The Man Who Died Laughing (7 page)

Hoag:
Even though it was humiliating?

Day:
It ain’t humiliating if you’re getting paid for it. So every night I’d come through with a big tray, and he’d say, “Hey, Sonny, what kind of pie is that?” or “‘Hey, Sonny, what time is it?” and I’d take a header and he’d make fun of me. That’s how I got started in show business. I was Frankie Faye’s stooge. How I got my nickname, too—Sonny. Fit together with Day pretty good. Sonny Day.

Hoag:
You were how old?

Day:
Sixteen. Now, while this was happening, Mel and me were still doing our old routines together for fun. We used to do ’em up in the room to keep the other boys entertained. Mel was the straight man. I was the clumsy kid brother. Just like real life. We did our old short-order routine. A dentist’s chair routine. And some new stuff we picked up around Pine Tree. We did one where Mel’s this very high-toned guest with a big cigar and I’m this nervous new waiter trying to light it for him, only I end up lighting it in the middle instead of at the tip. Jerry Lewis stole that from us. All he did was make it more physical. I guess if I had a nine-inch jaw span, I’d make everything more physical, too. He was always on roller skates, throwing cream pies. Did you know I never threw a pie? Ever?

Hoag:
What about in
Suburbia?
At the wedding party when the punch got spiked and Gabe said, “Let me have it.”

Day:
Except in
Suburbia.
And that wasn’t me. That was the gag.

Hoag:
What’s the difference?

Day:
The script called for it.

Hoag:
That’s a genuine bullshit answer, Sonny. You appeared in a movie in which you threw a pie. Fact. Don’t jerk me around, okay? This isn’t a fan magazine piece.

Day:
You’re right. I apologize. I’ve made that statement so many times through the years I’ve started to believe it myself. Forget I said anything about pies.

Hoag:
It’s struck from the record.

Day:
Where was I? Oh, yeah, me and Mel. We did another routine where I’m afraid to ask this pretty girl to dance, so he shows me how, with me playing the girl. Remember the scene in
Ship to Shore
where I don’t have the nerve to ask Lois Maxwell to dance, so I go back to my stateroom and dance with an invisible girl? It still makes people cry, that scene. It was the old Pine Tree routine Mel and me did. Anyway, the social director at Pine Tree was this little putz named Len Fine. He liked Mel and he thought I was funny stooging for Frankie. So he started letting us
tummel
after lunch in front of the guests. No pay. Nothing formal. If people wanted to ignore you, they could. And they
did.
Then one night we got our big break—Frankie’s car broke down on the way up from the city. So Mr. Fine put up a sign and suddenly it was the annual New Talent Night at Pine Tree Manor. We billed ourselves as Day to Day. And on we went after dinner, knees knocking.

Hoag:
Did you bring down the house?

Day:
Yeah. Around us. We
bombed,
pally. Baby, were we terrible. Total amateurs. I mean, we actually giggled at our own material. See, there’s a big difference between being funny in front of your friends and being funny in front of a roomful of strangers. They don’t already know you, or like you. Half of ’em don’t even
want
to like you. So you gotta
make
’em. That means every little thing you do up there has to work for you. You can’t have no weak spots or you’ll lose ’em. Standup comedy is just like being in a prize fight. One mistake and—pow—you’re flat on the canvas. We grew up a lot that night. We learned you gotta throw stuff out, replace it with better stuff, polish it, polish it again, work on your pacing, your delivery, your mannerisms. It’s a
performance
up there, and you’re a
performer.
You’re not
you.
You’ve got to find your stage personality, your—

Hoag:
Your mask?

Day:
Exactly. And once you put it on, you don’t take it off. That’s harder than it sounds, especially when your material is bombing. The temptation then is to break proscenium, wink at the audience, and tell ’em, “Hey, that shit I just did? That ain’t me.” Watch those kids on
Saturday Night Live.
They do that all the time—disown their material. Or get dirty, the easy way out. Professional comedy is very hard work. But you never let the audience see the work. If you do …

Hoag:
Then you’re Frankie Faye.

