OLIVER COULDN’T FIND His NOTEBOOK anywhere. He’d turned his house upside down, searched his car three times, and had called the hotel twice. But the front-desk manager assured him that it still wasn’t in the lost-and-found box. His search had turned ridiculous, as he was now double-checking places like the refrigerator and bathtub. Oliver was searching the pantry when the phone rang. After exchanging a few pleasantries he said, “Have you seen my spiral notebook, Simon?”
“Yep.”
“Lately?”
“Nope. So anyway, I hear you’re on the docket tonight?”
“The insurance convention?”
“That’s the one,” Simon said. “And you’re very welcome.”
“Um, thanks?”
“Whimbush had to back out. Then I ran into your so-called manager at Jesters one night and I put in the good word for you about this gig.”
This only confirmed what Oliver suspected. Barry hadn’t ferreted this gig out on his own. Someone had canceled and the promoter was forced to go to the bench, to find a second-stringer and put him in the lineup.
“Thanks for thinking of me.”
“Think you could express your gratitude in the form of a ride?”
“Your place is not exactly on the way.”
“It is now. I’m staying at my uncle’s for a while.”
Fifteen minutes later, Simon piled into Oliver’s Integra and snapped his seatbelt into place.
Oliver said, “So what happened to your car?”
“Donna kept it.”
“Donna the stewardess girlfriend?”
“Donna the ex.”
“What happened?”
“She found out about your little assistant friend.”
“Wendy?” Simon nodded with a big stupid grin. “So why can’t she give you a ride?”
“She found out about Donna.”
As soon as Oliver saw the room he considered bailing out. The stage was no mere afterthought, nothing like the six-inch platforms wedged into corners between tables at his local comedy haunts. This was a massive structure, three feet off the ground, painted black and replete with monitors and a rack of blinding gel lights. And there wasn’t a blue collar in sight. No beer mugs or rude waitresses or comedy groupies. It was a roomful of suits and ties and champagne flutes.
Simon elbowed him in the ribs. “Pretty cool, eh?”
“If you say so.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot about your stage fright.”
Oliver had long since conquered his fear of speaking in public. But he did still harbor a handful of more specific fears, one of which was lofty, wide-open stages in well-lit rooms. But he didn’t have time to obsess over it because the mustached master of ceremonies was approaching.”Childress, right?”
Simon nodded and accepted a stack of paperwork.
“And you must be Miles?”
“That’s me.”
“Thanks for helping us out on such short notice. Trust me. You’re going to have a ball.”
“What’s this?” Oliver said, scanning the handful of pages.
“Just a few formalities. The first is a waiver in case one of those lighting trusses falls and caves your head in. Then there’s a tax form in there somewhere, and a check. And that last bit there is the list of topics.”
The emcee laughed, obviously pleased that the promoter had sent him such a funny, funny man. He gave Oliver a hearty pat on the back and was off to shake other hands.
“Yeah,” Simon said. “I was really surprised you agreed to do this. Don’t you hate improv?”
That’s when the list finally registered in Oliver’s sleepy brain. Instead of taking the gigantic stage and blowing through his best ten-minute set, he was about to share the spotlight with several of Nashville’s finest stand-ups and invent brand new material on the fly. The only thing he hated more than giant stages in well-lit rooms was forced improvisation. He’d seen Roscoe force comics to abandon their well-honed material many times, insisting they do a set of nothing but “crowd work.” Witnessing this had filled Oliver with awe and dread, but mostly dread.
He was still scanning the room for emergency exits when the comics were called to the stage. Simon gripped his arm and dragged him against his will.
“You’ll be fine,” Simon said. “Like my uncle used to tell me when he was learning to fly planes, ‘If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger.’”
“Didn’t your uncle die in a plane crash?”
“See? That was funny. And you just made it up on the spot.”
“Seriously, Simon. Isn’t that how your uncle died?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t make it any less funny.”
Five stools stood in a line across the platform, one for each of the assembled comics. Each had his own microphone as well. Oliver angled for a stool on the edge but ended up in the middle of the stage. The emcee stroked his curly mustache as he thanked everyone for coming and promised a festive night of hilarity. He explained the format for the night’s proceedings. The comics would each do a short set of stand-up material. After which they’d engage in a freeform set of improv, based on topics supplied by the organizers. Oliver couldn’t help thinking it was going to be a sloppy version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
But he did breathe a small sigh of relief. He could do five minutes in his sleep. And since most every comedian he’d ever met was an attention hog, he could simply fade into the background when the comics started riffing on each other’s material. This would no doubt turn into an exercise of one-upmanship. He’d seen this before at Jesters and knew it could get brutal.
