The Comedy Writer (25 page)

“I want you to see a colleague of mine,” the doctor said. He looked sad as he rubbed his upper lip.

“Okay,” I said.

“He's a psychiatrist.”

What was this, a shrink who specialized in treating the terminally ill?

“I think it would be beneficial for you to talk to somebody,” he said.

“The lump?”

“It's nothing.”

“What do you mean, 'nothing'? It's a huge lump. I never had a huge lump there before.”

“Henry, it's not huge, and it's very common. It's a subareolar mass.”

“A what?”

“It's what's called a breast bud.”

“Breast bud?”

Slowly it started to sink in.

“I never heard of a
breast bud,”
I said with an irrational bitterness.

“You didn't go to medical school.”

“But how do you know just by feeling it? Shouldn't you do a biopsy?”

“Henry,
you re not dying.
You're suffering from anxiety. Believe me, you have all the symptoms, and they fall under the heading of hypochondriasis.”

“I
knew
I had something.”

“This isn't a joke, Henry, it's something you've got to deal with. For God sakes, you're in the tumor-of-the-week club.”

This was humiliating. It was one thing to be called a baby, but a nut? I stood up.

“Look, Doc, I'm sorry I troubled you, but I really don't think I need to see a shrink.”

“I think you do.”

I stared at my shoes. “Wouldn't most people come in if they started feeling lumps on their body?”

“There are lumps all over your body, and I guarantee in a week you'll find another one, or your urine will be a funny color, or your gums will bleed when you floss, or a headache will become a brain tumor. And what'11 happen is, if you don't trust me, you'll probably go to another doctor, and then another, until finally you find something you can feel genuinely sick about.”

I looked out the window.

“Look,” Dr. Hoffman said, “seeing a psychiatrist is nothing to be ashamed of. In your business it's practically a rite of passage. You're a creative guy, and you're probably under a lot of stress.”

“Not really.”

“Sometimes you can be under stress and not know it. Let's face it, you're in a competitive industry. There's a lot of pressure to succeed.”

I nodded, but I wasn't really listening. The thought of walking past the secretaries was starting to make me sick—this time for real. I was a pussy, and they all knew it, and they were probably laughing at me right now.

“I can't afford a shrink. I'm not covered.”

“He's reasonable. Can you afford seventy-five dollars a visit?”

“Not really. I mean, that's a couple lunch shifts for me'

“It's worth it, and he's a good man. I'll tell you something else. It's possible you may just have a chemical imbalance that can be treated with drugs. He may want to try you on a half-milligram of Klonopin or Inderal and see if it helps any.”

“What if it doesn't?”

“Then we'll find other means to deal with it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just relax …”

“But what if we don't get rid of it?”

“Then you'll just go on worrying yourself to death.”

“You mean literally? Like I could die from this?”

“Henry, stop it.”

I came home and found two messages on my machine. One was from the Gus Anders guy, whom I'd still failed to call back; the other was from Levine. I rung Levine back and, to my surprise, he got right on. The general rule with my agent was that when he called, I immediately called back, and then he would return that call at six-thirty or seven. Unless I called him first, in which case he'd call back at 8 P.M. or 8 A.M.—correctly figuring that most writers were either out or asleep at those hours—so he could live with himself without actually having to talk.

Levine asked how my meeting with Bowman had gone. I tried to answer but produced nothing coherent.

“What's the matter?”

I wanted to tell him about Colleen Driscoll and my cancer scare and the humiliation of working at Johnny Rockets, but it all sounded crazy and unstable and, being new to the entertainment industry, I thought this might adversely affect his opinion of me.

“I have no idea what the hell he was talking about,” I said.

“A disaster?”

“He didn't punch me out or anything.”

“Did you pitch him?”

“He pitched me.”

“Really? That's good. What'd he pitch?”

“Something about love in the nineties being death. And the guy in love is a serial killer.”

“Oh, Jesus … He's been throwing that one around for years. It used to be love in the eighties.' “

“Well, tell me, what does he want?”

“He wants somebody to write a love story about a bunch of assholes. Something he can relate to. I'll call and tell him you're passing.”

“No way.”

“It's an insane project. It'll never get made.”

“I don't care. I need a job.”

“I'll set up some more meetings.”

“When? In a month? Six weeks? Levine, I don't think you understand how broke I am. Maybe there's a way I can turn this into something good.”

“This was a mistake. I shouldn't have sent you to that asshole in the first place. The guy's got the personality of a student loan officer. I'll tell you something else. If you pass, he'll have more respect for you.”

“I don't need respect, I need money.”

-Henry—”

“Wait a second. Let's just think about this, okay?”

“Henry, I got you a meeting with Larry David.”

“Who?”

“The guy who runs
Seinfeld.
He's a friend.”

“You're shitting me?”

I could hear Levine pouring something.

“He was down in San Diego for the weekend, so I sent him your script. He called with a little interest, so I put my ass on the line. Now I want you to go prove me right.”

“Done. I'm perfect for that show.”

“You don't have to convince me. Just go in there with a bunch of ideas and blow them away.”

“Maybe I should write a spec
Seinfeld
script. I could kick one out in a week.”

“You don't have a week. You're meeting with him and Larry Charles tomorrow. Anyway, these guys they don't buy spec scripts. It's rare that they even buy a pitch, but like I said, he's a friend and they've bought one or two in the past. What you do is you go in, you make him smile, hopefully he pays you to write an episode, and Larry and Jerry rewrite you until you hardly recognize it. Then if you're lucky, maybe when there's a staff opening, they think of you.”

“Would I still get credit if they rewrote me?”

“You're getting way ahead of yourself. First you have to blow them away.”

