Juste pour rire/Just for laughs

Juste pour rire (just for laughs)

Will gazed out his hotel room window at the misty day, wishing he had gone to Paris instead of Montreal. Paris in July was hot, though, and full of loud American tourists.  Will was a quiet American tourist, no matter where he went.  Gwen said it was exactly this silence that made her pack her belongings and run off with Randy (“by name and by nature” the jerk bragged in his braying voice) to Seattle.  They were probably experiencing a misty day, too, Will thought, almost smiling.

The image on the roof across the way was more than “almost” smiling.  An exaggerated smiley, it would have been grinning from ear to ear if it had ears. Not the vacant ovals of earlier happy face designs, its eyes were squinched shut, as people’s did when they laughed out loud.  Was the world a happier place than it was in 1948 or the sixties?  Will thought not, but then, morose was his default mood. 

“What’re you lookin’ at?” he wondered, “and what’s so funny?”   He thought maybe even icons could experience schadenfreude, pleasure at another’s misery, but he realized how stupid that idea was.  Yes, he definitely should have gone to Paris.  Or Peoria.  Anywhere but Montreal during the comedy festival “Just for Laughs.”  He couldn’t change rooms; the town was packed with laughing people and those making them laugh in two languages.  He had sunk into inertia. That was another thing go-getter Gwen had criticized.  He could stew for days before making a decision.

“So, after all that schooling and fifteen years in practice, you think peering into people’s mouths isn’t the career of your dreams?” she had sniped, throwing her expensive wardrobe into the expensive leather luggage he’d bought for their third anniversary. “You want to be an artist?  A sculptor?  Gimme a break.  How will you pay the mortgage with ART?”  Gwen was a materialistic princess, but she had a point.  This escape could not signal the end of his career, just a hiatus, a foray into the art world.  Paris would definitely have been better.  Or maybe Prague.

Then again, Will thought, now that she was gone, he could downsize considerably. They had lived together in modest apartments until he’d been persuaded to “make her an honest woman.” Then she’d had a personality transplant along with breast implants. She had a great job as an insurance agent, but once married, she had quit

to have and raise children, but the kids didn’t appear. Gwen was not interested in fertility treatments, adoption---or going back to work. The upshot of this undiscussed decision---Will hated conflict---was that Gwen had whiled away her days spending much of his earnings on salon treatments and the gym.  She was beautiful and wanted to stay that way. Her personal trainer was the improbably sculpted Randy.  Will hoped he used steroids, with all their nasty side effects. 

A near smile teased the corners of Will’s mouth as he pictured Gwen and Randy ten years down the line. Turning away from the window, he grabbed a can of Molson from the mini-bar and tipped the contents into a tumbler.  Cheerful bubbles rose, foaming into a nice creamy head.

“Here’s to you, Randy!” he said, raising the glass to the empty room, “Maybe you’ve done me a big favor. I can’t wait to see what Princess Gwen thinks once she compares your six-pack of assets with my earnings.”  He must have been out of his mind to fall for that piece of bitter arm candy.  It must have been her gorgeous smile full of sparkling white teeth…

“Oh, knock it off, Doc,” he said, “Gwen is history. It’s time to get out and try to experience this comedy festival. I may be fun-impaired, but people can change.”

A billboard in the lobby featured the same grinning icon he saw from his room.  A crowd, each person wearing Mardi Gras style gold beads with a goofy medallion the size of a saucer, milled about, forming a sloppy line into a conference room. Will saw no one clutching tickets or wearing wristbands, and no one checking at the door. He allowed himself to be carried along with them.  About a hundred folding chairs stood before a raised stage.  The lighting dimmed, and a spotlight picked out the gleam of a microphone stand.  A harried-looking guy in an ill-fitting tuxedo began speaking. Glancing from side to side and shielding his eyes, he peered past the audience at the entrance.

“Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs…patience, please, patience, s’il vous plait….” He announced that the featured act, a duo from Beauport, was delayed and might not show up during the allotted time. He then invited anyone so inclined to consider this an open mike event. A chorus of murmuring rose as the crowd expressed their disappointment, some urging their friends to go ahead, give it a try.

Will knew no one in the crowd.  He had never done standup in his life, but impulsively, he decided he had to tell his story.  If he bombed, so what?  He walked up to the stage, where the master of ceremonies asked his name, his profession and where he was from. A tall fellow, Will ducked down to the mike and said, “I’m Dr. Wilbur Fraser, orthodontist from Plattsburgh, NY.”  The crowd laughed.  Will glanced down to see if he’d zipped his shirttail into his fly, but he hadn’t.

“My wife ran off with her personal trainer, Randy,” he continued, and someone in the audience yelled, “By name and by nature!”  The crowd laughed louder. Well, this is surreal, Will thought, but went on.

“I fell in love with my wife when we met because of her smile.  I don’t smile much myself, not because I have bad teeth,“ he said, baring his naturally perfect dentition, “but because life is real, life is earnest, as my old mother used to say. Americans and Canadians smile excessively.  Especially Americans. “  The crowd laughed extra loud at this jab at their neighbors to the south.  It was true that a lot of Canadians had made it big in comedy south of the border, in part because life in Canada really was more serious.  Will doubted this was his life’s calling, but told the whole story.

“My wife found me boring, I guess,” Will went on, warming up in response to the laughter of the faceless crowd, “even after I decided to take up art.” This elicited a

gasp, murmurs and a few nervous titters.  He expected someone with a long hook to pull him off the stage at any moment; this had to be the strangest ten minutes of his life!

Ducking closer to the mike, Will said, “Thanks for your attention,” and shuffled off the stage.  There was applause---not thunderous, but not a spattering, either, as he opened the door into the lobby and ambled into the lounge bar.

It was almost empty, but at the darker end, there was a woman whose age he estimated to be about thirty-five, possibly forty.  She was nursing a gin and tonic while staring into the mirror behind the bar.  She wore little makeup, so Will figured she was

most likely a real guest at the hotel, rather than an “escort” looking for business.

“May I?” he asked. The woman nodded, smiling. Her teeth were seriously flawed.  Will noted an uneven bite and too-small tilted lateral incisors. Well, he thought, I was fooled by a smile before, but never again. He saw no rings, no Coach handbag; maybe she was not obsessed with image. It would be too much of a sob story to relate the whole saga of Gwen and Randy, so Will remarked that he’d never done any standup comedy before and yet had been well received.

“You weren’t that great,” said the woman, whose name was Martine Dusseau, “but it was brave of you to get up there. The audience was mostly drunk. My sister and I were featured, but she got sick.” She shrugged, adding to the charm of her Quebecoise accent.

“I’m sorry about your wife.  But you aren’t, are you?”

Will sighed, “Not very.  What do you do, besides comedy?”

“I make metal sculptures out of rusty farm implements,” she said, ”for the tourists. The birds sell best.” Will had only said “art” in his confession; what an amazing coincidence. His own sculptures were tiny things of wire and plastic, the stuff of retainers, but hope warmed his heart.

Will and Martine closed the bar, exchanging room numbers. His step was light as he entered his hotel room.  Beginning to close the drapes, he was startled to see the squinch-eyed smiley across the way open its eyes wide, then send a giant-sized wink in his direction.  Tomorrow, he’d invite Martine to go to Paris, or maybe Prague, to check out the art scene. It was time to live a little, just for laughs.