Ten Dead Comedians

by Fred Van Lente

  He flashed her a bright grin. “Sorry. Just naturally nosy, I guess. Get it from Grandma.”

  Somebody clapped their hands, and they turned to see Steve Gordon standing up.

  “Okay, everybody, get up. Come on, on your feet.”

  They all just looked at him. Not even Zoe moved.

  “Seriously, guys, if we die here it doesn’t have to be of boredom,” Steve said. “We’ll do a super-quick, easy, and fun game I do to warm up my improv students.”

  Everyone groaned.

  “Man, don’t make us do improv,” Dante said. “That makes you a Hitler.”

  “Once again, I am just making a suggestion,” Steve said. “If you absolutely don’t want to play, you don’t have to.” He said this as he took the two tall bar chairs TJ and Ollie weren’t sitting on and dragged them to the front of the room, spacing them about six feet apart.

  He stood between the chairs and said, “This game is called Goalie.”

  Zoe laughed. “My God, could you be any more Canadian?”

  “I’ve been an American citizen since 1999, but thank you for playing. Anyway, here’s how this works. I’m the hockey goalie, and you guys are trying to take shots and score off me.”

  “You’re ugly,” TJ said. “Like simultaneously ugly and really forgettable at the same time. I don’t know how you pull it off. It’s almost magical.”

  “Thank you, TJ, but I’m not done explaining the game. The idea is you guys come over and initiate a scene or a character or a bit, and I have to respond in kind almost immediately. If I hesitate or stumble in any way, you score. The idea is to turn off thinking, and instead of trying to be clever or funny, you just go with your instincts. Once we go all the way around the room, someone else becomes the goalie, and we keep going until everyone’s had a chance in the net. Okay?”

  Ollie leapt out of his chair, clapping his hands. “This sounds so awesome.”

  “Your endorsement isn’t helping, Ollie, but since you’re the eager beaver, you get to go first.”

  Ollie pranced and danced like a fairy, pointing and oohing and ahhing at various imaginary objects around the room.

  “You’re supposed to do this quickly, Ollie,” Steve said. “Hence the hockey analogy.”

  “Which is a sport,” TJ added, just in case Ollie didn’t know.

  Ollie reached down and plucked an invisible flower out of the ground and skipped over to Steve. “Good sir, would you accept this gift of a lovely flower?” he falsettoed.

  Steve whipped out an imaginary can and sprayed it in Ollie’s face. “Mace!” Ollie clawed at his eyes and screamed and fell away.

  Steve turned to an imaginary camera and said, “Remember, kids, never accept gifts from bald people. People without hair are fundamentally evil and regularly inject their flowers with AIDS. This message has been brought to you by the Coalition Against Bald People.”

  TJ was next in line and marched up to Steve and said, “You are a huge loser and you should do the world a favor and kill yourself.”

  Steve raised his hands wide. “Oh, Mom, you shouldn’t have! What a kind birthday message. How’s prison treating you?”

  TJ turned and sat down and Zoe went next. She minced over to Steve, holding an imaginary scepter and waving to the others with a robotically cupped hand. “Pardon me, young man,” she said in a high-pitched posh English accent, “I am the Queen of England. Could you tell me what I’m doing in this biker bar?”

  Steve swishily waved a limp wrist at her and said, “Girl, it’s your lucky day! All queens drink for free on Flaming Queens Thursdays!”

  “Yay!” Zoe cried, clicked her heels, and sat down as Dante bounded over to Steve. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and pointed to the heavens:

  “Doctor!” The movement of his lips didn’t match the words coming out of his mouth. “That eight-hundred-foot tall erection is laying waste to the city! What can we do?”

  “Never fear, Timmy,” Steve said, pushing Dante aside and stepping forward. “This is the city’s lucky day. I may have been kicked out of the Justice League for being, quote, totally useless—thanks a lot, Aquaman—but this looks like a job for Vaseline Man!” He tore his shirt open, revealing nothing beneath. “I know how to make that boner limp and flaccid and easily subdued by our armed forces, but I warn you…First you’ll have to bring me the biggest tube sock you can find and every damn box of Kleenex in the city.”

