The Last Laugh Read online

  Paul is a filmmaker. Inspired, while we were both in college, by Francis Ford Coppola’s Koyaanisqatsi, he had devoted the intervening years to what he called visual poetry. He had been creating a full-length feature film, shot mostly on a video camera, with no story or language, only Paul’s quirky touch for startling and unusual images. Various incomplete grant proposals sat on his table, which continued to be in various stages of incompletion since I had known him.

  “Hey, Matt, what’s with you getting home at one o’clock in the morning?”

  “I forgot my key. You weren’t asleep, were you?” I tried to look upbeat, but probably failed.

  Paul and I had grown up together in North Carolina and moved to the big city in the same pickup truck after college. I got the job at the KYQD, starting in the mailroom, fresh out of school with a journalism major. Paul got his job at the TV station and had worked his way up to being a production assistant. He was working half the time at the studio and on his opus the rest of the time, hence he was living in this small apartment where he also acted as a manager for the building.

  Paul’s lack of orderliness was perfectly balanced by his extraordinary heart and kindness. He once stayed an extra month on a trip to India to nurse a fellow traveler back from hepatitis, someone he had met briefly on a train. When Rebecca left, his offer of the garret at the top of the building was without a moment’s forethought. Devoid of any interest in religion or philosophy, his was a kindness like his dress sense: entirely uncultivated and purely intuitive.

  I told him about the long wait, the shrink, and the pills, but omitted the moment of flunked suicide on the bridge. He had given me all he could these last months; I did not want to add to his concern. So I skipped ahead to the waitress and the mysterious number on the back of the check.

  “There you go,” he grinned. “That’s what you need. Call her in the morning and ask her out. Sounds like just the ticket for a stud like you.”

  Why is it that the friends who have sidestepped sex most thoroughly end up being the ones who think it will cure everything?

  “No, Paul, I don’t think it was her number. It’s probably some kind of support group, depressives anonymous or something. I doubt it’s anything worthwhile.”

  “Well, don’t dismiss it too quickly.”

  A loyal connoisseur of French cinema, he sees life as a well-orchestrated movie plot, where each small detail is somehow contributing to the unfolding of a perfect ending. He even acts faithfully on the advice in fortune cookies and the horoscope predictions in tabloids.

  “I’ll see, let me sleep on it. Thanks for everything.”

  I climbed the five flights to my attic room, and collapsed immediately into the sleeping bag on my foam mattress and the welcome oblivion of sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  NEW DIRECTIONS

  As always, I woke at five in the morning, my heart pounding. My room was more of a storage area for the apartment building than a real home. In addition to my single foam mattress on the floor, there were piled boxes of repair materials for the building, a roll of carpet, and some pieces of wood leaning against the wall. The floor was just bare boards. My suitcase and duffel bag in the corner contained only long overdue laundry.

  Above my head was a skylight, and there was one other window looking out toward the ocean. This window was my only source of grace. In the darkness I lay still, half awake, half caught in a dream that had come during the night.

  In the dream, I was in a damp dark cellar with Rebecca and the two children. Water had collected on the floor. The walls were shiny with moisture. We were all freezing cold, dressed in dirty rags, like slum dwellers in a developing country. A rat ran across the cellar floor, and both children screamed. Rebecca pulled them to her.

  I felt so isolated. All I could see in their eyes was cold accusation. “I’m sorry,” I told them. “I’m so, so very sorry.” But they just stared back at me, the villain in their movie. I felt rage rising in my chest, a rage at myself, a rage that this prison even existed, that my family had to experience any of this. I lunged at the wall of the cellar, wanting to beat the cold damp stone with my bare hands.

  As my fist met the wall, I ripped a tear in it. It was made only of the thinnest fabric. I pulled on each side of the tear with my hands, and it opened a hole large enough to walk through. It exposed a garden, rich with daffodils, the sound of birds, the smell of the spring. Further off I could see a pond, a cluster of trees, and a waterfall. I stepped through the tear into the garden and looked back through the ripped fabric into the dark damp cellar. I called out to my precious ones to follow me, but they stayed huddled together, their eyes still betraying their distrust. And so I stood, poised between the allure of this brand new paradise and the pull of family responsibility. It was in this dilemma that I awoke.

  Lying on my mattress, I closed my eyes again and curled into a ball, yearning to go back there, anywhere but here. I rocked myself back and forth. This was always the worst time for missing the children. They had been my all, my everything. They trusted me completely. I lay in the darkness re-creating Christmases, remembering gifts. Last year it was a bicycle for Dom. We had played games for weeks, Dom asking me for one with 15 gears, me saying it was way too expensive, while all the time I had the prize already locked away for him in the garden shed. His ecstasy was explosive when he discovered my deceit. A dollhouse for Sarah. We bought it at Thanksgiving and then spent weeks making our own improvements. Rebecca sewed endless minute curtains, sheets, and tiny comforters for the beds. I built a garden fence out of balsa wood. We delighted together in creating her dream.

