Editor’s note: This Playboy Fiction story from author Stephen Randall was originally published in the April 1991 issue of Playboy Magazine.
Of the three logical routes Stan could take from his home to the television station where he worked, he chose the one with the most trees. He seldom varied that part of his routine, avoiding the faster, more efficient freeway and the only slightly less efficient thoroughfare in favor of a leisurely drive past homes he would never be able to afford, past the high school where the students had better cars than he would ever own, past the shopping center where he often took his wife and two young daughters to while away a Saturday afternoon. He wore a polo shirt and clean, pressed chinos—the standard uniform of a 35-year-old executive stopping by his office for a few hours on a Saturday to catch up on work or attend an urgent meeting.
He drove an older Volvo, one that ran well but otherwise showed its age. His wife had given him personalized license plates three years before—KBXT-25, they read—and at first, they made him cringe. Later, he came to like them. Since they were the call letters of the small UHF TV station that he managed, people could assume that the battered Volvo was a company car rather than simply the best he could afford.
Stan pulled the Volvo into an empty slot near the far sound stage. A few cars were already parked nearby—cars even older and more decrepit than his. They belonged to the crew. And there, of course, in all its purple garishness, was Uncle Andy Gee’s Fun Van. Andy Gee had vanity plates, too. They read FUN4KIDZ.
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He entered the garagelike studio. Tiny cameras—looking more like the ones used for home movies than for a real television show—were being wheeled into position around the Fun House set.
“Stanley, I’m so glad you’re here. This will be a very special show. I can feel it.” Uncle Andy made a sweeping gesture toward the crew. “They can all feel it, too.”
“I’m sure they do,” replied Stan softly.
Andy bounced away to a lighted mirror near the side of the set to finish putting on his clown make-up. He had enormous energy in his step, more than Stan had seen since he found out about Andy’s illness.
“Andy looks good,” said Gene, who had directed all of Uncle Andy Gee’s Fun House episodes for the past four years.
“It’s therapeutic for him, don’t you think?”
Stan nodded, but his lack of enthusiasm was obvious.
“Really,” Gene added earnestly. “It’s helped him. He looks better, he even seems to have put some weight back on. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could hold this show for months, maybe even a year.”
“We can hope so,” Stan answered.
The overhead lights came on, bathing the Fun House set in bright, artificial sunshine. A few more crew members showed up, taking their position at the coffee urn, slowly gearing up for what they knew would be a very strange day. Saul, the station’s dim-witted, portly announcer and weekend weatherman, walked in, the only person dressed in a coat and tie. He motioned for Stan to join him outside.
“Read this, Mr. B.,” he said, handing Stan the day’s script, personally written and typed by Uncle Andy himself. “Do you really want me to say this?”
“Read it to me,” said Stan. “I want to hear what it sounds like.”
Saul cocked his head and switched to his announcer’s voice: “Hello, boys and girls, and welcome to a very special visit to Uncle Andy Gee’s Fun House. Some of you may already know that Uncle Andy has been sick. As a matter of fact, Uncle Andy has been very sick with a disease that boys and girls can’t get. It’s a disease that you don’t get better from. And when you don’t get better, you die. And that’s what’s happened to Uncle Andy.”
Saul checked Stan’s face for some form of reaction, but Stan only motioned for him to continue reading. “But before he died, Uncle Andy wanted so very much to say good-bye to all the boys and girls who love the Fun House. So he taped this special show so that you and he could have one last visit together, one last chance to sing your favorite songs and play your favorite games.” Saul paused and shrugged. “Then we cue the music and I introduce him, just like always.”
“Have you seen the rest of the script?” Stan asked.
“No,” admitted Saul. “Just my part. He said no one could see the script.”
