The Man Who Cancelled Himself (13 page)

“What is it?” asked Marjorie.

“Rob’s genuinely blind,” Marty replied enthusiastically, pitching his ass off. “He’s a
blind
blind date. Great gag, and it gives Rob just the kind of spin you’re looking for. Plus it gets us into all sorts of serious issues about the handicapped, like Katrina wants.”

“On the downside,” cautioned Tommy, “we’ll be locked into it.”

“Unless we want to do an operation at the end of the season to restore his sight,” countered Marty.

“This coming Monday,” intoned Tommy gravely, “a very special
Uncle Chubby
…”

“I love this!” squealed Katrina.

“We don’t find out until next fall what happens,” Marty went on excitedly. “Helluva summer cliffhanger. What do you think, Chief?”

Lyle considered it a moment, brow furrowed. “Let’s not do that.”

“Too limiting,” agreed Tommy instantly.

“Snap-crackle-flop,” admitted Marty, retreating from it.

“Okay, he works for the Internal Revenue Service,” pitched Tommy, moving right along. Neither of The Boys was the least bit fazed by Lyle’s turndown. Their job was simply to offer up possibilities, not to believe in one of them. Or in anything. It was scary. It was like being a lawyer. “And Deirdre gets this letter summoning her to headquarters. She thinks she’s gonna get audited. She freaks, because she’s such a stickler for keeping precise records. So she barges in with ten shoe boxes full of papers and really lets the IRS agent have it and—”

“Rob’s the agent?” asked Marjorie.

Tommy nodded. “Turns out she just forgot to sign her return. After she apologizes for screaming at him, he asks her out.”

“Or she asks him out,” suggested Marty, playing to Marjorie’s presence at the table.

“I
don’t
wanna do a meet cute!” bellowed Lyle. “How many times do I gotta say it?! Besides, an IRS agent does even less for us than a shop teacher.”

“Audiences do tend to dislike characters who work for the government,” Marjorie pointed out, as if a survey had been commissioned on the very subject. Very likely one had been.

“He c-could be an old friend,” sputtered Bobby. “Someone D-Dierdre and Chubby grew up with. She maybe went out with h-him once or twice in high school. They l-lost contact through the years, and now he’s back in town and … and …”

Lyle started snoring loudly. He was a man who needed a whipping boy. Bobby was it. “I swear to God, Bobby, every time you open your mouth I feel like I’m listening to National Public Radio,” he cracked, taunting him.

Bobby just gripped his script tightly, blinking, blinking.

“I
got
it!” cried Marty, smacking the table triumphantly. “It’s a natural! It’s staring us in the face!”

“The only thing staring us in the face is cancellation,” muttered Tommy.

“What is it?” asked Marjorie anxiously.

“We make
him
the milkman!” declared Marty. “Natural, right?”

Total silence. Deafening silence.

“Then again,” Marty quipped, with admirable aplomb, “shit is natural, too. And you wouldn’t want to watch it for thirty minutes a week.”

“Whatta we do, Hoagy?” wailed Lyle mournfully. “Tell us. Don’t hold nuttin’ back.”

They all looked at me again, beseechingly this time. They were hoping I somehow had it—the magic solution that would somehow make the network happy, Lyle happy, Katrina and The Boys all happy at the same time. Something each of them could live with—for better or wurst.

“I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing a blind date,” I replied. “Provided you explore Deirdre’s feelings about it ahead of time, as Bobby suggested. It might also be nice to hear how Rob feels about it, too. We’d like him more if we knew he was feeling insecure, possibly even intimidated—she is, after all, a lawyer. And she has children. That would scare a lot of men off.”

“That plays,” Marty said. “That would also give him something to do if we want to get him in the show earlier.”

“Who does he unload on?” asked Marjorie, musing aloud. “Does he have a friend?”

“He’s a yutz,” replied Tommy. “How could he?”

“There’s always Jimmy,” suggested Marty.

“Again with the milkman,” moaned Tommy.

“No, wait!” exclaimed Annabelle. “I love that. Check it out—I’m, like, Jimmy is literally delivering the story from one house to the other, like the milk. That’s
extreme.
”

“W-Wonderful resonance,” agreed Bobby. “Shades of Odets.”

“That’s Bernie Odets,” cracked Tommy. “Used to write for the Skelton show.”

Marty shook his head. “What are we saying? He lays it on
Chubby
when the two of them are fixing the dishwasher together.
Chubby
is his friend.
He’s
who Rob confides in.”

“Mo’ better,” said Lyle approvingly.

