Authors: Jane Hill
'Hey, you look great!'
Zoey sounded, I think, surprised. But
she was right. I did look great, or at least as
near to great as it was possible for me to look; as near to
great as I'd looked in a very long time. It was
extraordinary what a few nights of deep, relaxing sleep
could do. I was doing something completely out of
character for me. I'd taken Zoey up on a last-minute
invitation, with barely a second's thought. I was doing
something spontaneous. She'd phoned that evening, and I
had answered my phone. That in itself was unusual. She'd
invited me out to watch what she called her 'Edinburgh
preview'. 'I need good unbiased feedback,' she said. 'You
seem like someone who will give me an honest opinion.
So, how about it? Want to come?'
And I had said yes, because it was the end of term, and
because I was being bold and unafraid. I said yes. And
with that spontaneous decision I drew Zoey Spiegelman
into my nightmare.
I do believe that evening was the happiest night of my
adult life to date. What a sad, constrained, tight little
life I'd led until then, if a night in the upstairs room of a
pub in Kingston-upon-Thames hanging out with a new
friend that I barely knew counted as the happiest that I'd
ever been. But I felt relaxed and calm, and also I felt
needed. Zoey explained what she meant by her Edinburgh
preview. 'I'm taking a one-woman show to the Fringe this
year. First time ever. It's a dream come true. I'm only
going for ten days, second half of the Fringe. I can't afford
anything more. I can't take any more time off. But I have
a great venue sorted, and all I need now is to get my
material together.'
The room was filling with people, mostly groups of
friends in their twenties or thirties, taking their places at
the tables that were crammed into the little room. In one
corner there was a black curtain and a microphone – the
stage area. There was an expectant hubbub. People were
chatting and reading the flyers that were on the tables, and
ordering drinks and generally getting ready to have a
good time. Zoey was jittery, full of nervous energy,
pulling at her hair, scribbling things on a piece of paper
and then onto her hand. 'Forty-five minutes I'm doing. At
least. Forty-five to fifty-five minutes it's supposed to last.
How the fuck am I supposed to remember that much
material?'
'You'll be fine, mate. Just remember, it's a narrative.
You're telling a story.' This came from a very tall skinny
guy who had manoeuvred his way across the crowded
room from the bar carrying two drinks, a pint of lager and
a pint of water. He gave the water to Zoey. He had long
dark hair and a full beard, and he looked like an elongated
Jesus. 'Just remember the story,' he said. 'One thing after
another. Follow the story. And if you forget something,
well, fuck it. It's not like the audience knows what's
supposed to come next.'
Zoey introduced us. His name was Steve. We looked at
each other, neither of us quite sure who the other was or
what we were to Zoey.
'You two are on constructive criticism duties, okay? I
want notes, feedback, thoughts. What you liked, what
you didn't like, what worked, what didn't and why. Steve,
you need to check the video camera's working. And also,
go get Beth a drink. The poor girl's parched.'
I saw her take a good look around the room, checking all
the faces, getting an idea of who was there. Steve bought me
a beer and we settled ourselves at the back of the room. He
lit a cigarette. The lights went down and the hubbub
stopped. The compère took his place in front of the curtain
and behind the microphone and started warming up the
audience. He asked for names, had some fun with the
people at the front table and told some topical jokes. Next to
me, Zoey jumped up and down on her toes, and swung her
arms around, raising her energy levels or fighting off her
nerves. She closed her eyes and took some deep breaths.
The compère introduced her: 'Ladies and gentlemen, all the
way from America, the fabulous Zoey Spiegelman!'
And with that, she ran to the front of the room and
grabbed the microphone out of its stand. With a giant
burst of nervous energy and a huge megawatt smile she
turned to the audience and shouted, 'Hey, how ya doin'?'
Zoey was good. She was very good, even better than
she'd been the last time I'd seen her. She had a gift for
making people laugh. She had a gift for making people
warm to her straight away. She was loud, but on the
chirpy, likeable side of loud. Her smile, her hair, the way
she bounced up and down, in and out of the tables at the
front, interacting with the audience – everything seemed
exactly right. She began with some of the material I'd
heard before, jokes about being an American in England.
