Best to Laugh: A Novel

  “Thanks,” he said. “That’s the goal.”

  I nodded at the case he held. “Do you always play the trumpet in your act?”

  “So far.”

  “Do you write your own material?”

  “Why, do you want to sell me a joke?”

  “No . . . I was just wondering.”

  The comic’s smile was easy. “Yeah, I write my own material. I think it’d be weird performing someone else’s.”

  “Well, it was funny.”

  “Thanks again.”

  The horn of a car swerving toward the curb asserted itself over the other sounds of traffic on Melrose Avenue.

  “That’s my ride,” said the comic. “Nice talking to you.”

  My own ride was on the bus, and as it muscled its hefty self through the traffic on La Brea, I leaned my head against the smudged window, reviewing what I’d seen that night. The guy with the trumpet was one of my favorites, and so was a guy who did a mind-scrambling impression of “Johns”—Jonathan Winters doing John Wayne doing Johnny Mathis. The only woman performing in the entire lineup did a riff on the Maidenform bra commercials and how they never featured women doing mundane, everyday things.

  “I mean, you never hear them saying, ‘I dreamed I shopped for brisket in my Maidenform bra’ . . . or ‘I dreamed I popped a pimple in my Maidenform bra.’”

  I was a comedy vulture, watching and listening to everything, wondering what attitudes and ideas I could scavenge for my own use.

  After pulling the buzzer, I was walking up the aisle when the bus driver laid on his horn and braked hard. I lunged forward, grabbing the metal backrest of a seat.

  I dreamed I flew through the windshield of a crosstown bus in my Maidenform bra.

  12

  THE BEAT STREET STAFF huddled around the portable TV in the break room, surprisingly excited to see me on Word Wise.

  “My boyfriend’s watching it at home,” said Ellie Pop, racing in. “He loves this show.”

  As the snappy Word Wise music began, Greg Wyatt, the attorney, turned to Neil Thurman and said, “Idea: a novelty album of game show theme songs played by rock-and-roll bands.”

  “I love it!” said A&R Tony. “Imagine Black Death’s bassist playing this—” he strummed an imaginary guitar along with the bright chipper TV music—“or better yet, the Dating Game theme song!”

  “Shh,” said Solange. “It’s starting.”

  Yancey Rogan strode onto the set.

  “I’ve heard that guy’s a freak,” said Ellie Pop.

  “Shh,” said Solange.

  When Filo Nuala and Precia Doyle were introduced, everyone in the room cheered.

  “Shhh!” admonished Solange, again.

  No one took offense at her bossy behavior, and I personally was grateful for it, not bold enough to shush anyone myself.

  They were disappointed that I didn’t get to play with Filo Nuala but cheered when I won my round with Precia.

  “Well, I’m impressed, Candy,” said Neil at the end of the episode. “How do you know all those words anyway?”

  Solange rolled her eyes. “She reads, Neil.”

  “I tried that once,” said my boss affably. “I got a headache.”

  When my second show aired the next day, the assemblage was reduced by half, Tony, Ellie Pop, and Greg all having previous luncheon engagements.

  “I thought you had a date with your dad at Ma Maison,” said Solange.

  Neil shrugged. “I do. But first I want to watch Candy win millions of dollars.”

  “I’d like to watch that, too,” I said.

  They cheered me and booed my opponents, and during the first commercial break Neil informed us that he’d gone to school with Sally Breel’s daughter.

  “Beverly Hills High,” Solange explained. “It’s where the elite send their kids to start networking.”

  Neil laughed.

  “No, that starts at the birthday parties. You know Linc Michaels?”

  “Of course,” said Solange, and to me translated, “big record producer.”

  “And my best friend,” said Neil. “Who I just happened to meet at the sixth birthday party of Nan Norman.”

  “Yes, Candy,” said Solange wearily. “Nan Norman the movie star.”

  “I remember Mindy Breel because she had one of the first nose jobs of anyone I knew. She was cute, too—before. Afterwards her nose looked permanently pinched—like one of those synchronized swimmers wearing one of those nose-plug thingies.” Neil pulled off the band encircling his ponytail. “I wonder what she’s doing now.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m sure she’s doing fine. Once you’re a member of the Beverly Hills Mafia, you’re taken care of for life.”

