The Funny Man (14 page)
“I was thinking,” the love interest says, “that we should just go ahead and screw.”
The funny man slides down to the floor, his back still against the door. The coldest air has sunk to ground level. It is like a mini-fog covering the bottom four inches of floor. “And why were you thinking that?”
“Well, you know, because the movie’s almost over.”
“Exactly,” the funny man replies.
“Exactly,” she volleys in return.
“Wait,” he says. “Why are you saying
exactly
?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m saying
exactly
,” he says, “because it doesn’t make sense to sleep together now. Why would we want to start an affair when the movie is almost over?”
“And I’m saying,
exactly
,” she says, “because now is the best time for us to screw because there’s no danger of having an affair. It would just be a notch in our belts, a deposit for the future.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
The love interest sits up on the bed, her nipples taut against her shirt. They are like scouts searching for targets. “Think of it this way,” she says. “It’s like insurance. Odds are, one or both of us is going to get famous, or more famous than we already are. If we sleep together, at some point in the future, we’ll be able to tell someone about it and when the story comes out, we’ll be linked together and each of us will get a little boost in the press.”
“What?”
“Okay, it’s not really like insurance. I just said that to keep it simple. It’s more complicated than that. It’s more like celebrity arbitrage.”
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The love interest says it again, slowly,
arbitrage.
French-sounding, vaguely dangerous, a Bond villain. “Arbitrage is when you have two markets of unequal value. Think of fame as a market. Right now, admittedly, you’re more famous than me, no doubt. You’ve got some heat behind you with that thing and honestly, you’re the only interesting part of this crummy movie. At the moment, your celebrity value is higher. However, I’m on the rise. My agents say my look is coming into vogue, which is important for an actress. I’m still young, I’m single, and I haven’t done any nudity yet. I’ve got a lot of weapons left in my arsenal. We have every reason to believe that my celebrity is on the rise.”
“You’re not as dumb as I think you are, are you?” the funny man says.
The love interest closes the word search and smiles. “I’m smart about some things.”
“Go on.”
“So, right at the moment, your value is higher, but there’s reason to believe that someday, my value will be higher because honestly, that thing, how long is that going to hold up? This is a classic arbitrage situation. Because you’re more valuable at the moment, I’m offering you a premium, namely, you can just lie on your back and I’ll hop on and do all the work, and I won’t care if you don’t get me off.”
The funny man reaches down and pushes himself up from the floor. He feels each vertebrae click into place as he rises. The back is perhaps more scathed than he initially figured. It takes a good thirty seconds to stand fully upright. He twirls the wedding ring on his finger and thinks about how sleeping with this girl is the kind of thing he should do. It is what a celebrity does and a celebrity is what he is. This not-as-dumb-as-she-seems girl just said so. Why should he not do what is expected of him? Since his marriage he had never taken his ring off until he began filming the movie. It has been one production assistant’s job to hold it while he does his takes. When the director says “cut” the funny man beckons the production assistant back and retrieves the ring and places it where it belongs. He believes in that bond, of course he does. He has long ago ceased to notice the ring’s presence when it’s on, but even in the middle of live action on camera, part of the funny man’s brain would think how weird it felt in its absence.
The funny man puts his hands on his hips and levers back at the waist, trying to stretch some of the stiffness out of his back. “Look. You’re a lovely girl, very alluring, and what you say makes a lot of sense—in the kind of world you describe, anyway—but something I’m realizing is that I want nothing to do with that world, so I’m going to take a pass.” He is proud of himself. This may be the highlight of his life, an act of heroism even, since this love interest will go on to truly incredible heights of fame and is widely considered one of the most desirable women on the planet. The thought that a heterosexual male would pass on sex with her is sinful, criminal even, but at this moment this is what he does, which is about the least believable part of this stupid tale.
Here he starts walking toward the bathroom and a final phrase from his childhood rises in his brain. At that time he thinks it is hugely clever, but he will later come to regret this to the very marrow of his bones. “Tell you what, let’s not, and say we did,” he says, and with that he shuts himself inside the bathroom.
“It’s your funeral, pal,” the love interest yells through the door. The funny man hears her leave the room and he curls up in the bathtub and goes to sleep.
B
ARRY HAS RETURNED
from Barbados and called an “urgent non-emergency meeting.” One of Barry’s philosophies, as he explained it to me, is that there is no such thing as an emergency, just varying degrees of urgency. “If you think about it,” he said, “emergencies don’t really exist.” He even said the word like it tasted bad on his lips.
“Break it down,” he continued, “look at the root,
emerge.
Now,
emerge
means to come forth, to come into existence, but why should that be a cause for panic? If you plant a seed in the ground, eventually a stalk with
emerge
, but this should not be a surprise, since after all, you knew the seed was down there and it’s a seed’s job to grow, so when the stalk appears it’s simply an expected arrival. Or babies. Often, when a baby is on the verge of being born it is treated as an emergency, a cause for panic and worry, but again, the root,
emerge
. The baby, along with some very explicable, very natural goo, is going to ‘emerge’ from the birth canal. Unless you’re talking about one of those self-deluding high school girls that drops the kid behind the Dumpster during lunch, everyone knew the damn thing was in there, right? And at some point it’s got to come out. What is so goddamn surprising?”
“You don’t have kids, do you,” I said.
Barry frowned. This was early on before he had agreed to take me on as a client and for a moment I worried that I’d fucked up the audition. “You don’t choose him,” my manager warned. “He chooses you.”
“My belief,” Barry continued, “is that with proper planning and vision and foresight and vigilance, there will never be an ‘emergency.’ All events are foreseeable. Everything is predictable, not for everyone, but for me.”
“Like a psychic?”
Barry frowned even deeper this time. “No, nothing like a psychic. There is nothing mystical about it.”
“Sorry.”
“Even when you see an ambulance, siren howling, lights blazing, zooming through traffic, all appearances to the contrary, that is not an emergency.”
“No?”
“Look at what’s probably inside, some fat ass who for forty years started his day with a rasher of bacon and half gallon of coffee with cream. Not even half-and-half, cream. That his coronary artery exploded like a sabotaged Iraqi oil pipeline shouldn’t be
surprising
, should it? Or maybe it’s one of those bike messengers who refuses to wear a helmet and when he flips over a taxi, whoops! There go his brains all over the street. Who could’ve seen that coming?”
Barry had worked himself into a pretty good lather. He wiped the back of his suit sleeve across his chin. Frankly, I liked the passion. I was in a pickle.
“These are not emergencies, they are
eventualities
and that’s not no voodoo.”
During the months of my trial I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Barry’s little philosophy, about how it manages to reconcile both free will
and
predestination. In Barry’s world, there are two categories. Barry types who embrace their role as agents of change, influencers of events, controllers of destiny. Then there are others who allow themselves to be nudged inexorably toward their preas-signed fate, their
eventualities
.
And yet, because he had agreed to take me on after that first meeting, by implication, I was being invited to the other side.
B
ARRY’S OFFICE IS
expecting me and I am shown into a conference room with an even better view than my apartment. The carpet is thick and springy enough for a floor exercise routine and on one wall I see a buffet that would embarrass the Sunday brunch at the Ritz. There is a carving station with steaming rounds of ham and prime rib, a shrimp tree, and at the end, after a full array of sides of both the starch and green vegetable variety, what looks to be a fully outfitted sundae bar. I am alone in the room.
At first I figure the spread is for some kind of office celebration they’re having later, but when Barry walks in followed by a guy in whites topped with a chef’s hat, I realize what’s going on.
I’m in a pitch meeting.
