The Funnies (23 page)

I was amazed. My father might well have done it himself. In the background of the strip, a woman—endowed with that flawlessly bland matron sensuality that all women had in the Family Funnies—leaned over her child, who was tossing pennies into the fountain. And in the foreground, Bobby was telling me the punchline, the one about God getting the pennies, and I was listening. Bobby's expression was perfect in its groundless confidence, while mine was one of effusive awe, both of what he was saying and that he knew it at all. It was marvelously stupid, exactly the kind of thing the guy who cleaned the fountain would cut out and tape to his fridge.

“Wow,” I said.

“Let's see yours.” I gave it to him. He nodded. “Okay, sure. You could ink this up into something half-decent, couldn't you?” He handed it back and stood up. It was time to move to a new site.

I was frustrated enough with Wurster's effortless aping of the strip that I stayed an extra couple of seconds on the bench. Wurster was already walking. “Why is it,” I called after him, “that everybody can draw this goddam strip but me?”

He turned around. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. I don't even know why I'm up for this job. You ought to get it yourself. Or Ken Dorn.”

His eyes bugged out, and he took a step forward. It was a funny step, the kind you might take toward a caged lion in a poorly maintained zoo. “What did you say?”

“You ought to get the job.”

“Did you say ‘Ken Dorn'?”

“Yeah, Ken Dorn. You know him?”

Wurster sat down again, his eyes never leaving my face. “How do you know him?”

“He was at the funeral,” I said. “And at FunnyFest. He's been hanging around town.”

“Riverbank?”

“Mixville.”

“What!”

I explained the name change to him. He shook his head. “For Christ's sake. How stupid.”

“Well, whatever. But Ken Dorn.”

He brought his finger to my face. “Ken Dorn is a leech, Tim. He'll grab you and suck all the blood out before you know what hit you, and by that time you'll be dead in the water.”

I unmixed his metaphors and offered a respectful nod. “How do you know him?” I asked.

Wurster shook his head and stared off into the depths of a shoe store. “That's not important,” he whispered.

* * *

That Friday, at lunch in New York, I got an idea of what Wurster was talking about. Susan had been gloomy and evasive the entire meal, and while we were eating—the time I would least expect her to speak—she put down her chopsticks and sat up straight in her chair. “Tim.”

“Mmph?”

“I have a confession to make.”

I finished chewing and raised my head. Already the rhythm of the meal was draining away from me. “What?”

“Remember I said the syndicate would have somebody else…on deck? Just in case?”

“Yeah?”

She turned her head to watch a waiter glide by. “It's, uh, Ken Dorn.”

My innards tingled, as if girding themselves against an impending nausea. Still, I was not surprised. Before I could respond, she said, “I only found out a week ago. And then, bumping into him at FunnyFest…it just looked strange. I should have told you then.”

“But they still want me, don't they?”

She nodded. “Well, yeah, sure. I mean, I hope.”

“You hope?”

“I found out about this through a memo from Ray Burn to the syndicate's law firm. They were working out the legalities of turning it over to Dorn. Who gets the merchandising rights and all that.”

I said, “I guess Dorn would.”

“Well.”

“Well?”

“This memo was asking the lawyers to look into Dorn not getting the merchandising rights. That is, the syndicate getting all that.”

“I don't understand.”

“I think…I think maybe if you get the strip, you get merchandising money. But if Dorn gets the strip, the syndicate would keep it all. I think.”

I gave this a little thought. “So you're saying it's not in their best interests to go with me.”

She opened her mouth. It took a few seconds for anything to come out of it. “Uhh…no, not exactly. We're talking about your father's dying wishes, here. I mean, they still want you. At least I think. I mean, no, they definitely do. Why would they be pumping money into this thing otherwise? Free lunches, et cetera.” She didn't look like she was convincing herself. She let the et cetera hang in the air a moment, then plunged, embarrassed, back into her food. Now I set down my chopsticks.

“Susan,” I said. “I don't want to do this if I'm just going to get screwed.”

She chewed and swallowed, and stared at her plate. “Well, there are things you can do to impress them. Go to this conference, for one thing.”