  My attention came back with a thud to the cold attic room. My chest winced. My intestines tightened so forcibly, I thought I would retch. The room was cold and smelled of mold and dust.

  I sensed a pleading deep within me: “Oh, please, what have I done? What must I do? I will do anything—just for relief from this pain I will do anything.” I had never been religious. God and all related deities always seemed more of a concept to me, an opiate for the people, Karl Marx called it. I think this was the first attempt at prayer I had ever allowed.

  I looked up through my only window. The sky was lightening up. I wanted so much to feel that the pink early clouds would listen to the depth of my begging. I found myself involuntarily calling out loud to the sky, to those clouds, to an invisible deity, to the memory of my parents’ love, “Oh, please! Mother, Father, God, please hear me! I know I have been a fool, please show me how to repair all I have done.” For the first time in many months, I cried.

  “Please,” I silently screamed, again to some unknown but faintly felt benefactor. A cloud shifted a little to the left, the sun rose a little more, and I was bathed in its morning glory.

  I closed my eyes.

  I faintly sensed an upswing, like music coming from so far away that you cannot quite tell if it’s real or imagined.

  I had interviewed a hundred teachers on the radio about God and Grace and prayer and divinity, and I thought I understood it all. But this little flicker of hope was beyond any understanding, this was something hinted at in my body, not in thought. Like a man released from prison after decades, I sensed a clumsy desire to move, to dance. I felt hungry again.

  Breakfast, I thought. Then I remembered the number on the restaurant check.

  It was still too early in the morning; I had to wait. An urgency burned in my chest, making it hard to stay inside. I pulled on some clothes and descended the five flights of stairs from my room to the street below. I offered a rain check to the strong urge to scrub my body from head to foot, as the only shower was in Paul’s apartment. I started to walk, in company with the early morning crowd, the other half of humanity from last night’s café patrons. This was the hour of the joggers, muscular, determined people who meant business and played hard. I used to do that, too.

  I also started to jog, turning from the street to the entrance into the park. My feet hit the tarmac of the park’s running
track. I was breathing. In. Out. In. Out. The awakened energy in my lower belly crept down into my thighs. I ran harder and faster. In. Out. In. Out. I passed retired ladies walking their dogs. Bizarre, how the body of the dog is a miniaturized version of its owner. I passed women with hair tied back, in the latest designer sweats. I savored the skin imagined beneath. In. Out. In. Out. I passed young men whose physiques exposed diligent hours spent at the gym. I said hello, brightly. Even though they all ignored me, I felt alive. The stronger the return to life, the stronger the need for action. In. Out. In. Out. I felt a pain in my side. Keep going. “Take a step toward God, he will take a hundred toward you,” my mother once told me. In. Out. Breathe through the pain.

  There again was the muffled plea within my heart, Please help me, please help me …

  My hunger grew, as I ran to the far end of the park and out onto Grant Avenue. Some shops were already open; cars were passing taking their drivers from the security of home to the duties of the day. My appetite for breakfast amplified my determination to participate in all of this again, to pick up the instruments of war and go back to battle.

  There was a family diner on the corner. Grand Slam, $4.99. That would do. I ran over and sat at the counter, panting. A previous patron had left behind a newspaper and a half-full glass of orange juice. I grabbed the glass, emptied it, and slapped the counter.

  The waitress ran out to me, almost tripping in her urgency to get me my own menu. I ordered the special. Eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee, and orange juice. She smiled at me nervously, flustered by my lust for her bargain menu. I picked up the paper and randomly devoured news stories. Bush had just stolen the election from Al Gore. Everyone had something to say. I even pored over sports results of teams I did not know, jumping to the next story before finishing the first. It didn’t take long to reduce the Grand Slam to a smeared plate, and still there was the desire for more, for more of anything. My whole body was trembling. The inside of my head felt overcharged with electricity.

  I sat in the now-crowded restaurant watching the clock on the wall, drumming my fingers on the table, rereading news results and reports of business I did not understand. I had decided that 9 A.M. was the earliest I could call. Each successive minute the clock went into an even slower cycle. Time was slowing down, stretching like elastic to tease my impatience.

  At five to nine, I finally abandoned all restraint and walked to the pay phone. I tried to slow my gait to a respectable walk, but inside I was running, to what or away from what I did not know. I pulled the crumpled stub of the night before from my pocket, standing trembling outside the doors to the toilets. The pay phone looked dirty and unforgiving. It would do me no favors. Graffiti offered me a number for the best head in town with Jeannie, and triumphantly declared that Joe loves Cindy forever. Good for them, but I was on my own.

  I dialed the digits with shaking hands. The phone rang, once, twice, and my stomach muscles tightened. I had not realized how badly I needed to piss. Why was this so important? Wasn’t I just getting into a frenzy, setting myself up for more foolishness and pain? Three rings, four, five, and my bladder was about to burst. Hang up and go home, stupid fool, a voice said from within me, with a vicious lunge on the word fool. By now it was maybe eight rings, and my bladder would wait no more. I took the phone from my ear to replace it in its dirty cradle. As I simultaneously started to turn toward the men’s room door, I heard a real voice bellowing into the air between my ear and the pay phone: “Goood mooorning!” Just like Robin Williams in that Vietnam movie Rebecca and I must have rented five times.

