The Comedy is Finished

game sets, Koo hugged him and kissed him and put him away, and went right back to the world he knew, in which he could be comfortable and in control.

It wasn’t, in fact, until Barry was thirteen and Frank eleven that Koo made any intense effort to be a father. In his late thirties by then, successful in the movies and reaching out for his first success in television, secure at last in his long-term status as a star and becoming truly aware for the first time that he was aging, he was no longer the fast-talking hotshot radio comic of a dozen years ago, he found himself finally conscious of those two boys he’d helped to create just before he’d become the real Koo Davis. They were both in boarding school, Lily at that time living in Washington, an unpaid consultant on various welfare projects, and when Koo phoned her to ask if he could have the boys on one of their vacations she was sardonically amused—she wasn’t afraid of his comedy anymore— but she did agree; he could have the boys for two weeks in April.

And it was a disaster. Koo didn’t know children, and more importantly he didn’t know these children. He had the use of a mountain ranch in Colorado, complete with horses to ride, streams to fish, hills to climb, real life cowboys as ranch-hands, and even some of Koo’s showbiz pals dropping in for a day or two. But the whole thing went to hell in a handbasket, and by the end of the two weeks Koo was drinking all day long and shooting zingers at his own kids.

The almost constant rain didn’t help much, of course, but the real problem lay deeper than that. Children, particularly when just entering their teens, tend to become absorbed in one or two special interests, and to ignore everything else that life has to offer. At eleven years of age, Frank was utterly wrapped up in music: swing music, that being the very end of the big band era. Ralph Flanagan, Sauter-Finegan, Billy May: those were Frank’s heroes, and his dream in life was to be a big band arranger. Cowboys and mountains had no place in Frank’s life, and he spent the entire two weeks fretfully hunkered over the ranch’s only radio, a huge pre-war monster that could barely bring in Albuquerque. He clearly saw himself as a prisoner—an innocent prisoner at that—with Koo as the evil jailer.

As for thirteen-year-old Barry, his passion was even farther from trout streams and backpacking; he was a science-fiction fan, a voracious reader and a constant designer on graph paper of rockets and space stations, all prominently featuring the American Air Force star-in-a-circle. (This was before Sputnik dampened the science- fiction fans’ more chauvinistic sentiments.) Barry ran out of reading material the fourth day and graph paper the sixth. Also, Koo made the mistake of ordering him out of the house and onto a horse, during one break in the rain. It was probably sulky Barry’s fault that the normally placid horse eventually threw him into a rail fence and broke his arm. (“Two weeks from now,” a misguided pal told Koo, “you’ll think back on this and laugh.” Koo gave him a look: “Twenty years from now,” he said, “if anybody mentions this and laughs, I’ll kill him.”)

This disaster didn’t stop Koo from trying. He knew at last he’d made a mistake in shutting those kids out of his life, and he was determined to make up for it, so over the next several years he took the children from time to time on their vacations from school, and gradually learned to leave them alone with their enthusiasms. A kind of distant respect grew up on both sides, an aloof sort of tolerance. The boys were never warm toward Koo, but they liked him well enough, as though he were a long-term friend of the family; not of their generation, but basically all right. Koo, feeling the guilt of his earlier omission, circled cautiously around the boys, accepting whatever affection they could show him.

Did he love them? He never asked himself that question, wouldn’t have considered it in any way to the point. The point was to get them to love him; his own feelings didn’t matter. In truth he did love them, fiercely and with terror, but that love had only surfaced the once, during Barry’s pneumonia. He—and they—remained essentially unaware of it, and operated at a much cooler and less passionate level. The fact was, the missing years could not be reclaimed. Koo was not their father any longer; he had waited too long.

