Fourth Angry Mouse

15 Pages·2016·0.11 MB·English

by  Schickler David

Fourth Angry Mouse
Fourth Angry Mouse
David Schickler
Jeremy Jax wanted to be funny, like his grandfather.
Jeremy’s grandfather was Robby Jax, the famous comedian. In his
seventies-which also happened to be the 1970s-Robby Jax was still performing
at Cherrywood’s Lounge, on 42nd Street, and Jeremy attended the shows with
his parents.
Jeremy was ten, and when he sat on the couches in Cherrywood’s, he
expected that someone might read aloud to him from The Chronicles of Narnia.
Bookcases lined the room. There were studs on the walls on which men hung
their hats. The smoke in the air had a blue glow, and the smoke seemed to
remain in the room, day or night, even when no pipes were lighted. At
Cherrywood’s, women drank coffee with amaretto, and men drank ale. When
someone sank a shot at the pool table, the ball fell snugly into one of six leather
pouches.
In one corner, between two bookcases, was a small, hardwood stage bearing
an upholstered chair. In this chair, drinking century-old Scotch, was Robby Jax.
He sat down around eight on a Saturday night, drank silently until nine, then
began to speak. If you were new to Cherrywood’s, you wouldn’t even know at
first that a performance was under way. It would dawn on you gradually that the
woman whose eyes you meant to seduce was having none of you. She was
staring at the old gentleman in the corner, the one with the furry eyebrows.
Everyone was staring at the old gentleman and beginning to smile, and the lights
in the lounge had dimmed.
“And so,” sighed Robby Jax, “I told Emma Jean Bryce of Vassar College
that she reminded me of a stalk of celery. And Emma Jean Bryce of Vassar
College looked at me quite seriously and said ‘Robert, I don’t know what that
means. I honestly don’t.’” Robby Jax sipped his Scotch. He glanced slowly
around at his audience. He adjusted his vest over his thick middle. “And I said to
her… I said… ‘Emma Jean. A man can do many things to a stalk of celery. But
one thing a man cannot do to a stalk of celery is make love to it, Emma Jean.’”
The audience laughed.
Robby Jax shook his head. “The women at Vassar College,” he said sadly,
“are virginal stalks of celery.”
The audience kept laughing.
“I’m in my first year at Vassar,” a girl called out, “and I’m not a virgin.”
“Not yet you aren’t,” said Robby Jax.
The audience roared.
Jeremy didn’t understand how it happened. None of the things his
grandfather said were actual jokes. They were just stories, little pieces of life that
sounded true. For all Jeremy knew, his grandfather made them up as he talked.
But, somehow, the Scotch and the smoke and his grandfather’s tweeds warmed
people up, got them laughing.
“What’s the secret?” Jeremy demanded one night when he was twelve. His
grandfather had just finished a set at Cherrywood’s. He was drinking Scotch at
the bar and whispering to a young woman in black velvet. The woman had a
Southern accent.
“Well?” said Jeremy.
“The secret to what?” said Robby Jax.
“How do you make people laugh?” Jeremy had his arms folded.
Robby Jax scowled. He loved Jeremy, but he was a widower and young
women in velvet were rare occasions.
“What’s the secret?” persisted Jeremy.
Robby Jax bent to his grandson. “Relax, kid,” he whispered.
“What’s the secret?” Jeremy whispered back.
Robby winked. “I just told you. Relax.” Robby stood back up, held his palm
open toward the woman. “And now, Jeremy, I’d like to introduce you to one of
the finest creations our Lord ever set down on Earth. She is called a brunette.”
The young woman giggled. “Hush, Robby.”
Relax, thought Jeremy. Relax, relax.
He thought this all through high school. He thought it when he worked
stage crew for the productions of Smile and Frown, his high school’s drama
club. Jeremy would’ve auditioned himself, but his voice cracked into falsetto
when he got nervous. Jeremy figured that once he was eighteen, officially a man,
his voice would be strong. Plus, he’d be at college, away from Manhattan. He
could relax and become a brilliant comic actor.
