Knock 'Em Dead, Kid!

The manager said he’d pay me after the show, but drinks were on the house while the jazz band warmed up the audience. I nursed a rum and coke and flipped through my flashcards when the bartender tapped my shoulder.           

“You’re the new comedian, right?” he asked. “You need to suck.”

I chuckled. “Like a vacuum cleaner?”

“No, like that joke. Legend has it this club is cursed. Once you tell the best jokes of your life, you die.”

“That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.”

“One girl told some killer jokes about her ex-boyfriend right before he jumped out of the audience and stabbed her,” he said. “Two weeks later, some schmuck tells a joke so funny, a big agent signed him on the spot. One step out the door, a car runs him over.”

“How spooky.” I closed my eyes, drunk enough to go on stage. Would I remember all the jokes? Would people laugh?

The saxophone wavered on its highest note as the club applauded. The MC sauntered from behind the blue curtains and ushered the band off the stage. The stage lights shone so brightly against his white jacket that he became a beacon on an otherwise empty stage. Would it still be empty with me up there?

“And now ladies and gents, let’s give a big hand to our up-and-coming stand-up maestro from Burlington, Vermont. Introducing Jimmy Spiel!”

The crowd clapped as I tottered onstage but stopped once the speakers crackled when I adjusted the mic. A man at the bar slammed the countertop and demanded another beer. Somebody coughed.

I glanced stage right. The MC gave me a thumbs up.

“Good evening,” I said. “I just drove in from Burlington, but don’t worry, it wasn’t a long drive. It’s just down the street between the grocery store and the coffee shop.”

It was the warm-up joke. Don’t mind that no one laughed. Tell Warm-up Joke #2.

“I was talking about visiting my aunt in Texas, and she gets so worried for me. ‘Oh, isn’t it cold in Vermont? I’ll send you a coat.’ I’m like, ‘relax, I literally live in a coat store.’”

“Where’s the joke, funny man?” said the man with the beer. It sloshed onto the foot of the stool.

“Oh, it’s just our signature Vermont sense of humor. But no one knows it because we’re just the jumping-off point to Lake Placid.”

“I can see why no one visits.”

The heckler earned a few chuckles.

“Funny thing about Vermont is everyone thinks we’re maple syrup addicts. But then I’m like, ‘no, that’s Canada, eh?’”

“I’d rather move to Canada than sit through another one of your jokes.”

Someone in the front row collapsed with laughter, wiping at his eyes with his handkerchief. The rest of the audience laughed, too.

The Vermont jokes weren’t working. Half my routine down the shredder.

The heckler leapt off the stool. His hips smacked into people’s shoulders as he sashayed through the sea of tables.

“Looks like I’m your comedian tonight, folks,” he said. “My lawyer told me a great joke.” He shuffled backwards toward the stage, spilling the dregs of his beer onto the tablecloths.  “And that was that he was a good guy. I’ve seen him chase ambulances like a dog. But he gets all the clients. I guess that’s why they call him the golden retriever.”

Everyone laughed, and the heckler faced the crowd and bowed. The man on the floor convulsed, twitched, and squirmed with laughter. When the heckler readied himself to step on stage, the man rolled over and knocked the heckler’s feet out from under him. The heckler’s head slammed onto the floor. He stopped moving. The crowd fell silent like a laugh track turning off.

The MC rushed from behind the curtains and rested his fingers on the heckler’s neck. He rushed CPR, gagged on the film of beer over his lips, and checked again. The MC shook his head and rolled the heckler’s eyelids shut.

“Should we call an ambulance?” I asked.

The MC waved the crowd out of the club. “We don’t need one.”

Soon, the floor emptied. The barflies stumbled into taxicabs, the jazz band went back to their hotel, and the MC looked up what to do with a dead body. I stood alone on the empty stage. I tapped the mic. It was still live.

“Was that a killer set, or what?”

I cackled, but miraculously, I was still standing up.

[cover photo Carlos Delgado; CC-BY-SA]