“And this is Meredith?”
“I hope so, I’m wearing her underwear.”
“Ha. Real Genius, nice. So, hey, Meredith—”
“Hey.”
“I’ve only got one question, which is—”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, it’s not a joke. It’s a genuine offer.”
“Oh, thank God!” Steve blurted out, and Meredith laughed:
“It’s all right, most of the others have had the same reaction.”
The others?
“Well, sure, sounds like fun. Send the details, I’ll look them over, and we’ll go from there.”
“You still with ICM?”
“I…think so?” Steve chuckled. “It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to anyone over there. My agent may have died from lack of interest. I just, uh—I was wondering…”
“Yes?”
“Is Dusty around? Can you put him on? It’s been so long since I’ve spoken to him.”
“Dust—? Oh. That’s brilliant you call him that. No, I’m in L.A., crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Dustin’s already at the island. The cell reception there’s rubbish; we communicate through Skype mostly. I’ll let him know you want to touch base, maybe he’ll find the time to raise the port before you arrive on the island.”
Steve took a deep breath, exhaled:
“I…this is…wow. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes,” Meredith Ladipo said.
X
And he did.
In the end, they all did.
When God almighty walks down on a beam of light and asks for your help, what the hell else are you going to say?
And that was just what their host was counting on.
Dustin Walker
Filmography
Actor (55 credits)
Writer (15 credits)
Producer (19 credits)
Director (1 credit)
Known For
Can’t Help Myself
As Himself
(1988)
Filmed concert version of Walker’s multiplatinum Grammy-winning comedy album.
What Just Happened?
As Various
(TV series, 1990–1994)
Funnymen Dustin Walker, TJ Martinez, Steve “Gordo” Gordon, and surprise guest stars improvise comedy sketches based on suggestions from the audience and inspired by current events.
Help! I Married a Cat
As Jerry Russell
(1995)
Shallow ladies’ man learns the true meaning of love when his eccentric aunt’s will stipulates that in order to inherit her fortune, he has to wed her ill-tempered calico, Miss Puffytail.
Help! I Married a Cat 2
As Jerry Russell
(1998)
Jerry and Miss Puffytail must contend with a bigoted senator (Christopher Walken) fighting to pass a constitutional amendment banning interspecies marriage and a gold-digging neighbor (Fran Drescher) in this sequel to the box-office smash.
Help! I Married a Cat 3: The Claws Come Out
As Jerry Russell
(2000)
Miss Puffytail schemes to ruin a growing relationship between Jerry and her pretty new vet (Jennifer Aniston).
Help! I Married a Cat 4: Divorce, Feline-Style
As Jerry Russell
(2003)
A jive-talking tomcat (voice: Martin Lawrence) seeks to sabotage the marriage of Jerry and Miss Puffytail so he can collect her millions.
King Lear
As the Fool
(2004)
Kenneth Branagh’s attempt to relocate Shakespeare’s classic tragedy about a misguided ruler (Derek Jacobi) and his three daughters to 1920s gangsterland Chicago was an ambitious critical and commercial failure.
The Adventures of Cosmic Carson
As Cosmic Carson
(2005)
A roguish space trucker and his sentient fart sidekick (voice: Gilbert Gottfried) must protect a nymphomaniac princess (Chyna) from intergalactic loan sharks. One of the most expensive box office bombs of all time.
Dandy Waller, Your Destiny Awaits You
As Dandy Waller
(2008)
Dustin Walker’s semiautobiographical directorial debut about a suicidal stand-up reviewing his life before leaping from the Golden Gate Bridge was described by the New York Times as “less a feature-length film than a cry for help from a comedian who was briefly one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.”
Help! I Married a Cat: The New Litter
As Jerry Russell
(2009)
Jerry’s son (Zac Efron) has to marry one of Sir Toms-A-Lot and Miss Puffytail’s kittens for financial reward in this failed attempt to reboot the blockbuster franchise.
