The Man Who Cancelled Himself Read online

  “I feel good about wimp,” Chad affirmed.

  Lyle heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Fine. If you feel good about wimp then I feel good about wimp. Thanks, boys. You saved the show.”

  “Come on, Lulu. Let’s go.” Marty gathered her up in his arms and tickled her tummy, which made her leg twitch, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. She was in basset hound heaven. “Lulu’s our new Team Chubby mascot, Hoagy.”

  “Her deadpan inspires us,” explained Tommy.

  “Can we keep her?” asked Marty.

  “I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Off the three of them went, leaving me there with Lyle and Chad.

  “What else, pal?” Lyle asked him with mounting impatience.

  “Balls,” said Chad. “Rob needs some balls. Like when the two guys are fixing the dishwasher together. Chubby nails him about why he’s not married. Rob should nail him right back. He should say, ‘What are you doing sponging off of your sister, fatty?’ ” Lyle’s eyes widened. “Maybe not those exact words,” said Chad, beating a hasty retreat, “but he should be a guy.”

  “He is a guy,” Lyle argued. “Look, Chad, I understand what you’re going through here. You’re an outsider coming into a close-knit family. You’re not sure how you fit in. Rob’s in the same boat. He doesn’t know where he fits either. He’s feeling what you’re feeling.”

  Chad listened intently, head bowed like a fighter soaking up last-minute advice from his trainer.

  “So don’t block those feelings out,” Lyle continued. “Use ’em. Be yourself. Be the terrific guy you are. You’re a health ed teacher now. That was Hoagy’s idea. You’re hip. You’re relevant. The girls all wanna fuck ya. You’re hot.”

  “I don’t feel hot,” Chad confessed.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “It’s this business about my bathroom. Leo told me that you said no way. I just can’t believe it.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about that, pal.” A hard edge crept into Lyle’s voice. “The studio won’t spring for it. Times are tough.”

  “That’s just not acceptable, Lyle,” Chad declared angrily. “You can’t treat me this way. I’ve worked with Spielberg. I’ve worked with DePalma. I’ve done three series. And I’ve never, ever not had my own toilet. Not once. I want a toilet. I have to have one. Or I’m having my agent call God.”

  “Fair enough, Chadster,” Lyle said pleasantly. “If that’s how you want it. Only answer me this: When was your last successful series?”

  “What do you mean?” Chad’s voice quavered slightly.

  “Lemme see now …” Lyle said, counting them off on his gloved fingers. “There was that piece-of-shit Indiana Jones rip-off you did for ABC. Then there was that piece-of-shit Bull Durham rip-off you did for NBC. Then there was that thing you did with Valerie Bertinelli where you were the alien.”

  “I wasn’t the alien,” Chad retorted. “She was.”

  Lyle suddenly turned vicious. “Who’s fooling who here, huh?” he snarled. “This show is it for you—your last series shot. You know it, I know it, and God sure as hell knows it. You’re, what, forty-five?”

  Chad swallowed. He looked like he was about to be sick. “I’m forty-two.”

  “Bullshit!” Lyle exploded. “You’re forty-seven. Your hair’s falling out by the handful and you’re fucking lucky to be here! So don’t go copping a fucking attitude with me, you fucking bastard, or so help me I’ll call up God and get you axed! This is my show! I’m the director! I’m the star! You’ll play the character I tell you to play and you’ll piss where I tell you to piss! Got it?!”

  Everyone on the soundstage had stopped what they were doing. They were all staring at Lyle, transfixed. In the bleachers, Casey and Caitlin were gaping at him as if he were the monster in a real-life horror film.

  Chad was too angry to speak. The man just sat there a moment, quivering, before he lunged for Lyle’s empty lunch plate and hurled it at him. It bounced harmlessly off Lyle’s big chest. Lyle jumped to his feet. They both did, Lyle towering massively over his new leading man.

  “Wienie!” Lyle sneered like a schoolyard bully.

  “Pervert!” raged Chad.

  Lyle started breathing hard. Sweat formed on his brow. Menacingly, he moved in on Chad, his huge lists clenched.

  “Not my face!” cried Chad, his voice unpleasantly high-pitched and shrill. “Don’t hit my face!”

