Fault Line

by Janet Tashjian

  This is not to say we lived rich. In fact, Mom was so frugal, most of the time you’d think we were bordering on broke. She still dyed her hair in the kitchen sink and refused to buy us Christmas presents until the sales kicked in on December 26. We stayed in the same two-family we’d lived in before her windfall. The biggest differences were that we no longer had tenants upstairs, and we now had a large library. My parents had spent a month of weekends installing mahogany bookcases along all four walls of the double parlor upstairs. They worked on it for weeks, finally filling both rooms floor-to-ceiling with books. (The stacks and stacks of them piled around the house had been adding up, I guess.) The lustrous shelves and accompanying ladders were the only visible proof of my mother’s stock deal.

  Mom constantly touted the importance of earning your own living; the only reason I never argued with her was that I loved my two part-time jobs. I’d been working at the Goodwill store downtown for more than a year. Some of my best material had come from the ridiculous stuff people brought in as donations, not to mention our quirky clientele. I learned more about the city there than I ever could by studying the daily newspaper.

  I’d only had my other job for a month, but I already couldn’t imagine life without it. When I saw the ad at our local diner, I tore the flyer off the bulletin board so no one else could respond. One of the local tourist companies ran a bus trip that highlighted all the famous movie spots in San Francisco. Since my mom and I were movie freaks and I needed all the “stage” experience I could get, the job was tailor-made for me. I thought I scared the guy on the interview when I came up with esoteric examples only a handful of tourists might want to see. (When I mentioned Francis Ford Coppola’s vineyard up north, I wasn’t sure if I came off more as a stalker or a fan.) I got the job anyway. So once a week, I donned my standard-issue navy blazer and helped Mr. Perez lead a busload of tourists through the cinematic history of the city.

  Even before I landed the job, the walls of my room were completely covered with movie posters I’d collected over the years. Abby and I had recently started adding voice balloons to the mouths of our favorite characters, letting Hannibal Lecter or Forrest Gump test our latest material. Once in a while I’d find an attempt at a joke pinned to one of the posters closest to the floor. The scrawled handwriting and potty jokes always gave Christopher away.

  Dad was trimming the hedges so they wouldn’t drape over the sidewalk while Mom planted the fall bulbs as if someone were standing behind her with a stopwatch. She tamped down the soil with her daisy-print gloves and told me my boss had called.

  “Which one?”

  “Mr. Perez. He said to tell you they’ve decided to add American Graffiti to the tour.”

  “I can’t believe he finally took my suggestion.”

  “How do you do a movie tour of San Francisco without that classic?” Mom asked. “It should’ve been one of the first on their list.”

  “You’ll be running the company soon,” my father told me between snips.

  When the cordless phone rang, I picked it up from the lawn. It was Abby with Ritual #17—testing out a new joke.

  “How about this?” she asked. “My boyfriend’s so cheap, when we go to Kentucky Fried Chicken, he licks other people’s fingers.”

  “Gross, but funny. Especially since Kevin wouldn’t be caught dead there.”

  “We broke up.”

  “What happened?” I sat down on the front steps to take in this new information.

  “We just hit a dead end,” she said.

  “But you’ve been together almost three months.”

  “Time to move on.”

  Her cavalier attitude in the boyfriend department was yet another mysterious quality of my best friend. Long-term, short-term, serious, or casual, no relationship was ever a big deal for Abby She then went into Best Friend Ritual #38—deconstructing the latest SNL show bit by bit. I tried to keep up with her as she analyzed several Weekend Update jokes, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. They had seemed so happy together. I knew I’d never get any scoop from Abby—the present interested her much more than the past—but still … . Couldn’t they have tried harder to make it work? Were things bad enough to throw the whole relationship away? I asked again for details, but she shrugged off my questions as irrelevant.

  As usual, I was putting more effort into analyzing my best friend’s relationships than she was.

  Life is what you’re stuck with while you’re waiting to have one.

  Write jokes.

  Write school papers.

  Write jokes in the margins of my school papers.

  Same old routine.

  There was one piece of excitement at my movie-tour job, however. While the other tourists were taking photos of the street where they filmed the famous car chase in Bullitt, an eighty-two-year-old man named Hector Santos had a quiet heart attack in the back of the bus. Mr. Perez dealt with the paramedics while I was forced to converse with and comfort the crowd for forty-five minutes. Not fun. We heard the next day that Hector was okay. Thank God. (Imagine: The last thing you see on earth is Barbra Streisand’s apartment in What’s Up, Doc?)

  I continued to hone my Leap Year set; it was almost beginning to be funny. Mom was so used to hearing it, she actually sat at Rick’s and did paperwork during most of my act. Delilah had OD’d on my jokes too; she burned up her cell sitting at the bar.

  I finally nailed the three-step joke: “We Leap Year people are cured way before the boozers. We only have three steps.”

  Biggest laugh I’d had in months.

