Cop House
Page 7
The nurse seemed deeply focused on the drip.
“Yes, his condition is stable,” she said, eventually. “So that’s good. We’ll have to stay positive, right? I’ll be just outside if you need me.”
She left the room and Ted shook a fist.
“You hear that, DeRosa?”
DeRosa’s monitor beeped.
“And you’re no better. Why don’t you wake up and say something already? Wake up, DeRosa. I’ve got words for you.” He needed the man to wake up. He had so many questions: Who are you? Why did you break in to my house? What do you want from me that you can’t get back in Texas?
When the coma spell broke, Ted would be there, waiting. He wasn’t interested in pressing charges; he wanted to deal with DeRosa himself. Give the schmuck a lecture, show him who’s boss and get some answers.
Ted pulled a Pall Mall from his pack and stood up.
“I’m just stepping outside. When I come back, I expect your little nap to be over. I’ve got words for you, DeRosa.”
DeRosa’s monitor beeped.
Correspondence between Ernesto DeRosa (Dispatcher, Lake Jackson Taxi) and Ted Cohen (Executive Producer, F∙R∙I∙E∙N∙D∙S), July 2003
Dear Ted Cohen,
I am writing to you now regarding the unfortunate decision to stop the production of new Friends episodes following the upcoming tenth season. I realize this decision may not be entirely, or perhaps at all, yours but I also know that as a writer and an executive producer you must wield considerable clout. Use it!
The official NBC press release concerning this decision states that those involved in the creation of Friends feel the series has “run its course” and that the “story must conclude,” etc. Excuse me? This is ridiculous. Friends is the greatest sitcom or even show of all time and the gang will never run out of fun experiences to share. Do you know Coronation Street, the British soap? It’s not anywhere near as strong as Friends but has been running for over forty years now and I feel that Friends can and should continue for forty more years, or even longer, or at least until a significant portion of the lead actors die.
Please add this letter to the mountain of like-minded letters I hope you are receiving right now and take a good, long look at that mountain. Look at that mountain and use your clout. It’s not too late to reconsider.
Sincerely,
Ernesto DeRosa
∙
Dear Fan,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful letter. We at NBC recognize that the quality programming we work hard to bring you would not exist without your support. As a token of our appreciation we have included a complimentary packet of postcards highlighting NBC’s exciting new fall lineup.
Yours,
Stephanie Lyons, Audience Outreach
NBC Studios, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY
∙
Dear Ted Cohen,
Thanks for your speedy reply, although this reply came from some Stephanie Lyons and not you, whom I addressed the letter to. Why is this Stephanie reading and replying to a letter that I sent to you? Anyway, I’m sure you are buried in fan mail pleading for the continuation of Friends right now but I feel like I wasn’t specific enough with my last one and that there are some things you should know. Like I didn’t really communicate how much Friends means to me.
It means a great deal, Ted. I began watching your program with my family during Season Three. We’d gather around the TV set every Thursday night and I’d make popcorn. My wife Susan and I sat on either ends of the sofa with our son Gabe between us. We’d turn down the lights and really get into the episode and had this rule where we could only talk during ads. Susan’s favourite was Phoebe because she liked her songs. I’m a Joey man. My son likes Chandler and his endless quips—we all laughed at Chandler together. We caught up on reruns and kept our Thursday night tradition alive until Susan left me during Season Six. I was devastated but Gabe and I continued with Thursday night Friends until Season Seven, when I lost custody of Gabe. I was devastated again.
The point, Ted, is that I kept watching every Thursday night by myself and I’ll do the same with Season Ten and hopefully the seasons to follow. I have Seasons One through Five on DVD and I watch them regularly. I watch reruns when they come on too. Sometimes I’ll turn on the TV halfway through a gem from Season Four, watch it and then pull out the DVD and watch the beginning of that same episode. But it’s so good I keep going and watch the second half all over again and then watch the next episode too.
