“So you can imagine how good it feels for me that this girl I’m dating now, God, wow, saying that, dating. Like I can’t believe that? Can you guys believe that?”
He shakes his head. F@#k Narcissism.
“Well okay, my girlfriend, when we’re fucking, she gets really into it and I mean like—you guys, you gotta swear this is just between us—where’s the camera? Who’s got a camera?”
Everyone has a fucking camera and he knew that, the arrogance of the man who gets onstage and thinks he doesn’t need a punch line. He’s gyrating. Mocking Amy, the way she yelps. He pretends to finish and he grins. That fuck-face grin and he takes a bow.
“So afterward I’m like, no offense, but I’ve been fucking for a while now and I know that I’m not very good at it. So I ask her if she’s faking it.” The crowd goes ooh and Henderson raises his eyebrows. “And you know what she says to me?”
He smiles. How awful it must be to be him, to be brimming with viciousness. “‘You have to understand. I have this ex—and, well, let’s just say I never loved him and he was bad at sex.’”
The Spanish tile floor collapses into the basement and This is the End and my insides go quiet as Henderson shares with the world what Amy said about me.
I back out of the living room and go upstairs and I barge into his bedroom, where Amy fucks him and whispers vicious things about me. Well, fuck you, Amy. She used me and then she used us to entertain her new boyfriend. He knows about me so I deserve to know about him and I search for his box of secrets—everyone has one and people with no imagination keep theirs under their beds—and sure enough, he has a box of shit about his ex-wife: journal entries, newspaper clippings, pictures, ticket stubs.
Her name was Margie and she went to Birds with him, sat on his lap, laughed at his bad jokes, and took naked selfies on their shitty futon. They saw Billy Joel and had terrible seats. He was puffier and once upon a time he had a heart. He got divorced when he started to get famous, when he was on the way up. Margie lives in Lake Kissimmee now and has three kids with a salesman. She doesn’t look bitter. Never loved him, bad at sex. He can’t be happy without her, clearly, and I will put him out of his misery. Downstairs, the laughing only gets louder. Someone needs to stop him from poisoning the world.
I grind up four of the Percocets and empty them into the reusable metal water bottle by his bed, right next to his bottles of Xanax and prescription sleeping pills. I take his box into his walk-in, live-in, fuck-in closet and I text Calvin that I’m Lyfting with the Tinder girl. I text Delilah: Sorry to do this at the last minute, but I have to bail.
I get why Calvin likes improv. There is something kind of exciting about having so little control. I didn’t plan to kill Henderson, but then, when you go on TV and whine about your girlfriend’s bush and stand up in your home and say mean things about Kate Hudson and brag about your masturbatory habits and open up your home to strangers—the password was all over Twitter ten minutes after we got here—well, Henderson is gonna learn the hard way that you can’t go around making fun of people you’ve never met before.
13
IT takes a long time for the party to end because most of the guests are dirt-poor fan boys who need this night to stay juiced about their own flailing careers. I listen to their American Apparel conversations and the way they analyze their expressions—even your teeth look stoked—and I wonder what will become of them all. There aren’t enough mansions and jobs to go around.
Hiding behind Henderson’s suits is uncomfortable and my neck hurts and it occurs to me that I could walk out on all of this, everything, and go back to New York. But I need closure. Henderson’s fucking act changed everything and now I have to know why Amy said those terrible things about me. I can’t leave this house and go on with the rest of my life wondering if I’m bad at sex. And I can’t lose the chance to talk to the one person who actually knows where Amy is.
There is a loud boom downstairs and that was the remote-controlled blinds going down all over the house. There is an emptiness in the house now, the sound of Henderson pouring cereal into a bowl, watching a little recorded Seth Meyers before turning it off and locking the doors—that’s a good boy—and heading upstairs. All lonely men are the same and he’s no different from Mr. Mooney as he plods up the stairs. My heart beats. I stand at attention, listening as he gets ready for bed.
