Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The infernal hurricane that never rests

Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;

Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.

…

Love, which exempts no one beloved from loving in their turn,

Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,

That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;

Love has conducted us onto one common death;

Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy - Inferno, canto V

November 1999, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City, NY

Packing 115 mph winds, ‘Wrong Way Lenny’ — as meteorologists called the hurricane that has been careening on a rare west-to-east track across the Caribbean Sea — keeps aiming directly at Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Some additional weakening is forecast during the next 24 hours but Lenny will remain a dangerous storm overall. We strongly encourage you to stick to the directions issued by NHC. Stay safe, stay home. [1]

The news reverberated within her ribcage and all over the living room — emptier than it ever was; a hollow she was starting to dig in anticipation of the upcoming millennium and a brand-new set of resolutions to delude herself with.

Switching channels wouldn't do it, either — everyone was talking about the ongoing disaster. She sighed at the technicalities reported by the weather person, too, which propagated all the way to her deafening ears, on the expensive couch. Where she sat. All alone.

“Classic Lenny” Her head turned from one side to the other as a bittersweet chuckle escaped her throat in her attempt to make some lightheadedness off of a tragedy — after all she was a comic; satirizing tragedies was precisely what she'd been doing most of her life.

“You were never going for good without at least trying to set those forty Puerto Ricans free of that one packed room, weren't you?” [2]

She turned the TV off. Her thumb was forceful on that red circle, yet very delicate when it got to brush the little arrows on the rewind button. She closed her eyes tightly and for a moment she wished the remote in her hand was programmed on her life, instead, allowing her to actually move back in time. She could not.

“What a mishap! How unfortunate!”

She mumbled under her breath. No one was around. She’d still whisper her thoughts, though — just in case he might be listening somehow. The way he had done decades before, when a similar menace was threatening their lives down in Florida, where they’d both happened to be taken by their respective careers – both on the verge of a quarter-life crisis; except they were past the age and late to the party, precisely as everything else in their lives.

It was the last time she saw his eyes; the last time he let her catch him stare. She didn't know it, then, although he might have had somewhat of an inkling, or an underlaying, unspoken preoccupation.

Chapter Text

Florida is one hell of a drug. Florida, can I use you up?

June 1966, Miami Beach, FL

The lights were much brighter than he recalled; ‘dazzling’, some might have said. He tried to convince himself that it was the standard intensity, he just was no longer used to it.

‘Yeah, no, fuck that’ he thought the minute he stood close enough to smell the smoke and booze, exposed – as he’d come to be – to a bunch of satisfied and intoxicated shmucks while he was left with his miserable greed and cravings.

Even the mic felt something was off, as it whined through a high-pitched screech that sent disturbing shivers down his spine – at least it got the shmucks to look up and see beyond their noses.

Yeah, the lights are brighter. And, along with staring bulbs, they burned harder than any high rush he ever rode.

“I’ve got somewhat of a top-tier gig at the end of the month [1] and, well- you know me, haven’t played venues since billboards displayed Reagan’s face in a cowboy hat rather than a tie and a Ronnie-for-governor [2] slogan next to it. So my manager shipped me all the way here, Florida, to practice my stand-up. To remove the rust, he said. Man forgot there’s paper in ‘sandpaper’; just walking on Miami Beach won’t brush the dirt away.

“And believe me, there are many things I’d rather have coming to mind when thinking ‘Ugh! It’s been a while! Let’s see if I can make it to the end, this time, and last all the way through the chag before I get busted and slammed against a wall, and someone taps their way down on me’, and I can assure you that my own act is not one of those many things. My act- well, actually my fresh routine. Yeah, yeah. I’m trying out new material. Mostly because I pawned my old notebook in ‘64 to pay bail [3]. Somewhere in Greenwich Village, a pawn shop owner is gulping PBR [4] reading the greatest jokes never told, while I’ve had to resort to writing them on cigarette cartons with a needle.

A gasp spread across the audience – what a cacophony! And how off did it sound, as opposed to the warm reverberating laughs. However, he found himself mirroring the crowd. From up the stage, from his perspective, it felt like oxygen providers suddenly decided to betray him and guzzled all his lymph rather than nurturing it. Unlike the quiet attendees, his was a gasp for life. And precisely as everything else in his damned existence, he took it with a spicy smidge of comedy.

The lights were still too darn blinding, though. They deafened the silence some further.

“Oh, you little thing!” He playfully targeted a girl on the front row. “You’re too young and full of hope for my shows. Who let you in? Didn’t mean to go all Santa’s-not-real on you. You’ve got a couple more Republican presidents and a few more of their attempts to kill off a minority to go through first. Then, when you have experienced such historical tragedy knowing there was absolutely nothing you could do but watch and burn in powerless guilt, you’ll be able to see my set and survive it, unimpressed. Except there will be no set of mine left, by then.

An echoing ‘boo’ of disappointment slithered all through the audience, menacingly, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

“Ha! Funny crowd! Are you booing because you want it all to happen within the near future, or do you want me to become immortal? ‘Cause, as lovely as it would be of you – ‘cause you meant it well, right? – I wouldn’t be so hopeful about the latter. I’ve lost thirty pounds since I got blacklisted. It’s this new Hollywood diet, you know, the one where nobody will hire you and you can’t afford food. Or electricity. Or a lease. Really trims the ego.” Theatrically, he rubbed the palm of one hand up and down his stomach immediately before running his fingers through his hair to comb it and fixing his tie.

“I know I’ve already mentioned my manager too many times tonight for him not to be my wife, or my lawyer, but I’ll have to mention him some more. See, my manager gave me a sage piece of advice – or a brand-new perspective on my condition, if you will. Want to hear it? Alright-uh, ha! He nods to me, with that manager-y look in his eyes – and, mind ya, he’s got these ghostly cloudy gray bulbs from his cataract, to which you shall add the gleam of the perpetual lacrimal fluid gathering up in his eyelids ‘cause he’s smoking his pipe much more than he’s sleepin’ and eatin’ to the point you can find his cornae on the menu of the diner around the corner, alongside other fumée specialties. Anyway, he looks up from his newsboy hat – somewhat eerie if you ask me – and he goes like, ‘Lenny! Ma man! You are not all washed-out. You are just well-rinsed. You said they cut off water, didn’t ya, man? You’re so showered you’re never gonna need one ever again!’

“Ha! Such a motivator this guy! And then he gave me The Talk. Which consisted of the basics, you know – all the classic things you need to know to be precautious, in case you forgot how to avoid unplanned outcomings. Beret a little higher now. Pipe- oh, no, not pipe. Cigar! He was sucking his cigar that time – unlit. He goes all, ‘Just one comeback plan for you, troublemaker: don’t die, don’t get arrested, don’t talk about Vietnam, don’t say anything that offends Catholics, politicians, or the guy who owns the club, and try to score the highest you can – four out of four would be great, but two out of four is also acceptable’. Which is a dangerous thing to tell a recovering addict, right? I mean, the man didn’t like it last time I did, in fact, score as high as I could. And why is he talking me into this experimental 4-step plan of his, anyway? Is it deception? Get-well-quick pills I didn’t know about?

“I am yet to decide if his PDA, disguised as upsetting terms of endearment, amuses or repulses me, but I definitely agree with the guy: it was, indeed, the smoother formula for what showbiz talk would’ve rather put this way, ‘Please don’t overdose before the big show, I need your 10% and the headline exposure’. So I was sent here. To practice jokes. Or to manage delusion after bombing. Bombing in front of the wrong people – the only thing the government and I have in common. Well, beside our visceral need to shush each other. And also, well, my bombing will go away in a few drinks and it will have harmed just my ego. The government however- it’s going to be the Nile during the Plagues all over again.

He paced across the stage, slowly; the microphone cord following each one of his tentative movements while his own shadow decided to give him a break from being tailed, as he astutely stepped into dimmer spots. He was now able to see past the first row, unblinded. The lights turned to be warm rather than burning, in the end. Maybe he wasn’t going to die tonight, after all. At least not on that stage.

“Satire is tragedy plus time”

A declaration he believed in, deeply. Enunciating it, weighing each word excruciatingly, he surprised the crowd and himself when he approached the stool at the center of the stage, eventually sitting on it. Singing Lenny would do that. Actually, only singing Lenny would do that. He never performed an act of stand-up comedy without, in fact, standing up.

The body shall be restless and uncomfortable; ready to dodge a punch and to throw it back, ready to leave, ready to put out a cigarette in whichever ashtray came the closest among the front-row tables. There is no luxury in comedy, and laughter is never granted in life. Nothing about making a living out of the satirization of one’s own misery and oppression felt like a privilege. There was absolutely no reason to afford to sit and rest – nothing allowed such feelings of carelessness. Laughing – alone, with friends, with enemies, with one passerby, alongside a bunch of strangers; laughing ain’t a birthright. It takes strength and courage to laugh. Because it takes strength and courage to have the sensibility to see the rottenness in the world and still believe deeply in one’s soul that people are inherently beautiful and capable of forgiving each other, by just sharing a good, stentorian laugh. Of course, it was also required to deal with cruelty, suffering, and excruciating pain. It was important to be comfortable sitting with the discomfort for a comic to be capable of being comfortable standing – capable of being comfortable only standing.

Hence, when he took a seat on that stool, when his limps gave in to gravity and he nurtured himself with a deep breath, he shocked everyone. He himself had seen it done only rarely, maybe once or twice. It was always because the act had turned to be driven by freewheeling and unarmored, probably drunk too, sentiments, rather than sharp, enraged, and wit foul-mouths.

That was precisely the time to hush his fury and disclose his pain.

“Take a moment to think about it, will you? Satire. Is tragedy. Plus time”

Beating the rhythm of his own enunciation, his fingers were shaking mid-air, just before resting back on his laps.

“You ever confuse NA meetings with open-mic nights? No? Just me, then. Oh, and also- mmh- where is he? Philip? Phil- oh, there you are! See, the man down there on that corner- ‘s up, buddy? Dodging the collective sharing, huh? Don’t worry, kid, Mrs. Wilson ain’t here tonight. You can sit closer and I’ll be the only one to talk. No? You comfortable over there? That’s fine, too. Later we’ll exchange tips about the best seating layout during meetings, though! A good fella’s gotta know how to enjoy himself when this many folding chairs are around but no one’s wearing a nametag, huh?

“So, satire. Satire is tragedy plus time. I’d step into a church basement or a piss-scented club and have the exact same angst boil down in my guts. Same folding chairs, same smell of burned profanity, same poisonous coffee, they both have a quite loquacious and optimistic guy named Frank, and if you hear someone say ‘This is my first time’, you know that, either case, you’re about to witness a meltdown while praying really hard for it not to be displayed as second-hand embarrassment on your face. The only difference is, one is all about healing your trauma, the other monetizing it. Either way, you give it enough time and everyone – the public, the reviewers, the stoned shmuck at the bar – will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, in my opinion. Why am I to wait? Why can’t I laugh at my own misery while I’m being miserable? Why laughing at it when I’ve supposably recovered from rock bottom already? Truth is, I have no idea. I am just as clueless as any. I will, however, continue to satirize it when I need to satirize it – or, when society needs to be pissed at me for having satirized it. But then, why am I not allowed to laugh at my own tragedies and turn them into satire, either? Why do eyebrows raise all the way up to the hairline when I make a joke about my condition? That shit’s real and it’s mine.