She talked about the use of the word 'toilet' where she
would normally say 'restroom', and how – even as a blunt
American – she felt awkward about asking for the toilet in
shops. 'It's too much information. It's like going up to a
store clerk and saying, "Listen, I have an urgent need to
empty my bladder. Do you have a porcelain receptacle I
could use?'"
She talked about other people's personal space, and
how she kept accidentally invading it. She mentioned
Tube etiquette, and how she freaked people out by sitting
next to them and starting up conversations, just to be
friendly. She illustrated her point, making one of the
audience members in the front row squish up on his seat,
so she could sit next to him for a moment. 'It's not just
me,' she said. 'It's my whole country. It's the American
way. We're just trying to make friends. We invade
people's space because we're trying to be friendly. Why
do you think we went to Iraq?'
And then Zoey moved on to more personal stuff. She
talked about her marriage, how she was seduced by a
British accent. 'I thought he was just like Jeremy Irons in
Brideshead Revisited.
Turns out he was more like Jeremy
Irons in
Reversal of Fortune.'
She paused for a laugh but
there wasn't one. 'You know, the movie with Glenn Close
as his wife, and she's in a coma because maybe he
poisoned her?' She looked around the room, seemingly
unfazed by the lack of laughter. 'Too obscure? Just not
funny?'
She took an imaginary pencil to an imaginary sheet of
paper and crossed out the joke, and moved on to the next
thing; and I was really impressed by her verve and
confidence, the way she handled a joke that didn't work.
Some of the later material about her husband was very
bitter, but still funny. She'd been hurt, badly hurt,
obviously; and yet somehow she'd managed to turn it into
a joke. Perhaps it was her way of dealing with things; her
way of facing up to her past and making it safe.
Zoey came off stage all sweaty and buzzy and Steve and
I both hugged her. He spoke to her at length. He gave her
the feedback she'd asked for, some of it quite detailed.
'The Jeremy Irons thing is never going to work. Too
fucking middlebrow, and the rhythm's wrong. I know
you were wondering if Ralph Fiennes would work instead
–
English Patient
and
Schindler's List
– but I think that
would be as bad. Plus it would bring in the whole
Holocaust issue. You'd be comparing him to a fucking
Nazi, and you probably want to avoid that. I say bin it. Bin
that whole bit. You don't need it.'
Zoey nodded. She took in everything he said, a serious
look on her face. She wrote some of it down in a little
notebook. 'Thanks,' she said. 'This is great.'
They cheek-kissed and he tousled her hair. 'Gotta go,'
he said. 'I'm headlining in Soho,' and he left. Zoey turned
to me, smiling. I knew she wanted some feedback from
me, too, so I gave her some thoughts, I can't remember
what, mostly just praise. I couldn't compete with the
depth and detail of what Steve had said. And then all at
once the evening was almost over and I didn't want it to
be.
'Do you want to come back to my place for a drink?'
she said, and once again I did something I never normally
would have done. I said yes.
'Comedy is truth, exaggerated,' said Zoey, almost the
whole way through a bottle of red wine. She was at
the precise point of drunkenness where she was hyper-articulate,
verging on pretentious, without yet becoming
slurry. 'Stand-up comedy at its best is a bit like poetry.
The really good comedian finds words to express
thoughts and moments that you may not recall ever
having thought or experienced, but as soon as you hear
them, you know that you have. And so you laugh. It's
recognition. It's the joy of hearing that elusive fleeting
thought or experience expertly pinned down.'
She poured herself another glass. I had barely touched
mine. I always took care not to get drunk; not to suddenly
find myself blurting out things that I wished I hadn't said.
'Do you know what every comedian's favourite sound
is?' she asked.
I shook my head.
'The anticipatory giggle. Not the full-on laugh: the
anticipatory giggle. Because it's the start. It's the promise
of great things to come. It means the audience wants to
laugh, they're willing you to make them laugh. And then,
unless your punchline's really weak or you screw up your
timing, there's every chance that the giggles will turn into
waves of laughter spreading around the room and, on a
good night, with a great gag, an extra line, and then
maybe a surprise reversal, a twist in the tail, the waves of
laughter can feel like . . .' She took another gulp of wine
and smiled. 'It can feel like the warm ripples that go
through you when you know you are just seconds away
from an orgasm.'
'Stand-up comedy – as good as sex?'
