The Funny Man

by John Warner

  8

  THE FUNNY MAN and his wife ride a limousine to the big show. He drums his hands on his knees and hammers a leg up and down, nervous. At the house, the funny man spent half an hour peering through the curtains, certain the limousine would not arrive, that the big show in the city was a figment, a hoax, but there it was, five minutes early, an inky, rolling ship docking in his driveway, amazing.

  The limousine is nice, not new, and not particularly long, but clearly this is not the limo for hyped-up prom-goers, with scratched leather, knobs twisted off of the television, crumbs in the seat crevices, grime along door handles, and a pine-tree scent freshener jammed in the divider between passengers and driver masking the stench of overuse. He would have ridden in one of those substandard limos if he had gone to prom, which he did not because of his abject terror around girls, but that is so far in the past as to barely exist. Since he started performing the thing he has had to remember is to throw out cocktail napkins with phone numbers scrawled in lipstick before he gets home.

  No, this is the limo for the fairly famous, for the somewhat known, for a celebrity, of sorts.

  “I am a celebrity,” the funny man thinks. How many people would recognize him? Some, for sure. Many? Not many, but some. His name? No. Just that funny man, you know that guy with the thing. This show is officially “the next level” for the funny man. The moment he hits one level he is on to the next one, so thus far it has all been the same to him, but tonight the people in the audience will number in the thousands and they will be taping the performance for later premium cable broadcast.

  The funny man looks at his wife. She looks good to him, very good. Her makeup is heavy around her eyes, but it is different and sexy. Her eyebrows have been trained by a professional into tapered arches that accentuate her truly excellent bone structure. Previously, if someone had asked him about his wife, he would have said she was “perfect looking,” and meant it, but here she is looking better than perfect, which would’ve seemed impossible until everything seemed possible. How is it that the boundaries of the possible can move? It is not possible and yet it has been happening to the funny man.

  Lately he has begun mentally listing those things that separate before from after: First the house, with its multiple floors and yard, as opposed to the apartment where they shared their bedroom with the child (the antiaphrodisiac, they joked) and where the kitchen and living room were one space, really; only formality and a two-stool breakfast bar designating them as different. There is now a car for each of them, new ones with six cylinders and leather, and of course, the true indulgence—the one thing he couldn’t imagine he was buying, could not justify buying even as he read his credit card number over the phone to the toll-free operator—the chair that massages him with thousands of tiny fingers while he sits in front of the TV, which unfortunately also makes the TV look like it is jiggling, something that was not noted in the catalog description of the magic chair; which, come to think of it, specifically mentioned being able to watch TV while enjoying the massage and the heat. But no mind. How many people even own such a chair? Enough to make it worthwhile to put out a catalog filled with these sorts of luxury items, the funny man supposed.

  And now this wife with professional eyebrows, not that they were a problem before (though she is half-Italian), but clearly, these are better—can he actually count the number of hairs left in the brows? He thinks he can. Yes, it is like they have been cut and combed, each hair the perfect length. There are people who excel at shaping a woman’s eyebrows and his wife now goes to these people because of him and his success. Is this a source of pride? Sure. Of course. Just a year or so ago, before he’d met the clapping man, he was not even aware of these needs, but now, here they are, permanent and obvious.

  And yet, every time he sits in the special massaging chair and tries to watch the shimmying television screen, rather than relaxed, he feels irritated, enraged even. Several times he has begun composing angry letters in his head to the chair-manufacturing company and the catalog that sells it. He added a three-minute bit about the chair to his act, pretending that he’d only tried one at a friend’s house, a friend who was clearly the kind of asshole who would plunk down two months of the average American salary for a chair.

  Seriously, though, had the chair company never actually tried watching television while utilizing both the heat and massage features? Seems inconceivable. They must have noticed this and suspected it was a fatal flaw, but chose to lie to save their own researched and developed hides. He should call. “Hello, this is … Yes, that is me. What is my concern? Let me tell you my concern… .”

  Boy, is he nervous. He doesn’t remember ever being this nervous. Not when he got married, not when the child was born. He had complete faith in the rightness of the outcome on both of those occasions, the bliss of ignorance. Both events were complicated, and one (the birth) was downright gory, but he does not remember any doubts. This time, there are doubts for sure, a sense that this could be it, that his career is a balloon that has been inflating from a tank of nitrous, with this gig as a giant pin of “fuck you, you’re not fucking funny.”

  His wife wears a black dress cut above the knee that rides even higher when she snugs back, settling deep into the limo’s leather seat. Beneath the dress, her dark nylons work in conjunction with her pressed-together legs and the soft, interior lighting of the limo to create a small, dark, inviting triangle at her crotch.

  The funny man puts his hand there. He is thinking of a different kind of need. She puts her hand firmly on top of his and smiles at him.

