“I haven’t gotten around to redesigning the backyard yet,” she said, which explained it. “All we did was the lap pool so Lyle could do his workouts.”
Lyle Hudnut was no threat to Matt Biondi in the water. He thrashed and snorted and bellowed like a gut-shot hippo, displacing huge quantities of water in the process. But then Lyle Hudnut did nothing in a small or quiet way. Not that anyone in the United States thought of him as Lyle Hudnut. He was Chubby Chance—Uncle Chubby—the immense, gross, unruly sitcom ne’er-do-well who had held forth on network television’s No. 1 rated prime-time show for three straight seasons. Uncle Chubby was every little kid’s favorite adult, every slob’s favorite role model, and every parent’s favorite babysitter. Picture a funnier, hipper, and much cruder Mister Rogers and you had Uncle Chubby. Uncle Chubby was television’s biggest star. Emphasis on the word was. Because Lyle Hudnut was in deep, deep doo-doo. Had been since the spring, when a routine vice squad roundup at a sleazy porn movie house in Times Square had snared him, pickle firmly in hand. His arrest for indecent exposure and public masturbation had sent shock waves through the television industry. Outraged parents’ groups had immediately demanded that Uncle Chubby be jerked off the air, as it were. The network, horrified, had complied. An equally horrified show business community had rushed to Lyle’s defense. His attorney had sued the network. And the controversy had raged for much of the summer, consuming the tabloids and talk radio lines with a passion rivaled only by Mia’s split with the Woodman. Disgraced and humiliated, Lyle Hudnut had twice tried to kill himself. But he had survived. And so had his show. The network, not so anxious to lose its ratings leader, was bringing him back for the fall season, angry protestors notwithstanding. And a publishing house was paying him $3 million to tell America what he was doing in the Deuce Theater that afternoon. And how he survived his ordeal. I was there to help him tell it.
When he saw me there, he finished his lap and pulled himself up out of the narrow pool, bringing a hundred gallons or so of water with him. He stood before me, panting and wheezing, wheezing and panting. Lyle Hudnut was a huge man, two or three inches over six feet—about my height—only he had to weigh close to three hundred pounds, most of it pink, hairless blubber. Rolls of fat spilled obscenely over the waistband of his baggy white trunks like scoops of ice cream melting from a triple-decker cone. Each of his mammoth thighs was as big around as I was. His fat feet looked like twin piglets. I was ready for them to sit up and oink at me. Actually, standing there, he looked like some giant freak infant out of a fifties horror movie—The Baby Who Ate Bakersfield. For some reason the small screen has often embraced volcanic comics of immense size and appetites, performers noted for their wildness almost as much as their humor. Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar, and John Belushi come to mind. These days, there was Lyle Hudnut, Belushi’s protégé and friend. He was about forty. Had a big round head with short, curly red hair, a bulb nose, jumbo jug ears, and somewhere between seven and nine chins. He looked a lot like Mr. Potato Head, though he had a much livelier personality. His blue eyes twinkled with mischief, his grin was impish and playful. Early on, many critics wrote that he reminded them of Fatty Arbuckle. The comparison had proven to be eerily prophetic.
Katrina handed him a towel and he dabbed at himself with it, his eyes locked on her tits with fascination and pride. They were built to his scale. They were his. She handed him a giant hooded monk’s habit of unbleached muslin. He put it on over his head and cinched it at the waist and waddled over to me. I half expected him to cry “Piggyback ride, Da-da. Piggyback.” What he said was “Glad you could make it out, pal.” His voice was soft and weary, and in it you could hear the streets of working-class Long Island, which is Queens with strip malls. He stared at my extended paw. “I don’t believe in shaking hands, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “As long as you’re not angling for a hug.”
He shook his head. “No, no. I just have this thing about germs. I don’t like to touch people. Or things people have touched.” For punctuation he cleared his sinuses by blowing his nose into his fingers, much like a homeless person.
“Must be rather difficult working around a TV studio,” I observed, as he carelessly wiped his fingers on his robe.
“I take precautions. Don’t get me wrong, pal. I’m not a nut or nuttin’. I’m just risk adverse.”