Fortunately, his nighttime regime only involves brushing his teeth and rubbing potions all over his precious face. I hear him walk into his bedroom, the unmistakable click of the metal bottle I spiked with Percocet, the plip-plop of the sleeping pills into his hand, the plip-plop of the Xanax, another sip of his Percocet water. And then his lights go out. He jerks off, and within minutes he is asleep.
He is snoring now. I open the door. He doesn’t move—thank you, pills. And thank you, Henderson, for being the kind of asshole who waxes his entire fucking body. I cuff his arms with cable ties and though it’s demeaning—I miss my cage, where I didn’t have to be reduced to this kind of thing—I pull off the covers and cuff his legs at the ankles. I cover him up with the buttery duvet and then I slap his face. Nothing. I slap him again. Nothing. This goes on awhile until it doesn’t, until everything in the world, every last bit it of it, is in his eyes, in his scream. He is the ultimate toddler and I put on his Beats headphones and wait for him to accept his circumstances. These headphones are powerful; they do block out the noise and I turn on his bedside iPod—Jersey Boys soundtrack, not very hipster chic of him—and wait while he thrashes, a dying shark.
When he finishes fighting, I take off the headphones and I pick up his iPad. I ask for the password. He begs me—no no please no—and I approach him with my Rachael Ray paring knife and he caves: “Margie19.”
“Who’s Margie?” I ask innocently.
“My wife,” he says. I look at him. He corrects himself. “Ex-wife.”
I am in his iPad and now I need to contact his maid.
“What? Why?” he protests. “Please, you tell me what you want, anything. Anything, just let me go.”
“I told you what I want,” I say. “I want your maid’s name.”
“I can wire money to you.” His forehead is already slick with sweat. “I can sell this house for cash and you can have the cash and I can go away.” He sobs. “Dude, please.”
He won’t stop negotiating, offering me all kinds of fabulous prizes if I would just let him go. “I don’t want your money,” I say. “I want to know the name of your maid.”
He gets it. “Jennifer,” he says. “She’s in Contacts.”
I find Jennifer—JENNIFER MAID as opposed to JENNIFER TITS and JENNIFER BIG TITS and JENNIFER NO TITS—and I write: Jennifer. You have the day off. Calling in big guns for this one. Sorry for the late notice.
Jennifer gets the text and responds immediately: You are so kind!
And now it’s time for the real fun to begin. I tell him to stop bellyaching and he asks me to let him go and I tell him that’s not going to happen and he screams again. I sit down in his white modern throne of an office chair. “Tell me when she said it.”
“Let me fucking go.”
“Tell me when she said it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about but there is fifty K in the safe.”
“I’m talking about Amy.”
“Who?”
“Amy,” I snap. “Don’t say who like you don’t know who I’m talking about. You talked about her on your show and you talked about her tonight so don’t sit here and tell me that you don’t know who Amy is.”
He swallows. He nods. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know when you met her.”
His lower lip trembles. “Is this . . . are you from the network?”
I look at him. Could he possibly be that stupid? “No,” I say. “I’m from the world.”
He cries again and he squirms and I focus on the future. I imagine the online melee that will ensue when Henderson’s untimely death hits th
e news. Someone will leak the details about the box of pictures of his first wife and psychologists will say that comedians are notoriously depressed. People will be stunned that Henderson killed himself at the peak of his career. I can hear the funereal battle cry clichés already. Everyone’s a philosopher after a suicide.
It just goes to show you, money isn’t everything.
Maybe if he was married, things would be different.
At least he didn’t leave any children behind.
What a shame that he didn’t even have any children yet.
His poor mother.
And to think he just told those people how happy he was.
Finally Henderson stops moving. He breathes, sweats. “What do you want?”
“I told you,” I say. “I want to know when you met Amy.”
“Are you her boyfriend or something?”
“I said I want to know when you met Amy.”
He nods. There is not one single blueberry stain on the duvet but I bet he’s so rich that he has tons of duvets. These sheets are softer than the ones in Little Compton, the ones she liked so much, back when I was good enough. “I met her at Soho House,” he says.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but it hurts to think of her with her legs crossed at a private club where rich people like to sit near other rich people and talk about things rich people talk about. It’s the kind of place frequented by girls like Delilah and guys like Henderson, gold diggers and deep pockets, almost like a brothel, less honorable. “Okay,” I say. “And then what?”