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Stan had expected as much, ever since Andy grabbed the microphone at the company picnic six weeks ago, announced that he was dying of leukemia and made an impassioned speech about his farewell show, his last chance to say goodbye to the only family he had ever had, the only people he had ever loved—his kids. Kids have to learn about death, and how to mourn, he said. “I can’t leave them without saying goodbye.” He then made Stan promise, in front of all his employees and their families, that he could tape a show to be broadcast immediately after his death. Stan had looked out at the sea of moist eyes and, feeling a little emotional himself, had given his word. He didn’t mean it, but under the circumstances, there was no choice. Even an evasive answer would have made an uncomfortable situation untenable, and the truth would have been disastrous. But unlike Stan’s other white lies and half-truths, this one was made to a dying man before 67 witnesses.
It seemed odd—to Stan, at least—how everyone believed the lie. In the days that followed, nearly every employee at the station had taken time to compliment Stan, to tell him he was doing the right thing, the brave thing, that he was helping both Uncle Andy and the children. Stan had never felt much warmth from the staff before, but now they were proud of him. He had agreed to let them be part of something historic.
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“You should talk to Andy and get him to tone down his intro,” suggested Saul. “We’ll scare the shit out of kids every time their mom or dad gets a cold.”
Saul was dumb but not significantly dumber than the rest of the staff. If we’re going to do the show, they seemed to think, then we should do it right. For Uncle Andy. For the kids. It had become a station-wide passion, welding them all together, as if Stan had ever really considered running the show on the air, as if the kids who watched KBXT needed to be dragged into Uncle Andy’s misery. Stan saw no choice but to let Andy tape his farewell show and put it in his office safe until Andy died, but he would never, under any circumstances, let anyone outside of the staff see one minute of it.
“Read it the way it is,” he told Saul. “Andy’s given this a lot of thought. We’ll let him do it his way.”
• • •
There were two sets of Andy’s kids—the ones who watched the show and the crew that worked it. Most of the cameramen, grips, sound engineers and the like were fresh out of high school and not bright enough or ambitious enough to go to college. For them, running the equipment at a TV station—even a tiny 1500-watt station in a minor market—was the best blue-collar job imaginable. Stan fantasized that they bragged about their jobs when they picked up girls, that working at KBXT was a glamour job.
Once, Stan had worked at a network affiliate in Philadelphia, on his way, he thought, to New York or L.A. and the big time. Looking back, he could never be sure what had gone wrong. Maybe he wasn’t good enough. Perhaps he lacked drive. Sometimes he felt unlucky or blamed his fate on his family—without a wife and two girls, he could have taken some more chances, ridden out the dry spells without resorting to lesser jobs at lesser stations, tarnishing his résumé so that work at a network, or even at a major station, was unlikely. Somehow, on his way to becoming Lee Iacocca, Stan had ended up selling used cars.
“Excuse me, Mr. B.,” said one of the crew kids as he pushed a barrel of prop toys past Stan. The set was alive now, the equipment was in position and the lights adjusted. Despite the situation and his own dashed career hopes, there was still something exciting about taping a TV show. Sometimes Stan had to remind himself that he really liked TV, and that it was better to run KBXT than to own a dry cleaner’s or sell frozen yogurt.
Andy was still dabbing on make-up and putting the finishing touches on his costume when Stan walked up behind him. Stan noticed that three light bulbs in the row of lights surrounding the mirror were burned out.
“I’ll get those lights fixed for you,” he said.
“That’s OK. I’ve been putting on this make-up for 37 years at 14 stations. I could do it in the dark,” answered Andy. “I assume Saul had trouble with the script.”
Maybe terminal illness makes you omniscient, thought Stan. But then he thought of his grandmother. Terminal cancer had made her bullheaded, demanding and wrong. He remembered that after one torturous visit—during which his grandmother had petulantly insisted he take away the new color TV he had brought her so she could watch her shows in black and white, the way she was used to—the private nurse took him aside and said, “Just because someone is dying doesn’t mean they’re suddenly noble and wise. They’re still just human and sometimes a little less.”