“That makes two of us.”
He grinned at me. Huge grin. There was nothing subtle about Lyle Hudnut. He came right at you, and he had tremendous presence—partly because of his size, but not totally. He also had that something, that star quality only a few of them have. He demanded your attention and he got it. Just by being there.
“I’ve already explained to Hoagy about his dog, Pinky,” Katrina squeaked.
Lyle stiffened. “Dog? What dog?” he demanded, his eyes widening with fear. Paranoia seemed to bubble just under the surface with him, like a troubled septic system.
Lulu was curled up in the shade a careful twenty feet away, glowering at him.
“You better keep it away from me,” Lyle warned, a whiny edge to his voice.
“It is a she,” I said. “And she’ll stay out of your way.”
“She works with you?”
“She does.”
“Why?”
“Everyone needs a straight man.”
“And she’s yours?”
“No, I’m hers.”
He drew back and gave me a sidelong scowl, one eye brow raised. The Scowl. His trademark mannerism. At once sarcastic, mocking, and caustic. Then he snorted and parked his porky self on one of the picnic benches and stuck his fat, pink feet out before him. Katrina fell to her knees like a supplicant and began putting his white cotton socks and his Birkenstock sandals on for him. It was a dirty job, but I guess somebody had to do it—better her than me.
“See, I’m leading a hygienic existence these days,” Lyle explained. “No poisons, no germs, no chemicals. This robe, for instance, is totally unbleached, undyed cotton. No formaldehyde. That stuff’ll kill ya—right through your pores. I’m off alcohol and caffeine and my diet is one-hunnert-percent macrobiotic. Rice, beans, and veggies. Tastes great—and, Christ, you wouldn’t believe the butt music. I can do all of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” … I’m gonna be straight up with you, Hoagy. I used to stuff shit into every orifice of my body twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. I devoted my energy to killing myself. These days I’m devoting it to staying alive. I’m clean.”
He held up a pudgy hand for silence, even though he was the one doing the talking. I could see the fresh scars on the inside of his wrist from when he’d tried to kill himself with a razor blade earlier that summer. A few days later he swallowed the contents of an economy-sized bottle of Uncle Chubby’s children’s aspirin, 277 tablets in all.
“Time for my readings,” he announced, as if this were as momentous as, say, the Israelis giving up their West Bank settlements.
They had a whole little routine. First Katrina grabbed his wrist and strapped a pulse monitoring wristwatch around it. His index finger went inside a sensory cuff. When his rate registered, she dutifully marked it on a chart, then removed the watch and hooked his finger up to a cuff that was attached to a digital blood-pressure monitor. She marked that down as well. She examined the chart a moment, brow furrowed, then gave him an approving nod and a kiss on the forehead. Beaming, he made it into a wet, slurpy kiss, pulling her down onto his lap. I had a feeling this was for my benefit. Proof of ownership.
“Pinky,” she squeaked, giggling as he pawed her roughly. “You’re an animal.”
“Can’t help it, Katrina. You do things to me.” He winked at me. “This woman saved my life, Hoagy. Her and no one else. Would you believe my blood pressure used to be up over two hundred? I was dying.” He reached for a bottle of mineral water and drank greedily from it, much of it streaming down his chest. “God, I love water.”
“May I offer you something, Hoagy?” asked Katrina. �
��Herbal iced tea?”
I said that would be nice. She went wiggling and jiggling off to the house to fetch it.
“Wait’ll you taste her tea,” Lyle exclaimed jovially. Although now that the two of us were alone, he seemed to have trouble meeting my eyes. “The greatest. She makes it from scratch. She’s an extraordinary individual, Hoagy. The perfect woman. She’s been a professional dancer, run her own jewelry business, designed this whole place. Plus she happens to be the single greatest fuck in the universe. Of course,” he gloated, “she learned that under a master.” He let loose with his famous laugh, a deep rumble that seemed to start way over in the next county, then build up force until it exploded out of him with a huge hoo-hah-hah. “Seriously, I’ve never met a woman like Katrina. Somebody real. Somebody who loves me for who I am. She stuck by me through all of this, y’know. Never complained. She’s the only one who did. Mickey Stern, my agent, who I considered one of my two or three closest friends in the entire world, wouldn’t even return my phone calls anymore. Ya believe that?”
