The Comic Who Couldn't Laugh

Benjamin Myers, wearing only his boxers, stood in the entrance of his bungalow scratching his head and squinting at the man on his doorstep.

Trees above blazed bronze in the early morning sun. The still air, thick and stale, promised triple digits by noon along with tantalizing scents of breakfast--sausage!--from the cafés on Melrose Avenue, half a block away.

The man who'd pounded on Ben's door dragging him into wakefulness looked to Ben like he could use some breakfast. Despite his nervous eyes and flaring nostrils, though, this lean stranger had the face of a handsome boxer.

Semi-famous, certainly. Mid-list? Maybe porn. Probably not, though, with that shock of grey. Where'd I see this guy? Ben wondered.

He realized the man was talking, apparently had been.

"I’m sorry, what?"

The man sighed, shoved a hand at Ben. "This is yours."

The hand held a wallet, black and worn.

"I don't think so," Ben started. He glanced toward the bedroom where his black linen trousers lay folded over a chair. Was his wallet in them?

Wasn't his wallet brown? Maybe he should check. But the prospects of leaving this wild-eyed, disheveled man alone at the threshold disconcerted him.

The man made his decision for him. "The address is yours! Take it. Take it!" He yanked Ben's hand from its akimbo post, shoved the wallet into it and fled.

Ben slammed the door. He peered through the slats of his wooden blinds, but didn't see the man, or hear a car leave, just the murmur of early yuppies and ambitious tourists.

In the kitchen, the sun's sharp angle told him it couldn't be past eight.

Far too early for a bartender who's shift ended at 2:30, and who attended an after-hours that brought him stumbling through the door--womanless--at quarter past 7, to be up.

But curiosity overrode tiredness. He reheated a cup of yesterday's coffee and opened the wallet. The license was in one of those flip-out plastic things. The address indeed matched Ben's. Ben didn't recognize the guy in the photo, but he'd bought the house from someone who had rented it out, so this must have been one of the previous tenets. Examining the picture, he decided that the madman at the doorstep must have been either blind or incredibly generous in his physical assessments. The photo guy, like the wallet bearer, possessed a broad, high-cheekboned face, large eyes and good hair. Not grey, as Ben's had turned, nearly completely as of last year, betraying him at the comparatively young age of 34. Women described Ben as "cute," sometimes "handsome," but he'd never graduated to sexy.

The microwave beeped. On his way to it, he yanked closed the curtains over the kitchen sink. Who was this previous tenant guy? What was his name? Ed Bloodworth. Even his name was creepy!

Despite feeling voyeuristic, Ben riffled through the rest of the wallet.

Not much in it, no Norton's Food card, no library cards, no photos. A bank card, maybe he could drop the wallet off at BankZilla and they could hunt Eddie down. What unnerved Ben was the money. Hundred dollar bills. Lots of them. And some weird orange certificate things. Foreign currency? Ben felt uncomfortable touching it. He thought about calling 411 but what could he tell the guy if he did find him? No, dropping it off at the bank seemed better. Good and anonymous.

He left the wallet on his dresser. Some superstitious feeling made him check his pants, make sure he still had his own wallet, his own identification, was still Ben Myers.

He took a shower, mostly cold. The cool water left him refreshed and sleepy, so he went back to bed. At three, his radio clock came on, the Clash pulling him from sleep. Thursday. Thursdays meant the comedy club.

In lieu of the linen pants, he dug a pair of brown, wide-wale cords from his drawer and put on a brick-red jersey-cut T-shirt. Safe, earth colors. The cut of the shirt hid his little teddy-bear belly. The fact of the colors and cut, that he knew this and didn't mind, made Ben feel old.

* * *

Busta' Guts: "Food and Funny, See?" The sign featured a typecast mobster, smoking a fat cigar and rubbing his belly as he laughed. In fact, the drawing was a caricature of Buster DelGrosso, the unfunny-comic-but-shrewd-businessman who owned the place. Back in the 80's when stand-up had reached its pinnacle, Busta's provided the brightest new talent to the screen. Now it lived off its reputation, and like so many places in Hollywood, was frequented mostly by tourists.

The girl showed up early, but that wasn't the only reason she stood out.

People dressed tourist-nice at Busta's, khakis and pressed shirts. This chick had on a baseball jersey--Pitt--over a short plaid skirt and boots.

Roughed-up combat boots with gold laces that matched the writing on the shirt. Underneath the skirt were black fishnet stockings, and she wore the jersey open at the top, revealing a lace tank top.

