Tuesday is five-dollar night at the Funny Farm. Five dollars for a murder burger. Five dollars for a Witchwick's glowing amber ale. I get up for five minutes. The audience at the farm is hostile. Some nights I get mistaken for Yize Yee, who is B-list, so I get a little special treatment. But it can also backfire. Once this happened, and when the audience member realized his mistake, he threw a mozzarella stick at my forehead. 

     I work on a bit about this fantasy I have about a man trying to murder me in my kitchen. It's a real fantasy I have almost every night. I get up for a glass of water. As I'm drinking the water, I imagine there's a professional killer behind me, pointing a semi-automatic pistol with a suppressor at the base of my skull. 

     But right before he ends me he looks at the refrigerator. It's covered in lousy child art. Mostly drawings my daughter, Junebug, did of herself holding hands with her dead mother, my dead wife. Lydia. Sweet woman. Beauty. Junebug never includes me in her family portraits. Sometimes she draws this, like, hairy creature way off in the distance, either coming out of or getting stuck in a bush.

     Anyhow, the assassin sees all my daughter's sad art, and it causes him to inspect me more carefully. I'm short. Balding. Fat butt. Nightshirt thinning. Legs in medical need of lotion. 

     "God," the assassin thinks. "This guy is too pitiful to murder. Why would someone pay me to do this?"

     "I can hear you thinking," I say, aloud, in my fantasy. "And you're right. I am pathetic. My butt is very fat, and I don't even own a television."

     "Sorry I have to do this," he says. "I'm not in charge. I'm just the messenger."

      But he discovers he can't kill me. He feels too sorry for me. The assassin looks off into the distance, wistfully. 

     "I guess I'll have to give the money back." 

     "How much did they pay to kill me?" 

     "Seventy-three dollars even," he says. 

     "O," I say. "Is that good?" 

       At this point in my set, they are flashing the red lights to get off the stage. At the very back of the room, one person laughs hysterically. Later, I find out her name is Bebe Kobayashi. Bebe is way too young for me, way too sexy. But an hour after my set, she has me pinned up against my car and is kissing me. 

       "Your jokes remind me of my great-grandpa," Bebe says. "Do you have a CD?" 

       "OCD?"

       "Your comedy. Do you have recordings?" 

       "No one would listen."

       "Has anybody ever talked to you about positive mental rehearsal?" 

       "You mean, like, think nice thoughts?" 

       "I think you need a vision board," Bebe says. "I'll help you make one." 

 

       On Thursday night, I bomb horribly. Before I can finish, the DJ is playing me off. The song is "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M. Bebe Kobayashi finds me in a dark corner. She has bought me two massive daiquiris. 

       "Drink this one fast," she says. "Then drink this one, well, fast. I thought you were hilarious." 

       "I felt like I was bombing," I say. 

       "Yeah you were definitely bombing," she says. "But I find that funny. You kept on going even though no one was laughing." 

       "Thanks," I say. 

       "Persistence can be sexy," she says. 

       A cold, long-forgotten feeling comes over me. 

       "Why are you talking to me?" I say. "I'm not a doctor or an engineer during the day. I'm not rich." 

       "I like you, Kazuki," Bebe says. "Is that allowed?" 

       "It's allowed, but does not compute." 

     "Ok," she says. "Full transparency. I come to comedy shows because I represent a roster of comedians who will pay for material that they can make work." 

       "Ah," I say. "Ok. Ouch. Who do you work for?"

       "A lot of comedians of color. A lot of women."
       "So you're broke too. Names?"

       "Ainhoa Arana, Sugar Sugai, Lulu Wagner," she says. "Sometimes, Roy Graham Foster." 

       "Roy Bananas," I say. "Jesus, ok, bye." 

       And then I get up and leave. 

       

      When I get to my car, somehow Bebe Kobayashi has beat me there. 

       "You a vampire?" I say. 

       "A what?" Bebe says. 

       "A freaking bat girl," I say. "How did you magically beat me here?" 

       "You walked the whole way around the club. I walked through the back." 

       "Ok, I don't want to talk to you anymore," I say, getting into my car. 

       Bebe lets herself in on the passenger side. In the parking lot, we talk for another hour. 

       "I get along with most people," I say. "I like Ainhoa. I like Lulu and her comedy. But Roy. It's not a small beef. I've known him ten years. If Roy saw a woman give me a compliment after a show he'd swoop in and try to sleep with her. He's a foul dude." 

       "I know you don't like him," Bebe says. "But you don't have to like him to take his money. He would give you two hundred dollars for two minutes of material that I would choose. You never have to see him." 

       "I will see him someday, and he'll be doing my jokes." 

     "Only if they work. You know as well as me, most of them don't." 

     "They're true stories. I tell them on stage so I won't thought-spiral during the day." 

     "Kazuki, the stuff you do, that only you can pull off, perfectly, I'm not going to ask you for it. That's your art. My talent, my art, is knowing who is going to make the bits work to their fullest. I'm telling you, a lot of your jokes don't fit your body or persona. Maybe when you were younger but not anymore. I'll find someone who will kill with them. Your stock as a writer rises. Everybody wins."

     "No we don't. One person wins. One person. Roy takes my best two minutes. Mike's best two minutes. Lovella's. Ian's. A bunch of other saps. He steals anything with a soul. He gives us a few thousand dollars. Bananas will make that back in a single weekend doing bits it took us months to figure out. It's a machine."

      Bebe's voice goes a little faint. "This system does privilege some comedians over others. Mostly rich ones. And it also pays my rent. I get it if you aren't game." 

       I don't. But I have a very old Asian dinosaur-brain reaction to money. To refuse it feels like I've pulled it out of Junebug's piggy bank and burned it. I've already started to think about the art camp Junebug wants to do in summer. All her current crayons are stubs. Kernels. I've started thinking Junebug is looking a little big for her dresses. I'm thinking about the emergency dental visit from last fall after she knocked out a tooth on the blacktop. I had to pay off the bill in installments. 

      "I'll give you my best five minutes," I say. "For a thousand dollars." 

      "I'll choose three," Bebe says. "And I can go as high as three hundred and fifty." 

      "Ok," I say. 

     "I really do like you," she says. "You're cute. You have a good butt." 

     Then, she leans in, kisses my cheek, and says, "Have you ever done skydiving?" 

     "No," I say. 

     "I'll take you on your birthday," she says. 

     I watch Bebe get out of my car, into her jeep, she's gone. I stare at the empty parking spot. An ambulance shrieks up the street. The Junction staff leaves, one at a time. Someone puts six enormous black bags into a green dumpster. All the lights in the lot go dark. If I stay past 3:00 A.M the babysitter begins looking around the apartment for something fun to steal. There's nothing good though. Cheddar sticks. Fruit snacks. Nothing she wants. No jewelry. No fun drugs. I am starting to fall asleep. If it is a dream it offers no resistance.