Death by Pantyhose (8 page)

"So you don't actually take them off onstage,"
I said, relieved that she wasn't going to be doing
a strip act.

"And perpetuate a perverted male sexual fantasy? No way!"

Then she reached into the tote and pulled
out a pair of scissors, which she shoved into her
other pocket. Finally, she took out her cloisonne lipstick case and slapped on some Chapstick.

"And now," Spiro was saying, "let's welcome to the Laff Palace stage a very funny lady, Dorcas MacKenzie."

"Bombs away!" Vic called out, setting off a
fresh round of guffaws from the comics at the
bar.

Dorcas flushed in dismay.

"Don't listen to them," I said, squeezing her
arm. "You'll be great."

She put on a brave smile and hurried up to
the stage. I admired her courage. It takes a lot
of guts to be a comic, especially when you don't
have any actual jokes.

Dorcas got up to the mike and started to do
the same material I'd heard in the deli. It hadn't
gotten any funnier since then. The same feminist diatribe about women being forced to conform to unrealistic ideals of beauty. All very
true. All very boring.

The audience wasn't paying attention. People were ordering drinks and talking among
themselves, biding their time until the next act
came on.

And I'm ashamed to confess my mind did a
little wandering of its own. I thought back to the
scene I'd just witnessed in the darkened corridor. So Vic was cheating on his girlfriend with
Pebbles the barmaid. I wasn't surprised. Hadn't
Dorcas told me Vic flirted with anything in a
skirt?

I looked across the bar at Allison, one of the
few people in the audience not talking over
Dorcas's act. I could see the pity in her eyes as
she watched Dorcas dying up onstage. Allison
was clearly a kind soul; what was she doing with
a guy like Vic? He was probably one of those rats
who, in spite of their rat-hood, manage to charm their way into the hearts-and panties-of good
women. Sad to say, there's a lot of that going
around.

For a fleeting instant, I wanted to run over
and tell her what a creep he was and how he was
cheating on her with Pebbles. But of course, I
didn't.

Instead, I was jolted out of my reverie by
angry booing coming from the audience. Somehow, in just minutes, the audience had turned
from bored to hostile. Dorcas was ranting her
feminist spiel to a roomful of mainly drunk
jocks. And the natives were getting restless. They
wanted someone on stage who'd tell the bathroom humor they were so fond of.

Finally, her act came to a merciful close. She
cut up her pantyhose with her scissors and
threw the bits out into the audience.

The only laugh she got all night came next,
when Vic shouted, "Forget the pantyhose, Dork,
and throw out your act."

The audience roared.

Poor Dorcas came back to the bar, her face
burning with humiliation.

"Hey, Dork," Vic sneered. "Want a little constructive criticism? You stink."

His toadies at the bar snickered.

"Screw you, Vic," Dorcas said. Then she took
a big gulp of her Coke and muttered, "I'd like to
kill that bastard."

"I'd like to help," I said.

And I meant every syllable.

Now if I'd just bombed the way Dorcas
bombed, I wouldn't dream of hanging around the scene of my humiliation. I'd hightail it out
of there back home to my bathtub so fast your
head would spin. But not Dorcas. She plunked
herself down at the bar and ordered a double
scotch from Pete the bartender.

"Anything for you, sweetheart?" Pete asked
me.

"No," I said, holding up my six-dollar water
bottle. "I'm fine."

"I guess Vic's right," Dorcas said, with a sigh.
"I stink."

"That's not true," I lied. "You have some very
funny material. Like you said, it just needs
tweaking."

She looked up from where she was tearing a
cocktail napkin to shreds.

"You really think so?"

No! I wanted to scream. Of course I don't think
so. You're about as funny as an open wound. You're
never going to make it, so quit now and save yourself
the heartache.

But she was looking at me with such hope in
her eyes I couldn't bear to bust her bubble.

"Sure," I managed to say.

"Hey, I've got an idea," she said, brightening.
"Let's stay here and work on my act."

"Here? Don't you think it's a little too noisy?"

"Nah," she said, with a wave of her swizzle
stick. "It'll be fine."

