Best to Laugh: A Novel

  AN AFTER-DINNER INVITATION to soak in Taryn’s hot tub was extended, but its only takers were Maeve, Egon, and Sharla.

  “If you don’t mind driving yourself,” said Ed to Sharla, “I’ll just get a ride home from Candy and Mike. I’ve got to teach tomorrow.”

  “Mr. Excitement can only take so much,” said Sharla.

  Ed smiled, the way a beleaguered parent smiles at yet another smart-ass and not-so-funny wisecrack his bratty kid makes.

  HE WAS QUIET ON THE SHORT DRIVE HOME, and when Mike pulled up in front of Peyton Hall, Ed thanked us for the ride, practically jumping out of the backseat.

  “Do you mind if I don’t go with you?” I asked Mike, whose late set at the Comedy Store I’d planned on watching.

  “Not at all,” said Mike. “Find out what’s bugging him. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  It was dangerous to kiss him good-bye—it was easy to forget everything when my mouth met Mike’s—but I forced myself away after a good fifteen seconds and opened the car door.

  “I love you,” I said, and gasped, hit by the surprise and the truth of my announcement.

  “I love you, too,” said Mike and we stared at each other, like two spies who’ve finally exchanged the right code words, and then I tumbled out of the car and ran after Ed.

  When I caught up to him by his apartment steps, he seemed agitated, even angry, but when I told him I just thought he could use some company, all the air went out of him in a great sigh, and he said I was right—he could.

  “I know you have to get up early tomorrow,” I said, “but it’s such a nice night out, why don’t we go sit by the pool?”

  “Good idea. Especially since I don’t have to get up early tomorrow.”

  Following the path, we made our way to the back of the complex.

  “Did you hear Billy Gray Green’s going out with Siri Kenner?” said Ed quietly, looking up at the bartender’s apartment.

  “The weather girl?”

  Ed nodded as he took off his shoes and rolled up his pants legs. “I guess she comes into the Toy Tiger a lot. The TV station’s right down the street.” Taking off his sports jacket, he draped it over my shoulders. “It’s a little cool. And it’ll protect that snazzy dress of yours.”

  I took off my sandals and we sat on the pool’s edge, dangling our legs in the water.

  “I wonder how you get to be a weather girl,” I said. “Do you have to have a real interest in the weather, or is it mostly about being in front of a television camera?”

  “I’d say the latter. But for all I know, Siri Kenner has a Ph.D. in meteorology and has had a lifelong interest in weather patterns since she saw a twister take down the local post office. “‘There were letters,’” he said in a falsetto voice, “‘and packages flying everywhere!’” He shrugged. “Then again, what do I know?”

  The water rippled softly as I swung my legs in a slow circle.

  “If you really don’t have to work tomorrow,” I said, “why did you tell Sharla that you did?”

  “Because it’s over.”

  Ed’s cheeks puffed up as he expelled a long sigh.

  “I knew it was, a long time ago, but I just couldn’t give myself permission to believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Uh, because she’s Sharla West? Because there’s no way a woman like Sharla West should have ever gone out with a guy like me in the first place?”

  “Sharla West doesn’t deserve a guy like you.”

  “You know what I mean.” Ed sighed again. “It was fun, really fun for a while, especially at the beginning. Seriously, I was besotted.”

  “Besotted. Good word.”

  “To think that a beautiful woman—a Hollywood actress!—wanted to be with me; well, it was easy to ride that wave for a long time.”

  I nodded and we both stared out at the water. The pool lights were on, making it glow a fluorescent sea green.

  “I never really liked how she treated you.”

  “It took me a long time to notice. Again, blame the besotted factor. I didn’t mind being her coat rack—you know, holding her purse while she glad-handed all the important people . . . but what really started to bug me was her lack of curiosity about anything but herself. And when I wouldn’t go to that inauguration ball—”

  “—I can’t believe you turned down a chance to go to the White House.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t at the White House. It was at the Smithsonian.”

  “Still!”

  Ed shrugged. “There’ll be plenty more inaugural balls in my lifetime.”

