Ten Dead Comedians

by Fred Van Lente

  So I’m just going to suggest a title for Dusty’s autobiographical movie:

  Pussywhipped.

  (Deafening applause, thunderous laughter)

  You like that? You like that?

  Well we’ve got a real 100 percent USDA-approved Grade-A show for you tonight. Larry David is here! Yes, Larry David, here to talk about the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Uh-huh. Funny guy.

  Our musical guests are a great up-and-coming band from Detroit, a husband-and-wife duo, the White Stripes, they’re terrific. The White Stripes, everybody!

  And if we’re lucky, something will happen soon so I can retire all these Gary Condit jokes! Help me! Help me! I have a problem!

  (Laughter, applause, fade out)

  —2nite with TJ Martinez

  Taped in Burbank, CA

  Monday, September 10, 2001

  I

  Ruby Ng and Janet Kahn volunteered to explore the main house, with Meredith Ladipo leading the way so she could steer them clear of doors that opened to face walls and staircases that rose up, turned a corner, and abruptly stopped, along with all the other allegedly hilarious architectural elements added by Dustin Walker when he had the mansion built.

  They started with the ground floor. Each of the three women took turns opening side closets and pantries solo while the other two stood facing the doorway. They made almost no sound, and so everywhere they went they could hear the caw of a thrush in the banana tree just outside. It kept crying out in a rhythmic bleat for a companion to come or for enemies to stay away. No one knew which.

  “We’re not going to find anyone,” Meredith said as they closed the door to the walk-in pantry in the kitchen. “I am quite certain no one has been here in a week. You saw the state of the writers’ room. The grass is too tall. It’s just…” She sighed and wiped her eyes. “I don’t know why Dustin would do this. He seemed perfectly happy the last time I saw him. I can’t imagine where any of this is coming from.”

  “I’m sure Dusty had his demons, like we all do,” Janet said. “Happy, contented people don’t get into this business.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Meredith said. “I consider myself to be a pretty happy, contented person.” They were walking out of the kitchen and into the central hallway with the grand mahogany staircase leading up to the belvedere level. “I’ve wanted to be a comedian since I was a kid. I used to memorize my dad’s Cosby CDs.”

  “Interesting choice of role models,” Ruby said.

  “I mean, obviously when I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about that…other stuff.”

  “Some of us did,” Janet said. “Going back to the seventies.”

  “Really?” Ruby said. “Did he ever…”

  “Me? No. He knew my reputation. I would’ve bitten off his Jell-O pop at the stick.” Janet shrugged. “Of course, if he had doped up my Sanka, how would I know?”

  Ruby scowled at her. “And you never said anything? Perpetuate rape culture much?”

  “Put down the hot irons, Torquemada. It’s not like I’m proud of it or anything. And if I had known it was that many broads he gave extra-extra-extra-decaffeinated to, I’d like to think I wouldn’t have kept my mouth shut. But he was a big deal. Not somebody smart to cross.”

  “That’s why you cross him,” Ruby said.

  “Hey! Internet activist! Or, for short, inactivist! I didn’t have a keyboard to hide behind in the seventies and eighties! And you know, showbiz people didn’t talk about other showbiz people’s dirty business in those days. It was us against the press and the gossip columnists. Or, in your case, podcasters.”

  “This is why what I do is important. You can’t leave this bad behavior alone, that’s where it thrives. I mean, you should hear the shit I’ve heard about TJ Martinez.”

  “I’d rather just leave it alone, if it’s all the same to you, honey. I’m not from the social media generation. I don’t need to know everything about everybody. If it weren’t for repression, none of us would have jobs.”

  “Truth is the job. Dustin Walker may be a douchebag but he was right about that one thing.”

  “You’re exhausting to talk to, anyone ever tell you that?”

  “More or less constantly.”

  Janet turned away from Ruby and walked into the fully enclosed rear gallery facing the pool, which had been converted into a long arcade or playroom, filled with obscure ’80s video games, air hockey, a bank of skee-ball lanes covering an entire section of wall, and, of all things, a ball pit as big as a medium-sized backyard pool.

