The Last Laugh Read online

  “Once I led the life of a rich man …” Clapton’s voice came out of the darkness from a passing car radio, and was gone. The glare of headlights from a truck, another harsh lunge at one already stumbling. Give me time, give me time. I looked away from the glare, the rust on the metal bridge tower. Another wave of nausea.

  Back to the endless tightrope between this hell and another. Papers were blowing randomly on the quay nearby. My thoughts flew out of control. Sarah’s birth, four years ago, the whole world was full of blessing then. Such promise, a new daughter, my career going so well. Dom’s first day at school. He cried when I left, and I hid for an hour in the bushes outside to be sure he was all right.

  All gone now.

  The stink of reality, the faint smell of the river below, the even fainter hints of food cooking beyond the quay: Indian, Italian, American smells, it made no difference. It all made me want to throw up into the beckoning and horror of the December water below.

  Another demon lunged, appearing from who knows where to join in the endless chaos of mania and indecision. Dominic’s voice on the phone last week, “I love you, Daddy. When can I see you, Daddy?” Words which only months ago had brought such riches, now drove the knife deeper into the wound beneath the ribs. There was no way to explain to him my confusion, my mumblings, it just added to his conviction that it was he who had done something terribly wrong. Each time my children’s voices came into the discordant medley, the water below became more horrifying. Without them, the jump could be so perfect, final, free of consequence.

  Harmer. Dave Harmer. The only man I knew I could kill with my bare hands, and enjoy it completely. On the show, he was so cocky, talking about his new invention, a bike powered by the sun. Tiny cells between the spokes and on the frame picked up the sun’s rays, stored them in a patented lightweight battery inside the frame, which could then propel the bike up hills. Like a moped, but so light you could put it on top of your car. He talked about the environmental benefits, how many more people would ride a bike if the hard work was taken out of it.

  Afterward, over drinks, he told me how Costco and Pepsi were both endorsing the bike in national sweepstakes, that the military had a stake in it, that he had offers from all over the world. And … he was short $125,000 to complete his last essential safety tests before the bike was ready for national marketing.

  I kicked the railing of the bridge. Bastard. How could I have been such a fool?

  There were reasons he was not at liberty to reveal, why he had to borrow the money from a very special, very lucky private party. People were fighting for the chance to be that special one, but he had turned them all down for “karmic reasons.” He kept in touch, calling me from hotel rooms all over the world with stories of great potential success. He never asked me directly for the loan, just told me that he would make the right person a very special offer: lend him the money for six months, and he would then return it with 100 percent interest.

  I bit.

  We had good equity in our house, and I had great credit. A mixture of greed and environmental exuberance led me to do something I later came to bitterly regret. I took out a second mortgage on the house, effectively leaving no equity in it at all, and took out a line of credit at the bank. I lent him the money. Sure, I had an iron-clad contract; I even had my attorney check it. Everything seemed above board and reliable.

  I felt a stare, like a grip on the back of my neck. I glanced over my shoulder. An old man was standing by the next tower. Probably homeless. Whichever way I angled myself away from him, I could still feel the intrusion of his look. I wanted to be left alone. Even in this despair there was no peace.

  A police car drove slowly over the bridge, slowing almost to a stop as it came close to me. Time was running out. Time to jump and be done forever, or walk away. Another flash of Dominic and then of Sarah, sweeping out of the darkness at me. What had these innocents done to deserve a father’s suicide?

  The old man was still staring, as though challenging me to make a clean decision. Jump or move. The police car was coming closer. I started to walk to the other side of the bridge, as if pushing my body through treacle. I glanced at the police car, and averted my eyes as I passed the hobo, his look still piercing.

  I walked into the pre-Christmas bustle of the city at night.

  CHAPTER 2

  A VISIT FROM VENUS

  The neon sign said: “Open till 2 A.M.,” a spider’s web luring passing drunks and insomniacs. I stepped inside to old cracked linoleum on the floor, small booths around the outside wall, a few sad lost souls sipping black coffee at the bar. “Idiot Wind” was playing on the jukebox. I looked for the table with least exposure. Safety. Above all I had to protect my wounds.

