The Man Who Cancelled Himself (2 page)

“We finally finished it in May,” Katrina confided shyly. “It ended up costing us over four times what we thought it would—nearly ten million dollars. We had to import the whole crew from Barcelona to do the stucco work. Red tape like you wouldn’t believe. But it was worth it.”

“And who was your architect?” I asked, so I’d remember never to hire him.

“I was,” she replied, sneaking a peek at me. “Surprised?”

“Every once in a while.”

“I had to let the first two architects go,” she explained. “They just didn’t have the same vision I had. The two original wings, they
wanted
to be joined. They cried out to be joined. But the architects, they were just so …”

“Hard of hearing?”

“Traditional. I had to battle with them constantly. The second one finally told me, hey, I ought to just design it myself. So I did.” She stood there admiring it. “It’s not a house for everyone.”

“It certainly isn’t.”

“It’s very cerebral.”

“It certainly is.”

There was a Nantucket-style pool house out back, a blue-stone patio, a redwood picnic table with benches, a built-in brick barbecue pit where Lyle could no longer grill steaks. The lawn gave way to reeds and tall grasses, which separated the property from the beach. The water sparkled in the sun. In the distance there were sailboats. It was all rather nice, considering the rest of the place.

“I haven’t gotten around to redesigning the backyard yet,” she said, which explained it. “All we did was the lap pool so Lyle could do his workouts.”

Lyle Hudnut was no threat to Matt Biondi in the water. He thrashed and snorted and bellowed like a gut-shot hippo, displacing huge quantities of water in the process. But then Lyle Hudnut did nothing in a small or quiet way. Not that anyone in the United States thought of him as Lyle Hudnut. He was Chubby Chance—Uncle Chubby—the immense, gross, unruly sitcom ne’er-do-well who had held forth on network television’s No. 1 rated prime-time show for three straight seasons. Uncle Chubby was every little kid’s favorite adult, every slob’s favorite role model, and every parent’s favorite babysitter. Picture a funnier, hipper, and much cruder Mister Rogers and you had Uncle Chubby. Uncle Chubby was television’s biggest star. Emphasis on the word
was.
Because Lyle Hudnut was in deep, deep doo-doo. Had been since the spring, when a routine vice squad roundup at a sleazy porn movie house in Times Square had snared him, pickle firmly in hand. His arrest for indecent exposure and public masturbation had sent shock waves through the television industry. Outraged parents’ groups had immediately demanded that
Uncle Chubby
be jerked off the air, as it were. The network, horrified, had complied. An equally horrified show business community had rushed to Lyle’s defense. His attorney had sued the network. And the controversy had raged for much of the summer, consuming the tabloids and talk radio lines with a passion rivaled only by Mia’s split with the Woodman. Disgraced and humiliated, Lyle Hudnut had twice tried to kill himself. But he had survived. And so had his show. The network, not so anxious to lose its ratings leader, was bringing him back for the fall season, angry protestors notwithstanding. And a publishing house was paying him $3 million to tell America what he was doing in the Deuce Theater that afternoon. And how he survived his ordeal. I was there to help him tell it.

When he saw me there, he finished his lap and pulled himself up out of the narrow pool, bringing a hundred gallons or so of water with him. He stood before me, panting and wheezing, wheezing and panting. Lyle Hudnut was a huge man, two or three inches over six feet—about my height—only he had to weigh close to three hundred pounds, most of it pink, hairless blubber. Rolls of fat spilled obscenely over the waistband of his baggy white trunks like scoops of ice cream melting from a triple-decker cone. Each of his mammoth thighs was as big around as I was. His fat feet looked like twin piglets. I was ready for them to sit up and oink at me. Actually, standing there, he looked like some giant freak infant out of a fifties horror movie—
The Baby Who Ate Bakersfield.
For some reason the small screen has often embraced volcanic comics of immense size and appetites, performers noted for their wildness almost as much as their humor. Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar, and John Belushi come to mind. These days, there was Lyle Hudnut, Belushi’s protégé and friend. He was about forty. Had a big round head with short, curly red hair, a bulb nose, jumbo jug ears, and somewhere between seven and nine chins. He looked a lot like Mr. Potato Head, though he had a much livelier personality. His blue eyes twinkled with mischief, his grin was impish and playful. Early on, many critics wrote that he reminded them of Fatty Arbuckle. The comparison had proven to be eerily prophetic.