Just enough skin, Ben thought. He hoped she didn't come near him. She did, of course.

"Bar open yet?"

"Only for you." Geez what a cliché! Ben wanted to slap himself.

"What's your special?"

"What's you pleasure?"

Her ice-blue eyes sparkled. "I asked you first."

Ben faltered. He wasn't supposed to serve his personalized drinks here.

But no one else was around yet, he wouldn't be upstaging anybody….

He leaned in conspiratorially. "Sweet or sharp?"

"What?"

"If you had to choose between Jaeger Meister and peach Schnapps," he said, "which would it be?"

"Jaeger."

That meant he could make her a sit-and-spin. He selected a pilsner glass, poured a half gin, half vodka base (mixed over ice), and two magical liquors that sat on top of each other, one blue one red. He set it in front of the girl, inserted a stirrer. "Watch."

He stirred it with vigor. The drink swirled and turned patriot blue. It kept spinning and the blue faded, passed to purple for just a moment, then flushed fire engine red

The girl grinned, cocked her head of loose black curls and examined him.

"You work at Tattoo."

"Maybe."

"He does," said a different woman, a swank redhead. "He makes another drink called the Kafka. It's grey and a little city forms at the bottom, disappears each time you take a sip then reforms again, reconfigured." She dropped onto a stool and shot him a smile. "He also juggles broken bottles and breathes fire."

"Hello, Heather." Ben sort of smirked, like a fond older brother. "What'll it be?"

"The usual. And: Lacy was prowling around here earlier."

"I thought Buster banned that crowd."

"He doesn't know Lacy hawks, he thinks she's just a starlet. Besides she was prowling around for you." Heather turned to Ben's new friend. "Comedy is like acting, the porno industry snatches up the failures. Eats them up and shits them out." She aimed her smarmy smile at the girl. "Are you on tonight?"

Ben glared at Heather. "I'd introduce you two but I don't know Pitt's name.

This is Heather."

The girl put out a hand. Ben prepared Heather's whiskey sour, glad for the respite. The pornography hawks made him prickle. They stalked joints like Busta's, made good sounding offers to fame-starved kids, "Hey baby, you're gorgeous, you're talented, you could make three hundred bucks a day, working in film!" Buster had cracked some guy's skull open one night and promised next time to shoot him. So what was Lacy chasing?

Ben set Heather's drink on a napkin.

"Her name is Chloe," Heather told him, and pranced off.

After Heather left, Chloe asked him, "Your girlfriend?"

"Absolutely not."

"She'd like to be." She eyed him over. "And… you've slept with her."

Ben felt himself flush. "Only once. We were both drunk."

"Maybe you'd like to get drunk with me some time."

Ben's face absolutely burned. He pointed to Chloe's jersey. "Did you go to Pitt?"

"No."

"Oh. I thought maybe you did because of the shirt. That's, ah… that’s' where I'm from."

"I bought this in Venice. I thought it was funny, you know, to buy a Pittsburgh shirt in California."

"Funny peculiar, or funny haha?"

"Funny ironic." She sipped her Sit-and-Spin.

"You ever been there?"

"You couldn't pay me enough."

"How do you know if you've never been?"

"Let's just say Pittsburgh is aptly named."

"You're pretty funny." He gazed at her suspiciously. "Are you on tonight?"

"No, one of my friends is. Vonnie."

"Connie Anders?"

Chloe shook her head. "Vonnie Upchurch."

Ben nodded, pursed his lips slightly, hoping he disguised how impressed he was. And jealous. Upchurch, former wife of rap-rock star Bagga' Chips, had taken the horrific and slanderous lyrics he'd sung about her and twisted them against him. Now half the country laughed at him. Naturally, this had gained her quick access to the talk-show circuit. Brilliant. Ben wished he'd thought up some similar approach with his own, now long-abandoned shtick.

"Want to meet her?" Chloe asked.

This struck Ben as an odd question, being that he worked for the club and it was usually him asking that question, kind of a standard pick-up line, come to think of it. "Sure."

"Good. We can all have dinner at my place Saturday night. Good?"

"Ah… good!"

Any fantasies he may have harbored about sex with two girls--one of them a famous comic!--or watching two girls have sex with each other, were squelched by Heather as they closed up.

"Neither of those women even wants to see you naked. I, on the other hand…."

"You realize that, since you're the club manager, I could potentially sue you for sexual harassment." He winked at her.

"Oh please do. Court would at least break the predictable cycle that has become my life. Seriously. Honey? Use a condom? In fact, use a box."

* * *

Before Chloe had the door open she apologized. "Vonnie couldn't make it."

