Funnymen by Ted Heller

nose, everything.
    Backstage after a show I was in his little dressing room. He had a glass of seltzer, I remember that. And he was naked except for a towel around his neck. Naked and very sweaty. Not a pleasant sight, all those red bumps and pimples and the flab. And that shlong of his, like a prize-winning carrot at a state fair.
    â€œI'm dying every single night, Danny,” he said. “Sometimes two times a night.”
    I started to say, “Ziggy, this act with Dolly—”
    â€œWhat about Dolly?! What about her?!” he snapped at me.
    Now, I had to stand my ground. Because it was her fault, not mine. I said, “Zig, I'm sorry but I think she's very stiff up there.”
    And he said, “Did it ever occur to you it might be your jokes and your songs? Maybe you're very stiff?”
    â€œShe's a lovely gal,” I lied. “She's really the sweetest thing. But she's just not funny.”And that's when it happened. He took his glass of seltzer and smashed it into the mirror right next to him, the vanity mirror. And he yelled at me. He was yelling at the top of his lungs and every pore of his body was flushed like a strawberry. Called me every name in the book. He was humiliating me—he was as loud as his mother when she sang and everyone in that hotel could probably hear it and I was shaking with fear and shame.
    It lasted ten minutes. I wiped my eyes with a handkerchief. I'm thinking to myself: I don't need this. Big deal. A few dollars a week. It's not worth it. I'll have a drink and tell him I'm quitting and if he screams at me for that I'll just walk away.
    He pours me a scotch and I thought, Okay, one more drink and then I'll tell him I'm out. So he poured me another.
    And then he went into his wallet and slapped four fifties on the vanity. And he said, “Okay, let's burn the midnight oil, Danny. Take the dough. It's yours. Jeez, just for letting me yell at you like that, you should get a grand.”
    And we worked until six in the morning and wrote completely new material. We played off each other: I'd be him and he'd be Dolly or he'd be Dolly and I'd be him. And we kept saying, “Socko stuff.” “Mucho yuks.” You know, like a Variety review. At one point we were cracking up so much he said, “Hey, Danny, you're doing so good as Dolly maybe I'll team up with you!” By the next day I'd nearly forgotten about the torrent of abuse he'd unleashed.
    The new material died. Died. You know how good this stuff was, Ted? Years later we recycled it—with some touchup work, obviously—for Ziggy and Vic's TV show.
    â€œOkay,” he told me. “I'm getting rid of that blond ball and chain.”

    SNUFFY DUBIN: He was afraid to give Dolly the heave-ho. He actually wanted me to drive up there and, one, fire her from the act, and, two, break up with her for him! He wanted me to do this!
    I say, “Ziggy, this is your doing. I ain't doing this for you. I just ain't.” And in the back of my mind is when Jimmy Powell and me had to extricate him from that girl in Newark.
    â€œCome on, Snuff,” he says.
    I tell him, “No, Zig. This is just morally and ethically wrong.”
    â€œI'll give you six hundred dollars,” he says.
    â€œMake it eight hundred plus expenses and you're on,” I told him. “And I already got a plan too.”
    He says, “Okay. Eight hundred. And hurry your tuches up here.”
    The next day I'm in Loch Sheldrake, in Dolly's hotel room. I'm looking all solemn and everything, right? I got a black suit on, my hair is slicked back, I look like John Q. Undertaker. I sit down and I take her hand and I say, “Dolly . . .” And I'm whispering too! Talking very gently, very seriously in these hushed tones. I say, “Dolly, Harry Blissman has a contract out on your life. It would really be in your best interest to skip town, to leave the act and the state and this portion of the country and maybe just