The Road Narrows As You Go (6 page)

Significant to all Frank's exhortations was his ongoing financial relationship with client Piper Shepherd, owner of Shepherd Media, a regional threat buying up southern television channels and city newspapers and launching his own syndicate to represent journalists, illustrators, and comic strips like
Strays
and a dozen other fledglings, each with its own editor in a similarly touch-and-go situation to Gabby Scavalda's, in so much as their careers were concerned. The ladder Gabby wanted to climb, Wendy couldn't tell if the artist was even considered
on
the ladder, a different ladder, or none at all. Another thing: it was no secret Shepherd Media was in the midst of a buying frenzy. In Piper Shepherd's bid to become the new Pulitzer or Hearst, Shepherd Media brought work to Hexen Diamond Mistral, an epic need for loans to bankroll the mergers & acquisitions, and part of what attracted Frank to Wendy's comic was the synchronicity of it already being a part of this emerging empire. Therefore he strongly agreed with Gabby's strategy that from now on he make sure all future Shepherd Media buyouts included
Strays
in the boilerplate contracts. Frank estimated that within six months she would see ten times as many newspaper subscriptions.

Why do I get the sense you're both trying very hard to convince me of something I should really want so badly anyway?

Because we are, Gabby said, we are trying to—, can't you see you're young, you're not looking at this from the same vantage point as us, and you're from this generation that doesn't give a shit about—excuse my language—about bank accounts or commitment or careers, your peers want to smack around classic taboos and rebel against a jury of your peers, they don't want to develop the patience to crank out a comic strip perfect enough to turn into a rubber stamp every time, every panel, every day, for the rest of your life. Gabby spat in Wendy's face as she spoke and stung Wendy's thigh with slaps meant to emphasize her points. I'm sure all your punk friends think you should be doing this for free, right? You're young, Wendy, and this is a serious thing we're asking, more serious than what it takes to be in forty papers.

Wendy laughed and said, Know what else I want besides a cartoon? I want my own café too, like this one, with classy waiters, and full of my own memorabilia. Look at that picture of Coppola lounging with underage Cambodian whores.

Then we have a deal? Frank stood and pressed two fingers to his temple, saluted her, and welcomed Wendy to the client list of Hexen Diamond Mistral's high-yield bonds division. As Gabby applauded, tourists around them took notice of the noise, all except for the man in the corduroy blazer eating solo, who stared out the window, and the waiter came to Frank Fleecen's side in a polite way.

Will there be anything else?

Champagne, Frank waved a hand in front of their waiter's nose. If this is a
real
celebration then do we deserve champagne or what? Are we in business? Waiter, a bottle of your bubbliest Clicquot.

And three more bowls of your
zabaglione
, please, cried Wendy.

5

Buzzing drunk, the three new business partners left Coppola's café and standing on the sidewalk under the sodium streetlights watching tourists they decided instead of splitting up so soon it would be better to escort Gabby Scavalda back to her hotel. It was not far away, fifteen minutes' walk so why take a cab. Gabby loved if they would take her back, tugging on Frank's sleeve, please.

You can't see the stars at night over a foggy San Francisco. No matter how hard Wendy tried to read her fortune in the skies, the streetlights glowing off the dark moisture veiled in a phosphorescent orange the cosmos hanging overhead. So they made their way through the thickest vapours into the bright neon briars of Chinatown, laughing, passing under the sleek flashing lights, making giddy predictions for the future, the famed noodle houses and not-so-good dim sum restaurants, imported-goods stores, tarot card readers, porno theatres, food carts, racist tourists, and incontinent slummers getting in everyone's way. By chance they passed by Justine Witlaw's second-floor art gallery near Pine Street, a loft space that
was the location for some pretty pretentious stuff, Wendy thought, but what did she know. Not all bad, she hinted.

Frank said he had been inside and agreed, there was only one good artist there, in fact he'd bought some pictures from Justine.