  I slipped in between them. “Gentlemen, please. Think of the children.”

  Lyle turned to look at them, his chest heaving. “Hiya, Munchkins!” he sang out, waving to them. “How ya doing?”

  “Fine, Lyle,” they answered, their eyes huge with terror.

  He turned back to Chad, the spell broken. “Go chill out for ten minutes,” he barked. “Go on. Get outta here!”

  Chad charged off the set and across the stage, slamming the steel stage door behind him. The crew watched him go. Slowly, they went back to work.

  Lyle ran a gloved hand through his tight red curls, disgusted. “See what I gotta live with?”

  “I’m certainly getting an up-close-and-personal view, all right.”

  He shot me The Scowl. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I see what everyone else has to live with, too.”

  “Hey, nice people don’t keep a hit show on the air.”

  “Then you should stay number one for many weeks to come, Lyle.”

  He dropped down heavily into Chubby’s easy chair. “If he’d just put himself in my hands, he could be a terrific straight man. Christ, Fiona’s the funniest woman on television. And I’m—”

  “The funniest man on television. I know. You already told me.”

  Lyle peered up at me, as if he’d only just remembered who I was. “You helped out big-time with Marjorie this morning.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “I mean it. You really poured oil over troubled waters.”

  “I’m a major slick, all right. Number two crude.”

  He guffawed. “You ask me, I see you around here permanent.”

  “I don’t recall asking you.”

  “Television may be your true calling. That ever occur to you?”

  “In the night sometimes. But then I start screaming and that wakes me up.”

  Lyle raised his chin at me, eyes narrowing. “About before—sorry if I was being rude bellowing for you like that. Just the way I am. You’ll get used to it.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “You always this way?”

  “What way is that, Lyle?”

  “Thin-skinned.”

  “My skin is plenty thick. I just don’t like you.”

  “Well, hell, don’t let that bother you, Hoagster. Nobody does.”

  “What I mean is, you’ll either learn to love me or to hate me. That’s the way it is with me. Right, Katrina?”

  “Right, Pinky,” she squealed dutifully.

  The three of us were in his combination office-dressing room. Rehearsal was over for the day and one of us, Pinky, was naked. He lay flat on his stomach on a rubdown table, mask off, gloves on, while Katrina expertly massaged the huge, hairless globes of his ass, her zoomers whomping up and down inside of her leotard.

  “Why is that, Lyle?” I asked.

  He stuck out his lower lip. Gloved and naked, he looked a lot like a Disney cartoon character. “We working on the book now?”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Hell, no. Just checking.”

  Lyle’s inner sanctum was sumptuous. Also overbaked, overripe, and over the top. Animal magnetism was its theme, Katrina-style. The walls and ceiling were covered with woven zebra-print wallpaper, the floor with a faux tiger-skin rug. The sofa, the throw pillows on the sofa, and the two easy chairs facing the sofa were leopard skin. Lyle’s desk was of clear Lucite. There was a red phone on it, and a lamp with a cheetah-print shade. Behind the desk chair (ocelot), the drapes (more leopard
skin) were partly open on the only window in the entire place, which came with a deep granite ledge and a perfectly splendid view of the air shaft. One wall of Lyle’s office was given over to the worship of Uncle Chubby. An antique glass case contained a reverent display of Uncle Chubby dolls, games, books, nourishing microwave meals, the works. Hanging above this were the many awards and citations Lyle had received from the many parents’ and children’s groups. Before his arrest. A framed photograph of Magic Johnson was signed “For the real big fella, with thanks.” Still more leopard-skin drapery separated the office from Lyle’s dressing area, where there was a makeup mirror and dressing table and wardrobe cupboard. A door led to his much-contested private bath, which also had a door that opened out into the main office.

  “Why is that?” Lyle wondered aloud. “Okay, I know why—it’s because I’m too honest with people.”

  This one I had to sit down for. I chose one of the leopard-skin easy chairs. “Oh?”

  Katrina dug her fingers into the muscles in his lower back. He yelped in protest. “Pinky, you’re soooo tense.”