"I'm not surprised. Saturday is top dollar for a comic."

"I didn't think you'd make it either. Mister bartender."

"Speaking of which." He shoved a bottle of wine at her. "That's from Canada," he said. "Eastern Canada."

"I didn't tell you what I was making."

"So?"

"So how did you know what wine to get?"

He grinned. "I'm a bartender."

Chloe had a nice apartment in a marginal neighborhood, on the seedier side of Hollywood. Maybe the vaulted ceilings and hardwood floors made up for not being able to leave the house after dark without putting on some hardcore attitude.

She sat him at the dining room table, wrought iron with an inset grey marble top. Ben ran a hand along it. "This is gorgeous."

"Thrift store, can you believe it?"

In place of a table cloth which would have covered the beauty of the marble, she'd draped three cobalt blue runners. A metal watering can spilling over with blue and white irises rested on the farthest of these and placemats set beside cloth napkins graced the other end. Tasteful.

And the food! Duck prepared in Grand Marnier sauce, with wild rice and perfectly steamed asparagus. Crème Brule for dessert; Chloe had a cook's blow torch. Ben thought he could marry this girl. She had taste, a sense of humor and cooked like a fiend!

"Why are you such a good cook?"

"Why?"

"You have to admit it's a bit unusual for somebody, what, twenty five?"

"Is this an elaborate ruse to determine my age?"

"Yes."

"I'm twenty-nine."

Ben finished his wine. "You don't look a day over thirty. Seriously, not may people in their twenties cook this well unless it's their profession."

"I'm not a chef."

"I figured. So?"

"I watched Food TV a lot."

Ben sensed there was more. For the first time in their short relationship, Chloe seemed hesitant. He hedged the bet: "For a reason?"

"Do you really want to know?" She attempted a laugh. "In the past five years my life became a bad Lifetime movie. Oh wait, that's a redundancy."

He snickered. "But yeah, I'd really like to know."

"My dad died when the World Trade Center came down. All the channels were showing it all the time. I couldn’t get away from it, but I couldn’t stand the silence when the TV was off. Music wasn't enough, I wanted voices, you know? People."

Ben searched her for signs of farce, was he being punked? He didn't think so. Her speech was rushed. Plus the way she'd referred to it, not the media-catchy "Nine Eleven."

"What about the Weather Channel?" he asked.

Chloe shook her head. "It affected the weather. All that smoke and debris? So I watched all these different people cook. It got to be interesting. They each have their own little pet thing. And cooking, it's a form of creation I guess." She shrugged. "I found it therapeutic. Don't laugh."

He looked at her, sparkling eyes and wide smile; Chloe was struggling not to laugh herself.

"How about your mom?"

"Died a year later. Of a broken heart."

"That's poetic." He instantly regretted his sarcasm.

"It seems to frighten people less than telling them that she hung herself from the exposed pipes in the basement."

"I, ah… I'm sorry."

Chloe glared at him only for a moment, then shrugged. "I warned you." So what about you? Any after school specials you want to share?"

Ben rubbed his chin. "We'll do me next time."

"I won't do you next time. I'm a third date girl."

* * *

Ben drove home happy, not even minding his broken radio. Brand new car and the radio--satellite--stopped working after two weeks. The dealer said it wasn't their responsibility, here's a voucher, go to a stereo place. The stereo places looked sideways at the car because it was a hybrid and they don't work on hybrids 'cuz it's an electric car, comprende? They could be electro-cuted.

But he wasn't thinking about any of that, he was humming and dreaming about Tuesday, his scheduled second date. How foresightful of him to have taken those passes to Alrik's art show opening. He never believed he'd actually use them but stuff like that can come in handy. No pun intended, he joked to himself, then remembered it's the third date he had to get to before there'd be any hands involved. He already knew just where to take her. As such a good cook, she'd be hard to impress, but in searching for hard-to-find wines he'd recently stumbled across this Romanian place and who was parked in his driveway?

A silver Escalade sat, motor running, by the curb, across his driveway so that it blocked his entrance. Adrenaline brought Ben its rush of anger and irrationality. Then he noticed that one of the taillights was out, and sighed: Heather.

For show, he screeched to a halt inches from her bumper and tossed open the door. He had not been completely truthful with Chloe. Yes, he and Heather hooked up only once, but neither of them was drunk and it was the beginning of an arrangement whereby if both of them were free and physically needy they could use each other to fill that need. Technically, he was not yet with anybody. Chloe's chastity was cute though, he found it charming, and he'd decided before he got out of his car to send Heather home.