“See? Same delusion coming from both. It’s just, uhm- people don’t want to feel uncomfortable these days. And if they do feel uncomfortable, they will make it your problem. You walk into NA, they hand you a cup of coffee and say, ‘Come back’. You walk into an open-mic, they hand you a drink ticket and say, ‘Don’t suck’. Same welcome, same pity smile, same unbothered, gum-chewing door-greeter-y chick. Besides, NA and open-mic both start the same way: a shmuck stands up, clears his throat, and immediately regrets every decision that led him to that position. Except, in NA you say, ‘I’m powerless over my addiction’; at open-mic, you say, ‘Hello, I’m a comedian’. Same sentence, just dressed in a trench coat and an outdated ego.

“And if you’ve ever been busted, though, you even keep it on – the coat, not the ego; the ego has long since deserted you by the time you’re thrown in the back of a police car, believe me. You keep it with all your belongings weighting in your pockets, pulling you to the ground. You know, just in case there’s a bunch of undercover cops watching your set, waiting eagerly for you to say some obscenity, they call it that, and lock you in [5]. Not as eager as the audience, though; especially the ones who’d come to see you in the first place just in greedy hope you would get busted and they’d have an amusing anecdote to tell their friends. But I’m not an anecdote, and I certainly do not enjoy keeping my coat on all the time. Seriously, it’s sweltering in here! And this humidity in Florida ain’t helping. Therefore, to this I shall say, strike it all and to hell with that! I am not a comedian. I… am Lenny Bruce. [6]

Chapter Text

My friends all smell like weed or little babies

June 1966, Miami Beach, FL

Miriam Weissman hated speechlessness. And she also hated silence.

Blame it on the loudest Jewish family who ever inhabited the Upper West Side, or on an apartment full of kids, both hers and friends’ – whichever the reason, she was not used to quietness, nor did she enjoy it. She’s never got a tender heart for situations that would astound her – she hated the concept of jumping back having let something impress her. She could not accept admitting she did not have a comeback. Therefore, when she heard the familiar freewheeling voice, both in tone and arguments, she nearly chocked on ice cubes. Miram Weissman also hated short-notice surprises; she could not stand the idea of having prepared for something that eventually got replaced by a new scenario she hadn’t think of, hence prepared for.

She wanted to yell at Susie, or punch her, or both – third time within the last twenty-four hours. Her manager had booked her at the Gaslight – oh, dear old place! – and she knew very well that club had always been both her blessing and her curse. Call it whatever – a sneak preview, a hometown homage, a summer special – I don’t give a hoot, but that’s what you’re doing. Show your folks that you haven’t forgotten them. ‘Tis good for the people, ‘tis good for the biz – God knows which motherfucker would get his decision-making compass all nice and lubricated and convince himself it’s a good idea to buy a ticket for your Carnegie shows.

Gee, thanks! was her only reply, along with a scornful chuckle. Little did she know that her run-through that night was hardly the place to practice her improvisational skills and to try out some experimental material; among the audience, some Carnegie representatives and bookers were destined to change their mind about their upcoming guest, having witnessed a rakish woman perform such a licentious act and wishing no such kind of obscenity to walk on their stage.

I had a doctor appointment just the other day – been tryna talk the guy into giving me the pill, you know – and he asked, ‘Are you sure you want to take the pill? It might upset your hormonal balance and encourage you to have sex’ Honey, the only thing to be upset here will be my unsatisfied horny cunt if you don’t prescribe me that damn pill! And then, he even said that it might entice me into corrupt acts – yeah, he actually called it that! As if my acts of any kind are holy, anyway. So I looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘Doc, I’ve been having sex since Eisenhower’s first time to accidentally swear to break in and usurp the POCUS office – and the second time he did that, I was still having sex! [1] I just want to stop naming my orgasms after people from the Torah, who also happen to be people I’d run into in Temple every Shabbat’. Didn’t work, though. He went on and on about the Pope’s visit to New York last fall [2] – which slightly offended me, to be frank, as I am a proud Jew to begin with and, secondly, a former make-up counter girl at B. Altman who strongly believes that white works awfully with his complexion and would also recommend to lose that hat as it makes him look silly! Anyway, back to my doc and the reason why I am restlessly unhinged right now (or, why you have to put up with this insane, horny woman and pretend you take some pity on her). That guy quoted the Pope – said birth control is a sin, then recited some shit off the Bible or something. Again, I look him straight in the eyes – at which point I start to wonder why it worked no wonder on him, anyway, which also makes me think about his sex life for a couple minutes, before I realize that’s not what I was there for – and I snap back to my sad horniness and say, ‘Sin this and sin that – forcing a woman to have five kids and no orgasm is the real sin!’

And that was, among numerous scenarios, the very occurrence wherein she’d declare herself the most feral silence-hater. Bombing. It always upset her. Seeing someone bomb, too. Someone good, someone bad – as long as it wasn’t a misogynistic, all-knowing white man in a suit, she hated the lack of responsiveness, the crickets instead of feigned support.

If they don’t laugh, if they don’t like your act, it’s you they don’t like!

More than anything, though, Miriam Weissman hated being caught off guard. Strike that, she hated to seem off guard. Which is why she’d often play it safe to the point it’d almost turn into playing unfairly. Afterall, mama didn’t raise no pussies.

There, in a club in Florida, embedded in a lonely booth on the farthest back like a once-shiny stone in a long-forgotten wedding ring, she sighed and, as the night show was coming to an end, she came to realize how she now had to deal with a silence so uncomfortable because it came from her. And eventually, she had to make peace with that – something neither Miriam Weissman nor Midge Maisel was good at.

Her glass stood empty on the table, judging her and the open notebook she was tiredly doodling on. There was no proof that alcohol actually swam in the drink her glass once contained, as she’d long since gulped it down erasing any trace. Or so she thought.

She moved her left wrist, which had been resting lazily on the page, so to cover away the last entries she’d made before being shipped down to Florida. It was a joke; one that, gladly or not, she didn’t end up saying in her last set.

Johnson said we’re going to protect the Vietnamese and then sent off 19-year-olds to die while killing. Bombing people into democracy? That’s like fucking someone into virginity! The only thing Johnson’s actually protecting here is his cocktail napkin with Nixon’s private phone number on it.

A lazy chuckle escaped her mouth, quietly. After all, she still was her own supporter. She stopped writing easy, unfunny things just to please who couldn’t deal with her uncomfortable wit.

On the opposite page, together with the untold joke, the result of the last hour of rumination was disclosed, too. Her drawings appeared scattered in strong-smelling, bronze, half-wet drops, making it look like a Seurat’s painting. The ‘unhinged alcoholic’ allegations she had been facing lately would actually be incriminating only if one were to give a look at her notebook – and no one under any circumstance was to come anywhere near it, ever. Well, no one except for one person. But even that became too lame to count. That was her old notebook – her Survival Guide to Piss-Scented Clubs, Sober-Up-Quick Morning-After Emergencies, Misogynistic Dicks, and a Good-Laugh Feedback for Aspiring Reversed-Chauvinist, Battleaxe Viragines from Bronx Disguised as Upper-West-Side Housewives in Distress.

This one, though – it was her new notebook, her new guide. Blue and practical; unofficially titled How to Talk Dirty and Get Away with It [3].

She closed her little joke book and looked up to meet her distorted, magnified reflection on the empty glass and whatever was left of ice cubes. Amidst the hallucinating-like trance, she still stayed well aware of the weight hanging on her head like one really-sharp, really-sardonic Damocles’ sword – procrastinating uncomfortable feelings always carried more discomfort than going through the annoyance of actually dealing with them.

She sighed. Alright, Midge. It’s time.

Standing up and adjusting her dress, she noticed how she had had an advantage over the man at the bar, who was smoothing his jacket and ordering nothing but seltzer. She’d been watching him – scrutinizing him – with the discretion and precision of a marksman. She just wasn’t good at shooting. Not this target.

However availing, she didn’t seem to come up with anything catchy. Only lameness orbited in her brain. Yet again, she seemed off guard. The worst thing being, she actually was such, too.

“Two comics walk into a bar” She declared with a bright smile and captivating eyes as she balanced herself down her catwalk to him – if she couldn’t count on original lines, she’d put everything on her appearance, then.

She leaned on the counter; one elbow determinedly anchored on the wooden bar as she eyed the empty stool but didn’t sit yet. He looked astonished, puzzled. She couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. She could see he hadn’t been well, though. From up close, she could see he was scrawny; there were important circles around his eyes, expanding all the way down the lids – the very proof of his insomnia and sickness. He looked just as pale as her own milky skin – only, much sharper. His features were highlighted by the roughness around his edges. Picasso would’ve loved to paint his portrait, she thought, alongside Humphrey Bogart’s of course.

She saw his lip tug up on one corner, eventually; it foreshadowed what happened next. “And neither one has anything funny to say” He concluded the way it felt more fit to him, or them actually – words she wasn’t expecting left her flabbergasted now.

She’d heard the rumors, she’d heard the news – which she was just confirmed by his act. Even before tonight, she was no stranger to the latest outcomings of his life – hell, she even saw the signs of the aftermath herself; she just wasn’t educated on the subject yet. Still, his humor was just as trenchant as ever. It stung with an accuracy that made it excruciating to bear – no matter that it was the actual truth.

Lenny always saw right through her, right through people. The Prophet, many called him that. She wouldn’t agree, though – there was a hint of martyrdom to it which, she felt positive in her gut, he was not thrilled to be associated to, nor was he zealous of having his profanity sanctified just for the sake of making it appetible. The Mirror fit him better. He reflected back just what stood before him. He wasn’t sick Lenny; he was Lenny pointing out society’s sickness. Similarly, it wasn’t unfunny Lenny, nor was he a dismissive version of himself that would’ve rather screamed, ‘I can’t talk to you right now, please go away’.

Neither one of them, right there and then, had anything funny to say – her line was lame, it aged like the potential of their relationship; his comeback was lazy, tired, running out of the will to spend his energy on it. Yet, the most exact anyone could come up with.

She stared. What gave her the confidence to do so, she didn’t know. Maybe she wanted to search his eyes and play a game of spot-the-differences. A blurred vision of their bodies touching just enough to make their slow waltz feel like performing Noh theatre danced in the back of her mind, where the most fragile of her memories were stored. What’s changed since the last time she pronounced those words – I just can’t think of anything funny to say – such a vulnerable confession he couldn’t help but concur with? Everything has. Everything, except Florida.

Midge chuckled briefly, hiding the nervousness that was reddening her face in a shameful blush by lowering her head down on her chest. She took the chance to take a seat next to him and gesture the bartender for a gin martini. ‘Up, with olive’ he thought to himself, in unison with the melody of her voice placing the order.

“Should I expect Shirley Temple in person to show up at some point?” She nodded to his drink. He chuckled shyly, not yet down to terms with how he was feeling.

“No. But it’s better this way. You would have to expect my manager, otherwise, and I can assure you the guy is not that much of a delight to have around”

“Yeah? I heard he doesn’t take good care of his cataract. It makes his glances look intimidatingly eerie, they say”

He looked up at her, his neck sustaining his head carrying his own eyes all the way to hers. It felt blasphemous to feel that way – like Jesus carrying his own cross, parading it down his way to his death, knowing he’s carrying precisely the means of his destruction; likewise, he felt his stares were giving himself away as agonizingly as Jesus’s cross. He was a common, mortal man, though. He wasn’t enough of a big guy when it came to the feeling of shamefulness.

“Y- you, uhm- you saw my act?”

May sobriety be damned! He thought to himself, catching a glimpse of his flashed cheeks on the distorted reflection his lighter was showing. That ‘cheesy feeling thing’ – as he’d refer to his newly discovered sensibility in one-on-one meetings with Mrs. Wilson – got much more revealing since sobriety.

