The Bones (29 page)

The script Robert had given Honey at the hospital hadn't turned into a job, but he called regularly and was confident he could
get her cast in another pilot since everyone to whom he had shown
Kirkuk
had responded favorably to her work. This kept her as bubbly as could be expected given Frank's deteriorating mental condition,
which bore an inverse relationship to his improving physical one. When Robert got her a guest shot on a new sitcom that required
her to be out of the house for three days, for Honey it was as if Lincoln had freed the slaves.

Frank is seeing a court-mandated therapist in Westwood, an Israeli woman called Naomi Glass. She is a former Mossad officer
in her late fifties whose stylish jet-black hair and formfitting suits make her look twenty years younger, and the result-oriented
approach she practices is precisely what you would expect from someone whose curriculum vitae included targeted assassinations.

She is not a priestess in the Church of Psychology who holds that her parishioners must occupy their pews for life. On the
contrary, she wants to give them the good news and send them on their way. Naomi Glass believes that if you are having a crap
day but have the wherewithal to physically smile for a time, to stretch your mouth into a gaping grin, no matter how ridiculous
you feel doing so, some kind of interoffice memo will be sent from the muscles in your face to the receptors in your brain
reminding them that when the face acts in this way, the happy synapses should fire, and fooled by the face's muscular duplicity,
the brain will respond, causing your inner mood to mirror your cheerful expression.

When Frank first heard this, he actually laughed out loud at what he took to be the utter silliness of it. To which Naomi
Glass responded in her Israeli accent, "See? It's already having an effect." Frank demurred and told her, no, he simply found
it absurd, but she got him to promise to try the technique, which he dutifully did on the cab ride home, stuck in traffic
on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was amazed to find that, for a few minutes, it actually seemed to work. But then his face started
to hurt. He stopped smiling and quickly tumbled once again into the Slough of Despond. By the time he got back to his house,
crawling into bed seemed the most logical response to the universe.

Frank is making an honest effort to stay clean, and as a result his life has become increasingly circumscribed. Performing
was not a panacea after the initial pleasure of being back on familiar ground wore off, so his visits to the Comedy Shop are
less frequent. His CD came out but it was hard to get Frank booked on TV to promote it; in the months since the crash the
all-seeing media eye has moved elsewhere, and currently the interest isn't there. Robert managed to get the record company
to buy a billboard, but it was on a lightly traveled road in the San Fernando Valley and did no good at all.

Predictably, no one bought the CD. Frank refused to go out on the road because he didn't want to be away from home, but he
didn't particularly want to be home either, which left him in an uncomfortably existential position where all choices were
wrong.

Honey couldn't take his behavior. She was gone for longer and longer during the day, and when she returned, he wouldn't ask
where she'd been. Bills were piling up, but still Frank wouldn't work. He'd sleep, watch TV, and if he could bestir himself,
float in the small backyard pool after the peak melanoma hours because however much he may have wanted to die, skin cancer
was not the way he wanted to go.

Frank lies in his underwear on a cheap blow-up raft in the pool (which has become increasingly brackish since he decided to
stop paying the pool man) staring at the dwindling sun one afternoon in late October. Flying saucers are migrating across
his line of vision from one side of the pool to the other, small silver disks that look as if they've beamed in whole from
a 1950s sci-fi movie, little creatures with big heads at the wheel. Only Honey's agitated voice lets him know he is in the
presence of the familiar.

"There goes the
Atlantic Rhythm and Blues Collection,
Frank, the one with Aretha singing 'Respect.' R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that's what you don't give to me!" Honey yells in juvenile doggerel,
mangling the lyric. Frank realizes the flying saucers are his shrinking CD collection, which thanks to their sleek aerodynamics
are beginning to collect on the surface of the pool. "There goes Bernard Herrmann's sound track for
Taxi Driver.
Oooo, there goes the John Coltrane you were always playing. Hello, Frank! You haven't moved in nearly six weeks!" That cheerless
fact does not change as the number of CDs on his shelves continues to decrease. Honey, energy spent, drops to her knees, beseeching,
"Frank, baby, please . . . I've been praying for you so hard, but I don't think it's working." Frank continues to bob in silence.
What's left of the afternoon sun glints wildly off the floating silver CDs, sending shafts of jagged light in all directions.
Honey watches him for a few moments, then turns, walks off the patio, and out of the house.

