Death by Pantyhose (3 page)

"You poor thing!" she said, wrapping me in a
hug as I sunk in the Miata. "Tell Kandi all about
it.

"I will, but first, you've got to drive me over
to Crazy Dave's."

"Crazy Dave's?"

"A car rental place on Pico and Cloverfield."

While waiting for Kandi to show up, I'd called
my trusty insurance company, whose motto is:
When Trouble Strikes, Don't Come Whining to Us.
The helpful claims lady told me that I was entitled to the princely sum of fifteen dollars a day
to rent a car. She had to be kidding. I could
barely rent a bicycle for fifteen bucks a day.

Which is why I'd decided to rent a car from
Crazy Dave's Rent-A-Wreck. I'd driven past
Crazy Dave's lot many times and remembered a
sign out front claiming: My Cars Are So Cheap, Its
CRAZY! The price seemed right to me.

"Okay," Kandi said, swerving out into traffic
and barely missing a bus. "Now tell me everything that happened."

And I did.lI told her how I ran into the
phony Stan McCormick and how he figured out
I was going on a job interview and stole my car
and stuck me with the bill for two steak sandwiches and a tiramisu.

"I don't believe it!" she said when I was finished.

"I know. It's incredible, isn't it?"

"You had a steak sandwich and tiramisu for
lunch? Do you realize how many calories you ate? Not to mention cholesterol and triglycerides."

"Kandi, I think you're missing the point. The
guy stole my car. The cops said it's probably
gone forever. I'm going to have to fork over
money I don't have for a new one."

"Twenty years from now when your arteries
are clogged with old steak sandwiches, you
won't care about that silly car. And besides, the
car isn't really a problem. I can give you the
money to get another one."

Kandi happens to be one of the most generous women in the world. She's always offering
to bail me out of my financial scrapes, but due
to my idiotic pride, I'm always turning her down.

Of course, Kandi can afford to be generousthanks to her job as a writer on the Saturday
morning cartoon show Beanie & the Cockroach.
Yes, I know it's hard to believe that someone can
make scads of money writing jokes for a household pest, but she does.

The thing is, I know Kandi would write me a
check in a minute if I asked her, and I'm always
touched by her generosity.

"I can't let you do that," I said. "But thanks
for offering. And thanks for coming to get me. I
hope I didn't drag you away from an important
script meeting."

"Actually, I was auditioning actresses."

"Oh? One of your supporting insects get
sick?"

"I wasn't auditioning for the show. I'm trying
to find someone to play me."

"You?"

"Yes," she said, cutting in front of a BMW. "I got another speeding ticket again. Can you believe that?"

"Of course I can believe it, Kandi. You're a
terrible driver. I've seen crash test dummies
drive better than you."

"I am not a bad driver!" she protested, giving
the finger to the BMW. "Anyhow, I need somebody to go to traffic school for me."

"Why can't you go yourself?"

"I can't. It brings back too many memories."

"What memories?"

"Have you forgotten? That's where I met
Steve."

I'm ashamed to admit I had forgotten. Steve
was Kandi's ex-fiance, a darling guy who she met
in traffic school; they were all set to get married
when he ran off with the wedding planner-another darling guy named Armando.

"I can't possibly face traffic school again."

"Can't you take a course online?"

"Online, in person. It's all the same. Just thinking about those traffic rules makes me weepy.
Steve and I first exchanged glances during a discussion of U-turns," she said, making an illegal
one.

"You're nuts. If you get caught, you could lose
your license."

"I won't get caught. I just need to find someone who looks like me and is smart enough to
pass the test."

By now we'd pulled in to Crazy Dave's Rent-AWreck, which indeed lived up to its name. The
place was wall-to-wall clunkers. I almost expected to see Jed Clampett chugging along in
his Model T.

"You can't possibly be serious about renting a
car here," Kandi said, looking around, aghast.

"It's not so bad."

"Are you kidding? It looks like the aftermath
of a demolition derby. C'mon, I'll take you to
Hertz. My treat."

"I'll be fine," I said, with a confidence I didn't
feel. "I'm sure these cars are perfectly safe."

I got out of the car and shooed her away.

"Go on, Kandi. I'm okay."

She shook her head, exasperated, and drove
off, doing some heavy-duty tsk-tsking.

Once she was gone, I headed for a small office at the rear of the lot, where I found a bald
butterball of a guy working at a computer, eating a piece of baklava. His scalp shone like a
snow dome under the glare of the fluorescent
lights.

A matching butterball woman, practically his
twin, sat at a desk next to his, poring over account books with a chewed-up pencil.

"Er ... Crazy Dave?" I said tentatively.

"That's me," the man boomed, in a thick
Russian accent. "What can I do for you, lady?"

I told him I needed to rent a car for fifteen
dollars a day, and much to my relief, he did not
break out into gales of derisive laughter. On the
contrary, he assured me he had the perfect car
for me.

"Don't worry, lady," he said. "Crazy Dave will
take good care of you."

I had a hunch his name wasn't really Dave.
Mainly because the butterball lady kept pointing to his baklava and shrieking, "Watch out,
Vladimir! Crumbs in the keyboard! Crumbs in
the keyboard!"

Crazy Dave AKA Vladimir led me outside. The
place bore an uncanny resemblance to a parking
lot in downtown Kabul. Not that I've ever actually been to downtown Kabul. I'm just guessing.

After looking at the wrecks-I-mean, previously owned vehicles-in my price range, I finally settled on a decrepit VW Beetle so old I
almost expected it to have a "Hitler for Fuhrer"
bumper sticker.

It was a stick shift and it had been years since
I'd driven a shift, but I figured it would all come
rushing back to me in no time. True, the car was
painted a bilious green, and the fenders looked
like they'd just lost a battle with an angry SUV.
But Crazy Dave assured me my little VW would
purr like a kitten.