I did believe that. Of course, you must remember that TV and movie people almost always mistake their business friends for real friends. This is partly because they want to believe that everyone they deal with truly loves them. And partly because they have no real friends.
“My other close friend, Godfrey Daniels, blew my doors off before I even had a chance to defend myself,” he said, of the young programming wizard who had engineered his flagging network’s turnaround from third to first, mostly on the coattails of Uncle Chubby. Time magazine labeled him “a genius.” Newsweek called him “Mr. Television.” Everyone in the industry simply called him God. Lyle shook his head in disgust. “I called him up the day after I sent him the first draft of the Uncle Chubby pilot script, and said, ‘Well, God, did you like it?’ And he said, ‘I love it, Lyle. It’s brilliant. It’s perfect. Don’t change a word. I only have one little note: Can you make them robots?’ True story, I swear. I’ll let you in on a little secret: God is an empty sweater.”
“Yes, I seem to recall reading something about that in the Talmud.”
“No brains. No taste. No guts. A fucking moron. So’s Jazzy Jeff Beckman, who runs the studio that finances me. Another fucking moron. They’re all fucking morons.” His rage was starting to slip out. He caught it and tucked it back in. “But I’ve set aside my anger,” he vowed. “You have to forgive, and I have.”
I nodded, though this one I didn’t believe. Something about the decidedly un-Zenlike anger burning in his eyes. And the way he was clenching and unclenching his big fists. Plus there was his reputation to consider. He was supposed to have the most volatile temper in the entire industry, worse than even the legendary Roseanne Arnold. He was a colossal abuser of actors and writers, a screamer, a puncher, a big mean bully. He made people cry. Made them ill. Made them flee. An Esquire writer who hung around the set during the show’s first season wrote, “If you were to cut off Lyle Hudnut’s head, frogs would come jumping out.” Reporters had been banned from the Uncle Chubby set after that. I don’t know about frogs.
“One thing this whole awful experience has taught me,” he went on, “is to be grateful for what I have. Because it can all vanish just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis, which woke Lulu. She grunted, got up, circled around three times, curled back up and went back to sleep. It doesn’t take her long. Not a lot on her mind.
Katrina returned now across the patio with my iced tea and a plate of raw carrots for Lyle. She sat next to him on the bench, watching me like a tigress guarding her one and only cub. Alert. Suspicious. Ready to tear my throat out.
Her cub was waiting anxiously for me to tell him how great the tea was. Lyle Hudnut was one of those—a celebrity in constant need of stroking. Nothing bores me more, except maybe Jurassic Park.
I tasted it. “Excellent.” And it was—as a bracing rub for razor burn.
He beamed at her happily. “We’ve been getting me in shape for the season. I gotta be in tip-top condition. I mean, I write the show, direct it, produce it, star in it … I’m the show. Me. Always have been. Ever since I first put together the Suburbanites back in college. I’m the one who found us that crummy little basement club where we performed for nickels and dimes. I’m the one who held us all together. And I still am. I’m the daddy, Hoagy. Fifty-four people depend on me. And that takes its toll. I had to have a doctor on the set full-time last season to give me oxygen and B-twelve shots.” He bit into a carrot. “But that was then. Katrina’s involved now, as my coexecutive producer. Second only to me. Which is a huge help.” He put his arm around her, his big paw playing with the heavy silver chain that she made with her own two hands. “Naturally, there’s been a little resentment from the staff,” he allowed. “But anyone who can’t deal with it is free to leave. Katrina is part of my life now.” He spoke of her as if she were a force of nature. The sun. The wind. Katrina.
“And how did you two crazy kids meet?” I asked.
Lyle’s face turned red—faster than any man I’d ever seen. “I don’t like to be called crazy!” he roared.
“It’s just an expression, Pinky,” Katrina said soothingly. “Relax.”
