flicking rhythmically from his moving palms to a spot just above
his head - he was miming a juggler with a lot of fragile items in the
air, and doing it with the easy grace of the long-time showman. It
was only something in his face, something as subtle as a shadow,
that told you the objects were eggs or something, and would break
if dropped. It was, in fact, very like the way Johnny's eyes
followed the invisible ball down the invisible fairway, registering
one that had been righteously stroked ... unless, of course, he chose
to vary the act, which he could and did do from time to time, and
without even breathing hard.
He made a business of dropping the last egg, or whatever the
fragile object was, and his eyes followed it to the floor with
exaggerated dismay. Then, for a moment, he froze. Then he
glanced toward Cam Three Left ... toward Doc and the orchestra,
in other words.
After repeated viewings of the videotape, Dave Cheyney came to
what seemed to him to be an irrefutable conclusion, although many
of his colleagues - including his partner - questioned it.
'He was waiting for a sting,' Cheyney said. 'Look, you can see it
on his face. It's as old as burlesque.'
His partner, Pete Jacoby, said, 'I thought burlesque was where the
girl with the heroin habit took off her clothes while the guy with
the heroin habit played the trumpet.'
Cheyney gestured at him impatiently. 'Think of the lady that used
to play the piano in the silent movies, then. Or the one that used to
do schmaltz on the organ during the radio soaps.'
Jacoby looked at him, wide-eyed. 'Mid they have those things
when you were a kid, daddy?' he asked in a falsetto voice.
'Will you for once be serious?' Cheyney asked him. 'Because this
is a serious thing we got here, I think.'
'What we got here is very simple. We got a nut.'
'No,' Cheyney said, and hit rewind on the VCR again with one
hand while he lit a fresh cigarette with the other. 'What we got is a
seasoned performer who's mad as hell because the guy on the snare
dropped his cue.' He paused thoughtfully and added: 'Christ,
Johnny does it all the time. And if the guy who was supposed to
lay in the sting dropped his cue, I think he'd look the same way.
By then it didn't matter. The stranger who wasn't Johnny Carson
had time to recover, to look at a flabbergasted Ed McMahon and
say, 'The moon must be full tonight, Ed - do you think - ' And that
was when the NBC security guards came out and grabbed him.
'Hey! What the fuck do you think you're - '
But by then they had dragged him away.
In the control room of Studio C, there was total silence. The
audience monitors picked up the same silence. Camera Four was
swung toward the audience, and showed a picture of one hundred
and fifty stunned, silent faces. Camera Two, the one medium-close
on Ed McMahon, showed a man who looked almost cosmically
befuddled.
