The Funny Man

by John Warner

  I feel one of our Abbott and Costello routines coming on. “How do you get more perfect than perfect?” I ask.

  “The old thing was perfect, the new thing is better, therefore, more perfect. The perfect defense … plus.”

  I decide to let it drop and try a bite of the mashed potatoes. They are warm and buttery and agreeably lumpy with just the right hint of chives. Judging from the way my suit hangs I have not been eating all that much, and as I try the beef (succulent, tender), I realize I have no real memory of any recent food ingestion. It is, in short, hitting the spot.

  “Now, it’s a risk, which is why you’ve got to sign off on it, why we’ve got to commit, but I’ve been thinking about it nonstop. I couldn’t even enjoy the magnificence of the giant sea turtles. I think it’s a risk worth taking. I think it’s at least precedent-setting, if not history-making.”

  Barry and I share a dramatic pause that only one of us is interested in.

  “Not guilty by reason of celebrity.” When he says it there is a pause between each word and he spreads his arms apart, like he is viewing it on a marquee from across the street.

  “I don’t get it.”

  Barry doesn’t seem surprised at this.

  “Okay, you’ve heard of being not guilty by reason of insanity, right?”

  I can only nod because my mouth is full of perfectly pink beef. The food appears to be stoking my appetite like I didn’t know I wanted it until I tried it. It’s just a little better than a cold can of beans.

  “This is like that, only it’s not guilty by reason of celebrity.”

  “It sounds like you’re saying that being famous is some sort of disease, or defect.”

  “I’m not like saying that. I am saying that.”

  “I don’t know if I like the sound of this.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before,” he says. I am superfluous now. He is an avalanche making its way to the bottom of the hill. “It’s practically already in the law. It’s just that nobody’s put it quite so plainly. I’ve got some clerks working on the briefing, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to fly. The judge is no-nonsense, but she’s fair, and she’s got to really take a hard look at this. The law is allowed to recognize a de facto affirmative defense ex post facto its establishment. Look at the precedents. If an average person took a nine-iron to some dude’s car in the middle of the road, what would happen to him? Criminal mischief? Felony property damage? When Jack does it, what happens? Nothing. If Bob Smith saws three quarters of the way through his wife’s neck and takes out an innocent bystander to boot, what happens to him? Life? Death? O.J… . nothing. Ergo, not guilty by reason of celebrity.”

  Barry goes on and on, citing case after case: Michael Jackson, Mel Gibson, Kobe, Rush.

  “The one or two times one of you actually did go to jail, pretty goddamn quickly everyone realized it was a big mistake and they got her the hell out of there.”

  “Paris Hilton? Lindsay?”

  “Exactamundo!” Barry says.

  “Fonzie.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Gary Coleman, kind of,” I said, “but you’ve to say it differently. It’s more like, what chu talkin’ about?” Barry looks like he wants to break me over his knee. I take a moment and gather my shit.

  “But what about Martha?” I said.

  “I’ve thought of that,” Barry says, rubbing his chin in contemplation. “But it’s an aberration. I made some calls and looked into it. Number one, that was federal; federal is different. Number two, because she thought it would look tacky, they were ordered to play down the celebrity thing. She wanted to be treated like everyone else. It killed her. Terrible strategy.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all covered,” I say.

  “Think about it,” Barry says. “Celebrity is just like a disease. You can catch it, so it’s communicable like a disease. It can also be hereditary like a disease. And I know I don’t have to explain to you how it does its damage. The world is fundamentally different for someone with celebrity, an honest-to-god alternate reality. An irreality, even. Also, celebrity is tenacious, incurable. Once it has you in its grasp, it will not let you go. At the very least any celebrity by definition has a prima facie case of diminished capacity.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re never wholly responsible for your actions. There will always be some mitigating factor.”

  I polish off the last of my meal. “This sounds crazy,” I say.

