by John Warner
“Bam!” Darntoff said, drawing his fist back, and spreading his legs, karate-movie style. “Got ya.”
Knowing that a display of weakness meant death, I grinned as I moved all the way past Darntoff. Oh, it hurt, though mostly the arm was numb, neurons shutting down in defense of what they perceived to be a severe injury, but I could not betray this hurt, which would be to beg for a repeat visit from Chris Darntoff’s knuckle. This was not abuse, but a rite of passage, a form of bonding, of boys just kidding around.
The sound of a coach’s whistle echoed through the pool and Mr. DeFranchschi started yelling. “All right, let’s see what we got, here,” he said. “Two lines, one boys, the other girls. Swim test time. On each whistle the pair at the front dive in and swim to the other side. I will be judging your swimming proficiency as a benchmark against later progress.” He stood in his athletic-department collared shirt, arms crossed, the pit stains creeping out toward his chest. Another whistle blast and we lined up at one end of the twenty-five-yard pool. The other end stretched into the distance and I knew I would never reach it. At least we were starting in the deep end, so if I could make it two-thirds of the way, I could stand and walk my way in.
My arm had shifted from numbness to violent tingling, but still it dangled, wasted and useless. I jockeyed for the final position in the back and hoped for the feeling to return. It didn’t.
At the ledge, Coach D. tweeted the whistle, and by reflex I jumped in. (There would be no diving for this guy.) As I surfaced, I heard a laugh go up from some of the swimmers who had already finished. I figured my best and only chance was to start strong, kicking with as much might as I could muster while flailing forward with my one usable arm. Launching into my stroke, I heard Coach D. yell from behind me.
“For the love of god, son, stop screwing around.”
But I was not screwing around. I was trying to keep from sinking to the bottom. I quickly become exhausted, swimming in circles thanks to my one-armed stroke. My brain matter swirled around my skull like a tornado and I heard sizzling noises like the water was boiling around me. Coach D. got madder and madder, blasting the whistle and screaming at me at the top of his lungs to cut the crap. I thrashed for everything I was worth and wondered if I stopped and sank if someone would come get me. Everyone else had finished their lap and was poolside, laughing. Even the girls with the excuses looked up from their nails and paperbacks and joined in. Finally, on one of my loops I got close enough to the edge to grab on with my one working hand and Coach D. pounced and hauled me out of the water, hands under my arms, the suit dripping like a soiled diaper. My breath came in heaves. I felt like I’d swallowed half the pool.
“All right, funny guy!” he yelled. “You’re done! Hit the showers!” As I shuffled my way to the locker room, Chris Darntoff extended his hand and slapped me five.
“Dude, that was hilarious,” he said.
AND SO I recalled it in that moment as she beckoned me from her position at the tip of the dolphin’s nose, raising a leg above the surface and wiggling her toes at me, her lovely calf flexing, but unlike my time with the goo when I could feel my heart pound as I reexperienced the memory, this time it’s just something not very important that happened a long time ago.
I have to traverse two-thirds of the pool’s torso to reach her. It seems very do-able. I hop on one foot as I yank off my shoes and socks and drop my pants, giving thanks for Chet’s taste in boxer shorts. I suck in my gut as I strip off my shirt and dive—yes, dive in—the bottom rushing toward me before I arc upwards and dog-paddle with my head above water toward her, undignified, but undoubtedly swimming. With each stroke she grows closer. I swallow a mouthful that burns in my nasal passages and she briefly goes out of focus, but I endure, and there she is, right in front of me, treading water with very little effort.
“You made it,” she says. Her legs brush against mine under the water. I have a desire to put my hand on her waist and pull her toward me, so I do. She does not resist.
“Beware, I’m troubled,” she says. She smoothes her hand over the stilled surface of the water.
“Aren’t we all?” I place my other hand on top of hers. I have never been so bold in my previous life. My ex-wife and I were like two atoms colliding, heedless of what was coming until the moment of impact, or electrons combining. The women on the road were groupie dodgeball. Meredith Babcock propositioned me.
Our fingers twine and she pulls me toward her. Here is a face that is so familiar, but it is like I’m seeing it for the first time.
“I’ve never been kissed,” she says.
“Really?”
I think she might blush. “I’ve had other priorities.”
“I see,” I say.
She smothers her face in her palms and then tilts her head up and shouts, “I’m a freak!” and then looks at me and says it so sadly that I swear I feel it in my heart. “I’m a freak.” I want to deny it, to bat it away, but we both know she’s right and that she’s not just describing herself. I have no words, so I lean in very slowly in an effort to remedy the situation. As I approach her eyes close, and I shut mine. Our lips brush …
AND THEN CHET showed up. “There you are,” he said, his voice filled with false cheer. He held a large towel with the phoenix stitched into it up with arms extended like he wanted to give someone a hug. “I’m afraid the party is over for us. Big day tomorrow.”
“Go away, Chet,” I said, trying to sound as threatening as possible. I hovered millimeters from Bonnie’s face. Her breathing came out in little huffs.