Yeah, right. A kitten with asthma. Huge plumes
of exhaust billowed out from the car the minute
I turned on the ignition.

The less said about the ride home, the better.
Sad to say, the art of driving a shift did not come
rushing back to me. I popped the clutch and
ground the gears the whole way home, bucking
and lurching like a drunk on a mechanical bull.

When I finally shuddered to a stop in front of
my apartment, I discovered that the locks were
broken. Oh, well. Not a problem.

Nobody in their right mind was going to steal
this clunker.

-Irozac!" I wailed as I walked in the front
door. "A horrible man stole my Corolla
and stuck me with a lunch bill for two steak
sandwiches and a tiramisu."

Her eyes wide with concern, the little darling
leapt off the pile of freshly washed laundry
she'd been napping on and came bounding to
my side, rubbing my ankles in that comforting
way she has when I'm down in the dumps.

Okay, she didn't move a muscle. She just
yawned a yawn the size of the Grand Canyon
and shot me a look that said, Steak sandwiches,
eh? Any leftovers?

What can I say? Lassie, she's not.

I would've killed for a glass of chardonnay
and/or a box of Oreos to calm my frazzled
nerves, but I showed remarkable restraint and
got down to the business at hand. (Mainly because I was all out of chardonnay and Oreos.)

I simply had to line up a job. I called my
steady clients, but nobody had any work for me. I called my former clients (even the crazymakers
I'd vowed I'd never work for again) and suffered
through a series of dispiriting rejections. When
my ear was numb from all those phone calls, I
answered some online ads for jobs I knew I'd
never get.

Exhausted, I plopped down on the sofa, trying
to think of what else I could do. And then I remembered the nutcase who'd called me earlier
that morning. The pantyhose-tossing comic. The
last thing I wanted to do was write jokes for a
woman whose punch line was a pair of underwear, but I had no choice. I was a desperado. I retrieved her number from my answering machine,
then took a deep breath and made the call.

She picked up on the first ring. Why did I get
the feeling this was a woman hovering over her
phone, happy to hear from anyone, even a telemarketer?

"Dorcas MacKenzie," an eager voice came on
the line. "Funnywoman Extraordinaire."

Not exactly Little Miss Modesty, was she?

"Hi," I said, trying to inject some enthusiasm
into my voice. "This is Jaine Austen, returning
your call."

"Oh, right! I'm so glad you called. Like I said
on my message, I have an absolutely hysterical
comedy act; it just needs to be tweaked here and
there. Have you had any experience writing
comedy?"

"Yes. In fact, I've had some sitcom experience.

Which was no lie. Some time back, I'd written
a script for a sitcom that unfortunately never
saw the light of day, due to a murder that took place during the taping of my show. It was a
thrill-packed chapter in my life that should
have taught me that working in show biz can
be dangerous to your health.

"Really?" Dorcas sounded impressed. "You're
a sitcom writer? What shows did you write for?"

"Only one show," I admitted. "Muffy `NMe."

"Oh." Now she sounded a lot less impressed.
"I never heard of that one."

Okay, so it wasn't exactly Seinfeld, but then
again, neither was she.

"I was hoping for someone with a bit more
experience," she said, "but I'm willing to give it
a shot if you are."

I cleared my throat and broached the subject
at the forefront of my mind.

"About salary. .
."

"Like I said on my message, I can't afford
much. What would you say to five dollars a joke?"

I'd say something not suitable for a family
novel, that's what I'd say.

"Dorcas, I couldn't possibly work for that
amount."

"Six bucks?"

"My going rate is fifty dollars an hour."

I could hear her gasp on the other end of the
line. "I can't afford fifty dollars an hour."

"How about forty?"

"How about we compromise and say ten?"

Ten dollars an hour? Was she kidding? That
was barely above minimum wage. After all, I was
a writer, a wordsmith. The woman who came up
with In a Rush to Flush? Call Toiletmasters!Did she
really think I'd sell my services for a measly ten
dollars an hour?

Bridling with righteous indignation, I said the
only thing possible under the circumstances:
"Sure."

Hey, don't go shaking your head like that.
What else could I do? It was ten dollars an hour
more than I'd make sitting home on my fanny.

We agreed to meet for coffee at Pinky's Deli
in West Hollywood and I set off for the meeting,
with a quick pit stop at the market for a bottle of
chardonnay and some Oreos.

Something told me I'd be needing them.

An hour later, I came lurching up to Pinky's
in my ancient VW, which I was now calling
Wheezy. The drive over had been only slightly
less harrowing than my maiden voyage. I was beginning to get the hang of driving a stick shift
again, but poor Wheezy's asthma showed no
signs of letting up. I managed to coax her into
the parking lot and shut off the ignition with a
sigh of relief.

Pinky's was a nondescript deli, with cracked
vinyl booths and linoleum on the floor, a hangout for the comedians who performed at the Laff
Palace across the street. It was four in the afternoon when I headed inside, and the place was
nearly deserted.

A dark-haired woman sat in a booth at the front
of the restaurant. I figured it had to be Dorcas.
The only other customers in the restaurant were
two guys in their eighties crumbling saltines
into their chicken noodle soup.

I waved tentatively and walked over to join
her.

The first thing I noticed about Dorcas was how skinny she was. Tall and gangly, and thin as
a rail. Think Ichabod Crane with a ponytail.

It was hard to see much of her face. Most of it
was obscured by the huge double-decker pastrami sandwich she was gulping down. It looked
like the sandwich weighed more than she did.

"Hi," I said to the face behind the sandwich.
"Are you Dorcas?"

She jumped up and nodded, her mouth
filled with pastrami.