The hour ended not with a bang or even a whimper. More like a thud.
Specifically, it ended with Gibby’s decision to replace the final joke he’d told at rehearsal with one about a guy whose golfing partner drops dead from a heart attack on the twelfth hole. You probably remember it. Back at the clubhouse, somebody asks him what happened after that. “Not much,” he replies. “From there on in, it was pretty much the same. Hit the ball, drag Charlie. Hit the ball, drag Charlie.” In itself, a good joke. Old but good. It would probably have prompted a wave of laughter at almost any time other than immediately following a discussion involving the death of the show’s previous host.
Oblivious to his lapse in sensitivity, Gibby was thrown off cue by the lack of audience response. Still, he gamely waved the show’s few lingering participants back onstage for a group goodbye. Then he performed what he hoped would become his under-the-credits signature, a standing backflip, ending with a semi-grotesque little-boy grin and a wiggling-fingers wave.
As soon as the camera’s red light went off, he rushed to the wings. I had him pegged as the kind of despotic twit who’d start blaming everyone in sight for the shambles he himself had made of his first show. Instead, he brushed past us and went directly to his dressing room without a word.
Marcus Oliphant turned to me with a surprised look on his pan-caked face. “Did you see that?”
I nodded.
What we had both seen was Gibby Lewis, not only looking like an unhappy baby but crying like one.
Twenty minutes later, he knocked once on my dressing room door, opened it, and came in. I was on the phone, talking with Detective Brueghel. I’d called to tell him about hearing a whirring sound just before the explosion, and he’d insisted we get together immediately. Since I had no more information, I was about to ask him why a face-to-face would be necessary. But Gibby picked that moment to barge in.
His eyes were red, his cherubic face blotchy. He was still wearing his on-camera suit, but he’d removed the tie and his shirt collar was unbuttoned. He flopped onto the only other chair in the small room and glared at me, nodding his head, tapping his foot, and showing just about every known sign of impatience.
I asked the detective where he wanted to meet, told him I’d get there as soon as I could, and clicked off the phone.
Gibby immediately lapsed into “Give it to me straight. Am I fucked?”
I stared at him, not quite sure what he was asking or how I was supposed to answer. I decided to wait him out.
“I know the show was a monu-fucking-mental disaster,” he said. “I mean, after tonight, forget Cop Rock. Forget the Iraq War even. Are they gonna can my ass, Billy?”
“What have you heard?” I asked.
“Max says it’s not his call, that the decision will come from the East Coast. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not New York’s rep out here? They’ve already got someone they rely on, a vice president with a nice, big office in the main building. Carmen Sandoval. You may have noticed how just the sound of her name causes Max to deflate.”
“Aw, shit. Carmen is not a fan,” he said gloomily. “Max had to do handsprings to get her to give me a shot. I really fucked the duck tonight. I just didn’t … I couldn’t get a fix on the studio audience. I couldn’t get into the zone.
“No! You know what it was? I lost faith. That’s it. I lost faith in the material and was trying to edit on the fly. That takes real cool and real smarts, and, let’s face it, I’m not a guy gets too intellectual, you know?”
Why couldn’t he have lived up to my expectations and been a blame-everybody-else weasel? Then I could have just given him the usual three-word suggestion of what he could do to himself and walked away. Instead, he was wallowing in self-pity and self-recrimination, which, while not exactly my favorite traits in an adult, tapped into one of my less protected pockets of sympathy.
“Gibby, at our lunch you mentioned Conan O’Brien. Like you, a comedy writer moving up to show host.”
“So?”
“Remember what his first shows were like?”
He brightened a little. “Yeah. You’re right. They were awful. Even as bad as ours, maybe.”
“And he kept improving.”
“Yeah. He improved so much, he wound up getting booted off The Tonight Show.”
“But now he’s thirty million dollars richer and he’s got a show on TBS,” I said. “People love CoCo.”
“You’re right, Billy,” he said. He lowered his head in a gesture of faux humility. “Do you think you could mention the bit about me being the new Conan to your contact at the network?”
I sighed. “I’ll add it to my morning report,” I said, hoping it would satisfy him and get him to leave.
“You’re a mensch, Billy,” he said. “And your segment with the alter cocker? The only part of the show that didn’t suck.”
“Thanks, Gibby.”
He stood and started for the door. Then he stopped and turned, looking as despondent as he had when he’d entered. “Shit, I was fucked from the git-go. If Carmen was expecting the show to be any good, she’d have had April go full-out on the publicity.”
“What makes you think April didn’t?”
“Did you see anybody shooting backstage promo footage for the website?”
“No.”
“She had a guy doing it for Des’s debut. I saw him. I realize Des had the big contract and I’m just trying to prove myself. But how much would it cost to have a publicity guy with a camera?”
“Ask April about it,” I suggested. “Maybe somebody was there and you didn’t notice.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said. “Ah, well, fuck it. It’s only a career.”
When he left, the atmosphere in the room brightened considerably. I felt so relieved to be rid of him that I did not give his story about the backstage photographer a moment’s thought.
My foolhardy lack of awareness didn’t end there.
I completely overlooked the black BMW sedan that had to have been waiting for me as I exited the lot.