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“Why don’t we take a walk?” Stan suggested, and Andy stood and followed him outside to the parking lot. Stan in his polo shirt, chinos and deck shoes; Andy in his wide polka-dot tie, striped suspenders with flashing red diodes and a plastic carnation that sprayed water.
“Saul had a problem, yes, but I told him to leave the script as is,” said Stan, choosing honesty as a relatively new management technique. “He meant no harm. He was simply worried about scaring the kids.”
Andy seemed impatient. “What does Saul know about my children? Have you ever met his kids? They’re terrors, every one of them, and they’re even dumber than he is.”
Stan smiled. “I don’t think they’re such bad kids. Saul and Marijane have done a good job. It’s not easy raising five children.”
“Obviously not,” snapped Andy. They leaned against the wall in silence. Finally, Andy spoke. “I think you’re lying to me, Stan,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to run this show.”
“I understand why you think that, but I wouldn’t lie to you,” lied Stan. “Besides, you have a lot of friends here at the station. They heard me promise that the show would air. What would I say to them?”
“It’s not for me, you know,” Andy said. “It’s for my kids. The show is part of their lives, and if it suddenly disappeared, it would be hard on them. I think they deserve the truth, don’t you?”
“I may have had my doubts, but I’ve given you my word.”
“I feel so much love coming from those kids when I do the show. It’s real—I can feel it all around me. And when I do personal appearances…”—for the first time, Stan was watching Andy choke up while discussing his death—“I’ll miss that, I really will.”
“The kids will miss you, too,” said Stan. “We all will.” They’d discussed Andy and his kids numerous times before. Often, Andy’s egocentricity seemed charming. Other times, it was vaguely pathological. Stan was never convinced that Andy occupied a place in the hearts and minds of his young viewers that was so special it warranted this bizarre bon voyage episode, a funereal kiddie show in which Uncle Andy Gee would explain death to children, between cartoons and commercials, while wearing a clown’s costume. And not just any death, either. His own.
“We have a lot in common, Stan,” said Andy. It seemed to Stan to be a ludicrous statement. Stan was young and healthy, Andy was old and dying. Stan wore a khaki belt, Andy wore flashing suspenders. Stan was married and had a family, while Andy lived alone in a small apartment. If he had family or friends, it was a well-kept secret. “I didn’t want to end my life at KBXT. I thought I could have been Captain Kangaroo or one of the regulars on Sesame Street, but it didn’t happen. I just kept moving to smaller and smaller markets, to worse and worse TV stations. Did you know this is my first and only UHF station? I’d always been on VHF before.”
“This is my first UHF station,” said Stan. “It sounds as if you had a longer run in the big time than I did.”
“But I didn’t appreciate it. All that time, I kept wondering, What will become of me? Will I go network? It wasn’t until the doctor told me I was dying that I realized this is it. This is what became of me. My life built to Uncle Andy Gee’s Fun House, and then it stopped.
“Do you know why I’m glad I’m dying? Because this was my last stop. The day would come for you to fire me and cancel the Fun House, and that would be it. I’d never get another show. There’d be no more kids and no more money. There were days that I hated being on this two-bit station, and now I feel guilty about that. It’s not where you do the work, it’s only that you get the chance to do it. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” answered Stan. “I was marveling earlier today on how I’m always excited when we tape a show, even though I’ve been responsible for literally hundreds of shows.”
Andy smiled, having proved their similarities. “My death could be a big break for you,” he added. “My farewell show will get lots of publicity. People will think it’s a bold move. You’ll be noticed. Maybe Brandon Tartikoff will call.”
“I’d rather have you healthy,” said Stan.
“It’s too late for that,” said Andy matter-of-factly. “Did I tell you I’ve prepared a special gift for my kids? It’s a song. I wrote it a few months ago, when I found out, and I’ve been polishing it.”
“That’s nice,” said Stan. “What’s it about?”
