“Signor Fabiano!” Rocky said. “Sit down.”
Freddy wouldn’t look at us. Instead, he spun one of his square cuff-links, occasionally lining it up with his shirt cuff. “I’m not sitting down,” he said. He had the kind of accent you get from an Italian neighborhood.
“Get some gravy and biscuits,” said Rocky. “That usually settles your stomach.”
“No,” Fabian said, in a voice that meant You know nothing about me and gravy and biscuits. Even standing still, he wobbled slightly. Maybe he’d started to drink again when he’d gotten the middle-of-the-night call from backstage. “I hope,” he said. “I hope.” What did he hope? He was hopeless, a man — like all spurned men — who did not know whether he wished that we’d be happy together, or that we’d choke on our breakfast, or that somehow he’d be asked back as part of a team, even an overcrowded one. He shook his long bony head, and then tried to steady it with trembling fingers. “I thought we were funny,” he said plaintively.
Rocky slid over in the booth, but kept one arm on the back. “Sit down, Alfredo. You’re making me dizzy.” Fabian collapsed on the seat. Rocky’s hand settled on his estranged partner’s far shoulder. “Look: You don’t even like show business. You throw up before every curtain.” Fabian nodded sadly. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, but then you drink so you’ll forget how much you hate it, but that’s not all you forget. So what’s the point? You got money, I know you do, because you’re cheaper than hell, so why not go home and sell that cheese you like so much?”
“Boof-falo mozz’rella,” said Fabian in his soft accent. The name alone made me want to throw up, but it seemed to calm him.
I regarded the two of them, and tried to decide that Rocky and I looked funnier together. Close up, the recently dissolved team of Fabian and Carter came off like a pair of toughs, one Irish, one Italian, both a little hangdog and worked over.
“Hey,” said Fabian to me. “New guy.”
“Mike,” I told him.
“Mike,” he said. Then he stared. “So. You’re Jewish?”
Not the question I’d expected, especially since I was usually mistaken for something more exotic, but I was game. “Yes. You?”
“Not.” Fabian picked up a fork and began to eat directly from Rocky’s plate, halfhearted bites. “We’re Catholic,” he said, pointing at Rocky and then himself with the butt end of his fork. He turned the plate a quarter revolution, and examined what the orbit had brought him. The fork he held in the air, as though it was an instrument with which to repair Rocky’s breakfast.
“Okay,” I said agreeably.
Rocky slapped Fabian on the back. “Jews are funny,” he said.
“Maybe,” said Fabian. “Sometimes. I was just wondering.”
“Why do you care?” I asked.
“Did I ask to see your horns?” he said with some real meanness. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s funny about you.”
“Jews are funny,” Rocky repeated, “as long at they’re not too frum.”
“Too what?” I asked nervously.
He smiled broadly. Then he laughed. “Very good,” he said, though at the time I didn’t get my own joke: frum was Yiddish for observant.
Fabian didn’t get it either. He was staring me down. “Barney Sullivan,” he said. “Manny Lane. Ted Mathis—”
“Freddy,” said Rocky.
Freddy eyeballed him. “Joe Hatch. Lee Schmidt. Harry Ray. That everyone?”
“That’s it, sure,” Rock said wearily.
“His straight men,” Fabian said to me. “Of the last two years. Don’t get comfortable. Every time he meets someone new — that’s it.”
“I’ll chase after anything in a nice suit with good timing,” Rocky said. “Freddy, Freddy. Do not pin this on me. You—”
“Remember this,” Fabian told me. Now I really felt like I was busting up a marriage. He rubbed the side of his face. I couldn’t tell whether he was preparing for tears or preventing them. He said, in a small voice, “Please, Rock. Where else am I going to get a job? As a friend—”
“A good straight man can always get work,” Rocky told him.
You could hear in the silence that followed a full report on Fabian’s merits as a straight man.
Rocky slapped his ex-partner’s arm again, this time cajolingly. “You’ll do okay. You’ll do fine. Do you need money?”
Fabian was still holding the fork, which he stared into as though it would show him his future. Beg more? Beg less? He let his shoulders drop. “Do you need money, is more like it,” he said, a little too late to be cutting.
“I’m set. Boof’lo mozzarella,” Rocky said musingly.
Fabian dropped the fork and stood up. “Look.” Now he tried to play the big man. “I wish you much success. All the success in the world. This is disgusting. See you around.”
“We’ll call when we’re in Chicago,” Rocky said.
Fabian raised himself to full height, and I thought, Yeah, now I can see it, he’s got something. “What,” he said, “makes you think I’ll be there?” He pointlessly threw some dollar bills on the table, for the meal he’d never ordered, and muttered, “I always wanted to be a singer, you fat idiot.” Then Freddy Fabian exited the Busy Bee, trying to look significant. The bell jangled when he left, same as it had when he walked in.
Rocky turned to me, smiling. “Ah, Freddy,” he said. “He’s been calling me that since before I was fat. You nervous? Don’t be. You got talent. He didn’t.”
“What about the other guys?”
“Let’s see.” He closed one eye and thought. “Barney Sullivan: died — of old age — in Cleveland. Manny Lane. Married a hoofer and wanted to put her in the act, but there wasn’t room for three of us. Ted Mathis — can’t remember what happened to Ted, exactly. Hatch became a junky. Probably not my fault. Lee Schmidt stepped on my lines. Lots. Really not a straight man, more of a singer or monologist or something. Harry Ray suffered from stage fright. Freddy Fabian: couldn’t hold his liquor. Plus whenever we play Chicago, the guy works days in his father’s store and comes onstage smelling of groceries. He figures the customer’s always right, but it’s not funny if the customer’s always right. What are you worried about? You’re good. You got some things to learn, sure, but you’ll learn them. I mean, Freddy wasn’t all wrong: I will be famous. I’m funny, and I will succeed, and I’ll tell you right now, Mose Sharp, that I am not someone who sticks with a lousy act just because I like the other guy. I’ll be his friend forever, but I am a comic, not a captain. I will not go down with the ship. You and me, we won’t have that problem. You’re good. Stop! Don’t worry. You’re good, and I’m good, and together we’re better, and that’s all you need to know.”
I nodded.
“This would be a fine time to say something,” Rock said.
“Right you are,” I said, “but I’m speechless.”
“You’ll have to get over that. Now listen while I tell you of the future,” he said, and began to. We’d become headliners, we’d hit the big time, we’d move to New York. Movies, probably, though Rocky said he needed an audience to work. If you can’t hear ’em laugh, how do you know you’re funny? Carter and Fabian had a route — they were booked into houses for the next eight weeks — and Rocky figured it didn’t matter who he showed up with. He’d drunkenly wired his agent the night before.