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“I don’t think it’s funny,” Robert said. “Because, you know. This show is very … I’ve put a lot of my eggs into this …” He frowned and shook his head, and then looked at Renny with very faint hope on his face. “I mean—what do you mean?”
“I mean,” Renny said, “way back when, I was supposed to do the special in Vegas.” He showed his teeth again. “But then I land this part? And so Mr. Eissen says, ‘Let’s shoot it in Miami and use it to promo the show.’ ” He raised one eyebrow at Robert. “Could mean my part gets a little bigger. I know you like big parts, Bo.”
“Robert,” Robert said.
Renny ignored him. “So—we tape it here, this Saturday night, with the whole cast in the house. I say I’m here in Miami to tape the show. Make a joke about all the bodies we got to work with here. Camera cuts to Jackie Forrest laughing her sweet white ass off at … moi.” He raised both hands, palms up. “Everybody gets a plug. Everybody happy.”
“Why Jackie?” Robert said. I was glad to see he had already moved on to his next neurotic worry. “Why does she get on camera? I mean, I can laugh harder than she can any day.”
Renny looked at Robert, shook his head, and then turned to me. “Glad you’re here, Dexter,” he said. “Robert’s just too easy.”
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I said, “but what does all this mean in English?” And because he was staring at me exactly the way he had looked at Robert, I added, “Or in Spanish, if you’d rather.”
Renny folded his hands and looked down at them in mock prayer. At least, I assumed it was mock. “Lord,” he called out, “deliver me from the dummies. Please, Lord—help me out here.” He looked at me and said, as if to a child, “A special, Dexter. A one-hour comedy special. Starring me, because that’s what I do. Comedy. Because I am a comedian, and that is somebody who does comedy. And the network is shooting my special here, this Saturday night, and using it to promote Bobby’s show, okay?”
“So wait, so what,” Robert said, sounding jittery but a little hopeful. “So they use your special to promo the show—”
“Thank you, Jesus,” Renny said devoutly.
“So the show isn’t canceled?”
“We are on, brothers and sisters, and Renny Boudreaux is even more on ’cuz he is on first and he is gonna make you laugh until you hurt—’cuz my shit has been cooking awhile and I am going to kill.”
And as he said “kill” he looked at me—and there it was again, that sudden flutter of dark flame—and then Robert interrupted, and it was gone, and once more I was left wondering whether I had seen anything at all.
“Yeah, but …” Robert said. He frowned, and then said, “Oh, well, hey, I guess—I mean, that’s great, you know. I mean, as long as they’re not— Hey, one hand washes the other anyhow, right?”
“Riiiiight,” Renny said. He looked at me.
Since I was new to showbiz, I wasn’t sure what was expected of me here, so I just said, “Congratulations,” and that seemed to go down all right. Renny nodded at me, frowned, and then looked back at Robert.
“Oh,” Renny said. “Almost forgot. Wardrobe wants to see you. They’re at the hotel, suite twenty-four seventeen.”
“Wardrobe,” Robert said, sounding slightly alarmed again for some reason of his own.
Renny looked at him with pity on his face. “Yeah, you know, wardrobe. There’s that mean woman and her two gay friends, and they dress you up for this shit,” he said. “You remember wardrobe, don’t you, Robert?”
Robert looked at him for half a second and then gave his peculiar artificial laugh again. “Ha! Ha! Yeah, okay, well, then, I’m outta here.” He turned and aired out a few bright teeth in my direction. “See ya later, Dexter,” he said. He made a clicking sound, accompanied by that annoying my-finger-is-a-pistol-and-you-are-dead gesture again, and he sauntered away.
Renny watched him go and then shook his head and said, “Can’t decide if that man is dumb as shit or just really weird.” And then he turned and frowned at me. “You’re easy. You just weird.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“But that’s okay; I can use weird,” he said. And then he smiled again, and the kind of smile it seemed to be sent a tiny shiver of alarm through the coiled tentacles of the dozing Passenger. “You like to come see my show, Dexter?”
I admit he had taken me by surprise; I had no ready response other than a blink and a very feeble-sounding, “Oh. Well, I mean, it’s this Saturday?”
“Good, you been listening. I knew you weren’t a dummy,” he said.
In truth, I did not want to see his show, not this Saturday nor any other. But, of course, if Jackie was going to be there, I would have to go along,
too. So I nodded and said, “Well, um, sure, that would be very nice.”
“Oh, it won’t be nice,” he said. “But I just might get you to laugh some. And your wife. You got a wife, right, Dexter? ’Cuz I know you want everybody to think you’re normal and shit.”
Once again I felt an uncomfortable shifting of coils deep inside; Renny’s dig at me was much too close to home to be entirely innocent, but it was still nothing definite enough for me to be sure. My only real choice was to keep playing Weird Normal—for now.
“Ah, yes, I do,” I said. “I do have a wife.”