“I'll blow them away.”

“Yuh,” he said with a sniff, “good luck.”

“What's that about?”

“I just know these guys. They're not laughers.”

“I thought I didn't have to be funny—I'm just a comedy writer, remember?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before, you said—”

“Forget what I said. Make 'em laugh and they'll hire you, that's the bottom line.”

“But they're not laughers … ?” “No. No, they're not.”

I tried to prepare for my meeting, but for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about Colleen Driscoll. It's not that I was worried about her, but I did wonder where she was. I'd seen the runaways and crazies and alkies and just plain unlucky who had ended up homeless and I knew that, despite the Beverly Hills policemen's ostensible astonishment that I would wash my hands of this lunatic, they weren't about to get their fingernails dirty, either. This wasn't Mayberry, and no one was going to take her home to Aunt Bea and fill her with pot roast and sweet potato pie. At best they'd contact a relative back in Jersey, if that didn't violate her civil rights, but, from the little I'd gathered, help from that quarter seemed unlikely. I listened to the drizzle in the gutters. Two days in a row now, a record for June in L.A.; thirty-eight hundredths of an inch. I wondered if she would find a dry place to sleep. I thought about the nooks and crannies in the palisades off the PCH. It made me tired and I slept.

and there was a magnificent snow-capped mountain range to the east. The air had been wiped clean like a windshield. L.A.'s blue-gray sky was now just blue and the gray was floating in the sewers toward the sea. Everything was damp and shiny from the rain, and the downtown skyline sparkled beneath the magical new peak.

It never occurred to me that Jerry Seinfeld would be in the meeting, but when I walked in the office, there he was, slouched on the waiting room couch, in jeans, a button-down shirt, and Mets cap, not reading, not talking, just slouching.

…Excuse me,” I said. “Could you tell me how to get to the
Seinfeld
offices?”

He stared at me for a beat. “Uh, this is it.”

“Just kidding. I'm supposed to be meeting with the two Larrys at eleven-thirty.”

Suddenly the door swung shut, revealing a thin bald man sitting behind it. He held out his hand. “Larry David.”

The two of them led me to an inner office and then Larry David went off looking for the other Larry. Jerry leaned against a desk, apparently deep in thought.

I gestured at his hat. “So … Mets fan, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“They broke my heart. I'm a Sox fan.”

He tilted his head. “Chicago?”

“Red Sox. Eighty-six Series.”

“Oh, right, yeah. I was there.”

“Boy, that one hurt.”

“I bet.”

We continued to stand there, nodding at each other, me trying to act comfortable. I pretended to check out the room.

“Billy Buckner,” he said.

“Mm. Billy Buckner.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, as if it were still eating me up.

“We had Keith Hernandez on one of the shows,” he said.

“I know. I thought that one sucked.”

Jerry flinched. Then he got it. “Yeah, well, guess I don't blame you.

Larry David showed up with the other Larry—Larry Charles—a friendly face about my age who looked like a young Jerry Garcia. This was a nice surprise. I never pictured Seinfeld hanging out with hippie types.

“I've got to warn you,” Larry David said, “this is a next-to-impossible task you have here.”

“What's that?”

“Pitching to us. It's almost impossible to make us laugh. I just want you to know that, so you don't get disappointed.”

“It's true,” Larry Charles said. “We hardly ever buy pitches.”

Jerry jumped on the bandwagon with a big fold of the arms.

Larry David said, “I think all last year we may have bought two.”

“We're brutal,” Larry Charles said, looking more like Manson than Garcia now.

“That's right,” Larry D. said. “We hardly ever even
take
pitch meetings. But Levine talked us into it.”

“All right, all right,” Seinfeld said. “Let the man do his job.”

I opened my notebook and dove in. Everyone was telling the truth. These guys weren't laughers. The first three stories didn't draw so much as a nod. I was starting to sweat. It's one thing to die in front of some development schmo you never heard of, but dying in front of your idol and two guys named Larry is traumatic. The development person I could write off as a humorless idiot, but these guys were funny. They'd proved that. If I couldn't make them laugh, I wasn't ready for the big leagues. I could see Seinfeld starting to lose interest. Larry David was alert but unenthused. Manson looked like he'd been kicked in the head by an elephant. “Give me another,”
Larry David kept saying. I was short of breath, felt flop sweat coming on. I wanted to run out the door and never watch the fucking show again.

“What about virgins?” I said. 'They haven't done anything about virgins in a while.”

Larry David sat up and a smile appeared like a rosebud on a rock.

“Virgins,” he said. “Yeah, yeah, I like virgins.”

“It used to be, back in the fifties and sixties, that every guy aspired to find a virgin. That was the consummate dreamgirl. Not now. Now it's a nightmare. The last thing you want today is a virgin, especially once you get into your thirties.”

“That's true,” Larry D. said.

“A virgin at that age only raises a red flag. I mean, why is she a virgin? There's no good excuse for it. Is it an AIDS thing? Use a rubber. Is it religious? You definitely don't want to be the first one in if that's the case—it'd be like fucking God over. Is she holding out for Mr. Right? Too much pressure—what if you do her and it doesn't work out? Maybe she's a virgin because she just doesn't care that much about sex. Well, then … you have nothing in common. The bottom line is: Who the fuck needs blueballs when you're in your thirties?”

“That's good,” Larry D. said. “I like the virgin thing.” I saw him write it down. “Yeah, virgins, I like that.”

with a girl, common sense often abandons him as well. So it was that upon returning home that day I found myself dialing Amanda's apartment before I could think it
through. Her roommate Maura answered and I started yakking immediately to disguise how ridiculous it was that I was on the other end. Maura had always liked me, that much I knew.