But as he stepped from his hybrid, the Escalade darted away with a tight squeak of tires. Ben cursed after the S.U.V., suddenly bitter with the realization that he'd just been blue-balled twice in one night.

* * * *

"So how was your wild night, loverboy?"

"You should know."

Heather raised her eyebrows at him. "How's that?"

"I appreciate our arrangement, but I'm dating. And color me crazy but stalkers make me nervous."

"What on god's green earth are you on about?"

Ben peered at his manager. She had a hand on her tilted hip and a vaguely-offended sort of frown creased her brow.

"Don't you drive a silver Escalade with a burned out taillight?"

"Silver Explorer, psycho, Cadillac makes Escalade. And I fixed my busted taillight two weeks ago. You told me where to go."

That's right, he had. So who the hell'd been parked outside his house?

Like they were casing the place. Not that Ben had much, necessarily, but he liked the things he did have. His couch was comfortable, his stereo kicked ass, and the bedroom furniture had been his grandmother's, which in his opinion more than made up for the dresser's mismatched hardware and circular stains. He'd considered refinishing the piece but--the wallet! Shit, he'd forgotten all about it.

What if the Escalade guy was Eddie the Wallet Owner? Ben took a deep breath. Tomorrow the banks would be open, he'd return it. He counted his drawer, liquor and receipts, brought the numbers back to Heather along with an apology. She shrugged in a way that told him she was still irritated, but gave him her usual "Break a leg at Ta-Twat."

Ben hated Club Tattoo but loved working there. The clientele ranged from over-privileged children-of-famous-people to Persian princes and their bombshell American dates. They had a stage show on the lower level--impersonators, magic, sometimes vaudevillian stuff. Upstairs, people danced. No average citizens and no white light ever graced the carpets, dance floors or bathrooms of the infamous Club Tattoo. Their bouncers carried side arms. More than one of their waiters were rumored to have used their kitchen torches for things beyond the showy at-the-table caramelization of desserts, and two of the waitresses were known for going on to become Hollywood Madams. For Ben, all this meant two things: that he got to put on a show and that he got tipped superbly.

What Heather had told Chloe was true, the fire breathing and broken bottles. He also worked some basic magic, a cup-and-ball trick he did with shot glasses and maraschino cherries, a dollar-in-the-lemon trick. This week he planned to debut a disappearing dollar bit, "Drink Your Money Away," he'd named it. He poured a shot with the money in the glass, still visible when served. Once the patron consumed it, the cash disappeared. Ben made out on money tricks because Tattoo customers seldom carried anything smaller than tens, and they usually let him keep the bill.

The ninth dollar-drinker shook his shot glass, stared into the bottom, rubbed his finger around the inside.

"Amazing, isn't it?" a girl asked.

A girl with black hair and ice blue eyes. "Chloe!"

"I've been sitting here for nearly twenty minutes. What's wrong, you don't recognize me out of uniform?"

The Ninth Guy barked, "Hey! Where's my Abe?"

Ben pulled a five dollar bill out of the guy's ear, handed it to him. The guy snatched it and waltzed away.

Ben frowned after him. Chloe reached around him for a handful of maraschino cherries. "Cheap SOB, huh?"

"Naw, I lost concentration at the end there. It's all about timing." He noticed the cherries, aimed his frown at her.

"Is that your way of saying scram? Get outta here kid, you bother me?"

He blinked at her. "No. Don't eat those, I have to account for them." He snagged one from her. "You're probably right, cheap SOB. So, come here often?"

"Hey Benjy Boy!" A leggy platinum blonde poured herself into a stool at the bar's far end. Veins bulged through the loose skin of her hands, but her face could still sell lip gloss to teeny-boppers.

Ben waved a finger at Chloe, "just a minute," moved to the blonde. "What's your poison Geena?"

"What, no kiss? Give Mamma a kissy-wissy, baby." She yanked him to her by his shirt, took his face in both her hands and planted a sloppy kiss on his mouth. Amazingly, she left no traces of lipstick. "I hear you're making dollar bills disappear tonight."

"I hear you're making other things disappear."

Geena giggled. "Show me yours. Sorry, but you can't afford mine."

Ben poured her a shot, the money disappeared, he pulled it out of her blonde mane. She let him keep the bill, and hers was a twenty. He served the small crowd that Geena inevitably left in her wake. Eventually everybody had something in his hand, and Ben returned to Chloe.

"You here alone?"

"Vonnie dragged me. She almost fits in around here."

"She doesn't have a gig tonight?"

