Out of Whack (32 page)

       “I’d love to,” I said. “But I already have plans. Maybe we should do something after the show.”

       “That’d be fun. You interested in dinner, Travis?”

       Travis thought about it for a moment. “Sure, why not? It’ll be more interesting than listening to Seth obsess over the one stupid poem he has to read tonight.”

       “Great! My car’s out front.”

       Travis turned to me. “I’ll meet you at Laugh Attack, seven o’clock sharp. Tell Laura it’s not necessary to get there three hours early.”

       “Enjoy yourself,” I said. “Nice seeing you again, Kirk.”

       Kirk nodded. “Good luck tonight, and I’ll definitely see you later.”

* * *

       7:00. “Oh, sure, he tells me to be here at seven o’clock sharp.”

       7:10. “If he’s out getting drunk with Kirk, I’m going to quit brushing the roaches off his face while he sleeps, I mean it.”

       7:20. “Where the hell is he?”

       7:30. “I can’t believe he would be so irresponsible! We have to go on in half an hour!”

       7:40. “That shithead!”

       “You have no idea where they went?” Laura asked.

       “Just out to dinner, like I said. I don’t know where.” I was pacing around the Laugh Attack stage, getting more and more frantic. “What if they were in an accident? Or what if Kirk has become some kind of serial killer? What if he’s got this twisted evil that’s eating him up inside, and the only thing that can release it is to kill those who humiliated him back in high school?”

       I had this sudden vision of Kirk standing in his bathroom, breathing deeply and wiping sweat from his forehead as he gazes at his reflection.

      
The Voices are about to torment him again. He can feel them writhing inside his head, stirring from their slumber. And when they speak, horrible things happen.

       “Please... leave me alone this time...” he whispers. “I don’t want to hear you.”

       Then one of the Voices speaks. It is the one he knows only as Cedric, recognizable by the deep, eerie tone.

       “When variable a is equal to the sum of b and c squared plus 606.0842, then the coefficient of x + y - z must—”

       Now Morgan speaks: “Continuing the list of those graduating Cum Laude...  Alan R. Connell, Early Childhood Education... Jennifer B. Conner, Speech Pathology and Audiology... Heidi S. Coogan, Human Resource Management...”

       “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Kirk requests.

       Next comes Bob, the worst of all: “Horses. I like them. Pigs. I like them. Turkeys. I like them. Goats, I like them, but not as much as turkeys. Flamingoes. I like them.”

        Kirk staggers out of the bathroom, hands pressed tightly against his head. “Why must you torture me so?” he wails, falling to his knees.

       Finally the Voices fade. Kirk stands there, breathing deeply for several minutes to regain his sense of well being, then sighs with relief.

       He walks into the kitchenette and grabs his butcher knife. Now that the Voices are gone, he can go out and kill somebody in peace. He pauses to make himself a Rice Krispies Treats sandwich to curb those pre-homicide munchies, and smiles at the vision that has filled his mind for all these years...him clutching the knife tightly in his fist as he stands over the bodies of Travis and myself, our throats slit and our blood soaking into a tacky pastel-orange shag carpet.

      
Hey, it was possible.

       “I’m sure Travis is fine,” said Laura. “We still have twenty minutes. He’s probably just trying to make us sweat.”

       I shook my head. “He may be obnoxious a lot of the time, but he wouldn’t do something like that. Not when it’s important.”

       “He could have lost track of time.”

       “I doubt it, but it’s possible. We don’t know Kirk very well...maybe it’s his fault, maybe he got them lost or something. Maybe he found a pile of moldy fruit somebody threw away and wasn’t willing to leave it behind.”

       Laura checked her watch for the third time that minute. “Okay, they’re going to let the audience in any moment now. If we cancel, it won’t be the end of the world, but we’ll never be invited back.”

       “Just what we need. A huge blotch on careers that haven’t even started yet.”

       “We can’t cancel, Seth. And we have to pretend that Travis isn’t going to show up. If he does, great, we’re saved, but until he walks through that door, we have to plan on you taking his place.”

       Yes, that’s right. With two full days to rehearse, I didn’t have what it took to be a performer. With twenty minutes before showtime, I was going to have to learn.

       “I can’t,” I insisted. “I don’t know the lines.”

       “You wrote them! And you’ve gone over them with Travis dozens of times, and you’ve watched us rehearse them into the ground!”

       “I know, but—”

       “The lines won’t be a problem. Even if you can’t do them word-for-word, you can’t tell me you don’t have the basic gist.”

       “Laura, I really don’t want to do this. If we go up there and do a terrible job, that’ll be worse than canceling!”

       “We won’t do a terrible job.”

       “We might! You can’t imagine how nervous I am right now!”

       “You’ll be relaxed. I promise.”

       “How can you promise?”

       “Because I’m going to take you into the bathroom, massage your shoulders, and then give you the most incredible blowjob you can imagine. You’ll feel better.”

       I believed her.

       One most incredible blowjob I could imagine later, I was certainly feeling better. Not quite mellow, but a vast improvement over near-hysterics.

       It was five minutes until showtime, and there was no sign of Travis. I hated at least 90% of the guts in his body.

       But I was also incredibly worried about him.

“A Surprising Success”

- or -

“Crash and Burn”

(I don’t want to give anything away.)

       “They didn’t suck earlier this week or last night, and so everybody please welcome back...Out of Whack!”

       The audience applauded. Fools.