  I sank down into the dirty upholstery of the booth, patched together with gray duct tape. Cold, defeated, I did my best to avoid the accusing stares of lonely people.

  A woman walked out from the kitchen into the serving area behind the bar. Wavy blond hair was pulled back into an ornate clip on top of her head. Even from this distance, I could see penetrating blue eyes. She looked as if she could be in her 30s, past the naïve exuberance of youth, but still fresh, still open. She picked up the decaf flask to fill a patron’s cup, with the elegance of a Roman goddess. Shy and retiring, yet without fear. She had the strength and presence of royalty. Venus—suddenly it was clear. She could be the model Botticelli used for his Birth of Venus. She turned to the glass-fronted display case to take out a lemon meringue pie. She lifted it like a holy sacrament. She placed the pie on the counter and sank a knife into its heart. In that cut, I was also slain. She placed the pie on a plate, and without any change of her demure expression, she offered it up to her midnight guest. I was in a fairy story with kings and dragons and princesses. This was a woman of royal blood.

  Memory came crashing back in. I looked away. My jeans were frayed and smelled of many days and nights of use. My jacket, once a prized object, was torn and stained. The sneakers, only months before my passport to distinction at the city’s most exclusive health club, were now old and dirty, and had holes in the sides. My eyes, when I dared look in a mirror, peered out of darkness and confusion.

  She came over to my table. My stomach turned. She had the body of a dancer or an athlete. From under her white uniform I could see perfectly toned legs. Her arms were strong and brown.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked.

  I looked at her with hunger. A few clever and flirtatious answers flew across the screen to respond to her. But then that sinking feeling returned. She softened her composure, and laid one slender hand gently on the vinyl of the table.

  “A cup of tea and toast,” was all I could say. “Please.”

  The moment of tenderness which had opened between us suddenly snapped shut like a mousetrap. She stiffened. Her lips tightened. She wrote on a little pad that she pulled from her hip pocket.

  “Whole wheat, rye, or sourdough?”

  I chose rye, mechanically looking at the table.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” she said with a perfunctory smile, and returned to her sanctuary behind the counter.

  I pulled out pen and paper, an old habit which had started in cafés in Europe, more than 20 years before. My leather-bound notebook then was full of optimism, of witty things to say and futures to live. Now I used the back of an unpaid utility bill, sent to a house I no longer owned. As I had done so many times over the last months, I played the game of retracing my steps. Maybe I could undo the damage if I could only understand what went wrong.

  “March, 2000,” I wrote. “The Crash.” I had prided myself on providing a safe haven for my lovelies. Where did I start to go wrong? Where exactly was my big mistake? The bike had a design flaw. The battery worked fine for about 16 hours, then refused to take any more charge. The deals with Costco and Pepsi were never properly signed. Within months of having given Harmer the money, the whole thing went belly up. Harmer disappeared completely—turned out in retrospect he w
as something of a professional con man.

  Who knows? Maybe I could have weathered the storm, were it not for the change of management at the station. KYQD has been privately owned since the ’30s. Will Thurston took it over from his father in the ’70s. Now Will wanted to retire, so he hired a younger man to manage the station, fresh out of business school, a man named Bruce Pushar. What a jerk. He had a whole new campaign to increase listeners and to attract more advertising money. This meant, as he put it, “more zap, less yap.” Which also meant less of me. I resigned before they had a chance to fire me. They wanted me to slot rock music and commercials into talks with environmentalists and visionaries. It just wasn’t my idea of radio.

  A man looking as sad and crazy as I was feeling stood up from the bar. A cigarette hanging from his lower lip, he tripped on the step, in a haze of alcohol and nicotine. He stumbled over to the now silent jukebox and flipped a coin into its open lips. After a few seconds came the voice of Neil Young singing “Oh Lonesome Me,” once the accompaniment to my lovemaking and painting in Paris. I returned to my envelope, also in search of the elusive end to my troubles.