  Ruby turned earnestly to Meredith Ladipo as they entered the room and took her by the hands.

  “Dustin’s gone,” she said into Meredith’s eyes. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Meredith frowned. “I don’t get your meaning.”

  “You can tell us whatever you want. This is a safe space.”

  “Are you daft? There might be a murderer on the loose!”

  “Well…okay, technically—you’re right—this is not a safe space literally. But wherever Janet and I are is a safe space psychologically, spiritually, for anything you want to say. We won’t judge. We just want you to share your truth.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Ng, I’m just not following. I’m British. We don’t talk like this. Or feel like this. Or talk about our feelings.”

  “I am very sex-positive. No shaming. You can tell us if…” Ruby’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Dustin tried something. That you were not…into.”

  Meredith pulled her hands away. “No! No. Definitely not. Dustin was always a perfect gentleman.”

  “So your boning was consensual,” Janet said.

  “No! There was no boning! Do you find that so hard to believe?”

  “Yes,” Ruby said.

  “I’m gonna have to go with yes,” Janet said.

  “Why, because you don’t believe a man like Dustin Walker could, out of the goodness of his heart, take in a protégée and give her tips and pointers, in exchange for honest employment as a personal assistant without, you know, wanting to get down her knickers?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Me neither,” Ruby said.

  “Well, that’s the way it was. So sorry to disappoint.”

  “Geez, no wonder he killed himself,” Janet muttered, and Meredith gasped.

  Ruby looked at her, shocked. “Blame the victim much?”

  “Say much, much?” Janet shot back. “Answer: Yes. Much.”

  Ruby turned back to Meredith. “What were the kind of things he advised you on?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things. Like joke construction, how to read a crowd, how to develop a closer, how to shut down a heckler…”

  “Give us an example,” Janet said.

  “Okay, well, pretend I’m on stage, and you’re a drunk nibber in the audience.”

  Ruby made a show of adjusting the phantom penis inside her sweatpants. She put her hands to her mouth:

  “Take your top off, beeyotch!”

  Meredith jumped into her face, pointed and screamed, “Shut your fucking cunt hole you dumb motherfucking piece of fucking shit!”

  Then she giggled a bit.

  Janet and Ruby looked at her.

  “You sure you two weren’t boning?” Janet said.

  II

  “I’m sorry TJ Martinez is such an incredible asshole,” Zoe Schwartz said out of nowhere as she, Steve, and Ollie made their way to the cabana on the other side of the grounds.

  “Me, too. I just wish he was sorrier,” Steve said.

  “I bet he will be. Sooner rather than later,” Zoe said. “But I don’t know what his problem is. I saw what he said to you on the boat on the way over. That was some straight-up nonsense. I remember you from What Just Happened? They’d run two episodes back-to-back every day when I got home from school. You were amazingly funny. You used to be huge!”

  “I am huge; the pictures just got not-huge,” Steve said.

  “Like, really not-huge in your case. Postage st
amp size. No offense.”

  “None taken. They’re more like electron microscope size.”

  “What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I don’t mind.” Fleetingly, very fleetingly, it occurred to him to tell her the truth, even just for the hell of it, but he’d been avoiding that for so long it was an easy impulse to ignore.

  He turned back to the large pink bouncy house they had discovered on the grounds. The minute they approached it, Ollie had emitted a screech not unlike an anime schoolgirl and ran inside. Through its mesh walls Steve could see the prop comic’s egg-shaped bulk bouncing in a blur with a series of squeals and yelps.

  “Who inflates a bouncy house at a murder scene?” Steve asked.

  “The same sort of person who’d murder a bunch of comics for being hacks, I guess,” Zoe said.

  “Come on, you’re no hack. I saw your Comedy Central thirty. Pretty hilarious stuff. You’ve got great chops.”

  “Thanks, Gordo. That means a lot coming from you.”

