He is concussed.
Colbert is done for the night, so the episode is concluded with a backup interview, which the show keeps in the can in case of emergency. The guest is Ted Koppel, reminiscing about his time in the White House press corps. He covered Nixon and was there for the trip to China. Following Nixon’s visit to the Great Wall, Koppel asked Nixon what he thought about the experience. Koppel relates the president’s reply in a surprisingly good Nixon, with just a hint of his own sultry baritone. “Let it be said,” says Koppel-as-Nixon, “that this was and shall be for all time, a truly great wall.”
The audience howls. The ratings are strong. Rather than reschedule my appearance, the producers decide to invite back Koppel.
I am invited to the 92nd Street Y, as part of its “Lox and Talks” series, focusing on young Jewish writers. I am worried. The event is set for a Tuesday at lunch, and I will have no reliable supporters on hand. Q is out of town for the week at the Northeast Organic Farming Association annual convention. None of my friends can take the time from work. Even my mother, who reliably attends all of my readings, cannot make it because of a conflicting pedicure appointment. I am uncomfortable—for good luck Q has bought me new pants, which are itchy—and nervous: I expect an empty room.
But the room is not vacant. Not at all. It is brimming with alter kakers, a gaggle of old ladies sipping coffee and munching coffee cake and kibitzing about dental surgery. It is not exactly my target audience, as they say in the ad biz, but I am elated all the same. Here are real human beings gathered to hear my work. I take the stage and open to my favorite chapter—the one where Secretary of State Daniel Webster uses his rhetorical gifts to cajole President-elect Harrison into wearing a coat at his inauguration—and begin reading with verve.
“I must prove that I am the same man who triumphed at Tippecanoe,” protests the president-elect.
“You are sixty-eight years old. You will catch a cold and die.” Webster had a rich and musical voice, which I do my best to imitate. I am good but not great at impressions. I hold out hope that Jim Dale will voice the book on tape.
“You are extremely persuasive,” says Harrison.
“So I am told,” says Daniel Webster.
Harrison dons an overcoat and the rest, as they say, is history.
Fake history, but history all the same.
I see immediately that the old ladies are disappointed. It is not even what I have written, my mere speaking seems to dishearten them. I press on, but they continue to fidget in their seats and whisper to one another. One woman makes an ordeal of opening an ancient sucking candy. Another sighs a giant sigh.
I stop reading and ask, “What is wrong?”
“You are very nasal,” says a woman in the front.
“Do you have a cold?” asks another.
“I am fine.”
“Well, you should have some chicken soup anyway.”
“I do not like chicken soup.”
“You would like mine. It is the best.”
“Is my voice the issue?”
“Yes, we are surprised to hear you speaking.”
“You have never heard someone with a nasal voice?”
“No, we are surprised to hear you speaking at all.”
“It is a reading after all.”
“We came to hear Marcel Marceau read from Bip in a Book. You are not he.”
An official from the Y standing in the back hears the exchange. She explains that the rare video of one of the few readings Marceau gave before his death is being shown in the next room. Slowly, the old ladies file out. One woman remains to whom I ascribe the noblest and most empathic virtues of humanity. No doubt she too has stumbled into the wrong room. But she recognizes how vulnerable a writer makes himself when he puts his work out to the world. Even if this reading was not her first choice, as an act of basic human dignity, she perceives a duty to stay. I, in turn, am grateful for her and read with even more zeal than before.
I become apprehensive, however, when she fails to perk up at Harrison’s mention of reviving the Bank of the United States, and downright suspicious when she does not so much as chuckle at Martin Van Buren’s snoring during the second hour of the inaugural. I take a close look at her and conclude that she is either asleep or, as appears to be the case upon further reflection, dead.
Hastily, I finish the chapter and head for the door.
I want to make a quick exit from the Y and the yet-to-be-discovered corpse, but I also need to pee and I decide to make a stop at the bathroom. Here I meet Steve Martin, who is having a pee of his own at the adjacent urinal. It is a coincidence, but the sort of chance encounter that happens more often when one travels in the circle of celebrities.
Martin will be performing banjo at the end of the week, as part of a bluegrass festival at the Y, and he is here for a rehearsal. His banjo case is on the ground between his feet.
I fumble a bit as I get started. It’s the new slacks.
“Usually I wear pleated pants,” I explain to Martin, “but my girlfriend bought me flat fronts for this occasion.” He does not look up. “She couldn’t be here today,” I explain further. “She is at the Northeast Organic Farming Association annual convention in Hartford.”
“I see,” says Martin.
“I have just finished reading from my novel. Perhaps you have heard of it? It is called Time’s Broken Arrow.”
Martin shakes his head.
“I was very much influenced by Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” I say. “I think you are right that all great works, whether of art or scientific genius, are of equal merit and share the same mysterious origin. I just love the scene where Picasso’s art dealer asks the waitress whether Pablo has been to the bar and Germaine says, ‘Not yet,’ as if she knows what is going to happen in the future. I bet you get that all the time.”
“More often people prefer scenes involving the main characters.” Martin does not look up as he says this. He is concentrating.
“I also love the way you make time fungible and everything arbitrary. When Einstein shows up at the wrong bar and explains there’s just as much chance of his date wandering into the Lapin Agile as at the place they made up to meet because she thinks as he does, it’s just hilarious. It’s a brilliant play. I bet you get that all the time, too.”
“More often people prefer the movies,” he says.
“I enjoy your movies, too. My favorite is The Jerk, before you got all serious with The Spanish Prisoner and Shopgirl. I love the scene where Navin Johnson sees himself in the phone book and is so excited to see his name in print. I like Mamet as much as the next guy, but that’s just classic.”
“That seems a bit incongruous.”
It’s true. It is. I hadn’t thought about it before. I watch as he fixes himself.
“I had broccoli for lunch,” he says.
I tell this story the next day to Charlie Rose on the air and he is delighted. More accurately I perceive that he is delighted. In fact he has fallen asleep and, by coincidence, stirred during my telling of the Steve Martin story. I mistake this for delight.
Following my successful appearance on Charlie Rose, I am invited to speak at the Gramercy Park Great Books and Carrot Cake Society. The director sends me a historical pamphlet, from which I learn that the club has paid host to many of the great writers and thinkers of the day, including Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, S. J. Perelman, the Kinseys, and a young Norman Mailer. Reading between the lines, it appears the society was, in its day, a den of iniquity.