       Laura and I walked up on-stage. I’d like to say that I was feeling a renewed confidence, and that my lines seemed to be floating in the air in 72 point Times New Roman font right before my very eyes, and that the characters I was about to play seemed to be taking over my body like a demonic possession. I’d really, really like to say all that, mainly because I’d already blanked out once before and to have it happen again in the same book would result in a repetitious plot structure, which is one of those things the critics’ll slam you for.

       But if I said that, kind reader, I’d be lying.

       We got into our positions for the “Drawing With Daddy” skit, which could well have been the “Twisting Our Tongues Into New And Exciting Positions Then Yanking Them Out With Red-Hot Pliers And Feeding Them To Yaks” skit for as much as I remembered.

       “Okay, Laura,” I said, calling her by her real name instead of Ashley like I was supposed to. “Do you want to draw Aunt Margaret’s hair?”

       And with one screw-up I’d just thrown our first five lines down the drain. Let’s hear it for Seth Trexler! He’ll be here all week! Don’t forget to tip your servers!

       Laura nodded and began to draw. “No, honey,” I said, “that’s Aunt Margaret’s tumor, not her hair.”

       That got a chuckle from a couple of people and an “Eeeewww” from a heavyset woman in the front row with a face like a flat tire on an eighteen-wheeler (you’re just going to have to trust me on that one). I saw in Laura’s eyes that she knew she’d made rather a poor judgment call in allowing us to proceed with the show. There would be no sex tonight.

       I threw a glance at the Master of Ceremonies. From the expression on his face, I could tell he was mentally rewriting the part in his introduction about us not sucking.

       We were silent for a moment as Laura tried to figure out a way to ad-lib in character and I tried to figure out a way to remain conscious and upright.

       “All right, stop that immediately!” a loud but slurred voice shouted.

       Laura and I looked at the door, where Travis stood, pointing accusingly at the stage. “This man is an impostor!” he said, weaving his way through the tables, staggering just a bit. He was holding a small paper sack. “He may look as nerdy as a real comedian, but he’s a fraud! And I can prove it!”

       He stepped up onto the stage and turned to address the audience. “If he were truly a member of the universe-famous comedy troupe Out of Whack, he’d have a doggy bag just like mine, which would contain...” Travis paused for dramatic effect as he pulled something out of the bag. “...fuzzy dice!” He turned back toward me. “So, you reprehensible pseudo-comic, do you have a doggy bag filled with fuzzy dice, or am I going to have to kick your ass?” Travis’ eyes weren’t quite focusing on me, and his enunciation left a lot to be desired, but he seemed sober enough to perform.

       “Darn you!” I shouted, filled with so much relief that I found myself able to ad-lib, albeit in a rather lame fashion. “You found me out, but I’ll be back!” I stepped off-stage and stormed back to my table.

       “I’m sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen,” said Travis. “Serial comedian impersonation is a serious problem in our society, and I’m here to combat it wherever possible. Now, back to the show.” He knelt down next to the table. “Okay, Ashley, what do you want to draw? Do you want to draw our house?”

       Laura said her lines without hesitation, and they proceeded with the skit as if nothing had happened. I motioned the waitress over to my table and asked for something with a shitload of alcohol, feeling as if the weight of the world had been removed from my jockstrap. Travis was going to get the chewing-out of his life after our performance was finished, but at least now I could relax.

       A couple more lines into the skit, there was a long pause. A blank look came over Travis’ face, as if he’d forgotten his lines. Then his eyes rolled upward, his head lolled backward, and he dropped onto the stage with a loud thump.

       The weight of the world went “Nyahh nyahh, fooled you!” and came crashing back down upon me.

       Travis’ fall had earned a decent laugh from the audience, as such sophisticated humor often does. The only thing we had in our favor was that the audience was assuming this was all part of the act. But I wondered just how much more messing up we could do before they caught on.

       I pushed back my chair and stood up, trying desperately to think up something hilarious to say. “So, he’s drunk again!” I announced. Nobody laughed, most likely because it wasn’t funny. I walked toward the stage, unable to stop wringing my sweating hands together in preparation for a really spectacular nervous breakdown. Laura was still staring at Travis in a state of shock.

       “Is he still breathing?” I asked.

       Laura poked at him. “Yeah.”

       “Good.”

       Wonderful ad-lib there. We were not doing well.

       I knelt down next to the table and tried to recall the lines to the skit. Then, failing that, I tried to recall the name of the skit. Then I tried to recall my own name. Oh, I was ever so screwed...

       “Should we remove him from the stage?” Laura asked, gesturing toward Travis.

       “Nah,” I said, figuring if things got really rough I could take out my frustration by kicking him several times in the head. Or maybe I could even get some laughs by stretching out his ears and tying them together.

       “So, Daddy,” said Laura, “would you like to watch me draw?”

       It was a pretty decent cue, and I could have kept the skit flowing with a large number of responses, including “Yes,” “Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” or even by nodding my head. But I remained frozen, sweat running down into my eyes, trying to recall lines that might as well have been NASA rocket schematics.

       We were silent for a moment.

       “I can draw lots of things,” said Laura.

       More silence. I blinked several times, my eyes burning from the sweat. What was wrong with me? Why was this so difficult? What was the big deal about standing here on this stage...with people watching me...staring at me...analyzing my every move...

       I could see by Laura’s pained expression that she was about to give it up as a hopeless cause. We’d cancel the show, never be invited to perform anywhere ever again, and go on to work for soulless corporations in unfulfilling, miserable jobs for the rest of our lives.

       The silence continued.

       Then was broken by a snore.