  “See, I don’t believe in holding back. Anybody gets in the way of my own personal happiness, I gotta let ’em know, is what I’m saying. I hold nuttin’ back. Not ever. Some people can deal with that. Some can’t. They get hurt. But, hey, I’m cool with that. Because I’m not the one with the problem—they are. I mean, you can’t deal with the truth, you got yourself a problem, let’s face it.” He raised his huge head so that he could look up at me. “How’s that for a deep fucking philosophy of life?”

  “Sounds more like a self-serving justification for being a complete asshole.”

  Katrina froze. Her lazy eye gave her a somewhat glassy expression.

  Lyle grinned at me expansively. This was him being in a deep fucking philosophical mood. “Hey, lemme tell ya something, Hoagy. Probably the only fucking thing I ever learned in life—I can either hold things in and beat up on myself, or I can let ’em out and—”

  “Beat up on other people?”

  He pointed a fat index finger at me. This was him being cautioning. “I feel good about me, Hoagy. Best I’ve ever felt. I ‘like’ me. Don’t fuck with that.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, Lyle.”

  Katrina handed him his caftan, thus earning my eternal gratitude. Then she began to gather up her things. “Okay, I’m going to leave you guys,” she announced.

  “Where are you going, Cookie?” he whined, like a sorrowful little boy.

  “To the health club. I’m soooo flabby.”

  “Who you kidding?” he asked, looking her up and down lasciviously.

  “Pinky, you’re awful!” she squealed. “Besides, you two need time alone.”

  “Okay,” he said grudgingly. “But don’t use the shower there. No telling what kind of fungus you might pick up.”

  “Not to worry. I’ll shower when I get back to the hotel. How late will you be?”

  “Dunno. Hoagy’ll want some din-din.”

  She stroked his forehead. There was genuine affection in the way she did it. “That’s fair. But don’t you eat the food, Pinky. Remember your diet. I’ll have a special meal ready for you when you get home, okay?”

  “Okay, baby.” He buried his face in her neck. “God, I love you. You’re the greatest.”

  “You’re the greatest,” she cooed, kissing him on the forehead. Then she left us, closing the door softly behind her.

  He turned and winked at me, gloating. “Is that the greatest pussy in New York or what?”

  I left that one alone.

  He glowered. “How is it you manage to register so much disapproval without saying a word?”

  “I do special facial exercises every morning. I thought we’d begin with the early stuff.”

  “How early?” he asked, turning sullen.

  “As early as you can remember.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “You just go ahead and talk. I’ll pick out what I need. And stop you if I’m not getting it.”

  “Yeah, I don’t doubt that,” he muttered, flopping onto the sofa like a big, unbleached muslin whale. “Fair enough. The early shit. I was born in ’53, April the eighteenth, in Bay Shore, Long Island—Queens by the Sea. You catch the Fire Island ferry there. So every summer there’s this swarm of yammering, horny singles from Manhattan tramping through. Otherwise it’s strictly working-class hell. Block after block of raised ranches with above-ground pools, power boats in the driveway … Herb bought into a dry cleaning business out there when he got out of the navy in ’46. He’s from Queens. Elmhurst. So’s my ma. They met in high school. Aileen waited for him the whole time he was in the Pacific. Four fucking years.” Lyle paused, gazing out the window at a pair of pigeons roosting there on the ledge. “When I was going through my darkest periods I used to think if only he’d been blown out of the water I wouldn’t have been born. I used to be damned sorry he wasn’t.” His eyes flicked back to me. “He and ma ran that same dry cleaning store until they sold out two years ago. They sent me a letter about it, right here to the show. Not that I answered ’em. Forty-five fucking years they ran it. Lived in the same house the whole time. Can ya imagine that, Hoagy? Together behind that counter every single fucking day for forty-five years, stinking of dry cleaning fluid. Together in that same crummy little house every single night. Christ, what a miserable life. His dad was a garbageman, so maybe it seemed like a step up to him. Hers was a doorman at a hotel in midtown. He was a big, tall Irishman. I got my size and coloring from him. Aileen’s Irish through and through. I was their second kid.” The red phone on his desk rang. He ignored it. “First one died a few weeks after it was born. They didn’t have no more kids after they had me.” He let out a laugh. “I kind of spoiled ’em.” His phone rang again. It was past six—no one was answering it. He cursed, struggled to his feet, and got it. “Mr. Hudnut’s office … I’m sorry, Mr. Daniels, Mr. Hudnut’s in rehearsal right now… Yessir, I’ll have him call you just as soon as he’s free… Yessir, I’ll be sure to tell him… Good-bye, sir.” He hung up and sat in his desk chair. “God himself. He’s very anxious to hear how the show’s coming.”

