The Comedy Writer (17 page)

But it was Sunday, and Sunday was Colleen Driscoll's birthday, and, more importantly, it was the day before Monday, which was when she was going away. And so I sucked it up all morning while she watched cartoons, and I went for a walk in the afternoon while she took in the figure-skating championships, and I even brought her back a big wedge of chocolate cake and some birthday candles and all the time she was pouting like a teenager in a jeans commercial. Because it was clear to her that this was it. There would be no reprieve tomorrow, there would be no last-minute call from the karma governor. One way or another, she was history.

It was a tremendous feeling, a sense of impending freedom, like getting extricated from a horrible marriage without even hearing from a lawyer. Rebirth. Hope. Joy. All these things I felt, and not even her petulant puss could dampen my spirits, because I was happy, happy, happy!

And then I felt a crushing pain rip through my skull, starting at
one temple and exiting the other. I found myself floating off-balance, felt my eyelid rip against the corner of the coffee table, then came the nauseating blackness. I didn't know if I'd been unconscious or just in shock, but when my head cleared, I tasted blood and Colleen was kneeling beside me tugging on my sweatshirt. Cerebral aneurysm came to mind.

“911 …” I groaned.

“Don't worry, you'll be okay.”

“Please … an ambulance …”

“Shake it off. I didn't hit you that hard.”

I noticed the two-iron in her hand.

“You hit me with a golf club?”

“Gulp,” she said, and she crinkled her nose.

“You hit me with a fucking golf club?!”

“I didn't mean it.”

I staggered into the bathroom, examined myself in the mirror. The slice above my eyebrow looked like a fish gill—deep and red, but no blood coming out. There was also a lump blooming in front of my ear, about a half inch below my temple.

“You hit me with a fucking golf club
in the temple,”
I said.

“Double gulp.”

A pair of clean underwear was taped to my eyebrow and I was laying on the bed with a T-shirt full of ice cubes pressed to the side of my head when she finally put the weapon back in the bag. She pulled out my putter and lined up the balled-up sock I'd been reaching for when struck down. “Put that away,” I said sharply.

She shot me a puss, dropped the club on the floor. Then she leaned against the windowsill pretending to read one of her shrink magazines.

“Pick up the golf club and put it back where you got it.”

She crossed her legs, flexed her jaw muscles. This somehow pleased me; she was giving me all the ammo I needed. As if sensing this, Colleen got up and put the club away.

“Happy, Master?” On her way back to the window, she muttered, “Dink.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

I started to sit up, but the pain zigzagged to my forehead. “I don't believe this shit. I get clubbed in the skull with a piece of wrought iron, and
you re
pissed at
me.”

“I said I was sorry. What do I have to do, kill myself?”

“No, you didn't say you were sorry. You
never
said you were sorry.”

“Well, I am, okay? There, I said it.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Hey,
you re
the one who bent his head into it like a big dumb moosey-goose!”

I pulled myself up on my elbows. “Listen, lady, I live here, this is my home. I make the house rules in my home and house rule number one is that I pick up my fucking socks whenever the hell I want. Besides, I told you a million fucking times not to swing those fucking clubs in this fucking apartment!”

“That's a lie. You just said not to swing the wooden ones. And you only said that
twice!”
She made a /-sound.
“A million. Right”

My head was starting to pulsate, I was seeing flashes of white, so I caved back onto the mattress. Sensing my vulnerability, Colleen sprung on me. “You're acting like a big baby! For God sakes, grow up, it's hardly even bleeding.”

I got to my feet, stumbled toward her. “Zip it up, sister! I
should be in a fucking emergency room, not listening to this bullshit!”

“Nice language. Is that the only word you know?”

“Shut the fuck up, you fucking fuckhead!”

I was hoping she'd say something—
anything
—because I was ready to plow her right out that door. She managed to shut up, though, and I lay back down, and the phone rang, and it was the
LA. Times
girl, Jenna.

What a trooper. She wasn't mad, she was concerned. The message had just gotten to her from work. How bad was the accident? Was it a head-on, was I hit from behind?

“Sideswiped,” I said. “A drunk lady from New Jersey.” I scowled at Colleen. “A fucking ugly one.”

Jenna hesitated. “Are you okay?”

“Just a bump on the head. I'll live.”

We gabbed for a while and she said we should try it again, and she said how about dinner, and how about tonight, and suddenly the pain in my brain wasn't so great. After I hung up, I told Colleen to get lost for a few hours. I didn't care what she did or where she went, but she couldn't stay here. She took this pretty well. For about ten seconds. I was in the bathroom dressing my wounds when she appeared in the doorway.

“Why do I have to go?” she said.

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because I have plans.”

“What plans?”

“None of your business what plans.”

“I know you're going out to dinner with Jenny. I'm not stupid, you know. I heard you on the phone.”

I didn't respond.

“I can't believe you.”

“What can't you believe, Colleen?”

“I can't believe you're gonna cheat.”

I turned to her. “I beg your pardon?”

“On your girlfriend.”

“Let me worry about that.”

She sat on the toilet, started to pee.

“So if you're going out to dinner, why can't I stay here?”

“Because I want to have my apartment available.”

“Available for what?”

I noticed specks on the bathroom mirror and took Windex to them.

“Look,” I said, “you can come back anytime after one. I just want to have a place to come to if the need arises.”

“You mean if you get lucky.”

“I mean if the need arises. Maybe she'll want to see my place, maybe we'll come back here and play Monopoly. It's none of your business.”

“So why can't I be here? What's she gonna care?”

“I'm
gonna care.”

“Why?”

“Take a look around. Have you noticed how tiny this place is?”

