The Comedy Writer (10 page)

“Oh, come on, she won't know.”

“Ah … I don't even know you.”

“Listen, Henry, I'm begging you. Just tonight. I'll be gone tomorrow and you won't never hear from me again … never.”

“Um … no. I'm sorry.”

Colleen shot me a look as if I was throwing her out on the street along with our five kids.

“Thanks a lot!”

She smashed out the cigarette, grabbed her bag, and rushed from the room.

I shrugged at the couple whom she'd just almost bowled over, then I grabbed the newspaper off the counter. While finishing breakfast, I checked out how the playoffs were shaping up for the Celts and Bruins, then stared at the top ten batting list for a few minutes. Boggsie had gone one for three.

Colleen was leaning against a pay phone when I came out. I tried to slink by her.

“You know, Henry Halloran, you're a real hypocrite! You write about trying to be a hero, but when it comes right down to it, when it comes down to really helping a human being who will accept it, you say, Tuck off!' “

I opened my car door. “I didn't say, Tuck off,' I just don't have a real big place—it's a studio—and I don't know you from a hole in the wall.”

“Did you know her?”

“No, but I didn't ask her to move in with me, either.”

“Why am I different than Bonnie? Aren't I good enough to help?”

“Don't you have any other friends? What do you mean, 'Bonnie'? Who's Bonnie?”

“All my friends abandoned me when Honus and me broke up.”

“Again, who's Bonnie?”

She swung her head side to side. “Do you think this is easy for me, man? I been living here two years and I got no friends. You think I feel good about that?”

“I don't understand. Who the hell's—?”

“Bonnie was my fucking sister!”

I stared at her.

“Bonnie …” she said, and her voice trailed off. “You tried to save her … my sister …”

We dragged her bags out of some bushes in a small park off Robertson, along with a foot-high pile of
Psychology Todays.
There was an uncomfortable silence on the drive back to my apartment, and then she said, “I wonder why they're so red.”

“What's red?”

“Michelle Pfeiffer's eyes.”

“I don't know. Maybe she swims a lot.”

This cracked Colleen up and she hit my arm and said, “Maybe she swims a lot.”

I glanced at her and shrugged.

“Where you from?” she asked.

“Originally Rhode Island.”

“Why is it that everyone from Rhode Island is so funny?”

“Who? Who's from Rhode Island?”

“I don't know. Everyone.”

On the corner of Santa Monica and Doheny, a fucking lunatic with a shaved head and a blue ponytail pulled up beside us in a truck and asked if we wanted to buy a joint for five bucks.

“Sure,” she said.

He tossed the joint into her window and Colleen looked to me.

“I'm
not paying him,” I said.

“I don't have any money.”

“Then give it back.”

She searched the floor for the joint as honks came from behind me.

“Come on, buddy!” the truck guy yelled, and I heard someone behind me yell, too.

“What are you doing?” I said as I felt around in my pocket. All I could find was a crumpled-up tenner, so I threw it to the truck and asked for change, but he shot me a look like, “Yeah right, pal,” and then he said exactly that and sped away.

on the bare floor in front of the black-and-white Motorola for two and a half hours, never budging, turning her attention only to reach for a pack of cigarettes. I was at the table trying to work, listening in succession to
Gilligans Island, The effersons
, a couple game shows, and
Entertainment Tonight.
Earlier I'd brought up the subject of her sister, I had a million questions, but she said she was too tired to get into it and in a way I was relieved. She had, however, provided me with a snapshot— unsolicited—of her and Bonnie and the similarities were unmistakable. This was definitely the dead woman's sister. I glanced at Colleen occasionally, but she didn't notice. She was hypnotized by stale one-liners, celebrity innuendo, and trivia. I thought about what had happened on that roof and couldn't help but feel a little responsible for this poor woman who apparently had no one and nothing.

Colleen finally landed on
Tom and Jerry
and almost immediately
started coughing up approval, a one-person laugh track. I tried to concentrate, but the room was full of whistles and zipping sounds with Colleen's guffaws keeping the beat.

“That's what I wanted to be before I became an actress.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“In cartoons.”

“Cartoons?”

“Yeah, you know, like Schulz. Know how much money that guy makes off Charlie Brown alone?”

I gestured that it was a lot.

“Only thing is,” she said, “I can't draw to save my rear.”

“Too bad.”

“I still want to do children's stories, though.”

“Great.”

I looked back in my notebook and tried to focus. Colleen grabbed the three-wood out of my golf bag and took a practice swing that came inches away from my only reading lamp.

“Whoa,” I said. “Put that away, you're going to break something.”

“Yes, Master.”

She dropped the club and started jumping on the bed.

“What are you doing? Stop that.”

“Why?”

“You're going to break the thing.”

“You saying I'm fat?”

“I'm saying it's a cheap piece of shit. Now get off it.”

She sat on the floor, crossed her legs.

“I have an unbelievable idea for a children's story. Wanna hear it?”

“Little later,” I said. “I'd like to finish up here first, okay?”

“Sure, okay. It's about this kitty that gets depressed and tries to commit suicide.”

Her hook was too good.

“This a children's story?”

“Uh-huh. Most people don't know this, but animals get depressed, too. So I figured I'd teach kids to be nicer to their pets, so they wouldn't get depressed—the pets.”

“That's a darn nice message.”

I surrendered to the fact that I wasn't going to write anything worthwhile with the constant interruptions, so I flipped back a few pages and started editing.

“The kitty in my story gets so bummed out that she jumps out of a big building.”

My head stayed down, but the eyes swung toward her.

“Happens all the time, you know,” she said, “cats jumping out of big buildings. I even heard about a pig who bit into an electric wire and got electrocuted.”