And when I watch Friends I’m not just watching because it’s my favourite show and sometimes I feel like the friends on Friends are my best friends. I’m also watching because it reminds me of the golden days when my family was a family and we always had Thursday nights to look forward to together. Sometimes I’ll even turn to offer Gabe popcorn, realize he’s not there and then I’ll cry. I’ll cry and wipe my eyes with my hands which have butter from the popcorn all over them and then I get butter in my eyes and cry even more because of the physical pain on top of the mental pain. When I finally stop, I’ll look up and there’s Chandler proposing to Monica and the tears will come again, then the butter and more weeping.
As you can see, Friends is all tangled up with my deepest emotions and if you kill Friends, in a way you’re killing me. My stress levels are already high and if they climb higher because of the end of Friends, I don’t know what I’ll do. I feel like I have to do something to stop this so I’m writing you this letter but I don’t know if that’s enough. I hope you’re listening.
Friends is the only good thing in my life. Except for my wife and son, but they aren’t really in my life anymore so perhaps they don’t count. Please, Ted.
Sincerely,
Ernesto DeRosa
∙
Dear Fan,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful letter. We at NBC recognize that the quality programming we work hard to bring you would not exist without your support. As a token of our appreciation, we have included a complimentary packet of postcards highlighting NBC’s exciting new fall lineup.
Yours,
Stephanie Lyons, Audience Outreach
NBC Studios, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY
∙
I’ll just do it, Ted Cohen thought. I’ll reach over, pry his lips open with my fingers and sneak a peek.
He stood up, walked to the doorway and looked down the hallway. Empty. He went over to DeRosa. Nothing had changed—still a sad lump on a hospital bed. A sad, mysterious lump the nurses had to shift every three hours to prevent bedsores from forming. Ted wiped his hands on his pants and then touched DeRosa’s face. It was cold but the cardiac monitor kept beeping so he had to be alive. Ted pulled up DeRosa’s top lip. There it was along the upper row of teeth. A gap, just as he’d expected.
A few weeks earlier, Ted found a tooth while vacuuming his living room carpet. He almost sucked it into the Hoover but swerved just in time.
“Well, look at you,” Ted said, stooping.
He palmed the tooth and gave it a squint. He could tell it had come from a human mouth. Off-white enamel, a spot of blood on the roots. He held it under his nose—no real smell. A regular American tooth.
Ted stuck a finger in his mouth and prodded. Wasn’t his. He had all his teeth, which was a source of pride at his age. He considered that the tooth may have belonged to Annie. She had been gone a year now, though, and he always kept up with the cleaning. He would’ve found it earlier if it were Annie’s.
Had there been any visitors? Ted wondered. He couldn’t remember. Annie was the social one. A few days earlier he’d bought a box of cookies from a Girl Guide; maybe she had ripped out a loose incisor and hucked it across the room while he was retrieving his wallet. Hard to come up with a motive to go along with that theory, though. Most likely he had stepped on it outside. In the parking lot at the bank, perhaps. It got stuck in the treads of his shoe and he tracked it inside. There, solved. He put the tooth in a cup and put the cup on t
op of the fridge. He finished vacuuming the living room.
The next day, when Ted began to make toast he noticed that a chunk of the bread loaf was missing. There should have been three-quarters instead of half. Guess I ate it, he thought. He made his toast. He watched golf on TV, took a nap, drove to the 7-Eleven and bought a case of Dr. Pepper. He ate a ham sandwich for dinner. He watched more golf, drank two Dr. Peppers and went to bed. An ordinary Ted Cohen evening.
In the middle of the night, Ted awoke with a painfully full bladder. He flicked on the bedside lamp and sat up but before he could put on his slippers he heard a noise coming from down the hall. It sounded like a drawer shutting—or maybe a cereal box falling from the kitchen counter. Ted sat still, listening, and gripped his blanket. The house was silent.
Oh Christ, he thought. The tooth, the missing bread. Someone’s been breaking in, some junkie, and he’s been eating my bread and using my stove to get high. And he’s in my house right now. Some lunatic hophead is in my house, whacked out of her mind, or minds—could be an entire gang. A whole platoon of fearless, gap-toothed junkies crouching in my kitchen and if I don’t go to the bathroom this minute, there’s going to be laundry to do.
