Free Jaine Austen 2 - Last Writes by Laura Levine Page B

out.
    Out on stage, the warm-up guy was scraping the bottom of the comedy barrel and doing knock-knock jokes.
    “Knock knock. Who’s there? Aardvark. Aardvark who? Aardvark a million miles for one of your smiles!”
    The audience groaned.
    “Oh, God,” I said. “They’re in such a bad mood. If this keeps up, I’ll be lucky if they don’t lynch me.”
    “Don’t worry, my dear,” Wells said. “I’ll entertain them.”
    And before I could stop him, he went bounding out onto the stage.
    I watched in the wings as he walked up to the warm-up guy and whispered something in his ear.
    “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” the comic said, “as a special treat, allow me to present Mr. Wells Dumont doing Hamlet’s soliloquy from the blockbuster hit, Hamlet! ”
    The audience gave a tepid round of applause as Wells tried his best to look like a twenty-something Danish prince.
    “To be or not to be…” he began.
    What on earth did he think he was doing? These people came to see a comedy. Not a guy contemplating suicide. Even knock-knock jokes were better than Hamlet’s bitching and moaning.
    As Wells rambled on, the natives grew more and more restless. People were openly yawning; I saw a guy in the third row nodding off. Clearly, I could kiss my show biz career good-bye. Woody Allen sitting on Neil Simon’s lap couldn’t get laughs from this crowd.
    It was all too painful to watch, so I made my way out a side door into the cool night air. I sat down on the steps of the soundstage, looking up at what would have been the stars if the smog hadn’t been so thick. I could barely make out the Miracle roller coaster in the distance.
    But one thing I could see was Dale, a few feet away, talking on his cell phone. At first I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but then suddenly he started shouting.
    “If you won’t do something about it, I will!” He punched the air with his fist to emphasize his point. “That’s right, Bernie. I’ll handle it myself.”
    With that, he snapped his phone shut and stormed past me back into the soundstage. No hello. No hint of recognition. As if he hadn’t even seen me.
    And what was that phone call all about? Just what was Dale Burton going to handle?
    Whatever it was, I didn’t much care. I had troubles enough of my own. Not only was my career about to go up in flames, but there was a distinct possibility that my father was losing his marbles. What was all that nonsense about finding love oil in Mom’s car? Of course, it was possible that he wasn’t nuts and that Mom was actually having an affair with some sleazeball from the shopping channel, but that thought was just too horrible to contemplate.
    So there I sat, whiling away the minutes, feeling my fanny go numb and thinking about joining a nunnery to get away from it all, when Kandi came rushing up.
    “Where the hell have you been?” I asked.
    “Emergency shrink session.”
    “Didn’t you just have one of those yesterday?”
    “Hey, I’m having a rough time.”
    “Join the party,” I said.
    “How come you’re out here? Why aren’t you inside?”
    “The taping hasn’t started yet. Stan and Audrey are stuck on the Hollywood Freeway.”
    “I was, too,” she said. “It’s a nightmare out there.”
    “It couldn’t have been worse than what’s going on in there,” I said, pointing to the stage.
    “Why? What happened?”
    “The warm-up guy ran out of jokes forty minutes ago, and when last I looked, Wells was entertaining the troops with Hamlet’s soliloquy.”
    “You poor thing.” Kandi shook her head pityingly. “We’d better get in there before Stan and Audrey show up.”
    With Herculean strength, she managed to haul me up and drag me back inside. By now, Wells was back at the coffee machine, telling poor trapped Zach about the time he played Iago to Paul Robeson’s Othello.
    “Jaine, my dear,” he said, catching sight of me, “I tried to warm them up for you. Although I must admit, they weren’t the most