copa

by Raymond Embrack

RAYMOND EMBRACK. Paperback writer, USA.

I’m Artie Dean, insult comic. I am as subtle as a concrete dildo. I am offensive and crude, sexist and racist. My trademark is a highball glass in one hand. My audience is longshoremen, grey flannel businessmen, drunken frat boys, pimps, gangsters, Atlantic City high rollers, swingers who roll in white limos. They wait for the fool to hit the stage and knock them off their chairs by insulting them to their faces. I insult them, their dates, insult their clothes, insult their body size, insult their race or religion, insult their sexuality, anything that gets the yuks. I’m an assassin, baby.

It was the space age. The Fifties had a weak launch but reached the stars, opened for Tony Bennett in Miami. I was still headlining but by 1959 I was already losing heat, the big blue globe below my rocket getting larger all the time.

“You stink.”

It was during the Atlantic City gig, headlining a four-nighter. Afterwards I was in the bar trying to get hammered in peace when he comes up and starts heckling me some more. Hecklers are the guys who go to the zoo to throw rocks at the gorillas. This loser heckled me all during the second show, a juvenile delinquent in a black leather jacket and a ducktail. You don’t heckle Artie Dean. I took him apart, nailed him until he crawled into his drink. It was business. Now it wasn’t business.

“You stink,” he repeated.

“Heard you the first time, ace.”

“You give a new meaning to stink,” he said.

“Go find a purse to snatch. Beat it.”

He reached over with his cigarette, dumped it into my drink.

“I say you stink.”

Glass cracked inside my head. When the glass broke, it was hard to think ahead to the future. All I wanted to do was smash this punk’s face in.

But the future ruled me anyway. I was a psycho coward. When you’re a psycho coward, you are a mad dog, hair-trigger psycho whose brain vessels are swelling with homicidal rage . . . until you have to confront the guy; then you shrink into the coward you’ve been all your life. A psycho coward had to specialize in the art of making the other guy back down first. Especially when everyone in the bar was watching, like now. When you’re a psycho coward, once you’re past the psycho part, looking threatening is your art form.

In my hardest, deadliest tone of chill, I said, “Okay, punk.”

I got off the barstool, faced him. Like most guys, he was taller. One trick I had was to reach into my jacket and take out the prop I carried for these situations, a fighter’s mouthpiece. Only a professional or a way over-experienced bar fighter would have to carry one on him, therefore I was a cat too deadly to pick a fight with. I slipped the mouthpiece over my gums where it guarded my teeth, flashed him its solid whiteness. I shifted my weight, turned my coldest Sonny Liston stare onto his eyes. His eyes widened, his stare lost edginess, he went soft. Perfect. He backed a step, but still breaking off a sneer at me. I put more white heat into my mad dog stare. Nobody knew that I was pushing the psycho part like a rusted heap running low on gas, soon to be stranded deep in Cowardville. The punk kept backing away, broke off a last sneer before getting lost.

My heart started again.

“At least finish me off, sweetie,” I said after him.

I picked up a little applause, turned back toward the bar . . .
…spotted the man in the pink suit.

In Atlantic City, every night I had the man in the pink suit, sitting at a table surrounded by two massive goons. The suit was neon pink. The man in the pink suit was topped by a greasy black pompadour that needed a building permit, his pinky ring flashing when he sipped his martinis. I made him for one of the Atlantic City Mob, a new guy. Him I did not razz. Did not ask where he was from. Did not razz the broads with him and their Lockheed silicone boob jobs. Not me. This guy was my best customer, spitting his martini, falling out of his chair, yukking and laffing even while I was bombing.

Now he was at a booth, drink in hand, his goons with him, a couple of blondes. And he was watching me. He was watching me like I was still on stage, still the main focus of attention in the room. Our stares locked. I didn’t know the cat at all but he was staring at me like he knew me. It wasn’t like I owed him money and it wasn’t like he was queer. It was hard to say what it was. It was like he was hearing a joke I wasn’t telling. Something secretly amusing him in the act of staring at me. The amusement was mixed with something reptilian that fed on smaller creatures.

I gave him a nod. He nodded back. I turned back to the bar. The barmaid told me the man in the pink suit bought me the next drink. I turned back to the man in the pink suit, shot him a finger. He shot me one back. Behind his finger, the amusement had chilled. His look told me that there was maybe one neuron between him buying me a drink or leaving me in the trunk of a car.

I turned back to the bar, had a drink. Forgot I was still wearing the mouthpiece, dribbled the scotch onto my shirt.

---

 

The one thing I’ve learned for sure: if you know anyone long enough, they will become your worst enemy.

A promoter owed me $2000 for the Atlantic City gig. When I went to his office, it wasn’t to make him laugh.

Three days after the gig ended I was still unpaid and I couldn’t get Waxie Maxie on the phone anymore. He had an office on the second floor of a mint-green building enough near the ocean to be speckled with seagull crap, the sweep of gulls in the smutty cloudy sky. I crossed the street expecting to catch a plop from above, courtesy of A.C.

Waxie Maxie’s secretary was a 300 pounder. When she looked at you, you heard the sound of crickets. She buzzed him. Pointed at one of the chairs. From there my future was about collecting dust.

