It Happened One Knife

by JEFFREY COHEN

  “Let’s stick to Harry,” I suggested. “I can almost understand you corroborating his story, but after you thought he was dead, why keep it up?”

  “I’d made him a promise,” Marion said. “It seemed like the last thing I could do for him.”

  “I’m trying to understand Harry,” I said. “I can’t figure out why, if he was so filled with rage and guilt about Vivian, if he really thought Les killed her, why he’d wait fifty years to do anything about it.”

  Marion shook her head. “He never said anything to me about it before,” she told me. “But when he was diagnosed, and he knew this was the end of the line, that’s when Harry had nothing left to lose.”

  “I suppose he really loved Vivian,” I said, and instantly regretted it. I can fit a pretty big foot inside my mouth, when I give it all my effort.

  “I suppose,” Marion agreed with a tear in her eye. “I was trying to convince myself that he loved me.”

  “Maybe he did.”

  She shook her head again. “That’s sweet, Elliot, but no. I just fooled myself. And Harry, he let me do it. I was better than nothing.”

  “You’re a lot better than nothing,” I told her honestly. “And Harry was a fool for not noticing.”

  She smiled. “Thanks,” she said.

  THE evening’s showings went off without incident, and after the staff left for the night (Sophie driving Jonathan in her Prius and Anthony heading back to campus, where he assured me he’d stay another year or two), I patted the snow globe on my desk and walked outside. I locked the front doors, then walked around the building into the alley.

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Chained to the pipe, where I’d been expecting Bobo Kaminsky’s loaner bike, was my original bicycle, restored to something approximating mint condition. The pipes were straight and beautifully shined; the tires were new, the wheels unbent. The handlebars pointed in their intended directions, rather than in grotesque, splayed positions. And the pellet holes were gone. It was even a gleaming, metallic green, which I’m relatively sure was the color of the bicycle when I’d bought it, used, in another decade.

  Speechless, I stood for a few moments, my jaw flapping open and shut a number of times. Finally, I managed to compose myself to the point that I could reach into my jacket pocket and pull out my keys. I unlocked the bike and rolled it, carefully, into the theatre.

  In my office, I picked up the phone and dialed Bobo’s number. I knew he’d be at the store; it was only eleven thirty.

  “Midland Cyclery.”

  “Bobo, you’re a wizard.”

  The pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. “As if that was ever in question,” he said.

  “How did you get the old one out and this one in without breaking the chain? Do you have a duplicate key to my bike lock?”

  “Don’t question the magic, muggle. Just enjoy it.”

  I thanked him profusely until I started to sound like Anthony, then we hung up.

  It was a pleasure to ride home. Even in the autumn chill, I paid more attention to the improvement in my ride than to the wind whipping through my Split Personality crew jacket. The suspension system (the shocks) had been strengthened, or more likely replaced, so I didn’t feel every pebble in the road. The seat was the same, but had been positioned properly, which I rarely bother to do. The tires, of course, were new and properly inflated. And the shine from the body was evident every time a car’s headlights passed on my left. I felt like I’d bought a whole new bike, and it probably cost me only a little more than if I had.

  At the remarkably green door of my town house, I was sorry the ride was finished. Already treating my “new” ride better than I had when it was my “old” one, I was very careful about lifting the bicycle properly up the front stairs, and certainly about not scraping it against the doorframe. Inside the hallway, I placed it gently on the floor, using the kickstand instead of merely leaning it against the wall. Then I stood and admired it for a full minute before walking inside.

  The ride had exhilarated me; I wasn’t tired, and I should have been. But, figuring that I could certainly sleep as late as I liked in the morning, I decided against going straight to bed. I had bought myself a book called Teach Yourself to Play Guitar, and tried a few chords quietly, but I was too antsy to pay attention to something I didn’t know how to do yet. Besides, I was hungry, so I toasted myself a couple of freezer waffles to compensate for my early dinner, sat down in my director’s chair, and pondered which of my thousands of comedy films on VHS or DVD to watch.

  I’d been avoiding it for a while, but I couldn’t put it off forever, no matter what. I put the disc in the player, got myself a beer from the fridge, set up a snack table, and picked up the remote control to hit Play.