“Conference?”

“The cartoonists' conference I was telling you about? Next weekend?”

“Oh, right.”

“And then meet with Ray Burn. Tell him you mean business. Dorn would be a hard guy to sell, to work with. He's a notorious weasel. Everybody hates him.”

“And you can set this up?”

She nodded quickly. “After the conference, sure.”

“So now what?” My food looked sticky and unappetizing on the plate, like it had just been dragged from the bottom of a lake.

“I, uh, got the day off,” she said. “Maybe we could go somewhere? The Met? A bookstore? A drink?”

“A drink sounds good.”

“On me,” she said. “Not the syndicate.”

In fact, we had several drinks, at an ill-lit NYU student hangout with framed portraits of art-film stars on the walls and peanut shells all over the floor. We got sort of drunk. This is not something I had done with someone else for a long time, and it reminded me of college, and long, dazed walks back to my dorm in the dark. In retrospect these walks seemed like the best moments of my life: unhurried, mildly challenging, directly preceding sound sleep. I was so lost in the memory of them that when we spilled out onto the sidewalk afterward I was shocked by the bright diffuse light of an overcast summer day in New York. I smelled pretzels. We traced the smell to Washington Square Park, and sat eating in a little island of grass bordered by orange snow fences, where some kind of water-line maintenance was going on.

“I can't go home,” I said. “I'm drunk.”

“The Museum's still open,” Susan mumbled, studying her watch. “Let's go there.”

But we never made it. Our cabdriver didn't yet know how to get there. He feigned professional indignation, as if the Museum were in the South Bronx, surrounded by crack-happy street gangs, before letting us off, for free and apparently at random, outside a movie theater, which we found ourselves staggering into like twin Mr. Magoos through an open manhole. The movie playing was a revival:
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
. It was three hours long.

It took us most of that time to find one another in the dark. The star-studded cast was scampering blithely around the base of the big “W” where the money was buried when I finally turned my head blearily toward hers and found her looking blearily up at me, and our lips blearily met. And then our arms were around each other and we were kissing, kissing, and it felt very, very strange. The air conditioning was too cool and I touched the nubbly bumps on the skin of her arms. On the screen Jonathan Winters's childlike voice was rising out of the din, and he said something that, in my alcohol-and-hormone-induced delirium, sounded like “You're making out!”

Making out! I hadn't heard anyone say that since about 1980, and I turned my head to the screen. But all that was going on there was digging, and back in our seats Susan was kissing my neck. And so I turned back to her, and the credits rolled.

But in the street, nothing. We had gone to the rest rooms to unrumple, but something must have happened there—perhaps the sight of ourselves, just beginning our fourth decades, wan and haggard in the unflattering fluorescent light—to pluck us out of our respective spells. We simpered, embarrassed, at one another. The sun had finally come out, just in time to start setting. I had homework to do.

Still, we walked all the way downtown, saying little, not touching. It was a good walk, a necessary walk, as the last remnants of alcohol rose to my skin and evaporated into the city air. When we got to the Caddy we stood facing each other, smiling politely and not looking each other directly in the eyes. The day had lost almost all its light.

“So,” I said.

“So,” she said.

I began to lean forward, just a little, and she did too. Then someone down the street yelled and we turned our heads to see, but there was nothing. And then my hand was on the door handle and Susan was a step farther away, and so that would be all.

“So call me,” she said, then corrected herself: “I'll call you. Whenever I know something. About the conference.”

“And Ray Burn.”

“Yeah, sure.” She smiled, I smiled.

“Thanks,” I said. “I had a great day.” Though I wasn't sure if that was true. Great? Different. Unexpected.

“Yeah?”

“Sure,” I said.

Her face darkened, just a little. Had I not sounded convincing enough? I was embarrassed and looked away.

“Well, until then,” she said.

“Okay, great.” I opened the car door and got in. She walked off. And I was suddenly saying, “Susan?”

“Yes?”

She half-turned, her face full of something: hope, fear, humiliation? It was red, anyway. No matter what I said, it would be wrong. I said, “Thanks again.”