“I saw your act” she confirmed, unknowingly shaking him back to reality.

He nodded, fingers wrapped tight around the glass and eyes floating on his seltzer. She tilted her head to the side, searching for the best sight of his face she could get. He felt that. A pink cloud of finely-sewn fabric was orbiting on his periphery; he breathed in and out, slowly, to the rhythm of the alcoholic, warm breath he felt on his wrist. He looked up. Exactly what she was waiting for.

“Hello, Lenny”

“Hello, Midge”

Matching whispers, twinning eyes.

“What’d you think of my act?” He asked tentatively, brushing his thumb just beneath his lower lip – always counter-Michel-Poiccard of him – like the old times. And, precisely like the old times, he disguised it as a self-confidence trademark although he’d actually been doing it for as long as he could recall to scratch his nervousness and shyness away. After all, from time to time, he could still hear Mrs. Kaufman’s voice calling him out on that. ‘Lenny,’ she’d say, ‘Stop scratching your chin! You won’t grow a beard, otherwise, and girls will think you are an eternal child!’ Oh, Mrs. Kaufman – God bless her; how disappointed would she be if she were alive to be acquainted with the boy he turned out to be. Just a tall child, really.

Her voice snapped him back to reality, again. “Wow. Just like that? I usually start with some small talk. How have you been? Who's got gout?”

He chuckled. Of course she remembers. Miriam has never failed to take up on his cues, especially if they were a comic set-up.

“Well! Life is short. Talk about me.”

Midge smiled in bittersweetness; she read between those thick, rigid lines and she wished to be mistaken.

“It’s nice to see you, Lenny”

It was the first real thing she said all night – including when, earlier in the evening, she’d found herself on a date with an exceptionally unfunny, conservative man who bragged incessantly about his stamp collection right before he mocked her as she was ‘probably nodding just out of womanly politeness’ given that ‘you ladies don’t collect anything- or, well- shoes, I guess’. Not even her sharp comeback – Yeah, shoes and voting rights; we collect both now – escaped her mouth with the same authenticity and total lack of social filters as those simple words that were just been told to Lenny. The genuineness in her sparkly eyes pinched his heart. He nodded in response.

“Nice to see you, too, Midge”

Her hair whirled like a wheel as it followed her head shake in disapproval. “Nah- uh. It is, it is nice. To see you”

“I had caught that!” he fought. “To answer your question, though, Uncle Elijah’s got gout. And I’ve been ok; I’m standing quite fine”

“Said the man who sat” Midge smirked, after having thanked the waiter who served her drink and having gulped a sip of it.

“Hey! I stood for ten not-so-tight minutes. Let the elderly rest!”

She chuckled, shaking her head. One last gulp of her drink and she eyed his glass – empty. Her hand approached his arm, then, as carefully as one would approach a stray dog that looks like it is about to attack and run away in terror just the same.

Her palm rested on the smooth fabric of his jacket, causing him to flinch and turn. “Yeah?”

“Do you- uhm, can we… talk? Yeah, can we talk?”

‘Sure. Let me just complete this last Hebrew Language assignment and I’ll be all ears’ The joke solidified on the tip of his tongue, clearer and more defined as time passed. However, he ended up swallowing it back, forcefully, among the dry lump in his throat. Lenny’s eyebrow frowned up in his signature expression of bitterness and confusion. Grieving the unfunniest joke he ever thought about, as well as a level of affinity he and Midge seemed to have swapped in favor of uneasy unfamiliarity, he pointed out, “Aren’t we already?”

Her head shook again, perfectly smoothly, from side to side – it felt like admiring a ballerina pirouette. “Can we talk talk?” she clarified.

“Ha!”

That laugh – so startling it was almost pleasant – and the solid background of the sharp clasp of his hands.

“Mr. Bruce is feeling dethroned off her supremacy over the group of people entitled to give me The Talk. Schmucks are corrupting the youth nowadays”

“So I heard” Midge expelled her amusement through a messy laugh and a few slaps on his arm. “Sally [4] will forgive me, though. She is amiable and she thinks I’m hilarious, so get your ass off the stool!”

She hopped off of hers barely a blink of an eye later, aiming for his trench coat laid down on the counter.

“Quick, quick!” impellent and impatient for something that would probably turn out to be not even that big a deal – classic Midge.

“Yes, Ma’am. Do you happen to know when Leni Riefenstahl will be back to work, though? Don’t take it personally, but I liked her ways better”

She ignored him. She just held his coat up to speed up their getaway and helped him into it. With his arm hooked safely around hers, they fled. If such could be called their fast-paced walk. Years weighted on their shoulders, slowing them down just enough for them to feel the nostalgia come in waves, hitting harshly with the realization – they weren’t in their 20s anymore.

Chapter Text

They’ll send us away to a little home in Florida

June 1966, Miami Beach, FL

“How do you know my mother, anyway?”

Still catching his breath and gripping tightly on the railing to balance himself, Lenny stepped out of the metaphorical fogginess that wrapped the two of them during such a romantic escape – although it was nothing like the last time they had made quite a romantic exit, which, instead, did involve an actual aura around them; it was coming from the snowstorm that had caught them the very night a police raid couldn’t.

“Saw one of my shows at the Copa a few years ago” Midge shrugged one shoulder, her milky face all flushed as she gasped for regular intakes of air.

“She did? Mhmh!” His forehead wrinkled in a pensive expression; something she couldn’t grasp the weight of.

“What?” She dared. He shook it off, patting his coat for his cigarettes. He pulled out one and balanced it between his lips, now searching for his lighter.

“I was nervous as for if and how to bring up and satisfy my nicotine cravings” Midge said, as if she were asked. He scoffed and proceeded to light it. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of his first drag. It was a peculiar presence. He only breathed that way when he’d take the first puff off his first smoke in a while and when he’d show up out of the blue – sneak attacks, he’d call them that – and lock eyes with her. It was a muffled breath, adorned with an aftertaste of relief and finally resolved aching.

When her eyelids retired to the back of her pupils again, Midge could see he’d been holding his cigarette out to her. She looked at it, puzzled, like it was just the tiny dot above which she’d placed a huge question mark – ‘what are you trying to do?’ seemed to be her inquiry, her judgment.

“It’s tobacco, nothing different from what it looks like” he declared defensively. He withdrew in his own coat, sinking into the collar, feeling naked and ashamed. If Midge, of all people, was staring at him half-astounded and half-disgusted after he’d offered her his smoke, then he feared there was no place on planet Earth where he would be forgiven for his own misery, ever. 

She shook her head, shaking her paralysis away, too. “N- no. No, no. I- didn’t- I wasn’t, I wasn’t insinuating, I- uh-”

He breathed out through his nose, scoffing to hide the newly inflicted stab. He then stayed silent – until she reached for his cigarette and he watched her take a drag.

“I’m an addict,” he declared and, man, did those words taste funny when they rolled out his tongue in a place that wasn’t a church basement full of folding chairs, burnt coffee, and miserable people with nametags on their shirts. “On multiple fronts” he pointed out.

Her eyes met his, eventually. That declaration, a vulnerable whispered confession against the loud rumors on headlines, it shook something inside her. It almost made her cough and choke on smoke, actually – which gave him just the perfect chance to reclaim his cigarette and fidget with it.

“That doesn’t mean I use my untreated addictions to cheat and relapse back into the ones I am recovering from” A guarantee? A justification? A defensive comeback to what was perceived as an attack? She wasn’t sure; not until he added, “There’d be a guy named Frank who would take my sobriety chip away, which I think is quite fashionable and have grown attached to. And there’d also be a sad and disappointed look on Janet’s face, and I really wouldn’t like that because- see, Janet is this nice old lady who gives the biggest smiles when you make eye-contact and sneaks the yummiest snacks to meetings – which she shares profusely because she believes human needs should not be expected to follow a schedule – so that you can indulge in some refreshments any time before coffee break. I would never deliberately disappoint Janet! I couldn’t do that!”

Her head stopped shaking dismissively, trying to show the misunderstanding. Instead, her chin aligned perfectly to the inclination of the cigarette dangling from his lips again – her eyes flew up to his only once he stopped his blabbering.

“I am sorry” She blew out to the wind, with the same accidental rasps in it. “I- I didn’t mean, it wasn’t my intention, Lenny. I just-” a quick cough cleared her throat as she swallowed the raspiness. “I was just-”

She hadn’t noticed it before, the tie. The tie. She knew that tie. Pitch black, split in half by a white dash-line. He’d worn it precisely to Florida, six years back. He’d then worn it again as he was leaving the East coast – permanently, she’d feared, and up until this notorious night, she was right. She had made fun of it, of course. ‘Looks like the sewing line from this angle. Might make people think you’ve worn it on the wrong side,’ she had pointed out after tilting her head, a misdemeanor she didn’t know the actual pondering of – their staring contest was too much of a rush to include a time for rules- and faux-making. He had shrugged at her observation. ‘Might make people think I am actually cut and sewn in half, keeping the unwanted presences away’

“You were just what?”

Eyes still stuck to his tie, she had to make a real effort to pause her memory – possibly never returning to it, not throughout the night at least. She just hoped she’d remember she’s left it stand-by and would be rewinding it all over.

“Resuming you” She whispered, as if easing out of a trance. Maybe she was.

“Resuming me?”

“Yeah” Eyes on him now. Something in the tone of his voice made her feel like she wasn’t sounding either reasonable nor sane.

“What does that even mean?”

She shrugged it off, waving it away and stealing the half cigarette from his lips.

“Oh, come on! What does it mean? Don’t drop and flee like that!”

“Look who’s talking! Mr. Crystal Clear Expression, ladies and gentlemen!”

It escaped her mouth in a distinct muffled sound that constituted her voice whenever she would talk right after taking a drag of smoke, which she couldn’t release in time to deliver her unapologetic thoughts and was, therefore, being held hostage somewhere in the back of her throat. He loved that particular pitch; he thought it made her voice sound round, and soft, and sweet.

“Fine. I’ll tell mine and you’ll tell yours, deal?”

Midge hummed affirmatively through nicotine.

“Why are you here, Midge?”

She coughed, then chuckled scornfully. Of course it would be something trivial and completely unrelated. “Is this your explanation for the vagueness?”

“Why are you here?”

As if she never said a thing. As a movie scene that was cut off the film because it wasn’t that significant after all. That’s how he seemed to react.

Midge sighed, dropping her shoulders and blowing out the last puff of smoke, before putting the cigarette out altogether. “Got a foul, dirty mouth that cost me Carnegie, so basically nothing new, nothing you wouldn’t know.” She blew on the remaining ashes atop the cigarette bottom before looking up at him. “Susie literally shipped me and a random suitcase full of just lingerie down here. Must’ve slipped her mind that Florida is soon-to-be hit by a hurricane. Or maybe she thought, ‘You know what? To hell with that altogether. Things get lost in hurricanes anyway’. Whatever” She waved off. “Shove some Tits Up at as many in-your-opinion handsome men as you need to pull yourself back together and then get your ass back here, she told me that. Honestly, it was just extremely disturbing to hear her discuss heterosexual sex utterly disgust-free. Well, kind of”

He chuckled, perfectly capable of picturing a quite accurate scene; all the innuendoes went unacknowledged, they almost became irrelevant, shadowed by her humor. ‘I need you to look me in the eye first and promise that you will never, ever forget that I am very, very funny’ And how could he ever? When he’d assured, ‘First and foremost’, this is exactly what he meant. It never even crossed his mind that there might be anything to see but a wild comic and a hilarious woman whenever he looked at her.