  On the screen, the opening credits to Cracked Ice showed up on the flat screen, and I braced myself. After all that had happened, all that I knew about the men involved and where their lives would go from that moment, would the wondrous comedy that had sustained me through my adolescence and my young adulthood still be as perfect as it had been? Would I become depressed at the sight of them, distraught at the part I’d played in both their deaths? Was it possible that Lillis and Townes could still take me to the place that had meant so much to me with all the extra baggage my mind had accumulated?

  I took a long swig from the beer and let out a deep breath. And I felt a knot in my stomach as the caveman sequence with Les Townes, which opens the film, began. I couldn’t help seeing in that face, with the pasted-on beard and the “caveman” hair that was obviously from the studio’s wig department, the look he’d had when he was bending over his partner, more than fifty years later, in a residence for elderly show business veterans moments before he died. It was hard to shake.

  But within ten minutes, maybe four scenes into the movie, my dread had dissipated. I was caught up in the beauty of Harry Lillis’s delivery, Les Townes’s natural ability to set up the punch lines, and the amazing, dexterous slapstick each of them could perform. I heard myself laugh once, then again, and by the time fifteen minutes were showing on the DVD’s counter, I was totally engrossed and roaring with delight.

  Damn, they were funny.

  Further Funny Film Facts For Fanatics

  Cracked Ice (1956)

  Okay, you got me. There is no movie called Cracked Ice, although there almost was. All of the Lillis and Townes movie titles were alternative working titles for Marx Brothers films. Cracked Ice became Duck Soup (1933); Step This Way and Bargain Basement were working titles for The Big Store (1941); and Peace and Quiet was the title of an early draft of A Day at the Races (1937). As for the Lillis and Townes stage show You’re Making It Up, well, I . . . made it up.

  While Lillis and Townes are meant to belong in the same strata as other great comedy teams—such as Abbott & Costello, Burns & Allen, Laurel & Hardy, and Martin & Lewis—they are in no way based on any real-life comedians (at least not consciously); with the one notable exception that I swiped their names from a pretty well-known comedy duo: Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby and Leslie Townes “Bob” Hope.

  My Man Godfrey (1936)

  Directed by Gregory LaCava, screenplay by Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch, based on the novel by Hatch. Starring William Powell, Carole Lombard, and Eugene Pallette.

  Powell plays a “forgotten man,” another name for a homeless victim of the Great Depression, who is acquired by Lombard as part of a scavenger hunt and made a butler in her somewhat dizzy home. But there’s more to him than meets the eye.

  Morrie Ryskind, who wrote the screenplay from Eric Hatch’s novel, also cowrote Animal Crackers (1930) and A Night at the Opera (1935) for the Marx Brothers, with George S. Kaufman.

  In a very small role, one can find Jane Wyman, who later married (and divorced) Ronald Reagan.

  Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)

  Directed by Edward F. Cline, screenplay by Prescott Chaplin, W. C. Fields, and John T. Neville, story by Otis Criblecoblis. Starrin
g W. C. Fields, Gloria Jean, Leon Errol, and Margaret Dumont.

  In case anyone was wondering, Otis Criblecoblis was actually W. C. Fields.

  The film blends reality and fantasy as Fields plays himself, trying to sell a story to Esoteric Pictures. It then moves back and forth into Fields’s story and his trying to sell it. It was Fields’s final starring role.

  Mrs. Hemoglobin is played by Margaret Dumont, apparently on leave from playing straight man to Groucho Marx.

  The Ghost Breakers (1940)

  Directed by George Marshall, screenplay by Walter DeLeon, based on a play by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard. Starring Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Anthony Quinn, and Willie Best.

  Willie Best eventually played the elevator operator on the fifties TV show My Little Margie. He also wrote the song “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons.”

  Not in any way related to Ghostbusters (1984), this film stars Hope as a somewhat disreputable radio reporter who tags along with Goddard when she inherits a supposedly haunted mansion. The film was actually a quick follow-up to the hit The Cat and the Canary (1939), with the same stars and director.

  Another bit part: Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen, The Longest Day).

  It Happened One Night (1934)

  Directed by Frank Capra, screenplay by Robert Riskin, story by Samuel Hopkins Adams. Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, and Alan Hale.

  Yes, Alan Hale is the father of the Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.) on Gilligan’s Island.

