Life Its Ownself (15 page)

"When there's a bigger crowd I do a longer act," she said. "I left out the rosary tonight and a thing I do with a rhinestone cross. This jukebox isn't great, either. It's mostly country. I don't think God is opposed to country, but I seem to reach more souls through old-fashioned jazz and big-band sounds."

I asked Kim how she had gotten along with Shake Tiller.

"He's a very devout person," she said.

"Yes, I know."

"I cried when he told me the story about the crippled nuns. How they changed his life?"

"The who?"

"You were there, he said. The time you were little kids and skipped church to play touch football on the lawn by the convent? And it caught on fire?"

"Oh, yeah, that's right."

"That was so heroic," said Kim. "Not many kids would have gone in that burning building—and you weren't even Catholic!"

"Shake did it all. I just turned on the garden hose. It's so long ago, I can't remember how many nuns he saved."

"Ten."

"Well, I'd have said six. The old memory sure plays tricks on you."

"Six were in wheelchairs."

"Right. It's all coming back to me. The flames were terrible. Some of those poor nuns were flying out of the windows like bats."

"God repaid you. He persuaded you it was all right to play football on Sunday. You see? Help others and God helps you."

"Shake spoke to God, I didn't. But I guess getting the word from a holy person like Shake is the same thing, isn't it?"

"It is!" said Kim, still rubbing her knee on my leg. "I transfer goodness and I receive goodness in return. My boyfriend in Dallas says he can sense the vibrations in the audience when I'm stripping for God."

Jim Tom backed off his barstool. He took Brandy by the arm.

"I'm outta here, Billy Clyde. I've had eight dozen Scotches and four million Winstons. I've had it."

"I didn't know you came in here to try to quit smokin'," said Brandy.

"See you next trip," I said to Jim Tom. "When Kim and I get settled in our mobile home in Bakersfield, you'll have to come out and visit."

Stretching his right arm and massaging his shoulder, Jim Tom wobbled behind Brandy and they went out the door. I turned to Kim with a yawn and patted her hand.

"It's not easy for me to confess this to a Minister of Mystical Theology, but I'm an atheist, Kim."

"That's not true."

"Also, I'm a happily married man," I said. "
And
...I have an early flight in the morning. Today, I mean."

"Happily married men are the only kind I know. My boyfriend's married."

She ran her fingers up and down my thigh.

"It's been fun, Kim. You took my mind off the Middle East... Afghanistan... inflation... unemployment. Should I thank you or God?"

"Take Communion with me."

She put my hand on one of her 44s and held it there.

"God is good." She smiled sweetly.

"I don't see how I can take Communion with my leg in a cast."

"There's more than one kind of Communion, Bozo. Ever heard of Oral Roberts?"

"Uh... where do you generally hold Communion?"

She dumped her vodka into a plastic cup for the road. "I'm at the Holiday Inn on University. Pay up and let's blow this pop stand."

There were two versions of what happened next. There was mine, which was the truth, and there was Shake Tiller's cynical fantasy, which was guaranteed to get a laugh from the guys in the bars.

Kim's motel was on the way to the Hyatt Regency downtown. I did follow her car, a new Camaro, but I left her with a friendly honk as she turned into the Holiday Inn. Fifteen minutes later, I was tucked under my Hyatt Regency covers with nothing but three Anacin.

The way Shake liked to tell it, J&B had grabbed the steering wheel out of my hands. J&B had tracked Kim's turn signal like radar, parked the Lincoln with great haste, yanked me into her room, and made a $100 donation to her church.

Articles of clothing had then gone sailing in all directions, and I had quickly found myself pinned down on a motel bed listening to Kim's little exclamations of relish as something damp traveled toward my pelvis.

How a close friend could accuse a mature, responsible person like myself of such wretched behavior was beyond my comprehension, but of course I had learned to live with other vicious rumors about my character.

The next morning, curiously enough, I was surrounded by Shake Tiller as I limped into a gift shop in the D/FW airport. Shake's book,
The Art of Taking Heat
, was displayed everywhere.

I bought a copy to take on the plane to Los Angeles. I needed it for a prop.

I slumped into the seat I always requested—6B, aisle, smoking—and opened Shake's book to let the dry-wall salesman sitting next to me know in a pointed way that I would be unable to chat during the flight.

WHAT IS HEAT?

Heat is shit—and we all take it.

We take married heat, kid heat, boss heat, car heat, bank heat, credit heat, political heat, IRS heat, health heat, appliance heat, and every other kind of heat you can think of.

And all it ever does is make us grumpy and irritable.

But we can't talk about it until we start calling it what it is.

Shit. It's important that you get used to the word. It's more descriptive than heat.

It would have been in the title of this book if I hadn't taken some shit from the publisher.

The point is, the shit-givers of this world think that giving you shit helps you become a better person.

Well, we all know they're full of shit, don't we?

Shit-givers come in two basic categories. There are those who don't know they're doing it, and there are those who give it to you on purpose.

The unknowing shit-giver is a person who goes along thinking it's his or her privilege to do it, like it's something you grow into as an adult.