Day:
You’re catching on. Anyway, we bombed that first night. But Mr. Fine, he saw something. He encouraged us to keep at it over the winter. And we did. We added some new stuff. Refined it. By the next summer our routines were pretty funny for a couple of kids who didn’t know what the hell we was doing. We were good. We didn’t know
how
good, though, until one night the social director of Vacationland, a fellow named Don Appel, caught our act and offered us fifty dollars a week to perform there. That was good money in those days. We went to Mr. Fine and told him he’d have to match it or we’d be moving on. He matched it.

Hoag:
Did you like getting laughs? Did you like the attention?

Day:
It beat being a busboy or a shine. It was fun, sure. People came up to us. Patted us on the back. Told us to look ’em up if we was ever interested in getting into plumbing fixtures.

Hoag:
Did you know this was what you wanted to do with your life?

Day:
No, absolutely not. Mel was going to City College, saving up to go to dental school. Me, I wasn’t old enough to think about anything but my face clearing up. We were a couple of kids. We were having fun. There were a lot of kids up there like us—Red Buttons was doing stand-up then at the Parkston, Sid Caesar was at Vacationland, playing the saxophone. Mel Brooks was up there. He was from Brooklyn. A real nudnick. A pest.

Hoag:
And you honestly didn’t say to yourself, hey, I’ve found my identity—I’m a comic.

Day:
No. I had no idea there was a future in it for me. And then, don’t forget, Mel died on me in 1940. That was a real traumatic thing for me. I’ve never known such a sense of loss. He was everything to me—father, big brother, best friend, partner. When he died … I-I really didn’t know what to do with myself. One thing I knew for sure was I couldn’t even think about performing. All it did was remind me of Mel.

Hoag:
So what did you do?

Day:
I finished high school and took a civil service exam. Got a job in Washington as a clerk for one of FDR’s dollar-a-year men. I lived in a rooming house. Met a nice girl from Indiana along the Potomac one day. Judy Monroe. A stenographer. She had red hair and the whitest skin I’d ever seen. My first real girlfriend. We went to the movies. Ate Chinese food. I almost married Judy. Then Pearl Harbor was bombed. I went into the army. They shipped me down to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for my basic training. Hot, muggy, the food was so greasy and awful I lost twenty-five pounds the first month. Also, it was not a terrific place for a kid from Brooklyn named Rabinowitz. I was the only Jew down there. A lot of the crackers thought it was our fault that the United States was in the war. So I got in a lot of fights. It was just like Gates Avenue all over again. Only I was all alone now. No Mel. No Seetags. The only guy in my barracks who was nice to me was this tall, skinny kid from Nebraska who had the bunk below mine.

Hoag:
What was his name?

Day:
Gabriel Knight. And da rest is showbiz history.

(end tape)

N
O ONE LEFT ME
any more presents that first week. Someone did sort of move around the tapes and notes piled on my desk one afternoon, but I figured that was just Maria doing her dusting. At least I did when the sun was out. When night came and the coyotes started to howl, I became convinced somebody was trying to spook me and was doing a damned good job. I took to looking under the bed at night. There was never anyone hiding down there. Except for Lulu.

I kept thinking it couldn’t be Sonny. He was being so cooperative and open. Our work was going great. I was thinking it couldn’t be Sonny until he announced after our morning workout that he’d decided he wanted to leave Gabe Knight out of the book completely.

We were eating our grapefruit by the pool. He wore his white terry robe with “Sonny” stitched in red over the left breast. I wore mine, too. A gift. Mine said “Hoagy” on it.

“You’re kidding,” I said, nearly choking on a grapefruit section.

“I’m very serious, pally.”

He was. His manner had changed from warm and expansive to guarded.

“We can talk about plenty else,” he went on. “My philosophy of comedy, my theories of directing, my recovery from—”

“Wait. You can’t do this.”

“It’s
my
book, ain’t it?”

“Yes, but the reason people are going to buy it is to read about the two of you. They want to know why you broke up. Certainly that’s why the publisher bought it. Face facts. Gabe is now a very big—”

“So I’ll give ’em their dough back. I changed my mind. Project’s off. You’ll be compensated for your time. Vic’ll book you a flight back to New York for this afternoon.”

As if on cue, Vic appeared. He seemed somewhat short of breath, and was chewing on a thumbnail. “I … I called them, Sonny,” he announced timidly. “I called the police.”