  This was the first movie to sweep the “big” Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The leading roles were originally offered to Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy, both of whom turned the movie down. Colbert originally didn’t want the role, either, but agreed to take the part when her salary was increased. Gable allegedly told a friend after filming, “I just finished the worst picture in the world.”

  The working title, from the short story it was based on, was Night Bus. Thank goodness I didn’t have to come up with a pun for that.

  Director Capra tricked Colbert into doing the famous “skirt lift” hitchhiking scene, which she initially refused to do, by bringing in a body double with legs Colbert found unattractive.

  Bananas (1971)

  Directed by Woody Allen, screenplay by Woody Allen and Mickey Rose. Starring Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalban, David Ortiz, Rene Enriquez, and Howard Cosell.

  No, that isn’t the David Ortiz who now plays for the Boston Red Sox. But Carlos Montalban was Ricardo’s older brother, and also played El Exigente in coffee commercials, and Rene Enriquez played Lieutenant Caetano on Hill Street Blues.

  One of Woody Allen’s earlier, funnier movies, Bananas features Woody as Fielding Mellish, a timid New Yorker who becomes involved in a South American revolution to impress his girlfriend. Sportscaster Howard Cosell gives play-by-play of both a dictator’s assassination and Fielding’s wedding night.

  Watch for a brief scene in which a young punk terrorizes Woody on the subway. The punk was played by Sylvester Stallone.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It might take a village to raise a child (where are the villagers when you have to pay for college?), but it definitely takes a small army to get me through the writing process. Without a selfless and generous group of individuals, I would have to go out and get a real job, and who would that help, exactly?

  In order for Harry and Les to seem like real classic comedians (did anybody notice the reference to them in Some Like It Hot-Buttered?), I relied on a number of sources, including my Marx Brothers bible, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo, by Joe Adamson. If you can find a copy, more power to ya. I have two.

  Special thanks to everyone at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home in Englewood, especially Jordan Strohl, the administrator of the Home, and Lynne Hoppe, the director of communications for the Actors Fund. I am a proud member of the Fund, largely because of these two extremely accommodating, helpful, and cheerful people. I hope the Actors’ Home is presented in the most positive way possible herein, because it really is a special place.

  Thanks to Ivan Van Laningham, who contacted me through the DorothyL Listserv (here’s a shout-out to the intrepid moderators there), for educating me on the subject of dentures and how they’re marked. It might not have seemed like a big point to you, but I couldn’t have gotten past that page without Ivan.

  Invaluable help to the Double Feature Mysteries overall has come from many kind souls who seem bound and determined to help me succeed. My sincere gratitude to Victoria Hugo-Vidal and all of Team Pepperoni, who don’t realize they have better things to do than promote my work (so don’t tell them); Victoria’s dad, Ross; her mom, Julia Spencer-Fleming; and her brother, Spencer, are all on the team, and I think a lot of people wouldn’t have heard about these books without their tireless, generous work. I can’t thank them enough.

  Thanks of course to Linda Ellerbee for being a good sport and a true friend. Thanks to Tom Straw, Joe Stinson, Matt Kaufhold, and Chris Grabenstein for saying nice things when I really needed nice things to be said—and none of them knew it.

  At Berkley Prime Crime: Thanks to Tom Haushalter for putting up with my incessant questions and goofy schemes, and to the incomparable Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, who forced me against my will to have the book make sense, and even braved the wilds of New Jersey to attend a popcorn party. Sure, other editors will correct your grammar, but how many are willing to take New Jersey Transit?

  To Christina Hogrebe and the gang at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, thank you for dealing with all the stuff I couldn’t possibly understand, which is anything that doesn’t involve writing the book itself. What a relief to have a wonderful agent in your corner!

  All that effort would be for naught, however, if it weren’t for terrific booksellers, like Marilyn and Lisa at Moonstone in Flemington, New Jersey; Dianne and Craig at Borders in Fairfield, Connecticut (they should put on a seminar in author events for other bookstores); and the irreplaceable Bonnie and Joe at Black Orchid, whom I won’t miss, because they’re still around, but whose store was so friendly and welcoming, and isn’t there any more. Dammit.

  But more than anyone, thank you to my astonishing family: my mother; my brother, Charlie; my inspiring son, Josh (as he approaches college!); my awesome daughter, Eve; and especially my incredibly understanding wife, Jessica, who has supported my writing habit for twenty-one years and hasn’t complained once. Now, that’s inspiration.