This type can't seem to figure out why you're always mad at them. They're too busy giving somebody shit to understand that the people you genuinely like are the ones who don't do it.

Shit for your own good is the worst kind.

First of all, it means that somebody is giving it to you on purpose.

And of course you know what's good for you a hell of a lot better than anybody else— and you don't need that shit, right?

This is a book about how to turn it around on the poeple who bring all the heat into your life; who give you the shit, in other words.

I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. You wouldn't have bought this book if you'd wanted to read
that
shit.

I'm just a person like yourself with one big difference. I got tired of taking it and decided to do something about it.

I don't have all the answers. For instance, I don't know how to handle death shit, particularly in a case where it happens to you.

What I mostly think you do is dress up real nice and go talk to that guy across the river.

But I do have some thoughts about the other stuff.

Let's start with a common example of the kind of everyday shit we run into.

A repairman comes to your home to fix your G.E. icemaker. He says it's fixed after he's been there a while and he leaves. But the minute he walks out the door, it doesn't work. Sound familiar?

Five times he comes to fix it, and five times he leaves and it still doesn't work even though by now you've paid him $1,657 for his labor.

Finally, on his next visit, he says it looks like you need a new icemaker.

That's when you give
him
the shit.

Here's how you do it.

You smile and say, "I need a new icemaker? Fine. I hope you have one with you."

He says he does.

"Great," you say. "Can you install it now if I make you a sandwich and give you a glass of iced tea?"

"Well, I don't know," he says.

"Aw, come on," you say. "There's a big tip in it for you, Guido."

"How big's the tip?"

"We're talking big. Do you really have a new icemaker in the truck?"

"Sure," he says.

"How much will it cost?"

"Two million dollars, plus tax."

You say, Terrific. Sounds fair enough. Oh, by the way, your office called before you got here. It was something about your wife."

"My wife?"

"Yeah, has she been ill?"

"No, not really."

You shrug and say, "I'm sorry I didn't get the whole message. I guess I was busy. It was something about a biopsy. The only word I remember is 'malignant.'"

The flight to Los Angeles was uneventful except for the manner in which an attentive stewardess—Dallas, killer bod—autographed the cast on my leg.

She wrote:

"Randi. 214 555-1488!"

"My wife will love it," I said to the girl.

"How long have you been married?"

"Almost five years."

"Perfect!" she sparkled. "You're about ready to bolt, Jack!"

The cab ride from the L.A. airport to the Westwood Marquis gave me sufficient time to dwell on the fact that foreigners who spoke no more than ten words of English were now driving as many cabs in Los Angeles as they were in New York City.

My driver acted as if he knew right where the hotel was, but instead of taking a northbound freeway to Wilshire or Sunset and hanging a right, he insisted on getting lost in a maze of side streets and then trying to recover by plodding his way along arteries peppered with stoplights. We passed all of the familiar places: shabby health spas, boarded-up karate schools, cut-rate camera shops, out-of-favor Italian restaurants, Trudy's Records, Tapes, Vitamins & Jogwear, Rusty's Bikes & Bagels, and several denim outlets for thin- legged pygmies.

I knew we had overrun the hotel when we cruised by the
Hello, Dolly!
set at Fox, but soon we crawled through the Beverly Hills flats and went by that house with the statue of the elephant in the yard. When we hit Sunset I shouted out the only thing I thought the driver might understand. "UCLA!" Happily, he turned left and we finally made it to the Marquis.

I didn't complain about the meter going $10 over what it should have been. The driver was of indefinable origin, but he obviously had an Iranian-Syrian connection, and I knew he would be dead in a matter of months. He would volunteer for a suicide mission on behalf of some insane cause and ram a truckload of TNT into an office building. With a bit of luck, he might choose a structure teeming with network programmers.

I checked into Barbara Jane's suite—our suite now— and called the number of the sound stage at the Sunset- Gower Studio to let her know I had arrived safely.

I had known she would be at rehearsal. Yet another try on the
Rita
pilot was coming up for a taping session before a live audience in a few days. It was touch and go for everyone, not a moment to relax.

"I'm here," I said after she was summoned to the phone.

"You're there. Good."

"You're busy."

"Yes."

"You're very busy."

"Yes."

"That comes as no surprise to this reporter. You also sound mad."

"Yes, but practicing genocide is improving my frame of mind. I'll be jolly tonight. Half the membership of the Writers' Guild will be dead by then. I'll see you at Enjolie's for dinner."

"Enjolie's?" I said with apprehension.

"Shake knows where the restaurant is. He's in our hotel."

I tuned in a pro football game on television to keep me company while I unpacked. The game was a lackluster affair in which the Washington Redskins were allowing the L.A. Rams to romp down the field like the Grambling band.

The Rams were ahead by 44 to 14 when I turned on the set. It was early in the fourth quarter. The picture on my screen came into focus as Dreamer Tatum artfully stumbled and fell, letting a slow-footed Ram trudge by him on a 26- yard touchdown jaunt.