HE WAS GOING TO HAVE TO DO SOMETHING about that refrigerator. The hulking Kenmore that came with the house suffered from a mechanical form of croup. It would cough and splutter through its various cycles for a few days and then get better, sometimes with Oliver’s help, most times not. Under the cyber-tutelage of Google, he had learned a few troubleshooting skills. Things like defrosting the freezer section, cleaning the condenser coils, oiling the compressor, and replacing faulty door gaskets—most of which were way easier than they sounded. It seemed now though that the coughing had turned chronic, tubercular, inoperable. Oliver would either have to replace it or learn to live without it. Or maybe there was another one buried under all the junk in the garage.
Obviously, his ailing refrigerator wasn’t his only problem. It wasn’t even the biggest. It was just the one that had elbowed its way to the front of his brain and gave him something to worry about as he stirred his soup. Others included the recent robbery at the Harrington, Sherman’s reaction to said robbery, and Oliver’s unintentionally accusing Mattie Holmgren of committing it.
But he did his best to ignore those things, focusing instead on things he could control—a warm meal, a hot shower, seven uninterrupted hours of sleep, and finding an open-mic night he could hit on his way to work. If he wanted to survive the Downers audition, he would need to hone his material. Although there were only a handful of actual comedy clubs in Nashville, it seemed open-mic nights had sprouted up all over town in restaurants, bars, hotels, and coffee shops.
Oliver turned the burner off and brought the entire pot to the table. He placed it on a potholder on the table next to a half-sleeve of crackers and a chilly jug of apple juice. He paged through his spiral notebook until he found the folded printout of the audition email and flattened it out on the table. The message began with an entire line of capital S’s and H’s and exclamation points, imploring its readers to keep quiet about what followed, basically this: that on Saturday, June 19, 2010, the owners of Jesters Comedy Club would be holding tryouts for an upcoming benefit concert for the legendary Roscoe Downs. The auditions were by invitation only and slots would be limited, since the promoter expected “numerous national acts” to commit in the coming weeks. The email ended with a telephone number and instructions for the invitees to call for an audition time.
Oliver wanted this gig more than was probably healthy. And he had exactly ten weeks to prepare for it, or more accurately, to obsess over it.
The simple truth was that while most comics dreamed of landing a spot on The Tonight Show, Oliver’s overriding ambition was to finally finish one decent set of stand-up comedy at Downers. He could worry about Leno and Letterman later.
After crumbling a fistful of Saltines into the thick tomato broth, Oliver ferried a spoonful to his mouth and burnt the tip of his tongue. He tipped the bottle of apple juice back to cool his tongue and noticed movement on the other side of the opaque pane in his front door. A second later he heard a knock. Two seconds after that the door swung open.
“Knock-knock. Anybody home?”
Joey reminded Oliver of a furry snowman—a round head perched atop an equally round middle, long reddish nose, and dark eyes that did indeed appear buttonlike behind thick eyeglasses. Only his stubby legs threatened the illusion, but not much. His body seemed to compensate for the lack of hair on his head by sprouting billowy tufts of prematurely gray hair from his ears, nose, forearms, and neck. He waddled to where Oliver was sitting and thrust out a beefy paw.
He greeted everyone this way, no matter how many times they’d actually met. Which, in Oliver’s case, was about twice a week. Joey was his mother’s handyman. She’d apparently hired him after she moved into this house. Joey took care of leaky faucets, cleared out gutters, mowed the lawn, sprayed for bugs, and did a variety of other chores. Whenever Oliver attempted to butt in and fix things, Joey got his feelings hurt.
Not that hurting Joey’s feelings was hard to do. He was a little boy in a big man’s body, mentally challenged and physically imposing. So Joey fixed things and Oliver paid him out of his mother’s checkbook. There would likely come a day when the account ran dry and Oliver would have to turn Joey away. But he would worry about that when the time came.
“You got any jobs for me?” Joey said, smoothing his T-shirt over his belly.
“Not at the moment.” This felt like a lie. The refrigerator obviously needed attention. But Oliver craved privacy right now more than cold food.
“Looks like you do got a message though.”
Oliver followed Joey’s gaze to the indicator on his mother’s old-fashioned answering machine that was winking at him. He had a love/hate relationship with the clunky device. He loved that his mother’s voice was captured on the tiny cassette tape, accessible at the push of a button. He hated everything else about it though, a conditioned response to its potential for bad news. So he kept it out of sight, tucked between the toaster oven and breadbox.
“Thanks,” Oliver said.
“Aren’t you gonna thisten to lem?”
“I’ll get to it eventually.”
“I won’t mind if you do.”
