The Comedy is Finished

7

“My brain is happy to be here,” Koo Davis says, “but my feet wanna be in Tennessee.” That’s a line from Saturday Evening Ghost, one of a series of comic spook movies Koo made in the early forties. Portraits with moving eyes, chairs whose arms suddenly reach up and grab at the person seated there, wall panels that open so a black-gloved hand can emerge clutching a knife; and Koo Davis moving brash and unknowing through it all. It was a genre then, everybody did the same gags: the candle that slid along a tabletop, the stuffed gorilla on wheels whose finger was caught (unknown to him) in the back of the hero’s belt so he’d be tiptoeing through the spooky house with this gorilla rolling along behind him, the hero pretending to be one of the figures in a wax museum. The audiences didn’t seem to care how often they saw those gags, and a recurring bit in Koo’s movies was the point where he would suddenly notice all those weird things around him, and become terrified. Koo’s bit of going from oblivious self-assurance to gibbering terror was one of his most famous routines, so much so that Bosley Crowther wrote in a review, “No one can make panic as hilarious as Koo Davis.”

I’m scared, Koo thinks, but he doesn’t say it aloud; it ain’t that hilarious. Remembering how often he simulated fear in all those movies, and later on television, he’s surprised at how different the real thing is. Of course, like everyone else he’s known brief moments of fear in his life—mostly on those USO tours—but what he’s feeling now is steady, growing, ongoing. He’s afraid of these people, he’s afraid of what will happen, he’s afraid of his own helplessness, and he’s afraid of his fear.

“Why would anybody be afraid of getting killed?” he asks. That’s a line from Your Genial Ghost, and it was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but in fact death is not at all what Koo fears now. His imagination crawls instead with images of pain, images of humiliation. He’s afraid they’ll hurt him in some awful way, and he’s afraid he won’t be brave in front of them. He’d hate to live the rest of his life remembering himself groveling on the floor in front of these bastards.

What if they do something to his throat or his mouth, so he can’t talk? What if they blind him or scar him in some awful way? What if they cut him—he’s always been afraid of knives, sharp things.

“We’ve got nothing to fear but fear itself—and that big guy over there with the sword.” The Zombie Goes to College. He keeps trying to reassure himself—they haven’t done anything to him yet, have they? They haven’t even threatened very much. But Koo remembers the look on that one guy’s face, the bearded son of a bitch who showed him the gun way back at the beginning. He’s probably also the one who hit him when the sack was over his head. And he doesn’t talk, he just stands there and glares at Koo like he’d prefer Koo’s head on a platter, with an apple in his mouth.

If only they wanted money. He’d been afraid earlier that they’d ask too much, but now he believes he could somehow have raised any amount they wanted. Ask for money, you bastards, and I’ll find it, one way or the other I’ll buy my way out of here. “Will you take a post-dated check?” Anything; ask for something I’ve got, ask for something that makes some kind of goddamn sense.

Ten political prisoners. The Feds won’t do it, Koo is convinced they won’t do it, and why the hell should they? Koo has no illusions about his “friendships” with generals and senators; one of the perks of being a general or a senator is to hang around with famous show biz people, and one of the perks of being a famous show biz celebrity is to hang around with generals and senators. “They come out ahead on that deal,” Koo says, but he doesn’t really mean it. He’s always enjoyed the company of VIPs, playing golf with them, going on hunting weekends, cruising on their yachts, visiting at their ranches, and he knows damn well they’ve enjoyed him just as much, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to release ten weirdos and crazies in return for one Koo Davis.

They won’t do it. No negotiation with terrorists, that’s been the official position for years, and Koo has always agreed with it, and even where he is now he still agrees, because if you give in to these bastards it just encourages more of them.

Well, what encouraged this bunch?

Shit; Koo doesn’t want to sit around thinking about it. He just wants to go home, back to his life, back to being what he’s good at. He’s no good at sitting here in the semi-dark, wondering what’s going to happen next. “My mother didn’t raise me to be a hostage.”

What will they do when the Feds say no? They won’t quit, not right away. They’ll try to pressure the Feds to change their minds, won’t they? And how will they do that? Koo knows how, but doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t want to think about it. He wants this over with, and he doesn’t see any good way for it to end. If this is reality encroaching on his happy private world, he doesn’t think much of it.

He also wishes to hell he had his pills. He’s not what you could call addicted to sleeping pills, but he does more often than not take one or two little capsules before going to bed. Sleeping pills, prescription, from his doctor; in addition to all the other pills he takes every day. He doesn’t know what the rest of them are for, and he doesn’t want to know. He’s simply made it clear to his doctors that he’s too busy to get sick, he can’t keep coming down with a lot of sniffles and aches, he’s got schedules, appointments, deadlines, he’s booked two full years into the future. So they give him these pills, and he takes one red-and-green every morning, and two whites after every meal, and a black-and-yellow every Wednesday and Saturday, and—

Well, he’s got a lot of pills, except they’re all back at the Triple S studio, in his dressing room, packed away in the brown leather carrying case made to his specifications by Hermes. And even somebody who never took sleeping pills would find it hard to doze off in Koo’s present position. Koo is awake, wide awake. He doesn’t know what time it is, but it must have been hours since the last light faded in the swimming pool water. He ought to sleep, if only to keep his strength up for whatever is ahead, but he just can’t. When he turns off the lights, the fears swarm worse than ever in his mind, like worms, each carrying another horror. The lights are on a dimmer, so now he has them at their lowest setting, and he’s lying on the long built-in couch with two blankets over him, but his mind just won’t slow down. He’s afraid, he’s goddamn afraid.

And now it’s affecting his digestion. For the last hour or so his stomach has been feeling worse and worse, and he’s been refusing to admit that he might have to throw up. Ignore an upset stomach, he believes, and the chances are it’ll go away by itself. Brood about the goddamn thing and the first thing you know you’ll up-chuck.

Well, this time the theory isn’t working. He’s not brooding about his stomach, God knows, he’s brooding about his fear of the unknown, but something is making the stomach worse and worse, in fact insistent, in fact it is going to happen, in fact he’d better get the hell to the toilet right—

He makes it; barely. He hasn’t eaten much since he’s been here, and only had the one small glass of whiskey, so what the hell is all that coming out of him? Smells as bad as it looks. Koo keeps flushing the toilet, keeps bringing up more, keeps flushing the toilet, and when at last it’s all over he’s so weak he can barely stand. He reels over to the sink, rinses out his mouth, staggers back to the couch, plucks at the blankets, gives up with only his legs covered.

Jesus, he feels awful. Perspiration is pouring out of him now, his face and chest and arms are greasy with it. Foul-smelling perspiration, as though he hadn’t bathed in a month. Is this the smell of fear?

The stomach again. “There’s nothing left!” But, oh, God, it won’t take no for an answer. He can’t walk, he scurries on all fours, he only partly makes it this time. Oh, Jesus, Jesus, what is this stuff?

For a while, this time, he lies on the floor afterward, waiting for strength to return. Got to wash out the mouth, it tastes so bad. The perspiration runs along his body, his shirt is sopping wet. Finally he crawls to the sink, struggles upward, rinses his mouth, crawls to the bed, climbs into it, doesn’t even try for the blankets.

He’s shivering, and he’s hot, and the skin of his temples is burning. The skin is burning.

This isn’t fear. What in the hell is this? Some goddamn flu, maybe, there’s always some goddamn flu going around. What a hell of a time to get sick.

Then he wonders, What’s in those pills I take all the time? Jesus, do I really have something? What a joke—after all these years, it turns out I really need all my pills.

At the next attack, he can’t leave the couch, but he manages to turn his face over the side.