Jeremy’s chance came in October of his freshman year at Hobart College.
He saw signs around campus advertising an annual student talent show called
The Follies and he decided to audition. There were slots for student singers,
musicians, and performance artists, but the most coveted position in The Follies
was Master of Ceremonies. It was in this role that Jeremy planned to make his
comic debut.
The auditions were held in The Hovel, the on-campus student pub, on a
Thursday night. The Hovel was dark and crowded. On most nights, it was a pit
where students sought drinks and laughs. Tonight, though, it was meant to be a
charmed, bewitching cave, full of human art.
“Don’t suck,” said Patrick Rigg. Patrick was Jeremy’s roommate, along for
moral support.
“I won’t,” said Jeremy.
Patrick and Jeremy sat in the corner. Jeremy wore his black suit, the one
that matched the color of his hair. This suit, Jeremy believed, made his green
eyes look jovial and menacing, as if he were a funny but dangerous man, like
Lenny Bruce. It was this sinister edge, this tiny malevolence within himself, that
Jeremy planned to exploit as a trademark of his performing style. Still, as a nod
to his grandfather, the more traditional storyteller, Jeremy ordered Scotch at the
bar.
“No Scotch,” said the bartender.
“Perhaps Crown Royal?” said Jeremy.
The bartender snorted. “Perhaps beer,” he said. “Perhaps Jagermeister.”
Jeremy ordered the Jagermeister, which was served in a plastic cup. He
returned to his corner to watch the competition.
A quick-eyed juggler performed onstage. A dancer danced. Three frat boys
in Marx Brothers garb jabbered and received applause. An awful singer named
Freida forgot her lyrics and wept and ran away.
“Jeremy Jax,” said the judges. “Auditioning for MC”
Jeremy took the stage. He set himself down in a chair amid the footlights.
He smiled wearily at the audience, the way his grandfather always did. He drank
his Jagermeister. Directly before him was a table where three judges sat.
“Say something,” suggested a judge.
Jeremy nodded. He understood what was required of him. However, he
hadn’t planned any material. He’d expected a perfect, spontaneous anecdote to
rise within him, but it wasn’t happening. A minute passed. Jeremy gulped at his
Jagermeister.
Relax, Jeremy told himself.
A judge wrote something down.
“Um,” said Jeremy.
His heart lurched. He saw Patrick frowning. People stirred in their seats,
whispering. Jeremy stared at the drink in his hand.
“What’s the deal with malt liquor?” he stammered.
One of the kinder judges smiled. “We don’t know,” she called out. “What is
the deal with malt liquor?”
Jeremy didn’t answer. He sat motionless in his chair. There was a riot in his
stomach, in his mind. He tried to think of a story, any story.
“Jagermeister,” he said, “is German for Master Hunter.”
Someone in the audience sighed. Seconds passed.
“Women are celery,” blurted Jeremy.
The Hovel fell silent. Patrick Rigg left. People looked at the floor.
“Thank you,” said the judges.
Outside The Hovel, in the darkness, in a clearing of trees, Jeremy came to
himself. His first instinct had been to run from the pub, to get out into the
October air. He’d expected himself to throw up or cry or gnash his teeth. He was
perhaps on the verge of doing these things when he made out another figure in
the dark beside him. It was a girl kneeling on the ground, her face in her hands.
It was Freida, the awful singer.
“Hey,” whispered Jeremy. “Hey there.”
Freida looked up. Her face was miserable, splotchy with eye shadow.
“Are you great?” she sniffled.
“What?”
Freida pointed at The Hovel. “I– I meant, were you great. In there. Onstage.
Were you great?”
“No,” said Jeremy. His voice was hard. “I sucked.”
As he said this, Jeremy felt a chill inside himself. It was a cold, new rage of
some sort. It was painful, but somehow good. It made him feel capable of
startling feats, like bludgeoning his grandfather.
“I’m Jeremy Jax,” said Jeremy. He was practically shaking. “I’m terrible.”
Freida shivered. She wiped her face, took the hand of the furious young
man.
“I’m Freida,” she said. “Come on.”
