Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

Not the question I’d expected, especially since I was usually mistaken for something more exotic, but I was game. “Yes. You?”

“Not.” Fabian picked up a fork and began to eat directly from Rocky’s plate, halfhearted bites. “We’re Catholic,” he said, pointing at Rocky and then himself with the butt end of his fork. He turned the plate a quarter revolution, and examined what the orbit had brought him. The fork he held in the air, as though it was an instrument with which to repair Rocky’s breakfast.

“Okay,” I said agreeably.

Rocky slapped Fabian on the back. “Jews are funny,” he said.

“Maybe,” said Fabian. “Sometimes. I was just wondering.”

“Why do you care?” I asked.

“Did I ask to see your horns?” he said with some real meanness. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s funny about you.”

“Jews are funny,” Rocky repeated, “as long at they’re not too frum .”

“Too what?” I asked nervously.

He smiled broadly. Then he laughed. “Very good,” he said, though at the time I didn’t get my own joke: frum was Yiddish for observant.

Fabian didn’t get it either. He was staring me down. “Barney Sullivan,” he said. “Manny Lane. Ted Mathis—”

“ Freddy ,” said Rocky.

Freddy eyeballed him. “Joe Hatch. Lee Schmidt. Harry Ray. That everyone?”

“That’s it, sure,” Rock said wearily.

“His straight men,” Fabian said to me. “Of the last two years. Don’t get comfortable. Every time he meets someone new — that’s it.”

“I’ll chase after anything in a nice suit with good timing,” Rocky said. “Freddy, Freddy. Do not pin this on me. You—”

“Remember this,” Fabian told me. Now I really felt like I was busting up a marriage. He rubbed the side of his face. I couldn’t tell whether he was preparing for tears or preventing them. He said, in a small voice, “Please, Rock. Where else am I going to get a job? As a friend—”

“A good straight man can always get work,” Rocky told him.

You could hear in the silence that followed a full report on Fabian’s merits as a straight man.

Rocky slapped his ex-partner’s arm again, this time cajolingly. “You’ll do okay. You’ll do fine. Do you need money?”

Fabian was still holding the fork, which he stared into as though it would show him his future. Beg more? Beg less? He let his shoulders drop. “Do you need money, is more like it,” he said, a little too late to be cutting.

“I’m set. Boof’lo mozzarella,” Rocky said musingly.

Fabian dropped the fork and stood up. “Look.” Now he tried to play the big man. “I wish you much success. All the success in the world. This is disgusting. See you around.”

“We’ll call when we’re in Chicago,” Rocky said.

Fabian raised himself to full height, and I thought, Yeah, now I can see it, he’s got something. “What,” he said, “makes you think I’ll be there?” He pointlessly threw some dollar bills on the table, for the meal he’d never ordered, and muttered, “I always wanted to be a singer, you fat idiot.” Then Freddy Fabian exited the Busy Bee, trying to look significant. The bell jangled when he left, same as it had when he walked in.

Rocky turned to me, smiling. “Ah, Freddy,” he said. “He’s been calling me that since before I was fat. You nervous? Don’t be. You got talent. He didn’t.”

“What about the other guys?”

“Let’s see.” He closed one eye and thought. “Barney Sullivan: died — of old age — in Cleveland. Manny Lane. Married a hoofer and wanted to put her in the act, but there wasn’t room for three of us. Ted Mathis — can’t remember what happened to Ted, exactly. Hatch became a junky. Probably not my fault. Lee Schmidt stepped on my lines. Lots. Really not a straight man, more of a singer or monologist or something. Harry Ray suffered from stage fright. Freddy Fabian: couldn’t hold his liquor. Plus whenever we play Chicago, the guy works days in his father’s store and comes onstage smelling of groceries. He figures the customer’s always right, but it’s not funny if the customer’s always right. What are you worried about? You’re good. You got some things to learn, sure, but you’ll learn them. I mean, Freddy wasn’t all wrong: I will be famous. I’m funny, and I will succeed, and I’ll tell you right now, Mose Sharp, that I am not someone who sticks with a lousy act just because I like the other guy. I’ll be his friend forever, but I am a comic, not a captain. I will not go down with the ship. You and me, we won’t have that problem. You’re good . Stop! Don’t worry. You’re good, and I’m good, and together we’re better, and that’s all you need to know.”

I nodded.

“This would be a fine time to say something,” Rock said.

“Right you are,” I said, “but I’m speechless.”

“You’ll have to get over that. Now listen while I tell you of the future,” he said, and began to. We’d become headliners, we’d hit the big time, we’d move to New York. Movies, probably, though Rocky said he needed an audience to work. If you can’t hear ’em laugh, how do you know you’re funny? Carter and Fabian had a route — they were booked into houses for the next eight weeks — and Rocky figured it didn’t matter who he showed up with. He’d drunkenly wired his agent the night before.

I watched him. He’d say something deadpan, and then laugh out loud. He was a slob, and yet he had fancy etiquette-book manners; he found a napkin and touched it to the corner of his mouth after every bite. Somehow he never spoke with a full mouth, which he managed more through efficient consumption than waiting things out. Every now and then he’d ask a personal question. “You’re not married?”

“No,” I said.

“Close, ever?”

I thought about Miriam and then I shook my head.

He threw his napkin in his plate and then rested his chin on one hand. “I imagine you’re lucky with girls. Right?”

What could I say? I said, smiling, “I wouldn’t call it luck.”

“Okay, okay then, you understand women.”

Well, I had a lot of sisters, that was true. He was looking at me as though I could teach him things. I never lied, mind you, I just implied that he was right. “I wouldn’t say that either. Let’s just say I’ve studied the issue.”

He nodded, still leaning into his hand, wistful. “I’ve studied it myself, with no success. I had a feeling about you. Here’s my theory: good straight man is good with women. It comes from the same part of your brain. Charm. I always wanted to go on the road with a guy who had a talent for meeting women. Me and Fabian, we sat in bars and played hearts. But that’s not good enough for guys like us,” he said, indicating me, then him. “We have to be ambitious in everything, even girls.”

Guys like us, I thought, tickled to be a guy like him. Already I was wondering how I could become a ladies’ man. “You ever been close to married?”

“You should eat something.” He lifted the napkin from the plate to see if anything edible had escaped his notice: no. “I’ve never had a near miss, but I do have a distant missus. I’m married.”

“Where’s your wife?”

“A good question. Florida? I think that’s what the note under the milk bottle said. Plus it said: Don’t try to find me. Personally I think she ran away with the milkman. I never did get a bill for that bottle.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It was easier with the second wife. The next one, number three? That’ll be true love, whoever she is. See what I mean? Ambition.”

He flagged down the waitress for a plate of pancakes and some toast. “I’m trying to gain weight,” he said. “While you’ve been studying women, I’ve been studying comedy, and I think fat men are funnier.”