This One Will Kill You

This is a Story about young Edwin Duff, the world's most fantastic comedian back in the year 2070.

It was New Year's Eve and Edwin was performing one of his most famous one-nighters. He was giving a one-man comedy concert at the Utah Civic Auditorium Bowl--one of the really good bowls to play, because it had these huge machines that could mix our own low-grade air with oxygen from Mars. There was this big rubber hose that sucked the oxygen from Mars and brought it here. A few ecologists, of course, objected to this theft, since it would eventually mean the end of the planet Mars. But nobody of any importance cared much one way or the other.

Anyway, young Edwin Duff was out onstage and he was really cookin'. He'd already been performing for six hours and the audience just kept roaring and screaming for more. In fact, the screams from the audience almost cracked the huge bubble top--made up of helmets from World War Nine--that encased the bowl.

Edwin had just broken his previous attendance record by 100,000; this particular audience had reached a total of 487,000 people--not bad for Utah on a New Year's Eve. In fact. Edwin's cut for the one night would be somewhere around 33,000,000.

Unfortunately, he had to pay his agent, Howie, 73 percent of his take. Howie stood in the wings, howling with the rest of the crowd at jokes he had heard 100 times before, while through his mind passed the wonderful statistics of Edwin's successful one-nighter. But Edwin didn't mind paying 73 percent of his take to Howie. After all, it was Howie who told him never to wear a brown suit onstage. That advice had easily been the turning point in Edwin's illustrious career.

By now, Duff's pockets bulged with hotel-room keys that hordes of 12-year-old girls had thrown up to him. When he had 8000 keys in his suit pockets, Edwin made a mental note not to pick up any more, because his clothes were beginning to drag and droop all over the stage.

"Well, you can just take your radiator and give it to the police department." That was the tag line to Edwin's famous radiator story and, as usual, the people all stood up and clapped and cheered and laughed. A woman threw her baby into the air. A man clutched his heart in a paroxysm of cardiac arrest. And Howie, in the wings, yelled: "I love it! I love it!"

Edwin, however, was feeling the sweat running down his ear lobe, the tension settling in (continued on page 224)This One Will Kill You(continued from page 211) his little toe, which meant that he was beginning to tire. So he decided to do his closing number, a routine that could make an audience stand and cheer and clap for 462 hours straight.

He decided to do his imitation of Walter Brennan.

Walter Brennan! He dared not announce it, because if he did, the audience would probably pass out. Even though he'd been performing brilliantly for almost seven hours, he knew what they were waiting for: Walter Brennan. And since he was really getting tired--the sweat now dripping from both ear lobes, both little toes quivering in his socks--he knew it was time for W. B. As he stepped back to begin, a room key hit him in the middle of his forehead and fell to the stage; he quickly picked it up and stuffed it into his suit pocket and smiled, because after the show, he was going to visit each and every one of those rooms. He was going to hold and touch and tremble to the feel of every one of those 12-year-old bald-headed girls. (Hair, as we all know, had completely disappeared from the human body at ten A.M. on April 4, 2011, due to high mercury content in our drinking water.)

Edwin Duff began to remember when he first started in show business. Even then, the little girls would throw their keys onstage. How innocent he had been. "They love me. They really love me," he'd thought. He remembered that first room and looking at that beautifully shaped bald head with its accompanying Mona Lisa smile. He remembered how he'd approached her, how he'd wanted to hug her and hold her--only to hear the girl say, even as she embraced him, "Edwin, just for me, just for me.Will you do Walter Brennan in my ear?" Edwin hadn't minded the first 200,000 times he had done that number with each new 12-year-old, but after that, he grew weary of it. The audience, meanwhile, had become a great expectant hunk of humanity, and Edwin was ready to begin his routine: Walter Brennan giving the six-o'clock news.

This was the best bit in his act. Edwin adjusted the microphone inside his neck that had been installed there by a plastic surgeon, making Edwin unique among entertainers. Of course, politicians had long ago discovered the advantages of a public-address system installed right inside the mouth. But Edwin's system was shaped like a heart and when the house lights dimmed, he could trigger a special device that made heart-shaped red, orange and yellow flashes come darting out of his neck.

Sometimes Edwin would run old photographs across his face--fantastic, subliminal cuts (frankly sentimental)--of old women and little boys and dogs and working people. But not now. Now was Walter Brennan time.

He was all set. He looked out at the people and, as the sweat dripped from his ear lobes to his shoulders, the lights dimmed and Edwin's neck lit up. He cleared his throat and began his imitation of Walter Brennan giving the six-o'clock news.

Nothing, of course, could follow that, and when he was finished and had left his audience for dead, Edwin began the half-mile walk back to his dressing room, the 8001 hotel-room keys still bulging in his pockets.

"Beautiful, baby," said Howie, who clutched briefly at Edwin's warm knee before walking off to the box office to check the night's take.

Once inside his dressing room, Edwin sat down and wiped the perspiration from his head. There was a knock on the door and before he could get up to answer it, an old woman entered with her husband. Edwin smiled at her, concealing his fatigue. "Hello," he said.

The old woman seemed slightly upset. "Edwin," she said, "I sent you a note twenty years ago and you've never answered it. Why?"

"Well, I've been so busy I just haven't gotten around to it," Edwin answered.

But the old woman was not satisfied.

"That's not a good reason, Edwin," she snapped. "Why couldn't you have answered my note?"

As Duff explained about his heavy schedule, the old woman suddenly pulled out a knife and stabbed him through the heart. Edwin, a little embarrassed and in pain, just stood there, a small smile on his face, trying to show them how weary he was, hoping the woman and her husband would allow him to rest--maybe later he'd be able to give them more time and a better explanation. Perhaps he'd take them out to dinner. It was the least he could do.

Edwin wondered how he could make love and whisper his Walter Brennan to 8001 girls with a knife in his heart. Perhaps if he tried it without taking his clothes off....

"Mr. Duff," said a young man who had just wandered into the dressing room, "would you teach me all about comedy? I think you're one of the greatest comedians in the world."

"Thanks," said Edwin, trickles of blood running down his shirt. He tried not to look tired. "First of all, the important thing in comedy is you have to think funny."

"But there are no clubs anymore. There are no places to be bad. It's so hard to get started," said the young man.

"It's not easy," said Edwin.

"Now, listen to this routine. Let me know if you think it's funny. I call it my car routine."

Slowly, the dressing room began to fill. There was a young boy selling Voice of the People newspapers. Edwin fished out a 85000 bill and bought a copy.

There was a politician from Utah who slapped Edwin on the chest, driving the knife deeper into his heart.

"It's so nice of you to take the time to come back and see me," said Edwin.

There was a guided tour of little boys and girls who wanted autographed pictures. "Thank you so much for taking the time out to come by," said Edwin.

There was a 12-year-old bald-headed girl who carried a straight razor in her hand and she immediately cut of! both oi Edwin's ears, after which she smiled sweetly and said, "Hi, Edwin, do you remember me?"

Edwin looked at her slightly puzzled--whereupon she stabbed him right in the throat. With the knife in his chest and the straight razor sticking in his throat and both ears cut off, Edwin smiled that smile that says, "It's so nice of you to take the time to come back and see me." He was now down on his hands and knees, smiling and trying very hard not to die. Edwin Duff shook hands with the bald-headed young girl and said, "Yes, I remember you now."

"If you remember me," said the girl, "then what's my name?"

Edwin Duff searched his memory and then sadly shook his head. "I can't recall it right at the moment," he said, "but 1 really do remember you."

The 12-year-old girl was bitterly disappointed. "I'd hoped you'd remember my name, because it was ten years ago tonight that you did Walter Brennan in my ear. Come on, now, try to remember."

Edwin gave it his best effort, but try as he might, the only thing he could think of was how tired he was becoming, what with his loss of blood and all. "I can't recall it," he finally said.

"Oh, well," she shot back as she got ready to leave, "I guess you meet so many girls."

Edwin sprawled out on ihe floor. Barely conscious now, he saw. standing above him, the old woman and her husband, the comic, the boy selling newspapers, the 12-year-old bald-headed girl, the politician from Utah, the guided tour of little children and his agent, Howie.

"That's funny," said the comic.

"Why didn't you take a year's subscription?" said the boy selling newspapers.

"Can you drive me home?" said the bald-headed girl.

"Do you know a Jack McEveety, lives in Miami? He says he knows you," said the husband.

"Could you write With love to Barbara?" said the autograph seekers.

"Beautiful, baby," said the agent.

"Don't forget. Next time you're in Ogden, look me up," said the politician from Utah.

"Edwin Duff," said the old woman, bending over him, "why didn't you answer the note I sent you twenty years ago?"

Those were the last words he ever heard.