  “Sure. Invitations to those are a dime a dozen.”

  Ed’s laugh was rueful. “Hey, don’t make me regret taking a stand.” He leaned back on his hands. “It sure is great about Maeve, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’ve never seen her so happy.”

  “You seem pretty happy, too.”

  “I am,” I said, with a little catch in my throat.

  “Aw, Candy, I’m so glad. Glad for you and Mike.” He clamped his arm around my shoulder, and making his voice sound old and rusty, he said, “Does my heart good to see young couples in love. Gives me hope for the future!”

  47

  IF I COULD HAVE BOTTLED MY EMOTIONS during the first show, that bottle would have exploded from the sheer force of its effervescence.

  It was almost a full house (Melanie was good at publicity) and included in the audience were my favorite people: my grandmother and Sven, Madame Pepper, Ed, Maeve, Solange, Frank, and Melvin. The words of my secret power mantra rang in my head as Mike’s bouncy theme music began and his announcer’s voice filled the theater.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the Contessa of Comedy, the Duchess of Droll, the Empress of Entertainment—put your hands together for Miss Candy Ohi!”

  The words of my life saber blasted in my head, as if screamed by three dozen cheerleading squads with bullhorns.

  The curtain parted and I strode out briskly, wearing the suit and tie the costumer had found for me in the boys’ department of Buffums. I took my mark in the spotlight and struck an I’m-conveying-seriousness pose, bending one arm and holding it against my waistline, the other at my side.

  “There is nothing wrong with your television set,” I said, stealing the line and intonation used in The Outer Limits. “Do not attempt to adjust the picture.

  “What you are seeing is real: a woman—a Korean American woman—hosting a nighttime television talk show. Now I know there are some of you out there who don’t think it’s a woman’s place to host a nighttime talk show, so let’s meet one of them right now. Ladies and gentleman, the sexist pig I get to call my sidekick—Harry Chest!”

  A spotlight shone on Harry sitting on the couch, his legs spread wide. He gestured to me as if his hand was a gun.

  “Contessa of Comedy,” he said in the broad Brooklyn accent he’d decided to use, “give me a break! You know where you should be right now? You should be at home in bed with your man watching this show, not starring in it.”

  A few boos rose out of the audience, which brought Harry scrambling off the couch.

  “Ah, shut your traps!” he said, hands clenched. “You’re nothing but a bunch of henpecked losers!”

  The boos increased.

  “Sit down, Harry,” I said, and then looking out into the fourth wall, which served as my camera, I said, “For those of you at home, we’ve got a fight brewing here in the studio audience. I’m hoping it’ll break out in fisticuffs, with the audience winning.”

  “Cut!” said the actress playing Gwen McGillicutty, our director. She raced out onstage wearing a tweed skirt, a cardigan sweater, and comfortable shoes. She looked like a British dog trainer and her voice was old-money-lockjaw. “Harry, you’re simply going to have to stop harassing Candy. She is the star of the show, after all!”

  “Just because she slept with the president of the network!” said Harry.

  Gwen looked more confused than usual. “But . . . but my husband’s t
he president of the network!”

  The show rolled on. During our first “commercial break,” the actors playing Harry and Mac now played kids sitting at a table who didn’t want to eat their Death cereal.

  “I’m not gonna try it—you try it!”

  After pushing around their bowls, Harry said in a cute little voice, “I know, let’s get Mikey!”

  My Mike, playing the little brother, dug into his bowl and after a moment clutched his throat and keeled over.

  “Death Cereal,” came the prerecorded announcer’s soothing voice, “so tasteless, so healthy, so good for you, you might as well die.”

  In other parodies of well-known commercials, we pushed products like Alkie Seltzer (we all played lushes trying to stop burping) and Eczema Shaving Cream, where the Swedish bombshell (me in a blonde wig) begged Mike, playing an old pervert in a trench coat, to not take it off!

  After I finished my monologue and we got to the interviewing part, I sat at my desk and in hushed tones, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a thrill for me, and I know it will be for you, to bring out our very first guest, the lovely and talented Taryn Powell!”