Colleen tore off some paper, wiped. “So I suppose you're just gonna drop me off at the Hard Rock again like I'm some little piece of shit you can control?”

“You supposed wrong. You're walking, honey.”

“Why can't you just admit it, Henry? You just want to have the place so you can fuck her.”

“What happened to the country bumpkin who showed up here a few days ago?”

“Admit it, you're gonna fuck her, aren't you?”

“That's right! I'm gonna fuck her, I'm gonna jam her till the cows come home, I'm gonna
bone her brains out
, okay?”

“Fine, Henry, just fine,” and she walked out of the bathroom without flushing.

at the restaurant, I stopped at “The Car Wash of the Stars” in West Hollywood. A Mexican man sold me on the twelve ninety-five special, which included Armor All, and asked if I also wanted car freshener.

“Sure,” I said.

“Lemon, cherry, pina colada, new car, or mint?”

“What would you use?” I asked, which was a mistake.

While I waited for my car, I bought a tin of Altoids and an oldies tape called
Freedom Rock.
I checked out the photos of the stars who washed their cars there. It's amazing how many stars there are that you've never heard of.

Jenna Weingarten was one year out of the UCLA masters program in journalism. The
L.A. Times
job was a disappointment—she wanted to write stories, not answer phones—but at least it put her on the right track and she expected to be promoted in a year or two. She was strange-looking, almost ugly—the nose was big, the teeth slightly horsey, the lower lip droopy, the upper one too thin—but they'd all fallen together miraculously, and she was indisputably beautiful.

“Know why I decided to go out with you again?” she asked as our salads were being delivered. No alcohol was served here, so we drank water from Northern California.

“Not a clue,” I said, and the waitress threw me a smirk.

“Because when I was driving home the night we were supposed to go out, I saw two streetlights blink off. I believe in signs. Streetlights don't just turn on and off by themselves. So I figured maybe someone was trying to tell me something.”

“That's why you decided to give me another shot, because a couple streetlights didn't work?”

“Uh-huh.”

I ate my salad and considered this.

“Do you think that's weird?” she asked.

“Yeah, kind of.”

She studied the welt on my forehead. “Ooh, that looks like it hurt. You must've hit the steering wheel pretty hard.”

“Yeah, well, not as bad as it looks.”

“Your car seems all right.”

“Wasn't my car. A friend's.”

“Oh, no. Was he mad?”

“He was driving.”

“Then how'd yqu hit your head on the steering wheel?”

I sniffed out a laugh. “Yeah. See, we got sideswiped from the left and I went flying toward him and cracked my head.”

“You weren't wearing a seatbelt?”

“We'd just gotten in. I was putting it on—what are you, from the insurance company?”

“Sorry. Reporter at heart.”

We talked about movies and she was riled up about Arnold Schwarzenegger claiming he wasn't responsible for the violence in
his films. He said it was “Hollywood” who made the movies and he was just an actor. “Right,” she said, “and Auschwitz was just a bakery.” When Jenna found out I'd lived in Boston, she told me she'd been there while checking out grad schools, but the place was too racist for her—“just look at the Celtics”—and anyway New York was the only city she could see herself living in on the East Coast, with the possible exception of Washington. I knew it was hopeless trying to defend Boston to a Laker fan, but I pointed out that the Celts were the first team to hire a black head coach and let it go at that. Jenna told me about her trip to New York—how she'd discovered the best places to get bagels and pizza and Thai food and leather. I listened attentively until she mentioned the crush she had on Leonard Bernstein, at which point I changed the subject.

I spoke of the dizzy spells I'd been experiencing the last couple months, throwing in a half dozen or so of my prognoses, ranging from an inner ear problem to too much sugar to Meniere's syndrome. She suggested I visit a physician, but I waved her off bravely, saying it would probably go away on its own. What I didn't tell her was that I was certain as we spoke that I had a tumor sitting in my skull the size and consistency of the avocado she was devouring.

Jenna had just been to the doctor and he'd taken blood tests that left her arm black-and-blue like a junkie's. I didn't ask what the tests were for, but she quickly offered, “Don't worry, I don't have AIDS. They just wanted to see if I was hypoglycemic.”

This AIDS remark was encouraging, the inference being that she didn't want me to count her out as a possible sexual partner. Then she took it a step further and asked if I was seeing anyone.

“I was, back in Boston, but no more.”

“Why'd you break up?”

“I don't know. I live here, she lives there. Too difficult, I guess.”

As we ate in silence, I thought about the best way to answer this in the future.

“I'm seeing someone,” Jenna said.

I was surprised by the stab I felt. What a pussy. For God sakes, I hardly knew her.

“So you're cheating on me?”

“I was going to go out with him tonight, if we didn't go out.”

“You mean you had a Plan B?”

“Actually, he was Plan A.”

“Ow.”

“I'm just being honest, Henry. You could never accuse me of being dishonest.”

“Or tactful.”

When she didn't defend herself, I said, “Let me ask you something: Why do people always say things like that to me? I mean, everyone's nice to everyone else, but when it comes to me, I don't get the gentle brush and the sugarcoating, I just get the hard ugly …”

“Truth?”

“Yeah.”

“Probably because you can take it. That's what I like about you.”

This took the wind out of my sails, and I hardly touched my meal. She was eating asparagus and mentioned how it affects one's urine odor. I sensed that she wasn't having the time of her life, so I tried to force the fun by steering the conversation, and of course nothing came of this except a kind of canned dialogue that I would wince at later.

Seeing as the night had taken an ugly turn, I suggested we move
things back to my place, where I hoped a little alcohol might reunite us.

She said, “I have to get up early for work.”

“I'll have you home first thing in the morning.”

She wasn't amused, but I persisted and she caved.