  Even Dante chuckled at that one, then slapped Steve on the back and sat back down next to Meredith, who sat wide-eyed in her armchair, not moving.

  “Come on, Meredith, your turn,” Steve said.

  “Let’s go, girl. We know you’re not just a pretty face,” Zoe said in a tone that made it clear she did not in fact know that.

  Meredith stood up, slightly, and wavered about coming forward.

  Then she whispered something and dashed from the room, near tears.

  “Did she just say ‘limburger’?” Ollie said. “I thought she said limburger. That’s kind of funny…”

  “Whoa, dude! You broke her brain,” TJ said, looking to Steve. “I didn’t think you had it in you, bro, but that was some ruthless shit. Kudos.”

  Steve spread his hands. “I didn’t mean to! I thought she was one of us.”

  Dante frowned at the doorway. “Don’t sweat it. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  Then they heard her screaming.

  Air Travel/Heckler

  Can I tell you something? Can I?

  I flew in from New York on the red-eye to make this show and I swear to God, are you with me? Doesn’t it seem like the airlines are actively trying to make flying the most physically and mentally traumatic experience possible? Like they’re doing future research for the Fourth Reich or something? Like it’s like that Broadway show The Producers where they’re trying to do such a bad job the companies tank and they can pocket the insurance money?

  Case in point:

  Last night, after I got my federally mandated cancer at the security checkpoint, I made way to the gate, and I was running a little late, and…

  And, uh…

  Just a second. Just a second.

  I’m sorry, I have unexpected competition here in the front row. This table thinks they’re the second stage.

  Pardon me? Sir? Sir? Can I tell you something?

  Yes, of course you! Honey, there’s only two people talking in this theater. One of us has a huge pair of boobs and the other is me.

  Just in case you don’t quite comprehend the situation here, see, I’m the one with a mic in my hand. I’m the one these nice people paid money to see. So how about you pipe down and let me do my job, huh?

  What’s that? What? You don’t think I’m funny?

  Wow, if I gave a crap what you thought about anything, that might really bother me.

  Look, I don’t come down to where you work in SeaWorld entertaining tourists and tell you how to eat fish or flip through a hoop or whatever, do I? No, I don’t. So show me the same courtesy, huh? Or, in words you understand:

  (Flaps palms together, barks like a sea lion)

  Ar ar ar ar ar ar ar!

  Oh, my God, he’s still at it. Buddy, have people ever made the mistake of listening to whatever annoying nonsense dribbles out of your mouth? Ever? Really? Has anyone ever said you were funny?

  Yes? They were lying. All the laughs you get are fake, just like her orgasms.

  What’s that? Don’t bring your wife into it? I’m trying to help this poor woman. How long have you been with this fat bastard, sweetie?

  Not the full sentence—just tell me when you’re up for parole.

  Did he tell you how long it took him to flatten the other ones? Where they’re all buried?

  He’s got a long ways to go with you, I see.

  Can we get this guy a ticket to the buffet next door? I’ve got a feeling the only time he’s not moving his lips is when he’s moving his teeth, and it must be way beyond feeding time.

  Stop. Just stop. You
already lost. No, you did. I can trace it back to the exact moment, you know when it was? All the way back when your mother said:

  “I refuse to have an abortion on moral grounds.”

  It’s been all downhill since then, hasn’t it? You peaked real early, mister. It’s a shame.

  I’d almost feel sorry for you if you’d shut up for five seconds so my hatred could subside.

  No, really, you’re a terrible person. I know you think otherwise because you’re a man, and men spend their entire lives being mollycoddled and having their egos stroked and their sensitive little tuchuses wiped, but I’m sick of doing it for men. I’m sick of it!

  Am I right, ladies? Right? Hear those cheers. They know what I’m talking about. And I’m just not doing it anymore. There’s nothing any of you men can do for me that an extra-large cucumber from Krogers can’t do just as well, and I can make a nice salad out of it afterwards.

