We slashed through the coagulation of women’s perfumes and men’s hormones clogging the entrance to Oscar’s, keeping the little knot of our foreign delegation from across the tracks in tact. As we did so, Andrew said, “Last time I was here, every other person was Sally Fields.”
“Naturally,” Penelope said.
After getting close enough to the back of the large room we were able to find an open table. Nodding toward the stage, Penelope said, “Voila.”
A tall, effeminate, thirty-something man in a sweater vest was standing on it reciting the following: “...and I wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it and I can't deny the fact that you like me right now, you really... like me!" The crowd offered up its huzzahs. The man stepped down from the stage and the female hostess, a young blonde in a cocktail dress returned. “Exactly,” she said. “Great job by Timothy. Sally Fields, Best Actress, 1984.”
Before long we appeared to be barricaded from any clear passageways by people standing. A waitress materialized from the circle of black and blue fabric ringed around us. Penelope asked for a Bud Lite, a shot of Jack, and a couple of aspirin. After the waitress had taken all the orders she parted the sea of customers and asked them to keep the passage clear. I could see to the bar, above which was an enlarged replica of an Oscar statuette, and a sign that read: Oscar’s, The World's First Oscar Award Karaoke Bar.
“Hell hath no fury like you up on stage performing, darling,” Andrew said to Penelope. “Let me just tell you again: wow.”
“Author, author,” I said.
“You like me, you really like me,” she cooed.
“No kidding, your songwriting only gets better, Pen,” the Professor told her.
“Hear hear. I wish we had some glasses to clink together,” I said.
Up on stage, a tiny woman in thick glasses was reading the teleprompter and reciting: “...although some might say it's a little soon to be giving this to a guy in his early 40's, uh, I, to have known that I was going to get it particularly this year with all the...it's been very helpful around the house. I must say that, you know, if you had your choice, say Thalberg or the White House, I think I'd stick with this. I...”
Andrew nodded toward the door and said, “Look over there.”
We looked. Then we looked at him.
“Know who that is...guy with glasses wearing the blue blazer...with the other guy, and the woman?”
“Looks familiar,” I said. “Can’t get a bead on who he is or what he was in.”
“No,” the Professor said, “he’s not an actor. That’s what’s his name. What the fuck is he doing here?”
“I think he was supposed to have been on Maher tonight,” Andrew went on. “I bet the gang over there tipped him off to groovy places to go.”
“Who is it?” Penelope snapped, understandably out of patience.
“A guy named Michael Isikoff,” Andrew told her. “He’s a reporter for Newsweek. Smarmiest of the smarmy.”
“Right,” I said, looking at Penelope. “He was one of the first to blow the lid off the crime of the century...Clinton getting some biff.”
“The name means nothing to me,” she said. “He does look familiar though.”
“For a while there he was on television every time you turned around,” the Professor chimed in. “Hardball, CNN, Geraldo, blah blah blah...whoever would put his shamelessly opportunistic ass in front of a camera.”
On stage, the small woman with glasses read: “...if I may, pay tribute to the memory of my mother Kathlyn, my father Ira, and to the people who nurtured me as a child in Virginia with my sister Shirley. And beginning with..."
“Every right-winger in the country,” I said, “fed him like a Holstein for about a year, and he faithfully regurgitated it like the dependable bovine he truly was.”
Andrew said, “He never met a source he didn't find credible. Reminded me of those Washington Post and New York Times reporters on the Whitewater stuff...shaken down by every rube with a tale for sale in Arkansas.”
“If he wasn’t leaving I’d offer to buy him a drink,” the Professor said, “for driving Clinton’s popularity ratings into the upper seventies.”
Choking on a spate of coughs, and looking very exhausted, Penelope said in a damaged voice, “I must have missed him. Guess he’s not going to be my newest superhero.”
The little woman on stage went on: “It doesn't work. You have to throw it out. You gotta pick one. It just...they'll never believe it. So I would say to you, don't worry. I don't ever expect another evening like this..."
“I wish I'd had a chance to ask him what it was like to be Linda Tripp's bestus buddy and biggest megaphone,” Andrew said.
“If she's still unemployed he owes her a job at least,” I added. “Answering phones at Newsweek sounds about right.”