  “April,” I continued. “Becca’s fury.” I’d never told my wife about the second mortgage, or the line of credit at the bank. I knew she wouldn’t approve, and I wanted to surprise her with our huge profit when it came in. Besides, I was ashamed of myself, the money we had had in the house all came from her family. Finally, after it was clear that the money was gone for good, I made up my mind to confess and begged her forgiveness.

  She went through the roof. Italian blood, very fiery. When she called her parents in hysterics, her father finally got his way, persuading her that she had married a spineless wimp. “He’s not a real man, hon. You deserve better than that.” I overheard his booming voice as I paced the living room. “Now come on home with the kids, where you belong, and we’ll look after you good, honey.” She was very torn, but her anger at me and a lifetime’s habit of privilege finally won the decision.

  “May. Abandonment.” Within a month, she took the kids to Chicago. At first it was just for a visit, while I sorted things out, tried to find a job, but after that it all went downhill. I couldn’t make the house payments or car payments; everything was falling apart. Even renting the house couldn’t have saved me at that point. What could I have done differently? Should I have begged more thoroughly for her forgiveness?

  My analysis was interrupted by the return of Venus. She bent slightly to put the teapot and cup before me, revealing the lace at the top of her bra. I winced and looked away from this greater intimacy.

  She returned a few moments later with my toast. The entire operation was like a ballet. As I looked up, our eyes met for a few seconds, long enough to transport me back into a world of laughter and bright colors. There was something in those eyes. They soothed me from behind her cool exterior.

  “How’s everything?” she asked.

  Lost for a moment in confusion, I answered her more literally than she had probably expected. “Things have never been worse in my life … ” My throat tightened, my chest felt explosive, and I looked back to my notes on the envelope, waiting for her to leave.

  She didn’t leave. She stayed. “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered. This was really not what I wanted. I felt humiliated, yet pulled at the same time to tell her everything, to rest my head in her lap and go to sleep.

  “Well, thank you for your sympathy. I’m just going through a hard time lately, that’s all. And thanks for the tea; it’s nice and hot … ” I forced a smile. She took my change of subject as a dismissal. She returned to the kitchen, and I to my chronology of failures.

  “June/July. Falling apart.” I had just spiraled down into a state of terror and apathy. At first I tried to get other work. I had a good track record in broadcasting. Will had gone away to Hawaii with his wife after Bruce took over managing the station. I tried to reach him to get a reference, but he was out of contact. Will always liked me. I had been with him for more than ten years. I got a few jobs subbing on talk shows, but I’d lost my knack and my nerve. On one show I couldn’t think of anything to say at all. I had a guest on the air talking about affirmations and creating a great life, people were calling in, but I was just frozen in a numb blankness. Soon word spread that I was a “has-been.” It got harder and harder to get jobs.

  “September. War.” Rebecca’s father hired an attorney to press for exorbitant child support. He based his attack on my previous earnings and came up with a huge monthly figure I had to pay. The pressure was overwhelming, and each day I had less strength to meet it.

  “October. Homeless.” The bank repossessed the house; I had next to nothing. I put my stuff in storage, and my friend Paul let me stay in the attic room of the apartment building he managed. Things just went from bad to worse, and every day I woke up with even less motivation and self-respect. I lost so much weight that my pants wouldn’t stay up without a belt. I spent hours trying to sleep at night, and then I’d wake up before dawn in a panic. Every joint in my body began to ache, like I had the feeling of constant flu. I had no appetite or desire for anything. I tried to call the kids as often as I could, but Becca wouldn’t even come to the phone. She was sore as hell. As far as she was concerned, I had ruined a perfectly good life for four people, and there was no way she was going to forgive me or even talk to me. I couldn’t really say that I blamed her.

  “November. Drifting.” I tried a few odd jobs after the radio stopped working for me, but mostly I just wandered around the town, sitting in coffee shops or on cold park benches, waiting for something to change. I thought of killing myself. A lot. Even sorting through the bureaucracy of claiming unemployment benefits seemed like too much of an effort. I was living in total shame and hiding.

  The same drunk stumbled over to the jukebox, and fed it more coins. Leonard Cohen’s voice growled out of the darkness, reminding us that it was four in the morning, the end of December. What’s with this place? Do they only offer funeral dirges? I’d already spent my whole day wallowing. Paul had insisted I go to a shrink. He was right; I was totally depressed.

