by Rod Serling
"We heard you the first time, fat man," yelled the man at the bar. Then he turned to the bartender. "When do the dames dance?"
The bartender scratched his forehead underneath the fez. "Anytime now."
The heckler looked toward Jackie. "What does it take to get him off? A lynching?"
The bartender grinned. "He's great for all the other acts. He makes 'em look so good."
"I believe it," said the man. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and yelled toward Jackie. "Hey, klutz you can get off now. The trained seal just recuperated.''
Jackie smiled a sick smile and waved. There was always one; always one smart ass in the audience. Usually drunk. Usually big. Always belligerent. Jackie looked around the room. His smile was a suspended, crooked thing—like a billboard that had slipped. And he waddled around, back and forth, holding on to the microphone, slipping the back of his hands together, grunting like a seal. Oh, God, why didn't they laugh? And even as he probed for the next gag, the cheapness of the place rose up in front of his eyes in waves. It was as if his entire world was Myron's Mecca, and the giggling broad, the two loaded Teamsters, the bored bartender, and the former Pacific Fleet champion sitting at the bar were his own private ghosts, hired to haunt him through eternity. They were always the same And his performance was always the same. Tonight was like all the others A long line of funerals. He did a little half-step, yanked up on the microphone cord, pointed a finger at the half-sleeping combo, then turned to face the eight people in the room. "And now," he shrieked, "ladies and gentlemen—four of the most beautiful, talented ladies you've ever met in your life—"
"Jesus, it's about time," yelled the man at the bar.
"Here they are," said Jackie, ignoring him. "The Finger Lakes Fandangos."
The combo, chords apart, spewed out a ragged fanfare.
Jackie bowed low at imaginary applause, took another little dancing half-step, deposited the microphone in its stand, and walked off the stage and through a side door that led to the rest rooms and his own dressing room. The Finger Lakes Fandangos passed him en route—eight sagging tits in sequins.
The voice of the man at the bar drowned out the combo. "Oh, Jesus. Out goes the hippo— in come the dogs!"
Jackie walked down the dark, narrow corridor to the tiny little cubicle set between "Men" and "Women." He opened the door and went inside. From either side came the sound of flushing through the thin walls, mixed with the snores of his agent, Jules Kettleman, who lay asleep on the threadbare sofa.
Jules was a gaunt, bony little man with a perpetually startled look in his eyes. He awoke with a start and sat up. "How'd it go?" he asked.
Jackie sat down heavily in front of a cracked mirror on a rickety card chair—the only other furniture in the room. He averted his reflection in the mirror and forced a smile. "For a first shot . . . for a first shot, maybe not so bad. I'm gonna rework it a little bit before the next show."
He rose and banged his head on the yellow bulb that hung by a naked wire. It swung back and forth, sending out little shadows of light and dark that played hide-and-seek with the jowled flesh of his face. He was conscious of Jules stating at him, and there was a long and deadly silence.
"Goddamn it—say it."
"Say wot? Whaddya wanna hear, Jackie?"
Jackie turned to him. "It would've been nice to hear you push a coupla laughs out there. Or maybe bang your hands together a few times. Honest to God, Jules—I'm playin' in front of Forest Lawn—and you're in here like it was a federal law to be horizontal after the sun goes down."
He turned back toward his reflection, his bald dome, with the eight or ten straggling hair strands, glistening in the yellow light—like an ivory ruin with weeds coming up through the cracks.
"Didn't go over so well, huh?" Jules's voice was soft and knowing.
"That's the only tomb with a stage in it," Jackie said as he sat back down in the chair.
"That's the only stage with a corpse on it," a new voice said.
Jackie turned in the squeaking chair to look toward the open door.
Myron Mishkin stood there. He was the owner. He entered the room a dyspeptic-looking tall man in a funeral-parlor-blue suit who took the step into the room like a man walking into a sewer, afraid to touch anything.
Jules started to sweat. "He warms up slow, Mr. Mishkin."
"It's a hundred and two out there," Mishkin said. "This guy couldn't warm up in a boiler room."
Jackie tried to laugh. It turned his voice ragged. "That's a tough audience, Mr. Mishkin. You'll give me that, won't you?"
"I'll tell ya what I'll give ya," Mishkin said through a barely lit cigar in his teeth. "Papers to walk. Do the last show, then cut."
