“Oh!” she said, and she jumped like she had been shocked. “But I can’t possibly— You sit next to him; it’s only— My God, I couldn’t possibly!”
“All right,” I said, and I slid into the seat right next to Robert. A moment later, Rita remembered how to sit, too, and she sank bonelessly into the seat beside me.
I sat there and watched Rita fidget for several minutes; she would start to settle down and then glance at Robert and begin to blush and twitch again. I tried to ignore it, but her spasms of adoration shook my seat, too. I looked to my left, where Jackie and Deborah would be sitting. They weren’t back yet; probably still sipping beer and mingling with other celebrities in Renny’s dressing room. I hoped he would keep his shirt on.
My seat quivered and I glanced back at Rita. Her left leg was jumping up and down in a nervous and probably unconscious twitch. I wondered whether she would turn normal again when the show started. Renny would probably have to be very funny to take her mind off sitting so close to Robert the God. I hoped Renny was hilarious. But what had he said to Robert—that he didn’t do comedy; he did social commentary? Could that possibly be funny enough to stop Rita’s convulsions? Could someone with a Passenger really be funny at all? I mean, I am well known for a dry wit—but I couldn’t keep a full theater in stitches.
Still, a real TV network believed in Renny enough to give him this special. Of course, that same network had cast Robert in a starring role—but they had cast Jackie, too, so I guess that made it a fifty-fifty chance. And who knows? Anything could happen. Maybe he would even make me laugh. I didn’t think so, but stranger things have happened—many of them to me. After all, I was married, had children, and everyone thought I was wonderful.
There was a burst of gaudy music from the sound system; a cheerful-looking young man came out onstage and plucked the microphone from the stand. “Heeeeeyyyyy—Miami!” he called out in a happy foghorn voice, and for some reason the audience cheered enthusiastically.
He went on to tell us all that we were filming tonight, which I already knew, and he told us to turn off our cell phones, don’t take flash pictures, and remember to laugh a lot. He said one or two other things that I think were supposed to be funny, and then called out, “Oooo-kay! Enjoy the show!” And he stuck the microphone back on the stand and strode offstage to wild applause.
A moment later, the lights went down, the noise of the crowd trickled to a whisper, and the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen—Mr. Renny … Boudreaux!”
TWENTY-FOUR
RENNY LET THE APPLAUSE BUILD, AND BUILD, AND THEN BUILD a little more until the audience climbed to its feet and yelled and stomped and the old theater began to shake. Then he slouched out onto the stage three steps and stopped, staring at the audience with clear disapproval. The cheering got louder; Renny shook his head and walked to the microphone as the laughter grew and mixed with the cheers. He took the microphone from its holder, turned front, and just stared at the audience.
More laughter, more cheering; Renny just kept scowling. And at the exact moment when the crowd noise started to ebb, he called out, “What the fuck is wrong with you people?!” and we were off again into a riotous rollicking sea of glee.
Again, he timed it perfectly, and at just t
he right moment he said, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong—you’re stupid!” Oddly enough, this got a huge laugh, which seemed to make Renny mad, and he yelled, “I’m serious!” and the laughter got even louder, until Renny held up a hand and, when the noise died down a little, he said, “Sit the fuck down!”
I realized with a small shock that I was standing along with everyone else, and as I sat down, everyone else did, too. Renny waited for it to get very quiet, and then he began to speak. He mentioned the pilot we were shooting and introduced Robert and then Jackie, and as she stood to acknowledge the applause, I saw Deborah looking alertly around the room, bodyguard style. I remembered that I was supposed to be protecting Jackie, too, so I turned and pretended to search for any sign of trouble. There was none, of course. Jackie sat down safely, and Renny pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. He scowled at it and then looked up.
“I’m supposed to say thank you to the cops here in Miami.” He shook his head. “That make any sense to you? Me—saying thank you to cops? But Big Ticket said please, and they’re paying for this shit, so … Thank you, cops.” He glanced at the crumpled paper. “Hey, Captain Matthews, you out there?” The captain stood up with a modest and manly smile on his face, and waved at the crowd to polite applause. “Yeah, I just asked if you’re there, Captain,” Renny said. “I didn’t say, stand up and steal my fucking spotlight.” And he smiled for the first time. “Hey, that’s right—first time I can say fuck to a cop—and he’s a captain, too. Hey, Captain Matthews! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
Renny waited for the laughs to die down and then he began to talk about Miami: Miami traffic, Miami food, the variety of people here—and every so often when he got a big laugh for some outrageously cynical observation, he would pause, glare at the audience, and call out, “I’m serious!” Apparently this was his tagline, the words he was famous for, like Steve Martin’s “Excuse me!” and every time he said it, half the crowd chanted, “I’m serious!” along with him.
