Free The Funny Man by John Warner Page A

window so her head is part of the way out of the car and he will take her from behind! She will rock and squeal and whoop! They will speed pass the cars of the non-famous on the way from the city, and they will know that something is really going on in that limo. Who could that be?
    Me. Me. Me. Me, the funny man thinks.
    The funny man presses his forehead to the window and clutches the leg of his pants in his hand. Where do these things come from? He’s never seen anything like these things he is imagining.
    There is a sunroof! (A moonroof; it is evening.) His wife could strip her top and whirl it around her head, as she rides torso-bared halfway out of the sunroof!
    He feels feverish. Could he really be getting sick? The funny man smoothes his hands along his legs and tries to breathe deeply and shifts a little trying to relieve some of the pressure building in his pants. He tries to think of baseball. He tried to play baseball as a kid because he loved and still loves baseball, watches it all the time while sitting on the special chair, because the slow pace of the game makes the jittering less infuriating, but he was bad enough at it that the only way he ever saw the base paths was to screw himself up and let the ball hit him. He was not adverse to this, though, because he liked running—and what’s this?
    His wife’s fingers tiptoe across the arch in his pants and work the zipper down. She smiles at him as her hand works the goods free. Limousine head, the funny man thinks. Of course. Better than limousine sex? Not better, no; but good, very good. Very very very very very good. This woman is a genius, the funny man thinks as they ride toward the big show.
    T HE SEATING IS theater-style. No tables, no drinks, no drinks with swizzle sticks to absently twirl around fingers or crunch between teeth while the funny man delivers his material. People will not be drinking. If they are drunk, they did it to themselves prior to arrival. There are to be no distractions. The funny man will be the sole focal point of the entire room. The steamer trunk full of props waits for the funny man on stage. They have paid to see him, not to cover the two-drink minimum. This is not the first time for that, but it is still a relatively new thing.
    The dressing room is beneath the auditorium and the funny man can hear the rumbling above him as the audience files in and it feels to him as though the temperature is rising by the moment. They are treading on top of him and don’t even know it. He is holding them up, supporting all of their weight. This performance will be filmed, and he has blocking to remember, spots to hit during his “thing” to ensure the best camera angles. Something extra to worry about. He has rehearsed his routine infinite times. When he wakes in the mornings he often finds his mind has been working the routine over in his sleep and when his wife smiles at him, he imagines it is in response to one of the jokes running in his head. The material, he knows, is good; not great, but good, but the thing— his thing—is great. The thing is outstanding.
    The funny man never knows what to do with himself in the last moments before it is time to take the stage, so he is shadowboxing, flicking his fists into the air, bobbing from foot to foot. The stagehands look at him a little oddly, but surely they’ve seen stranger. As he nears the entrance to the stage, the houselights go dark and the audience whoops and whistles. The funny man listens to their cries.
    I haven’t even done anything yet, he thinks, but still, they love me.

9
    F OR SOME REASON there is a ten-day hiatus before the start of my defense. Ostensibly it is to allow Barry time to prepare, but Barry is spending at least part of the interim in the Barbados, leaving me confined to the apartment, special, hiatus-scheduled twice-weekly visits to the therapist my only escape.
    At least it leaves me some time to catch up on my “work.” It is not that the money is