With the children’s maturity, the pressure eased. It was permissible, after all, to leave grown children to their own devices. Koo helped where he could, stood ready to answer any call, but didn’t push himself forward. Barry wanted Yale, and Koo got it for him. Frank wanted UCLA, and Koo arranged that. Frank’s ardor for music gradually shifted to an interest in movie music, then to movies, and finally to television; with Koo’s help, he was taken on by a network affiliate station in Chicago after graduation from UCLA, and now he’s a middle-management executive in the network’s home office in New York. Barry’s interests having swung much more wildly between future and past, he is now a partner in a highly profitable antique dealership in London, selling chandeliers, sideboards and firescreens to Arabs and Texans.

Koo’s learning about Barry’s homosexuality was, in fact, the only real trauma in his relationship with either of his children once they’d grown up. Barry, visiting Koo in L.A. with his “friend,” announced the fact of his inversion with a kind of unblinking defiant vulnerability that touched Koo almost as deeply as the pneumonia-racked skinny body had one day almost twenty years before. He didn’t want the boy to be queer, he didn’t want Barry to face the complications and the suffering and the loneliness that Koo felt convinced were the inevitable complements of homosexuality, but he didn’t dare say aloud even one word of what he thought. His reaction was instinctive and immediate and based on his ingrained perception of the relationship between himself and his children. What he thought of them or about them didn’t matter; it didn’t even matter who in fact they were; all that mattered was that somehow he must, in a permanent and clear cut way, win their love—as he had long since won the affection and the (granted much shallower) love of the American audience. “It’s up to you, Barry,” he said, at once, “but remember; if you and Len have any children, I want them brought up Catholic.”

What if—Koo isn’t sure he even dares to phrase this question, the answer means so much to him—what if, now... What if (all in a rush) these people go to Barry, or to Frank? “We’ve got your father. Mortgage your house, empty your bank accounts, convert everything you own to cash, give it all to us, and we’ll give your father back.” Back? Have they ever actually had Koo, have they ever really thought of themselves as having a father, who happens to be this fellow here, this Koo Davis?

What would they do? Barry and Frank, how would they react? Do they love Koo Davis? Do they love him enough to trade all their money for him?

Well, that isn’t even a sensible question, and Koo knows it, because he knows who’ll pay. He himself, he’ll pay; that’s who. These people grabbed him because he’s supposed to’ve piled up a lot of bucks over the years and they want some. The only question is who they’ll deal with on the outside, and the fear in Koo’s mind is not that Barry and Frank don’t love him enough to buy him back; the fear in his mind is that the boys don’t love him enough to deal: “Who? The old man? Why not talk to his agent? Her name is Lynsey Rayne, she’s the one closest to him. Hold on, I’ll give you the number.”

Oh, Jesus, Jesus, would they do that? Koo can’t bear the question, much less the answer. He can’t bear any questions, locked away here in this cavern under the waves—imprisoned king, in the cave beneath the sea. “I refuse to ask myself any more questions,” Koo says aloud, “on the grounds I may incriminate myself.”

The fact is, Lynsey Rayne really is closer to Koo than anybody else in his life. She used to be Max Berry’s assistant, and when Max retired Lynsey came to Koo and said, “I’m taking over Max’s client list.”

Koo was already looking around among established agents for a Max replacement, so all he said was, “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “And there’s two reasons why I want you to stick with me.”

“Name them.”

“Number one, you’re easy. Everybody knows who you are, I don’t have to go out and sell you. I just sit in the office, say yes to one offer in ten, skim my percentage and live fat.”

Laughing, Koo said, “Now I got to hear the other one.”

“Max has been sick a long time,” she said. “I’ve been your agent for the last five years. Nobody knows you better than me.”

And she was right, wasn’t she? “Nobody knows you better than me.” Jesus Christ, when Koo casts around in his mind for his closest relation, his nearest and dearest, he comes up with his agent. Lynsey’s a terrific lady, one of the best—not one of the blondes to be trouped and shtupped—but is this any way to run a life? Your next of kin is your agent?

A distraction, a distraction. He paces his small soft-surfaced carpeted prison, trying to push all the bad thoughts, the horrible questions, right out of his mind. Death, love, money...

Hunger. How about that one? There’s something he can think about, because the