“Carnegie, huh?” Lenny breathed out his pleasant surprise as if it was the delightful, tiny cloud escaping one’s mouth in the freezing weather. He did find it impressive for her to be already booked at Carnegie – although what impressed him the most was how effortlessly she’d outdone herself and outrun himself as withholder of the honorary title of ‘Obscene, Must-Be-Censored Comic’. He was boiling in curiosity, too. There was some intense attraction between his mind and whatever it is she must’ve said to get kicked out of such a gig and forced to exile in Florida. And he was dying to know. Dying for one more laugh. Not the audience’s this time, but his own. He was dying for a chance to step off the stage, on this side of the microphone, and sit – sit and let someone else be in charge of making sure he’d have a good laugh.

“Have you talked about pregnancy again?”

“Quite the contrary!”

“You talked about childlessness? Chastity?” an eyebrow flung up to the most rebel of his curls, hanging the lowest.

She started walking, wordlessly. At first, he thought she was just pacing – she’d do that a lot; as if following her spoken thoughts alone wasn’t that challenging of an activity already. It was only when his stare caught her a couple feet past what he’d consider a normal distance to roam that he realized she was probably just asking to be followed.

She stopped on her feet, turned around and gently gestured for him to catch up with her, just before delivering the very line that got him to stop half-way there, “Yeah, and the nuns got upset because they felt the cultural appropriation was profanely insulting and kicked me out”

He left out a laugh. A loud, joyful, authentic laugh. It’d been months since he experienced one of those. It was the kind of cackle he hardly ever had. And it was precisely what he had been craving since the early years of his career. But he’d never admit it. Because for him there was some kind of shame, even, to it.

The most embarrassing sounds came out of him when he’d cackle – even more embarrassing than the desperate pleas that’d messily leave his mouth during sex. Because sex was instinctual in a way that could never compare to the ultimate climax, the nirvana, that laughter constituted. And to him, laughter had always wielded much more power than an orgasm. Finding a woman to come with, to him, was always second place to finding a woman to laugh with. Something about the moist of sweat and seminal fluids was nothing intimate compared to the remarkable symphony that came from two unpolished, rustic laughs that were unbothered enough to just be genuine and careless.

He did catch up with her, at last; his thumb picking at his chin was on the verge to cause dramatic bleeding. “It was just the same ol’ classic, you know – the Pope and sex, the Pope and the pill.” She eventually revealed. “Johnson being a wuss sucker for Nixon” Her palm waved it off like it was nothing, but that last line caused him to stomp on his feet all over again.

Midge turned around, feeling a sense of vertiginous hollowness around her, a void that wasn’t there before. Or, maybe, she didn’t feel the shadow that was following her just a moment earlier.

Her eyes bumped into Lenny’s slim figure towering over her, just a couple feet back. She didn’t even have the time to translate her confused, raised eyebrows into words, that he bowed theatrically and delivered a quite distinctive line, “Chapeau, Mrs. Maisel.”

“Well, thank you, Sir.”

“They’re getting back to you soon, though; you know that, right?” He was quick to break the sudden silence that had fallen upon them. “Give it time. Those shmucks will reach out the minute they see some place bigger give you the spotlight, trust me. I’ve been there, too, and that’s what they do. But none of what you lost matters; you actually didn’t lose a thing”

She chuckled softly, mostly to herself really. “Is there some place bigger than Carnegie, anyway?”

Lenny reached for her arm and gently interrupted her seemingly aimless walk with a loose grip around her wrist. “For you?” he started once he was sure she was looking at him. “For you, they’d build one. Someday soon. Mark my words”

She smiled. And it was just as sincere as the one she gave him the time he’d called her – actually, her act – sensational.

“Thank you,” she whispered through just the same emotional hoarseness. She coughed, clearing her throat. “Now shall you enlighten me about the reason of your mysteriousness?”

“Shall I escort you to a sitting, maybe eating or drinking, place before getting down to business?” Lenny proposed, keeping up with her pace once he’d registered that she was already on her way to this yet-to-be-defined sitting-maybe-eating-or-drinking place.

“That was my job for the night. I called dibs on it the moment I walked up to you. So you’re going to have to find a smarter way to procrastinate your point, I fear”

“You know Miami Beach?” Left eyebrow curved up in his signature expression of a peculiar mixture of confusion and disbelief. She cracked a short, sharp laugh before turning around to face him and walk a few of her steps backwards – just to look at him when she delivered her answer.

“Well, I’ve had a chance or two to find my way around it since the marvelous wife-or-sister gag of 1960, Mister”

“Elated to follow your lead, then”

“Weren’t you scared of following a girl? Everywhere, I also recall” Midge teased, turning on her feet and back on her way towards a destination that looked vividly precise in her mind and cluelessly vague in his.

He cracked up one more joke – the one thing he was sure he had a blurred idea as for how it’s done.

“Grew out of it. I’m a big boy now”

When that sky rains fire on you

And you're persona non grata,

I'll tell you how I've been there too

And that none of it matters.

Chapter Text

Moon over Miami, shine on my love and me

June 1966, Miami Beach, FL

It was pleasantly humid in the lobby of her hotel, where they sat on cushioned chairs around the lowest coffee table he had ever seen. There wasn’t the usual stickiness to the Floridan air in that particular building of Miami Beach; he found that refreshing.

Only a few people were around – which was maybe the reason for the unexpectedly lively humidity. Everyone – especially guests from the top floors – was busy carrying their bags back and forth, bunking in the sheltered first floor of the hotel, in preparation for the upcoming hurricane [1] – although the forecast hadn’t placed its passage until a few more days.

She watched him, observed him twirling his glass of soda and gulp the sparkling drink down along with all the sugar in it. She just sat there, on the arm of a chair opposite to his, only a coffee table between them. Balancing on her seat should have felt easier – her show corset was wisely stored in her drawers in New York, humidity-free. However, she still had a hard time staying still, being centered without sliding on one side and then the other. Her looser undergarment and the rumbling in her stomach revoked the most aching snippets of the most painful events of her life. A certain blue room, a certain storm. Some wet clothes against the skin and two wet bodies against each other. So she admired, silently, though definitely not still.

However, he didn’t notice her stare; not before he placed his glass down on the table and looked up at her.

“You’re staring” he pointed out tentatively. She chuckled, breathing out of her nose, turning her head slightly away. “Oh boy,” she whispered to herself. The humor left the moment she locked eyes with him again and realized that was it – it was time, she shall speak.

“Lenny,” Midge called out unsurely, through the hoarseness of a weak heart and a drunken body. He turned to her, eyes full of guiltless questions. She twitched. Like his glance was an itch, or a sudden pinch. Like his stare was something she couldn’t face. How do you lie to that? How do you tell the truth, too?

She took a deep breath; her shoulders rose all the way to her ears and then fell down defeated by gravity. She could feel her corset surrender, too. Though not as suffocating as the ones she’d reserve for stage time, the corset she was wearing was still to keep her up and straight, which it seemed to no longer wish to do, especially given how everything in her was making resistance to such efforts.

Her eyes darted frenetically in every direction – an open-eyed REM phase, except she felt on the verge of a seizure rather than sleep. The deep breath she took dissolved into thin air – what a vain effort she had made! Her chest rose up and down too quickly. The inflation of her lungs was suddenly an even vainer effort; she didn’t seem to hold it in, as if her lungs were a flat tire refusing to let air in and shape it. It happened to her only twice before – when Joel walked out of their (well, his father’s) classic-six apartment one night in ’58, when she came clear with Benjamin about her night-life secret career.

Turns out, the third time is a charm. Her eyes flew wide open; her pupils swung hectically from one side to the other, resembling a malfunctioning pendulum clock that has been beating seconds as if in a rush. And just like those two previous times, she’d blurted out the truth through her hiccupped panic, eyes long past the ability to make out structures from the shapes running before her. “I saw you in San Francisco”

A burning whirligig spun effervescently all over her stomach. When she swallowed, it itched like acid. “Last summer. Basin Street West, San Francisco [2]. I- uhm, I was there”

Eyes resting now, flying up to his. She had anticipated a disappointment that she was surprised wasn’t there. He was struggling with recalling the event. It seemed like his mind couldn’t pick that particular day from the archive of the tens of thousands he’d lived.

“Susie talked to you backstage” she added tentatively. His brows flung up to his hairline as his mouth rounded in resolution.

“Oh. Yeah. I knew you were” he waved off, now struggling to understand the relevance of it and why it caused her such panic.

“Susie told you, didn’t she?” Her ears growing red with rage again. Two times did Susie play behind her back concerning Lenny; she did not enjoy either.

He shook his head. She jumped back in surprise – had anyone ever noticed that she hated being caught off guard?

“You saw me? I swear I tried to dress less like me and I even stood in the back. I knew I should have picked another color, any other color. I look ghostly in white. It’s such a cursed color, too. The worst things in my life happened when I was wearing white. Starting from my wedding, including my semi-naked meltdown on the side of the road after Shy fired me, and going all the way to your metaphorical sucker-punch reality check at Carnegie, right centerstage– legitimate, but still painful. Actually, no, strike this chronology. It all started on the day Mama told me You are a lady now – keep your knees shut, your chest out, and your stomach in. Oh, and here’s a measuring tape – make sure you’ll stay as close to the size you are today as possible. And if you’re in pain, it means you haven’t tied your corset tight enough. Like, seriously? I don’t know who made the poorer decision then – my mother passing on her seeming wisdom on mannerism and the proper way to conduct yourself as a woman, or me, who chose to still wear white on the very first day of my period. Not that smart of you, Midge, you really could have-”

He smirked slightly, in tenderness – it really just was bitterness, though; or a byway past the sour bile going up and down his throat as he was inevitably picturing every single episode she had reminisced. Bending over to rest his arms on his laps, he gently raised his palm to stop her blabbering. “I didn’t” he confessed quietly, hence the closeness. “But I’m sure you looked fabulous whatever you did put on”

He was playing pretend – pretend you didn’t hear, pretend she didn’t say, pretend you heard it wrong, pretend she’s not talking about herself. He wasn’t that good at pretending. He was good at making things light, though – well, for anyone else but himself. He knew how to crack a joke. Even the cops who have arrested him that far would sometime have a hard time hiding the smirk tugging at the corner of their mouths. He was glad this quality of his didn’t vanish over time. Because it brought beautiful sightings on her face. She blushed a little; her teeth scraped the inside of her cheeks, up high on her face that it almost squeezed her eyes into tiny peanuts. She looked aside.

He didn’t. His eyes lingered on her, unapologetic and loud. The rawest desire irradiated through his chest – the same visceral yearn that got him to watch Midge’s set although he knew it would make her nervous, the same that later got him to take in the unabridged sight of her small body wrapped in her show corset, her dress pooling around her ankles. It was a voyeuristic urge – one that he liked to disguise as his self-definition of ‘observer of the human condition’.

“How’d you know, then? Who told you?” Midge gathered up enough goodwill to pull herself together and investigate some further, hoping to blame the alcohol if it was pointed out to her that her cheeks had become a quite noticeable shade of peach.

“No one” Lenny shrugged mindlessly. “No one had to. In the modest number of times we crossed paths, not once did I see Susie without a cigarette. And each one of those times she’d reached out – it was never not about you.”

Her heart tweaked; she actually felt it skip a beat and then rush in the useless attempt at catching up. “You’ve got a quite excruciating way of pulling back the emerald curtain, let me tell you.” She confessed, trying to hide the few grains of vulnerability she managed to keep undisclosed.