  “The windows are dark,” he says. “There is a soundproof divider between us and our driver. No one could possibly see.” The funny man runs his hand up the inside of his wife’s dress, claws at the panty liner of her nylons. He has done some fine work there, in that space, with this hand, and the other as well, and sometimes even his tongue. When they first met, he knows he was pretty bad with all that, first shaky and unsure, then too rough and too quick, unskilled but eager labor, but she had guided him and he had improved. He is very good now, he thinks, you can’t fake some of the things he’s made his wife do (back arching, uncontrollable shudders, wetness) when he’s working well down there, and what a night this is going to be. Shouldn’t this be bracketed by some limo sex? Before and after the performance? This isn’t even daring, rather the kind of thing expected—nay, demanded—of a celebrity. And he is a celebrity. Millions have seen his picture in the magazine, and then the performance on the late-night show. (Okay, the late, late-night show.)

  His hand retreats, drawing a small circle with his index finger inside her knee, first gently, then more forcefully, trying to part her legs. He is sly, his touch perfect, impossible for his wife to resist. Soon her lips will part, her breathing will both quicken and deepen and they will finish this business he has started just as they arrive at the theater and emerge from the limo panting and rumpled, and the dressing room attendants will notice the sleepy look on his face for what it is, the look of a man who can have sex in a limousine.

  But his wife’s knees stay locked together, very firmly. She works out, sometimes with weights. She pats his hand. “Not here, I don’t want to get messy.” Her look is not unkind, and the funny man removes his hand, strokes his chin. She makes sense, of course. This is not only his night, but hers as well, a partnership, an equal partnership. She has made sacrifices too, and he should honor her wishes on this. Of course she makes sense. She has always been the sensible one, had even warned him off the massage chair before giving in, admitting that he deserved an indulgence. He should have listened then like he’s listening now.

  The funny man turns to look out the window and rests his chin on his hand and he sulks. He doesn’t think of himself as a sulker, but he is, he is, always has been. His mother would say so and his wife as well. He tries to banish the limousine sex images from his mind.

  No! the funny man thinks. She does not make sense. She is absurd! Look at her! Sh
e is hot! There should be limousine sex! Images of his wife’s legs thrown over his shoulders dance through his head, her feet thumping against the window glass. With all these things he now has, with the massage chair, with the heated floor in his bathroom, with the part-time (okay, one day a week) personal assistant (who is actually the babysitter most days) who will pick up his dry cleaning without complaint (not quite true, he has to add a tip to the total), is he really being denied limo sex?

  Seriously?

  On the way home, when they reprise this limo sex, when he is triumphant, he envisions his wife pouring champagne down his back as she rides him, giggling together at the waste. When they exit the limo, finally back at home, he will wear her torn pantyhose as an ascot and tell the driver that the manager (there is now a manager in addition to the agent) will take care of everything, which is true! That’s true! His manager would take care of everything! This is almost tragic, he thinks. How many times does this happen in a person’s life?

  From behind! He will take her from behind! He will open the window so her head is part of the way out of the car and he will take her from behind! She will rock and squeal and whoop! They will speed pass the cars of the non-famous on the way from the city, and they will know that something is really going on in that limo. Who could that be?

  Me. Me. Me. Me, the funny man thinks.

  The funny man presses his forehead to the window and clutches the leg of his pants in his hand. Where do these things come from? He’s never seen anything like these things he is imagining.

  There is a sunroof! (A moonroof; it is evening.) His wife could strip her top and whirl it around her head, as she rides torso-bared halfway out of the sunroof!

  He feels feverish. Could he really be getting sick? The funny man smoothes his hands along his legs and tries to breathe deeply and shifts a little trying to relieve some of the pressure building in his pants. He tries to think of baseball. He tried to play baseball as a kid because he loved and still loves baseball, watches it all the time while sitting on the special chair, because the slow pace of the game makes the jittering less infuriating, but he was bad enough at it that the only way he ever saw the base paths was to screw himself up and let the ball hit him. He was not adverse to this, though, because he liked running—and what’s this?

  His wife’s fingers tiptoe across the arch in his pants and work the zipper down. She smiles at him as her hand works the goods free. Limousine head, the funny man thinks. Of course. Better than limousine sex? Not better, no; but good, very good. Very very very very very good. This woman is a genius, the funny man thinks as they ride toward the big show.

  THE SEATING IS theater-style. No tables, no drinks, no drinks with swizzle sticks to absently twirl around fingers or crunch between teeth while the funny man delivers his material. People will not be drinking. If they are drunk, they did it to themselves prior to arrival. There are to be no distractions. The funny man will be the sole focal point of the entire room. The steamer trunk full of props waits for the funny man on stage. They have paid to see him, not to cover the two-drink minimum. This is not the first time for that, but it is still a relatively new thing.

  The dressing room is beneath the auditorium and the funny man can hear the rumbling above him as the audience files in and it feels to him as though the temperature is rising by the moment. They are treading on top of him and don’t even know it. He is holding them up, supporting all of their weight. This performance will be filmed, and he has blocking to remember, spots to hit during his “thing” to ensure the best camera angles. Something extra to worry about. He has rehearsed his routine infinite times. When he wakes in the mornings he often finds his mind has been working the routine over in his sleep and when his wife smiles at him, he imagines it is in response to one of the jokes running in his head. The material, he knows, is good; not great, but good, but the thing—his thing—is great. The thing is outstanding.