  So where did that leave me? “December. Today.” I finally went to the outpatient department of the university hospital. My medical insurance had run out, so I was a freebie. I had to sit for hours in a waiting room with people who had overdosed on every kind of chemical, and every kind of misery. Finally I was ushered in to see the shrink. He was with me for about ten minutes. He looked like he had read every book known to man on psychology. He wore a dapper little polka-dot bow tie and looked at me over the top of his bifocals. I told him my whole story while he listened and made notes. He looked some stuff up in a big book, and then proudly announced that I had “acutely isolating depression.” There was a moment of relief … I was not a failure, the destroyer of my kids’ lives; now I had a “condition.” He gave me some pills, and told me they wouldn’t do much for a couple weeks, till they started to inhibit uptake of some chemical in my brain. And that was it.

  When I left the hospital, it was dark and cold and drizzling. As I walked to the bus stop, I realized I’d left my key in my room. Paul worked the late shift at his job, so I was obliged to wander the streets till he got home, after midnight. No one else in the building even knew I was officially there. After all, I was paying no rent.

  Christmas can be the most tender or bitter time of year, depending on your condition. As I traversed the city, each happy family out buying gifts was another knife between the ribs. Small voices called out, “Daddy, will you carry me?” How many times had I refused that request in tired self-importance? I would give up a limb to carry them even one block now.

  I passed old men, mumbling into beards, left out of the warmth of family and comfort in the cold and derangement of the mind. I saw my own pain and regret stumbling before me. I felt hopeless.

  I passed well-dressed executives, wearing just the right shoes and tie and designer brand overcoat, life hurried along by cell phone,
appointments, and the next giddy achievement. I grieved over my wasted years of busy self-absorption.

  And I passed old men and women, struggling to hold onto their last remnants of dignity, with hardly the energy left to hide the pain of another Christmas alone with canned food and the TV. I grew weak at the inevitability of my own doomed future.

  So, as the evening turned into night, I ended up on the bridge, freezing cold, and absolutely, irreversibly alone.

  I caught the waitress’s eye for the check. She glided over almost immediately, and placed the ticket on my table. She lightly touched my wrist. “Listen, I don’t want to pry,” she said, “but I have written a number on the back of your check. I can’t explain now, but I really suggest that you call. You won’t be sorry.” With that she smiled and evaporated back into the kitchen again. I left a few dollars for the toast and stepped out into the crisp winter night.

  My walk home was brisk and determined. It was starting to drizzle; I wrapped my arms over my chest and made a beeline for my attic. After a couple of blocks I stopped in panic. I had left her no tip. I turned back, walking into the cold wind. She’ll think I’m crazy, going back again. I’ll go back another time and tip her double. I turned again. The nausea. I’ll just go home.

  Luckily, Paul answered his buzzer and let me in right away.

  Paul has never made any attempt to meet the world half way. With his shock of wild red hair and matching beard, his huge burly body crammed into baggy jeans and a faded T-shirt, and his size 14 skater shoes, he had clearly long ago abandoned any attempt to be inconspicuous. His apartment displayed the same long-standing habit of relaxing into anarchy. The furniture was all unmatched and worn; even the most desperate thrift store would politely refuse it. Books were stacked in piles on the floor, in piles on the shelves, sharing space with abundant dirty coffee cups and assorted bric-a-brac collected from the far corners of the globe. A confusing assortment of electronics was scattered amidst the chaos. A computer, derobed of its plastic case, spread its intestines into the room. Various cables led to all kinds of black boxes, many of them homemade, as though the computer was now on complete life support. And video. Every remaining square inch was taken up by videos, of a variety of different formats: some of those tiny ones hardly bigger than a matchbox, and some the same size you would put into a VHS player. They all sported labels adorned with Paul’s spidery illegible writing: “Bali from the air”; “Bullfighting accident in Madrid”; “Bombay slums #3”; “New Jersey pollution scenes.” They had been shot over almost 20 years.