The Comedy is Finished

“That isn’t the cops,” Mark says. “It sounds like the critics found you.”

“Their aim never was any good.” To Koo’s right, another mirror cracks. “Jesus,” he says, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. “So far, that’s a hundred forty-seven years’ bad luck.”

They’re safe in this room from all that heavy firing, but it doesn’t feel safe. The occasional bullet penetrates the house deeply enough to hit one of the surrounding mirrors from the back, and then that mirror cracks or splinters, so that by now over half the mirrors are broken, the reflections of the room becoming increasingly fragmented and crazy. With the room’s color scheme of black and white and purple and red, with the furniture piled up against the door and all the mirrors sharding and shattering so that wherever Koo turns he sees reflected the images of disjointed parts of himself and Mark, sometimes weirdly linked, the effect should be nightmarish; but it’s merely ugly and dangerous, and rather trite. Koo says, “I’d be ashamed to tell a dream like this to a psychiatrist.” Putting on the standard comic’s Viennese-psychiatrist accent, he says, “Vot’s dis mit de broken mirrors? Ged adda here, you’ll be coming in mit de freight trains next. Vot are you, some kind a normal or something?”

“In my flying dreams I always go economy fare,” Mark says, “and my luggage winds up in Chicago. What does that mean, Doctor?”

“It’s ein deep-zeeted neurotic re-action. Vot does dis inkblot look like to you?”

“A four-dollar cleaning bill.”

Koo laughs, in surprised pleasure. “Nice,” he says, in his own voice. “Very nice. I don’t think I heard that one before.”

Mark seems highly amused by that: “You only like jokes you recognize?”

“Old friends are best.”

This patter started back during that ludicrous terrifying few minutes when Koo and Mark were braced side by side against the barricading furniture while Peter and the others struggled to push open the door. Much of comedy is a way of trying to deal with tension and fear, both of which Koo now possesses in abundance, so it was in a spirit of whistling-in-the-graveyard that he looked across the barricade at Mark and said, “Maybe we should just take the magazine subscriptions.”

And Mark immediately answered, “Collier’s? Life? I don’t trust these people; keep pushing!”

The jokes and gag-lines have been running ever since, a lengthening routine which almost distracts Koo from the truth of his surroundings and circumstances, and which in any event delights him. Mark delights him. Neither of Koo’s sons—his other sons, he has to be careful about that—neither of them has followed in Koo’s funnyman footsteps. Frank has a kind of salesman’s hearty good humor while Barry sports a self-amused wit, but neither has Koo’s love for or skill with gags. Astonishingly, down inside that raging murderous beast which has apparently always been Mark’s surface persona, there lies a comic. It doesn’t matter if the jokes are good—we’re going for quantity here, not quality—the point is that they’re jokes and they’re delivered with a natural sense of style and timing, and to Koo’s joy and bewilderment he and Mark work well together. This, he thinks, aware of the exaggeration but not caring, must be what Abbott felt when he met Costello, Hardy when he met Laurel. “Well,” Koo says. “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”

“Hush,” Mark says; seriously, not part of any routine. “Listen.”

Koo lifts his head to listen, and realizes it’s stopping. The war is coming to an end out there. The rattle and clatter of gunfire is reducing rapidly to a mere scattered popping, it’s thinning out, thinning...one last distant crack. “Somebody’s always late,” Koo says.

Mark doesn’t answer. There’s silence, stretching on. Looking around, Koo sees jumbles and shards and geometric segments of the room, all ricocheting back and forth among the fractured mirrors; a crazy quilt in glass. When he raises one bandaged arm, bewildering quick movements flash from the mirrors all around, like a flight of tiny birds. And the silence stretches on. “Peace, it’s wonderful,” Koo says.

And still Mark says nothing. Koo looks at him, suddenly apprehensive, and Mark’s head has lowered, he’s brooding with hooded eyes at the floor between his feet. In profile he seems cold and humorless, reminding Koo uncomfortably of the Mark he’d known at first. Suddenly very nervous, not wanting to lose their connection, Koo says, “What’s up?”

Mark makes no response.

“Listen,” Koo says, keeping it light even though his old terror of Mark is rapidly returning, “just ’cause I won’t kiss on the first date, you don’t have to get sore.”

Now Mark shakes his head, with a small brushing-away hand gesture, but he won’t meet Koo’s eyes, and he still doesn’t speak.

“Mark,” Koo says. He feels it all slipping away, and he must hold onto it. “Mark, for Christ’s sake, what’s happening?”

“It’s coming to an end.” And Mark turns to show Koo a painful bitter smile. “It’s all over,” he says. “The law’s on its way.”

“And the west will never be the same again.”

“Neither will I.” Lifting his head, his expression almost playful, Mark says, “I was trying to decide whether to take you with me.”

Koo doesn’t get it, and it alarms him when he doesn’t understand Mark. Peering intently at the boy, he says, “Take me with you?”

“Oh, I’m gone, Koo.” Mark chuckles, not pleasantly, and shakes his head. “I’ve been gone since last night. I just came back to help you with Joyce, that’s all.”

“Take it easy, Mark,” Koo says, and rests his hand on the boy’s forearm.

But Mark shivers and pulls his arm away, as a horse sometimes flinches from being touched. “Better not, Koo,” he says. “I don’t know who I am right now. I don’t want to kill you by mistake.”

As so often before, Koo’s fear of Mark leads him to face the boy directly, insist on the clarifying statement. Heart in his mouth, he says, “The question is, do you want to kill me on purpose?”

“That’s the question, all right.” Mark glances toward the door. “And I don’t have much time to find the answer.”

“Mark, listen, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can work things—”

“Don’t make promises!” The harshness in Mark’s voice shocks Koo into silent rigidity. “What are you gonna do, sign me up with a contract? Make me second banana on your TV shows?”

“I thought I’d let you handle my negotiations with the network.”

Mark grunts in amusement, but then once again shakes his head.

“Listen,” Koo says, putting all the sincerity he can muster into his voice. “We can work something out. You’re not—”

“I will kill you, Koo.” Mark’s eyes as he gazes at Koo are as cold and empty as a northern lake. “If you sweet-talk me to save your life, I’ll strangle you this second.”

Koo blinks and blinks, staring into those clueless blank eyes. Mark wants something from him, he knows that much, but if he tries to give what he wants the boy will accuse him of hypocrisy. And the finish isn’t resolved in Mark’s mind, the old need to kill is still inside him, like snake venom. Whatever Koo does now is wrong, and whatever mistake he makes is fatal.

It’s too much. The seconds go on, and Koo remains impaled here, and at last there’s nothing left to do or say, no more twists and turns. Koo closes his eyes, his head dropping back to expose his throat; finally, after all this time, he’s giving up. “Do what you want,” he says. “Take me with you if you have to.”

“Do you want to be with me?”

Something strange in the wording, and in the boy’s voice, plucks at Koo’s attention, bringing him back from defeat. But he’s too tired, he’s been through too much, he can’t defend himself anymore. He doesn’t move. He waits for it to happen, the hands on his windpipe or whatever it’s going to be.

“Koo? Do you want to be with me?”

Since it doesn’t matter, the simple truth will do: “Yes,” Koo says. His eyes remain shut, his body is limp and relaxed, his voice weak and without inflection.

Mark says, “Your place or mine?”

Koo could never resist a straight line; not even here, on the brink of the grave. In doubt and wonderment,