  “Beverly Hills Mafia,” said Neil with a laugh. “You kill me, Solange.” Looking at me, he smoothed back his hair, before gathering it into a ponytail again. “Can I help it if I grew up with rich and powerful people?”

  He didn’t ask the question with attitude but with sincerity, and there was an awkward moment of silence before we all starting laughing, and then the show came back on, and when Yancey announced that the letter was W and the word was a noun, Sally Breel said, “Wealth!”

  This really cracked Neil up.

  As the credits rolled, he raced out of the office to keep his lunch date with his father and after Solange turned off the portable television set, she leaned against the counter and folded her arms across her chest.

  “Candy, I am truly impressed. You were the best one on that whole show.”

  I shook my head. “Jerry, the cop? He won sixteen thousand dollars and a trip to the Bahamas.”

  “I’m not talking about who won the most money. I’m talking about who was the most entertaining. You were so funny! When you had the letter F and you said, ‘Fangs’ in that vampire voice—that was hilarious! And when—”

  The bell on the front door jingled and a voice asked, “Hello?” and I scurried out of the break room to attend to business, which in this case meant signing for flowers—for the third time since I’d been on the job—sent to Ellie Pop.

  “How many bouquets do you suppose she gets in a year?” I asked, carrying the heavy arrangement to Ellie’s office.

  “The smart ones know how valuable publicity is and Ellie’s good at her job,” said Solange. “When she got the band Hard Rain a front-page spread in the Herald-Examiner, they sent her a lemon tree!”

  Positioning the vase on Ellie’s desk, I inhaled. The smell was deep and sweet, and I was about to ask Solange the weird question that skittered across my mind: what’s more beautiful—how a rose looks or how it smells?—but she asked me one first.

  “Have you ever thought of doing comedy, Candy? I mean, professionally?”

  The rush through my body was like the one I felt when Ricky Pederson and I kissed (well, bumped lips) in our seventh grade cloakroom.

  “I uh . . . I uh, yes.”

  There. I had admitted it. Out loud.

  “Is that why you came out here?”

  My ears translated her mild question as something hollered by a prosecuting attorney determined to get to the answer that’ll crack the case wide open, and I stared at her, my heart pounding so hard I could feel the pulse in my ears.

  “Well, I . . . my cousin needed to sublet her place and . . . yes.”

  13

  I WAS SO OUT OF PRACTICE letting people get to know me that when I did, it took on the weight of confession, as if to reveal personal information about myself was a sin. That’s how I felt when I shared with Ed and Maeve at the pool what I had with Solange, that I wanted to do stand-up comedy. Their reactions couldn’t have been more positive; Maeve surmised I’d probably have my own sitcom by next year, and Ed said he’d head up my fan club.

  “So how long have you been thinking of doing this?” Ed asked, after Maeve cannonballed into the water.

  “Practically all my life. But it’s been a . . . dream deferred for a long time.”

  Ed smiled. “
I’ve taught that poem. But you’ve decided not to ‘let it dry up like a raisin in the sun’?”

  It was the kindness in his voice (and maybe a few renegade premenstrual hormones) that made tears spring up in my eyes. Grateful for the shield of my sunglasses, I shook my head.

  “So what was it that made you regenerate this particular dream?”

  Maeve swam past us, kicking up fountains.

  I watched her for a moment. “Coming out here. Going to the Comedy Store. Taking steps for a change . . . instead of standing still.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “More steps, I guess. And getting over being so scared.”

  “Well, it’s a scary thing. Fear of public speaking—let alone stand-up comedy—is ranked right up there with death of a spouse or loss of a job.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel better . . . or worse?”

  Ed’s laugh rolled into a shudder as he regarded the bottle of chocolate soda he held perched on his stomach. “Why do I keep drinking this stuff? What grown man in his right mind drinks something called YaZoo?”