Twenty minutes later, a sexy chick walked in. I wasn’t watching the sexy. I was watching her go to the desk. Then watching the secretary send her right in.

Inside my head glass broke. I listened to the tinkling for maybe thirty seconds, got up, walked to Waxie Maxie’s closed door. Behind me she bellowed: “Hey you!”

I opened the door, walked in. The chick was seated in front of Waxie Maxie’s desk. I walked past whatever she was saying, leaned over the guy’s desk. Waxie Maxie was an ageless spindly weasel with black-dyed hair, glasses that swam his eyes in twin fish tanks, his voice a brittle pocketful of fake dimes twisted around a drug store El Producto. “Been trying to reach you, Artie.”

“I’ve been right outside,” I said.

“I know. And we’re gonna talk about this.”

“We’ll talk now.”

“I’m with a client.”

“Now you’re with me.”

“That’s rude, Artie.”

“I’ll live with that.”

He spread his hands. “So what’s your problem, Artie?”

“I did the gig. I’m wondering when I’ll get paid.”

“I’ve been trying to call you.”

“You owe me two G’s.”

“And it’s coming.”

“I should’ve had it before the gig.”

“I don’t pay before the gig.”

“I’ve done night clubs all my life,” I said. “You’ve worked with comics. You pay on the spot, before the gig.”

“Did you specify that up front?”

“No.”

He spread his hands. “So how am I supposed to know your arrangement?”

“That’s how it’s done.”

“Maybe that’s how you do it,” he said. “Here, the checks get cut after. When I get the money, I cut the checks.”

“Okay,” I said. “Did you get the money?”

He relit the cigar. “That’s being lined up.”

“How is that my problem?”

“It’s like you think you sold that room out, Artie.”

“What?”

“You didn’t fill the room.” He aimed the cigar at me. “The truth is, you did not fill the room.”

My finger aimed at him. “Now you’re insulting me.”

“Nobody’s insulting you, Artie. We’re talking facts.”

“Whatever. What does have to do with my money? It’s been three days since the gig. How long do I have to freaking wait?”

He did the hand-spread again. “The money is coming to you. It’s being lined up this week. The checks...”

“...I still...”

“...You gonna let me talk? You talked. Let me talk now.”

“Then talk.”

“The money is coming to you. It’s being lined up this week. The checks will be cut and sent out this week. The money will happen. If you want, I will hand it to you personally. If you had told me you wanted it up front, that would’ve been arranged. Your money is coming to you. So stop being difficult.”

“I haven’t gotten ‘difficult’ yet.”

His voice dipped. “Don’t push it, Artie.”

I gave him my hapless loser shrug, palms out. “Okay. I won’t push it. I’m not a professional comic. I don’t make my living at this. This is just a hobby for me.”

He gave that a frozen smirk then leaned into a harder tone of voice.

“Look, Artie, truthfully...I did you a favor taking you. You need the work. And you want to be able to come back to A.C. and work again. So in terms of doing business, you want to show me a good track record, Artie. Do not be difficult with me, Artie. It’s not recommended.”

The glass ground inside my head. I watched the psycho part of me threateningly walk around his desk...

“Artie...”

I watched the psycho reach him, grab his necktie, wrap it around my fist to yank him out of his imitation red leather chair. He slapped at my hand. I looked at the Venetian blinds behind his head at half-slit over a view of a crummy street. I saw him hanging by his ankles out the window. I’m a short guy but bulky enough to keep hold of his spindly body weight. The vision was hard to resist. His glassed-in eyes picked up my intentions. By his necktie, I pulled him out of the chair. I said, “Heard the one about the promoter who couldn’t fly? Why? Gravity gets paid on time.”

Good scene. Cut. Instead, I watched the coward stand there giving Waxie Maxie his Deadly Psycho Stare, hoping he would buy that, maybe give him a mild shiver of discomfort before I found a way to back down while still looking dangerous.

“Mister?”

It was the chick.

I turned to look at her. Then looked up. Way up. She was standing now. She was a lot taller than I. For the first time I noticed her. She had to be a showgirl. Young. Blonde. I didn’t feel fit for someone like her to stare at.

I gazed up her frame. She was around five-ten in white high heels with ankle straps, ankles that already broke my heart, long showgirl legs caressed by light. It could be showroom lights or the light in a crummy office, in reaching her legs, light was diverted to circulate around their perfection. She was in a pink polka-dotted white dress that followed her tall lean tall curves, puckered at her narrow waist, then cupped her shelf below a string of pearls. Above that was a face fresher like the ocean view, the cutest nose, eyes filled with their blueness. All this I had not noticed when she had walked in. The broken glass in my head went smooth, smoother than still water.

“Hey,” she said. “You’re Artie Dean.”

“Uh...yeah.”

“He owes me money too,” she said.

“That figures.”

She smiled at me. Her mystique came with its own keyhole to leer through. Except with her, leering was the gateway drug to worshiping her.

I said, “Let’s just get out of here and have a drink.”

“Love to.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tess Revere.”

“Okay Tess Revere. Let’s get out of here.”

###

Copyright © Raymond Embrack, 2008

Click here for Raymond Embrack's review of The Last Shaft by Ernest Tidyman