“Milk?” said Christine, as though this were some newfangled invention.
“Scramble ’em some eggs,” said Rocky. “Dogs like eggs?” he asked Dr. Elkhorn. “I’m only guessing scrambled. Poached, maybe.”
Christine slammed her hand on the bar. “I am not poaching eggs for seventy-five dogs.”
“You’re exaggerating for no reason again. There are not seventy-five dogs. There are. .”
And then Dr. Elkhorn let go of the leads, and it sure felt like there were seventy-five dogs. They ran under chairs, they came snuffling up to ankles. One approached Rocky and began barking, for no reason I could figure, unless he thought he’d treed some weird animal in some weird chrome-trimmed elm. Another grabbed hold of my sock, didn’t pull, just bit down. One dog jumped onto a table and ran around the perimeter circus-ring style. The biggest tried to molest Archie Grace in an offhand way, as though making a pass at a crawling man was part of the theatrical canine’s code. Love, I mean to tell you, was in the air. I couldn’t imagine how such professionally well-behaved dogs could be so badly behaved off-duty, except to say that they were vaudevillians. In six months I would read in Variety that Dr. Elkhorn had poisoned those strange dogs and himself, that they’d all been found together in a hotel bed, the dogs tilting their muzzles up to their master’s chin. Well, they said Elkhorn was the murderer. Maybe it was one bright angry dog.
That night some of us knew and some of us didn’t, but vaudeville was sinking already. A few people made it out; a disaster always has survivors. I did, and Rocky, and Fred Allen and Burns & Allen and Cantor and Bert Lahr and Baby Rose Marie. More drowned. Where could Jack Robertson dance when vaudeville was over? Who’d hire an inept but buxom contortionist? And as for ventriloquists, there really was only room for one, and Edgar Bergen stepped in. There are memorials, as there should be, for soldiers killed in every war, for those who died in camps in the Holocaust, for those lost at sea. There should be one with the names of all those who disappeared when vaudeville finally died. Dr. Think-a-Drink Hoffman. The Cherry Sisters. Patine and Rose. Maybe the best of us survived, but I don’t think so.
Now, Dr. Elkhorn clapped his hands, and the dogs suddenly sat. They didn’t even pant. “Seven,” said their master in a soft voice. “Scrambled will be fine.”
By then I’d stood up, hand-in-hand with the Indian Rubber Maid, whose actual name I can’t remember. I found her coat and helped her on with it. Across the room, Rocky raised his glass to me. Helen Keller was never so suave, I wanted to tell him, but instead, still playing the dummy-about-town, I winked and walked out into the night with a sweet tipsy girl, and that, no matter what I might later tell reporters and fans and my own curious children, is the moment I knew I would be a success in show business.
The Education of a Straight Man
A fan of Carter and Sharp — and we have them still, a fan club even — would recognize the boys in our earliest performances, but just barely. Rocky wore a suit, not his trademark striped shirt, and his voice was deeper, and though you could call him fat — plenty of people besides Freddy Fabian did — he was a mere shadow of his future self. (We had terrible fights when I could no longer lift him: was he too heavy, or was I too old? Probably we met in the middle.) My offstage moniker, Professor, was still strictly offstage. What’s more, my character was a mean fop, a confidence man who saw in the poor guy an easy mark. Later I became a stern but addlepated academic.
We did our act in-one, meaning in front of the drawn curtain. Behind us, scenery shifted and scraped. Rocky threw himself around that stage, first like a feather pillow, then like a sack of potatoes, then like a ballerina who hasn’t noticed she’s gone to seed. Me, I stood still and smoked a cigarette and leaned against an imaginary lamppost, upright and nonchalant. When we were bored, we did dialect. Sometimes we sang, me seriously, Rock in mock opera. We did everything two young men could possibly do to make the audience remember us, but our material didn’t make us funny, Rocky did.
Also, I hit him a lot.
It was called a knockabout act, and the slap was our tag, the way the audience knew when to laugh. George Burns took a puff on his cigar, Will Rogers twirled his lariat, I hit Rocky: over the head, across the face. Sometimes I delivered a kick to the seat of his pants. I hated it. Rocky insisted it was hysterical. What really amused him, though, was running into someone on the street who’d seen our show and wanted to hit me, for treating that fat little fella so rough.
I learned all of his gestures: the tilted head with the hand to the ear, listening; the tilted head with the clasped hands near his knees, wrist touching wrist, deep love; hands clasped behind the tilted head, one leg cocked out, an impression of the girl who inspired this passion. The man could not hold still. There he goes sliding across the apron of the stage on one knee — two knees if it’s a tough crowd. There he is falling in a dead faint, because I’ve scared him. He hugs the proscenium arch. He hugs his straight man — briefly, because the straight man is scowling at such mush: there’s serious work to be done. When all else fails, he hugs himself, so tightly it seems like his elbows have swapped sides, so needfully one leg comes around and embraces the other. He turns to look at me — he’s terrified—and with the upstage eye, the one the audience can’t see, he winks. Then he scuttles away in his own arms, limping with crossed legs. The poor little man, don’t you love him, love him, love him?
A straight man is the fellow who spins the yo-yo. The yo-yo’s the fun part, you keep your eye on the yo-yo, but you lose interest the minute it doesn’t come back.
PROFESSOR: So here’s your salad fork, your meat fork, your fish fork, your oyster fork, your salad knife, your meat knife, your fish knife, your soup spoon, your fruit spoon. What’s the matter?
ROCKY: All this hardware, and nothing to stir my coffee with.
PROFESSOR: Pay attention. (SMACKS HIM) Coffee comes later.
ROCKY: Good. Can I have some cream?
PROFESSOR: Sure, sure.
ROCKY: And some sugar.
PROFESSOR: Okay, but pay attention.
ROCKY: I like sugar in my coffee.
PROFESSOR: Sure, who doesn’t?
ROCKY: And a doughnut.
PROFESSOR: A doughnut?
ROCKY: A cup of coffee’s sad without a doughnut.
PROFESSOR: (SMACKS ROCKY) Are you going to pay attention?
ROCKY: And maybe another doughnut.
PROFESSOR: Another doughnut?
ROCKY: To keep the first doughnut company.
PROFESSOR: You’re being ridiculous.
ROCKY: Poor lonely doughnut.
PROFESSOR: Rocky!
ROCKY: I feel sad for that doughnut.
PROFESSOR: Look. You come into the dining room. Here’s the beautiful table. What do you say to your hostess?
ROCKY: What, no doughnuts?
PROFESSOR: Now why would you say a terrible thing like that?
ROCKY: I don’t mean to be rude.
PROFESSOR: You’ll hurt her feelings, you say something like that.
ROCKY (NEAR TEARS): I’m sorry.
PROFESSOR: Okay.
ROCKY: This is the saddest story I ever heard.
PROFESSOR: What are you talking about?
ROCKY: That poor woman, and no doughnuts!
PROFESSOR: Now, look. It’s time to sit down.
(ROCKY SITS. PROF SMACKS HIM.)
PROFESSOR: Not yet! There are ladies.
ROCKY: There are ladies?
PROFESSOR: Yes, there are ladies.
ROCKY: Maybe they’re out back eating the doughnuts.
PROFESSOR: No, no. I mean imagine there are ladies.