  Barry waves his hand in front of his face like he’s swatting a mosquito away. “Think about it,” he says. “All we’ve got to do under this theory is first prove that you’re a celebrity, which they’ll basically stipulate to. After that, it’s just a matter of illustrating what we all know to be true, that celebrities are not like the rest of us.” I could’ve pointed out that Barry was himself pretty famous. Self-awareness was not his forte. He continued.

  “The judge may not go for it, in which case we’ll stick with plan A, but I’m telling you, the briefs look good, very convincing, and I think she’ll see a little lasting legacy juice for herself in this. If we get this through, we’re talking permanent history in the annals of law, real Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade stuff here.”

  “So why do you need me to decide anything?”

  “Because of the risk. Either way, win or lose, it’s going to appeal, maybe even all the way up to the Supreme Court. We’re talking years before this case is resolved. Years and years and years. This is going to hang over your head forever and beyond. This is your obituary. This is your tombstone. The good news is that win or lose, you’ll be out on bail. If we win, you’ll be as free as anyone else who can’t go anywhere without being stared at and generally loathed. If you lose, you’re looking at more home confinement.”

  I do some of my own contemplating. “You said the original plan is perfect, right, that if we do that, we’ll win.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re sticking by that?” I say. “That’s still a winning strategy.”

  “Of course.” He looks offended that I might think otherwise. “So why would I sign off on this new strategy, this strategy that’s going to paint me as some kind of defective?”

  Barry smiles because he has foreseen this, just as he promised. He has directed everything right where he wants it to go, true master-of-the-universe style. “Because I’m going to waive all of my fees.”

  This is the most interesting thing Barry has said to me and I chew slowly as I consider it. Bonnie’s wristband missives have made it clear that one of the prerequisites for a successful execution of our plan is a pile of money. My pile is severely depleted. Barry is offering me a way to rebuild it. It won’t be enough, but it’s a start.

  I do the only thing I can. I say, “You’ve got a deal,” and make myself a sundae to go.

  14

  IN THE IMMEDIATE aftermath of the movie things got a little dark. The first night back the funny man crawled into bed and wept into his wife’s shoulder until he exhausted himself into sleep and when he woke to her worried face he declared that he was not having a breakdown, he just needed some space to figure some shit out. It will take several months to piece what was done into something that will be shown to test audiences, besides, if he is lucky and/or the studio has any sense, the movie will be quietly euthanized in the editing room.

  He did not know what was going on with his mind. He was simultaneously overjoyed to see his wife and son and deeply ashamed about so much and grieving for what he was certain was the end of his career, and so he was having a hard time facing them. From the massage chair, his “throne” (his wife’s sarcastic term) he saw a household that seemed to operate just fine without him, as though his absence while filming illustrated that he was the gunk in the gears holding everything back. The child looked good, walking more steadily, making eye contact and asking for things in multi-word sentences. The funny man co
unted the boy’s age on his fingers, almost needing his thumb, and couldn’t believe it. As the boy passed by the chair the funny man would beckon him closer, like one would a dog, and the boy would stand just out of arm’s reach and say, “Daddy’s sad,” (this came from the wife as well) and sprint off to somewhere else.

  At the insistence of just about everyone he started seeing a therapist and one of the first breakthroughs was that one source of the funny man’s discontent was his feeling of “superfluousness.”

  The first session with the therapist was his first foray outside of the house since the end of the filming and he blinked hard at the sun as he made his way toward the car. He’d chosen the same guy everyone uses because he’s the best and most expensive, or maybe he’s the most expensive because he’s the best. Whatever. He specializes in “performers,” which was made to sound like an affliction to the funny man, even though it was (probably) not meant that way. Pilar was tasked with the driving since no one was going to trust him with that, and she jacked the seat as far up as it would go and still it seemed like she had to look through the space between the top of the steering wheel and the dash to see out. On the way to the therapist’s office the funny man punched the radio presets and all of them connected with Spanish-language stations. He had no idea there were so many. He settled on what was either a soccer game or stock market report. The therapist was all the way in the city because people said that suburban therapists are for teenage girls who like to cut themselves, so the drive took awhile and he laid his head back and waited for the inevitable crash that never came. When they arrived, Pilar said, “right here, one hour,” like it was a command and then disappeared down the street leaving the funny man wavering on the sidewalk.