“Okay, okay …” Marty started scribbling notes on a long yellow legal pad. “We stay with the blind date, but we still have to get Master Fruitwell in earlier. …”

Tommy: “We open the night before, instead of that morning. It’s suppertime, okay? We do the usual domestic shit. …”

Marty: “Dishwasher’s not working …”

Tommy: “Dishwasher’s not working … The phone rings … It’s Rob. Chubby thinks he’s a solicitor, hangs up on him. Rob calls back …”

Marty: “And we do the phone call. There’s sparks. There’s flirting. There’s heat.”

Tommy: “He asks her out for tomorrow night. She says yes.”

“We can pretape his end,” Lyle added, for Marjorie’s benefit. “Won’t even have to build a set. Randy can whip up a piece of backdrop in two seconds flat. Go on, Tommy, you’re on a roll.”

“That’s a Kaiser roll,” cracked Marty. “Lightly seeded.”

“We cut to next morning,” Tommy continued. “We still do Chubby losing Deirdre’s forty bucks to Jimmy.”

“Stop,” objected Marjorie. “I told you that the gambling is—”

“We’ll kill the pool hall,” offered Marty, negotiating. “She and Rob can go somewhere else. But Chubby’s got to blow the money on the horse. We need that. You can let us have it, can’t you, Marjorie?”

She considered this gravely, lips pursed, her head cocked slightly to one side. Again I thought she looked familiar, and again I wondered why—I so seldom ran into her type anymore. Or at least I tried very hard not to. “Where do they go on their date?” she asked.

“I know where,” Lyle replied. “We got a set for a Japanese restaurant left over from last season we never used. It’s in the warehouse, all built and paid for. Can have it here by the end of the day.”

“We’d have to hire Asian actors, Lyle,” Katrina pointed out. “And pay off the ones we already have.”

“Keep ’em around. No reason they can’t be eating suki-yaki.”

“We’ll still need waitresses,” she contended. “And costumes.”

Lyle sat there making these short, flatulent noises with his lips behind his mask. “We make it into a bonus—it
was
a Japanese restaurant, now it’s a Tex-Mex joint. Just opened. They haven’t changed the decor yet. We can get in a joke about a Japanese business going broke, huh?”

“And what about the forty dollars Deirdre wins back from Jimmy?” Marjorie wondered doubtfully.

“She doesn’t,” Tommy replied. “Chubby loses it, period. Typical Chubby behavior. And she’s genuinely pissed at him. Also typical.”

“Whattaya say, Marjorie dear?” asked Lyle. “Can you live with it?”

Marjorie clasped her hands and gazed up at the ceiling, mulling it over in silence. Or maybe she was looking to Him for an answer. The silence grew longer, The Boys more anxious. Finally she shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. “We can live with it, Lyle.”

“Yesss!” exclaimed Marty, jumping to his feet. “Let’s go, pardner, we got rewrites.” He was halfway to the door before he stopped Cold. “Shit.”

Tommy was still struggling to get up out of his chair. “Shit what?”

“Shit, we still haven’t got a job for Rob,” Marty said miserably.

“Shit.” Tommy slumped back into his seat.

Marty sat back down. Silence followed. Now a number of people were gazing up at the ceiling. Until, slowly, they began looking you-know-where again.

I tugged at my ear. “Would someone tell me what’s wrong with Rob being a wood shop teacher?”

“It doesn’t give us enough,” said Marty.

“He can’t bring any stories in,” said Tommy.

“Unless he cuts off a finger,” said Marty.

“And we can only do that, what, ten times,” said Tommy.

“I’m, like, it’s boring.”

“B-Bland.”

“What if he taught health education?” I proposed. “That covers a lot of ground in a typical suburban high school—sex education, AIDS awareness, drugs, alcohol—”

“N-Nutrition,” added Bobby, with great intensity. “Kids don’t know how to eat right any more. We have an entire g-generation being raised on the Taco Bell instead of the L-Liberty Bell.”

“I swear to God, Bobby,” jeered Lyle, “one more line like that outta you and I’m taking out a gun.”

“I
liked
that,” protested Katrina.

“So, what, he’s Mr. Novak?” asked Tommy.

“If you like,” I replied.

“Who’s that?” asked Katrina.

“A sixties classroom show starring the late Jimmy Franciscus,” replied Marty.

“Wait, wait,” said Annabelle. “You call him that because he’s always late, right?”

