Funny Feelings (24)

Relief, that, poetically in this little symbolic scenario of mine, will also accompany a great deal of pain.

“Once again, Meyer, I’ve been with the same woman for forty years and I’m fairly certain that she has slowly incapacitated me to the point that I am completely dependent on her for all of my thoughts and opinions. Therefore, I can only tell you that I guess it’s better to be a man with a plan than one without.”

“Thanks, Lance.”





Everyone is already seated at a table when I get to the restaurant, a fact that throws me off kilter a bit since I’m twenty minutes early. Kara, Clay, Shauna, and Fee all laugh heartily at something and that sense of resolve settles in me.

Farley won’t need me after this. And I know I’ll need to have some modicum of distance, friends or not. The one element of our relationship that can be cut is work. She was already good enough without me, but now she’ll have made a name for herself, big enough to leave no room for doubt.

“Hey!” she calls brightly when she sees me, and hops up to give me a quick hug. When she pulls away she doesn’t meet my eyes, and I wonder if she’s shocked herself with how easily she jumped to do that.

“Hey, everyone.” I shake hands and do the greeting rounds around the table.

After the waiter comes over and takes drink orders, Clay wastes no time getting into it.

“So, first things first. I have the NDAs for everyone to sign, along with additional ones for the two of you,” he nods to Fee and I. “Take them to your lawyers and send them back at your leisure.”

I give it a once over and don’t see anything unexpected, so I nod and set it back in the file and off to the side.

“How’s the new material coming along?” Shauna asks as she sips on a drink, raising her brows at Fee.

“Good. Pretty good, at least. When do you want me to have some stuff ready to test out by?”

“That’s what we wanted to meet on. I split my time between here and the Bay Area, and there are some great smaller clubs up there, too. I thought it would be a fun kind of bonding thing if we planned it all out and took the tour bus together? We could leave from here and head up north, pop into the Valley, the Bay, then head back down the coast until we get back here. Would you be up for that?” Kara asks.

“Wait—how long would we be on this? I don’t know that I can be away from home for too much consecutive time,” I say, before I can think twice about it.

“Well, we’d do it just like a regular tour. You can fly home when you need to and meet up with us when you’re available and all that. We just figured it would be fun. If we can, we’ll time the Bay Area stuff out so we can all go to one of Tyson’s games together. Kara and I talked about a series of shows spanning three weeks after the holidays,” Shauna adds.

“Yeah, and I’ll definitely have to be home during plenty of that, too. I’ve got three kids, and no nanny. Just my mom— who will probably murder my husband if I don’t show up to intervene regularly. She’s a fan of periodically boycotting English when he irritates her, and things get tense, to say the least. So you won’t be the only one leaving here and there,” Kara says.

“That sounds reasonable and fun. I’m in. Do you think you can swing it, My?” Farley asks.

Not just comedy clubs, but brainstorming and hanging with other comedians, constantly laughing and being challenged, shenanigans highly likely. Things I haven’t immersed myself in since before Hazel was born.

A tour bus. Sharing a tiny space together on wheels between hotel rooms. No breaks to escape and collect myself. Consistently being expected to be affectionate, and in all likelihood, share a room. And then, even when we come home I know she’ll want to see Hazel almost as much as I will, so we’ll have to transition right back into not being affectionate. Which will only get more difficult, seeing as I’m already dying to grab her hand right now.

“Of course.”





NOW





“It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.” - Lucille Ball





FARLEY


“Okay. Where did Clay say they’d be again?”

“Somewhere outside,” Meyer replies with a beleaguered sigh.

“Uh, it’s an outdoor mall. So…?” I start scanning the perimeter, looking for the photographers Clay said would be around.

“He didn’t exactly draw me a map, Jones,” Meyer shakes his head before muttering, “Shockingly.”

I roll my lips and nod, confirming that the last of Meyer’s patience is already slipping with this charade. And we’re only three days in.

Only a day after finalizing paperwork with Clay and ‘the team’, we met with him again for a social media consult. To summarize how that meeting went: He spent half of the time telling Meyer and I what to do, how to act, and what to post, and the other half of the time convincing us that just by injecting and circulating photos—so, just flashing our faces— people would be convinced to care.

“So essentially, you persuade people to take an interest in us— in Fee’s work— by circulating uninteresting pictures of us doing innocuous things, but then you want us to fire up this interest with more carefully curated photos that require maximum effort in order to look, in fact, effortless. Got it. Makes sense,” he’d spat.