Gabby nudged her cartoonist. Your mutual friend Jonjay. What I tell you?

That's whose pictures I bought, yes, of course, Jonjay's. What sort of a fly in the ointment is he today? Frank said with a condescending shake of his head.

He's missing in action, said Wendy. Maybe in Japan.

Jonjay, the one-eyed king, cursed kid, orphan from another world— what else did I hear the PhDs call him? Tailgater?

Not genius? said Wendy, arching a heel behind her so that her shoe hung by a toe.

Watching her, Frank said, I have two of those pictures he drew using the
I Ching
. Intriguing stuff. Not the usual blasphemous contemporary shimsham. And the one on the wall in my office I like the best because he drew it based on bets he placed on a game of roulette.

Gabby loped along behind in her effort to keep up as the two in front got to talking. At last Gabby saw her opening in the pedestrian traffic to run up beside them and repeat that she must get a chance to meet this Jonjay everyone talks so much about.

Some people never change, Frank said. They've been around forever. He's that type. You see him in paintings in the Frick. He's the hieroglyph in the graffiti. Didn't I hear he used to draw from his imagination? Frank blinked up at the neon coin laundry sign as if for confirmation. That's what I heard.

Oh, sure, he still does on occasion, said Wendy. Haven't you seen his comic book? It's amazing. I haven't seen him since Cleveland a year ago. Any idea where he might be?

Last time I saw him? Must have been … five years ago at the Stanford
math labs. He was auditing advanced physics classes on stochastic processes. We met at random.

Wendy slapped her forehead. Funny, I could have sworn Jonjay was like nineteen years old, I thought he was younger than
Hick
.

Timeless asshole, said Frank and slapped his hip where the Motorola was holstered like a cowboy's pistol. He
looks
like a child, doesn't he? But I know he must be more like fifty, sixty. Older than me.

Fifty! As if! Older than you? As
if
, said Wendy, giggling uncertainly and losing her balance on a cobble. Jesus.

Watch your step, said Gabby and tried to wedge her way between the two. I wonder if Jim Davis has a similar deal to ours for
Garfield—
it's the ubiquity I hope we can achieve—

Look for Jonjay at the end of chaos, on top of a terminal horizon of chaos, Frank laughed through his nose. Chaos is where you can find Jonjay. I happen to share this obsession with him, with ways to interpret randomness. Drunk walks. Stochastics. He was toying with chaos, all kinds of chaos, and I went to visit him at the Stanford labs to find out if he or someone with an actual degree could improve upon a model of my own. Since my days as an undergraduate I'd been tinkering with an equation that modified the standard approach to random movements. But Jonjay improved mine, all right. I threw mine in the trash after I saw what he had— 
well
.

So you ripped him off? Wendy kidded him, but when Frank didn't follow up with any laugh of his own she realized he probably
had
stolen Jonjay's formula. That's what a cartoonist would do anyways, she said.

The students he was hanging out with back then are all millionaire microchip engineers now, but even among them, he was a natural. One of those synesthesiacs who can see math. The PhDs did not love him hovering around.

I wonder if that's where he is right now, back at Stanford. Wendy considered investigating on Hick's and her own behalf.

They saw Gabby to the lobby of her hotel and embraced and palavered a moment longer. It's been so good to see you, Gabby, Wendy said and draped her arms around her editor.

Now hasn't this been a historic night out? We're in business. Yes, bring on the multitudes.

Awesome applesauce. Wendy kissed her editor on each cheek. Her editor gallantly shook Frank's hand and giggled. She could see Gabby gnaw over the triangle of the situation. With Wendy right there she couldn't very well dangle the hotel key from a finger and ask Frank up to her room for a drink. So after a few uncomfortable pauses in the farewells, Gabby blew them a kiss and got into the old wrought-iron elevator, leaving Frank and Wendy alone in the lobby under a candelabra chandelier, an octopus's tangle of goldenrod limbs with slender flickering bulbs at the ends.