His voice came back hard in a way I hadn’t heard before. “So sorry, sir, but it is time to go.”
Bonnie looked at me and shrugged and ducked underneath my arm and swam a powerful freestyle toward the tail, the water frothing behind her kick. I got out of the pool and Chet encircled me with the towel. He carried my clothes for me as we made our way back to the bungalow.
“I have a question, Chet,” I said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Do they teach you about cock-blocking on this island?”
“I don’t believe I understand your meaning.”
“Never mind, I’ve got another question.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“When this is all over, am I supposed to tip you?” We’d arrived at the door to my bungalow. Some nights he stayed and played chess with me, but I was not inviting him inside this time.
“Gratuities are always appreciated, but not expected,” he replied. “Sleep well.”
In our dreams we are always approaching our goals, only to have our brains snatch us away to some other, unconnected story, and this is what that felt like. After Chet left, I lay in my bed and told myself that while it seemed like a dream, it was not a dream.
Of course, I now recognize the calculation in everything, the integration with everything else I was undergoing as part of the treatment at the Center, but as I slipped into my impossibly soft sheets, eased into sleep by an ambient-noise machine perfectly suited to my aural needs, I cursed that fucker. My only desire was to get my hands on Chet and fuck him up, but good.
33
THE AUDIENCE IS curious, ready, leaning forward in their seats.
This is back at the club where it all started. The funny man has not been here in a long time and yet it is unchanged, except that someone has cleaved the big table that used to sit in the middle of dressing room and collect beer bottles in two and the two halves have been crudely fastened back together with two-by-fours nailed like railroad tracks across the top. He thinks maybe he should be a dude and spring for a new table. He does not know any of the performers, but it’s clear they are in awe of him. Sure, he’s had his setbacks, but they would kill for the opportunity to rise high enough to fail so spectacularly as him. No one notices if you fall out a first-story window.
A woman from the entertainment magazine that dabbles in politics has been following him around for three straight days and she stands in the corner of the backs
tage room and winks at him when he looks at her. Since she has begun her surveillance, the funny man has been taking pains to appear grounded, grateful for the opportunity to perform again, just as his agent and manager have suggested. He removed the pills from his medicine cabinet because he knew she would snoop there, and indeed, not five minutes after arriving she asked if she could use “the little girl’s room.” It amazes the funny man how predictable it all is, but this is to his advantage. Knowing what’s to happen ahead of time means it’s all easy to prepare for. The easiest way to dispose of the pills so they wouldn’t be discovered was to take them, so that’s what he did and after they kicked in he wondered why this hadn’t been his recommended dosage all along.
The woman is young, like right out of journalism school, and she has that green smell about her. She is tiny and dark, with short hair sculpted into a soft fin across the top of her head. She wears black exclusively. Her ears are small and pointed. She looks like an elf as raised and outfitted by eighties new wave musicians. She marvels at the view in his apartment, like she’s never seen such a thing before. She uses words like honor and privilege when she talks about this particular assignment. She has been asking a lot of questions and the funny man can’t remember all his answers, but he’s sure he’s doing fine. He’s practically a professional talker at this point. He’s lost track of how many questions he’s been asked and therefore answered at this point in his career. She’s writing lots of things down and the recorder seems to often need fresh cassettes. The funny man imagines it will be a very long article, maybe even the cover. He may or may not have slept with her. There is a feeling there and snippets of images: small, upturned breasts, a trail of fuzz heading down from her belly button that he would not have noticed if he hadn’t seen her naked, but while he sleeps hard on the pills, the sleep comes with extremely vivid dreams and it gets hard to tell them apart from reality.
These vivid dreams are still another side benefit of the pills that no one explained to him before.
When it is the funny man’s turn to go on stage, he takes his place behind the audience and as the previous performer introduces him he can hear the catch in the guy’s throat. It’s probably the biggest thing that ever happened to him, introducing the funny man. The funny man has timed the ingestion of the pills perfectly. His head is both soft and clear, his gaze warm and sharp. His performance is sure to be enhanced. There will be piper paying later, usually in the form of sweating and the shits, but the funny man is all about sacrifice, now that he knows what you get for it.
The welcoming applause is eager, aggressive, the claps a little slow, but loud. They have a “you better show us something” quality, and boy, will he. He’s shown them a lot in his life and miracle of miracles, he has even more. How is this possible? It is possible because everything is possible … for him.
Before the funny man even says thanks for his welcome, he quickly fakes shoving his hand in his mouth and then gives his widest smile and shakes his finger and there’s a lot of laughter because everyone is in on that particular joke. It’s a good start, just as he planned.
Most of the jokes are oblique references to his recent troubles, self-deprecating and they land with some force and regularity. Often the setups get bigger laughs than the punchlines.
I haven’t been up to much lately …
The jokes themselves aren’t particularly important, though. They are merely the setup for the new thing. It is like a boxing match. No one expects to knock a guy out with body blows, but you need to throw some shots there to get him to drop his hands.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” the funny man says, “that this comedy business just isn’t for me.” He pauses to allow the audience to boo. “No, seriously, I’m done with it, that’s what I’ve come here tonight to tell you all. For me, the joke’s over.” More booing, only lighter this time. He seems very serious, like he’s deciding to pack it in right in front of them.