  The audience applauded and a moment later gasped, no doubt expecting Gwen or Rose to play the star of Summit Hill. Instead, the real Taryn Powell sashayed onto the stage.

  I had called her up the day after Maeve’s engagement dinner to ask her if she’d been serious about coming on our show.

  “Absolutely. Write me up a little script—make sure it’s funny—and I’ll be there opening night.”

  A vision in a white-beaded gown that picked up light like a prism, Taryn threw kisses to the audience on her way to the couch.

  “You could have dressed up,” I pouted, as she sat down.

  She cast a cool eye at me. “I might say the same to you.”

  The audience laughed.

  The writers and I had conferred with Taryn in a fifteen-minute conference call batting around ideas, and when we asked her if she had anything special she wanted to do that she hadn’t done before, she practically squealed with delight and admitted to a special skill, which we then wrote into the script.

  “So Taryn—”

  “—please, Miss Powell.”

  “So, Miss Powell, everyone knows you from the hit television series Summit Hill—”

  “—I love that show,” said Harry. “All the broads on that show have such nice bazonkas.”

  “Harry, please,” I said. “Try not to be such a buffoon.”

  “He is right, though,” said Taryn. “We do have some nice bazonkas.”

  I let Taryn and Harry share a little moment before I said, “Could you tell us about your new movie?”

  “Well, of course; that’s why I’m here. You didn’t think I’d come on if I didn’t have anything to plug, do you?”

  She explained how she’d gotten the much-coveted part in the biopic of Katrina Nemorov, the Ukrainian gymnast who’d dazzled the world at the last Summer Olympics.

  “But Taryn,” I said, “Katrina Nemorov is . . . what, twenty-two?”

  Taryn glared at me. “What’s your point?”

  “Yeah,” said Harry, “what’s your point?”

  “Well,” I said, pretending to get flustered, “you’re a . . . bit older! Plus, she’s a gymnast! How are you going to portray a gymnast who got perfect scores for her floor exercise and uneven parallel bars routine?”

  “This is how,” said Taryn, and standing up she whipped off the detachable skirt she had specially made. The audience cheered and whistled as she posed like Betty Grable in what looked like a sparkly beaded white maillot and went wild when she did a handstand.

  The applause surged as she walked, on her hands, past my desk, turned around, and walked back.

  “So,” she said, after she had jumped onto her feet and brushed her hands together. “You were saying?”

  Also appearing on the show was champion Swiss yodeler Hulda Himmler (played by Rose who could really yodel) who tried to give me a lesson. Mac played the third guest, an up-and-coming soul singer who couldn’t get in tune with Mike’s band.

  When Gwen gave me the cue to wrap it up, I stepped to the front of the stage and thanked the audience for staying up for The Sorta Late Show.

  “And remember,” I said, “laughter’s a medicine that can lighten a heavy heart, that can put a cold compress on a worried brow, that can—

  “—hey, tootsie,” said Harry, pulling an imaginary zipper across his mouth. “Enough. Now how’s about we slip into your dressing room? We can go over some post-show notes while you give me a massage.”

  The lights blacked out.

  THE REVIEWS WERE GOOD. The Herald Examiner said, “They’ve assembled a wacky cast over at the Swan Theater, and a wacky premise, ‘Let’s put a late-night television talk show onstage!’ but somehow it all works and everyone has a good time from the beguiling host (Candy Ohi), to her jackass sidekick (Harry Jansen as Harry Chest), to, and especially, the audience.”

  According to the Los Angeles Times, “The Sorta Late Show with Candy Ohi is a freewheeling and funny nod to television talk shows. . . . Taryn Powell displayed a delightfully comic (and limber) side that impressed and surprised this reviewer.”

  “Bandleader and trumpeter Mike Trowbridge,” reported Daily Variety, “leads a jazzy quintet and amid the song parodies and witty intros is some seriously tuneful music.” (That was fun to read aloud to Mike; he in turn read aloud the part that said, “The talk show hostess is funny and charming with enough confidence to let everyone else be funny and charming, too.”)

