The Funny Man

by John Warner

  I heard it, with my ears. Yes, sir.

  AFTER MUSIC FEATURING every combination of performers possible, the equipment was snapped off and the torches snuffed, leaving Bonnie and me in the full darkness. We couldn’t have been more than an hour or two from sunrise.

  “It’s like some kind of retirement village,” she whispered.

  “For the most famous people ever.”

  “Who are supposedly dead.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “that’s weird.”

  “More like impossible.”

  “Seems like there’s a lot of impossible things going on here.”

  “That’s true,” she said.

  “Like this,” I said, pointing to the two of us. “This is impossible, isn’t it?”

  “Apparently, nothing is impossible.”

  “I’m glad you said it instead of me,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because that means it’s real.”

  ON THE WAY back to the WHC we made our future plans. When we got out we would be together and that was that, so all we had to do was talk logistics.

  “I could stop playing,” she said. “I’ve pretty much had enough, anyway.”

  “Pretty much?”

  “It does bug me, to be honest.”

  “No majors?”

  “Yeah, but that’s just the fucked-up brainwashing of the academy and Mr. Popov talking. I’ll get over that.”

  “Or you could just go win one.” We had made it back to the lighted paths of the compound and I reached and squeezed her hand.

  “There is that,” she replied.

  “So, I’ll travel with you. I’ve never been anywhere that I remember. It’ll be fun.”

  She sighed. “Can you imagine the coverage? The jokes? The tabloids? It’ll be awful.”

  “We’ll ignore it,” I said.

  “How’s that gone in the past?” she said.

  “Good point.”

  “But we’ll figure it out,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  We were at the entrance to my bungalow and it got awkward. I had one hand on the doorknob and the other on her elbow as we faced each other. She pulled her cap off and yanked the ponytail holder free and shook her hair and I smelled lilacs.

  “Should we say good night?” she said.

  “I’d rather not. There isn’t much night left, anyway, from what I can tell.”

  “I’m pretty tired.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “But maybe I can lie down here for awhile and then I’ll just go back to my place in a bit.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, opening the door and leading her in. As usual, the sheets were pulled down waiting for my entry. We didn’t even get undressed, just laying down in the bed with our clothes on, me on my back, her tucked to my chest, one leg slung over my body. I rubbed my hand in circles on her back.

  “That feels good,” she said.

  It was nothing like the moment Beth and I held each other after we first came together in the library. I was young then and the future stretched infinite, but I also cared only about the moment. It was a gift. She was a gift, a lucky break, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where we made the boy who gifted me my thing, the boy who I’ll probably never see again.

  But with Bonnie, I was making the moment. I had created it. Everyone’s got a story and the best ones are those we tell ourselves. I imagined it and then after the imagining it had come true. It is not a perfect substitute for what I had, but it will have to do.

  THE NEXT DAY I woke in what felt like my bed, in what looked like my apartment. I knuckled the sleep from my eyes and looked again and confirmed my initial suspicion. My face was stubbled and I needed a shower. Chet walked in from the living room.

  “Welcome home, sir,” he said. He opened the slats on the blinds and let the sun stream through. It clearly was morning, but judging from my stubble and my stink, it was not necessarily the morning after my adventures with Bonnie.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “You’ve completed your treatment, so we’ve brought you home.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “From past experience, we’ve found that often people are, let’s say, reluctant to leave, so we find it easier to do it with our guests unconscious.”

  “You drugged me.”

  “Correct, sir.”

  The room looked like it had from when I left, clothes strewn everywhere, my curtain loincloth as soiled and stiff as ever. The air was sickbed sour. I’d been barring the maid service while I was present, but at least she could have snuck in during my absence. I saw a firing in someone’s future. The only thing that had changed, apparently, was me.

  Chet hovered nearby, nudging some of the debris piles with the toe of his shoe. “Is there anything else I can do, sir?” he asked.

  My tongue was thick in my mouth, my throat dry. “I’m thirsty.” Chet nodded toward the nightstand where there was a half-full tumbler of water. Lip prints crusted the rim and there was a thin layer of dust across the top, but I drank it greedily. It was cold and crisp, just what I was hoping for.

  “Will I see her again?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why should anything stop you?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was waiting go be dismissed, what our relationship was now that we were no longer at the Center. I’d tried the servant thing once; it hadn’t worked out. “I’m going to take a shower,” I said.

  Chet just nodded. My body creaked as I headed to the bathroom, probably a hangover from whatever Chet had given me combined with my southwest compound adventure with Bonnie. The shower was glorious. I utilized every one of my six nozzles, simultaneously pummeling my body from all directions. I believed that the supply of hot water in my building was inexhaustible. I thought about testing the proposition. The towels smelled a little musty, so I went back into the bedroom naked, letting the air dry me.