Well, gee whiz …, said Wendy, kicking up a heel and yawning into the palm of her hand. What a doozy of a day. I got a real injection of adulthood. Like I was bit by a radioactive guru. I feel supermature. Did my hair turn white?

You look radiant. I'm parched just looking at you. What's the intelligent thing for me to do right now?

Hmm, intelligent's not my department.

I should not go home to San Jose. That's what a responsible man in my state of insobriety would do. I should book a room in this hotel.

Never occurred to me. Sounds expensive compared to a cab or walking it off.

I'm too drunk for roads, sidewalks. Can barely stand. Not even the backseat of a taxi. I can't picture myself going all the way to San Jose, not at this hour, no. Frank stared for less than a second at his Rolex. I start work at
four
in the morning on a weekday and end my day at eleven at night.

I'm the one who has a car, said Wendy. And it's parked up by the Caffe Trieste in one of those lots that closes after ten. I'll have to go back in the
morning and fetch it. I should be the one getting a room.

If I got a room, what do you think, would you come up for one last celebratory nightcap?

I thought you said you were
drunk
.

Too drunk for a taxi.

STRAYS

6

Upstairs in room 707 Wendy remembered there was a joint in her shoulder bag, and as the two of them smoked it leaning out the open window looking down onto Post Street, she told Frank her theory about violence in the funny pages. The basic thesis was that violence triggered memory creation. Essential to a comic strip's longevity was the imprint of violence.

Frank never got stoned, he claimed, as he poured them each two fingers of whisky from the minibar, and so if he seemed especially interested in what she had to say on the subject, he wanted her to know it wasn't because of the joint that he kept asking her facetious questions, like, Are you talking about murder? You mean mayhem, riots? Blood and guts?

Slapstick, not the real stuff—for a comic to get lodged in the reader's memory, slapstick is key. The good old vaudeville rules still apply to strips. In the right shoes, pain is funny and memorable. Because you laugh before you recognize the moral paradox of laughing at violence, you remember. Slapstick connects at a deeper level to emotional pain, embeds itself into memory, and helps make a comic strip famous. The best strips repeat the same slapstick routines, the repetition goes to show the themes. A comic
strip has to find a thing to repeat and the cartoonist must draw the same things the same way. Repetition is the secret. Repetition
is
the formula. A cartoon is the world on an infinite loop. Cartooning's circularity is its success. That's why you more often forget the strips that
don't
use violence regularly.

Hit me with an example.

Okay, so my favourite is the brick Ignatz mouse tosses at Krazy Kat's head every day. Every day for forty years, that brick to the head. Unforgettable poetical violence, a violence to suit every theme imaginable.
Krazy Kat
—every punchline's the same for hundreds and hundreds of strips, a mouse hits a cat in the head with a brick.

A brick. I'll have to look up that strip.

So
good. Or think of the many ways Lucy finds to pull the football out from under Charlie Brown.

And Popeye.

Wendy, shadowboxing, said, Popeye loves a scrap. With those forearm muscles and the spinach. Popeye's themes are in his punches. Charlie Brown's themes are in his crashes.

Yes, I see, yes, yes. Frank sat down beside her on the loveseat and accepted another toke on her joint, yes, he could see the point of this violence as more than a joke, yes, a key to understanding the restless, inimitable core of a comic. He smiled meaningfully at her—she could tell the topic didn't matter one whit to him. She drank up the whisky. Woop! It was strong, pungent, heady. She didn't want more, no. But she took another round for good times and continued to expound on her theory. He put a hand on her leg. She pretended not to notice. Garfield beats up Odie. Dennis is
the
Menace after all. Dick Tracy shoot-'em-ups. Alley Oop's caveman club.
Wizard of Id
's torture chambers. B.C.'s rolling on the wheel down a steep hill. Violence is timeless, don't you think?