  The therapist started the session the way he would start every session from then forward by asking the funny man what had been on his mind lately and the funny man talked about the film and the child and Pilar and the radio stations in the car and he did not stop until his time was up. The therapist asked how he was feeling now and the funny man said, quite honestly, “better.” At the third session, the therapist introduced the “superfluousness” thing and the word lodged in the funny man’s head like a puzzle piece locking into place and he asked the therapist what he should do about it and the therapist said he should make himself “useful,” that this would bolster both his self-esteem and his self-worth.

  The therapist also gave him a prescription for some pink, ovoid pills that he said should help.

  And boy, did they.

  In fact, he is now considering firing Pilar. He has not told his wife this because she and Pilar are pretty friendly; not just friendly, they appear to be friends, chuckling over coffee in the kitchen mornings. His wife majored in Spanish so when they chat the funny man has no idea what they’re saying, save the stray word here or there, but this is not why he is considering firing Pilar, no way. It is because she is no longer necessary, more anchor than buoy to the good ship of his family.

  The household goings-on had previously looked to the funny man like a category 5 rapids rushing by him with no safe point of entry, but three weeks to the day after the third therapy session, having ingested a sufficient loading dose of the pink, ovoid pills, as Pilar and his wife discuss who will take the child to the toy store in order to buy a gift for a little friend from kindergarten’s birthday party, the funny man announces confidently, “I’ll do it.” The two women stare at him, but he stands resolute and his wife looks at Pilar, who nods, and his wife says, “Okay.”

  The trip to the toy store proves to be simultaneously triumphant and horrifying, a real turning point in the story of the funny man. Where he grew up, the toy store was just that, a storefront in a small downtown strip, next to the clothing store, two doors down from the hardware store, in the same area as the grocery and stationery stores. The toy store he is sent to with the child is easily the size of all of those stores combined, much more like a toy warehouse. The funny man had, of course, known of the existence of this kind of store, but they were indigenous to the late-blooming suburbs and during his time there, the funny man had always had enough money and people to ensure that he did not have to go inside them.

  A pneumatic burst of freezing air blasts the funny man as he crosses the threshold of the store, sapping the fluid from his eyeballs, and he gazes at the extra high, girdered ceilings and the layout like a maze, where each aisle must be traversed in order to make it to the payoff of the registers and he feels very small. There appear to be thousands of everything in the store, enough of each item that every child in the world could have one if they were just willing to pay for it. Surely, not all of these sell, the funny man thinks. What happens to the leftovers? The less popular? The castoffs?

  The child is of the age where his walking is perfectly sufficient, though obviously he is much slower than a full-sized person. The funny man would like to toss him into the cart and wheel the boy around to speed things along, but the boy walks until he gets tired and reverts to a younger, more helpless self in which case he will beg to be carried, but he is heavy enough that carrying the boy for anything other than short distances is a chore, a real catch-22. Because of the shelves’ height, the child can only see maybe one-eighth of the merchandise and he is predisposed to inspect almost each and every item in his viewing range. Doing a quick calculation the funny man guesses that at this pace, it will take better than a day to navigate the entire store, so he makes an effort at moving things along.

  “Whose birthday is it, buddy?”

  The child inspects a plastic unicorn with a rainbow mane where when you push a button the head bobs up and down mechanically and the unicorn plays a seven-note scale, up and then back down. “Nico’s.”

  “And what does Nico like?”

  “Nico likes cars.” The child presses the button again, satisfying himself that the head bobbing and music are the limits of the unicorn’s powers.