  “Bravo! Bravo!” my mother said when Abby and I returned to the table.

  “Actually, Ms. M., when you’re applauding a woman, it’s brava!” Abby said.

  “Becky, why do you hang out with such a know-it-all?”

  “It gives me a break from doing all the thinking,” I answered.

  Abby pulled her knit cap farther down over her eyes. “Longest laugh I got lasted two seconds.”

  “Two seconds is huge. Besides, your LPM was almost five.”

  My mom asked what I was talking about.

  “Laughs per minute. We used to get three, now we’re up to five.”

  “I didn’t realize you two were getting so scientific about this.”

  “Next time bring your periodic table,” Abby said.

  “Does she have to bring the chair too?” I asked. “You’d think that would be included in the cover charge.”

  Abby rapped the table in a drum roll. (One of the downfalls of hanging out with comics: we never know when to quit.)

  “That bit about the three steps,” Mom said, “much better now.”

  “Thanks, but it’s not like it was wall-to-wall laughs or anything.”

  “Oh, and I’ve been thinking about this. You had one frog-themed party, missy—one! That stupid cake took me all day to make!” Mom got up from the table. “I’ve got to work tomorrow. You two coming?”

  “It’s only nine-thirty,” I said. “Can we stay?”

  She finally caved. “Delilah can take you home later. I’ll grab a cab.” She searched through her purse for what seemed like an eternity. I finally reached into the pocket of my jeans and took out a crumpled ten.

  “Ms. M., you are the most sorry-ass millionaire I know,” Abby said.

  “That’s because I’m an attorney. It’s not necessarily the same thing.”

  Abby grinned; she loved teasing my mother about everything—her job, old movies, her politics.

  After Mom left, Abby and I ordered two more sodas and kicked back to catch the other acts. While some woman actually tried to get laughs as a ventriloquist—hel-lo?—I noticed a cute guy at one of the back tables. He had a roll of paper towels and was writing furiously, his head only inches from the paper. He looked like he was writing to save his life. I asked Abby if she knew him, but she’d never seen him before either.

  As usual, she took things into her own hands. “Hey, Mr. Bounty! What are you doing?”
/>   It looked as if the interruption had disoriented him. He smiled awkwardly, tucked the roll of towels under his arm, and pulled up a chair at our table. He told us he was working on a new set. One of us.

  He was adorable—messy dark curls, deep-blue eyes, tall and thin, our age. My type, anybody’s type.

  He nodded in my direction. “Liked the bit about the three steps.”

  “You’re the second person to say that, so I guess I’ll keep it in.”

  “But the other person was your mother, so that doesn’t really count,” Abby added.

  Abby and I hadn’t gotten into a who-gets-him-first? contest since junior high, and I hoped we wouldn’t get into one now. Mostly because she always won.

  “You want some feedback?” he asked. “Just say no if you don’t.”

  “No, I do. Desperately.” It was true; I always wanted to hear everything about my sets, good and bad. It was the only way to improve.

  “You’ve got some good setups, but you’ve got to punch up your payoffs. Get them a bit tighter.”

  I asked him what he meant.

  “Well, like ‘Since I was born on Leap Year, I don’t get a full vote on election day.’ The punchline isn’t strong enough. Instead say something like ‘My vote counts less than yours, but then again, nobody’s vote counted during the Bush/Gore election.’”

  “That’s much better,” I said. “And I worked on that one for hours.”

  He shrugged, almost embarrassed. I pointed to the paper towels and asked what he was working on.

  “A routine about my mother’s antique shop—the people who come in, the yard sales she goes to, the junk that people think is valuable.”

  “Could be funny,” Abby said.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You got a problem with notebooks?” I asked.

  “The whole killing trees thing is too depressing.”

  “But aren’t paper towels made from—”

  “Yeah, but at least when I’m finished, I can use them to clean up my apartment.”

  Abby’s goal to get her own place as soon as possible reared its head, as usual. “You have your own apartment?”

  “Not really. My mom and I live over her antique shop in this rent-controlled building in Noe Valley. My rooms have a separate entrance.”

  He was talking to Abby but looking my way—a welcome confidence booster, believe me.

  Rick gave us the high sign from the bar.

  “Got to go,” Mr. Bounty said. “I’m on.”

  “Now?” we shouted. This guy’s casual attitude made Abby and me seem like major stress cases. He left his paper towels on our table and headed toward the stage.

  Abby picked up the roll and skimmed through the scrawled handwriting.

  “Hey, that’s private.” I yanked the roll away from her.

  “Oh, like you don’t want to know.”

  I tucked the roll onto the chair beside me and focused on the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Rick said. “A real find—Kip Costello!”

  Abby’s head whipped in my direction. “Kip? You can’t go out with a guy named Kip!”

  “Who says I’m going to go out with him?”

  “Becky and Kip. That’s worse than Barbie and Ken. Blech!”