  Chet was gone. I called out his name, first softly, and then loudly enough that it carried throughout the apartment. I slipped into some sweats and stepped into the living room. It looked like a tornado had blown through. Crusted take-out containers and half-empty cans of beans were splattered everywhere. The coffee table rested on its side and three giant slashes had been hacked through two of the couch cushions. Someone was going to have a lot of cleanup work on their hands.

  On the street below my window, the whole world went on as before. I missed her already. Fortunately, my cable package included a channel dedicated entirely to tennis. I punched the on button on the remote and flipped to the guide and saw that, just as I wanted, Bonnie Tisdale: A Life So Far was showing. It was a soft feature biography, lots of discussion about her youthful genius, talking head interviews with former coaches and competitors. I realized I’d seen it before, but now, it took on a different light. I put the single undamaged couch cushion back in place and settled in. Tomorrow, I would begin putting the pieces of my new life in place.

  42

  THE NEWS IS everywhere. Hours after winning her first Wimbledon title and her second consecutive major championship, Bonnie Tisdale was found hanging from the beams inside the ladies’ locker room at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. She left a note, an angry excoriation of her parents and former coach, laying the blame squarely at their feet. I wince at the pictures of her mother, face blanched and distraught. I know something about causing others grief. Even though I knew it was coming, and was necessary for us to be together, I weep softly. I hope it was as peaceful as we thought it would be, that she was transported to the island in whatever way those things happened, quickly and painlessly. I have an urge to call Beth, but I don’t. My disappearance will cause her trouble enough, and a call would only add to that.

  The coverage is wall-to-wall. There is nothing to say and yet they spend hours and hours saying it. I flip between the predictable mix of experts explaining depression and pressure and the risks of
starting children in ultracompetitive activities too young. I see on-the-street interviews with people clutching pictures of her moistened by their tears and it feels good to know that so many others love her as well, even though they do not know her like I do.

  Each of the networks has branded the coverage: “Death of America’s Tennis Sweetheart” or “the Passing of a Court Queen.” Psychological experts say how inevitable such a thing was given the pressures of our day and age. Everything is inevitable after the fact, though.

  Mitch Laver has been dispatched to host Hello U.S.A. from London. As I see him see me through the television, I wonder if he suspects anything, if he made his own visit to the southwest compound during his time at the Center. I want to get in touch with him, let him know that I’m in on the secret, part of the club now, but I imagine it’s against Center alumni protocol. We know who we are.

  The preliminary plans for Bonnie’s memorial service are already out of control. Lyrics to popular songs have been reworked in tribute to her. (It’s amazing how hard it is to rhyme anything to tennis.) There will be a charity match in her honor with black tennis balls and the scoring flipped so each game counts down to love, since we agree that’s what we need more of. Some have proposed canceling the U.S. Open in her honor, but most everyone agrees that would be impossible. Tomorrow, she will be relegated back to the sports-dedicated channels and a slice of the hourly loop on the news networks. Next week, there will be bulletins. Next year, there will be a brief mention of the anniversary. So it goes. Bonnie has a day’s head start and an easier route back than me, but her “death” will provide additional cover when my disappearance is discovered, which shouldn’t be for a couple of days, long enough for me to make it to the boat and launch, and at that point I will be a needle in the great haystack of the ocean.

  Everything is set, including the funding I may need to bribe my way into the promised land.

  I have some pictures in a drawer. There is one in front of the first house after the apartment, Beth and the boy on the front stoop, him resting on her out-thrust hip. With the hand not cradling the boy, she points to the ground at the welcome mat. We’d purchased it on our way to take possession of the place, her telling me to pull over at a home improvement store and declaring she’d be right back. The boy and I waited in the car and I asked him what he thought his crazy mother was up to. She hid the mat behind her back as she returned to the car, and once at the house made me close my eyes as she positioned it on the stoop. She whistled with two fingers in the corners of her mouth.

  It said:

  WELCOME TO OUR RETIREMENT HOME

  Twice as Much Husband, Half as Much Pay

  I tried to laugh.

  “We’re going to live and die here,” she said. “It’s just that the dying part’s a long time from now.” She kissed me with the boy pressed between us, forgiving me for my faulty sense of humor.

  We moved to the bigger house six months later. We brought the welcome mat with us, but it wasn’t the same. Some jokes work only once. Some never work at all.

  I twist the lid off the Scotch, its vapors reaching up to my nose, calling me closer. I’m taking it easy, though, just a finger and a half in a tumbler, one ice cube, one pill, two pills, fizzing angrily as they dissolve in the glass, like they’re upset at being drowned.

  I take the photos to the sink and burn them slowly, dousing the embers when the smoke threatens to trigger the alarm. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good-bye.

  SO, CLOSURE.

  As I turned the corner, I saw the guy dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and I could see the gun as he said, “Give me your wallet, no funny business.”

  I was shocked by the gun. I could suddenly taste the fillings in my mouth. I stammered and he grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me down an empty side street and pushed me to the ground and my hood came off and he said, “Hey, I know you.”