Sonny bared his teeth. “You
what?”

“They said there really isn’t m-much they can do,” Vic plowed on, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand. “What with you destroying the evidence and all. But at least it’s on the record now. It’s better this way. I’m sure of it.”

I cleared my throat. They ignored me.

“Vic, I
told
you I didn’t want you calling ’em!” hollered Sonny, reddening.

“I know you did,” admitted Vic. “But you pay me to protect you.”

“I
pay
you to do what I tell you to do!”

“So,” I broke in, “what exactly are we talking about here, gentlemen?”

Sonny and Vic exchanged a look, Vic shifting uncomfortably from one enormous foot to the other.

Sonny turned to me, brow furrowed. “May as well know, Hoagy. Not like it’s any big deal. I got a death threat in this morning’s mail.”

I swallowed. “What did it say?”

“He won’t tell me,” Vic said. “And he flushed it down the toilet.”

“Crapper is right where it belonged,” snapped Sonny. “Vic, I want you to know that I love you, but I don’t feel very good about you right now. I’m real, real upset with you for bringing the cops into this. They’re bound to leak it to the press. I’ll have ’em crawling all over me again.
Just
what I don’t want. Next time you get a bright idea, do me a big favor and remember something—you’re a dumb ox. Always have been. Always will be. Dig?!”

Vic blinked several times, nodded, swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. He was, I realized, struggling not to cry. “Sonny, I …”

“Get out of my sight!”

“Yes, Sonny.” The big guy skulked back inside the house, head bowed.

Sonny watched him go, shook his head. “Dumb ox.”

“He was just doing his job, Sonny.”

“Hey, you don’t even
have
a job, Hoag,” he snarled. “If I want you to talk, I’ll ask you to talk. Otherwise, shut your fucking mouth.”

With that he turned his attention to that morning’s
Variety.
I sat there for a second, stunned. Then I threw down my napkin and started around the pool to the guesthouse to pack. Then I stopped. Suddenly, Sonny’s book seemed real important to me.

“So why’d you drag me out here?!” I yelled across the pool.

He looked up, frowning. “Whattaya mean?”

“I mean, why’d you waste my time? I’ve put a lot into this. I think what we’ve done so far has been damned good. I’m ready to start writing. My mukluks are unpacked. I’m set to go. Why the fuck did you drag me out here, huh?!”

He tugged at an ear. Then he laughed.

“What’s so funny?!” I demanded.

“You are, Mister New York intellectual kosher dill. If I didn’t know you, I’d swear you’re taking this personal.”

“Maybe I just don’t like to see you back down.”

“Sonny Day
never
backs down.”

“Really? You said you wanted to tell this story. No,
needed
to tell it. You said it was part of your healing process.”

“There’s something you gotta understand about me, pally.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t ever listen to anything I say.”

I returned to the table and sat down across from him. “Why are you balking, Sonny?”

“I-I can’t help it. This thing … this thing with Gabe is too painful.”

“More painful than talking about your father?”

“Much more.”

“How so?” I can’t. I just can’t.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“How can I?” he asked. “
You
don’t
trust
me.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You won’t let me get close to you.”

“This is
work,
Sonny. This isn’t personal.”

“Work
is
personal with me.”

Wanda came padding out from the kitchen in her caftan and sweat socks. Her eyes were puffy, her hair mussed. “What’s all the yelling about?”

“Creative differences,” Sonny replied.

“This is your idea of creative differences?” I asked.

“Just like old times,” he acknowledged. To Wanda he said, “You’re up early.”

“Who’s up?”

“What’s the occasion?”

“I have a class.” She yawned and poured herself some coffee.

He turned back to me. “Tell ya what, pally. I got that emcee job in Vegas tomorrow. Why don’t you come with me? We’ll have the whole drive out. We’ll talk, have dinner. Maybe it’ll help. If I still feel the same way when we get back, then we’ll call it off.”

“What about Lulu?”

“It’s only for one night. Wanda can take care of her.”

“Sure, Wanda can take care of her,” Wanda said.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll go to Vegas.”

“We’ll go to Vegas,” Sonny agreed. “Just the two of us.”