A pale sun floods the late-autumn sky, but the Bones household is lit for permanent twilight. Frank is in the middle of the
living room at an imaginary mic stand looking out over an imaginary crowd. He has been up nearly twenty-four hours, his blue
funk having worked its way toward vexation.

I'm driving to work today,
he begins, immediately deciding to change course and going to
Gangs have taken over our cities,
then veering back to
and this cop pulls me over . . . Arab guerrillas are shelling each other . . . so the cop says to me . . . Christian values
in the White House . . . do you know how fast you were going . . . then the president fucked a kosher chicken . . . and I
said, "I certainly do, Officer" . . . he was courting the fewish farm vote . . . immigrants are pouring over our borders .
. . but here's the kicker
. . .
heavily armed white people are planning a revolution in the Pacific Northwest . . . after he gave me a ticket . . . ladies
and gentlemen, the chicken wrote a book! And that chicken is our guest today.

Then he collapses on the couch and begins weeping, remaining there for an hour before crawling back to bed.

In the middle of the following day, Frank is still indisposed. "How are you going to make a living if you don't get out of
bed?" Honey reasonably asks. Frank, as has become his habit, does not respond. Then, Honey produces a Zippo lighter from the
pocket of her jeans and with a flick of her finger a tiny flame springs to life. This she places to the bedsheet on which
Frank reclines. The sheet, after initially only managing to smolder, finally catches fire and a small flame begins to eat
away at the weave. When the fire approaches Frank's leg, he silently rises, fills a bucket with water, and douses the bed
as Honey looks on. Then he goes to the couch and lies down there. He says nothing to her about fighting the sheet on fire.
Angered beyond articulation, Honey smashes a plate against a wall and leaves the house. She doesn't come home that night.

The next afternoon Frank lies on the couch in the living room, gazing at the slit of sunlight visible under the drawn shades.
The phone rings insistently. Frank doesn't move. After the fourth ring the answering machine picks up and Robert's voice can
be heard, the voice of mission control in the space capsule. "Frank, it's Robert, your manager, remember? Believe it or not
there are people who want to hire you. Go figure. Call me." Frank may as well be dead.

Midafternoon the following day and Frank is floating on the raft in the middle of the pool.

"Frank?" He looks up and sees Honey standing at the side of the pool, a suitcase next to her. "I'm moving out." No argument
from Frank, who wants her to go. In his deteriorated psychological condition he cannot bring himself to ask her to leave,
but his actions are intended to produce that result. It was one thing to fall. He can almost begin to process that. But to
fall and then have to watch as Honey begins to succeed is entirely too much to bear because it is a rule carved in Hollywood
stone that when two performers are romantically involved and the one in the subservient position begins to surpass the dominant
one, the entire house of cards collapses. Honey has to go and both of them know it.

"By the way, Frank," she says after loading her effects into her newly leased Mercedes. "I know you were banging that waitress."

And then he is alone.

During the following week Frank eats nothing but Campbell's chunky beef soup directly from the can. He leaves the television
tuned to the Shopping Channel twenty-four hours a day to ensure a secondary human presence in the house while making sure
he won't see or hear anyone whose career is in a better place than his.

One morning, as Frank sits on the couch in the filthy living room watching a thirty-year-old former child star selling cubic
zirconium jewelry, the doorbell rings. He makes no move to answer it. In a moment, it rings again, more insistently this time.
Then the door, which Frank doesn't bother to lock when he's at home, opens, and a male figure is silhouetted in the doorframe,
haloed by the morning light.

"Why aren't you answering my calls, you asshole? I'm the only one in this business who cares about you."

"Bobby?"

Closing the door behind him, Robert Hyler, nattily attired in a two-thousand-dollar worsted-wool suit, steps gingerly into
the house and picks his way across the room holding a roiled-up magazine in his hand. He looks at Frank and shakes his head
in disgust.