  AFTER TYPING SOME PRESS releases for Ellie Pop and a letter from Greg informing the manager of the band Firestorm that, no, it was not only impossible but illegal to have a contract rider assuring a blonde and a brunette in the hotel rooms of the lead singer and keyboardist, I sat at my desk, tapping my pencil. My intention had been to work on my act, now that I had decided I was going to have one, but I was tapping far more than writing. Why was it such a struggle to come up with five measly minutes of material? What did I want to say, exactly? Something funny, sure, but what? And how?

  Some comics did characters and/or impressions, and while I could do funny voices, I wasn’t exactly Rich Little. Should I cultivate a wacky persona like Phyllis Diller or be politically insightful like George Carlin? Or should I take the observational (and popular) “Isn’t life weird?” route? The only thing I definitely knew I didn’t want to do was talk a lot about myself—(a) who’d be interested in that? and (b) my personal life was too personal.

  Bad News Bears Go Up in Smoke! Revenge of the Pretty Baby! High Anxiety Halloween!

  Trying to make something funny out of combining titles of recent movies, I realized I hadn’t and was crossing out the drivel I’d written when the door opened. I looked up, expecting to see the UPS guy, who this person was definitely not. He wasn’t wearing brown shorts, for one thing, and was so skinny that the ratty T-shirt and jeans he had on seemed to weigh him down. He was bald, except for a strip of blue hair that rose in spikes down the crown of his head.

  “Hey,” he said, surprised.

  “Hey,” I answered. “It’s . . . Francis, right?”

  A hint of color bloomed on his pale face. “Uh, actually, it’s Frank. Blank Frank.”

  “Oh,” I said, not exactly following him. “Well, it’s nice to see you . . . Blank.”

  His blush intensified. “It’s not just Blank. It’s, uh, Blank Frank. I, um, use the whole name.”

  “Sorry, Blank . . . Frank.”

  Solange pushed aside the curtain behind my desk and entered the room.

  “Solange,” I began, “this is—”

  “—I’m sorry,” she said, crossing her arms as she regarded the interloper. “I told you before: Beat Street isn’t interested in punk rock at this time.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll change your mind if you listen to this,” said Blank Frank, digging a cassette tape out of his pocket.

  “Look,” said Solange, “right now we’re just not—”

  The musician darted toward my desk and set the cassette on it.

  “Take a listen, okay? That’s all I’m asking.” Backing toward the door, he looked at Solange, palms out. “It won’t make your ears bleed or anything.”

  “It’s the ‘anything’ I’m worried about.”

  Before pushing through the door, Blank Frank smiled at me. “Just let me know what you think, uh—”

  “—Candy. It’s Candy.”

  I’D SEEN BLANK FRANK a few times on the grounds of Peyton Hall, in the company of a man so textbook dapper in his dress that he should have been twirling a walking stick.

  “Who’s that?” I had asked the first time I saw him. Having accompanied Ed to Limelight Liquors where he’d bought a bottle of wine for another date, we were coming up the Boulevard when I noticed the slim, silver-haired man in a suit and bowtie climbing the steps of the four-plex next to mine.

  “Francis Flover,” said Ed. “He used to own the Bel Mondo, this nightclub on Sunset that was really famous in the ’40s and ’50s. He and Robert X. Roberts hate each other.”

  “Why?”

  Ed shrugged. “Some Hollywood slight—who knows? Maybe he didn’t like the way Robert X. tipped his hatcheck girls.”

  “Look at that ascot! He’s so—” I searched for an expression I rarely had occasion to use—“natty.”

  Days later, I ran into Francis—almost literally—as I was coming out of my apartment and he was coming out of my neighbor’s.

  “Candy, meet one of my oldest pals,” Melvin Slyke said, and with great courtliness Francis Flover executed a snappy little bow before taking my hand and telling me he was “enchanted.”

  Another time, on the way to the pool, I saw him walking with someone whose sartorial tastes lay on the opposite pole from his own; where Mr. Flover wore a bowler hat, this guy wore a blue mohawk, where a fob watch might be tucked into Mr. Flover’s vest pocket, thick chains hung in heavy loops from the skinny kid’s belt—so much metal he could have outfitted his own private chain gang.

