The Comedy Writer (16 page)

Authors: Peter Farrelly

Tags: #Humorous, #Fiction

BOOK: The Comedy Writer

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While Colleen swam, I read the sports section and checked out the topless tattoo babes nearby. I started really enjoying myself until I got hit in the face with a mouthful of water, which was doubly annoying, seeing as I was sitting about three hundred yards back from the shoreline and after traveling that far swishing about in
Colleen's cheeks, it had the consistency of egg yolk. Colleen giggled and plopped down on the newspaper, making sure to hang over me and shake like a dog first.

“Ever notice how you never see baby seagulls?”

I didn't answer, and she said, “Did you ever notice that?” 1 guess.

“Not even any halfway-grown seagulls?”

“Mm,” I said.

“I have a theory. I think that baby seagulls probably lay low until they're completely grown up.”

“You're really going out on a limb, aren't you?”

I put down the sports section and rolled over, facing the six bare knockers. Colleen picked up the paper.

“Want me to quiz you?” she asked.

“On what?”

“Sports.”

“Sure.”

“What's NBA stand for?”

“National Basketball Association. You can get trickier than that. Ask me who the top ten hitters are.”

“Don't tell me what to ask. Okay, here's one: Can you tell me who the NBA's leading scorer of all-time history is?”

“Kareem.”

“Kareem
what?”

“Abdul-Jabbar.”

“Right. And who's the second all-time leading scorer?”

“Wilt.” She cupped her ear until I said, “Chamberlain.”

“You're good,” she said. “Hold it. Who's Alex English?”

“Plays for Denver.”

“I never heard of him. How come he's in the top ten?”

“He's good.”

“But how come Magic Johnson and Larry Bird aren't in the top ten?”

“They haven't scored as many points.”

“Bullcrap. They're better than he is, any day.”

“Points, this is about points.”

“So you're saying Alex English is better than them?
Right'

“I'm saying they haven't been in the league as long, and English has been consistent.”

“Oh, I suppose Magic Johnson isn't consistent?”

“Alex English has averaged twenty-five points a game for the last ten or fifteen years. That's why he's in the top ten and they're not.”

She glanced suspiciously at the stats, then threw down the paper.

“That still doesn't make it right.”

After Venice we hit the Universal Studios tour, which was better than I expected, except for the attraction called
Earthquake!
, which I thought in bad taste, particularly in a region where people live in fear of quakes—sort of like opening up a
Nuked!
in Hiroshima. We took Coldwater Canyon back from the Valley and went looking for the Manson house but couldn't find it. We couldn't find the Playboy Mansion, either, but we did stumble upon Ron and Nancy's retirement home while looking for Jed Clampett's place, which was another one we failed to locate. I paid two-fifty for a map of the stars' homes, but it was more for a souvenir than anything and most of the stars they listed I hadn't heard of. Finally we stopped off in West-wood at the wall Marilyn Monroe is buried in. I thought about the
RFK affair rumors and the irony of him losing his life in this city, too. It almost seemed like karma again, except I didn't believe those rumors. I heard something behind me and there was Colleen blubbering like a Middle Eastern woman, attracting curious looks from the small group of tourists gathered around Natalie Wood's headstone a few feet away. Colleen couldn't leave without throwing herself on that grave, too, which by then I was witnessing with disgust from a distance.

A moment later she came skipping across the cemetery, calling out, “Let's get a frozen yogie, Monkey!”

As we drove home, Monday suddenly seemed light-years away.

“You know what they should invent?” she said.

“What's that?”

“Windshields with subscription lenses. That way you wouldn't have to wear your glasses when you drive, but you could still see.”

I looked at her. “Am I that ugly in glasses?”

“Well … this would be better, 'cause this way you wouldn't have to wear glasses or even contacts. Do you think Phoebe Cates is pretty?”

“Yeah.”

We passed the grim reaper roller skater again, this time on Wilshire. He had the skates off and a radio to his ear, jamming away, oblivious to the fear he projected.

“You know what?” Colleen said. “I'm gonna invent it. You wait, someday I'll be rich.”

“One little problem: The passengers would be getting splitting headaches.”

“Not if they had the same twenty-twenty.” Colleen smiled. “If I don't get a yogie soon, I'm gonna die.”

She lit a cigarette, tossed the empty pack out the window.

I started to perspire. “Brilliant.”

I hit the brakes, backed down Wilshire until we were beside the crumpled red-and-white ball.

“Go get it,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because it's littering.”