“Death, of course. It’s called ‘I’ll Be Your Friend When I’m Gone.’”
Stan tensed but said nothing.
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“I think it’s important for my kids to know I still care, no matter what. Maybe it will become a standard, like ‘Happy Birthday,’ but they’ll play it at funerals.”
Stan looked closely at Andy. He could tell that even under a thick layer of grease paint, Andy was pale and sweating. “Do you want to rest before the show?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Andy. “I think I’ll go into the Fun Van for a while. Tell the others I’ll be a little late.”
Stan watched as Andy’s big floppy shoes disappeared into the purple van, quietly hoping that Andy would die peacefully during his nap, before the show could even be taped.
• • •
Stan returned to the studio. “Andy’s taking a nap,” he announced. “We’ll take a break until he’s ready.”
Gene, the director, had dug up a tape of Uncle Andy’s first Fun House at KBXT, and a small group gathered in the control room to watch it. It was like every other Fun House, with the possible exception of the one they were about to tape, with Andy sliding down the pole of his imaginary tree house, introducing cartoons, making dumb jokes, doing a pratfall or two, interviewing the guest du jour—a fireman, a 4-H club winner.
“What are Andy’s ratings?” asked someone.
“Not great,” answered Stan. “To be perfectly honest, he doesn’t even win his time slot with kids. More of them watch the Gimme a Break reruns on channel 11.”
It went unsaid, but Stan guessed that everyone thought he had kept Andy on out of the goodness of his heart, but in truth, nothing on the station did much better, so there was no reason to penalize Andy. While everyone thought that Uncle Andy Gee’s farewell Fun House would make television history, Stan’s secret fear was that—even if it aired—no one would notice. Given the station’s ratings, Andy could say a splashy goodbye and get nary a tear in return. Once, KBXT’s old sports reporter had gotten drunk before a newscast and accidentally switched most of the major-league baseball scores on the air, turning half a dozen losers into winners and severely confusing anyone paying attention to the pennant race. The crew told Stan what happened, and a furious Stan fired the reporter within the hour, only to feel foolish later when a mere three viewers complained. And the newscast was KBXT’s highest-rated show.
From the control booth, Stan saw Andy enter and make his way slowly to the set. He stood in the center and said, in a weak voice, “I’m ready.” The crew scurried into position and Saul bounded to the booth to read the introduction. Stan slyly rolled his chair next to the main recording unit, so that when the show was over, he could grab the master cassette and keep it from falling into other hands.
Saul read the intro with enthusiasm, and Andy slid down the pole like a young man, leaping onto center stage, his voice booming as he said, “Do you know why this show is so special, everyone? It’s because I love you all so much that I simply couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, If Uncle Andy is so sick that he died, why does he look so happy, why does he look so strong? I’m happy because I have you, and because we love one another, and because for most of my life, I’ve been able to do exactly what I wanted to do—to make kids like you happy.”
Stan watched the monitor. Despite the fact that the crew was emotionally spent—he saw the occasional tear streaking the acne-scarred faces of the young technicians—each one was doing his job. Andy was always in focus and in center frame, Gene called all the right shots and the boom man never missed a syllable. Maybe I’ve been too cynical about these guys, thought Stan. Maybe I’m the reason this is such a second-rate station. Someone with real talent and guts could make KBXT something special. Then he pondered the worst thought of all: Perhaps Andy was right—this is what has become of me, this is where I’m supposed to be.
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“There are several things I have to tell you that I think are very important,” said Andy, pacing the stage energetically. “The first is that I don’t want you to be sad, because even though I’m gone, I was lucky enough to have a wonderful life. That’s what’s important, and that’s what I want for you. Do you know how to have a wonderful life, everybody? It’s easy—just figure out what it is that you want to do and do it, no matter what other people say, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much you get paid. Do you want to be a doctor or a dancer? Do you want to play baseball or write books or sing songs?” Andy paused, glancing at the control booth. “Do you want to run a railroad or a TV station? Then do it, and do it the best that you can and do it exactly the way that you want.”