Oliver sat through three good sets before his name was called. After a rather bumpy start where he muffed a punch line, things went better than he expected. He calmed down and settled into his material. He didn’t kill, nor was he killed. On balance, he got as many laughs as the other comics. When the last comedian finished his short set, the emcee made his way back up to the stage, sporting an inebriated glow. Oliver had seen this before too, where a closet stand-up drinks some courage and tries to go toe to toe with real comedians. He found himself simultaneously hoping the guy would stay out of the fray, but mostly wanting to witness the comedic roadkill.
Once the first topic was thrown out, the assembled talent wasted no time bucking for attention. Oliver had guessed right. He settled onto his stool and tried to become invisible, which actually worked for nearly thirty minutes. But eventually the emcee turned to Oliver and said, “So what about you, Mr. Miles? We haven’t heard from you yet.”
Oliver waved good-naturedly, as if to say, “Go on without me.” But the emcee flipped to his next topic and said simply, “Everything I ever learned about picking up chicks …”
The crowd laughed. The other comics looked at imaginary spots on the ceiling as they searched their internal vaults for some trusted material to recycle. Everyone else in the room stared at Oliver, waiting. That’s when he noticed the giant TV camera in the back of the room, its illuminated “record” light mocking him. The only thing he hated more than improv was performing on camera.
Oliver stood, raised the microphone, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. This made the crowd titter. Then he opened his mouth a second time, but his tongue had turned to parchment paper. Instead of actually speaking, he lowered the mic again. A few people laughed, which made a few more people laugh. Oliver could imagine his expression—shell-shocked and forlorn—but couldn’t seem to send the right combination of signals from his brain to his face. A smattering of applause broke out near the back. Clearly, they thought this was an act, that he was feigning indecision or inexperience or some crisis of confidence about his ability to pick up girls. The truth, however, was that he was feigning nothing at all. He was genuinely terrified. Mentally, he kept hitting rewind, pause, then play, searching for any scrap of real-life experience he could quickly parlay into some semblance of a joke.
But the more he fidgeted, the harder they laughed.
By the time he shrugged and sat down again, he was enjoying the biggest laughs of the evening—by far. When he hung his head, thoroughly humiliated by his thorough lack of creativity, the laughter swelled.
At some point he looked up, only to see a tableful of folks down front, on their feet and applauding. As Oliver’s head dipped again he risked a quick glance at his fellow comedians. Two rolled their eyes in disgust, one shook his head in silent admiration, and Simon gave him two thumbs up.
• • •
Later, while sharing a pot of coffee with Mattie, recounting the more embarrassing parts of the gig, Mattie laughed harder than the roomful of inebriated insurance agents had.
Sherman wasn’t laughing at all when he intercepted Oliver in the parking garage. His face looked grim, his eyes imploring, moving like two small searchlights. But there seemed to be a smile tempting the corners of his mouth.
“Good morning, Oliver.” But it didn’t sound good.
Before Oliver could reciprocate, Sherman removed a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to Oliver. It was a photocopy of the hotel’s phone bill.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Miles. But I do believe that is a Virginia area code?” Sherman pointed to a specific entry on the printout of the phone bill. “As you may recall, our last night auditor was relieved of her duties for—among other things—abusing the hotel’s telephone policy.”
Oliver nodded. Gretchen’s fiancé was a traveling computer salesman. And she used to indulge her paranoid streak by calling him wherever he was staying to make sure he was in his room—alone—and not out carousing.
“So, Mr. Miles. You’re obviously hiding something. I just can’t decide if it’s to protect yourself or someone else.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
He nodded as if he understood. “Funny, that’s exactly what Mattie said. Don’t you find that funny, Oliver?”
“No, sir, not really. And if you’ll pardon me for asking, why did you hire her if you don’t trust her?”
“I didn’t hire her,” Sherman said. “Monty did.”
“Your brother?”
“Seems that he’s an old college friend of Mattie’s father. So I agreed to bring her on board as a favor. But I don’t have to—” Sherman paused. He seemed to be considering his words carefully. “She has a past, Oliver.”
“We all have pasts, sir.”
“True, but they don’t all include class-2 misdemeanors for breaking and entering.”
Sherman seemed to enjoy Oliver’s shocked expression. But it passed quickly and he seemed to regret having said it.
“That is obviously confidential information,” Sherman added. “And I assume you’ll keep it that way?”
Mattie’s criminal past was still sinking in when Sherman said, “You know, it’s a shame that no one wants to take credit for making the call. Occasionally, the ends really do indeed justify the means. So let me just say, in the most nonspecific way I know how … thank you for your loyal service to the hotel.”
Sherman waited until he had Oliver’s full attention, then winked.
As he walked back to his car, Oliver couldn’t help imagining his boss getting up early and rehearsing his winks.