“You’re right, you’re right. Sorry.” He calmed down, just as quickly. “Katrina was a production assistant last season, a gofer. Leo Crimp, my line producer, brought her in. Leo’s the toughest son of a bitch in the business.” Katrina looked away uncomfortably at this mention of her former boss. I wondered about that, too. “First time she came in the control booth I swear it got ten degrees warmer in there.”
“Pinky …”
He grinned at her. “I mean it. I felt her there. Like some kind of animal thing. I stared at her, and she stared at me, and wham, we were gone. Went straight in my dressing room and fucked our brains out.”
“Pinky!”
“Well, we did!” he boasted.
“And how’s the show shaping up for this season?” I asked.
“We’re shifting in a slightly different creative direction,” Katrina replied delicately, in her Kewpie-doll voice. “There’s been some give-and-take between us and God, in terms of Lyle coming back and everything.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you’ll find this interesting, Hoagy. Being a serious person.”
“You must have me confused with someone else.”
“Believe it or not,” said Lyle, puffing up proudly, “I’ve talked the network into letting me do more issue-oriented episodes this season. Hey, we’re America’s living room. It’s time for us to deal with what America’s dealing with—teen suicide, drug addiction, AIDS.”
Quite some shift indeed for a man whose chief claim to comic fame was that he knew 126 different ways to say the word snot.
“We’re looking for more of a reality context,” Katrina added. “We’re also looking more for irony—comedically speaking, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
“It’s a national shame, Hoagy,” he went on. “Kids are now our principal underclass in America. Twenty percent of ’em live in poverty. Six million will go to bed hungry tonight. Sixteen million have no medical coverage of any kind. I tell ya, that’s criminal.”
I nodded, wondering how it is that show-biz figures can get so worked up about social injustice, yet not have a problem with flushing $10 million down the toilet on an obscene house. Somebody ought to write a book about that someday. Not me, but somebody.
“Those kids are my kids,” Lyle declared. “The ones who used to look up to me.”
“They still do, Pinky.”
He waved her off. “Nah, nan. I let ’em down. I know that. So now, I got a responsibility to do good by ’em. From now on, Uncle Chubby is gonna make a difference.”
“Very admirable, Lyle,” I said. “And what are you giving up?”
His blue eyes penetrated mine, sizing me up. Or trying. “Giving up?”
“Katrina mentioned there was some give-and-take. What’s the give?”
He
pressed his lips together and made a short, popping noise which sounded more like flatulence than anything else. “No big deal. We agreed to add a regular love interest for Chubby’s sister, Deirdre.”
“The testing results showed that our audience would like to see her in a regular relationship,” Katrina explained. “Possibly but not necessarily leading to marriage.”
“At first, I told God no fucking way,” Lyle confessed. “It’s my show. I make the creative decisions, not you and certainly not the damned audience. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. We can have a lot of fun watching the romance unfold. Really opens up a lotta new possibilities. Chad Roe’s gonna play him. Know him?”
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. Merilee did Streetcar with him a few years back at the Long Wharf. Chad was one of those aging TV pretty boys who was still trying to prove himself as a serious actor. Mostly, he was a serious clod. “I don’t recall him doing a lot of comedy.”
“He hasn’t,” Lyle confirmed. “But God loves him. Or rather his Q-score. He went through the roof in that Judith Krantz miniseries he did with Jackie Smith last season. So I’m working with him. Hasn’t been easy so far. Y’know how it is—we’ve got a certain format that works, and Chad’s an outsider. But we’ll get there. He’s a helluva nice guy.” Lyle ran a big pink hand over his big pink face, like he was washing it. “Hey, enough about the show. Let’s talk about you and me. You gonna do this book with me?”
I stood up and smoothed my trousers. “I’d like to stretch my legs, Lyle. Can we take a stroll?”
“Sure, sure.” Slowly and with great effort, he got to his feet. It was like watching someone trying to get his butt up out of a deep hole. “We’ll walk on the beach. C’mon, Katrina. We’re walking.”
She stayed where she was, eyeing me shrewdly, her left eye drifting slightly. “No,” she concluded. “I have some phone calls to make. You boys go ahead.”
“Aw, gee, ya sure?” He was whining, like a petulant, jumbo-sized kid.
The Boy Who Never Grew Up Page 39