“What can I say? I am a sucker for the human condition. After all, I do observational comedy. It implies there’s observation in observational”

“You’re up” Midge declared soon after, passing the spotlight although this felt more like a confessional stream of consciousness to be whispered rather than delivered into a microphone – there was nothing funny or hilarious about it; just a good amount of pain and scary, hence self-censored, definitions.

Lenny placed his glass on the table, biding time while also practicing damage-preservation – God knows he would’ve dropped it at some point, and he surely was too broke to afford the fixing of his most careless mistakes; although they seemed to be exactly the ones that killed him the most and had the worst outcomes.

“You asked Susie, did you not?”

“I asked her what?”

“She said people owed her favors. She wanted to waste those on me. It was you, though, wasn’t it?”

“I-” words failed her, which was rare. She sat there, suddenly feeling the cushions beneath her too frail to hold her composure – too soft to keep her cool on her behalf. Midge let gravity – and a modest amount of dizziness – slide her off the arm of the chair, sinking onto the black hole that was the backrest. She stared and blinked, wordlessly.

“She told you she had extra favors to spend on someone and offered one to you, to get Carnegie back. Great talent-management choice, by the way. She should have listened to her gut, not her stubborn client. Because you turned it down, didn’t you? You turned it down and suggested you two go check if Dirty Lenny hadn’t OD’d yet, instead. And when it was well established that, in fact, he had not, you sent her in to talk me into accepting her offer”

Air got stuck somewhere between her lungs and her nose; breathing never felt so mechanical and forced. She swallowed.

“Am I wrong?”

Her blinking eyes stayed wide open for a second, fixating on his. Her head moved from one side to the other, so slightly it was almost imperceptible. “No” she rasped.

The last gulp of alcohol burning down her throat, a quick cough and she gave it a better try. “No” she repeated, “You’re not”

Lenny nodded, mostly to himself in affirmation of his past speculations. All the little hypotheses he’d conjured up in his head were now to be re-written with a permanent marker. Too many nuanced coincidences constituted their relationship – whichever label one wanted to put on it; that was a nuanced issue, too. At such point, he thought all that nuance must be plain enough to confidently impress it in ink on paper rather than draft it with a pencil.

“Were you ashamed of me?” He suggested, pondering which way to lay the questions spinning in his head. “Or for me?”

Midge’s eyebrows furrowed at the center of her forehead, confused. “No. Of course not” Her voice came out in rasp, sore pain.

“Scared?” He tried again.

“Of you?” The ghost of a smile was haunting her pink, thin lips – oh, the hours he had spent, through the months following the blue-room events, picture-watching; a frame with Midge’s photograph in it, which he had obtained from clippings, would rest between his fingers as he’d let himself wonder how could those lips be that thin yet feel incredibly soft and captivating, almost overwhelming, as if his tongue was made specifically to slide smoothly onto and into them.

Lenny’s heart took her smile as a good reason to let his guard a little lower and beat less like it would undergo a cardiac arrest any time soon.

“I don’t think I was ever scared of you in my entire life” She pondered after receiving a slight nod from him. His brows eased down once she said that and there were fewer wrinkles of concern on his face.

“Though I was, in fact, scared for you once.”

Midge shifted in her seat, like a baby raven that has been wavered by the windstorm and was now trying to get back on its feet, curling them firmly around the wire of the telegraph post it had been perching on. Adjusting her line of thoughts as well, she said, “When, you know- the one time I wasn’t too mad at the cabbie for having deliberately prolonged the route, hence my fare, and stayed on Eight despite the construction going on”

He sighed, “I apologized for that” His index finger pointing in her direction – not to judge or scold, just to place a full mark.

“That you did” She nodded. “A room almost as blue as my own eyes was involved in that apology at some point, right? I seem to recall that”

Lenny chuckled briefly, before dropping his head to hide the hint of a blush on his cheeks. “That room was intended to be just as blue as your own eyes,” he confessed eventually – cowardly enough to whisper, bravely enough to stare.

“Oh.”

She shall hate him for having made her jump back twice in just one night.

“Why’d you send Susie in and ask her to lie, Midge?”

Oh, that crack in his voice – she knew that sound. And that posture – that straightforward, confessional posture that was too painful to engage with – she knew that, too. And before she even recognized the tricks of her subconscious, she found herself back in that blue room. She had just told Lenny about her show corset and he had just called out her name, timidly, quietly – almost as if he, of all people, was becoming prude at the sole thought of her undergarment.

There was genuine curiosity then, and there was genuine curiosity now. Except, the look in his eyes was tinged by a heavy shadow of hurt now, which wasn’t there the first time.

She shrugged mindlessly, “I didn’t want that last look I saw in your eyes to be uprooted. I felt sick at the idea of losing that spark of hope you wore at the airport in favor of constricted pupils and unshaved humor” I guess, she wanted to add. But it wasn’t just her guess. It was the actual truth of what did, in fact, go on in her mind that night in San Francisco.

“Ha!” he laughed, echoed by the unmistakable single-clap of his hands. A frown was quick to show on his face, though, as he meditated some further – never a good sign, Lenny, never a good sign.

“Why didn’t you want me to know, though?”

Midge barely held back a sorrowful sigh, and then a scornful chuckle. She perched on the cushions, perfectly still and upright, as if someone had nailed her shoulders to an invisible cross on her back. All she moved was her head, shaking it in defeat so slightly he almost didn’t catch it.

He caught the glance, though. And he was determined to get words out of it, since her mouth didn’t seem to be delivering any anytime soon.

The stare started to feel like a contest she was shamefully losing. No matter how many times she’d found herself in that position, she never knew how to pull herself together when Lenny would look at her, look into her and see right through every single thing her soul was made of.

“God, that’s not the laying-bare I’d wished I’d get tonight” It was still there, she still got it. The humorous one-liner to crack discomfort open and fill it with the heart-warming lightness of laughter – and flirtatiousness, of course.

Lenny giggled, his cheeks sucked into beautiful dimples she hadn’t seen in too long. He looked tired, he seemed unimpressed to her, but was he such an attractive sufferer. The string that pulled them out of their own individual lives only to push them against each other – it’s worked its wonders.

And it never failed to pleasantly endear her to see a man who’d talk unapologetically about the Pope’s sexual activity, who’d get arrested for saying ass, balls, cocksucker, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, piss, shit, and tits [3] on a stage in front of many people, just blush in shyness when a woman would whisper to him a joke filled with innuendo. It made her blush, amusedly.

She leaned over, her inhibition no longer on duty by that time. She freed her right hand, pressing the empty glass onto her left palm, and reached for his cheek. She hadn’t done it in a while. It almost ached to remember what she had been missing and forgetting. His face felt just rough enough. The hills and depressions on it felt more yawning, but she traced the outline of them all anyway. The smile that rose there made it a surfing experience out of swimming across his cheek with her palm. A soft brush grazed the stubble on his jaw. He looked up at her.

His eyes fixated on hers, deep hazel on icy cerulean was suddenly the only color combination to make sense. His glance then shifted as far as her hand was soothing his nerves. Lenny turned his head, gently; his lips hidden in her palm.

Was he deliberately choosing to be silenced by her? Was he softly giving her the chance to shut to rest the foulest mouth that America had ever seen? Was he vulnerably trusting her not to?

It was important to him to remember it – to him, that was it. To kiss the hand who caressed you – that was to love quietly. Though he was known for being loud, he never was such in the eyes of his beloved – he never knew how to bring himself to.

She leaned in, both her palms cupping his face now. Forced to look back at her, he nodded gently and imperceivably once she saw her eyes turn into a pendulum, oscillating between each of his own in a loud, piercing question of consent. She cut off the distance and bowed to kiss his lips.

It started off floaty. Lips barely hovering over one another, as if they were about to commit an act that would change everything forever. As if they were about to kiss for the very first time, making those last, panted, yearned seconds of gasps a chance to admire everything before losing the sparkle of curiosity and longing.

Yet, they knew each other. And that was, by all accounts, the farthest from being a first time.

They only needed reminiscence at that point. Hands found their way across an old, desolate road they once knew all too well. It was a matter of time, really – a gasp in each other’s mouth away from spiting time, claiming their power over it, their ability to erase it and make everything feel like they’d just run into each other the night before in a bar.

“You know,” Midge whispered on his lips, fingers still curled into his curls and thigh humping slowly on his knee. Eye contact was an overrated practice – she already got the contact required to dissertate her argument.

“They say there’s a hurricane coming our way. It is going to hit Florida, they said” a complaining moan escaped his mouth the minute her lips moved farther away to enunciate such a longer sentence; something about missing the taste of her breaths brushing out air on his own lips and into his mouth. Her hand went straight to his neck, tracing soothing patterns on in, occasionally grazing his jaw. A damage-control procedure she furthered by leaning in and resting her chin on his shoulder.

With her head slightly tilted, she brushed her nose and lips against his earlobe. She felt him pant.

“Good thing I was warned about it already. Got myself a nice, safe room in the basement. It might be prudent to go shelter, huh?”

“Miriam Weissman,” Lenny breathed out shakingly when he felt her teeth biting softly into his lobe. “You are going to be the death of me”

“I do have a rap sheet after all!” she chuckled and stretched out her arm to offer to escort him to her room – some used to say, Never the conventional woman, this Mrs. Maisel or Did you know she’s not a Mrs. Maisel? In fact, she is not even a Mrs. to begin with! and she couldn’t care less.

Miriam Weissman loved wearing chivalry along with her heels. Lenny Bruce loved being emasculated by it.

Chapter Text

All the lights in Miami begin to gleam

Late spring 1960, Fontainebleau Hotel - lounge, Miami Beach, FL

“What are you doing here?” The pen dangled weightlessly from her fingers when she’d looked up only to be met by his eyes. A shade of genuinely pleasant surprise painted her face, along with the blunt relief that she was going to have to listen to this vile, pretentious suitor no more.

“I live here” A thrill of excitement settled all the way to her stomach, where anticipation was boiling in curiosity.

Midge had never been this close to domestic Lenny Bruce. She was in the very State wherein his daily life happened. With renewed chills, she found herself wondering if, through her own stay in Miami, she had walked past or been to the places in his daily routine. Midge had never been so close to the possibility to know whether or not Lenny Bruce was, in fact, boring at home.

Lost inside her own head – her own reveries – she had failed to notice how Lenny had politely kicked the random pretender away and take his seat, next to her, carrying the ashtray along. Similarly, she had missed part of his, “… with number three?”

He’s probably back home wondering how the obnoxiously-healthy, nicotine-free, alcohol-free, 8-hour sound-sleeper system in his annoyingly-attractive 6”2’ body managed to get actually Frawleyed. What can I say? I love reversing stereotypes. Let the man inhale all the passive chain-smoke and shrink down to a cantankerous alcoholic, then drop him barely halfway to the finale, courtesy of just some residuals from his past good-boy life.

“I thought you said the comparison to William Frawley really painted a picture” Midge remarked promptly, not as promptly as she had not been listening. She sat up straight on the edge of the stool. He chuckled at that, a smirk actually tugging at the corner of his lips.

“It does! I would still like to know the specifics of this transfiguration, though – you know, so that I am aware and prepared what to be careful about in order to avoid undergoing such process myself” Lenny said as he flicked his cigarette in the ashtray.

She scoffed, waving off. “You? Honey, you already got it covered by a pen, a notebook, a drink at 3 in the afternoon, and a social disease – but not of the sexually-transmitted kind; no, you have this much scarier disease called Rare Truth-Telling and Bigot-Shocking Incontinence, experts say it might be terminal. Can’t get any more transfigured than that!”