Chloe nodded. "Late. Up on the Strip somewhere."

Ben wondered if Chloe got paid to act as her friend's mascot, but before he'd figured a tactful way to phrase this question, Lionel burst through the swing doors behind the bar. "Heads up! Ice! Ice, ice, baby!" He dumped a plastic busboy's tray-load of ice into the bar trough, muscles bulging around his white tank undershirt. "You short anything else?"

"I could use more Blue Curacao," Ben said. "And don't eat those!" He smacked Lionel's hand, which was full of bright red cherries.

"Uh-oh." Lionel sang.

"What?" Ben followed the bar back's gaze. "Oh."

"Porno mafia at three o'clock."

"Why does Alex let them through the door?"

"And the fetish crew no less."

Two women and three men reached the top of the stairs, spread like a survey crew, like they owned the joint. Or planned to rob it. They'd've been awfully conspicuous though. Two of the three men had slick black ponytails and black leather trench coats. The third guy's dirty blonde hair fell into his eyes. He also wore leather, a motorcycle jacket over a Hawaiian shirt, and had an eyebrow ring and a goatee.

Then there were the women. One like Elvira but with breasts the size of watermelons. On her arm, a small, skinny girl in a plush fur leopard top and matching boy-panties. She had boots to her knees, Halloween cat-ears over her black Betty Page cut, and wore a mesh duster that trailed on the floor. Her chest held mere cantaloupes.

Ben turned to Chloe to tell her about how the last time this crew showed up, they'd had to close the floor for a night to clean up the mess. Luckily, the club appealed to a crowd made hot by scandal and murder, especially if the death involved being smothered between watermelon tits.

But Chloe had slid off her stool and was creeping toward the women's bathroom, eyes set on the youngest of the men, the one with the short hair.

Lionel came swinging back through the doors again. "Boss says blow."

"Really?"

"Yeah, apparently these clowns crashed the gates. Riley's on his way up, says get everybody out, don't come back till tomorrow."

"Who's gonna finish my shift?"

Lionel shrugged. "My guess is Tattoo's second floor is closing for the evening."

"My guess is Riley sets this shit up."

Ben searched for Chloe but to no avail, decided she was holed up in the bathroom with her comedienne friend and he'd call her later. He considered hitting Peanuts or one of the other dance clubs, but realized he was bored with that scene, was very much looking forward to Tuesday night with Chloe and the prospect of Tattoo being reduced to just a job, from the slender-possibility-palace he currently pretended it wasn't. So, for the first night in many months, Ben headed straight home after work.

As he pulled into his driveway his headlights swept over his little house, revealing the unmistakable form of a person, standing in his front room.

Forgetting the public service announcements which recommend that if you should come home to somebody in your house, you go to another house and phone the police, Ben burst from his still-running car and lunged through the door. A shadow slipped through his sliding kitchen door. Ben followed.

In the backyard he saw someone hop at the eight-foot rock wall, struggle for a grip. He lurched after the intruder. But lack of exercise got the best of him. He stood panting and sweating in the dim light as the figure slipped lithely into the neighbor's garden.

Ben put his car in the garage and headed inside to assess the damage. The lock was busted, but nothing in the house appeared broken or missing.

Perhaps he'd had the good fortune to arrive just in time? He checked the bedroom, where even the foisted mystery wallet still sat unmolested on his dresser.

But there'd been a sound as the intruder slipped over the wall, the unmistakable crunchy squeak of leather. Only certain types of people, Ben knew, wore a leather jacket in mid summer. The same kinds of people, come to think of it, who were likely to drive silver Cadillac S.U.V.'s. This, on the same night as the Porno cartel? This was bad.

Ben didn't want to end up like the stupid amateurs trying to make it in the business. The hawks always collected a few failed actors who didn't mind, maybe liked the work. Maybe tried to get a little too big. Like any big-money business, competition killed. The Porn kings and queens regularly met up with people at Tattoo, usually men, who left the club with them and then disappeared for good. Occasionally they didn’t leave the club at all.

Then the Tattoo staff got to clean up the mess.

Yeah, this was bad.

Ben slept in his clothes. At seven-thirty his alarm went off but he needn't have set it, he'd been awake since dawn, staring out the window and trying to keep his heart rate close to normal. He paced outside BankZilla, panting like a rabid dog for the three minutes it took them to unlock the door to customers.

The aging, too-skinny clerk drew away from him slightly, as if he smelled.

Her eyebrows, which she had shaved and painted back on so that she appeared perpetually surprised, made Ben slightly afraid of her and indeed of the bank, as if he had walked into an elaborate trap.