  “And didn’t I read you got a show on FX, with Apatow producing? That’s amazing.”

  “Yeah.” Zoe chuckled. “It’s literally unbelievable. Especially to me. You still read the trades, huh?”

  “Technically, I am still in the industry. If only in a professorial capacity.”

  “Improv teacher—what’s that like?”

  “It’s better than working for a living. I tried that, too, didn’t like it. It’s not the same as stand-up, though. I mean, improv people…They’re not like us. They’re so…”

  “Normal.”

  “Ugh, right? Well-adjusted.”

  “They work together well in groups.”

  “No sabotage or competition bullshit.”

  She mimed a two-handed burrito. “Whoa, this burrito is weird.” Next she rotated an imaginary steering wheel. “Hey look, I’m driving!”

  “Yeah, it’s just not my scene. I could do it on TV because I was young and hey, it was TV, but man…I’d give it all up to get back on stage with a mic in my hand.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  Time to change the subject, Steve thought. “Should you be worrying about this right now, considering where you are and what’s happening to you?”

  Zoe took a deep breath. “You don’t think I wouldn’t mind thinking about something else? And by ‘else,’ I mean my career. I know I look like a strong female protagonist on the outside, but on the inside I’m a churning jumbled washing machine of insecurities, constantly in spin.”

  “You want to make sure you don’t get any of my loser juice on you?”

  “I don’t want…any of your juice…anywhere near me.”

  “Sorry. Bad analogy.”

  “Indeed. But please continue.”

  Steve watched Ollie bounce up and down, up and down for a bit.

  Then he said:

  “The question every noob asks, all my students ask is, how do I break in? How do I get my shot? When you’re just starting out, you don’t know why you were put on this Earth and it must be because you’re special. That all of history is leading up to your birth, you just need to go out there and prove it. And so you spend all your energy and all your brainpower trying to break in, and they never tell you…that’s the easy part.”

  “What’s the hard part?”

  “Staying in.” Steve looked at her. “That’s so much harder. It’s like breaking in times a million.”

  Zoe nodded, mulling over his words. He felt good for telling her a truth, even if it wasn’t his truth; it wasn’t like he was actually lying or anything. Hopefully, she wouldn’t ask him to elaborate.

  “You’re really not easing my general anxiety level,” Zoe said.

  “Want a yes-man? Get a dog.”

  She watched Ollie bounce, then turned to Steve and said, “I can’t believe I’m going to say this to somebody who didn’t come out of my own womb.” Then she marched toward the bouncy castle yelling, “Ollie! I think you’ve had enough! Don’t make me come in there and get you!”

  Ollie bounded toward the exit flap and half stepped, half fell out of the castle, waving his cell phone. “I was seeing if I could get a signal higher up!” he gasped. “I thought I maybe got a signal for a second but I think maybe I just jostled the phone enough to get a false reading!”

  He weaved toward them the same way a dragonfly flies, not taking anything resembling a linear route, but then stopped, legs swaying.

  “I think…I think I need to sit down for a minute you guys! You go on ahead!”

  He staggered back toward the main house.

  III

  Dante Dupree and TJ Martinez walked to the stairs leading down to the dock.

  “Hey,” TJ said, looking around. “Hey, man.”

  Dante stopped. “Dude, I’m right here. Say what you got to say.”

  TJ waited until Zoe, Steve, and Ollie disappeared behind a row of palms toward the pink bouncy house and said, “I’m thinking you and me, we should form an alliance.”

  “An alliance?”

  “Yeah, an alliance.”

  “Man, you’ve seen too much Survivor.” Dante started walking again.

  TJ grabbed him by the arm. “Wait, wait, just hear me through. We’re not like these other fools.”

  “Who we—you and me we?”

  “Yeah, man, we’re both from the streets. We need to watch each other’s backs so we make it out of here alive while the rest of them get picked off like fluffy deer, man. Like a big, fat, dumb, rich, petting-zoo deer who gets released back into the wild and gets his throat ripped out by a squirrel.”