— IMDb.com
I
Steve thought that Meredith Ladipo, Dustin Walker’s personal assistant, was as good-looking in person as she sounded over the phone, if not more so. She was on the petite side, about five foot and a half, with dark skin and a bright smile and natural hair tied up in a halo bun. She was standing ramrod stiff when she first ascended into his field of vision. He was descending the escalator to baggage claim at Saint Martin’s Princess Juliana International Airport.
She held up an iPad with WEAVER PARTY on the screen in big letters. That was the agreed-to code name to throw paparazzi off their scent. Nevertheless, the locals and opportunistic tourists knew of their arrival thanks to whatever collective sewer of celebrity intel the TMZs of the world swilled from. Autograph seekers swarmed the baggage claim and mobbed TJ Martinez as soon as he appeared, a Marlins cap and sunglasses insufficiently Clark Kenting his identity. Without expression, and without complaint, he dutifully signed every notebook, ticket, and boob presented to his Sharpie.
Fans then swarmed each successive Weaver party member who came down the escalator by descending order of how recently they had been on TV. Janet Kahn was nearly unrecognizable in dark glasses, and a kerchief covering her hair, her recently revised face held together with a plastic muzzle, neck brace, and crisscrossing bandages. But to the autograph seekers, her identity was as transparent as Martinez’s.
The crowds for Zoe Schwartz, Oliver Rees, and Dante Dupree shrank in size and intensity, in that order.
But theirs were bigger than the crowd for Steve, which numbered zero. Not that he expected anyone to ask for his autograph. He’d been in his early twenties when he appeared on a weekly network TV show, and now he sported a neatly trimmed English lit prof beard and wire frames to match. His secret identity was perfectly concealed, involuntarily, to all but one.
“Mr. Gordon? Welcome to Saint Martin. I’m Meredith Ladipo, we spoke on the phone? How was your flight?”
She offered her hand and he shook it. “Uneventful, the way I like it.”
“Brilliant. So, if you checked bags—”
“One, yeah.”
“Well, we’re not in a huge rush because a couple of your colleagues’ flights were delayed, and as we only have the one charter boat to get over to the island, we’ll have to wait for them to arrive. If you could just point out your luggage as it comes off the spinner bin, the porter will make sure it gets into the limo and make its way to the charter…”
Steve frowned. “I’m sorry, spinner bin? You mean—the baggage thing?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Oh, uh…okay?”
Ruby Ng staggered away from the spinner bin bearing her bags and wearing an Oberlin sweatshirt and Elton John sunglasses.
When she emerged from the baggage-claim doors and Dante Dupree saw her from inside the stretch limo by the curb, he groaned in despair.
“What the hell? I mean, who in his right mind would invite her? What was Walker thinking?”
Zoe Schwartz, sitting next to him, peered over his shoulder to look through the window at the newcomer. The two had met at the Montreal Comedy Expo three years back, and then just six months ago they had both done the
Comedy Central Roast of Alec Baldwin and lived to tell the tale. Though they hadn’t spoken since, they had the easy camaraderie of foxhole buddies, picking up effortlessly where they last left off. Once they’d signed their autographs, they retreated to the relative safety of the limo, with its purple floor lighting, and talked shit about their colleagues as they arrived.
Dante said, “You know, I was actually looking forward to this weekend. Kicking back with some amazing comics, cutting loose, coming up with a bunch of funny shit. Then I see her and my dick goes soft.”
Zoe said, “You been Comedy Ambushed too, huh?”
“She called me a racist.”
“She calls everybody a racist. That’s kind of her thing.”
“She said my face belonged on a box of rice.”
“She said I was the worst thing to happen to women since the chastity belt.”
“Grandma heard that nonsense. She didn’t eat right for weeks.”
“Grandma listens to Ruby Ng’s podcast? Is she a lesbian? Or a twenty-eight-year-old artisanal bartender from Brooklyn?”