"This is… I found this. And I have reason to believe the man it belongs to needs it very much." He explained about the address, slid the wallet under the shield of bullet-proof plastic.

False-nailed fingers snatched the wallet from the metal tray and tapped a keyboard furiously. Still gazing at her computer screen, Creepy Bank Lady shook her head. "Account's closed. Has been for months. The last address we have is yours."

"What can I do?" Ben's vision tunneled.

"Try the DMV. Next in line, please."

"His license has my address."

"Then four-one-one. Next!"

He stumbled punch-drunk out of the chilly bank and into the bright morning heat of an LA Monday. For a while he sat with his car running, relearning how to breathe. And sweating. The heat made him come to. He raised a hand to his new car's air conditioner vent, discovered it pumped out damp, tepid air.

Ben sighed. "Alright," he said out loud to himself. "Fine. Four-one-one it is." He headed one city-block north to the Honda of Hollywood dealer.

"Why not confront Bloodworth directly?" he shouted at himself. "These people already know where I live anyway, right? Right! If they want to kill me, they will." His arms flailed in surrender, briefly abandoning the steering wheel. "With some luck I'll wake up while they're hovering over my bead with a butcher knife and just hand them the wallet."

He ran a red light, a stop sign, and cut off an old lady.

Perhaps the Honda dealer manager perceived that he was contending with a man on the edge. It took very little to convince him that, unlike the stereo, the AC was certainly their responsibility, and they would see what they could do right this minute.

While Ben was waiting he used the manager's phone.

"Information, what city?"

But after some key-tapping she told him, "No listing in the greater Los Angeles area."

He hung up to find the dealership manager looking apologetic and a little frightened.

"Let me guess," Ben said, "You need a part."

The manager nodded. "If you’d like you can take the car today and drop it off again. We should have it by tomorrow."

"No, take it. Keep it. Call me when it's ready. If I'm not dead, I'll come get it."

* * *.

Tuesday evening the sun retreated but left its heat behind. At seven, the buildings blazed metallic in the low light, and the temperature still hung in the high nineties. Ben phoned Chloe, left a message, could she drive tonight?

Nobody threatening had shown up at Busta' Guts, and Ben had spent the night on Heather's couch. He considered asking Chloe to pick him up from the club, but he needed of a change of clothes, and the tickets for the art show, which he hoped he remembered correctly as being tacked to his bulletin board.

Back at his little house, nothing seemed amiss, making him wonder if conspiracy theories had finally taken over his better judgment. He heard the phone ring from the shower and found Chloe's voice on his machine when he got out. "My AC is broken too. So's my stereo. But I can drive if you want."

At nine precisely, Chloe pulled up in her yellow Volkswagen Golf, wearing a mint green slipdress, a black feather boa and black vinyl platforms. The stereo, to Ben, seemed healthy enough, blasting 80's favorites loud enough to rattle his front windows. But he had more pressing things weighing on his mind.

"Listen!" he hollered over a Duran Duran tune he was embarrassed to admit still made him choke up if he paid attention. "I hope you didn't split the other night because of Lana!"

Chloe shook her head, made a right onto Melrose.

"Or Josie!"

She shook her head again.

"Can I turn this down!"

"It doesn't turn down!"

Very funny, Ben thought. If she was pissed at him, why hadn't she said so earlier? He punched the down arrow, furious. There was no way he was showing up at his friend's art opening with some chick who--it didn't turn down. It also didn't turn off, and the next song was Led Zeppelin which probably ranked as Ben's most hated band ever, but he couldn't change the station either.

"Your radio's broken!"

"I told you that! I also have to turn the heat on now, or the engine's going to overheat!"

Ben trusted things could only get better.

His friend's opening ran out of a one-room independent gallery in Studio City, in the Valley. Chloe found a parking space in the bank lot across the street. When she turned the engine off, and the full-blast heater and killer radio with it, Ben stumbled out of the car into the comparatively cool air and pretended to kiss the ground.

Chloe stood, arms crossed. "You can take a taxi home."

"I think it might be worth it."

"How else were we supposed to get here?"

Ben stood, dipped his head. "Point taken."

"Can we go see some art now please?"

"Well, I can't promise you that." He took her arm and led her across Ventura Boulevard to Gallery AnArtChy.

Music poured from inside the tiny, bright gallery. "Sounds like they hired the Flintstones band to play," Ben said.

"I like it. That's a marimba. The marimba is a great instrument because it can be simultaneously spooky and whimsical. Unlike the poor Theremin, which is always associated with monsters around the corner."