His laughter reverberated through her body, sending shivers down her spine as well as along her arms. She dropped them off her notebook and onto her laps. God, did she love that sound! He laughed the way a harpsichord sounds. Not any harpsichord, though. A very specific one. One that knew how to play Bach. The Witty-Tempered Clavier.

Midge dared to reach for her drink, arms no longer dotted in goosebumps. Taking a sip, she met his eyes, which she found in her direction, as well-adjusted and comfortable as only with something you are familiar with. Oh, how she would have loved to make a joke, mock him because she’d caught him stare. But then again, so was she. Hence, she let the joke go untold.

“What happened to the Doctor?” He ventured without ever getting his eyes off of her, nor even blinking. To her, he started to look more and more surreal. Like a vision. Strike that, the reason for it was clearly her third martini on a 7-hour empty stomach. Was her lucid mind relevant at that point, anyway?

She swallowed one more sip of her drink and, being caught off guard by that question, she chocked and coughed. She set the glass back down, pushing it away just enough to make a whole negotiation between her mind and her body out of the temptation to go for it.

“He, uh-” Midge burst into a sudden, unrelated stentorian laughter. She would do that, from time to time; it wasn’t unusual. Except, she rarely did it because she was truly, genuinely enjoying herself. Emotional incontinence, that’s how it was explained to her by the white-coated, grey-haired man she was forced to see once a week for too many months following Ethan’s birth and, apparently, the beginning of what was described to her as post-partum psychosis, which, apparently, she had.

“He asked me to marry him.” She said, eventually, getting her composure back and her glare as deep into the void as possible.

Wow, that’s huge! Lenny thought. But she didn’t look thrilled at the news herself, so he figured that she might have not wanted that. He waited.

“And he asked my father”

The bar bustled too loudly during those interminable moments of unknown, as he was left pending. He’d been to plenty of clubs and bars before – almost any venue was his venue, it was tricky to surprise him – but he swore that the Fontainebleau’s lounge was a kind of noisy that he had never experienced before.

“And of course I sanctimoniously told Papa that I didn’t know and that he went to him first, and all that shit Papa loves”

Midge’s crystal blues glanced through an unpleasant blurriness. It made her eyes tremble. He wondered if he looked ridiculous in her teary vision – and he silently hoped he did, because then it would’ve been funny, hence there was a chance that tears weren’t to be shed to begin with.

“Papa loved him. Well, it took him a while, actually. ‘Cause Papa can be very thorough when it comes to checking someone’s references. Despite that, at the end, he loved him”

“So, what happened?”

“I realized that I didn’t love him much more than Papa did”

The crack in her voice was a butterfly flapping its wings to go crack his heart.

“Oh.” It escaped his mouth so hoarsely, so quietly, he wasn’t sure if he thought it or said it. It managed to arise all the way up his throat and get past the lump in there.

He coughed to clear his throat and went to light another cigarette to clear his thoughts.

“Too bad,” he delivered his line just as he released smoke from his lungs. “There I was dusting off my bridesmaid dress to take it to the cleaners already”

She cracked a laugh. And she felt her heart being wrapped in a pleasant warmth. She wasn’t aware of his beating to the rhythm of her laughter.

Chapter Text

I’ve got some regrets, I’ll bury them in Florida

Late spring 1960, International Inn, Miami Beach, FL

Midge felt the warm softness of his fingertips trail all over the curves of her side; his breath was just as soothing hitting her nape, despite its irregularity. He had set off for a very long hike across the reliefs on her skin – some clothed, some not – determined to explore each feature, bringing along his digits alone. They followed the track of her shoulder only mid-way to the top; there was an inconsolable shiver in his limbs and she wasn’t sure it actually came from the genuine lack of confidence within the way he’d show affection: he was quite timid, but not meek, not timorous.

The way his fingers kept sliding back downwards, off her shoulder, and dangerously sinking onto her clavicle, made Midge think of a conversation they’d once had at a bar. They’d run into each other by chance, as almost any other time they’ve met. Not one of their encounters was agreed upon, there was no schedule, no warning. Maybe an invitation, but it never came with any sort of RSVP. At best, one person out of two knew that they were going to meet. But that was a rare case. Unless he’d screwed up, or she had, which would have led one in pursuit of the other to deliver heartfelt, messy apologies.

She was exceptionally pissed at every person with a penis she’d encounter on her cool-down roaming. She had just been kicked off a stage because she had dared to say the p-word. No, not penis, neither pussy. Not piss, not prick. Pregnant – she’d just said pregnant.

She didn’t even have to worry about coming up with psychotic ways to keep the men out of her way. All along her aimless wandering, she’d been mouthing insults under her breath, mentally retracing every single thing that fueled a whole new fire in her chest – this inevitably scared away unwanted gropers. There was only one man who would be spared from her wicked mantras that started to sound more and more like a spell. And she was lucky enough to have run into him that night. Or, the male population was lucky enough that she had run into him to divert her attention from showing the other men her good plan at vengeance for centuries of witch-hunting and witch-burning.

Midge had entered the bar unbeknownst to him, which had given her hope to a pleasantly surprised expression painted on his face. However, that was not the case. He was just as reactive as a leaf hanging on a branch in the windless weather. He might have been clueless about her presence until she had voluntarily made it known, and he might have been delighted to see her – his dark, bug eyes and very sharp features confirmed the lifeless responsiveness irradiating by looking at him.

But he had his reasons. I’m Sisyphus, without the fabulous hair and the loincloth, he had told her. His hand struggling to carry his own fingertips uphill reminded her of Sisyphus. Except, the hill was really just her semi-naked outline.

She didn’t mind the explorer side to his personality – in fact, she was pretty fond of it; he’d bring out the most inhibited and uncomfortable sides she didn’t know she had – nor did she mind his shaking. She just found it difficult to refrain her own body from any chill and shiver at all. It took her a while to master the skill of bluffing – oh the times Susie had tried to teach her how poker works and how to deceive gamers! – but she still wouldn’t know how to bluff with him.

“I thought you were sensational, too (and foremost), by the way”

Midge wasn’t expecting to even hear him talk. Every single muscle in her body was sore and overworked, solely focused on keeping her stillness and pushing the make-believe sleep as further as she could. The calmness in his tone served as a swinging lullaby, though, that put her at ease among the sweet nothings he was whispering in her ears — worthy of frantic palpitations, instead.

His digits made it. They were now softly descending down the valley after having successfully climbed uphill.

“Couldn't really tell you, though, could I? Might've given off the wrong impression that I wanted to be the ‘man’ (with an a, not an e) in the ‘sex and men and sex with men and sexy men and sex with sexy men’ you talked about in your act”

A burning trail marked that journey now; she felt his skin begin to sweat touching hers. On his end, he was just too focused on the softness beneath his own, diving deep down past her breast and onto the crook of her elbow.

“I mean, I don't have the pretense to call myself a sexy man, neither do I have the ambition to become one. I sure as hell wouldn't expect you to come to my rescue if I pulled an Orwellian kind of Houdini and escaped the barn, though. In my defense, Old Major would be proud of me” Oh, fuck it. He was too funny to hold back laughs for. He was too delightful for her to pretend she wasn't delighted.

She tugged her lips, up on one corner first and then up to the other. She shifted beneath the covers, mumbling yawning sounds. Faking them, actually. The minute he felt her move, his hand retired as far as possible from her face.

“Hey,” she whispered with feigned sleepiness in her tone.

“Hey”

“Were you always awake?”

“Since '25, sweetheart. My eyes have been open longer than all Argus's combined” He watched her chuckle. Amongst his turmoil, amongst the demons he wrestled with, that made it worth it. Making Midge Maisel laugh was worth loosening the recurring, obsessive thoughts that made him cave to his addiction(s).

She turned on her side to face him, carrying drapes of covers along with her in case the shirt he had lent her was large enough to become loose and revealing. Her whole body pivoted sideways on her elbow, steadily rooted on the pillow, as her hand secured her head firmly resting on her cheek. “You’re still staring” Midge pointed out softly, as if referring to a line she’d delivered a few moments earlier rather than the night before altogether.

Lenny chuckled quietly, doing nothing to prove those allegations wrong. Except, he stretched out his arm and reached for her hair. “Well, you have more than one hair out of place” and with effortlessness, he pulled the pink flower off her hair, gently dusting off any remains from her inevitably tousled coiffure. She forgot to take it off the night before and wouldn’t have remembered its presence if he hadn’t made it known, not until she would have looked at her reflection in the mirror. He blew softly on the rose swirling between his index finger and thumb. Once he was done fixing the petals, Lenny lifted his glance all the way to her eyeline, now catching her stare. He shook it off, focused solely on accomplishing his task. He tucked the flower back into her hair and behind her ear, then tucking one lazy curl along with it.

“Here you go. All’s fixed now” And she wanted to cry; she really did.

She started to wonder if it was a mistake, after all, to have listened to Carole. She had, in fact, walked away; she did at first. Not because his room was a slum, not because she had no matchbook on her, not because she wasn’t carrying any set of keys- actually, she had walked back to his room precisely because she wasn’t carrying any key. Her room was pitifully lent to her burned-out parents, and it was so late in the night – or early in the morning – that she was sure the only chance at bunking with any girl from the band would be if they were a rock ‘n’ roll band, which they were not. So, she came back. She had done the exact opposite of what she was advised to do in cases like this.

‘Cases like this. Oh, come on! Just say the word, Midge. One-night stands. That’s the cases like this’ she thought to herself to the sound of her deep breaths.  

But maybe she didn’t want it to be a one-night stand, or even worse, their only chance at this. Or maybe, she didn’t want him to think she wasn’t a girly girl. She was a girly girl. She did have feelings. She just didn’t know yet how deep she cared.

“Thank you” Midge whispered, coming back from her train of thoughts. It was so soft she wasn’t sure she actually vocalized it or kept it inside her head. He smiled in return, so she guessed she might have actually talked, after all.

She was staring now. Her glance traveled on board of his ruffled hair as its curls swung agitatedly at each of his movements – as he stretched his arms, burying the back of his head deep in his pillow; as he turned to the side and the messy hairs on his nape looked like a meadowed path that’s been walked upon a thousand times; as he got up and it just danced like tree branches in the wind.

Her eyes slid gently upon his skin, all the way down his bare back – her fault; she was wearing his pajamas, which she felt unforgivably guilty about as she noticed goosebumps run down his spine and culminate in a sudden shiver. Is he actually cold?

Lenny sat on the edge of the bed; head swinging erratically from one side to the other as his eyes searched the room for his hallmark white shirt. He spotted it on the chair and reached for it – his fingers trembling in a way that Midge recognized as the same that would hit hers when she’d try to light her first cigarette after hours – sometimes painfully close to a whole day – of abstinence, craving nicotine so brutally as if it would kill her not to take it, but also as if it would lethally maim her to try to do take it.

She shook it off and got out of bed, rejecting those intrusive thoughts as best as she could and focusing on giving the pajamas she was wearing back to their proprietor, who seemed to have slept quite coldly and uncomfortably without them. She rushed to change – as if he was actually risking hypothermia – and grabbed her dress on her way to the bathroom.

The reflection in the mirror was screaming at her in just as much inquietude as Munch’s famous painting. She tried her best to fix her hair, adjust her make-up, and clean up a little.

When she stepped back into the room, she found him in the exact same spot he was when she’d left – and she knew she wasn’t gone just for a few minutes; if all, she was not known for being a quick, punctual woman with short prep time needed. She was high maintenance – to the people around, but to herself too.

