “The only thing staring us in the face is cancellation,” muttered Tommy.

  “What is it?” asked Marjorie anxiously.

  “We make him the milkman!” declared Marty. “Natural, right?”

  Total silence. Deafening silence.

  “Then again,” Marty quipped, with admirable aplomb, “shit is natural, too. And you wouldn’t want to watch it for thirty minutes a week.”

  “Whatta we do, Hoagy?” wailed Lyle mournfully. “Tell us. Don’t hold nuttin’ back.”

  They all looked at me again, beseechingly this time. They were hoping I somehow had it—the magic solution that would somehow make the network happy, Lyle happy, Katrina and The Boys all happy at the same time. Something each of them could live with—for better or wurst.

  “I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing a blind date,” I replied. “Provided you explore Deirdre’s feelings about it ahead of time, as Bobby suggested. It might also be nice to hear how Rob feels about it, too. We’d like him more if we knew he was feeling insecure, possibly even intimidated—she is, after all, a lawyer. And she has children. That would scare a lot of men off.”

  “That plays,” Marty said. “That would also give him something to do if we want to get him in the show earlier.”

  “Who does he unload on?” asked Marjorie, musing aloud. “Does he have a friend?”

  “He’s a yutz,” replied Tommy. “How could he?”

  “There’s always Jimmy,” suggested Marty.

  “Again with the milkman,” moaned Tommy.

  “No, wait!” exclaimed Annabelle. “I love that. Check it out—I’m, like, Jimmy is literally delivering the story from one house to the other, like the milk. That’s extreme.”

  “W-Wonderful resonance,” agreed Bobby. “Shades of Odets.”

  “That’s Bernie Odets,” cracked Tommy. “Used to write for the Skelton show.”

  Marty shook his head. “What are we saying? He lays it on Chubby when the two of them are fixing the dishwasher together. Chubby is his friend. He’s who Rob confides in.”

  “Mo’ better,” said Lyle approvingly.

  “Okay, okay …” Marty started scribbling notes on a long yellow legal pad. “We stay with the blind date, but we still have to get Master Fruitwell in earlier. …”

  Tommy: “We open the night before, instead of that morning. It’s suppertime, okay? We do the usual domestic shit. …”

  Marty: “Dishwasher’s not working …”

  Tommy: “Dishwasher’s not working … The phone rings … It’s Rob. Chubby thinks he’s a solicitor, hangs up on him. Rob calls back …”

  Marty: “And we do the phone call. There’s sparks. There’s flirting. There’s heat.”

  Tommy: “He asks her out for tomorrow night. She says yes.”

  “We can pretape his end,” Lyle added, for Marjorie’s benefit. “Won’t even have to build a set. Randy can whip
up a piece of backdrop in two seconds flat. Go on, Tommy, you’re on a roll.”

  “That’s a Kaiser roll,” cracked Marty. “Lightly seeded.”

  “We cut to next morning,” Tommy continued. “We still do Chubby losing Deirdre’s forty bucks to Jimmy.”

  “Stop,” objected Marjorie. “I told you that the gambling is—”

  “We’ll kill the pool hall,” offered Marty, negotiating. “She and Rob can go somewhere else. But Chubby’s got to blow the money on the horse. We need that. You can let us have it, can’t you, Marjorie?”

  She considered this gravely, lips pursed, her head cocked slightly to one side. Again I thought she looked familiar, and again I wondered why—I so seldom ran into her type anymore. Or at least I tried very hard not to. “Where do they go on their date?” she asked.

  “I know where,” Lyle replied. “We got a set for a Japanese restaurant left over from last season we never used. It’s in the warehouse, all built and paid for. Can have it here by the end of the day.”

  “We’d have to hire Asian actors, Lyle,” Katrina pointed out. “And pay off the ones we already have.”

  “Keep ’em around. No reason they can’t be eating suki-yaki.”

  “We’ll still need waitresses,” she contended. “And costumes.”

  Lyle sat there making these short, flatulent noises with his lips behind his mask. “We make it into a bonus—it was a Japanese restaurant, now it’s a Tex-Mex joint. Just opened. They haven’t changed the decor yet. We can get in a joke about a Japanese business going broke, huh?”

  “And what about the forty dollars Deirdre wins back from Jimmy?” Marjorie wondered doubtfully.

  “She doesn’t,” Tommy replied. “Chubby loses it, period. Typical Chubby behavior. And she’s genuinely pissed at him. Also typical.”

  “Whattaya say, Marjorie dear?” asked Lyle. “Can you live with it?”

  Marjorie clasped her hands and gazed up at the ceiling, mulling it over in silence. Or maybe she was looking to Him for an answer. The silence grew longer, The Boys more anxious. Finally she shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. “We can live with it, Lyle.”

  “Yesss!” exclaimed Marty, jumping to his feet. “Let’s go, pardner, we got rewrites.” He was halfway to the door before he stopped Cold. “Shit.”