I had absolutely no idea what to do with her
act, other than burn it, but it didn't matter, because Dorcas didn't really want to work that
night. What Dorcas really wanted was to get
drunk. Which she did, with impressive speed.

By the time she'd finished her second scotch,
all her confidence had come bouncing back, and she was convinced that the people in the audience were a bunch of lowlife boors who wouldn't
appreciate true comedy if it sat on their lap.

I spent the next forty-five minutes listening to
Dorcas trash the audience and nursing my sixdollar water. I'd be damned if I'd spend one
more cent in this place, although by now the
smell of those fries was driving me crazy.

Meanwhile a series of foulmouthed comics
took their turn onstage doing acts that would
make a longshoreman blush. The jocks in the audience ate it up. I like comedy as much as the
next person (provided the next person isn't the
Marquis de Sade), but I just didn't get it. What
the heck was so funny about the F word? The only
time I ever found the F word remotely laughable was when I was doing it with The Blob.

No, my idea of a funny four-letter word was
Lucy.

But nobody was asking me my idea, and the
locker room language was getting solid laughs.

By now, the place had filled up. Most all the
tables were taken when Vic was finally called up
onstage.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Spiro was saying,
"let's give a warm Laff Palace welcome to a rising young comic star, Vic Cleveland!"

More than anything, I wanted Vic to bomb.
But in the Life Isn't Fair department, he was
very funny. He had strong jokes and terrific timing. And amazingly enough, once onstage he
actually seemed likeable. Gone was the smarmy
comic shooting zingers. Under the spotlight,
Vic was an affable guy with a disarming grin.
Even when he started taking some cheap shots at his ex-wife, he was still funny. The audience
loved him.

I was sitting there musing on the injustice of
it all when I felt someone poke me in the ribs.

I turned to see a rumpled man in his sixties
on the bar stool next to mine. His sports jacket
had clearly seen better days, and his few remaining hairs were plastered across his head in a
hideous comb-over.

"That's my client!" he said, his barrel chest
puffing with pride. I was guessing he'd once been
a muscular guy, but those muscles had long ago
turned to flab.

"I'm Vic's agent. Manny Vernon." He fished
out a business card from his pocket and handed
it to me. "Of The Manny Vernon Agency."

The card was do- eared at the edges and
blotched with coffee stains. Lord knows how
long it had been sitting in his pocket.

"I found Vic when he was waiting tables at
IHOP. And now look at him. Now he's waiting
tables at some fancy restaurant on Melrose. And
soon he won't even need to do that anymore."
His round face shone with pleasure. "Any day
now, my Vic is gonna be a star!"

just then, the comics at the bar started whispering excitedly as Spiro ushered a chiseled
blonde in an Armani suit to a ringside table.

"Look," I heard one of them say, "it's Regan
Dixon."

I had no idea who Regan Dixon was, but whoever she was, I'd bet my bottom Pop-Tart she
was important.

Vic finished his act to enthusiastic applause.

"He's not so damn funny," Dorcas groused into her scotch. "If it weren't for Hank's jokes,
he'd be nothing."

I looked over at Hank, who, like Dorcas, didn't
seem to be taking much pleasure in Vic's triumph.
I wondered if he resented Vic basking in the limelight while he sat back here in anonymity.

Up onstage, Vic bowed with false humility.

Then, after milking the applause for as long
as possible, he held up his hand for silence.

"Hey, everybody. I've got some good news I
want to share. I've just signed a network pilot
deal. A deal I never would've gotten without my
agent."

"Congratulations," I said, turning to Manny.

But Manny was scratching his comb-over, puzzled.

"Pilot deal? I didn't get him a pilot deal."

"That's right," Vic said, "I owe it all to my new
agent, Regan Dixon. In fact, she's headed to
New York tonight to finalize the deal. C'mon,
Regan. Stand up and take a bow."

The Armani beauty got up and waved to the
audience, her white-blonde hair shining like a
halo in the club's hazy air.

Meanwhile, next to me, Manny Vernon's face
was a most unsettling shade of gray.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

But he just sat there, staring straight ahead,
in a state of shock.

Vic made his way back to the bar, smug with
victory, smiling and nodding as his fellow
comics showered him with insincere congratulations.