“She was at the bar and she was checking me out and I asked her what year she was.”
I dig my Rachael Ray knife into the armrest of his stupid white chair. “What do you mean?”
“She was wearing a Peter Stark T-shirt and I know a couple people who did that program,” he says.
“Who’s Peter Stark?” I ask. Ugh, Amy.
He is smarmy even now as he raises his eyebrows. “The Peter Stark Producing Program at USC,” he says, as if I should know this, as if entertainment makes the world go round.
I picture her the day she got here, learning about the Peter Stark program, finding a shirt, taking it.
“Dude,” he says. “She’s not worth it, okay? This is not worth fifty K.”
“And then what happened?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “What ever happens? I bought her a dozen drinks and I got her number and . . . and then I don’t know. I have a driver. I blacked out.”
He’s an alcoholic and I bet he doesn’t remember most of his life but he better try. I want to know it all. “Did she go home with you?”
“Dude,” he says. “This is really not cool.”
Angelenos. As if not cool is the correct way to describe being tied up and interrogated. “Did she go home with you?”
“What?”
“Don’t act like you don’t do this five nights a week, Henderson. I’m asking the questions. You answer the questions.”
“And then you’ll let me go?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. Dummy. “Then I’ll let you go. So yes or no, did she go home with you?”
He looks at the wall. “I told you I don’t know.”
“Henderson.” I stand. This is fucking ridiculous. “It is very simple. You met her at Soho House. You asked what she year she graduated. Finish the fucking story.”
He growls. “Okay, fuck it! Fuck it! There is no story to finish because she’s not my girlfriend. I made it up!”
I stare at him. “You just pointed to her the other night. You said ‘hi, Amy.’”
He laughs, patronizing. “It’s a TV show,” he lectures. “I pointed at a plant.”
People in this business; all they do is make shit up. “You mean, you’re not with her?”
He sneers. “She never even wrote me back, kid. I sent her a dick pic. She must be a prude. Or a lezzie. Or a fucking nut job.”
“So why the hell are you out there telling people she’s your girlfriend?”
He writhes. “Because that’s my job! I can’t go out there and talk about banging hotties every night! Because sometimes they want your bits to be about relationship shit! Because on TV you make. Shit. Up.”
“You never slept with her?”
He laughs. “I told you. She’s a lezzie or a prude.”
I stab the chair. He’s the same annoying fuck he is on the show; not everything is made up.
He whistles. “Yoo-hoo, buddy! Can we fucking move on from this shit already?”
I’m sick of California with the lies and the jagged earth and the hills and the monotony. I walk into the bathroom. And no, we can’t move on from this shit. It doesn’t add up. Blueberries. I bolt out of the bathroom.
“If you didn’t sleep with her, why did she say her ex was bad at sex?” I demand.
He heaves. “This is fucking tired.” He chomps and snorts and he’s a dog, a spoiled dog. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s break it down already. I met a chick named Amy. She said she hated my show, which obviously made my dick hard because most of the time girls are just throwing themselves at me.” This, at least, is good to know. He continues. “She wouldn’t go home with me. She said she’s not that kind of girl but, you know, the ones that say that, they’re the ones who will do just about anything a day later, right? So I got her digits and sent her a picture of my dick.”
Revolting. All of it. The idea of dicks in Amy’s phone. “And?”
“And nothing,” he says.
“How did you know about blueberries?” I ask.
He laughs. “She said the best sex she ever had was with some guy, some blueberries, I dunno, bar talk. I told you. I make shit up. I turn it around. Nobody wants to hear me go off about how my lady’s ex is, like, the shit in bed. It’s called a fucking comedy routine, son. It’s called, comics make shit up. It’s called, let’s get you paid.”