They went to Freida’s dorm room. In what seemed an implicit, mutually
understood gesture, Jeremy removed Freida’s clothes. He did so violently, as
Freida expected. Then they lay down.
Jeremy stared deep into Freida’s eyes as they screwed. He wielded his body
into hers, taking a certain vengeance on the night. Freida made awful noises that
weren’t so different from the awful noises she’d made at The Hovel. When it
was over, they lay there. Jeremy’s hands shook at his sides. Freida’s eyes were
closed. Jeremy tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. So he got up,
dressed, and left.
~
When he was twenty-three, Jeremy Jax returned to Manhattan. He had, by
that time, a degree in Russian literature, a head of graying hair, and an Upper
West Side apartment. He also had a job as assistant to the director of the Lucas, a
theater on 51st Street that he admired for its history.
The Lucas was a dying theater. It had ruled Broadway in the 1930s, staging
the world premieres of several famous productions, including Hunter Frank’s
Killing Me Lately and Dazzle MacIntyre’s Eight Boxes. These plays and the
Lucas itself had been renowned for their raw, aggressive candor. Killing Me
Lately, in fact, had been investigated by the New York City Police Department
in 1938 because the character of the murder victim was played by a different
actor every night, after which that actor vanished from the cast. The owner of the
Lucas at the time, Sebastian Hye, claimed it was merely a gimmick to fascinate
the bloodthirsty. New Yorkers, of course, took the bait and bought tickets in
droves.
By the early 1990s, when Jeremy Jax started work there, the Lucas had
fallen from the grace of its early decades. The physical plant was in disrepair.
The black plush seats needed reupholstering and the ceiling was full of echoes.
Also, Michael Hye, the current owner and director of the Lucas, no longer
wanted to produce sensationalist, frightening plays.
“Satire, fine,” said Michael. “Irony, great. But no existentialism. No
amorality. No ennui.”
Michael was in his office, speaking on the phone to the playwright of the
Lucas’ latest show. Jeremy Jax sat in his cubicle outside Michael’s office,
eavesdropping.
“Now then,” said Michael, “there are flaws in Of Mice and Mice.”
Jeremy sighed. Of Mice and Mice, the Lucas’ new show, was scheduled to
open in one month. It was a departure from traditional Lucas fare. It was a play
in which all of the actors were dressed as giant mice.
“Act one is fine,” said Michael. “It’s act two. What’s driving the mice in act
two?”
Jeremy sighed again. Since its birth, the Lucas had been owned by the
Hyes, a famous Manhattan theater family. The Hyes had always served as the
producers and directors of the shows, and sometimes even as the editors of the
playwrights. It was an unusual relationship, but Lucas Hye, who founded the
theater in 1890, had been unusually wealthy and could afford to be overbearing.
The contemporary Hyes could afford it, too.
“Fine,” said Michael Hye into the phone. “I want the revised script by
tomorrow.” The phone clicked.
Jeremy sighed one final time.
“I heard that,” called Michael. “What’s your problem?”
“Nothing,” muttered Jeremy.
Michael appeared in the doorway. He was six feet tall, like Jeremy, but
pudgier and fifty years old. He had muttonchops and halitosis.
“Let’s hear it, Jax,” said Michael.
Jeremy had no love for Michael. However, Michael gave Jeremy good
money, and decent hours, and when Jeremy sat in on rehearsals, Michael often
asked him what he thought.
“It just sounds,” said Jeremy, “like you’re trying to make Of Mice and Mice
funny, and it’s not supposed to be funny.”
“Question,” said Michael. “Is Jeremy Jax the expert on funny?”
“No,” said Jeremy.
“Question,” said Michael. “Was Ionesco’s Rhinoceros funny?”
“Well,” began Jeremy.
“No,” insisted Michael. “I saw it in London in seventy-nine. There were
twenty people on that stage dressed as rhinoceroses and there wasn’t a chuckle
in the house.” Michael put his hands to his hips. “The mice aren’t funny. The
mice are dire.”
“Whatever,” said Jeremy. “Forget I mentioned it.”