  The funny man never knows what to do with himself in the last moments before it is time to take the stage, so he is shadowboxing, flicking his fists into the air, bobbing from foot to foot. The stagehands look at him a little oddly, but surely they’ve seen stranger. As he nears the entrance to the stage, the houselights go dark and the audience whoops and whistles. The funny man listens to their cries.

  I haven’t even done anything yet, he thinks, but still, they love me.

  9

  FOR SOME REASON there is a ten-day hiatus before the start of my defense. Ostensibly it is to allow Barry time to prepare, but Barry is spending at least part of the interim in the Barbados, leaving me confined to the apartment, special, hiatus-scheduled twice-weekly visits to the therapist my only escape.

  At least it leaves me some time to catch up on my “work.” It is not that the money is gone. That would be ridiculous, impossible even, but there is for sure much, much less of it, primarily thanks to the divorce, a fiscal cleaver leaving two halves, one of which I no longer have access to. The trial is proving to be spectacularly expensive and the offers hadn’t been rolling in even prior to the incident.

  Not long before Beth and I were to get married, my father made us both scotches and took me aside to the porch and we sat together and my father raised his glass in a toast and said, “Son, I’m going to tell you the key to happiness.” He wanted to tell me about the importance of “the nut.”

  I was surprised. This wasn’t our kind of relationship. Oh, there was love there. I felt it in the way the man knocked himself out for my mom and me, traditional-father-role-style, but it was almost all backstage, coming out from behind the curtain only on occasion, like once when I was around eight years old and the entire town had been buried in a blizzard and Dad couldn’t get to work and instead clomped down to the basement and dragged back upstairs with an armful of cross-country skiing gear that I’d never seen before.

  We set off down our empty suburban street, everything doused with snow so high that even the hydrants and mailboxes at the curbs were covered. The plows hadn’t come through yet, and my father blazed the trail while I followed behind, mimicking his swinging arms and kicking legs as we made our way to the golf course, a perfect, almost untouched expanse of white save for the tiny paw prints of squirrels and rabbits. As we entered the course I could then see the undulations of the ground, little hills to chug up and slide down. At the top of one, the tallest one we’d encountered, my father paused and waited for me and said, “This is really something, huh?” before schussing down into a depression and coming to a quick stop, hockey style.

  The way up the hill had been a gentle climb, but at the peak, I could see that the way down was rather steep and that my father had generated a pretty good amount of speed before slamming on the brakes. I hesitated. I’d never been on skis of any kind before and as far as I knew, cross-country was limited to flats only. These skis weren’t designed for this sort of move. But my father smiled up at me, eager for us to go on, and held his arms out, the poles dangling from his hands and said, “Come on, boy!”

  I pointed my skis down, directly into my father’s tracks. Because the snow had been tamped down, I gathered speed very quickly. I tried to bend my knees to absorb any jolts and this caused me to go even faster and as my father grew in my vision I realized that I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to stop. Looking up, I saw my father’s eyes go wide and his hands push forward to brace for a collision. At the last instant, I did the only thing I could do: Fall heavily into him. My face filled with snow, numbing my nose and lips and I felt the tip of my father’s pole jab my leg.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “What?”

  “My leg.”

  My father tore his gloves off and started pawing his hands over my body. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh,” he said. He was obviously and instantaneously terrified, and seeing this terrified me and I began crying. “Oh. Oh. Oh,” he said. “I felt it. I felt the tip go in. It pierced you. I felt it. Oh. Where? Your leg?”

  I shrieked now, my head bobbing frantically
. This looked like the end of the world to me, the stoic man who stood on the sidelines of my baseball games and refused to scream like an idiot as did so many of the other fathers; the man who much later would look at a report card with two C’s and not yell, but instead shake his head sadly and say only two words, “wasted potential”; the man who brought me to the porch to give me advice and wisdom as I was about to embark on a marriage was melting down in front of my face.

  He slapped the snow away and pulled up the legs of my pants and his hands searched my skin for wounds, for bleeding, and I couldn’t remember being touched like this by my father. When I was younger, my mother bathed me. When I got sick it was her hand that pressed to my forehead or rubbed menthol on my chest. She insisted on hugs and kisses, but not my father, never my father. Would he have liked that sort of thing? The hugs, the kisses? I’ll never know. “Here? Here? Here?” my father said. I could only shake my head because I had no answers. If this man did not know, who could?

  Eventually, we figured out that I was fine. That I had not been pierced by the ski pole, that it had been a glancing blow and all our terror was overblown, a mutual misunderstanding. My father laughed halfheartedly as he plucked me upright out of the snow and placed me back on my skis. As we made our way home, I stared at my father’s back and willed my trembling legs to keep going because I did not want to let him down again by scaring him further. Neither of us said anything about the incident to Mom, but boy, did it make an impression. I mean, obviously because there it is all over again, and maybe that’s also because when faced with my own responsibilities to protect my son, I was an abject failure, but I’m not talking about that yet.