“Grandma is an avid consumer of all things Dante Dupree.”
“Aw, that’s adorable.”
Dante watched Ruby Ng directing the porters and threw up his hands. “Now I can’t say a damn thing this weekend without worrying about whether or not the whole world will hear about it on her stupid podcast. Because you know everything out of our mouths will wind up there. Hell, she’ll make half the stuff up herself.”
“I love people like Ruby. The world has to be full of dragons for her to slay. It’s the only way she can maintain the illusion she’s a good person.”
“Hey guys,” Ruby said as she popped open the limo door and climbed inside.
“Hey!” Zoe beamed.
“ ’Sup girl,” Dante said.
II
The island began as a tiny lump on the horizon, a slight discoloration almost indistinguishable from the ocean itself. As the charter boat approached, it metastasized, expanding in height and girth until it commanded the surroundings, its tall looming cliffs crowned in green.
Oliver Rees stood at the narrowing of the bow, giggling with each swell the boat humped over. The wind was threatening to lift his boonie hat; he shoved it down on his blindingly white, hairless bowling ball of a head.
He turned back and yelled “I hope there’s shuffleboard!” to anyone who would listen, which was nobody.
Ruby Ng was equally popular. She sat on the aftmost bench with legs drawn up to her chest and vaped quietly, staring at the Caribbean through opaque sunglasses.
Zoe Schwartz leaned on the railing and watched the island approach. By her feet lay a cloth case she had carried off the plane and hadn’t let out of her sight.
She glanced to the other side of the boat and saw TJ Martinez talking to Dustin Walker’s English maid, or whatever the hell she was supposed to be, his arm on the back of a portside bench, leaning into her, just as skeevy as Zoe had remembered.
Steve Gordon walked over and said with a smile:
“Hey, TJ, I thought that was you! Long time no see! You look great! Dusty’s getting the whole band back together again, huh?”
TJ turned his black lenses Steve’s way. “Sorry, friend, I know you?”
“Yeah…TJ…It’s me, Steve?”
“Who?”
“Steve Gordon. You know, Gordo? We were on What Just Happened?”
“We were?”
“Yeah. Together. With Dusty?”
“Huh. If you say so.”
“For four seasons?”
TJ looked at him for what seemed like a long time and shrugged. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry, bro.”
He turned back to Meredith Ladipo with definitive finality. She had a strained, awkward, confused smile on her face. She looked at Steve with an uncomprehending glance, a very British I don’t know what is happening but I would be most appreciative if it would just go away.
Steve had no choice but to quit the field with a pointless, face-saving nod. He went to the starboard bench and sat down to look out over the horizon and wait for the burning in his cheeks to subside.
Zoe Schwartz watched the whole incident from the side railing with a deep frown, but didn’t say a thing.
III
“Fascinating, simply fascinating,” William Griffith said as he stepped outside the bridge door. Not long after launch, apropos of nothing, he had invited himself into the crew area and had a long boisterous conversation with the captain, an islander with a face like cracked bomber-jacket leather, in French.
To Janet Kahn, the only passenger who had retreated under the overhang shade of the foremost bench, William said:
“Do you know Saint Martin is split down the middle by France and the Netherlands? Our captain had quite the childhood, caught between two worlds, two cultures. It’s a shame such a beautiful place is home to such ugliness. Drugs, gangs. Poverty.”
It took Janet a second to realize he was talking to her. She squinted up at him.
“Forgive me, darling, but…who are you? I thought maybe you were Dusty’s lawyer, but your nose is too small.”
“That’s quite all right, few people recognize me out of character. And I rather prefer it that way.”
He switched to a drawl so distinctive that his business manager had trademarked it:
“You know that dating website, Farmers Only? They had to change the focus once they realized livestock can’t use the internet. Then it was called Kissin’ Cousins for a spell, but that name’d already been taken by a very specialized escort service in Alabama.”