"You said three weekends—" Jules began, slightly whining.
Mishkin turned to him. "That was before I heard him. You are his agent isn't that the idea?"
"Twenty-four years, Mr. Mishkin." Jules tried to say it proudly.
Mishkin put his hand on the doorknob. "Then book the schmuck in the Air Force Museum." He pointed his cigar at Jackie. "This guy don't tell jokes—he goes on bombing missions. Do the last show, and I'll tell the bartender to pay ya off."
He started out the door. Jackie got to his feet and followed him out.
"Wait a minute, Mr. Mishkin. Please. You can't ace me out after one lousy show." He started toward Jules as if for confirmation.
Mishkin took the cigar out of his teeth. "I can't?" he asked. He looked toward Jules and jerked a thumb at Jackie. "Read him the contract."
Jackie felt the age-old panic. The fantasy again—the nightmare. The whole world was Myron's Mecca. And Myron Mishkin was the Great Omniscient Ass Kicker in charge of the universe. He presided at Jackie's nightly funerals, Jackie's failures, the busts, the flops, the crap-outs—the daily, weekly, monthly boots out of the door.
"Mr. Mishkin . . . look, Mr. Mishkin . . . it's a tough house. Honest to God. It's a tough house. But if I could have a coupla weeks—"
Mishkin looked at Jackie's hand on his arm and very gingerly removed it.
"Mr. Mishkin." Jackie's voice trembled. "An act's gotta build. I mean—you gotta allow a coupla weeks for word of mouth."
"I do?" Mishkin stared at him. "Honest to God—I gotta allow a coupla weeks for word of mouth?"
Jackie took hope. He whirled around toward Jules. "Tell him, Julie. Will ya tell him? Tell him about that gig in Buffalo. Six weeks held over. And capacity, man. In a tough room—lemme tell ya. But when I get started, man, I zoom. I could fill the Hollywood Bowl." He laughed, shrill and high-pitched. "Tell him, Julie. Go ahead, tell him."
Mishkin looked from one to the other. "Unasked," he said softly, putting the cigar back into his mouth. "Unasked, I give ya the following opinion." He took out the cigar and pointed it again at Jackie. "You couldn't fill a men's room with free shoeshines. I'm strictly truck trade here, but they know what they like. And you, they don't like. A piece of advice, Mr. Slater—from an old-time saloon keeper. This is your agent here? Well, you tell him to buy you a correspondence course in diesel-engine fixing. Or maybe the Regular Army. But he should get rid of ya."
His cigar went out, and he extracted a kitchen match from a side pocket, then scratched it against the shiny surface of the seat of his pants and lit the cigar. "Slater—as God is my witness—you don't have enough talent to pay ten percent to yourself—let alone that poor putz over there who books you."
Mishkin turned and walked down the corridor, passing the Finger Lakes Fandangos as they came out from the stage—a quartet of rouged and powdered beef.
Jackie moved back into the room, past Jules, and slumped down into the chair. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked at his reflection. "You wanna hear somethin', Julie?" he said, whispering. "I was a fat, ugly little kid the day I was born. I had eight sets of foster parents before I was seventeen. They used to play jokes on me. Like when I'd come home from school—they'd moved."
Jules tried to chuck
le, but it caught in his throat. He just looked down at the floor.
"One of them," Jackie said, quietly, "sent me to a Y.M.C.A. camp one summer. Y'know what the kids used to do there for kicks? They pushed me off the dock. Like every day, they pushed me off the dock. And then they'd all laugh. So I figured . . . I figured that's what I'd do with my life. I'd make people laugh."
Jules kept his eyes fixed on the floor, but he made a little gesture, spreading out his hands at his sides. "You made some people laugh, Jackie."
Jackie closed his eyes. "Once," he said, "once I really got a boff from a guy in a men's room. I had this toup—this hairpiece. Black curly hair. And I'd left my date in the restaurant. Beautiful chick. And I went to the toilet . . . and when I was finished . . . I bent over to flush the john—and the toup fell in the toilet. You shoulda heard that guy. Like he started to cry, he laughed so hard."
