It is one of the secrets of the performer's art, the first few seconds of darkness as you take the stage. The glare of the lights, the stinging haze of smoke, the primordial horror of walking into the naked stare of an unknown crowd. One single instant in which you absolutely have to connect with the audience, and everyone does it blind. It is the ability to make them see even when you can't that makes or breaks a career. Milton had it, always had. But it was no longer enough.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. So who's here from out of town?
"This is it, Milt. The last big show," his agent said. Bernie was young, too young, and pitched jobs in a rapid-fire monologue that was as much coke-fueled rambling as sense. "It's an older crowd, so they'll like your moldy-oldy stuff. You're nervous? Of course you're nervous. All you've got to do is go out there, do your best, and leave a pint of blood on that stage. C'mon, Milt, I know you could use the money."
Fifty years. Fifty years of Polish jokes at Sons of Italy banquets, Italian jokes at the Polish-American clubs, trying the new material at the disreputable Chinese restaurant under the highway where the patrons drank scorpion bowls and blurting the word "fuck" could bring down the house. Small audiences, the comfortable rhythm, a churchkey hanging around his neck to open the beers he'd ask the prettiest girl in the audience to fetch him from the bar. Fifty years of being "local favorite, Milton Bloom" but that wasn't enough of a base to count on as the last few barflies who remembered your name died on their stools. The calls just didn't come anymore, not even the Catskills where old comics went to die. Milt's bones ached and his heart was gone. They both knew his answer before he opened his mouth. He needed this, and the money didn't matter at all.
You think I'm overpaid?" the heart surgeon said to the mechanic, "Lemme see you fix your patient while the engine is still running!
And now he was back, and they were laughing. Really laughing. Not the polite murmur of a drinking crowd, but the real laughs of an audience who has come out to have a good time, ready to love anything and everything you're willing to give. They looked younger than he'd expected, well dressed, elegant. Sophisticated, even. He could feel their mood, feel their need, and his patter synchronized with their pulse. He knew what they wanted before they did, and he gave it to them. And in return, they fed a need that had burned in him for as long as he'd been alive, a jones for which he'd thought the stash had long since been used up.
What do you call 25 guys watching the World Series? The New York Yankees! But seriously folks...
The things that were funny fifty years ago are still funny now. It's just the stories that are different, dinosaurs becoming birds. The audience was young and beautiful, but they understood. They knew what the world had been like that had given birth to three guys walking into a bar, the farmer's daughter and the traveling salesman. They knew. And in the glow of their eyes, bathed in the sound of their merriment, he was traveling back in time with them. They were drinking him in and he would give them every last drop.
You, yes you, the gorgeous one. Could you be a sweetheart and get me a beer?
She was tall and blonde, sheathed in a dress of some slick green material that clung to her body like paint. Her fingers lingered on his wrist as she handed him the sweating bottle and her smile was hungry, appraising, an echo of years past. She licked her lips suggestively and disappeared into the crowd. He popped the bottle open with the churchkey around his neck with a flourish, the beer as cold as a river baptism.
Now there's a woman folks. If I could see her naked, I'd die happy. Of course, if you could see me naked, you'd die laughing, so there you go...
The sweat was good sweat now, working sweat, the sand out of the gears, his body loose and hot, the blood pumping. He had them, he owned them, they were his. He rode their energy higher and higher, until, with the showman's instinct, he knew there was no further he could take them, no higher gear. The night was over, and staring out into the hungry eyes in the darkness, he brought the house down.
The edge of the churchkey was razor-sharp. Holding it in one withered hand, he drew it quickly across the pale skin of his wrist. As the blood began to flow crimson down his arm, he leaned forward into the audience where a sea of laughing fangs waited to take the last thing he had to give. To finally, lovingly, take him home.
You've been a fabulous audience... Thank you, and good night.