The Comedy is Finished

23

Koo stares at the TV screen. “That’s not funny,” he says. The screen is black, but then the Channel 11 identifying logo appears, with the ID jingle. It contains a repetition of the channel numeral, sung by a chorus with an echo effect: “E-lev-en, E-lev-en, E-lev-en.” The echo reverberates and reverberates in Koo’s head, as though the brain has been removed and it’s all empty space in there now. Space Available—Will Divide to Suit.

When a Pampers commercial comes on—“I don’t use Pampers anymore, I use new Pampers”—Larry at last gets up and goes across the room to switch off the set. When he turns back, his movement visually reverberating in all the mirrors, his face looks as agonized as Koo feels; and at least he has the sense not to make any Mickey Mouse hopeful statement. “I can’t understand that,” he says. “Koo, I’m as astonished as you are.”

“I’m done for,” Koo says.

“How could they have turned their backs that way? What’s happened to them in jail?” Larry seems to have latched on to a different aspect of the problem.

Koo’s aspect of the problem is that now he’s a dead man. Any minute now, somebody’s going to come through that door, and it’s going to be all over. If only there’d been a house, a store, even another automobile, when he’d gotten himself out of that goddamn trunk. That was his moment, and he blew it, and now it’s finished.

And it won’t even necessarily be Mark who does the job. Koo has known all along that these people are assholes—granted they’re dangerous assholes, they’re still assholes—but now the whole world knows it. Rage, humiliation, revenge for their defeat; Peter, for example, would kill for much less reason. Liz would kill out of general irritation, and surely there was enough general irritation in that program for anybody’s taste. Larry here might spend the aftermath in a moony post-mortem about whatever happened to the old bunch, but in this house there are killers. And a victim. “I’m done for now,” Koo says.

“No, Koo. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Koo points at the door. “They’ll be coming in.”

“No, they won’t. I promise. I’ll stay right here.” Eager, questing, Larry sits on the bed near Koo, gazing into his face. “Talk to me now, Koo. About you and Mark.”

“No.”

“You said, after the show, you said—”

“No.” Koo can’t talk about all that, his own distress. “There’s no point in it now,” he says. “I’m done for. I’m dead.”

“No, Koo.”

“I’m dead,” Koo says.