Midge carefully walked to him, one foot after another, very quietly and very stealthy – as if she was a cat; as if the floor was old, creaking hardwood. She laid his clothes, neat and folded, right next to where he sat and used the proximity as an excuse to give a closer look at what had gotten him stuck on the edge of the bed as if he had frozen in time.

His hands were shaking – now that’s what’s wrong! He was attempting to button his shirt down but failed miserably. He’d skipped a button, then a few buttonholes, then a button again. He was fumbling in a fight with his shirt like it had personally offended him.

“Need help?”

She wasn’t sure if she was asking for real. One sure thing, though, was that she was serious in tone and intention. He looked up from his task, almost jumping aback when he locked eyes with her, almost not expecting her there. Has he just zoned out? She wondered. Did he forget I was here?

He didn’t answer; he just stared blankly into the void. He didn’t retract, either, when she sat next to him to help him out. She assumed it was fine to go for it.

“You still drunk from last night?” Her attempt at a joke. She couldn’t really make it past twelve consecutive, joke-free hours – it was the scariest thing that could happen to her.

“Just clumsy” he shrugged as if it was all normal.

“You weren’t just now.” Midge nodded – a slight, angled bow accompanied her gesture – to her own head, showing the flower tucked behind her ear, which she also signaled with her eyes.

He was still unresponsive.

She let her glance travel upon his body, inspecting it thoroughly in her sweet, yet vain attempt to look for the cause of his blankness. She soon gave up. Until she was done buttoning his shirt down and decided that his cuffs were hanging too loosely. She went to button them, too; not before she rolled up his sleeves a little. From the inside of his right wrist and all the way up his arm as far as she had uncovered, a cluster of blueish marks dotted his skin. It looked like someone played dartboard on his arm.

Silence filled the room with a sound more deafening than the silence from earlier – she wasn’t holding her breath, then; it wasn’t the precise background sound one would only hear in a graveyard, where everything is still and nothing is alive.

Midge looked at him, then. But he wouldn’t look back. She sighed. She’s felt an upsetting inkling of eeriness since the line he’d said the night before, standing on the doorstep and hugging himself so tightly that he buried himself into his jacket. ‘Maybe someday, before I’m dead?’

When she had run back to his door, later on that night, knocking on it as she’d changed her mind, he was just in the bathroom – she remembered noticing the lights were on in that room when he’d answered the door, and his hair was dripping on the floor. A towel in one hand and a lighter in the other – why, then? Was he trying to set water on fire?

“Lenny,” she called out, quietly. He turned to her but didn’t say a word. She could just see his eyes stare at her direction. “Are you alright?”

“Mmh? Pardon?”

“Are you feeling alright?”

His bug eyes gazed blankly into hers, as if he could see her, but he couldn’t discern her. Like an image lost into the daytime reveries of someone with fervid and vivid imagination. A figment.

Midge held the stare bravely, although it was draining all of her liveliness to hold such an empty glance. As nothing seemed to change, she reached around his back for the jacket she had laid on his other side. She unfolded it and put it around his trembling shoulders very carefully, not wanting to pull him out of whatever mental place he had abruptly fallen into. She pulled up her right sleeve, then. Not a lot. Just enough to free her wrist and feel his temperature on his forehead. He wasn’t burning like she’d thought he would.

“I am feeling ok. I just have to make it past the morning”

A feedback resembling that of a noisy microphone, or a comet falling past the Earth only to stay unseen to the human eye for a little longer. The same kind of lateness.

The struggle itself towards the heights

is enough to fill a man's heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus

happy.

Chapter Text

And then there were none

November 1960, International Inn, Miami Beach, FL

Ten little blue marks on his arm in a line,

One drank itself dry and then there were nine.

The glass of the bottle made a hollow clink when it touched the tile – he felt it echo in the hollowness of his chest, too; his back resting against the bathtub.

And suddenly, it was still May in his head – the last semester never happened; it was just a figment, a humorous trick of his mind. It was still May; he was living in an inn in Miami Beach, that exact inn, the house chef had recently given him a kitsch apron as a welcome gift, and he had just waltzed with the funniest and most lovely woman he had ever met.

Despite his stubborn, selective memory, a roaring thunder outside caused a short-circuit to the pleasant tracks he was trying very hard to play, uncontaminated of anything dirty or crooked. The sky rumbled in one loud growl right after the strike of lighting flash, and suddenly reality stroke more harshly than the storm. It was still May in his thread of thoughts, but Midge had left.

Nine little blue marks serving as a bait,

One didn’t catch a thing and then there were eight.

Yes, Midge had left. He had gotten her that long-overdue cab, which had stayed uncalled for dangerously longer than advisable, and he had let her go, eventially. He had to. And, of course, his first thought, once he had closed the cab door for her, was, Alright- back to business. We left off at a perfectly arranged fix, only waiting to be shot.

Lenny shook that thought away, forcing his memory back to a happier place. As much as he would have loved to indulge in that temptation, the nausea was long gone and the cravings were manageable now. Maybe he could give a shot at not giving himself a shot, this time. He must try. He promised himself he would play Carnegie as sober as he was when he came out of his mother’s womb. But the joke was on him – was his mother sober herself when she had given birth to him?

Eight little blue marks gayest under heaven,

One went to sleep and then there were seven.

And that is how he found himself on the bathroom floor, leaking like an old, broken sink. His trembling fingers tried to unscrew a bottle of wine he’d gotten on his walk back to the International Inn, where he was staying – and where she had stayed, too, a few moons before, although just for one night. He had gone out morphine-hunting but he had caught the rainstorm; he took it as a sign. He was feeling quite bashful – and somewhat ashamed – to admit that what motivated him to turn his dealer down and go shelter from the storm rather than wander into it, hoping it would take him and wash him away, was the reminder, in the back of his mind, that he did get to experience the maybe someday, before I’m dead he had dreamed about – and how was one to feel satiated with water when they had just gotten a taste of the whole ocean? Living for the hope of a rerun, that he did.

Seven little blue marks cutting up their tricks,

One broke his heart and then there were six.

Now that he gave it a better glance, having winded it off the cork, the screw looked particularly keen – there was a familiarity to its sharp, pointed outline; one that made his right arm itch. His eyes dropped right on the blue-dotted skin and he scratched it so harshly, so vehemently. He wanted the craving to go away, he wanted his blood to stop boiling down his veins, demanding for something that he wasn’t giving them. Soon enough, there was dry blood encrusted beneath his fingernails – such eerie traces were left behind from the crime scene on his right arm.

Lenny felt like something had gotten into him, quite literally. He couldn’t but recognize himself only in the faint, distorted reflection on a broken tile on the corner. An excruciating rush slithered beneath his skin and burned all the way to his stomach and chest. Wasn’t the Devil supposed to be on one’s left side, though? Wasn’t the right for God? Maybe it worked the other way around for left-handed people? Or maybe it just didn’t apply to blasphemous Jews like him.

“Fuck! Is God here at all? For Christ’s sake!” He yelled out – his lungs deflating as he bent forward, almost forcing himself to misshape his own body as inhumanly and distortedly as possible, and then even some further. Sure, Lenny. Taking another God’s name in vain will make yours much more prone to listen to your despair.

Six little blue marks tempting his strive,

One kicked the bucket and then there were five.

One big sip off the bottle was enough for him to get on his feet and head straight to the cabinet where he stored his black pouch, although empty. Reaching for it with shaking hands, and holding it in his palms in a quake of an even greater magnitude, he dropped it. The thud was much louder than the clink that had come from the bottle just before. He sighed. His glance followed just a little later – from the outside, it surely would have looked as if he was on slow-motion, off-phased from the world’s timing.

His knees failed him before he could foresee it and brace himself. On the cold and hard floor, he fell – his understocked Premature Death’s Kit right between his legs. He wasn’t sure if it was the dizziness of withdrawal, or the overwhelming ache in his overly-existential soul, or the pining of a newly bar- mitzvah’d, horny teenage boy who didn’t get to hug his crush goodbye – whatever the case, be it even all of the above, Lenny’s mind started spinning with random scenes, memories, hallucinations, whose order and speed devasted his last working braincells. For a moment, his mind was entirely and unapologetically directed by Sir. Luis Buñuel.

Five little blue marks on the memory-lane door,

One broke in and then there were four.

He was sixteen in the front seat of the most fashionable LaSalle he ever saw, the very Mary Astor lookalike was unbuttoning his pants telling him all about venereal diseases [1] – a pouch short on morphine or a hand stained with ambiguous lust, he couldn’t tell which one was actually between his legs now.

He was in his 30s and carried heavier sins on his shoulders. His pouch lied unzipped on Midge’s palms in the bathroom of a blue room at Mayflower Hotel, his drugs popping out of it – was it Midge’s, the palm holding the pouch between his legs? Was it hers? Let it be hers. Please.

“M- Mi- ge” The sound stuck in his throat, his bottom lip trembling epileptically.

He was underage now, and he was serving in the Navy. His days were a continuum of blood and salt water, and deep down in his soul he felt that all the red and blue and red into the blue was not what the colors on the American flag stood for – it mustn’t be. He did an impression of his mother – specifically, a performance, the only performance, he had gotten to watch; he had sneaked out of his aunt’s house that night to go take a look at what was keeping his mother that busy and distracted. His superiors beat the shit out of him, discharging and reporting him for cross-dressing [2] as well as sodomy [3], public indecency, and disorderly conduct. Between his legs, officers abused him before granting him the freedom of the solid ground that was the mainland.

“M- Ma”

His leg jerked, accidentally kicking the bottle by the bathtub. The red wine spread on the bluish tiles terrifyingly quickly. His chest rose up and down in irregular beats; air seemed to have forgotten its way to his lungs. He gasped, his palm flat on his heart, and he grasped the black pouch.

Four little blue marks trying to set themselves free,

One locked another in and then there were three.

Morphine. That’s what they would have given to him if he still were enlisted. That was how they resolved everything.

Morphine. He craved it. He needed it. He had a primary urge to it, even prior to water and oxygen.

Morphine. The corpsmen would hand him the pre-filled syringe and call it a day.

Did he need the morphine or did he crave the ritual of injection? Lenny was no longer sure at that point; it might have as well been both, or he was too far gone to figure out the difference.

He twisted and jolted on the bathroom floor, soaking into the redness of the wine he had spilled. What an eerie view – if someone were to break into his room, they might think he was dead; pale, covered in bloody liquids, motionless on the cold tiles.

But he was very much alive. And no one was to enter his room. He had locked himself in and thrown the key away, tossing it out the window as forcefully as he could. Just to be safe, he had thought. I’ll dial the front desk to get out in the morning. He didn’t trust himself with his own safety – he didn’t trust himself with his own life.

Three little blue marks also had a few,

One choked to death and then there were two.

His eyes landed on the corkscrew on his side and he eventually managed to grow less and less self-conscious of the pouch on the floor. The rush still ran through his veins.

He grabbed the winding handle with the forcefulness of the agitated ocean and the trembling of an old man who has long since last known stillness. He just wanted the rush to stop.

The sharp point followed the trajectory of his convulsing fist, aiming quite decisively at one of the many fading blue marks on his arm.

Two little blue marks caught up in a run,

One gushed out blood and then there was one.

A guttural cry, one resembling a growl, escaped from the deepest core of his soul when the tip hit the designated mark, drilling further into his skin – just enough to make the itch go away, or let it stay but only alongside a stronger pain that would have distracted him from it. And precisely as the first one, he proceeded to dart each of his remaining marks. 