  What? It’s shrink-wrapped in plastic! What’s the big deal? I don’t know what’s wrong with you people. Prudes. You disgust me.

  Look, buddy, your mistake was, when you woke up this morning, in your tank at SeaWorld, it didn’t occur to you, in your teeny-tiny walnut brain, that maybe sitting in the front row of the Shotgun’s show, and proceeding to talk through it, and then trying to out-insult her, that maybe that was not the wisest course of action. Insult the insult comic? Yeah, that’s a good plan.

  I know that kind of planning and strategic thinking will make you a success at whatever you attempt to do with your life.

  You know, once Greenpeace finally succeeds in freeing you.

  Oh, up they go, that did it. Okay, bye-bye! Have a nice evening! There they go! Watch Free Willy go! Waddling like the wind.

  Hey, you know, I think Help! I Married the Cat 3 is playing at the Cineplex next door. That might be entertainment more up to your speed.

  What? What’s with the groans?

  I love these cat movies, these Dusty Walker movies. They’re like the whorehouses across town:

  They make money hand over fist, but nobody ever admits to going there.

  —Janet Kahn

  Venetian Showroom, Las Vegas, NV

  June 20, 2000

  (On YouTube as “Janet Kahn Epic Pwns Heckler,” 3.4M views)

  I

  The other five came running to Meredith Ladipo in the front gallery.

  “What’s all the yelling about?” Steve Gordon asked. “And why did you run…”

  When he saw what all the yelling was about, he stopped in his tracks. Everyone did.

  The six photographs of the six remaining comics were back on the wall, in the exact same position from which Dante had torn them down four hours earlier.

  “How…?” Zoe said.

  TJ said, “We all went out for bathroom breaks! Any one of you could have run back here and replaced them!”

  “Or you could have,” Dante said.

  Steve’s face was a red mask of fury. Without saying a word, he stepped forward and grabbed each photo off the wall and hurled it as hard as he could to the tiles beneath his feet, shattering them. He started with his own, then threw down Zoe’s, then Dante’s.

  He’d taken Ollie’s and was about to smash it when Dante grabbed his arm.

  “Hold on just a second.”

  Dante bent down among the shards of glass and cheap plastic littering the floor. One frame hit the ground so hard that it split apart, and now the white back of its photo faced upward.

  “There’s something written on it.”

  Dante pulled the photo free of the cracked glass. In the picture, he was standing on stage with a microphone.

  “Looks like…Atlanta, maybe? Uptown Comedy?”

  Written on the other side in black Sharpie were the numbers 11-12-15.

  “What does that mean?” TJ said.

  “Someone has trouble counting,” Ollie said.

  “It’s got to be a date,” Steve said. “Does November the twelfth mean anything to you?”

  Dante shook his head.

  “Could it be when the photo was taken?”

  Dante looked at it. “Maybe. I was touring the South in the fall of 2015. Sixteen cities.” He thought about it some more. “Maybe. But there’s nothing about any of the dates that was all that…significant.” He looked to Meredith Ladipo. “You didn’t write these, did you?”

  She shook her head fiercely. “Absolutely not.”

  Zoe pulled her own photo from the rubble and removed the backing of the frame. “02-02-17,” she read aloud.

  “Oh, it all makes sense now!” she cried.

  They looked at her.

  “No, I’m kidding, I have no clue what this means.”

  TJ said, “I wish motherfuckers would stop trying to be funny all the time.”

  “Can’t Help Myself,” Steve Gordon muttered, staring at his own photo on the floor.

  “Then try harder,” TJ snapped at him.

  TJ lifted his headshot off the wall, then wrested the photo out of the frame.

  “What’s it say?” Dante asked.

  He held it up so the others could see: “09-10-01.”

  “That have any special significance to you?”

  “It’s the day before 9/11,” Zoe said.

  TJ Martinez looked at the photo of him on the 2nite set. It could have been taken any weeknight over a twenty-year span. Except it wasn’t.

  “We were off the air for the rest of the week after 9/11,” he said. “The attacks were on a Tuesday, and we did a show the night before.” He thought about it. “Larry David and…the White Stripes? I think?”