The waitress brought the drinks, and set them up around the table. On stage, the tiny woman in glasses finished up: "Thank you very much from way down here."
The hostess hopped the stage again, and effused, “Excellent job Suzette. Warren Beatty, Irving Thalberg Award, 1999.”
“I guess if Benjamin Bradlee could conjoin the names Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate,” Andrew said, “to make the name WOODSTEIN, old Isikoff at least deserves to be known as WORMSTEIN.” He turned toward the door and shouted loudly in his best Jason Robards imitation, “WORMSTEIN!”
In the meantime, a man with spiked green hair, and wearing a t-shirt, leather pants, and a dog collar was up on stage reciting: "...one of those people that tries to mention a lot of names, because I know just two seconds ago, my mother and father went completely berserk…and I'd like to give some other mothers and fathers…that same opportunity."
“NO PULTIZER FOR YOU, MIKE,” I yelled toward the door, though Isikoff already had departed.
“Meryl Streep, Meryl Streep, Best Actress, 1981,” the hostess declaimed from up on stage. When I looked away from it, Andrew and the Professor were staring worriedly at Penelope. Her hair still matted with sweat, and pale, she had slumped beside the Professor and fallen asleep.
“This girl is really sick,” I said.
“She sure is,” the Professor said lowering his voice. “I think this thing is right on the edge of turning into pneumonia.”
“If you let it go, you can die from that incredibly fast, once it settles in,” Andrew warned.
“We ought to finish these drinks and take her home,” I said.
“We should. Next time I see the waitress I’ll flag her over. I’ll savor this extravagantly and maliciously overpriced drink in the meantime,” Andrew said.
“Don’t worry about the price of the drinks,” said the Professor. “They’re on me.”
I saw the waitress looming, and yelped, “Waitress.”
She swiveled and barked, “Watcha need?”
“Go ahead and give us the tab,” the Professor told her. He looked down at Penelope and added, “We’ve got a sick girl on our hands.”
“Awwww.” She handed the check to the Professor who looked at it, then handed it back with a lump of bills. She thanked him, said goodnight to the rest of the table and left.
“Thing is,” said the Professor, “I don’t think we should leave her alone…not until she’s doing better. She probably needs to go to Emergi-Care. But without her permission, and considering how much it would cost, the best we can do is watch over her until she’s out of the woods. Then, if she starts looking like she’s getting into serious trouble, we can take her there, or the emergency room, STAT.”
“I’m willing,” Andrew volunteered. “I tell you though, I don’t see how we’d be able to pay for Emergi-Care. If nothing else, looking after her in her room will give us some time for figuring out how to go about scrounging up that amount of cash.”
“We need,” I said, “to cough up…oops…to come up
with the money at least for a bottle of Tylenol and a bottle of expectorant.”
“At least,” the Professor said.
“I guess we could watch her in shifts,” Andrew suggested.
“Okay, if you two guys will take the first two shifts, overnight,” the Professor said, “I’ll come in tomorrow at the crack of dawn and watch her a fair amount of time before I go to work at the bar.”
“I can sit with her for a couple of hours when we get back,” I offered.
“Since the crack of dawn is about when I normally hit the sack, filling the time between you two guys will be about right for me,” Andrew said.
“We’re assuming,” I told them, “she’s going to go along with having us in her room all that time. You know how serious she is about her privacy. She hates living with roommates so much she’s living in that place…among the other reasons.”
“I think she may be too sick to object. If she does,” said the Professor, “we’ll give her the choice of watching over her in her own room, or going directly to the emergency room. I’m pretty confident she understands we wouldn’t be so concerned unless we thought she could be in danger.”
“All right,” Andrew said, “wake her up.”
As the Professor began gently jiggling her arm hoping to arouse her, a large, muscular, heavyset man, say two hundred and forty-five, two hundred and fifty pounds was taking to the stage and beginning to recite: "...wealth, the great firmament of your nation's generosities this particular choice may perhaps be found by future generations as a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it . . . the prodigal, pure, human kindness of it . . . must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament which shines upon me..." Penelope groggily began to come to. As Andrew and the Professor softly urged her to greater alertness, I could hear the man on stage as he recited, “…at this moment, dazzling.”
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