"Thank you, professor."

"Don't mention it."

Inside, amidst the brilliant lights and dazzling paintings, Ben found his friend, the artist, Alrik. Despite the man's Scandinavian name, he stood less than six feet, talked like a surfer, and had trim, dark hair that would have looked absurd underneath a Viking helmet. His paintings, too, were quintessentially American, a high-energy blend of comic book and graffiti art. Not "moving" or poignant perhaps, but an awful lot of fun.

Chloe assembled a cheese and fruit plate for them to share, and Alrik pressed plastic goblets of wine into both their hands. But he pulled Ben aside, "There was a man here looking for you. Asked me to keep it dark."

Ben's stomach tightened. "In a leather coat?"

"Naw, business clothes. Blonde hair, goatee. He left a card."

"Did he say what he wanted?"

Alrik shook his head, handed Ben a card, which Ben surreptitiously pocketed.

"Did he seem… dangerous?"

His friend shrugged. "It's hard to be dangerous in a Hugo Boss suit." He sent Ben to view the show.

Ben gulped his wine, snagged another glass. He scrutinized the other visitors. They seemed divided into a blend of hip kids and Euro-trash. The kids were skinny, had spiky hair bleached at the tips, or no hair and goatees. They wore Glitter Baby and Hip-Hop-HurRave gear, greeted the artist with congratulatory hugs, wolfed cheese, shied away from the wine.

The others--older, darker--frowned at them. Frowned at the art. They leaned into each other to whisper in foreign snatches, broke apart in nasty laughter.

"Know any of those clowns?" Chloe asked. "They look like they got lost on their way to Tattoo."

"Listen, I hope you didn't split on Sunday because of that woman at the bar.

Or the chick in the cat suit."

"None of the above. One of those guys? Was my boss."

"I thought you work in an office."

"I'm not saying I can account for it, I'm just telling you why I left."

"What's the name of your company again?"

"Why, you think I'm lying? That I'm actually a porn star?"

"No. If you were you'd have a nicer car."

"Those girls make a lot, huh?" She sounded like she might be considering it in earnest.

Ben wanted to avoid a public hard-on. "Want to go?"

"I guess. Where?"

"Are you hungry?" he asked.

"I could eat."

"There's this weird place I stumbled on, Romanian food. I was going to wait until Saturday to take you--"

"But we seem to need something to occupy us."

Ben nodded, felt warm from the wine. "Occupy. Exactly."

"What is Romanian food?"

He led her back across Ventura to the car. "I have no idea. I thought you'd know, you're the chef."

"Dracula was from Romania. Maybe they'll have blood pudding."

She started the car, killing the conversation.

The restaurant proved elusive, having no sign. But an odd building housed it, a long white box with a sharp peaked roof.

Chloe stepped out of the car and looked around. "I have no idea where we are."

Ben pointed up the road. "Three blocks that way is the 110-105 interchange."

Inside was cool and cozy. A brunette, college-age girl sat in front of a register, hopped off her stool when Ben and Chloe entered. "Welcome to Vlad's!" She gave them a warm smile.

"I love your dress!" Chloe spouted in admiration of the girl's floor length black and purple velvet gown. The top fit like a vest, while the bottom belled.

"Thanks! My Gramma made it."

She led them to the main room, where two men crouched over a chess game while an enormous black dog slept under the table. Aside from them, Ben and Chloe were the only customers.

The girl sat them at the table farthest from the concentrating men, explained the menu and made suggestions in good, only slightly accented English. While she was talking, an older gentleman wearing shirt sleeves and an apron snuck around her and set a basket of warm bread on the table.

"Take your time. Let me know if you have questions."

Ben set the menu aside. "Apparently Romanian food is organ meats, wine and vodka. And bread."

Chloe broke the loaf into two large chunks. "Our question has been answered."

"Ours has but mine hasn't."

"What?"

"You never told me where you work."

"I did so, on our first date."

"Tell me again."

The girl brought a bottle of wine, performed an elegant ceremony of opening it in front of them and letting them smell the cork, giving them just enough in the glass to obtain their approval before leaving them the bottle.

"Survivanoia," Chloe told him once the waitress had left.

Ben snapped his fingers. "Ah! I knew it was something intense like that.

Inside sales, right?"

"Right."

"See, I was listening. I just suffer from short term memory loss."

"So if I ask you next week, you'll remember?"

"You're pretty funny."

"You say that a lot, are you aware? But you never laugh at anything I say.