“This is a nice neighborhood, someone'U pick it up.”

“I know.
You
will.”

Colleen sat there hitting her smoke.

“Get out and pick it up.”

When she didn't budge, I snatched the cigarette from her lips.
“Pick it up/9

“You're crazy. You almost broke my tooth.”

“Just open the door and
pick it up.”

She squinted at me. “Why are you being such a fark?!”

“A what?”

“A fark.”

“A
what?”

“A fark, a fark
—
a dog dink, you idiot!”

I grabbed a hunk of my own hair. “Look, either you pick it up … or get the hell out of this car.”

There was a brief standoff, and then Colleen climbed out and folded her arms. I waited a moment, realizing I couldn't very well abandon her with her belongings back at my apartment. And then I thought, the hell with it, I'd call her bluff, and I drove the mile home without ever glancing in my rearview mirror.

along a grassy park that ran adjacent to Santa Monica Boulevard. I passed a sign that said BEVERLY HILLS—SISTER CITY OF CANNES, FRANCE. It appeared that the whole park was covered with duck shit, but it was just plugs of dirt. I saw a pay phone and called the
L.A. Times
again looking for Jenna, but the man who answered said she didn't work on Saturdays anymore. This time I left a detailed message on her voice mail, an alibi, and after I hung up, I kept walking. I saw an old ripped, weathered magazine against a fence and felt a surge of lust. A few homeless people were settling in for the night, so I kept going without checking it out. I went past Palm Drive, then Maple, then Elm. Menendez country.

I went right at Rexford, found myself in a tree-lined residential area. The air was rich with the smell of eucalyptus and freshly cut lawns. Outside a school, a group of men were playing a pickup game of basketball. I watched from behind the chain-link fence. God, I missed the game. What used to be my obsession was now my great fear. It was almost pitch-black now, but the players didn't seem to notice. It was a loud, violent game—no pure shooters, just a bunch of musclemen shoving their way inside. No one was passing, no one was firing from more than three feet away, most of the guys were plowing their way to the hole, and those who weren't didn't score. A black man with a scraggly beard and dirty work pants grabbed a rebound, took it end to end, got rejected, and called a foul. An argument ensued. It was a good call, except that no one else had been calling fouls, and there had been plenty. As the guys wandered to the sidelines, the Dirty-Work-Pants-Foulee refused to turn the ball over to the Dodger-Jersey-Fouler. “Listen to me, you motherfucker,” said Work-Pants. “I lost my home, I lost my job, I lost my fuckin' old lady and babies a long time ago, so I ain't in no big rush
to go anywhere, you understand? Now you can scream all night, scream till the sun comes up, you can
scream till your fuckiri throat bleeds Dodger blue
, but I ain't gonna lose this motherfuckin' argument!”

The man in the Dodger jersey saw that he was facing an asphalt filibuster, so he backed down and the game resumed. Then first time back down the court someone turned an ankle. While they checked him out, I got a rush of fear that they were going to try to recruit me, so I hurried back toward my apartment.

Herb Silverman and Tiffany were cooking popcorn and trying to convince Colleen to change her name. “Face it, you're not a Colleen,” Herb said. “You're just not.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because Colleen sucks. It's old and it means nothing and it'll only hold you back.”

My phone machine was blinking, but there were just a bunch more hang-ups.

Tiffany said, “You're an actress, right, honey? Well, start acting like one and get yourself a decent name.”

Turned out Tiffany's real name was Debbie and she'd changed it for the Miss New Mexico contest, which of course had paid off in spades.

“Try to think of a successful Colleen,” Herb said. “They don't exist. People aren't looking for Colleens to be in their movies today, they're looking for Winonas and Kirsties and Tiffanys. Take Henry here. He's got an old-fashioned name, so he attracts old-fashioned babes. If he called himself Trent or Hunt or Trevor, I guarantee you he'd be getting laid a lot more.”

“Herb isn't such a new name,” I said.

He kept addressing Colleen. “I don't have to worry about getting
laid, he does. Anyway, I didn't change my name to get women, I did it because Herb's a powerful name in the industry, and it's retro.”

It was only eleven-thirty when I went to bed, but I was exhausted. Colleen and I hadn't spoken since the litterbug incident, and that was okay with me. Just as I fell asleep, I felt the kick. I sprang up, looked at Colleen. She was sitting up, too.

“What the fuck?” I said.

This didn't straighten the smile on her face.

“Well?” she said.

“Well, what?”

“Well?”

uWell what?”