  I ignored her and checked out Kip as he began his set. He wore jeans and a green T-shirt under an unbuttoned oxford shirt—like he had respect for the audience but didn’t want to put too much effort into planning what to wear. (Unlike Abby and me, who still made a federal case out of the wardrobe issue.)

  Timing and pacing are two of the hardest things to get right in comedy, but Kip had both areas down. He built up slowly and by the end of his ten minutes, the audience was with him all the way. The bit about his grandfather confusing anthrax with Amtrak had the crowd howling.

  Me? I wished I had a videocamera to capture this great set on film so I could watch it again and study every joke. Well, not just the jokes … . But whether or not Kip and I would ever see each other again, he was a great addition to our humble comedy scene, no doubt about it.

  Afterward Kip made his way back to our table.

  “You were great,” I said. “Why haven’t we seen you before?”

  “We moved here from Napa this year,” Kip said. “I’ve been driving out to the suburbs to hone my act before I finally got up the nerve to perform in the city. Afraid of failure, I guess.”

  “Aren’t we all.”

  “My last two gigs were at a Chinese restaurant and a bowling alley. This is a big upgrade.”

  The three of us talked nonstop for the rest of the night. About everything, from Kip’s high school across town to the bawdiness of Mel Brooks. We bitched about people getting into stand-up just to showcase themselves for a sitcom and about how difficult the business still was for women. Between performers we continued a cutthroat debate—was Comedy Central the best or worst thing to happen to stand-up? (Abby and I went back and forth several times; Kip stuck with an emphatic “worst!”)

  Thankfully, this wasn’t the typical one-upmanship routine that passed for conversation in the comedy crowd. I liked joking around as much as the next person, but sometimes you just wanted to talk. Especially when the other person was as funny and intense as Kip appeared to be.

  Now, I am a connoisseur of details—it’s a job requirement. And here’s the tiny detail that just slayed me. As he spoke, I noticed the round transparent sizing sticker stuck to the pocket of Kip’s green T-shirt. He obviously hadn’t noticed the circle containing the bold black L, but I did. I loved the fact that I knew something about him no one else knew, including him.

  I checked my watch often, knowing Delilah would be ready to leave at eleven o’clock sharp. She was—in all her Bewitched glory. I don’t know how she did it, but her hair—unlike my long, unruly mane—was always completely in place.

  “Let’s go, honeys. It’s a school night.” She glanced over at Kip. “And who is this handsome young thing?”

  I introduced them.

  “Was she your nanny when you were young?” Kip asked me as we walked to the door. “Because that would be a routine.”

  I said she took care of my little brother when she wasn’t driving the rest of the family all over town or scheduling my mother’s meetings. Then I held out my hand and told Kip it had been fun hanging out with him.

  “Then we should do it again, right?”

  I took the paper towels from him and gently unrolled them to a new square. I wrote down my home and cell numbers. When I looked up, he was smiling at me.

  “You know what you remind me of?” he asked.

  This was all Abby needed to hear. “Here we go,” she said.

  He ignored her. “Cinnamon. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “I think I would have remembered that one.”

  “The bronze skin, the freckles, the reddish hair. Cinnamon all the way.”

  “Yeah, she’s a real Spice Girl.” Abby rolled her eyes so hard I thought the ceiling fan might fall to the floor.

  Kip continued nonetheless. “You know that Neil Young song, ‘Cinnamon Girl’? That should be your nickname.”

  I could feel the inner cinnamon rising to my cheeks. “Kind of a long nickname, don’t you think?”

  Abby decided to expand her repertoire to include impersonations—this one of a wet blanket. “You don’t know her well enough to give her a nickname,” she said.

  I had thought that too, of course, but was too flattered to say.

  He grinned and headed to the door. “That can change.” He waved the paper towel like a flag of surrender. “I’ll call you.”

  Abby could barely contain her disdain when he left. “What a phoney. And I’m not saying that because he picked you instead of me.”

  “Of course you are, but that’s okay. Admit it, his punchline about the voting was much better than mine.”

  “So he’s funny, so what?”

  “You’re not being very Zen.” My trump card line
with Abby; it always shut her up.

  Almost always.

  “You will never hear from him again,” she said. “I guarantee it.”

  I tried to construct an emotional barrier between my inner excitement and her outer negativity. Needless to say, Delilah loved the drama and insisted on hearing every last detail on the drive back.

  Later at home, I went downstairs to shut off the lights. I opened the cabinet next to the stove and spun the lazy Susan around till I spotted the tin of cinnamon. When I finally figured out how to open the canister, I sprinkled a little on my finger and inhaled—dark and exotic. I licked the dab off my finger and was surprised at the pungent taste. I guess that’s why my mother always mixed it with sugar before she sprinkled it on our apple slices when we were kids. I’d gone out with only a few guys over the years, but none of them were creative or interesting enough to come up with a nickname for me, never mind during our first meeting. Not that I would be going out with Kip—in this lifetime, at least. I shut off the kitchen lights and told my mind to stop racing.