In college, after his disastrous audition, Jeremy had turned his back on
comedy. He found a home in Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. Russian writers,
Jeremy felt, understood melancholy. They could be wry, but they believed in the
Devil, and you didn’t have to like black clothes or coffee to get their darkness. In
what he considered a kindred Russian spirit, Jeremy had embraced the darkness
he’d discovered in himself during that night years ago, his one night with Freida.
They’d never had a relationship, Jeremy and Freida. They’d come together
once, as failures, and fucked each other as failures, and avoided each other
thereafter. Jeremy remembered Freida as a ragged, tragic figure, like a doomed
Karamazov or a Faust. He thought of her sometimes after work when he walked
down Broadway to Cherrywood’s Lounge, his late grandfather’s haunt.
Jeremy drank Cutty Sark at Cherrywood’s, sitting at the bar, glaring at the
stand-up comedians who tried to take Robby Jax’s place on the stage. The
comedians were male, in their mid-thirties, with thinning hair and decent suits.
They rolled their eyes and quibbled about women.
“Comedians aren’t men,” said Jeremy Jax. He was speaking to his old
Hobart roommate, Patrick Rigg. Patrick was on Wall Street now. He was famous
for his handsome bones, and he carried a gun.
“Russians are men,” said Jeremy.
Patrick shrugged.
“Look at this guy.” Jeremy nodded toward the stage, where the comedian
was making baby sounds in the microphone.
“He’s doing a bit about dating,” explained Patrick.
Jeremy sucked ice and Scotch. He sucked till the cold hurt his teeth.
“He’s mocking idyllic romance,” said Patrick.
Russians, thought Jeremy, do not do bits.
It was on an ordinary Wednesday that Jeremy Jax became Fourth Angry
Mouse. It happened quickly, and if Jeremy had had time to consult the darkness
within him, he probably would have refused the role. But he was groggy from
lunch when Michael Hye ran into the office.
“Call an ambulance,” panted Michael. “Fourth Angry Mouse is down.
Unconscious.”
“What happened?” said Jeremy.
Michael shook his head. “He was berating First Kindly Mouse, and he
collapsed. Hyperventilated or something.”
Of Mice and Mice had eight characters, four Kindly Mice and four Angry
Mice. All eight actors wore almost identical mouse outfits, but the mice were
distinguishable by the colors of their trousers and their habits of movement.
Second Kindly Mouse, for instance, was partial to softshoe. Third Angry Mouse
rode other mice piggyback.
It turned out that things were serious. Fourth Angry Mouse, a habitual
smoker, had suffered a collapsed lung.
“Jeremy.” Michael pulled Jeremy into the office. It was four o’clock, still
Wednesday. The ambulance had come and gone.
“Jeremy,” said Michael. He spoke quietly, reverently. “The Lucas needs
you.”
“How’s that?” said Jeremy.
Michael gripped Jeremy’s arm. “You’ve got to be Fourth Angry Mouse.”
“Like hell I do.”
Michael’s face was grave. “We have no understudy. The show opens
Friday.”
“Call Equity,” said Jeremy.
Michael frowned. “Whenever it’s possible, the Lucas does things in-house.”
“Whenever it’s possible,” said Jeremy, “I don’t play rodents.”
“Don’t be flip, Jeremy.” Michael punched a calculator. “I’ll give you one
hundred and fifty dollars a night till we can train a professional in the role, if
that’s necessary. It’s virtually a nonspeaking part, it’s only a two-month run, and
you know the show cold. Plus… ”
“Plus what?”
“Plus, I suspect you understand Fourth Angry’s sensibility.”
“He doesn’t have a sensibility, Michael. He’s a fucking mouse.”
Michael snapped his fingers. “That. Right there. The way you just spoke to
me. That’s Fourth Angry’s tone. His Weltanschauung.”
“Forget it,” said Jeremy.
“Three hundred a night,” said Michael.
“Done,” said Jeremy.
Rehearsals began twenty minutes later. Jeremy suited up in a giant mouse
outfit and took the stage. The other mice gathered around.