A moment of silence. Then, “No problem,” and she was gone.

All the way home, I half-listened to talk radio, and thought incessantly of her breast's gentle pressure against the crook of my arm.

* * *

Pierce was asleep, but the kitchen counter had been cleared entirely of dishes and food residue and wiped clean. And sitting in the middle of it, like a surprise birthday gift or suicide note, was the safe-deposit box key. No explanation, though none was needed. Tomorrow he would go, I supposed, to the Pines, and I would be going to the bank.

* * *

There were three banks in Riverbank—that is, Mixville—and only two of them were open Saturday mornings. Of the open ones, I remembered having a childhood passbook savings account at Riverbank First National, and knew that Riverbank National Bank and Trust was closer, right out on Main Street. I went to RNBT first. Downtown was uncrowded, save for a small, just-awakened crowd milling around the bakery. I stopped there myself and bought a scone, perfectly serviceable and still warm.

RNBT was in the process of becoming MNBT. They had had a vinyl sign printed up with the new town name on it, and this hung from ropes over the illuminated sign; the lettering on the door had already been changed. I was impressed and abashed.

When I showed the safety deposit teller the key, she assured me that it was indeed one of theirs, and passed me a stack of forms. I had to sign in, as usual, but there were some other hoops, relating to my father's death, that had to be jumped through.

“I'm not actually in charge of his money,” I said. “I don't have power of attorney or anything.”

“Where did you get this key?” she said.

“It was left to my brother Pierce.”

She winced, as if she had some dire connection to Pierce I didn't, and couldn't, understand. “And why isn't he here himself?”

“He doesn't want to be the one to look.”

“Can't you bring him in here with you? Then he could stand outside.”

I looked down at the half-eaten scone in my hand. “He doesn't…like banks,” I said.

“Hmm.” She asked me for my driver's license and social security card. She asked me what my father's mother's maiden name was and made me verify his address. Then I signed the forms and she opened the gate. “But keep that out of here,” she said, pointing at the scone. I set it in front of a closed teller station and followed her in.

She made me wait outside the vault while she pulled the box from it, then led me to a cramped booth containing a small desk, a pen on a chain and a reading lamp with a green glass shade. She set the box on the desk. “Let me know when you're through,” she said, and clickety-clacked back to her window.

It was a long, narrow box, gray with sharp corners. The lid came up with a feeble creak. Inside was a small sheaf of papers and an envelope. I looked at the papers first: titles to the property and car, dental X-rays, birth certificates of Dad, Bitty and Pierce. Some low-denomination savings bonds, never cashed in and possibly forgotten.

I put these things aside and gingerly tore open the envelope. The paper was bright white, not aged in the slightest. Inside there was only another key, this one to a door lock or padlock. There was nothing else. I pulled the key out. It had the number 134 etched into one side, and on the other was a yellow sticker, half of which was rubbed mostly away by a succession of rough fingers. Only a few words were visible:

I looked again into the envelope: surely something else was in there. But there was no explanation, no note. I rifled through the papers, nothing. I pocketed the key, crumpled the envelope up and dropped it into the wastebasket. Then I closed the box and left the room.

“I'm done,” I told the teller. She gave me a look indicating that she was pleased to hear it. She disappeared into the vault with the box and returned with the key. Meanwhile I discovered that my scone had been disposed of. There were still a couple of crumbs there, standing out pale against the black marble counter where it had been sitting.

* * *

My assignment for the weekend was to come up with twenty-five strip-worthy gags. These would form the basis of my work for the next month and a half. During the last two weeks of my tutelage we would prepare the six dailies and one Sunday that would constitute my submission to Burn Features Syndicate, would decide my fate as a rich and goofy pop artist or pretentious loser living with his brother. I wasn't sure, considering the two, which suited me better. By that evening I was forced to confront the fact that neither was particularly suitable, and that despite my doubts I had no other conceivable options. I wanted to sit around and discuss this with somebody, but I couldn't see calling Susan so late at night, and incidentally making a fool of myself. So I sat quietly, fighting off sleep, and worked on the gags.