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Authors: John Warner
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can’t quite hear clearly. This is why I should not entirely trust myself on this front, but at this point, I’m too deeply invested.
So every time Bonnie double-faults or sprays a forehand return wide of the sideline, I believe I know why, I know that she feels it too. And we haven’t even slept together yet! Or rather, we’ve slept together very briefly—the best night of my (second) life—we just didn’t have sex. Imagine! As the camera bores in on her sitting on the sidelines between games, a towel over her head and a far-off look in her eyes where before there had been perfect focus, I’m not ashamed to say, my heart thrums. I am on life support and it is this that sustains me even it is just a few memories and a fantasy of an impossible future.
I have plenty of time alone in my apartment to contemplate these things. It is a nice cell, but still a cell. I leave the television on in the background as I wait for her next appearance and go to my big window, the first thing the real estate agent wanted to point out to me at the showing, even though at the time it mostly seemed like something I wanted to throw myself out of.
Now it, along with her, is my saving grace, a window to the world. I prefer the view at night when everything is reduced to shadows and lights, when the people can’t really be seen and the cityscape is dominated by the neon in the store windows, the white domes on the top of the taxis that stack up along the park that snap off one by one as they are claimed. The slow-moving flashers on the horse-drawn carriages as they amble down the path. Brake lights sparking in sequence as cars roll up to the intersections. I open some cold beans and eat directly from the can as I stand at the window. I never wanted this view, meaning it wasn’t a goal of mine, but all things considered, I’m glad to have had it, at least for a time. I have watched the scenes so often it’s like I know what is going to happen next, the pattern and progress, and sometimes it comes in my head that these people below are at my command. It is both beautiful and peaceful and when we were last together I told her that I couldn’t wait for her to see it.
8
T HE FUNNY MAN and his wife ride a limousine to the big show. He drums his hands on his knees and hammers a leg up and down, nervous. At the house, the funny man spent half an hour peering through the curtains, certain the limousine would not arrive, that the big show in the city was a figment, a hoax, but there it was, five minutes early, an inky, rolling ship docking in his driveway, amazing.
The limousine is nice, not new, and not particularly long, but clearly this is not the limo for hyped-up prom-goers, with scratched leather, knobs twisted off of the television, crumbs in the seat crevices, grime along door handles, and a pine-tree scent freshener jammed in the divider between passengers and driver masking the stench of overuse. He would have ridden in one of those substandard limos if he had gone to prom, which he did not because of his abject terror around girls, but that is so far in the past as to barely exist. Since he started performing the thing he has had to remember is to throw out cocktail napkins with phone numbers scrawled in lipstick before he gets home.
No, this is the limo for the fairly famous, for the somewhat known, for a celebrity, of sorts.
“I am a celebrity,” the funny man thinks. How many people would recognize him? Some, for sure. Many? Not many, but some. His name? No. Just that funny man, you know that guy with the thing . This show is officially “the next level” for the funny man. The moment he hits one level he is on to the next one, so thus far it has all been the same to him, but tonight the people in the audience will number in the thousands and they will be taping the performance for later premium cable broadcast.
The funny man looks at his wife. She looks good to him, very good. Her makeup is heavy around her eyes, but it
So every time Bonnie double-faults or sprays a forehand return wide of the sideline, I believe I know why, I know that she feels it too. And we haven’t even slept together yet! Or rather, we’ve slept together very briefly—the best night of my (second) life—we just didn’t have sex. Imagine! As the camera bores in on her sitting on the sidelines between games, a towel over her head and a far-off look in her eyes where before there had been perfect focus, I’m not ashamed to say, my heart thrums. I am on life support and it is this that sustains me even it is just a few memories and a fantasy of an impossible future.
I have plenty of time alone in my apartment to contemplate these things. It is a nice cell, but still a cell. I leave the television on in the background as I wait for her next appearance and go to my big window, the first thing the real estate agent wanted to point out to me at the showing, even though at the time it mostly seemed like something I wanted to throw myself out of.
Now it, along with her, is my saving grace, a window to the world. I prefer the view at night when everything is reduced to shadows and lights, when the people can’t really be seen and the cityscape is dominated by the neon in the store windows, the white domes on the top of the taxis that stack up along the park that snap off one by one as they are claimed. The slow-moving flashers on the horse-drawn carriages as they amble down the path. Brake lights sparking in sequence as cars roll up to the intersections. I open some cold beans and eat directly from the can as I stand at the window. I never wanted this view, meaning it wasn’t a goal of mine, but all things considered, I’m glad to have had it, at least for a time. I have watched the scenes so often it’s like I know what is going to happen next, the pattern and progress, and sometimes it comes in my head that these people below are at my command. It is both beautiful and peaceful and when we were last together I told her that I couldn’t wait for her to see it.
8
T HE FUNNY MAN and his wife ride a limousine to the big show. He drums his hands on his knees and hammers a leg up and down, nervous. At the house, the funny man spent half an hour peering through the curtains, certain the limousine would not arrive, that the big show in the city was a figment, a hoax, but there it was, five minutes early, an inky, rolling ship docking in his driveway, amazing.
The limousine is nice, not new, and not particularly long, but clearly this is not the limo for hyped-up prom-goers, with scratched leather, knobs twisted off of the television, crumbs in the seat crevices, grime along door handles, and a pine-tree scent freshener jammed in the divider between passengers and driver masking the stench of overuse. He would have ridden in one of those substandard limos if he had gone to prom, which he did not because of his abject terror around girls, but that is so far in the past as to barely exist. Since he started performing the thing he has had to remember is to throw out cocktail napkins with phone numbers scrawled in lipstick before he gets home.
No, this is the limo for the fairly famous, for the somewhat known, for a celebrity, of sorts.
“I am a celebrity,” the funny man thinks. How many people would recognize him? Some, for sure. Many? Not many, but some. His name? No. Just that funny man, you know that guy with the thing . This show is officially “the next level” for the funny man. The moment he hits one level he is on to the next one, so thus far it has all been the same to him, but tonight the people in the audience will number in the thousands and they will be taping the performance for later premium cable broadcast.
The funny man looks at his wife. She looks good to him, very good. Her makeup is heavy around her eyes, but it
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