Katrina handed him a towel and he dabbed at himself with it, his eyes locked on her tits with fascination and pride. They were built to his scale. They were his. She handed him a giant hooded monk’s habit of unbleached muslin. He put it on over his head and cinched it at the waist and waddled over to me. I half expected him to cry “Piggyback ride, Da-da. Piggyback.” What he said was “Glad you could make it out, pal.” His voice was soft and weary, and in it you could hear the streets of working-class Long Island, which is Queens with strip malls. He stared at my extended paw. “I don’t believe in shaking hands, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “As long as you’re not angling for a hug.”

He shook his head. “No, no. I just have this thing about germs. I don’t like to touch people. Or things people have touched.” For punctuation he cleared his sinuses by blowing his nose into his fingers, much like a homeless person.

“Must be rather difficult working around a TV studio,” I observed, as he carelessly wiped his fingers on his robe.

“I take precautions. Don’t get me wrong, pal. I’m not a nut or nuttin’. I’m just risk adverse.”

“That makes two of us.”

He grinned at me. Huge grin. There was nothing subtle about Lyle Hudnut. He came right at you, and he had tremendous presence—partly because of his size, but not totally. He also had that
something,
that star quality only a few of them have. He demanded your attention and he got it. Just by being there.

“I’ve already explained to Hoagy about his dog, Pinky,” Katrina squeaked.

Lyle stiffened. “Dog? What dog?” he demanded, his eyes widening with fear. Paranoia seemed to bubble just under the surface with him, like a troubled septic system.

Lulu was curled up in the shade a careful twenty feet away, glowering at him.

“You better keep it away from me,” Lyle warned, a whiny edge to his voice.

“It
is a she,” I said. “And she’ll stay out of your way.”

“She works with you?”

“She does.”

“Why?”

“Everyone needs a straight man.”

“And she’s yours?”

“No, I’m hers.”

He drew back and gave me a sidelong scowl, one eye brow raised. The Scowl. His trademark mannerism. At once sarcastic, mocking, and caustic. Then he snorted and parked his porky self on one of the picnic benches and stuck his fat, pink feet out before him. Katrina fell to her knees like a supplicant and began putting his white cotton socks and his Birkenstock sandals on for him. It was a dirty job, but I guess somebody had to do it—better her than me.

“See, I’m leading a hygienic existence these days,” Lyle explained. “No poisons, no germs, no chemicals. This robe, for instance, is totally unbleached, undyed cotton. No formaldehyde. That stuff’ll kill ya—right through your pores. I’m off alcohol and caffeine and my diet is one-hunnert-percent macrobiotic. Rice, beans, and veggies. Tastes great—and, Christ, you wouldn’t believe the butt music. I can do all of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” … I’m gonna be straight up with you, Hoagy. I used to stuff shit into every orifice of my body twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. I devoted my energy to killing myself. These days I’m devoting it to staying alive. I’m
clean.
”

He held up a pudgy hand for silence, even though he was the one doing the talking. I could see the fresh scars on the inside of his wrist from when he’d tried to kill himself with a razor blade earlier that summer. A few days later he swallowed the contents of an economy-sized bottle of Uncle Chubby’s children’s aspirin, 277 tablets in all.

“Time for my readings,” he announced, as if this were as momentous as, say, the Israelis giving up their West Bank settlements.

They had a whole little routine. First Katrina grabbed his wrist and strapped a pulse monitoring wristwatch around it. His index finger went inside a sensory cuff. When his rate registered, she dutifully marked it on a chart, then removed the watch and hooked his finger up to a cuff that was attached to a digital blood-pressure monitor. She marked that down as well. She examined the chart a moment, brow furrowed, then gave him an approving nod and a kiss on the forehead. Beaming, he made it into a wet, slurpy kiss, pulling her down onto his lap. I had a feeling this was for my benefit. Proof of ownership.

“Pinky,” she squeaked, giggling as he pawed her roughly. “You’re an
animal.”

“Can’t help it, Katrina. You do things to me.” He winked at me. “This woman saved my life, Hoagy. Her and no one else. Would you believe my blood pressure used to be up over two hundred? I was
dying.”
He reached for a bottle of mineral water and drank greedily from it, much of it streaming down his chest. “God, I love water.”

“May I offer you something, Hoagy?” asked Katrina. “Herbal iced tea?”

I said that would be nice. She went wiggling and jiggling off to the house to fetch it.