“Right, okay, you’re that patron saint of shit kickers and meth heads…Buddy the Contractor?”
Remaining in character, William said, “Billy. Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am. You are quite the legend.”
“Yes, I am. You call me ma’am again and I’ll kick your balls into your nostrils.”
“Just being polite. Madam? Miss?”
“Try Janet on for size, you might like it. But I don’t get the joke. There’s a website called Farmers Only?”
William smiled and reverted to his real voice. “You need to get outside the coasts, Janet.”
“I have performed in every state in the Union, honey, even the Canadian ones. I know they call it flyover country, but I’d vote to amend that to ‘bombing practice.’ ”
He couldn’t help but stare at the bandages on her face.
“That looks horribly painful, Janet, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“You should see the other guy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m putting his kids through college.”
“Were you in a car accident or…?”
“I’m a big believer in self-improvement, doll. And defrauding Medicare. And when I get to do both at the same time, so much the better.”
IV
No shore or beach surrounded the island. Instead, tall brown cliffs festooned with flowering vines rose higher and higher as the charter ferry approached, until they were all that the passengers could see.
A gray pier jutted from one side of the island, facing the boat. At the opposite end of the dock, a staircase crawled up the side of the cliff. The color and age of its wood varied from level to level, since steps and landings had been replaced after continuous lashing from hurricanes and the elements.
The boat’s three-man crew worked quickly but without urgency, the way people who labor at repetitive daily tasks do, hopping onto the dock and, as the boat was brought around, securing it with heavy ropes. They then removed the passengers’ luggage from the lower deck and stacked the bags on the pier. It took all three crew plus the captain to grunt and curse Janet Kahn’s trunk out of the hold. It was big enough to fit most of the other passengers’ bags inside it.
“Good Lord, woman, did you leave any clothes at home?” William Griffith said.
“What, I’m supposed to travel with a bindle over my shoulder, like a hobo?” Janet
tried to wrinkle her nose in disgust, then winced in pain.
The captain disembarked and handed Meredith Ladipo a piece of paper on a clipboard, which she signed.
“You’ll be by with supplies at the usual time tomorrow, then?”
The captain nodded and gestured for the crew to reboard and shove off. William Griffith waved good-bye.
The captain looked at him, grinned, and tipped his hand to the bill of his cap in a barely perceptible salute.
William couldn’t tell if he was being mocked.
Meredith Ladipo talked sideways into her cell phone like it was a walkie-talkie. “Right, Dave, we’ve arrived, so c’mon down.” When nothing but silence responded, she said, “Dave? You read me? We’re all here. Chop-chop.”
Not waiting for the response that never came, Meredith walked over to the other end of the dock. Carved out of the cliffside beside the stairs was a small alcove that contained little more than several life jackets hanging on a plaster wall and the doors to an elevator.
It wasn’t until she was a few strides from the alcove that she saw the OUT OF ORDER sign, handwritten in marker on a flap ripped off a cardboard box, stuck to the front of the elevator with a strip of duct tape. She punched the call button several times anyway, but nothing happened.
Meredith Ladipo drew her chin up high, a model of British resilience, and marched back to her guests, who stood in a clump on the dock eyeing her with suspicion.
“Right,” she said. “It appears we have stepped in some sticky pomade. I’m having trouble raising the staff, and the lift is knockered.”
“What?” Ruby Ng said. “Did you say knockered?” She looked to the others. “Did she say knockered?”
Janet pointed at the towering stairs, which induced vertigo even from ground level. “How the hell am I supposed to get my trunk up that?” She looked to the top. “How the hell am I supposed to get up that?”
Meredith Ladipo raised her palms in defense. “I would advise you to leave the bags down here. We’ll send someone to get them later. Don’t worry, they’ll be as safe as bugs in rugs. As for the stairs, I know they look a bit daunting but really, as long as you pace yourself, they’re not bad at all. I run up and down them every day as part of my morning jog.”
Ten Dead Comedians Page 3