Free Untouchable by Scott O'Connor Page B

laugh his ridiculous horse laugh, snorting and rocking like this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, egging on the audience, finally taking a minute to pull himself together before moving forward with the next question.
    When there was a particularly important or interesting guest, The Kid taped the show with a small cassette recorder Bob had given him for Christmas one year, using the microphone to interview his guests and deliver the opening monologue. When the tapes were full, Lucy marked them with the guests’ names and the dates of their original broadcast, and The Kid kept them in a shoebox up in his room. This allowed him to air occasional reruns, play a tape instead of a live show on nights when he didn’t feel like interviewing a new guest or when he wanted to revisit an especially successful episode. Lucy made requests sometimes, asked The Kid to replay a show with a guest she liked, a funny monologue she remembered. The Kid opened each pre-recorded show with a brief announcement to the audience, slightly apologetic for not having a live show to offer.
    It’s That Kid! had been the highlight of their night. Lucy would grade papers on the end of the couch, glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose, sipping a glass of wine, smiling at The Kid’s bad jokes, his ridiculous impressions. Darby would sit in the chair in front of the TV, looking at that morning’s paper, drinking his coffee, watching his wife, watching his son, their day ending, his just about to begin.
    The show had changed in the last year. Now The Kid wrote the questions in his notebook, listened as the guests answered from the empty chair in a voice only he could hear. Darby had to sit beside The Kid on the couch and read the notebook to follow the half of the show that was available. The Kid no longer performed the monologue at the beginning, or made the flattering introductions. It was too much to write. The shows were no longer recorded, of course. The tape recorder and cassettes had been packed away in the garage.
    The Kid’s guest that night was an artist of some kind, a painter. From what Darby could gather from the notebook, the artist painted murals under bridges. The Kid was asking him if he was worried that his murals were going to disappear under all the graffiti that was happening. If he was worried that one day he would walk under a bridge and find that his work was gone.
    When the show was finished, The Kid thanked the painter, walked him off stage, giving a last wave to the audience. Darby followed upstairs. The Kid got into bed, switched off his light, set his notebook and pencil on the bedside table. Darby leaned down and kissed The Kid’s high forehead, whispered what Lucy had always whispered when she tucked The Kid into bed.
    “Congratulations on a good show, Kid.”
    It didn’t sound the same coming from Darby. He knew it, was sure The Kid knew it. But he said it anyway, every night. Congratulations on a good show, Kid.
    He sat back down in the living room, flipped channels on the TV. It didn’t take long to find him, selling a steam-cleaning mop on one of the higher-numbered stations. Sometimes it was the mop, sometimes it was the car-finish repair kit. Sometimes it was the weight-loss program, two books and a series of videotapes. Earl Patrick, Lucy’s father, gone for almost a year and a half but still haunting the outer reaches of late-night TV.
    Darby kept the sound off, watched Earl’s demonstration of the mop on a tiled kitchen floor. Lucy had looked more like her mother than her father, but she had his physicality, the strong, deliberate presence in rooms. Earl pushing a mop across a TV studio set; Lucy walking up and down the rows of desks in her classroom. Darby pictured her there clearly: insistent, determined, the students listening with varying degrees of interest, restlessness, teenage boredom. It is a day toward the beginning of November, a little less than a year ago. They are nearing the end of