  “So maybe we should look at the cars, then?” The child looks at the funny man with a face that says “duh” before edging down the aisle and picking up a hyper-muscular dwarf doll that has long rainbow-colored hair and is apparently a companion of the unicorn’s. The arms rotate at the shoulder and the legs at the hips and the child works them back and forth, first like the doll is hammering something with his fist and then like he’s walking stiffly in the air. The child takes the dwarf and straddles him across the unicorn’s back, and even though the figure is a dwarf, in scale, it would surely break the unicorn’s spine.

  “I think the cars are somewhere else, pal.” The funny man gently puts his hand on the child’s shoulder while reaching with the other for the dwarf figure but the child shrugs him off and pulls the figure away and works the limbs some more, his face focused in concentration. The boy is careful, knowing they are not his. He has been well-brought up. The funny man considers heading to the car section and coming back with some choices for the boy to peruse, but it’s several aisles over and he doesn’t want to leave his son unattended.

  There is a small commotion behind them and the funny man sees a woman pushing a shopping cart with one hand while the other grips a girl, a year or two older than his boy, underneath the arm, pulling her up and along high and fast enough that the girl’s toes touch the ground only every other stride. The woman is thin, sinewy, dressed in a workout tank top and tight, three-quarter-length pants elasticed just below the knee. Her calves are knotty, hard, and her bicep tenses at the effort of holding the girl just off the ground. The girl’s face is a mask of fury, her features crowded together in the center and as the woman weaves around the funny man and his son, the girl grabs an item off the shelf and hurls it to the ground. So quickly that the funny man can barely register it as happening, the woman releases the girl from her grip and swats her on the behind hard enough to cause the girl to jump. “We don’t have time for this shit, Margie,” the woman says, low and menacing, one eye sliding to look at the funny man as she speaks.

  The girl wor
ks herself into a cry. The funny man has seen this kind of thing before in his own child, a situation where the boy knows that crying is plausible, but not imperative—say following a fall and a glancing blow from an end table—and there’s a beat before his eyes scrunch and the wailing starts.

  At first, the girl is unconvincing. The crying tones are too shallow, an obvious force, but as she warms to the task the tears appear genuine enough and as the mother finishes replacing the item on the shelf, she turns deliberately and slaps the girl across the face, hard and quick, and when the girl doesn’t stop crying, she does it again and then again, whap whap. The funny man looks down now and sees blackened circles marring the gray-specked linoleum, and he recognizes them as spots where gum has made itself a permanent feature of the floorscape. The girl, now having been silenced, her mouth a perfect, stunned O, is re-gripped under her arm and dragged away from the funny man and his son. The girl touches her hand to her cheek where the funny man is sure it must be red before her fingertips again brush the toys, grasping. “Please stop,” the funny man thinks.

  His son, engrossed in a mermaid figure that is part of the dwarf and unicorn group, has registered none of it. Crying children must be a regular feature in the life of a preschooler. Slapping as well, though usually of the child-on-child variety. The funny man looks at his boy and tries to imagine slapping him, or grabbing him by his plump forearm and twisting it until the boy feels his skin burning, or kicking his legs out from under him and knocking him to the ground, or later, when the boy is older, pounding his knuckles into the boy’s nose, mashing the cartilage in on itself, and the blood pouring into the boy’s shocked, open mouth, quickly coloring his teeth red, and the funny man is pleased to realize he can’t imagine such a thing, that it just wouldn’t and couldn’t happen, that he would never do that.

  For several hours, the funny man follows his son around the toy warehouse as his son inspects seemingly every item, or at least every item in his sightline, before settling eventually on what looks like a briefcase that when you open it holds thirty different toy cars, each with its own slot. “It’s a good choice,” the funny man tells him. On the way out he asks the boy if he wants anything for himself, and he replies, “Mom said it was just a trip for Nico’s present,” and the funny man’s eyes fill with tears. Such a good boy.