  “Candy!” said the older gentleman. He doffed his hat. “Meet my son, Francis Jr.”

  The younger man ducked his head in greeting, and I saw that he wore a small silver hoop through his eyebrow. It was the first time I’d ever seen a facial piercing and I tried not to stare.

  Now at my desk, after reading the label of the tape Blank Frank had given me, I put it into the cassette player and said, “And for all you listeners out there, here’s something from a new band called United States of Despair.”

  I pressed play, and an assault of guitar chords filled the room like the angry voices of a mob.

  Solange’s reaction was not favorable.

  “Turn it down! Better yet, turn it off!”

  I half-obliged her by doing the former, and we listened to a voice belonging to a lead screamer shouting over the guitar, bass, and drums. I couldn’t make out many of the lyrics, but I did recognize the phrases “death sentence,” “shock the septic system,” and “annihilation-celebration,” which were repeated in a chant.

  After we listened to the cassette’s three songs, Solange replaced it with one of her own, and the twangy strains of some cowboy band filled the air.

  “Ahh,” said my coworker, her hand to her chest. “Yodel me back to civility, Otto Gray.”

  ALTHOUGH I MISSED THE ENTERTAINING DRIVER who announced my stop as Bronson, Charlie Charlie Bronson, I hardly took the bus to work anymore. It was only about a mile and a half from my apartment to Beat Street Records, and I enjoyed getting there on my own two feet—especially after Maeve turned me on to roller skating.

  My weightlifter neighbor had turned into my weightlifter friend. Although Maeve had grown up in Beverly Hills, she was fairly new to Hollywood and had decided I was a worthy sidekick in her neighborhood explorations. The first invitation she extended had been to breakfast at Schwab’s Drugstore.

  “Look,” she said, swiveling on her counter stool, “there’s that actor who played the bad guy in The Godfather.”

  “Maeve, there were a lot of actors who played bad guys in The Godfather.”

  We watched as the man in question sauntered to the nearby pay phone.

  “Yeah, but that guy was really bad.”

  The second invitation was to a roller rink on Sunset and La Cienega.

  “You’ve got to try it,” she said. “It’s great for the quads and the calves—not to mention the glutes—and besid
es, it’s a lot of fun.”

  Disco was supposedly dying, but not at the roller rink where a blasting throbbing beat accompanied skaters and damaged eardrums. I had skated as a kid on little metal skates that affixed to your shoes and were tightened with a key, and it took me a little while to get used to the heaviness of a boot skate, but once I did, I could skate circles around Maeve. Then again, she could skate circles around me.

  “You’re smooth!” I shouted over Donna Summers telling me she’d love to love me, baby.

  “Why does that surprise you?” asked Maeve, skating backwards.

  I shrugged before shouting, “I guess it doesn’t!”

  “I’m not just some big galoot, you know!”

  Maeve presented an imposing-looking figure but it was sheathed in the thinnest skin known to humankind, and I’d learned it was best to ignore her when she went into one of her I’m-so-misunderstood rants. This strategy seemed to work; without attention, the tears threatening to rise out of her hurt feelings would evaporate, and her usual good cheer returned.

  A shirtless skater wearing tight vinyl shorts and a black motorcycle cap whizzed by us, twirling around like a music box dervish.

  The beginners stayed on the perimeter, tethered to the railing by their sweaty hands. The utilitarians skated beside them, content to move around the rink without falling. The next tier—to which Maeve and I belonged—was composed of fairly good skaters who could easily skate backwards and could do a basic spin turn, whereas the center of the rink was reserved for those who moved like dancers and gymnasts on wheels, executing jetés and arabesques and the occasional flip. As flashy as their athleticism was their dress code, whose basic tenet was that skin should be seen and not covered.

  The second time we went to the roller rink I again rented skates, but the day afterwards I bought my own pair and now used them as a means of transportation.

  It was a straight shot down Hollywood Boulevard to work, and the polished granite Walk of Fame, from Sycamore to Gower, was a skater’s dream surface. During the morning skate the Boulevard was light with traffic, and I’d read the names on the stars I slalomed through: Fred Astaire, Debbie Reynolds, Red Skelton.