  “But not us, because we’re from the hood.”

  “Yeah, man, exactly, I’m from the Pork and Beans projects down in M-I-A, and I saw your act, I know you’re, what, from the Gowanus Towers in Brooklyn, am I right about that?”

  “You seen my act?”

  “Yeah, man, it was funny shit.”

  Dante crossed his arms. “When’d you see my act?”

  TJ blinked. “I mean, who hasn’t seen your act, man? You’re known as the hardest-working road comic for a reason. When I had you on my show—”

  “You never had me on your show.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “You sure? Because I kind of feel like I did…”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. My manager sent you a reel every year, and every year you passed. For twelve years straight.”

  “Well, you see, that’s where I saw your act, then. Your sizzle reel.”

  “No, I went drinking with your booker, and she said you never watched comics’ reels. You just had your producers pitch jokes from them and then you said yea or nay.”

  “Which booker is this?”

  “Cassandra.”

  “Cassandra?”

  “The one who sued you for sexual harassment?”

  “Which one?”

  “Cassandra!”

  TJ waved his hands. “Look, you lost me. You can’t listen to a chick like that anyway. Any girl who can’t handle a boob grab or two clearly doesn’t have a sense of humor. And, ergo, should not be booking goddamn comics.”

  Dante groaned. “She said you said my act was ‘too urban’ for your show. You know, too from the street? Too from the hood? Too black? Wouldn’t play to the key fat, white, petting-zoo demographic?”

  TJ shook his head. “I would never say that. No way.”

  “That’s what Cassandra said.”

  “Then Cassandra not only has no sense of humor, she is also a lying bitch.”

  Dante spread his hands. “ ’Fraid I got to go with Cassandra on this one, TJ. I’ll pass on the alliance, thanks.”

  He continued walking to the dock stairs.

  IV

  Ruby and Meredith and Janet agreed to go check the secret room next, the result of an exchange that went something like:

  MEREDITH: Should we go down and check the secret room next?

  RUBY AND JANET: S
ecret room?!? What secret room?!?

  Meredith tried to explain that they should calm down; the secret room was just a panic room concealed in the wine cellar—and no, there couldn’t be anyone hiding in there because she’d checked the secret room when she searched the house right after their arrival. (“Just like I checked all the rooms when we first arrived and I found no one,” she reminded them for the umpteenth time.) The access log in the panic room’s built-in tablet computer showed that no one had accessed the keypad lock for a month. Even if she didn’t have the log, the visible layer of dust on every surface spoke for itself. The cleaning staff hadn’t been allowed inside since the day a maid had accidentally locked herself in and drank all the Courvoisier.

  Meredith tried to explain this to Ruby and Janet in the calmest, most rational tone possible, but they made her walk down the stairs in the central hallway to the dark cellar first, anyway.

  The dodgy auras of the women on the stairs behind her scared Meredith even more than the darkness she was descending into. For a single, irrational second she was afraid they might lock her in the basement, just like her older brothers used to lock her in the dry, low-ceilinged, tiny concrete laundry room underneath their building when she was a little girl. That room scared the coriander out of her. It was like a subterranean mausoleum, its air dully sultry from dryer exhaust.

  But she made it to the cellar floor and found the light switch without incident. The fluorescent panels set into the ceiling buzzed to life. Facing the stairs along several walls and several central panels were stem after stem of wine bottles arranged in an alcoholic’s honeycomb, rows upon rows of sleepers waiting to be summoned awake.

  “Geez, baby loves his bottle,” Janet said when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Dustin is…was…twelve years sober,” Meredith said with as much pride as if it had been her own accomplishment. “The wine collection is for guests only.”

  Ruby walked to the nearest honeycomb case and discovered that a clear Plexiglas door was covering it. She pulled on the edge to no avail: locked. “You got a key?”

  “Not my department, really,” Meredith said. “I do know the combination to the panic room, though.”