  “Didn’t he recognize your voice?”

  “Nah, I got me one of these voice-changer phones,” he replied proudly, swiveling it around to show me. “Looks totally ordinary, but it ain’t. Can disguise your voice sixteen different ways at the push of a button. Make you sound like a secretary, a kid, whatever. Digital voice modification, they call it. Greatest invention in the world.” He opened a small refrigerator behind the desk, removed a half-empty bottle of mineral water, and took a swig from it. He watched the pigeons some more. “My earliest memory is biting the mailman when I was three. Sunk my teeth right into the dude’s leg. Drew blood. Poor fucker had to get stitches and a tetanus shot.” He cackled gleefully. “Damn, was I a little rockhead or what?” Now there was a knock on his door. “Christ, it never stops,” he complained. “Yeah?!”

  It was Chad. He had a tan leather knapsack slung over one shoulder and a penitent look on his ruggedly handsome face. “Just wanted to say good night, Lyle,” he said meekly.

  Lyle crossed his heavy arms. “G’night, Chad,” he said coldly.

  Chad lingered there in the doorway. “Look, I’m real upset about what happened before. And real sorry.”

  Lyle’s face broke into a wide grin. “Hey, don’t be, man,” he said easily. “Nothing bad happened. We both care. We’re both trying to find our way, and we will. I know it. Now you go on home. Have a glass of wine. Make love to your beautiful wife. We’ll tackle it in the morning, okay?”

  Chad lit up. He was an actor like any other—hungry for approval, especially from his director. “Okay! See you tomorrow!” The man practically flew out the door.

  Lyle nodded contentedly. “He just showed me a lot of class, doing that. I’m starting to like what I see. I think the Chadster’s gonna be okay. Yup, I have a mo’ better feeling about him now.” He strag
gled to his feet with a grunt and padded off to his bathroom. “Much mo’ better.”

  I sat there, wondering how long it would take me to get used to Lyle Hudnut’s mood changes. Maybe you never did. Maybe you just got used to being continually off balance. They say you can get used to anything—if you have to.

  “Where were we, pal?” he called out. He was taking a pee in there with the door open.

  “You just bit the mailman.”

  “Oh, right.” He cackled. “Like I said, I was a rockhead—right outta the gate.” There was the roar of a urinal being flushed. He returned. “Dunno why. Just came natural to me. I was baaaad,” he boasted. “Always fighting with the other neighborhood kids in the sandbox. If one of ’em wanted to play with my shovel, I’d fight him. If I wanted to play with his shovel, I’d fight him. I was constantly having to be dragged off of somebody, biting, scratching, kicking. None of their moms would let ’em near me after a while. Especially on account of I was so big for my age.” He flopped back down on the sofa. “They thought I was some kind of bully.”

  “And were you?”

  He considered this. “What I was … I was born to be a rebel, y’know? Born to be wild. Bad to the bone.”

  “Slow down, I think there’s a song in there somewhere.”

  “Just born too soon, that’s all. I mean, we’re talking fifties suburbia, here. The age of conformity. Me, I was a free spirit. Too hip for their games and their bullshit. Nursery school, kindergarten … forget about it. I wouldn’t go along. Any kind of authority made me crazy. I’d call the teacher names. I’d make ’em sorry. First two nursery schools called up Aileen after one day and said get this whacko little motherfucker out of here. Another time and place, they’d have let me be free to be made. Not then. Then they tried to make me toe the line.” His voice had a hard edge now. “Because I was different. And because different was bad. That’s sure how Herb and Aileen saw it. I freaked ’em out, totally. Bay Shore was a small town. They ran a local business, belonged to the Chamber of Commerce. They wanted to fit in. They didn’t want to be known as the people whose kid bit the mailman.” He took a gulp of water. “So they had my head examined,” he recalled fiercely. “When I was five.”