You don't even smile, you just give me this sort of smirk.”

Ben gave just the smirk she spoke of. "That's my after-school special, as you termed it."

"Go on, I'm tuned in. I've got popcorn and everything. Even better, I've got wine."

"Really good wine, too." He helped himself to another glass. "Okay… I came here from Pittsburgh to do comedy. Believe it or not, Pittsburgh has a good reputation, comedy-wise."

"Vonnie confirms that, yes."

"I did pretty good out there, and I don't have that Pittsburgh accent--"

"True. You haven't said 'yuns' or 'Stillers' once since I met you."

"--so I figured I had a shot. I come out here and I'm doing alright, playing places like Adlibs, and getting good reviews and a word here and there from some bigger names."

"And then--tragedy struck." Chloe mimicked a violin.

Ben tossed back the rest of his wine. He told her about how his taste buds went funny on him one day, apples tasted salty. Then his lip tingled and went numb, and that night at the club, he laughed at somebody's joke and his face felt weird, like half of it was taped down. He ran to the men's room.

"Bell's Palsy," Chloe guessed.

"Right. You know somebody with it?"

"A friend, briefly. They gave her some steroids and something else, antibiotics? And it went away in like five weeks."

"Mine didn't." Ben had been saddled with a broken face for almost ten months. "So in the interest of not scaring anybody I taught myself this smirk. It used to go along with a shoulder raise and a little snort." He demonstrated. "I thought I'd appear clever and refined. They thought I was a stuck up prick. I got blacklisted."

Chloe's brow furrowed. "Why didn't you just tell them the truth?"

"Embarrassed! Palsy? Everybody makes fun of the Palsy kid!"

The black behemoth under the chess table raised his head at Ben's outburst.

Ben leaned in and said in what sounded to him like a whisper, "That's the biggest goddamn German Shepherd I've ever seen. Or Doberman. I mix all those pointy dogs up. That's one of the few things I can say in Spanish. I can ask where the bathroom is, call somebody nasty names, and I can say the dog is big and black."

"We seem to have gotten off topic."

"Oh, yeah." Ben shrugged. "So I took up bartending. I'm a loser, baby."

Chloe sat back. "I'm to believe that a clever, successful guy--at least when he's not drunk--traveled three thousand miles, got himself on a stage, and then let a temporary embarrassing inconvenience kill his career?"

He struggled with her words for a moment, then asked, "What would you believe?"

"You wanted to be a bartender."

"Nice. Thanks very much."

"What's wrong with it? You make a lot of money. You're good at it."

"Who the hell are you to tell me what I'm good at? I was funny, goddammit!"

The dog looked up again, grumbled.

Chloe folded her arms. "Funny haha or funny peculiar?"

Ben smirked. "Very clever. Touché."

"I have another friend like you, he's this great teacher--"

"Please. Drop it."

"--but he scorns teaching and continues to struggle with his painfully mediocre--"

"Will you please! Shut--"

Two huge hands shoved him backward. No, not hands--paws. Ben's chair tipped, and a maw of white teeth snarled beneath smoldering brown eyes. He heard a sharp cry in a foreign language. He scrambled out of the chair, landed on his belly. Something dropped from his pocket.

The chess players circled him, he heard their bantering, saw their formal shoes. He noticed the one man's pants were two inches too short and that his socks were stark white.

Then he heard Chloe's voice rise above the chaos. "Hey! Where'd you get these?"

He squinted up at her, pinned by the weight of the dog who stood on his back and held gently but firmly to his neck, police dog style. She held a wallet. Not his. A worn, black wallet. And now she rubbed his nose in the funny orange money.

"These are pollution credits," she informed him. "Stolen from my company.

You're in a lot of trouble, mister bartender."

"That’s not m--"

A growl cut him off, made convincing by its teeth. He saw the minty green whirl of Chloe's dress and watched her platforms clomp out the door. A rivulet of drool ran down the side of his neck. At least it wasn't blood, he thought, that'd come later when the Porno Mafia people came after him for a wallet they knew he had. Overhead, the distraught chess players flapped and squawked and then Chloe's stereo rose above them with that same damn Duran Duran song. "Don't say a prayer for me now…"

It would not be denied. His lips pulled away from his teeth, and for the first time in years, Ben smiled. He smiled so big he thought he must be buzzing, like fluorescent lights or a muted television. "You're in trouble!" she'd said. He savored this. The understatement did it, pushed a hearty bark from the back of his throat, a laugh! Benjamin Myers, Bartender Extraordinaire, laughed and laughed and laughed.

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