  I DIDN’T MONKEY MUCH with the daily monologue that PJ and Lowell wrote because I could count on it to be topical, politically charged, and funny, but it didn’t take long for me and the rest of the cast to get loose and make the written scenes even more improvisational. If any actor decided to go off script or invent an entirely new scene, everyone else was more than willing to go along. It gave the show a wild energy that the audience loved and participated in. They booed Harry Chest’s outrageous comments, and Mac, the stoned cameraman, couldn’t ask his signature line, “Where’s my pipe?” without having members of the audience shout things like, “The band’s got it! or “The last guest took it!” which might result in a whole new direction for a scene to take.

  Everyone was having fun, and we, ladies and germs, had a hit on our hands.

  48

  THE REPORTER FLUFFED HER HAIR and ran a fingernail between two teeth, but when she was given the signal, she was camera-ready.

  “I’m standing here with Melvin Slyke,” she said earnestly, “long-term resident of Peyton Hall, the Hollywood Boulevard apartment complex that’s slated for demolition.”

  “Not if we’ve got any say about it!” said Melvin, leaning into the reporter’s microphone.

  “Yeah!” chorused the group of tenants standing under the Preserve Hollywood Landmarks! banner we had erected on the front lawn.

  “Yeah!” agreed Maeve and I, seated at a table offering the chocolate Preservation Cupcakes! we had spent a whole morning baking.

  “Tell me, Mr. Slyke,” said the reporter, studied concern settling on her face, “what’s so important about this place? Why get in the way of progress?”

  “Progress?” said Melvin, waving his arm. “Take a look around you! You think a high-rise, a big tall box could ever match this graciousness, this oasis we’ve got right here?”

  “But Mr. Slyke,” said the reporter, “the complex isn’t even fifty years old; certainly not historic in—”

  “I’ll tell you what historic is,” said Melvin. “A place of grace and elegance that housed and continues to house a Hollywood community! Not just big stars like Clark Gable or Shelley Winters or Claudette Colbert, but directors, soundmen, costumers, screenwriters. Me, I was an animator for years, and my neighbor, Francis Flover, was the famous night club impresario—”

  “But how do you really expect to stop the complex owner from doing what he’s rightfully e
ntitled to?”

  “We’re standing up for what’s rightfully right!” said Melvin. “This place deserves to stand! Hollywood residents, call your city councilwoman and tell her Peyton Hall deserves historic landmark designation!”

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Slyke,” said the reporter, and turning her bright, professional smile on for the camera, she said, “Reporting live from Hollywood, this is Deena Lynde.”

  AFTER FOLDING UP THE CARD TABLE and taking down the banner, I presented Melvin with a cupcake.

  “They all sold. But I saved this one for you.”

  He kissed the frosting and licked what remained on his lips.

  “Nice job, Melvin,” said Vince Perrogio. “We’re going to get this place saved yet!”

  Sherri Durban nodded and shook a cigar box. “And Candy, your cupcakes brought in a hundred and eight dollars!”

  “Not just my cupcakes. Maeve helped me.”

  “Don’t tell my trainer,” said Maeve. “He doesn’t even want me in the same room with sugar.”

  Carrying Melvin’s card table up the stairs for him, I stood at the landing as he fumbled with his door key.

  “Melvin, you don’t seem so excited about the rally. I thought it went over really well.”

  “I was hoping for that reporter from the Times to come.”

  “Well, we had that one from L.A. Weekly.”

  “True, true,” said Melvin, and turning the key he pushed open his door.

  “Just put the table right there, if you don’t mind,” he said and after I leaned it against the wall, he added, “Don’t mind me. It’s just battle fatigue. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and wake up rejuvenated and ready for action.”

  “Remember, we’ve got a three-tiered plan,” I said, mimicking the nasal voice of Baines Wallem.

  The lawyer who’d taken on the case to save Peyton Hall as a favor to his old friend Melvin had assured us that he was going to (1) tie everything up with injunctions, (2) petition City Hall about historical landmark status, and (3) get as much publicity as possible.