He really thinks he’s getting out of this and I walk into the bathroom. I turn on the water. Best sex she ever had. Still, she ran away from me, from love, from all the good we shared. She would rather sit in a bar and lie to strangers than be with me. Charlotte & Charles. Bullshit. She makes Tinder Banger Calvin seem like John Fucking Sweetie Pie Cusack and I get it now. I’m too good for her. Way too good for her. My hands are too good at grabbing her ass and my dick was too appetizing to her and she loved me so much she couldn’t stand it.
I check on Henderson. He’s revved up again, moaning and thrashing. “Can we get the show on the road?”
“Hold on,” I say. “We’re not done just yet.”
“Dude,” he says. “Go get her back. Fuck me. Fuck this.”
I look through his phone but there are so many fucking Amys in here: Amy Toronto and Amy Chubby and Amy Bad Nose and Amy Tits and Amy Ass.
“Who came first?” I ask. “Amy Tits or Amy Ass?”
“Dude,” he says. “You try meeting this many people. You have no idea what it is to be in my position.”
“No,” I say. “But I guess Amy Gym and Amy Chateau and Amy Marmont and Amy Blowjob know about positions.”
“Stop it,” he says. “Don’t act like there’s anyone in there that didn’t wanna be in there.”
“Even Amy Fat Ass?”
“Especially Amy Fat Ass,” he says. “Stop it. Come on.”
“Tell me,” I say. “Did Amy Blowjob get on her knees before or after you put her name in your phone?”
“I have four women writers on my staff,” he boasts. “And I only banged two of ’em.”
I look at his phone. “Which one did you bang? Amy Fish Lips or Amy Sponsor?”
“That’s private,” he snaps. “Neither. Fuck. Stop it. Seriously.”
But there are so many more. “Does Amy Sponsor One know about Amy Sponsor Two?”
“Kid,” he says. “You quit now, you get paid. You fuck around, you don’t.”
“Who gives better head, Amy Sponsor One or Amy Sponsor Two?”
“That’s an AA thing,” he barks. “I was
in that for a while, and that’s that.”
“But I guess that’s not how you met Amy Grey Goose and Amy Tequila.”
I laugh but he struggles. “Dude,” he says. “I don’t lie to these girls. I’m not the bad guy. This is fucking beat, kid. You gotta stop.”
“Did you meet Amy Bellagio after you boarded Amy American Airlines or before?”
“Fuck off,” he snaps. “I’m serious. Cut. Stop. Enough.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “This isn’t your show, Henderson. Do you not get that by now?”
Frankie Valli continues to croon in the background, lecturing adolescent men about their juvenile posture. Henderson meanwhile screams and I search for Amy Blueberries. She lives here too, and I never felt so betrayed. My girlfriend, his phone. She looks foul here, lumped between Amy Blue Balls and Amy Bradley Whitford Party. I want to kill her. I want to kill Henderson. I dial Amy Blueberries and it brings me to a familiar recording. This phone’s not in service anymore; fucking Amy.
Henderson howls, red and enraged. He wants out of his shackles. Five seconds ago he was talking to me about getting paid and you really can’t trust anyone here. No wonder Amy thought she’d feel at home.
I search his phone for communications with Amy Blueberries. I feel like I’m going to get diseases just from looking at these texts and I am so disgusted with him, his abuse of power. I bet Jack Nicholson never did anything like this and I bet Paul Newman never asked women to come over bring two other chicks I want to watch you eat each other out. All his requests are honored. The girls come over. They bring other girls. It’s all horrifying and pornographic and he is one of America’s favorite men and this isn’t Bill Clinton falling for an intern and this isn’t Hugh Grant bumbling with a tranny on Hollywood Boulevard. This is revolting. He doesn’t delete any of the messages and the girls are always writing to him gushing about his dick—it’s HUGE and HOT—even though he ignores them once he gets into their pants. He is a loveless narcissist and only interested in the new. Just like on his show, the way he makes fun of our nostalgic fucking culture and brings on one soulless noisy band after another, all of them disposable. Then he gets home and rocks out to the Jersey Boys soundtrack and obsesses over pictures of his ex-fucking-wife. It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done, honoring his request for water. I turn off my music.
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