Ted stepped out of bed and into his slippers. He moved towards the hallway carefully, listening for a break in the silence. Had to be the garbage shifting, he thought. Sometimes a plastic muffin container or Styrofoam tray that’s been crushed will suddenly pop back into place. Or it could have been a mouse or even a dream.
Inside the bathroom, he locked the door and sat down on the toilet. His urine hit the water like a laser beam. Over the gurgle in the bowl, Ted thought he heard another noise—another drawer shutting or a knock but he couldn’t stop the force of his stream. Oh Jesus Christ, he thought. If only poor, dear Annie were here. She always kept his paranoia in check like when he suspected the neighbours were skinheads or when he thought a rash on his chest meant lung cancer. “Mr. Vogel is bald,” Annie had said, “not an anti-Semite.” It’s just a rash, an infected hair follicle, not a tumour. She was the rational one and now she was gone and his imagination was free to run amok. There was nobody to hear his latest delusions and identify them as such.
Ted flushed and listened: the house was quiet again. He pulled up his pants, unlocked the door and moved slowly down the hall. He hit the kitchen light switch and scanned the room—everything was as it should be. No junkies, no gang. He checked the front door. Locked. He walked around the living room, inspecting under the couch and behind the TV. No dirty needles, no more teeth. He decided to return to his bed but as he made his way past the area where he had found the tooth, something soaked through the bottom of his slippers. There was a small dark patch on the carpet beneath his feet. Ted kicked off his right slipper and gave it a sniff—Dr. Pepper. He hadn’t spilled any soda himself because he had opened, emptied and left his cans over by the couch. Someone was there. Someone was in his house, drinking his pop, spilling it and hiding in the shadows.
He searched the room for a weapon. A kitchen knife would be threatening, Ted thought, but you’d have to get in close to use it. The curtain rod was too flimsy. If only he hadn’t sold his golf clubs. He’d find something, then coax the intruder from his hiding place and give her hell. He had to. If he called the police, it’d take too long. If he ran away, the intruder might escape. This was Ted’s show and he had a plan. He pulled one of Annie’s watercolours off the wall—the beach scene in the heavy oak frame. A shame, but his best bet. He leaned it against the wall by the front door like a sword.
Ted walked into the kitchen, picked up the phone, punched in several zeros and covered the earpiece with his hand.
“Hey, Jim?” he said, loudly. “Sorry I’m so late, I accidentally fell asleep. Yeah. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m leaving right now. I owe you one. Yeah, I’ll come in for my next shift early so you can take off or something. Anyway, I’m leaving right now so just hold on. Okay, bye.”
He walked back to the front entrance, picked up the painting and opened the door. He took a few steps in place but didn’t go outside. He closed the door. He waited.
Ted remained still, breathing slowly through his nose. He listened. He watched the kitchen before him. A minute passed. Another minute passed and then the cupboard beneath the sink opened up. One leg emerged and then the other. A soda can rolled out from inside the cupboard and onto the floor. Ted lifted Annie’s beach scene above his head.
Correspondence between Ernesto DeRosa (Dispatcher, Lake Jackson Taxi) and Ted Cohen (Executive Producer, F∙R∙I∙E∙N∙D∙S), July–August 2003
Dear Ted Cohen,
Okay, so Stephanie? If you are reading this, please don’t send me any more postcards and just pass this back to Ted Cohen. This letter has been addressed to and should be read and replied to by Ted Cohen and only Ted Cohen.
Alright, so Ted. I feel like I was still a little vague with my last letter regarding who I am and why Friends is so important to me. Perhaps you are wondering why my wife left me or why I lost custody of Gabe. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Who cares what that Ernesto thinks, he can’t even keep his family together.” Or, “That Ernesto thinks he has this special pain because his family has fallen apart? What about all the other hundreds of people in the same situation? Who does he think he is, that Ernesto?” But listen: I am your audience. I am the average American. I have problems and I do the best I can. And if I’m but one voice amongst thousands then that shows you the impact of Friends. Hear my story and you hear the story of our great country.