And he really was serious; he was just very funny about it. He talked about serious issues and made the crowd look at them in a new way, a way that was provocative and funny at the same time.
He tore into politics in a fashion that would have to be called carnivorous, and that led to public education. “You all cut the funding to public schools. Take away all the money for teaching your own damn kids—and then you complain because all the doctors are from India! You rather have an American doctor who went through your public schools, and now he’s so fucking stupid he thinks Moby-Dick is a social disease?
“And then you say hey! We can fix the schools—with a lottery! And all the money will go to public schools! And the lobbyists get ahold of it, and now some of the money goes to the schools. And then the politicians step in, and all of a sudden, a portion of the profits goes to the schools. And what you’ve done, now it’s not just about funding—you’ve turned your kids’ education into a lottery. And you know how that works, right? One outa ten million is a winner, everybody else is shit out of luck.
“I’m serious!
“And who gets most of the losing tickets, huh? Yeah, that’s right, it’s the black man. Same old shit. You all think oh, everything changed now, ’Cuz we elected a black president, but it’s still hard as hell to be a black man in America. Especially since I fucking hate basketball …!
“But it could be worse,” he went on. “I might be gay.” He peered out into the audience and said, “Show of hands—how many faggots we got here tonight?” Believe it or not, a few hands went up, but Renny shook his head. “Come on, man, I know there’s more of you—I can see your shoes.” He shook his head again and waited for the laugh to die. “Yeah, being gay today, that’s gotta suck.… I mean, the rest of y’all—Give ’em a break, all right? You think it’s icky, that’s fine—you don’t have to watch. But really—what the fuck do you care who somebody else fucks? And if they like fucking ’em so much they wanna marry ’em, what the fuck do you care?” He made a solemn face and said, in a glutinous voice, “ ‘Oh, but Renny, it’s in the Bible.’ ” Renny snorted and shook his head. “Shit, yeah, it’s in the Bible; I looked it up. Any of you motherfuckers done that …? I didn’t think so. Well, I did. Yeah, it’s in the Bible. It’s right there, next to where it says you can’t have a round haircut and you can’t eat shrimp. And I can see some round fucking haircuts out there. And how many of you faggot bashers eat shrimp? ’Cuz if you think God wants you to piss on gay people, you gotta give up that shrimp cocktail, too, sparky.… I’m serious!”
A couple of rows behind me a loud voice called out, “Faggot!” Renny looked right at the man and smiled. “Isn’t that nice? See what happens when you give a beer to a man with a tiny dick?”
The crowd laughed, but the heckler wasn’t done. He yelled out again, even louder, “You’re a faggot!”
And Renny smiled and said, “You really think I’m a faggot, why don’t you just suck my dick, and if I like it—damn, you were right. And if I don’t like it—at least you got some action tonight.”
The crowd gave Renny quite an ovation, and the heckler slumped back into his seat as Renny moved on. And I suppose it wasn’t really a remarkable exchange, no more than the kind of routine put-down that happens every night, every place a comic stands in front of a crowd. But for me, it was very memorable—not for the high quality of the sparkling wit, but for something very different.
Because as Renny’s eyes moved over me to focus just over my head at the heckler, I felt the hair go up on my neck, and deep inside Castle Dexter an alarm began to toll as my Passenger whipped up into High Alert and began to hiss warnings at me.
And as Renny focused on his heckler and crushed him, I saw the Thing behind his eyes, the Thing I thought I might have seen, and now there was no doubt, none at all. Above all the noise of the crowd I heard the sibilant roar of the huge Dark Thing that reared triumphantly from the deep shadows behind Renny’s smile. And I watched it uncoil and flare up into its great shadowy length, and reach its long and sharp claw at the heckler, and it was there for all the world to see, and although no one else did see it, I saw it and I knew.
A Passenger. No doubt about it.
I don’t know how or why, but I always know it when I see it. I always have. And there was no doubt now, none at all: Renny had a Dark Passenger, just like me.