She paused, looked out past the floodlights at the people she couldn’t see but knew were there, and smiled. “Of course, nobody here has ever done that…” A ripple of slightly self-conscious laugher flowed up toward her.
“I mean… does everyone want to become an addict?”
This small insult got a slightly larger response. She could hear a few “Yeah, why not?” and “No kidding!” exclamations from the audience.
“Of course, that reminds me of an addict I used to know…” she continued. Riffing on drugs and acting a little befuddled about the needs of patients was an integral part of her shtick. Whenever she felt uncertain about her humor, she made fun of the things that were the least funny. This invariably warmed the crowd to her. She remembered an old comic taking her aside once, years earlier when she was first trying out some of her routines, and telling her, “You know what isn’t funny? A guy on crutches with a cast on his leg. You know what’s really fuckin’ funny? A guy on crutches with a cast on his leg slipping on the ice and going ass over elbows into the air. That’ll get a laugh every time. Everybody loves someone else’s over-the-top misfortune. Keep that in mind every second you’re up there.”
So she did. Her routines made fun of heart attacks and cancer and Ebola virus. Most of the time, it worked.
“So this guy says to me, ‘Doc, what’s wrong with taking drugs?’ And I say back to him, ‘Yeah, but dog tranquilizers?’ And he kinda smiles and says, ‘Me and my dog, we’re pretty similar…”
Karen paused. “‘Yeah,’ I says to him, ‘keep snorting that stuff and you’ll be wagging your tail a lot less…’” When she said tail, she grabbed her crotch as if imitating a man masturbating.
There was a burst of laughter and some hand-clapping. This was just enough feedback to make Karen relax and feel like she had made enough of an inroad with the audience to be able to finish on a high note. She made a mental point to use that joke, a double entendre: a high note. Part of what she loved about performing was the way standing on stage in front of an audience made her slide thoughts into various compartments, as if her brain were an old apothecary’s desk with a hundred different drawers.
She went back to her imaginary addict. “And I tell him, ‘You know, you might just find yourself lifting your leg at inappropriate times…’”
Another round of laughter filled the room. Part of humor was making the people in that dark room see things-in this case a man turning himself into a dog.
“But of course, he says back to me, ‘Well, maybe I’ll be able to smell the bitches better, too.’” This line, she figured, would make the men in the room clap. It did.
Karen had warmed up, was suddenly feeling confident, had shunted the telephone message that had trailed her onto the stage into some distant, nearly forgotten place, and she took a moment to let the applause surround her. It was like being caressed, she thought.
And then a solitary whistle cut across the noise.
It was a loud, piercing sound. It was not unfamiliar to her. She had heard it before at other shows and ignored it, or joked about it. But this time-the whistle rose steadily in pitch and then abruptly shifted downward-it stopped her cold, because she put a name to it.
Wolf whistle.
She shifted her weight back and forth and took a long gulp from the bottle of water. Her imagination seized-she knew she had to find a joke, but suddenly felt crippled.
All women have heard a wolf whistle. It’s nothing more than a common thoughtless way guys have of expressing attraction. It’s been around for decades.
Wolf had never meant anything to her before. Now it did. She tried to regain composure. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. She could hear a part of her scream, Liar!
Karen fumbled with the thread of her humor.
“Of course,” she said, “the drug companies spend all their time and money researching the wrong problems. I mean, they want to cure herpes and the common cold. But what about a drug that helps women parallel-park?”
A burst of laughter erupted from the darkness.
“Or maybe a drug that cures men of their football addiction? Ladies, we could just slip it into the salsa and cheese nacho dip, and next thing we’d know the game would be off the television and the channel turned to public broadcasting’s latest adaptation of Pride and Prejudice…”
More hoots and giggles.
Karen had started to relax again, to think that the wolf whistle wasn’t the Wolf’s whistle, when she heard it a second time, blending into the general amusement.
It is, it isn’t, she thought, once again trying to grasp hold of the sound. She raised her hand to shade her eyes, trying to see past the floodlights into the audience. But it was just a darkened cavern, filled with indistinct shapes. And then she suddenly thought, The call from Red Two. It was a warning. He’s here. He’s just over there past the blinding lights. I could touch him.
He can touch me.
Karen fought panic. She struggled to keep herself centered and keep up with the comedy patter. She thought, Make a joke. Say, “Someone must be falling in love…” or some such silliness. Make that whistle into something ordinary and benign.
She couldn’t make herself do this. Instead murder overcame her imagination. Is it happening? Right now? Is he going to kill me in front of all these people?
Her hands twitched. She gulped again at the water bottle, but it was empty. She was on stage. She had nowhere to hide. A spotlight followed her every move. She wanted to say something that would extricate herself gracefully from the dais. “Well, I’ll be heading back to the ER now.” Then she thought that might trigger the Wolf. If she tried to flee, would he shoot her right then and there? Would he leap up onto the stage like some deranged John Wilkes Booth waving a knife or brandishing a pistol?
She closed her eyes. She was trapped between irrational fears. There was the fear of humiliating herself in front of an audience and the Wolf fear. She swallowed hard. She wondered if she only had seconds left to live.
“Well,” she said to the audience, forcing a grin, “that’s it for me tonight. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”
The applause would conceal the shot. So would the darkened room. There would be confusion and panic. Someone would scream, “Get a doctor!” But of course, she was the only doctor in the club, and she would be dying on the stage. And in all the tangle of irony, death, and surprise, the Wolf would slip away. She knew this, even if it made no sense. She knew that he had already made his escape plans, and he would be fast on his way to Red Two or Red Three.
Unless they were already killed.
Maybe that was the call, Karen thought. It said “1 New Message” but maybe the message was, “I’m dead.”
Karen could suddenly see two bodies. Red Two and Red Three, twisted, bloodstained, discarded. It was almost as if she had to step over them to leave the stage.
She stumbled toward the curtain. She knew she should wave at the crowd, which was continuing to applaud, but turning back was impossible. Each stride she took she imagined was her last. Her legs felt weak and unsteady. She expected to hear the sound of a gun firing and she knew that it would be the last sound she ever heard.