"You fuckin' pig. Pull yourself together." Robert glances at the TV, sees the child star pitching the cubic zirconium. "You
know why that chick wound up on the Shopping Channel flogging fake jewelry to fat housewives? Bad management. Unlike you,
my friend. You have a manager who cares." Robert sits next to Frank on the couch, gazes around the room. "You kill your cleaning
lady?"

"Honey left."

"I know. She told me."

"She told you?"

"We're managing her now."

"You're managing Honey?"

"She's a piece of talent, Frank."

"Why don't you just take a cocktail fork and stick it through my heart?"

"You gotta grow up, kid."

"Then you can carve it up, put it on crackers, and serve it for hors d'oeuvres at your Christmas party." This image is enough
to make Robert pause for a moment, which allows Frank to ask, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm enough of a putz to care about you. Arrest me and put me in manager jail. Herman Melville and Vincent van Gogh? They
died in obscurity and now everyone thinks they're the greatest, you know? But it doesn't work that way for comics. You die
now? In six months, no one outside the business is gonna remember you. Don't give up, man." Frank looks at Robert, sees the
sincerity in his eyes. And what about those references? Van Gogh and Melville? Robert's not just a loyal manager; he's a renaissance
guy. "I booked you some dates in the Southwest. Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona. You can do a little work, pay some bills, get back
to L.A. and we'll make a plan."

Frank doesn't respond to Robert for a moment, so moved is he by this grace note, this simple act of faith. Robert may be a
shark capable of devouring entire schools of smaller fish, but however successful he has become in a business that offers
no reward for basic human decency, he has retained a touch of kindness that will occasionally reveal itself, and Frank is
dumbstruck for a moment at having seen it.

"You want some Campbell's chunky beef?"

"No, thanks. The first date is next weekend in Tulsa."

"I can't go to Tulsa alone."

"I'll find someone to go with you."

"I may not make you another nickel. You know that, right?"

"Some things you don't do for money."

Robert stays for a few more minutes during which he tries to restore Frank's belief in anything other than an endless unadorned
present. He senses he can go when Frank assures him he will be on a plane to Oklahoma the following week. As Robert's leaving,
he says, "Oh, I almost forgot," and he hands Frank the magazine he's been holding.

"It's the new
Rolling Stone.
Turn to page ninety-four." Frank obliges and smiles when he sees a review of his CD. "Look at the part I underlined."

Frank Bones's new CD is a blast of comic semtex. When is America going to get wise to the fact that one of our best comedians
is still working in small clubs because no television network has the balls to give him his own show? Catch him live before
he explodes, but if you can't, this CD is the next best thing.

"How about that?" Robert says, smiling sardonically as he steps out the door. "You're not the only one who thinks you're a
genius. Some jerk-off critic agrees with you."

Before leaving town, the sole place Frank goes is the office of Naomi Glass. It is his seventh session with her since being
discharged from Four Winds.

"Honey lit the bed on fire?"

"She thinks I need to get out more. Why would anyone want to leave the house? I used to watch CNN before I switched to the
Shopping Channel exclusively. I know what goes on out there. Too many crazy people."

"You've told me you thought you were crazy."

"I was crazy when crazy meant something. Now the whole world's insane. There's no money in it anymore."

"But if that's the case, perhaps you're less alienated than you realize."

Frank considers this a moment, then suddenly leaps to his feet, shouting, "I'm cured!"

Naomi Glass regards him placidly. "Do you really feel that?"

Frank sits back down dejectedly. "I was having a Prozac moment." Prozac is a delicate subject between the two of them. He
had resisted any kind of psychopharmaceutical intervention, believing antidepressants nothing more than crack for the melancholy
and they did not fit in with his new drug-free lifestyle, Frank only able to deal in extremes. But once the long blue tentacles
of depression had entwined themselves around his body and squeezed for nearly two months, he finally gave in. He'd been taking
Prozac for a couple of weeks now and, to his amazement, was starting to sense something beginning to stir within his frozen
breast. Feeling progressively better since Robert's visit, he believed he'd soon be able to think more clearly about his future.