Jackie turned to stare at Jules. "That's the story of my life, Julie. I keep fallin' in toilets." Then he turned back to stare at himself in the mirror. "I'm a second-rate schlep, goin' nowhere. And after twenty-four years of scratching each other's backs—we're still doin'
one-nighters in garbage dumps. Julie—how right am I?"
Jules shrugged and said nothing.
"Well, I'll tell ya somethin'," Jackie continued. "I wish . . . I wish I could make everybody laugh. That's what I wish. I'd give up everything I got. One trunk with the locks busted. Two suits and a sport coat. The wardrobe. Complete. One knitted tie with a hole in it and one that spells out, 'Will you kiss me in the dark, baby?' when the lights are out. One pair of shoes with lifts—one pair of sneakers."
Jules sniffled.
"Everything I got," Jackie said. "Everything. Just to make people laugh."
Then very slowly he put his face in his hands and he began to cry.
Jules swallowed, sniffled again, pulled out his handkerchief, and looked at this weeping whale in the chair. He wanted to reach out and touch him, say something gentle . . . something kind. But in the back of his fifty-seven-year-old agent's mind, the thought came to him. Oh, God, but Jackie was right. He could break his balls for the next twenty years, lining up the one-nighters, counting out his ten-percent in nickels and dimes, and telling this poor, no-talent hippo that he was the greatest—when they both knew you could blow only so much smoke up anyone's butt until you had to acknowledge defeat and officially surrender. He thought all this as he tiptoed quietly out of the room. Jackie was the last of the stable. Most of them gone. Some of them dead and buried. All of them either has-beens or never-wases. And as he walked down the corridor, he thought some more. Maybe he could find some stacked broad who'd sing topless. Or maybe he could latch onto a magician who did dirty tricks. He'd have to find some kind of act. He'd just have to scrounge. And scrounging, Jules Kettleman had done all his life. It wasn't his fault, he thought, as he went out a side door into the alley, that he always unearthed dogs. Dogs, hambones, and fat Pagliaccis who planted their big asses on a wailing wall and wondered why they got carbuncles instead of laughs.
"It's to weep," he said to himself as he walked out the alley toward the street. "Not to laugh—but to weep."
Inside the dressing room, Jackie Slaker had stopped his crying and was practicing his routines in front of the mirror. ". . . and this one fag said, 'I didn't know we had a Navy —' "
Jackie Slater got drunk and forgot that Jules Kettleman wasn't in his dressing room when he'd finished the last show. And now he was drunker and didn't even remember who Jules Kettleman was. It was 2:30 in the morning, and he was the next-to-last customer in the Mark Twain Bar, a block from his motel. He sat with mammoth buttocks overlapping the bar stool, fondling his seventh bourbon.
The bartender was eating a sandwich in one of the empty booths, then rose and came around the other side of the bar and looked at Jackie. "Your name Slater?" he asked.
Jackie nodded.
The bartender reached into his apron pocket for a folded piece of paper. He tossed it on the bar. "Some guy came in earlier. He left this for you."
Jackie blinked at it. "What is it?" he asked.
The bartender shrugged. "A note, I guess—for you. Some guy named . . . Kettleman."
Jackie reached for the paper, unfolded it, and started to read it upside down. He blinked, then threw the paper back. "Would you read it for me?"
"You mean out loud?" the bartender asked.
"Right out loud."
The bartender beamed as he unfolded the paper. Pouting drinks in that kind of flea-bag saloon was a listening job. Forever listening. And usually it was the tortured tomes of misunderstood husbands, depression-ridden salesmen on the way down, or the blurred wisdom of all drunks who turn philosopher whenever they get bagged. He cleared his throat like a TV announcer and read aloud. "'Dear Jackie. Please don't hate me for taking a run-out. But I'm as desperate as you are, and I've got to have bread. There's a steel-guitar band in Philadelphia—"
Jackie upset his glass on the bar, then reached over and yanked the paper from the bartender's hand. He looked at it briefly through swimming eyeballs, then crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.
"Son of a bitch," said Jackie. Then he pointed at his empty glass.
The bartender shrugged and poured a shot into it. "What do you do?" he asked.
"What do I do? I'm a comic."
The bartender surveyed him dourly. "A comic?"
Jackie nodded vigorously. "And Kettleman is my agent. Was my agent. I hope his frigging steel guitar band rests!"
"Where you been playin'?" the bartender asked.