“Suicide?”

“Well, pigs ain't stupid, you know. They're smarter than dogs.”

Without uncrossing her legs, Colleen hopped on her hands over to me. I smiled at her uncomfortably and returned to my task.

“Thanks for letting me stay here, Henry.”

“Eh. No big deal.”

She unwrapped three sticks of gum, stuffed them in her mouth. When she lit a cigarette, her eyes lit up, too.

“Hey, isn't that funny,” she said. “You wrote a story about suicide, and I was gonna.”

“Huh.”

“I don't know, guess some things are just meant to be.”

I forced my cheeks up in a vague smile.

Colleen stayed on the floor, cracking her gum, blowing smoke rings around my head. I pushed on, though, cutting and adding, trying to focus. When she stood behind me and read over my shoulder, I had to stop. A bubble the size of a soccer ball hung from her mouth.

“Isn't there anything on the tube?” I asked.

“
Beverly Hillbillies
, but I already seen all them twenty times already.”

I closed my notebook, pulled on a sweatshirt.

“You done?” she asked.

“Uh-uh.”

'Oh, come on, you been working all day.”

“Sorry, but I've got to finish this. I'm going to the library for a couple hours.”

“Why?”

“I need quiet.”

“What do you mean? I been quiet.”

On my walk to the Beverly Hills Public Library, I picked up a few scraps of paper and a couple soda cans and I felt good about that. Of course it had occurred to me that I really didn't know Colleen Driscoll, and she could be cleaning me out, but I had my notebooks and money on me and there wasn't much else of value.

A couple hours later, I walked home the long way, down Wil-shire. At the Security Pacific Bank a nauseatingly gorgeous woman with short blonde hair pulled up in a red Mercedes. She swung out a pair of shiny brown legs and hurried to the cash machine. I couldn't help but stop and stare at the way she pushed her hair back while waiting for the fresh dough to roll out, and the black dress that
clung to muscular dancer's thighs and the perfect, propped-up behind. She threw me a smile as she drove away, and as she turned the corner, I stared at the spot where I'd last seen her. I reminded myself that it was an illusion, she couldn't possibly be that fantastic, but still it killed me that she existed and I would never know her. I stopped at Kate Mantilini and ate a fourteen-dollar plate of meat loaf at the bar. It was an indulgence, but I was craving meat and I chased it with a Sprite. Afterward I was still in no rush to go home, so I ordered a Heineken and struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. Almost immediately he started telling me about the woman who was suing him for palimony, even though they'd only lived together for three months and she made more than he did. I thought about telling him about my breakup, compare notes, but it was my experience that when people told each other similar sob stories, neither paid attention, they just thought about their own situation, so I decided to keep my mouth shut and maybe learn something from his breakup, rather than tell mine to a blank stare.

Colleen was back in front of the tube when I returned. She glanced up as I entered, but didn't speak until a commercial released the box's clutch on her.

“I want to go to sleep when this is over, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, though I was wide awake now.

I considered going out for another beer, but I figured the sooner this day ended, the better. Tomorrow she'd be gone and my life would be returned to me. Maybe someday I'd have my own little Mercedes-driving, sweet little dancer butt staying here. Wouldn't that be nice?

When
Mat lock
ended, Colleen flipped off the television, ate a sandwich, made a racket in the bathroom for twenty minutes. She
came out wearing one of my T-shirts and my boxer shorts, smelling like soap and toothpaste. I brushed my teeth, and for the first time put on the pajamas Amanda had bought me two years earlier for Christmas. When I came out of the bathroom, Colleen was leaning against the radiator with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette.

“So is this furniture all yours?”

“It was here when I moved in.”

“No offense, but it's kind of cheesy. You should go to the Rose Bowl flea market and get some decent stuff in here.”

I sat on the murphy bed.

“So where do I sleep?” she asked.

“You've got the right side, I'll take the left.”

She looked as if she'd sooner cuddle up to a piece of fiberglass insulation. “I don't think I know you well enough,” she said. “You might rape me.”

A double take on that one. “Huh?”

“I said I don't know you well enough and you might rape me.”

I scratched my chin, Colleen flipped the butt out the window. She sat in a chair and stared at her feet as I climbed under the covers.

“Can't you sleep someplace else?”

I was astonished by this request. “Where?”

“The couch?”

“That's not a couch, it's a half-couch.”

“Curl up.”

“I don't think so.”

She whispered, “How about on the floor?”

I couldn't help but smile at this—at the sheer
balls.
“I'm sorry,” I said, “but I'm prone to bad backs. Trust me, I'm not going to touch you, I'm just going right to sleep.”

“You say that, but how do I know you're not going to rape me?”

“Enough with the rape thing, huh? For Christ sakes.”

“Well, how do I know?”

“If you're so concerned, then
you
can sleep on the floor, and I'll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Fine.”

I always thought about Amanda just before I fell asleep. I couldn't help it, I had to mention her in my prayers and then there she was. Usually the same image, a positive one. We're driving to a Patriot game in September, it's sunny, we're on a back road in Wrentham with a lush canopy of leaves above us—green mostly, a blotch of red here and there—shadows are flying across her tanned face, Amanda is smiling at me, in love …

Suddenly I heard Colleen shuffling about in the dark. Next thing I knew, the light was on and she was standing over me with her arms folded. “I'm mad at you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For being a shit. Just because I don't want to do it with you, you make me sleep on the floor, and I think that's pretty crappy.”

I sat up. “Colleen, I never said you had to sleep on the floor, I said you could use the bed.”

“Yeah, if I slept with you.”

“That's right,
slept
with me, not anything else. I just want to go to sleep.”

“Oh, yeah, and I was born like yesterday, right?”