“Wait’ll you taste her tea,” Lyle exclaimed jovially. Although now that the two of us were alone, he seemed to have trouble meeting my eyes. “The greatest. She makes it from scratch. She’s an extraordinary individual, Hoagy. The perfect woman. She’s been a professional dancer, run her own jewelry business, designed this whole place. Plus she happens to be the single greatest fuck in the universe. Of course,” he gloated, “she learned
that
under a master.” He let loose with his famous laugh, a deep rumble that seemed to start way over in the next county, then build up force until it exploded out of him with a huge
hoo-hah-hah.
“Seriously, I’ve never met a woman like Katrina. Somebody
real.
Somebody who loves me for who I am. She stuck by me through all of this, y’know. Never complained. She’s the only one who did. Mickey Stern, my agent, who I considered one of my two or three closest friends in the entire world, wouldn’t even return my phone calls anymore. Ya believe that?”

I did believe that. Of course, you must remember that TV and movie people almost always mistake their business friends for real friends. This is partly because they want to believe that everyone they deal with truly loves them. And partly because they have no real friends.

“My other close friend, Godfrey Daniels, blew my doors off before I even had a chance to defend myself,” he said, of the young programming wizard who had engineered his flagging network’s turnaround from third to first, mostly on the coattails of
Uncle Chubby. Time
magazine labeled him “a genius.”
Newsweek
called him “Mr. Television.” Everyone in the industry simply called him God. Lyle shook his head in disgust. “I called him up the day after I sent him the first draft of the
Uncle Chubby
pilot script, and said, ‘Well, God, did you like it?’ And he said, ‘I love it, Lyle. It’s brilliant. It’s perfect. Don’t change a word. I only have one little note: Can you make them robots?’ True story, I swear. I’ll let you in on a little secret: God is an empty sweater.”

“Yes, I seem to recall reading something about that in the Talmud.”

“No brains. No taste. No guts. A fucking moron. So’s Jazzy Jeff Beckman, who runs the studio that finances me. Another fucking moron. They’re all fucking morons.” His rage was starting to slip out. He caught it and tucked it back in. “But I’ve set aside my anger,” he vowed. “You have to forgive, and I have.”

I nodded, though this one I didn’t believe. Something about the decidedly un-Zenlike anger burning in his eyes. And the way he was clenching and unclenching his big fists. Plus there was his reputation to consider. He was supposed to have the most volatile temper in the entire industry, worse than even the legendary Roseanne Arnold. He was a colossal abuser of actors and writers, a screamer, a puncher, a big mean bully. He made people cry. Made them ill. Made them flee. An
Esquire
writer who hung around the set during the show’s first season wrote, “If you were to cut off Lyle Hudnut’s head, frogs would come jumping out.” Reporters had been banned from the
Uncle Chubby
set after that. I don’t know about frogs.

“One thing this whole awful experience has taught me,” he went on, “is to be grateful for what I have. Because it can all vanish just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis, which woke Lulu. She grunted, got up, circled around three times, curled back up and went back to sleep. It doesn’t take her long. Not a lot on her mind.

Katrina returned now across the patio with my iced tea and a plate of raw carrots for Lyle. She sat next to him on the bench, watching me like a tigress guarding her one and only cub. Alert. Suspicious. Ready to tear my throat out.

Her cub was waiting anxiously for me to tell him how great the tea was. Lyle Hudnut was one of those—a celebrity in constant need of stroking. Nothing bores me more, except maybe
Jurassic Park.

I tasted it. “Excellent.” And it was—as a bracing rub for razor burn.

He beamed at her happily. “We’ve been getting me in shape for the season. I gotta be in tip-top condition. I mean, I write the show, direct it, produce it, star in it … I’m the show.
Me.
Always have been. Ever since I first put together the Suburbanites back in college. I’m the one who found us that crummy little basement club where we performed for nickels and dimes. I’m the one who held us all together. And I still am. I’m the daddy, Hoagy. Fifty-four people depend on me. And that takes its toll. I had to have a doctor on the set full-time last season to give me oxygen and B-twelve shots.” He bit into a carrot. “But that was then. Katrina’s involved now, as my coexecutive producer. Second only to me. Which is a huge help.” He put his arm around her, his big paw playing with the heavy silver chain that she made with her own two hands. “Naturally, there’s been a little resentment from the staff,” he allowed. “But anyone who can’t deal with it is free to leave. Katrina is part of my life now.” He spoke of her as if she were a force of nature. The sun. The wind. Katrina.