  I stood slowly, my hands held out in front of me. I kept my eyes on the gun the whole time. “I don’t carry a wallet,” I said. I turned my pockets inside out to show him.

  He got angry, agitated. “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you, you don’t have a wallet. You are a rich motherfucker and got tons of money and you’re telling me you don’t have any on you? If that doesn’t beat the band.” He massaged his forehead with his free hand. His left leg twitched a little and his eyes were rimmed red. The thought formed in my mind, a thought I’d had once before: “I want that gun.” And the next thing I knew I had it in my hands and the thief was kneeling in front of me, an angry red welt below his eye.

  “Aw, fuck,” he said, sounding more sad than angry. “You’re going to call the cops, aren’t you? Are you going to call the cops?”

  I hadn’t thought that far, but it sounded right to me. “Yeah, I’m calling the cops.” I reached for my cell in my jacket pocket and flipped it open.

  “Please, please, please don’t, man, don’t. Just let me go. Keep the gun, let me go.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” I said, still holding the phone open. “Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit,” he said, pressing his forehead to the ground like he was praying. “I’m a two-time loser, man. This is going to be three strikes, and on a famous dude, no less. They’re going to throw the book at me. I can’t go back to jail. Do you know what happens in jail? I … can’t … go … back … to … jail.”

  We had a standoff, and he looked at me closely. “You don’t look so good, man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you look like shit.”

  “I’m in love,” I said.

  He kept looking at me and then frowned. “Okay, maybe that’s it. If you say so.” He sank further to his haunches and hunched over, like he might be praying.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what else to do.” I squinted at the numbers on the phone, but the rain pounded down hard.

  “I’m just so tired, so so tired,” he said, rising slightly. His shoulders shook as he began sobbing and then lifted his head up and looked straight at me.

  “Shoot me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Shoot me. Kill me. When you shoot me, just make sure you kill me. I don’t want to be no veggie or cripple. I want it over.”

  “I can’t do that,” I said.

  “But you have to,” he pleaded. “I need you to. This is it for me, I know it. It was it for me a long time ago. You’d be doing me a favor.”

  “But then I’ll get in trouble,” I said.

  “No you won’t. Look, no one’s around. You shoot me, you wipe the prints, you take off, it’s done. It’s my gun. No one will ever know it was you.”

  “I’ll know.”

  “Honestly, man, it’s the kindest thing you could do. I’d do it to myself, but I’m a Catholic and I can’t do that shit. It’ll be like an act of mercy. I’m telling you, it’s what I want.”

  He looked up at me and I could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t lying. There was no White Hot Center for this guy.

  He smiled. “Thanks, dude,” he said. “Oh, and hey, that thing you used to do, with your hand in your mouth, that shit was hilarious.”

  I don’t know why the earwitnesses say he begged for his life. The man knelt quietly and made no sound as I emptied the gun into him.

  Who could’ve anticipated the cops driving by that very moment? I don’t blame the thief, whose name was Daniel O’Dell. Daniel got what he wanted. We all should. It’s the American way.

  I RECOGNIZE THAT, unlike Bonnie, they will not be welcoming me to the island. I’m not delusional. The southwest compound is for legends who choose to leave on top and I am much closer to a career valley than any peak, but I am sure that running the place is not cheap and among my sailing provisions I have a hefty sum of cash stashed and ready to go. Beth and the boy will have plenty, and anything my legacy earns following my disappearance will go to them. Maybe there will be some sort of D.B. Cooper movie about my flight from the law for them and Gord and Frazier.
There may be Elvis-like sightings of me across the country, which could turn into additional profits. I have some guilt about leaving the boy, but the sad, sorry truth is that for a long time he has been better off without me. I will be reported as yet another casualty of fame, and maybe I am, at least from their perspective, but here is the full story, the true story.

  Maybe a storm will sink my boat, or my calculations on the island’s location are off, or I’ll get pulled over for a minor traffic violation on my way to the coast and they’ll recognize me and I’ll get hauled back. Maybe the White Hot Center’s vaunted defense system, if it really exists, will terminate me before my boat gets within a mile of the place, or if and when I arrive Chet will snap my neck and shove my carcass into the ocean, but maybe instead he will be a little glad to see me and I will be an exception to the rules. It is the exceptions that make the rules.

  Perhaps if I get there safely, I will write that play I’ve been thinking about.

  I open the curtains to my favorite view and switch on the music and I start to dance. I take just one or two additional pills and a final swig of the Scotch. I feel good. I really really do. I do.

  I shake each limb in turn until it is the leg with the monitoring bracelet’s turn. I shake and shake until it looks like my ligaments and tendons have become detached at the ankle. It looks like they have become detached because they are. The bracelet slips off rather easily and I leave it behind in the middle of the room, my final legacy.

  Curtain down, lights up. I exit stage right, limping.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS