The Man Who Cancelled Himself (3 page)

“And how did you two crazy kids meet?” I asked.

Lyle’s face turned red—faster than any man I’d ever seen. “I don’t like to be called crazy!” he roared.

“It’s just an expression, Pinky,” Katrina said soothingly. “Relax.”

“You’re right, you’re right. Sorry.” He calmed down, just as quickly. “Katrina was a production assistant last season, a gofer. Leo Crimp, my line producer, brought her in. Leo’s the toughest son of a bitch in the business.” Katrina looked away uncomfortably at this mention of her former boss. I wondered about that, too. “First time she came in the control booth I swear it got ten degrees warmer in there.”

“Pinky …”

He grinned at her. “I mean it. I
felt
her there. Like some kind of animal thing. I stared at her, and she stared at me, and
wham,
we were gone. Went straight in my dressing room and fucked our brains out.”

“Pinky!”

“Well, we did!” he boasted.

“And how’s the show shaping up for this season?” I asked.

“We’re shifting in a slightly different creative direction,” Katrina replied delicately, in her Kewpie-doll voice. “There’s been some give-and-take between us and God, in terms of Lyle coming back and everything.”

He nodded. “Yeah, you’ll find this interesting, Hoagy. Being a serious person.”

“You must have me confused with someone else.”

“Believe it or not,” said Lyle, puffing up proudly, “I’ve talked the network into letting me do more issue-oriented episodes this season. Hey, we’re America’s living room. It’s time for us to deal with what America’s dealing with—teen suicide, drug addiction, AIDS.”

Quite some shift indeed for a man whose chief claim to comic fame was that he knew 126 different ways to say the word snot.

“We’re looking for more of a reality context,” Katrina added. “We’re also looking more for irony—comedically speaking, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“It’s a national shame, Hoagy,” he went on. “Kids are now our principal underclass in America. Twenty percent of ’em live in poverty. Six million will go to bed hungry tonight. Sixteen million have no medical coverage of any kind. I tell ya, that’s
criminal.”

I nodded, wondering how it is that show-biz figures can get so worked up about social injustice, yet not have a problem with flushing $10 million down the toilet on an obscene house. Somebody ought to write a book about that someday. Not me, but somebody.

“Those kids are
my
kids,” Lyle declared. “The ones who used to look up to me.”

“They still do, Pinky.”

He waved her off. “Nah, nan. I let ’em down. I know that. So now, I got a responsibility to do good by ’em. From now on, Uncle Chubby is gonna make a difference.”

“Very admirable, Lyle,” I said. “And what are you giving up?”

His blue eyes penetrated mine, sizing me up. Or trying. “Giving up?”

“Katrina mentioned there was some give-and-take. What’s the give?”

He pressed his lips together and made a short, popping noise which sounded more like flatulence than anything else. “No big deal. We agreed to add a regular love interest for Chubby’s sister, Deirdre.”

“The testing results showed that our audience would like to see her in a regular relationship,” Katrina explained. “Possibly but not necessarily leading to marriage.”

“At first, I told God no fucking way,” Lyle confessed. “It’s my show. I make the creative decisions, not you and certainly not the damned audience. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. We can have a lot of fun watching the romance unfold. Really opens up a lotta new possibilities. Chad Roe’s gonna play him. Know him?”

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. Merilee did
Streetcar
with him a few years back at the Long Wharf. Chad was one of those aging TV pretty boys who was still trying to prove himself as a serious actor. Mostly, he was a serious clod. “I don’t recall him doing a lot of comedy.”

“He hasn’t,” Lyle confirmed. “But God loves him. Or rather his Q-score. He went through the roof in that Judith Krantz miniseries he did with Jackie Smith last season. So I’m working with him. Hasn’t been easy so far. Y’know how it is—we’ve got a certain format that works, and Chad’s an outsider. But we’ll get there. He’s a helluva nice guy.” Lyle ran a big pink hand over his big pink face, like he was washing it. “Hey, enough about the show. Let’s talk about you and me. You gonna do this book with me?”

I stood up and smoothed my trousers. “I’d like to stretch my legs, Lyle. Can we take a stroll?”

“Sure, sure.” Slowly and with great effort, he got to his feet. It was like watching someone trying to get his butt up out of a deep hole. “We’ll walk on the beach. C’mon, Katrina. We’re walking.”

She stayed where she was, eyeing me shrewdly, her left eye drifting slightly. “No,” she concluded. “I have some phone calls to make. You boys go ahead.”

“Aw, gee, ya sure?” He was whining, like a petulant, jumbo-sized kid.

“I’m sure, Pinky.”

“Okay. Oh, hey, that reminds me, Hoagy.” He cleared his throat uneasily. “Katrina has something she’s busting a gut to ask you. If ya don’t mind.”

I did mind, but I owed her one now.

“I heard the father of her baby was really Sam Shepard,” she blurted out eagerly. “Is that true?”

“I only know what I read in the papers.”

She frowned. “You mean Merilee won’t even tell
you?”

“I mean Merilee especially won’t tell me.”

She tossed her blond mane. “Gee, I don’t understand.”

“That makes two of us.” Lulu let out a low growl from next to me. “Correction—three of us.”

And with that we walked down the sandy path to the beach. It was a weekday, and there were very few people out. There was a black nanny in a starched white uniform with a little blond boy, who was crying. There was a teenage girl in a T-shirt and cutoffs sitting on a towel writing someone a letter or a poem. There was us. The tide was out. The Great White Monk wheezed as he clomped through the wet sand, his arms swinging wildly back and forth. I had to walk three feet away from him to keep from getting belted. Lulu scampered down to the water’s edge and chased a gull away, arfing gleefully. Some of the happiest days of her puppyhood had been spent here on this very beach. That first summer, when Merilee and I were golden. But that was once upon a time.

“I have the perfect woman, Hoagy,” Lyle Hudnut boasted, yet again. “We have unbelievable sex together. Woman’s a Hoover, y’know what I’m saying? She sucks up every last drop, is what I’m saying.” He had a smug, nasty little smirk on his face. I wanted to wipe it off. I would continue to want that the whole time I knew Lyle Hudnut. “And, whoa, you wouldn’t believe the
clam
she’s got on her.”

“I didn’t come all the way out here to talk about Katrina Tingle’s clam, Lyle,” I said, to shut him up, and because I hadn’t.

He stopped cold there in the sand, his face turning bright red again, as if clogged with blood. This time his eyes bugged out, too, and he began to breathe swiftly in and out, his thick lips pulled back from his teeth in a menacing grimace. Quite some intimidating presence, really. I doubted there was anyone in network television he didn’t scare the shit out of. “You’re one of
them,
aren’t you?” he bellowed, fists clenched tightly.

“Which
them
is that, Lyle?”

“Them who are always putting everyone else down. Them who are always criticizing. I can’t stand negativism! It’s a cancer. It spreads. It
kills.”
He shook a fat finger at me. “I’m totally serious about Katrina. I love her. And she loves me. She’s the real thing for me. I even changed my will. Katrina’s my sole beneficiary. If that’s not love, I’d like to know what is.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m the wrong person to ask.”

He snorted at me. We resumed walking, past the neighboring showplaces tucked back behind the dunes.

“Geez, it’s so great here,” he observed contentedly. His mood swings were truly awesome. “Can’t believe I actually live out here.
Me.
Lyle Hudnut from Bay Shore. Of course, once we go into production I’m in the city full-time. Keep a suite at the Essex House, but all I ever do is crash there for a few hours. Studio’s where I live.”

“I have to know some things, Lyle.”

“Sure, pal,” he said easily. “Like

what?”

“Like what the hell you were doing in that theater.”

He made that popping noise with his lips. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”

“It’s what everyone wants to know, Lyle.”

And absolutely couldn’t figure out. After all, the man was living with a major sexpot. After all, the man could have rented an X-rated movie and masturbated in the privacy of his own home if that was what he felt like doing. What was he doing in a Times Square theater with his entire career in his fist? It made no sense. And had been the number one subject of speculation, wonderment, and psychobabble in the tabloid press for months.

“I have to know, Lyle. I have to know you’re prepared to deal with this thing openly. Because if all you want is a whitewash, then I’m out of here.”

“Fair enough.” He considered his reply carefully before he ran his hand through his stubby red curls and said, “I had a headache.”

“I understand they have aspirin for that sort of thing.”

“Not that kind of headache. I get terrible, terrible migraines. My head feels like it’s being cut open with a chain saw. I can barely see. Strictly from doing the show. Fighting with the network, with the writers, with the cast. The pressure’s enormous and it’s all on me. For years, I coped by snorting coke. Couple thousand bucks’ worth a week. But I was trying to get off it, see? On account of Katrina said she’d break it off with me otherwise. She said I was killing myself. Just like Beloosh did. That day … that was a bad, bad day. I was stressed out, hadn’t slept in three days. Never did, unless I took sleeping pills, and I was off of those, too. See, I was strung out on Halcion for two years. Which they now say can cause major nutsiness. Like I need a drug for that, right?”

“That day, Lyle … ?”

“The show wouldn’t work,” he recalled. “The Munchkins had the flu. The toilet was stopped up. There was a blizzard. I couldn’t get hold of the plumber. Sis was coming down with the flu, too.”

I tugged at my ear. “You mean in the show.”

“Yeah, but it always carries over into real life. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. I was feeling … trapped. Like my head was gonna explode. I had to get away. Had to.” His voice was insistent and strangely high-pitched over the surf. He sounded almost desperate, like a man who was drowning in deep water, not walking on hard sand. I would think of that often as I got to know Lyle better. “I could just as easily have walked down to the Tenth Street Baths for a shvitz. Believe me, I wish I had. I walked uptown instead. I don’t know why I went in that theater. I—I just needed a release. It just happened. That’s the truth. The absolute truth.” He plowed along through the sand, his eyes out on the sailboats. “I still can’t believe how pissed the public got. I really can’t. I mean, people went
crazy.
Some parents’ group in Alabama said I ought to be castrated. That was my favorite. No, no—my favorite was that shrink in the
Daily News
who said I
wanted
to get caught. Like I was trying to commit professional suicide. Like I’d actually
cancel
myself. I mean, Christ, why would I wanna do that? Chubby’s my whole career.” He glanced over at me uncertainly. “That open enough for you?”

“Still have these headaches?”

“Haven’t since I went on this diet and exercise regimen. Of course, we’re not in production yet. That’ll be the real test. Whew, let’s take a blow, huh?” There was a driftwood log ahead of us, bleached white as bone. He flopped down on it heavily, puffing, drenched with sweat.

I stood there watching him. In some ways he reminded me of the neighborhood fat kid, the whiny one who always got picked last when you chose up sides for baseball. In some ways he reminded me of the bully who stole smaller kids’ lunch money and dangled them headfirst in the boys’ room toilets. Uncle Chubby was a bit of both. Was his creator, too?

He squinted up at me. “Wanna know what I’m all about?”

“It would be nice.”

“I’m simple,” he explained. “If they put out a commemorative stamp of the eighties it would have my picture on it. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Get it all, spend it all, fuck it all.”

“The eighties are over,” I pointed out.

“Well, I ain’t,” he said defiantly. “But that me is. All I’m trying to do now is hold myself together, one day at a time. And, believe me, it ain’t easy. But I’m doing it. I’m surviving. I’m chemically pure for the first time in practically my whole fucking life. And I’m not in any of that fucking therapy anymore either. No shrink can heal ya, Hoagy. Not if you don’t want to be healed. And if you do, you don’t need nobody else. I’m through with all of that therapy shit. I’m a grown-up now. The past is the past. Except for one thing …” His face darkened. “I can never, ever forgive my parents for what they did to me. Not ever.” He poked at the sand with his sandal. “Look, I’ve never talked much about my childhood in interviews, other than to say it was pretty typical.”

“I’ve yet to run across one that was.”

He snorted. “Then you’ll get off on this—I’m the star of the number-one family show in America and I haven’t spoken to my own family in over twenty years. Pretty fucking weird if you think about it. But some pretty weird shit went down, Hoagy. Shit nobody knows about. Mind-blowing shit. What I’m trying to say is …I wanna put it in this book.”

“Why now?”

He shrugged. “Because I think it’ll lend a certain … perspective to what happened at the Deuce. And because I can’t keep a lid on it anymore. Ever since I got busted, the tabloids have been digging into my life like crazy. One of ’em found an old classmate of mine who was willing to talk, for a price. I topped it. For his silence.”

“You’ve been blackmailed?”

“I’ve been lucky. Next time, I may not be. And there will be a next time. I wanna deal with this myself, in my own way. Not read about it in the
Enquirer.”