“No, I call him that because he’s dead.” Marty thumbed his chin. “So Rob’s the cool guy. The one that they can turn to when they’re in trouble. He listens. He cares. He gets involved. All of which means he can drag a million stories in the door with him. I like this, Hoagy.”

“Extreme!” cried Annabelle. “It’ll even bring in the
Beverly Hills 90210
crowd!”

“Slam dunk,” conceded Tommy.

“B-Brilliant.”

“God was searching for a positive new direction,” Marjorie responded cautiously. “We may have found it.” Her way of voicing approval.

“I love it, I love it, I love it!” squealed Katrina.
Her
way. She got up and ran toward me with her arms outstretched and her hooters ajiggle, shades of Morgana, The Kissing Bandit. I didn’t know whether to duck or run. Before I could do either she’d planted a hard, wet kiss on my right ear, temporarily deafening me.

Yes, everyone loved it. Everyone except for the one person who hadn’t said a word. “Last time I looked I was still running this show,” Lyle growled irritably.

Which chilled things considerably.

“What do you say, Chief?” asked Marty. “Great, huh?”

Lyle ran a fat gloved hand through his red curls and leaned back in his chair, which groaned under him. He glanced balefully around the table at everyone. “Try it,” he said grudgingly. “Only don’t get carried away. Remember we’re not doing
To Mr. Fruitwell, With Love.
We’re doing
The Uncle Chubby Show.”

“For now,” muttered Tommy under his breath.

The protestors were still out there on the sidewalk in front of the studio with their pickets. They seemed quieter and limper than they had that morning. Maybe it was the hot white summer sun and foul, heavy air. Maybe it was that the news cameras had bagged their footage for the day and moved on. I don’t know. The cops just looked bored.

The Kids took me around the corner to Big Mama Thornton’s for lunch, Chelsea’s version of a shit-kicking Southern roadhouse. The walls were of aged barn siding and studded with dented hubcaps and chrome bumpers and old Louisiana license plates. There was sawdust on the floor, and Michael Bolton was not, happily, blasting over the stereo. John Lee Hooker was—“Streets Is Filled with Women,” from the Detroit sessions produced by Bernie Besman in the late forties.

Our waitress wore jackboots and a T-shirt and a great deal of crust around the edges. “Okay, don’t tell me,” she said hoarsely as she stomped over to us. To Annabelle she said, “Diet Coke.” To Bobby she said, “Regular Coke, no ice.” To me she said, “Gibson?”

“Never touch them. Make it an iced tea.”

“I meant,” she said, “is Mel Gibson the father?”

“With lemon,” I added wearily. Lulu wanted to tear her throat out. “No sugar.”

We all ordered pork barbecue with cole slaw and hush puppies. Lulu went for the fried catfish.

“Now, does she always eat with you in restaurants?” Annabelle asked, keenly interested.

“If that’s where I happen to be eating.”

“And what if you’re at home? What does she eat then?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Bobby sat there quietly twisting his paper napkin around one knuckle, again and again, tighter and tighter. Origami for the clinically hostile.

“Was that a fairly typical notes session?” I asked him.

“P-Par for the course,” he replied bitterly. “Most shows g-get ripped apart and thrown back together that way. That’s w-why they don’t make any sense half the time.”

“Today’s gang bang was maybe a bit more amped out than usual,” Annabelle said, sucking on her Diet Coke through a straw. “I’m, like, now that Katrina’s sitting in.”

“Leo told me she thinks Katrina is pure evil.”

“No way!” shrieked Annabelle. “Leo
would
say that.”

“Why?”

“Because she let Leo love her.”

“Y-You don’t know that,” Bobby blurted out.

Annabelle batted her eyes at him. “You are such a bunny.”

“That’s gossip,” he insisted vehemently.

“I’m, like, Leo is gay,” Annabelle explained for my benefit. “I’m not putting her down or anything. Just explaining. Katrina came in as an extra for a party scene last season. She was one of the dancers. She can dance for real. Used to be on
Club MTV,
I mean. And I’m, like, she still works out two hours a day just to hold onto her shape, which would go
so fast
if she let it. Anyway, Leo fell for her
extreme.
Gave her a full-time job. Got Gwen to buy some of her stupid jewelry for the show. And when the sublet ran out on Katrina’s apartment, Leo let her move in with her. Bought her clothes, gave her extra spending money. I’m talking love here, okay?”

“Did the two of them—?”

“No!” replied Bobby, sharply.

“Nobody knows fer sure if they did the wild thing or not,” said Annabelle. “Me, I wouldn’t put it past Katrina. On account of, that woman is full of blah-blah-blah.”