Joey wasn’t that hard to follow if you had the patience to actually listen. It was mostly a matter of juxtaposing consonants and confusing his verbs. But Oliver wasn’t feeling particularly patient this morning. And he didn’t want to hurt Joey’s feelings. The big man stared blankly at the floor and finally said, “I sure miss your mom, Oliver.”
“She’s kinda dead in the head though.” Joey’s grin was wet and rubbery. “I know all about dead in the head.”
“You should go see her,” Oliver said.
Joey looked horrified. He began rocking in place and finally said, “Mind if I root around in the garage?”
“Help yourself, Joey.”
For some reason Joey loved to forage through the piles of junk in the garage. According to Oliver’s mother, most of the stuff was there when she moved in and she just never got around to moving it out. To Joey’s muddled brain, the garage was a sanctuary. He seemed to revere rummaging through things, sorting them into piles, then coming back and resorting them again. More than once Oliver suspected that Joey was pilfering stuff. But he couldn’t make himself care that much. He’d sifted through it all himself in search of clues about the house and how his mother came to live there, apparently rent-free. But there was nothing personal—no old phone bills or receipts or photo albums. The only things of any real value or interest to Oliver were his mother’s boxes of vintage clothing, a few old-fashioned mannequins, and a trunk full of camping gear (although he knew he’d never use it). Regardless, there were much worse hobbies Joey could indulge in than some harmless petty thieving. Maybe it was therapeutic. Either way, it got him out of the house.
“Guess I’ll run along then,” Joey said. On his way to the garage he turned and said, “You really ought to unpack and stay a while.”
This was Joey’s favorite joke in the world. And although Oliver understood its intrinsic humorous value—the truth is funny, after all—he was not amused.
• • •
The first message was from Simon Childress, the emcee and organizer of Rank Amateurs, a weekly open-mic night held at various Holiday Inns. Apparently, he had “come down with the flu,” which was Simon’s standing excuse for bailing out on his responsibilities. This meant he was either nursing a nasty hangover or that his overbearing flight attendant girlfriend was in town, demanding they do something “special.” Apparently every minute they spent together had to be special. Simon worked up a killer routine about their ability to turn codependency into an art form. But he was too chicken to perform it onstage.
The good news for Oliver was that he could host tonight, which entitled him to at least thirty minutes of stage time, albeit in small increments. Even better, a guaranteed spot meant he wouldn’t have to endure the first-come-first-served sign-up sheets with the rest of the wannabes. It didn’t hurt that he’d be sandwiched between several hacks and first-timers, always a nice boost for any middling comedian’s esteem. The best news of all was that this would afford him an extra hour of sleep.
He jotted a reminder to call Simon onto a blank page of his notebook and jammed an entire cracker into his mouth. Oliver always ate his crackers whole to prevent Saltine shrapnel.
The second message began with a one-and-a-half-second delay of bustling office chatter, followed closely by the cheery stench of a telemarketer. He aimed his finger at the delete button and was just about to press it when a female voice said, “Hey, Oliver … or at least I hope this is Oliver. Anyway, not sure if you got the message I left you at the hotel the other night, but my name is Lindsey Whittaker, a reporter with City Rhythm … if you call me back I’ll buy lunch …”
Instead of deleting the message, he turned the volume up. It seemed Lindsey wanted to talk to him about a story she was working on. He transcribed her number down next to Simon’s, then listened to the entire message again to make sure he got the number right, then a third time just because he liked the way she said his name.
If a reporter from City Rhythm was calling, then she was obviously doing a follow-up article on the local stand-up comics. There’d been quite a bit of grousing among the real locals that the original cover story focused on a trio of comedians that had either moved on from Nashville to New York or LA, or had never really put down any roots in Nashville in the first place. The subtext was that any comic with any amount of talent had the good sense to move on to greener comedic pastures. It made the locals seem like unmotivated hacks by comparison. If the paper wanted to make good on their original story, Oliver would be all too happy to oblige. With the Downers audition looming, the publicity couldn’t hurt.
He could feel the dopey grin on his face but seemed unable to stop it. Hearing his name was one thing, but seeing it in print had to be better.
But the first syllable of the third message flatlined his grin. Every syllable after that chipped away at his earlier aspirations of seven uninterrupted hours of blissful slumber.
It was Mr. Sherman, the general manager of the historic Harrington Hotel and signer of Oliver’s paychecks.
“Good morning, Oliver. I hope I didn’t wake you. I just needed to make you aware of an emergency staff meeting at four o’clock this afternoon. It’s obviously mandatory. And your punctuality is appreciated.”
The word “emergency” didn’t sound good. Nor did the sound of Sherman’s voice. Apparently he was back in town and ready to sniff out details about the robbery of Room 218.