In entertainment, whenever two parties meet, one of them is empowered to say “yes,” and because that yes turns into action they are very important. That person is the one who is being pitched. On one’s way up the ladder, you do the pitching and when you do the pitching it is necessary to prepare the proper tribute prior to delivering of the pitch. Sometimes this can be dispensed with using mere flattery over a recent creative endeavor, or small tokens like cigars or especially good prostitutes. Other times, you prepare a sumptuous feast like the one in this conference room. I have to say, this is a surprise, because even as I am on trial for my life, Barry has had the final say-so on all matters of tactics and strategy. Until now, apparently.
Barry is clearly excited, pacing the room as our chef prepares and then places a plate in front of me. I am not particularly hungry, but I thank him and Barry gestures him from the room.
“I had a vision,” Barry says.
“Vision?”
“I was on a reef dive, really beautiful, like two-hundred-million-year-old coral there, thinking about your case and it came to me, the perfect defense.”
“I thought we already had the perfect defense.”
“We did, but now this one is more perfect.”
I feel one of our Abbott and Costello routines coming on. “How do you get more perfect than perfect?” I ask.
“The old thing was perfect, the new thing is better, therefore, more perfect. The perfect defense … plus.”
I decide to let it drop and try a bite of the mashed potatoes. They are warm and buttery and agreeably lumpy with just the right hint of chives. Judging from the way my suit hangs I have not been eating all that much, and as I try the beef (succulent, tender), I realize I have no real memory of any recent food ingestion. It is, in short, hitting the spot.
“Now, it’s a risk, which is why you’ve got to sign off on it, why we’ve got to commit, but I’ve been thinking about it nonstop. I couldn’t even enjoy the magnificence of the giant sea turtles. I think it’s a risk worth taking. I think it’s at least precedent-setting, if not history-making.”
Barry and I share a dramatic pause that only one of us is interested in.
“Not guilty by reason of celebrity.” When he says it there is a pause between each word and he spreads his arms apart, like he is viewing it on a marquee from across the street.
“I don’t get it.”
Barry doesn’t seem surprised at this.
“Okay, you’ve heard of being not guilty by reason of insanity, right?”
I can only nod because my mouth is full of perfectly pink beef. The food appears to be stoking my appetite like I didn’t know I wanted it until I tried it. It’s just a little better than a cold can of beans.
“This is like that, only it’s not guilty by reason of celebrity.”
“It sounds like you’re saying that being famous is some sort of disease, or defect.”
“I’m not
like
saying that. I
am
saying that.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of this.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see this before,” he says. I am superfluous now. He is an avalanche making its way to the bottom of the hill. “It’s practically already in the law. It’s just that nobody’s put it quite so plainly. I’ve got some clerks working on the briefing, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to fly. The judge is no-nonsense, but she’s fair, and she’s got to really take a hard look at this. The law is allowed to recognize a de facto affirmative defense ex post facto its establishment. Look at the precedents. If an average person took a nine-iron to some dude’s car in the middle of the road, what would happen to him? Criminal mischief? Felony property damage? When Jack does it, what happens? Nothing. If Bob Smith saws three quarters of the way through his wife’s neck and takes out an innocent bystander to boot, what happens to him? Life? Death? O.J… . nothing. Ergo, not guilty by reason of celebrity.”
Barry goes on and on, citing case after case: Michael Jackson, Mel Gibson, Kobe, Rush.
“The one or two times one of you actually did go to jail, pretty goddamn quickly everyone realized it was a big mistake and they got her the hell out of there.”
“Paris Hilton? Lindsay?”
“Exactamundo!”
Barry says.
“Fonzie.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gary Coleman, kind of,” I said, “but you’ve to say it differently. It’s more like,
what chu talkin’ about?
” Barry looks like he wants to break me over his knee. I take a moment and gather my shit.
“But what about Martha?” I said.
“I’ve thought of that,” Barry says, rubbing his chin in contemplation. “But it’s an aberration. I made some calls and looked into it. Number one, that was federal; federal is different. Number two, because she thought it would look tacky, they were ordered to play down the celebrity thing. She wanted to be treated like everyone else. It killed her. Terrible strategy.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all covered,” I say.