What happened with my wife is that she left me for a man she worked with named Levon. But don’t sympathize with me too much because in retrospect it was a little bit my fault. See, years ago, when Season Five of Friends was airing, Susan and I were out for dinner at an Italian restaurant here in Lake Jackson called Paul’s, owned by Susan’s friend Paul. It was our anniversary and we had risotto and white wine. I had more white wine than I did risotto and it was December and icy and after dinner I slipped in the parking lot. My spine connected with the curb and I had to wear a back brace all winter.
I missed two weeks of work and wages. And during that “vacation” I happened to see an ad for one of those accident lawyers on TV. I called him up and he said I had a case. Susan pleaded with me, said not to sue, said that it was her friend Paul I’d be hurting—our friend Paul. I said that I was the one hurting, said look at this awful brace. Because I’m the kind of guy who fights for what is right, for what I’m owed. Just like I’m fighting for my family and just like I’m fighting for the continuation of Friends.
We argued. I wouldn’t listen and Susan grew cold. We still watched Friends together and she helped me with my brace but she looked at me differently after that. Like I was some kind of monster—not because I was crippled but because I was suing her friend Paul. I kept on with the lawsuit, I gave it my all and I won. Ended up with fifty thousand dollars after my lawyer’s fees. Paul had to shut down his death trap. I tried to rub my new fortune in my wife’s face but she didn’t want anything to do with the money. I’d buy her gifts and she’d throw them in the yard.
By that time, I had developed a small dependency on the painkillers I was taking for my back. I needed them though. I was in agony. Sometimes I’d wash the pills down with white wine which may have caused some unnecessary outbursts of anger. I was going through a lot, you must understand. Hard times. Susan began her affair with Levon. She sneaked around with him for months. I had no idea. When she finally told me what had been going on and that she was moving in with this other man—at this point Season Six was on the air—I couldn’t believe it. I had Gabe with me though and I had Friends. I put the money from the lawsuit in a special account for Gabe’s college fund. We watched Friends on Thursday nights before Susan and Levon would take him for the weekend.
Then during Season Six, Gabe fell off my roof. I still don’t know what he was doing up there. At this point in my life, I was in a lot of pain and had upped my dos
age of back medicine. I was drinking a lot of wine too, because it reminded me of romantic nights with Susan. Sometimes I’d swallow enough wine and pills that I’d pass out for an entire afternoon. I’d pass out in my recliner in front of the Friends Season Two DVD menu screen, a snippet of the theme song playing over and over, which is exactly how the neighbour found me the day Gabe fell off the roof.
I woke up in the hospital and they pumped my stomach. I was fine. The nurses told me that Gabe was on another floor, that he had fallen and hit his head. He was doing well but apparently there had been a scare. I guess, technically, he had died for about a minute on the way to the hospital.
Things moved rather quickly and soon Gabe moved in with Susan and Levon. I could still visit Gabe but there were all of these terms. I had to book two weeks in advance, I had to take a Breathalyzer test and a social worker had to be present. The hardest thing of all, though, was the calls from Gabe. He’d secretly phone me up late at night and talk about his brief death. He said he had been to heaven on the day of the accident, quite literally—that while his heart was stopped momentarily in the back of that ambulance, he had floated up and out of his body and met with God. He’d go on about how beautiful heaven was and how there were no bad feelings, only good feelings. He said he could have any toy he wanted, or any dessert, like he could just snap his fingers and whatever he desired would appear but that he didn’t need to snap his fingers because just being in heaven was enough. You didn’t need toys or cake because sitting still and thinking about the fact that you were in heaven was pure bliss.
He said he wanted to die. He said he wanted me to kill him so he could go back to heaven because Mom said he wouldn’t go to heaven if he killed himself—instead he’d go to hell. So here I was, alone, struggling with back pain and terrible hangovers with no one to comfort me and listening to my nine-year-old beg me to come over and suffocate him with his Dallas Cowboys pillow. Poor, young Gabe. Susan put him in therapy. He’s doing better now. He won’t back down from the idea that he’s been to heaven but he’s agreed that he needs to live out his existence on Earth before he can return to the afterlife. You can see it in his eyes, though. He’s just waiting. My poor son.