  So this was it. I brought the phone back to my ear again.

  “Hello,” I quivered.

  “Hi! Goooood morning!” the voice repeated with evangelical triumph.

  Oh God. That’s it. Some born-again outfit, or a weird religious organization with an imported leader that makes you shave your head and vow lifelong allegiance. Hang up now, hang up before it’s too late.

  “Uh, good morning,” I offered tentatively. “I was in a café late last night, and the waitress … ” I paused, realizing I’d never even asked her name. “She suggested that I give you a call.”

  “Fantastic, great,” enthused the voice. “So you met the beautiful Samantha. That’s great! So, do you want to come over tonight?”

  I had no idea if I wanted to come over tonight or not. My bladder was voicing a loud vote for forgetting the whole thing completely, as were many other unidentified voices vying for attention.

  “Well,” I stammered. “I really have no idea who you are or what it is that you do.” I was not really being honest here. If I had passed the phone to my thumping heart instead of putting suspicion on the line, it would have just said, Yes, yes, yes, whatever you do, the look in that waitress’s eyes is enough, I’m coming.

  The voice laughed. “So Sam didn’t tell you anything?”

  “She told me I should call.” I looked around to see if anyone was listening and lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And that it would help me.”

  “Okay, so come tonight and meet Joey. She is right; you won’t regret coming, at least no one has regretted it so far. Come at 7:30 P.M., the address is 627 West Broad Street. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes, I think so, it’s in the university district, isn’t it?”

  “Right. Okay, what’s your name, I’ll be there myself.”

  “Matt, my name is Matt Thomson. No P.”

  “Good Matt, great. We will see you tonight. Have a grrreaaaat day.” The phone went dead. Obscene, to have that much zest for life before nine o’clock in the morning. I won’t go, forget it. Insane.

  I bolted for the bathroom.

  I walked home, alternating every 60 seconds or so between I’m absolutely definitely not going near any place where they actually say “have a great day,” and I have to go; it’s my only chance; my whole life depends on it.

  I woke Paul from what would otherwise have been his usual morning in bed. He stumbled around in his red tartan bathrobe—like everything else he owned, he bought it for a song with all stylistic caution thrown to the winds. I told him what had happened on the phone. He peered at me, scratching his scraggly red beard, and started to boil water in a saucepan with almost none of its original white porcelain coating left. Every other dish, cup, saucepan, and utensil that he owned was piled in the kitchen sink.

  “Matt, you’re nuts, man. Don’t even think about it. I know it’s hard with Becca and the kids gone and all, but you’ve got to build things up again, there’s no sense in joining a cult. Have you started taking the pills yet?”

  He offered me at least a dozen more scary explanations about what I might be getting into. I would have listened to him more carefully, but the look in the eyes of my Botticelli waitress kept haunting me. I took a long shower and changed into the cleanest clothes I could find, before we sat on his tattered brown couch to watch hours of footage of funerals he had shot in the Indonesian archipelago.

  We microwaved a precooked chicken casserole and washed it down with cup after cup of tea with powdered milk. One body after another went up in smoke—some in colorful houses specially constructed for the job, and some au naturel, naked wrinkled bodies which looked uncannily like our chicken pieces, turned to smoke released into the sky. Anything to pass the time until I discovered what happened at 627 West Broad Street.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE MEETING

  This couldn’t be right. All I could find was a hippie-style café, the kind that sells precooked food from a limited menu. Chickpea casserole, vegan pizza, Indian chai with almond milk. Ask for white sugar and you risk getting lynched, or voodooed, more likely.

  I looked around. This was the bohemian area of town, home to bookstores, bike shops, even a Tibetan imports store. I checked for a number again, perhaps it was all a joke. I cursed my stupidity, chasing after another dead end after so many disappointments already. I shivered; the air was chilly, and I was underdressed.

&
nbsp; I turned away, back to the bus ride, back to my lonely attic. Back to no future at all. Then I noticed a door at least ten feet from the street, at the end of a dark alley. There was the number, 627. I walked up and knocked, my heart pounding. What if this was some ghastly soul-bearing support group where everyone got deep and honest? Or an Eastern cult, with exotic names and incense? I’m not selling anything at the airport—there I draw the line. Then I thought of the long bus ride home. What the hell? I knocked again. And … nothing, no one came. I banged a third time, with my fist this time; again, unwelcoming silence. What a waste of time. I spun around to the street and collided with great force with someone coming the other way.

  “Are you Matt?” beamed my assailant. He was in his mid-40s, with balding blond hair tied back into a ponytail. About my height, he was plump, and wearing a ridiculous grin. This guy was definitely all granola and incense, the embodiment of “It’s all so beautiful I could cry.” I nodded, and sure enough he hugged me and looked very emotional.

  “Great you came,” he beamed. “You are in the right place.” I was not so sure.