Dale Carnegie for kids. After cheering them on to greatness and telling them once again how much he loved them, Andy took out his guitar and sang “I’ll Be Your Friend When I’m Gone.” As the song faded out, the credits rolled and when Gene yelled “Cut” through the microphone, the crew stood in stunned silence, not sure whether to weep or to applaud. Andy was spent, tears were ruining his make-up and his body was hunched and shaking. His booming voice was now a whisper and he seemed to have trouble moving. A grip took him a chair, and he motioned feebly to get the crew’s attention. “I have one more favor to ask of you,” he said quietly. “I know you have all indulged me greatly, and I thank you for it. This show is very special to me, and it wouldn’t exist without our station manager. We all know that he’s destined for great things, and that’s why I’d like to ask all of you to join me in giving him a big hand for being the bravest, most adventurous station manager in the country.”
The crew turned and faced the booth, obediently applauding. Stan stood behind the protection of the glass wall and waved. He flipped on the microphone. “Andy, you’ve done a show that you can be proud of—in fact, everyone in this studio should be proud of the job they’ve done today. Now let’s get Andy some rest so that we can keep running the regular Fun House show for a long time to come.”
Part of the crew hovered over Andy attentively, and the rest started closing up the sound stage. Stan slipped the master tape into his briefcase, and as the staff started to thin, he headed for his Volvo. Saul intercepted him.
“I just wanted you to know that you were right to leave Andy’s script the way it was,” he said. “Sometimes I’m gutless, but you were right to be strong. Andy’s right—that’s why you’re going places.”
Stan put his arm on Saul’s shoulder and walked him to his car. “Give my best to Marijane and the kids,” said Stan.
“You’re doing a wonderful thing,” said Saul, his eyes red and puffy. “I hope you know that.”
Andy emerged from the sound stage, walking unassisted but surrounded, nonetheless, by his faithful crew. The kids were drained, as if they’d been to a funeral, and they wanted to say things that had meaning. They wanted to make emotional contact not only with Andy but with Stan as well. It made him feel uncomfortable, guilty for his insincerity and the ease with which he lied to Andy and his employees.
“Do you have someone to drive you home?” he asked Andy.
“No,” said Andy, smiling. “The Fun Van drives itself.”
It seemed disrespectful to leave before Uncle Andy, so Stan waited, briefcase in hand, while the Fun Van pulled out of the lot. Then the crew escorted him to his car and stood watching, like puppies, as he drove off.
Even though his wife and daughters were waiting for him, Stan again took the long way home, admiring the trees, looking at the nice cars, driving past the spacious homes.
As he drove, he allowed himself a self-indulgent fantasy. Andy dies and he runs the show. Newsweek calls and Stan is the subject of a brief but flattering story near the back of the magazine. Ted Koppel interviews him on Nightline. The phone rings and a perky female voice says, “Hold the line for Mr. Tartikoff, please.”
But there’s also reality. What will the staff say when the show never runs? How would young children cope with Andy’s tortured farewell? He thought about his own daughters and how they’d respond, if they were Fun House fans instead of regular Gimme a Break watchers. He wondered about his next job, and the one after that and the one after that, all the way to his last job. Is this, he asked himself, what has become of me, or is there something else, anything else waiting farther down the line?
He drove until he saw the biggest, nicest house on the street, the type of home he once thought he’d own by now. He rolled down the window of the Volvo and dropped the cassette of Uncle Andy’s special show out the window. Slowly, so that the neighbors would not be suspicious, he drove his car back and forth over the cassette—once, twice, three times—until the car wheels smashed the plastic casing and the tape unfurled down the street in the fall breeze. He watched for a few moments, and then headed home, knowing that starting Monday, he’d feel much more comfortable taking the freeway to work.