  “Quite the memory,” Meredith said.

  “Ask me what I had for breakfast this morning and I couldn’t tell you,” TJ chuckled.

  “Sure you could—it was nothing, just like the rest of us,” Zoe said, and she shot a look at Ollie, who had finally succeeded in opening his photo’s frame.

  He gave a little cry when he looked at the back: “Oh, yeah! I know exactly what this is! This is Orange Baby Man’s birthday! January 4, 2006, the first time I tried the character out on stage, at Carolines. I immortalize the date in all my Playbills and historical literature.”

  “What about your photo, Steve. What does it say?” Dante said.

  “I don’t have a burning desire to know,” Steve said.

  Dante looked down and saw that Steve had put his foot over the photo.

  “You already know, don’t you?” Dante said. “Why don’t you clue in the rest of us?”

  “Oh, shit,” TJ said. “Oh, shit.” Revelation rippled across his face.

  Steve looked at TJ. Their eyes met briefly, and TJ just guffawed.

  “C’mon, Steve, stop being weird,” Zoe said, arms crossed.

  Steve Gordon had been the person throwing the frames to the floor in the first place, so he was closest to the wall where one framed photo remained: Meredith Ladipo’s. He pulled the photo sideways out of the frame, looked at the back, then showed it to the rest of them:

  It was blank.

  “What’s the significance of that, Meredith?” Steve said, looking right at her.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and then stomped her foot. Tears were on their way again. “It’s the same answer for any question you want to ask me! I don’t know! I don’t know what’s happening here any more than you do. How many times do I have to say it before you’ll believe me?”

  “Tang,” TJ said.

  “Huh?”

  “Tang.”

  “Shit, dude, are you having a stroke?” Dante said.

  “Tang!” TJ said, and he looked right at Ollie.

  Steve sighed. “Ollie, do you have any idea what he’s—”

  Before he could finish, Ollie dashed out of the gallery and toward the fountain with a hearty cry of “Taaaaaaaaaaaaang!”

  Almost all the others looked in his direction as he receded into the distance.

  “What the hell was that about?” Dante said.

  Zoe turned ar
ound and yelled:

  “Look!”

  They caught a glimpse of TJ Martinez running away in the opposite direction.

  II

  Ollie lost his breath running up the hill to the cabana, but halfway there he looked around and saw that no one was following him.

  “Eff me in the a-hole,” he said out loud, then bounded down the hill to look for the others.

  III

  TJ Martinez overshot the cellar door under the grand staircase in the central hallway by a few paces but grabbed the doorframe, righted himself, and descended the stairs two at a time. His heart pounded, his limbs trembled. When he reached the bottom, he crashed into the huge center cabinet.

  He could hear the others at the top of the stairs. They were right outside the wine cellar door.

  In two strides he made it to the keypad.

  He typed in 0 then 9 then 1 then 0 then 0 again then 1 again: the sequence on the back of his gallery headshot.

  The panic-room door popped open with a beep and a hiss.

  The door was steel and a foot thick, and TJ had just managed to get inside and pull it shut as the other comics reached the cellar and threw themselves after him.

  But they were too late. The door slammed shut and TJ bolted it manually with a metal wheel on the inside, like the hatch on a submarine.

  “Ha, ha! Take that, motherfuckers!” TJ whooped and hollered and jumped up and down when the full import of his triumph sank in. It was a Hail Mary pass, guessing that the passcode had changed from one date to another, but his theory turned about to be correct. Why was the combo now that particular date? Would any of the dates on the back of the photos have worked? TJ didn’t know. Nor did he particularly care. What mattered was that he had made it inside, and the others hadn’t.

  TJ looked around. The room was perfectly soundproof and as silent as the inside of a grave, not that he could have heard anything over his heaving chest and pounding heartbeat. His eye was immediately drawn to a movement on one of the four wall-mounted monitors. From a camera in a corner of the wine cellar he could see Zoe, Meredith, and Dante banging soundlessly on the locked panic-room door.