She thought for a moment. 'Better. Sometimes. Well, I
suppose it depends on who you're having sex with.' She
downed her glass of wine and poured another, finishing
off the bottle. 'So, what did you think of Steve? Do you
think he likes me?'
And then, before I could answer, Zoey did something I
hadn't seen her do before: she blushed. 'Listen to me,' she
said. 'Thirty-three years old and I'm sounding like a high school
girl.'
Zoey's flat was in Clapham, at the very top of one of
those tall Victorian terraced houses, buried under the
eaves. I was surprised that her door only had a Yale lock,
no bolts. Despite that her place felt very safe. There was a
narrow hallway, painted the dark blue-green of the
deepest bits of the ocean, and all along it there was a series
of antique mirrors, none of them matching. The distorted
glass threw off wobbly reflections that I noticed as I
followed Zoey down the hallway. She had looped strings
of lights in the shape of chillies, stars and flowers between
the mirrors, and it seemed like the entrance to an
enchanted grotto.
The main room of the flat was a tiny bed-sitting room,
with a daybed covered with a silky quilt in a deep tobacco
brown and laden with cushions. The walls of the room
were blood-red, and covered with shelves laden with
books and DVDs and CDs. There were pictures on the
walls and objects crammed onto every surface, and one
wall was almost entirely covered with hundreds of postcards.
The womb-like room was unlike mine in almost
every way possible, except for this: it seemed to have been
designed as a safe place, a haven; a little cave for Zoey to
live in, just as much as my flat was for me.
Zoey covered her embarrassment by going into the
cupboard-like kitchen. She came back clutching another
bottle of wine, some sparkling water and a bag of posh
crisps. She opened them, poured them into a bowl and
offered them to me. I took a handful, and then found
myself asking a personal question. I didn't do this often,
because it meant running the risk of getting asked an
equally personal question in return. But this seemed like a
harmless subject. 'So, tell me about Steve. I thought you
were out of the relationship game?'
'Oh, I don't know. He seems like a good guy. He's a
comedian, too. We've done some gigs together. He's
great. Very intelligent, very interesting. It's probably
nothing serious. He's . . . someone, you know? And
sometimes you just need someone, to keep you safe.'
I thought about Danny for a moment. I wondered if he
was 'someone', and I wondered if I should tell Zoey about
him. But instead I asked her another question, a question
that I'd been wondering about since the first time I'd seen
her. It came close to breaching our pact, but I really
wanted to know. I judged that she was drunk enough not
to mind, not to notice, not to ask me a question in return.
'If your husband hurt you so much, why don't you just
forget about him and go back to America?'
'Because there's more to London than my ex-husband.
I like it here. I started my PhD here and I want to finish it.
Also, London's a great town for comedy. There's much
more chance of getting spotted here.' Another slurp of
wine. 'And, to tell you the truth, the divorce isn't final yet.
So there are still legal issues to sort out, and even if I
wanted to leave it probably wouldn't be a good idea right
now. There are still things to fight for.'
'Okay. But if he hurt you so much, why do you keep
telling jokes about him?'
'Because it helps. It's as simple as that. I don't mean
vengeance, or anything like that. What I mean is, making
it all part of my comedy routine makes it smaller in my
mind. It makes
him
smaller in my mind. It converts the
whole thing from tragedy to comedy, and that's got to be
a good thing.' Zoey looked at me, hard. 'You should try
it. You should try comedy. You should get up on stage
and tell some jokes about whatever this black cloud is
that's hanging over you. Better than therapy. A lot
cheaper, anyway. Try it. Go on, I dare you.'
'No.' The word came out very sharply, almost as a
shout. Zoey looked at me, a puzzled – almost hurt –
expression on her face. I stood up. I needed to walk
around. I needed to get out of here. I needed to go. I was
standing by the wall that was covered with postcards and
I found myself looking at them. Hawaii; Blackpool; the
Yorkshire Dales; Florida; Paris. And then one caught my
eye. Tall red girders, rising from a cloud of fog: San
Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, such a familiar scene
from my nightmares. Rivers Carillo's face flashed in front
of my eyes, the way he looked at me when I killed him, the
expression on his face: confusion, shock, almost indignation.
'Have you ever been to San Francisco?' My voice
sounded strangled as I asked Zoey the question without
looking at her.