At which point Manny sprang to life and
grabbed Vic by the elbow.

"You little ingrate!" he shouted, obviously having regained his powers of speech. "After all I've
done for you, you're walking out on me?"

"Afraid so," Vic said, shrugging free from his
grasp.

"But you can't leave me," Manny wailed.
"We've got a contract."

"That's what you think. It expired last week."

Manny blinked, confused.

"It did?"

"That's why you don't have any clients," Vic
sneered. "Too many senior moments, pal. Time
to pack it in and think about assisted living."

Manny crumpled back down on his bar stool
as if he'd just been punched in the gut.

"How could you, Vic?" Allison had pushed her
way through the circle of comics and was looking up at Vic in disbelief. "How could you fire
Manny, after everything he's done for you?"

"Allie, baby, if f stuck with him, I'd be waiting
tables all my life. It's a tough world. You gotta
break some eggs to make an omelet."

Break eggs? This guy would break legs to get
ahead.

"I'm long overdue for some changes in my
life, Allie. In fact, I've got something I need to
tell you."

At the edge of the crowd, Pebbles's eyes lit up
in anticipation.

"It's about time," I heard her say.

Omigod, was Vic really going to dump Allison
for this bimbette?

No, as it turned out, he was going to dump
Allison for someone else, someone several
notches higher on the food chain. As we were about to witness when Regan the mega-agent
joined the happy little crowd at the bar and
linked her arm through Vic's.

"You killed 'em honey," she said, planting a
kiss on his lips.

"Guess what, everybody?" Vic announced.
"Regan and I are engaged."

Now it was Allison's turn to be speechless.

"Sorry about that, babe," Vic said to Allison,
with a shrug. "I'm driving Regan to the airport
to catch the red-eye. I'll come back to the house
afterward and get my things."

A beat of shocked silence descended over the
bar, a silence that was broken by the crash of
broken glass.

Pebbles the barmaid had dropped her tray of
drinks. She stood there, openmouthed, the
words Cute, but Psycho practically pulsating with
fury across her chest.

Then Allison burst into tears.

At the sight of those tears, Hank jumped off
his bar stool and raced over to Vic.

"You piece of slime. How could you do this to
her?"

The veins were throbbing in his scrawny neck.

"What are you complaining about?" Vic said.
"I'm doing you a favor, buddy. You've always had
the hots for Allison. Now's your chance."

Hank blushed furiously and took a wild swing at
Vic. Clearly, Hank had never been on his high
school boxing team. He missed by a mile. Vic
grabbed Hank's arm and pinned it behind his
back.

"You don't really want to do this, do you,
buddy?"

Hank thought it over and, flushed with
shame, shook his head no.

Vic smirked and let him go.

"Get yourself another writer," Hank said, rubbing his arm where Vic had twisted it. "I quit."

"Boo hoo," Vic said. "I'm shaking in my shoes.
Writers are a dime a dozen."

"You're gonna need one," Hank countered,
"if you keep using cliches like that."

"C'mon, Sugar Buns," Vic said, brushing past
Hank and putting his arm around his trophy
agent. "Let's get out of here."

Sugar Buns? Had Vic just called this power
broker of a woman Sugar Buns? Surely, she'd object. But no, she just smiled up at him lovingly
Vic had obviously worked his magic on her, just
as he had on Allison and Pebbles.

The happy couple headed for the exit when
suddenly Dorcas, who'd been silent up to now,
erupted like a long dormant volcano. With a
guttural roar, she shoved her bar stool aside and
charged across the room.

Before anyone could stop her, she jumped on
Vic, tackling him from behind. He tried to fight
her off. But, unlike Hank, Dorcas wasn't that
easy to get rid of. Propelled by rage, she was surprisingly strong. Within seconds she'd wrestled
Vic to the ground and was sitting on his chest,
her hands around his neck.

"You worthless excuse for a human being!"
she bellowed. "You've hurt enough people on
this planet. You don't deserve to live one
minute longer."

Then she began strangling him.

Vic lay trapped beneath her, gasping for air, but Dorcas was oblivious, her hands locked in a
viselike grip around his neck.