“However!” the funny man shouts, lifting a finger into the air to signal attention. “What I am going to do, is dance!” At this cue, the music starts over the public address system and the funny man kicks into his routine where he shakes only one part of his body at a given time. With practice he’s gotten really good at it, his whole body entirely still, save his arm from the elbow down, or his head from the neck up. He can even wiggle his ears and move his hair back and forth in such a way that he looks like he’s wearing a wig. That took some practice.
At first, the laughter is tentative, but it progressively grows in volume and intensity and some are even clapping along with the music and whooping and the funny man feels fucking great, remembering what it’s like to bask in such love. Colors swirl in his vision as he now whips his head back and forth like he might unhinge his skull, which is not planned, but sometime the greatest comedy comes from accidents.
He knows now is the time to strike, now is the time to show them what he has, and he goes still except for his leg, which begins to twitch wildly, and with a practiced flick he is able to disengage the tendons and ligaments that hold his foot at the ankle and he flops that fucker around like nobody’s business, really flaps it around better than he ever has before, bouncing it off the stage as it twirls almost 360 degrees, and that’s when the cheering turns to horrified screaming.
A woman in the front row yells, “Oh, my god!” and points at the foot and this causes everyone else to look, which is what the funny man was going for, but soon there is the sound of glass breaking as the woman in the front row falls into a dead faint and takes out the cocktail table with her. From somewhere in the back a keening wail like a harpooned seal rises in intensity. Other people appear to be fainting as well, or holding back their hurl with hands over mouths, and still others scramble for the exits. His last image is of a young couple about the age he was when he first met his now ex-wife. They are at a table, a couple of rows deep and all around them is chaos, a panicky stampede, but the young man has wrapped his arm around the young woman’s shoulder and with his free hand, he covers her face by pulling it to his chest. “They’re going to make it,” the funny man thinks.
As the music track ends, the funny man stands on stage under the spotlight, his foot canted almost backwards. In front of him is wreckage. He hurts, but not from the foot.
34
LUCKY FOR HIM, I did not see Chet the next day, because my breakfast tray was brought in by Mr. Bob himself, the first time I’d seen him since the welcoming reception. He wore the same pristine white tracksuit and as he placed my tray on the table next to my bed a couple of splashes of juice hit it but appeared to vaporize on contact.
“Neat, huh?” Mr. Bob said, smiling. He moved to the French doors that led out on to a veranda and threw the curtains open. Like every other day at the WHC, perfect sunlight streamed through. “Want to try something else?” Mr. Bob gestured at the tray. I picked up a small jar of raspberry jam and twisted off the top. Mr. Bob nodded, giving assent. I spooned out some jam and flicked it toward Mr. Bob’s chest. It should’ve been a direct hit, but the fabric was as brilliantly white as ever.
“I bet that saves on dry cleaning,” I said.
Mr. Bob laughed way louder than anyone should have. “Ha! Ha! Ha! You are a funny man, just like they said.”
I was about to say, “To what do I owe the pleasure?” when he made his way over to the side of my bed and sat like he was going to read me a nighttime story. “You owe the pleasure to the fact that it is time for your progress report and diagnosis.”
“Diagnosis?” I said. “I didn’t know I was sick.”
“Of course you did,” Mr. Bob said, “but we all agree you’re getting better.”
“That’s good,” I replied. I squirmed under the sheets; he’d semitrapped me with his weight.
“It’s very good,” he said, “and now that we know what’s going on, we’ll do even better. Would you like to hear what we’re thinking?”
“Sure, of course.”
“Wonderful,�
� he said, smiling with his lips, but not his eyes. “You’ve had some truly remarkable successes in your career, amazing things, but one trend we have noticed is that they have just sort of happened. Now, I’m not saying they would have happened to anybody, but to some degree it seems like they could have happened to anybody. This is not unusual in the grand scheme of things, but for someone so famous as you, it’s very, very rare. We think this probably also explains your reversal of fortunes. You are simply prone to being buffeted around, if you will. Sometimes the buffeting nudges you skyward, while other times it hurls you to the ground.”
He stood up and I took advantage to throw off the covers and sit on the side of the bed. “But you are changing here, that is clear,” he continued. “You are coming to understand the power of desire, true desire, focused desire. For instance, I believe last night you had some unpleasant thoughts towards Chester.”
“I wanted to kick his teeth in.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.”
“Ah!” Mr. Bob said, pointing at the ceiling like he’d made a big discovery. “This all depends on what your definition of ‘right’ is, does it not?”
“I suppose,” I said.
Mr. Bob came over and removed the covering from my plate on the tray, revealing a perfect egg-white omelet, fresh fruit, and synthetic bacon. “And right now, you’re thinking that you might like to take a poke at me, even, yes?”
I wasn’t thinking that, or at least I didn’t know I was thinking that until he said something, at which point an image of me flattening his pointed nose popped into my head. “Yes.”