How High We Go in the Dark(10)

City of Laughter


I had been trying to land a paying stand-up gig in Los Angeles when the Arctic plague arrived in America, infecting the children and the weak. For almost two years I paid the bills as a sanitation worker, cleaning abandoned offices and shuttered schools, while at night I tried to fill dive bars with laughter in exchange for drinks. But seriously, folks, I’d say. Tough crowd. Patrons would applaud out of politeness, to maintain the illusion keeping them whole. I had all but given up hope for real comedy work when my manager called me for the first time in months.

“Have you heard of a euthanasia park?” he asked. It was early in the morning. I was pulling on my janitorial coveralls.

I paused. Of course I had. Everyone scoffed when the governor first announced plans for an amusement park that could gently end children’s pain—roller coasters capable of lulling their passengers into unconsciousness before stopping their hearts. Critics called the proposal perverse, accused the state of giving up on the next generation.

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen the debates on the news.”

“You’ve also probably seen the plague projections. Parents are desperate,” he said. “My niece, my nephew. Hospitals can barely keep up with the treatments. There’s a waiting list at the funeral home. I don't know if you know anyone who has been affected.”

“I think my second cousin is in the hospital,” I said. “But not really.”

“Anyway, some billionaire dot-com type who lost his son bankrolled a prototype euthanasia park on the site of an old prison between here and the Bay Area. They’ve been in operation for six months.”

“Okay, what’s this have to do with me?”

“Business is picking up for them and if these recent reports about the virus mutating and infecting adults are true, then this place is going to be booming. They need staff.”

“But I’m a comedian.”

“It’s a paying job and it comes with housing,” he said. “It’s entertainment.”

“Manny,” I said, “you know my material. I talk about being a bad stereotypical East Asian—smoking pot outside of SAT prep classes, letting jocks copy my shitty math homework . . . Would I need to wear a costume?”

“I didn’t need to call,” he said. “Just check your email.”

I hung up and stared at myself in the mirror in my hazmat coveralls. But instead of leaving for work, I BitPalPrimed my parents with news of my move, something real for a change, rather than the usual lies about my next big break being right on the horizon.

“Maybe something I can be proud of,” I told my dad. “Not exactly what I imagined, but I’ll be making people laugh.”

In the background of the video chat window, I saw my mother walk in and out of my dead baby brother’s room with a vacuum. He died in a car accident about a year before the outbreak and my mother still saw his face in mine whenever she looked at me.

“Your cousin Shelby died,” my father said. “She may have infected her brothers. We don’t know. Some people say this plague is airborne and others don’t. Hard to know what to believe.”

“How are you and Mom holding up?”

“Surviving, I guess. Might stay with your auntie Kiyo. Help plan your cousin’s memorial. But I know you have work. What’s the job again?”

“It’s a firm,” I began, “that provides comfort services to sick children. I’ll be helping run their programs.” I was already bending the truth to garner some modicum of parental approval. I had always had to fight for their attention when my brother was around.

“Sounds like a good opportunity,” he said, nodding. But I could tell from his tone, the way he squinted his eyes as if he were in pain, that he either didn’t believe me or didn’t have the emotional headspace to really hear what I was saying.

A couple days later, I handed in the keys to my apartment and drove through the lifeless streets, punctuated by a handful of shops and the orange haze of wildfires over the Los Angeles foothills. The newly homeless slept in their cars. Soup kitchens attracted lines snaking through parking lots. Outside of city limits, billboards advertised funeral packages and antique barns that had been cleared for body storage or triage. No rest stops. No open diners. Jacked-up gas prices at the few remaining twenty-four-hour stations dotting the highway. I followed the uncivilized darkness of the road for hours, unable to avoid radio evangelists going on about the second coming, until I saw the park’s angelic lights in the distance.

When I climbed out of the car, I felt like I was arriving at a prison that was pretending to be something else. The barbed-wire fences remained and while the old signage had been removed from the concrete walls, the discolored outline of the words STATE PENITENTIARY was still clearly visible. Inside the park, colorful murals of children in bumper cars, riding merry-go-rounds, and plummeting down log flumes covered the walls of the administrative building beneath the words WELCOME TO THE CITY OF LAUGHTER! A rainbow painted on the linoleum led me through the halls, passing old security checkpoints turned into gift shops and concierge desks. The minimally furnished HR office had been converted from a recreation room, judging from the sofas and old board games piled to one side. Only a table and a few filing cabinets took up the remaining space, along with a floor lamp and a stack of deconstructed cubicle walls. As I approached, leaving the rainbow path, the park manager, a balding man in a silver astronaut suit, leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk.