Black Cat Weekly #2

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD GIRL! by Jeff Cohen-1

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD GIRL! by Jeff CohenA Comedy Tonight Mystery

The Barb Goffman Presents series showcases modern

masterpieces of mystery, crime, and suspense selected by

acclaimed mystery author and editor Barb Goffman.

Thursday

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) and Baby Daddy (last week)

“Elliot, I’m not going to name my child ‘Harpo.’” Sharon gave me the same look she’d flashed when I first suggested she should pay me alimony in our divorce. I’d won that argument, but I wasn’t optimistic about this one.

We were standing—well, I was standing; Sharon had lowered herself into an old armchair I’d placed near the snack bar—in the lobby of Comedy Tonight, two hours before we’d open our doors to the steamy hot air of Midland Heights, New Jersey. The “air conditioning” in the theater, which was probably the prototype for the original Fedders model, was operating, but didn’t want to be obvious about it. Sharon, her belly swollen to watermelon-sized proportions, was not going to be an easy sell.

“It’s an homage to a respected artist who had a major influence on the baby’s father,” I said. Sharon and I were no longer married, but we had equal claims on the child she was carrying. Of course, possession being nine-tenths of the law, I felt a little disadvantaged at the moment.

Sharon shook her head. “No, it’s a silly name that’s going to cause the baby misery and humiliation for life.” She got a wicked smile on her face. “Besides, what if the baby’s a girl?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” I answered, having anticipated that one. “You can still use it. Oprah used it for her production company.”

“Because it’s ‘Oprah’ spelled backward,” Sharon pointed out.

“No. ‘Oprah’ is ‘Harpo’ spelled backward.”

“It’s Plan B, then,” she said.

Luckily we were interrupted, because I couldn’t immediately figure out what “Groucho” spelled backward would be (don’t do it; it’s unpronounceable). Jonathan Goodwin, our tall, skinny ticket taker/general staff member, had taken time out from his constant regimen of gazing soulfully into the eyes of Sophie Beringer, our manager (I’d recently promoted Sophie from snack bar—it’s a long story), his girlfriend. He shuffled over to where I was standing and mumbled my name.

“What is it, Jonathan?” He had the same hangdog expression he always wore, except when looking at Sophie. Not that you could really tell what his expression might be—Jonathan tends to study the carpet when communicating with people.

“Sophie says I’m ready to solo on the soda machine,” he said. Sophie had been teaching him the intricacies of the snack bar slowly and patiently (for Sophie), in anticipation of him taking over for her when she began attending classes at Princeton in the fall.

I glanced at Sharon, who gave me a look that urged some compassion for the boy. Jonathan can be exasperating, but his knowledge of classic comedy is greater even than mine, and that’s saying something. It makes him an asset in an all-comedy movie theater. So I heeded Sharon’s look and smiled my most encouraging smile.

“That’s great, Jonathan,” I told him. “Congratulations.”

Over his right shoulder, I could see Sophie at the snack bar, watching with anticipation and trying not to look like she was watching.

“Do you want to come see?” Jonathan asked, gesturing toward the snack bar.

Sharon nodded at me almost imperceptibly.

“Sure,” I said. And I followed him the fifteen feet to the snack bar as Sharon settled back into the chair and sighed.

Jonathan concentrated heavily as he poured syrup into the soda machine. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sophie, hands to her mouth, watching him intently, nodding her head a little when he stopped pouring at the right moment. Not too sweet. He turned the valve to open the flow of CO2 that carbonated the water to the spigot.

He looked at me. “What’ll it be, sir?” he asked.

It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me, because I’m not used to having Jonathan look me straight in the eye. “Um... Diet Coke,” I said after a pause.

But the voice at my right shoulder distracted me. “Mr. Freed,” said Anthony Pagliarulo, my invaluable projectionist (invaluable because he’s the only person who can coax a smooth performance out of our ancient, cranky projector). “Do you mind if I come in an hour late tomorrow?”

The fact was I didn’t mind, but Anthony hadn’t asked for time off since I’d met him, the first week I was renovating what had been the Rialto and was turning it into Comedy Tonight. Anthony had been so eager to work in the theater he’d practically lived there the first two months, bringing the dinosaur of a projector back to life lovingly and painstakingly, and then recruiting seven of his Rutgers University classmates to haul the monster up into our (then) brand-new projection booth. So time off was certainly not an unreasonable request, but an unusual one.

“Why do you need the time, Anthony?” I asked.

His cheeks puffed out, embarrassed. “I don’t have to,” he said. “I can work it out.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m just wondering.”

“I need to work on my screenplay,” Anthony said, with a tone that indicated he thought I would find that objectionable. Instead, I was just confused.

“You’re always working on a screenplay,” I answered. “What’s so different about this one?”

“It’s my senior project,” Anthony said. “I’ve got to make sure it’s right. I’ll get the reels all cued up for tomorrow before I leave tonight. It’s just an hour.”

I was about to answer but Sharon interrupted me with a small moan. I turned my head toward her in a blink, and caught her eye. “Elliot... ” she said.

I was already running toward her.

* * * *

In the movies, when a woman is about to have a baby, everything speeds up. Some lunatic goes to boil water (in the older films), or a wild chase to the hospital (in “wacky” comedies) is initiated. More babies have been born in taxicabs on the Paramount back lot than in all other taxicabs in the history of automotive transportation.

What I discovered that day was that the real experience isn’t a thing like that. I drove Sharon to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH), affiliated with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), which was a division of Rutgers—the State University of New Jersey (RTSUNJ), which is probably a satellite of the United Federation of Planets (UFP).

From Midland Heights, it took less time to drive her to the hospital than it did to read that last sentence. New Brunswick is pretty close.

Sharon, as a doctor with privileges at Robert Wood, bypassed the emergency room and was taken to the maternity wing, which was nicely renovated. “The only happy area in the whole hospital,” we were told by Jonesy, the fifty-ish maternity nurse who settled Sharon into her room.

We had a quick visit from the obstetrician on duty, Dr. Wiseman (whom we immediately dubbed “Dr. Wiseguy”), who told Sharon that “as a doctor you should have known you’re not dilated enough yet.” (Sharon later noted that “it would have been tough for me to see from that angle.”) He then predicted it would take twelve hours before our child was born.

The big dope. It only took eleven.

We couldn’t wait until Sharon’s regular obstetrician, Dr. Monica Fachette, would show up. But since Dr. Wiseguy would report to Monica that not much was going on, that would be a while.

There’s something especially jarring about watching your ex-wife go through labor with your child. In case you were wondering. One of the first things Dr. Wiseguy did was get Sharon hooked up to a monitor that would show the oncoming contractions and their projected severity.

Then he turned the monitor away from Sharon and toward me so I could see what was coming and she couldn’t.

In the beginning the contractions weren’t very severe or often and Sharon was encouraging me to let her know when they were coming. After about Hour Three, this game had lost some of its charm and she just wanted me to get her contraband.

“They won’t let me have food because they’re afraid they’ll have to knock me out for a C-section,” she said. “Get me a milkshake.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I said. “You’re a doctor. Would you let your patient have a milkshake when she was in labor?”

“I’m not an obstetrician,” she answered. For some reason that seemed to make sense at the time. I might have been a trifle nervous. I remember my hands feeling like I’d slept on them for three days. “Look. The doc thinks it’ll be like eight more hours. I can have a milkshake now.”

I refused to go fetch one and then didn’t tell her when a contraction was coming, which annoyed her even more. So, in order to get back into the good graces of a woman who had divorced me only a few years earlier, I agreed to go find some ice chips she could let melt in her mouth. Sharon suggested finding ice chips that were attached to a milkshake, and I let her think what she wanted to think.

The maternity section looked like pretty much any other area of a hospital once you got outside the individual rooms, which were homier but still had the same kind of hardware that made it look like a high-tech auto body shop. Out in the hall, it was all nursing stations and utility closets. I didn’t want to bother a nurse for ice chips, figuring I could find the cups and the freezer in question all by myself and, besides, it got me out of the room with the contraction monitor for a few more moments.

Turned out it wasn’t that easy to find an ice machine in a hospital. I considered going to the nearest hotel, which was less than a mile away, but it was a hot day and I’d probably come back with a cup full of warm water. For a woman hoping to get a milkshake it would be something of a disappointment.

There was a long hallway with patient rooms to my left as I walked. To my right were doors, mostly locked, marked “Authorized Personnel Only” and “Staff.” The fourth one had a sign reading “General Supplies,” and that seemed my best bet at least for a cup if not the ice itself, so I reached for the doorknob.

Inside among what appeared to be locked Plexiglas cabinets a man was leaning heavily against the wall, his back turned three-quarters toward me. I don’t think he heard me enter until I gasped at what I saw.

In front of him, back to the wall, was a woman in her late twenties with her eyes closed. Both of them were in hospital scrubs, and her curly blond hair was pulled back with a stretch tie and held tightly. She wasn’t making any sounds or moving independently as far as I could tell.

But there was some blood leaking onto her scrubs from her midsection, and in the man’s hand was something shiny that might have been a knife or a scalpel. That had blood on it too. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

I don’t remember whether I slammed the door behind me on my way out, but I do remember thinking that I had to choose between trying to disarm the man and getting help elsewhere, and I had clearly opted for the latter. I like to believe I was being practical when the fact is I was probably just your garden-variety coward.

There was no one in the hallway. What the heck kind of hospital was this? I’ve seen more people at midnight showings of obscure Buster Keaton shorts with no musical accompaniment. There was only one thing to do, and I did it mustering as much dignity and strength as I could.

I ran.

Luckily, hallways in hospitals aren’t very long, or at least, not without a station at which there will be people. Sure enough, the nursing station nearest Sharon’s room came up quickly, and Jonesy was behind the desk.

I am in such excellent shape that it only took me a half minute to catch my breath after maybe a twelve-yard run. But maybe you should try running while being terrified before you judge.