“Who’s this guy?” they asked.
“It’s me,” said Jeremy. His breath felt warm and close inside the mouse
head, which was held to the costume’s body by hinges. Jeremy’s eyes peeked
out through a grille in the costume’s mouth.
“I’m Jeremy Jax,” said Jeremy.
Third Kindly Mouse put his paws on his hips. “Michael. This is absurd.”
“Yeah,” said First Angry Mouse. “We’re professionals. You can’t just stick
some random employee into-”
“The kid knows the part,” said Michael Hye. “Besides, Fourth Angry only
has one line.”
Fourth Kindly Mouse patted Jeremy’s back. “Let’s give him a chance.”
“What’s his background?” said Third Angry Mouse.
“He’s Robby Jax’s grandson,” said Michael.
The mice all nodded, impressed.
“Let’s hear him,” said First Angry. “Let’s hear him try his one line.”
Michael urged Jeremy onto the roof, which was a giant promontory piece of
the set. It was from this roof that Fourth Angry Mouse proclaimed his line.
“Go on, Jax,” said Michael.
Jeremy climbed the roof, looked out at the empty seats of the Lucas. A
spotlight came on in the ceiling, singled him out.
Three hundred a night, Jeremy told himself.
“Do it up, kid,” yelled Fourth Kindly Mouse.
Jeremy took a breath.
“‘I have arrived!’” he shouted.
~
Within two weeks, an extraordinary thing happened. New York City fell in
love with Of Mice and Mice.
There was no rational accounting for it. Manhattan’s theater tastes had
ranged over the preceding decade from men drenched in blue paint to maniacs
thumping garbage cans, so the popularity of eight giant mice was perhaps only a
matter of savvy timing. On the other hand, Of Mice and Mice’s playwright was
furious. He’d intended Of Mice and Mice as a somber allegory about the
divisiveness of the human heart, and audiences were finding the play
outrageously funny. Children and adults loved the show with equal ardor, the
way they might a classic Looney Tunes. Susan March, who wrote the editorial
column March Madness for the New York Times, claimed that “these eight mice
show us, with their tongues in their divine little cheeks, how laughable are all
our attempts at serious human contention. Who would’ve expected such charm
from the Lucas?”
Receiving particular laud was the character of Fourth Angry Mouse. He
wore unassuming blue trousers and had only one line, but there was something
about his befuddled manner, his confused scampering to and fro among his
fellow mice that endeared him to audiences and won him standing ovations.
“Fourth Angry Mouse,” wrote Susan March, “is petulant, skittish, bent on
private designs. But he is so convincingly lost in his own antics that we can’t
help but laugh at the little guy. He could be any one of us, plucked off the street,
tossed into public scrutiny. Would any of us seem less goofy, less hysterically at
sea?”
Compounding the intrigue around Fourth Angry Mouse was the fact that
the program listed the actor’s name as Anonymous. This was unheard of. Benny
Demarco, the character actor of film and stage fame, was carrying the role of
First Kindly Mouse and garnering good reviews. Trisha Vera, as First Angry
Mouse, had some brilliant moments, including a Velcro routine on the walls. But
it was the unknown man behind Fourth Angry Mouse that Manhattan wanted to
meet most. Some critics speculated that it was Christian Frick, reprising his
Tony-Award-winning role as The Familiar in Coven. Most reviewers, though,
suspected that a newcomer lurked behind Fourth Angry Mouse, a dark-horse
tyro with few credentials beyond instinct.
As for Jeremy Jax, he was flabbergasted. He tried in each performance to
implement the critical notes he’d been given by Michael Hye and Of Mice and
Mice’s livid playwright. However, Jeremy was no actor. He had no knack for
detail, no timing, no sense of his body as perceived by others, and so no clear
motives for how to move when dressed as a seven-foot mouse. He got upset at
the laughter he aroused-he didn’t want his fellow mice to think him a showboat-
but the more upset he got, the harder people laughed and the more money the
Lucas made.
Relax, Jeremy told himself. Relax.
But Jeremy couldn’t relax. His fame was a farce to him. He wanted no one