"At Myron's Mecca," Jackie responded. "I did two shows. Just two shows." He downed his drink. "And I will never again set foot in Myron's Mecca."
The bartender started to wipe the bar, looking up at the clock over bis shoulder. "I gather you didn't kill 'em in Myron's Mecca."
Jackie drained the glass. "How could I? They were already deceased." He tapped at the glass with a forefinger.
"I'm closin'," said the bartender.
"One more."
The bartender shrugged and poured out another shot.
Jackie held up his glass. "I give you Corning, New York," he toasted. "I give you Myron's Mecca. Six tables with a pallbearer at each one of them."
He finished the drink, put the glass down, and lumbered to his feet. It was at this point that he took note of the other customer in the bar.
Sitting cross-legged on a bar stool, dressed in a cape, upturned tasseled bedroom slippers, and a turban housing a cracked ruby, was a tiny little man with an iodine-colored face who looked like Sam Jaffe playing Gunga Din. He was looking out the corner of his eye toward Jackie, then turned on the bar stool to face him, unfolding his tiny little pipestem legs as he did so.
"We have not met, yefendi," he said in a fluty little voice. "Chatterje is the name. Miracles by profession."
Jackie blinked at him through blurred, bloodshot eyes. "Miracles?"
Chatterje smiled a tiny apologetic little smile.
"Miracles.''
"That's what I need," Jackie said, "a miracle. Not a big son of a bitch of a miracle—but a lousy little miracle. You know what, Mr. Chatterje? You are face to face with Mr. Unlucky."
Chatterje got off the stool and walked over to Jackie. "Forgiveness, Mr. Slater—but compared to me, you are the winner of the Irish Sweepstakes. You are the owner of the 1969 New York Mets. And on the day they repealed Prohibition—you are the Little Old Wine Maker."
Jackie looked down at the dark face and the black, slightly clouded, shoebutton eyes. He patted the little man's shoulder. "Mr. Chatterje—you don't know what trouble is. You know that? You are now looking at a shipmaker in the desert, a jewel cutter with the palsy, and an opera singer with laryngitis."
Chatterje held up his hands as if in protest and shook his head back and forth. "Reflect, if you will, Mr. Slater, this undersized guru who stands in front of you —this child of adversity—"
"Mr. Chatterje," Jackie inter
jected, "I played a B'nai B'rith convention in New Rochelle where they wanted to replace me with an Arab "
The bartender looked from one to the other, like watching a Ping-Pong match, then started to untie his apron. "Maybe fifty thousand people are in this town," he said to his reflection in the mirror, "and who do I get? The Formaldehyde Twins. I gotta open up the only morgue with a liquor license in the whole state of New York." He turned from the mirror. "Why the hell don't you two guys go out and get mugged someplace?"
Chatterje folded his hands together. "Preferable," he said morosely. "Decidedly preferable to what is in store for me. Death certainly before dishonor." He looked up at Jackie. "You, Mr. Slater, are yet a young man with much ahead of you. It need not always be Myron's Mecca. You could yet make it on the Ed Sullivan Show. I, on the other hand, am fingering the tassels at the far end of my rope. Let the Pale Horseman gallop in now. Let a celestial tailor enter to measure me for a shroud. For by dawn tomorrow, if I do not perform a miracle—I am relieved of my powers and I have dishonored my ancestors for centuries back."
The bartender went to the front door and lowered a shade. "So work a miracle already," he said, "but do it outside."
The turbaned little man shrugged. "There is no willing recipient," he said. "There is no soul trusting enough to allow this poor guru to conjure up a blessing." He fingered the cracked ruby of his turban. "I am without hope," he said. "I am a dispossessed soul, tiptoeing in agony across the wasteland of my shattered dreams."
"So tiptoe the hell outta here, Swami," the bartender said, preparing the night lock on the door.
Chatterje turned on his Arabian slippers and started toward the door.
Jackie reached out and grabbed his arm. "Wait a minute," he said. He studied Chatterje's face. "What is it with the miracle?"
Chatterje smiled sadly. "You are now diddling with the essence! That is what it is all about. Miracles. Every miracle-making guru must work a wonder at least once a month. I am in arrears—Hence disaster."
Jackie focused his swimming eyeballs. "What kinda miracle?" he asked.
Chatterje shrugged again. "Name it."