Oliver ignored all things Harrington, dialed Lindsey’s number, and left her a message.
Next he called the number listed on the Downers email. A squeaky-voiced man answered, “Harry McNabb’s office.”
“Yeah, I’m calling about the Downers audition. It says on the notice to call for an appoint—”
“Name?”
“Oliver,” he said, a little too proudly. “Oliver Miles.”
He listened to the sound of heavy breathing until he realized it was his own. Oliver was already nervous. And this was just the phone call to set up the audition for the gig that he may or may not even get. He covered the mouthpiece and took a long, calming breath, and waited.
“Sorry, no Miles.”
“Excuse me?”
“No Oliver Miles on the list. No Miles Oliver either.”
“Could you check it again?”
“But there must be some kind of mistake,” Oliver said.
“Apparently.”
“But I have the email. It says ‘by invitation only.’ And it clearly has my name on it.”
“Maybe that was the mistake.”
Oliver resisted several urges at once, then finally said, “Could I speak to Mr. McNabb then?”
“Nope,” the man said. “But you can speak to his voice mail.”
Oliver’s heavy breathing returned as he listened to the outgoing message on Harry’s voice mail. By the time the machine beeped, Oliver’s voice was as squeaky as Harry’s unhelpful assistant. He stumbled and stuttered and whined and eventually left his own phone number. Then he vowed not to think about it until he heard back from Harry.
Instead, he consulted the digital clock on the stove. A four o’clock meeting would split his sleeping time in half. This meant he would have to scarf his soup and try to force himself to sleep in a hurry. Since he wasn’t that sleepy yet, he would lie there and obsess over not falling asleep fast enough, which would make him more anxious and even less sleepy. After much pillow fluffing and body repositioning, his brain would finally give in to slumber, but only until the UPS truck roared by his window or one of the neighborhood dogs decided to chat up a squirrel. Still clinging to those last tendrils of grogginess, Oliver would then will his body and brain to not wake all the way up. And it would almost work. But inevitably, one eyelid would betray him with a glance at the alarm clock.
He was tempted to raid his mother’s medicine cabinet for sleeping pills. But his body had virtually no tolerance for barbiturates of any kind. The last time he chugged a legitimate dose of Nyquil, he woke up thirty-six hours later in the emergency room.
On the way to the shower he stopped in his mother’s room. Little had changed since the fateful day the ambulance carted her to the ER. No one ever mentioned overdose. And Oliver was convinced she hadn’t done it on purpose. But the combination of his mother’s weakened physical state, her declining mental faculties, and the fact that she’d chased a handful of sleeping pills with several snifters of gin convinced her team of doctors that she would need constant care. Back when he still believed his mother would get better and come home, Oliver splurged on a new queen-size mattress. It was his way of helping her get a clean start. Now it just sat there, shrouded in its plastic wrapper, looking as ridiculous as Oliver felt about buying it.
As he moved from room to room he couldn’t help noticing the house had lost his mother’s scent, but not her personality. Every time they moved, she would throw herself into the task of appliquéing her personality on every wall of every room of whatever they were renting at the time. She ate more, drank very little, and fantasized about being featured on one of those home improvement shows where the voiceover would praise her originality and style as “playfully chic.” Then she would inevitably mime filming Oliver’s room, pitching her voice lower and saying, “The décor here is a bit more stoic, angular and minimalist. Kind of a serial killer meets boy-next-door motif—a very boring boy, I might add.” And it was true; he gave up ever trying to hang a poster or pennant or personalize his room in any way. Because every time he got settled in his new room, they moved again. At some point he stopped unpacking his clothes.
Oliver emptied his duffel bag directly into the washer and punched all the right buttons. Back in his old room he dropped his keys, watch, and wallet on the laminated surface of his empty dresser, wincing again at the chunky hollow sound. Then he rummaged through an open suitcase at the foot of his bed for clean underwear and socks. He shaved, showered, brushed, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. In the living room, he put a James Taylor record on his mother’s turntable and tried to sleep.
It wasn’t working.
Oliver gave up hope long ago that his body would ever get used to working third shift. Naps helped, but God’s best recipe for human existence included waking with the sun and sleeping with the moon.
He must have nodded off a few times. Because he startled himself awake more times than he could count, then had to repeat the entire process. His last waking thought was, This isn’t working. Might as well get up and work on some new material.
Oliver might have dreamed of missing his staff meeting, of performing stand-up on TV in his underwear, or of getting chased by a gorilla trying to force-feed him yogurt. He couldn’t be sure.
Because by the time he woke up, he was already late for the staff meeting.