Guy Novel by Michael Ryan

Author:Michael Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781579624750
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Published: 2016-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

13.

When I got home I called Advantage Private Investigators, Sheed’s subcontractor that prepared the report on Angela. The secretary said that number one, they didn’t have any more information to give me, and number two, if they did they would be giving it to Mr. Sheed since they were working for him not me.

Then I locked my doors and dropped the blinds and spent the evening with Sparky and a fresh box of veggie burritos (which still tasted like mittens but not frozen mittens). I tried to sketch out a routine for the Irvine Improv that would be neither deranged nor false. I only knew one way to perform: to speak the twisted truth about my life. But I also knew a lot of jokes. And why not give myself a breather (a la Mr. Hanh)? A drop-dead performance wasn’t required every time, and I wasn’t exactly being carried off the stage on the audience’s shoulders anyway. I started writing down all the jokes I knew. They were all about sex, of course. Black comics talk about being black, women comics talk about being women, and white male comics talk about sex. But there was something behind the pattern the jokes made, something I might be able to talk about: it was surely as much about me as about the culture, since these were the jokes I loved, but, with luck, it was about the culture, too, and about other people, about something more than myself. I wouldn’t find out what it was until the moment it shaped itself on stage. If it turned out to be nothing, I’d end up standing there with my pants down and my dick in my hand. But maybe that was what I needed to quit this business and begin doing something useful: an old-fashioned public humiliation.

Don called at ten. He had read the file. He didn’t express much more sympathy for what he called my “infatuation” with Angela than he had at lunch, although he admitted that there must be something substantial in her to endure if in fact she had gone through both parents’ suicides and now was risking her life to rescue her troubled brother. I didn’t expect more from him than that. I didn’t expect him to see what I saw in Angela. I really couldn’t see what he saw in Francine. I never met a friend’s wife I would marry. But then I never met anybody I would marry, including, as it turned out, Doris. According to Don, Angela was just me in the mirror, in love with my own fantasy—if in fact Angela was even her real name.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The brother business,” he answered.

“What? The kidnapping? What?”

“I’m not sure. The whole story about the ransom seems fabricated. I think Francine knew somebody named Angela Chase from somewhere, maybe from UCLA or some women’s group or something. If I can figure out how to ask her about Angela without arousing her suspicion that I was asking for you, I’ll do it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.