Blood spilled, it flew into the wine that had already been staining the tiles. For the first time in his life, he was starting to see the difference of shades in blood crimson versus wine burgundy. He surely had never noticed it before, as a layer of marine water was always covering the redness he knew.

One little blue mark living all alone

Retired up in Nob Hill and then there were none.

The hurricane with my name, when it came,

I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away.

Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine

Well, me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time.

Chapter Text

Love left me like this and I don't want to exist, so take me to Florida

June 1966, Miami Beach, FL

“Wow, Susie really did send a suitcase of lingerie alone!”

He parted from her lips, taking a quick glance at the room once she’d managed to unlock the door in between kisses.

“You thought I lied?”

With an earring already in her palm, ready for a quick resort to the bathroom, Midge turned on her feet at the resounding of surprise in his voice – her dress swirling hypnotically in a colorful pirouette – to give him a side look.

“Well, not lied lied. Maybe magnified for embellishment, yeah” He stumbled upon words, flinching a little, unsteady at her tease, especially watching her walk all the way back to him with a mischievous look in her eyes.

“Careful, Bruce” She whispered, pointing her fingers – busy holding her right earring like a cigarette – at his chest; the left one secured in her fist, instead. “A lady doesn’t like mock-talk about her best friends. Leave the corsets and garters alone, trust me”

“A lady doesn’t?” Lenny’s eyebrow curved up, not quite convinced. “You, lady, don’t!” She narrowed her eyes, disliking what she was hearing. “And only when it comes to yours, might I add. Because I recall a certain someone talk down on my dickie!”

Midge rolled her eyes, leaning on her right to reach the nightstand and put her earrings down on it – her bathroom resort long gone by now, as an impellent wave of flirtatious banter captivated her more. When she looked back up at him, she caught him perusing her room with his stare alone, trying to take in as much as he could. She sighed audibly – her smooth request for attention. Apparently, something on her bookshelves was more interesting and appealing.

“Gee, what does a girl have to do to get a kiss down here?”

He chuckled; his eyes finally on hers.

“Oh, it’s a whole procedure. There’s an awful lot of paperwork involved. And I’m not saying you should get a lawyer, but these sorts of things do have a reputation for being deemed ‘dirty’, which would get you arrested for obscenity – so maybe yes, do get a lawyer. And a good one, too; one that would win your case in the least number of times you are required to go to court. Because, I can assure you, it’s a terrible, terrible pastime”

“Lenny!” She cut off, smiling to herself for the tenderness she could see into his shy, uncomfortable eyes.

“Yeah, you have been to court. You are already accustomed to how it works. I know, I know-”

“Lenny” Midge tried again, softer this time. Just as quiet as needed to have him shut up if he wanted to hear her.

“Yeah?” His brows becoming two perfectly symmetrical vaults above his eyelids, his lips puckered in a lull.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t need a lawyer for performing blue things with no audience”

He smirked, and she could spot the excitement in his eyes – the kind of excitement that would hit him, or her, when there is a joke floating somewhere in the back of their mind, figuring out how to emerge effectively.

“Are you calling me not a spectator? I promise I will be spectating each blueness very respectfully through the entire thing”

Midge chuckled. Unlike the other times, she didn’t close her eyes nor did she look away to hide the blush she knew was rising on her cheeks. She actually held his stare, gently and resolutely. Not like a challenge. It was mere curiosity. Midge found herself fascinated by the exact spots that wrinkled up on his skin the very moment he would realize he had made someone smile, or chuckle, or laugh. Always too self-absorbed indulging in the pleasure of that laughter, she had never noticed before how his face, too, unfolded in carefree features marked by this peculiar spotlight of joyfulness.

Her heart gulped in her chest – or so it seemed; she felt like her stomach had actually just swallowed her whole soul. Instinctively, as if the emotional vertigo was in fact affecting her body, too, she grasped his collar tightly, balancing herself through the tsunami of feelings that was whirling her around.

He caught her; of course he did. His palms flat on her back – where she was surprised to feel them cold and shaky – were holding her up just as much as they were holding her close. Her own hands, in turn, moved farther up and she eventually clasped them right on his nape – her arms a solid chain he was elated to wear around his neck, her heart the precious pendant hanging from that priceless piece of jewelry.

She kissed him.

Or he did.

It was hard to tell who thought of it first, who leaned in first, whose lips touched the other’s first, whose tongue slipped into whose mouth. It was tricky to discern his breath from hers, his pants from her moans.

It was no use, anyway. It was no use knowing whose feet dragged them both in the direction of the bed. Because, as a matter of fact, for each step that led somewhere, there was another that was delighted to follow.

They kissed each other; but she broke it first.

Running out of breath, Midge closed her fists tightly around his collar again – her knuckles turning white now. She pulled back just enough for air to make it to her mouth and, with her chest going up and down very quickly, her hoarse voice teased, “Are you to leave or to stay?” [1]

As her grip on his trench coat tightened up, she made it unmistakably obvious that her subject was the beige item which he would wear indoors only in places where he felt unsafe because being busted wasn’t a debatable, unrealistic guess – which, by that time, also happened to be any roofed space he roamed.

“I,” he mumbled between short breaths, “am to come”

At that she chuckled, allowing them both a much-needed pause before she could proceed to take his coat off and whisper, “Well, ‘to’ is a preposition, after all” [2]

There was just as much amusement as there was shyness on his cheeks when she’d said that, which only prompted her excitement, “Do you intend to pre-position me down somewhere anytime soon?”

“Ha!” Lenny threw his head back. Normally, he would have snapped his fingers or clapped his hands, but he really didn’t want to let go of her, in spite of how weak and unsteady his arms were while holding her.

And there it is, she thought – and there, in fact, it was; that staccato chuckle she has missed like she’d missed her show dress that one time she was touring the States with Susie and, once back to New York, her manager had forced her to do her last set in her ‘stinky-traveling’ clothes.

“I intend to execute the necessary proceedings for your verbigeration of my name until it loses its meaning. Until I lose my meaning”

Mischief colored his voice – and her cheeks, too. In a slow and pondered move, his palms slid on the soft and smooth skin of her back until they were met with friction – the fabric driving them to a full stop right where the slider was. He unzipped her dress and hooked his thumbs around the straps, pulling the garment gently down her shoulders and off her body entirely.

“Oh-” she gasped. Her mouth had stayed agape in her lame attempt to voice her comeback, but his fingers had caught her off guard. As they traced the outline of her breasts painfully slowly, Midge wasn’t sure if she was glad or regretful for her recently-purchased wireless, sheer bra [3]. Sure, it was thin enough to feel each pressure of the sweet torture he was inflicting on her. But was she really complaining, anyway? It wasn’t unpleasant by any means, after all.

Finally, caught up in her own breathless moans, she panted out, “As existentially disturbing and sensorily enticing as that sounds, as the daughter of a former professor at Columbia who has been subjected to her father’s reading of scientific articles ever since her mother’s womb, I must point out that you misattributed a concept to the wrong definition. The word you are looking for here is semantic satiation”

Her fingers fidgeted with the knot of his tie, slowly loosening it only to tighten it back and loosen it again. Saying that she was nervous was an understatement. A billion of emotions rumbled through her stomach – excitement, worry, joy, tenderness, eagerness, nostalgia, lust; she was nervous she would mess this up, guided by too many undeciphered feelings. It wasn’t that much different from the moist of sensations that would boil in her gut whenever she was about to approach a microphone and say, ‘All that applause for me? What am I, putting out after?’

It wasn’t much different from the rush of pure happiness that would run through her whole system whenever a set would go well and she would also be blessed with a ‘sneak attack’ – as he’d call them – of Lenny’s, confirming the audience feedback only to upgrade it with few yet great words. It wasn’t much different from those times. Except, her audience was Lenny and Lenny was her only audience. Except, she wasn’t performing. Except, he would still be there, in spite of his misery, to be her guidepost. And that he was still doing.

Lenny brushed his way up her neck and to her cheeks, holding her face delicately in his tobacco-scented palms and tucking a curl behind her ear with his calloused finger, “Will you shut up and let us provide to other kinds of satiations?” He whispered, letting the phrase fade out into a long, sibilant ‘S’ to emphasize the plurality of it.

She smiled at that, sincerely. Her glance dropped and she did what he had done just a few moments earlier, out in the lobby. She turned her head to the left just enough to have her mouth sink into his palm and disappear; she kissed the inside of his right hand with just as much tenderness as she’d kissed her son’s forehead the very first time she held him in her arms. Oh, it must be a truly holy feeling – that which leads one to kiss a cold and debauched hand the same way the pureness of new life is to be kissed – and know deep in one’s soul that that is the exact and only way it ought to be – the exact and only way it feels right to kiss it.

It was a carefulness people usually reserved to delicate things – not fragile things – because there was no after-life where there would be such a redemption that would allow forgiveness to oneself for the guilt of having scratched, even by mistake, something one’s loved so preciously.

Midge sunk deeper into the abyss of his palm, only satisfied with her exploration once her lips had brushed on his wrist – the very landmark she had set off for in the first place. She felt him quiver, and she placed a soft, lingering kiss on the spot upon which she knew he used to wear dots much bluer than any room she had ever been to. It was so delicate he could feel his heart melt into caramelization. 

“You know what?” Midge asked out to the void, not really bothering to aim at his general direction. She was curled up on the left side of his bare chest – her own body equally naked – and she had picked up quite a soothing rhythm, brushing her fingernails up and down the arm that wasn’t holding her sweetly close to his own heart; it was not a scenario to upset or dismantle.

“Never met him. Will you introduce us?” He did turn to her, though – and it was plain and simple to Midge that he was hoping for her to do the same. Such hopes he would hide within the excuse for a humorous comment – and she was always willing to pretend she’d buy it, to fall right into the sweet trap of a chuckle and some eye-contact.

His head tilted low, his eyeline perfectly aligned to hers, once she shifted in her position to look up at him. Lenny smiled at the sight of a few of her curls smashed flat on the cheek that had been resting, flushed, on his chest – his body equally spent.

He reached for her face, brushing the hair away and wiping her skin dry with the back of his hand. “What?” He whispered, giving in to seriousness once he’s got her eyes to directly admire.

Midge smiled to herself, briefly and slightly. She gave a quick glance at a particular spot in the direction of the doorway that he was struggling to actually decipher. Then she said it.

“Your trench coat is your show corset, after all”

A single chuckle escaped his mouth, unrestrained. Lenny threw his head back, genuinely amused by her punchline – it was loaded with expectation and the delivery was by far among the smartest he’d ever witnessed. He smiled sincerely as a sense of profound gratitude imbued his own body – there must be a rebellious God up there who had a soft spot for his cause, blessing him with the great honor of getting to be the chosen spectator of such hilarious comedy.  

“Ha! Shut up!” He mimicked a slap on her arm.

“It is!” Midge insisted, throwing her head back against his arm, sneaking a peek at his delighted face. “You were very famous for it, back in the 1950s. Have you forgotten that, Sir?”

He cracked up, settling in a more comfortable position – still half-hugging her, Lenny pulled his own body up pivoting on his right elbow; it didn’t seem enough of an inconvenience for her to stop painting imaginary lines on his skin, though.  

“I’m pretty sure it’s not the trench coat what I was famous – or shall I say infamous – for. In fact, I am but a man of the people, you know. I’m definitely not important enough to entice media discourse about my sense of fashion. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure the fashion behind my humor is also questioned by the many and appreciated only by the few”

Midge stopped doodling along the inside of his arm now – which he was silently grateful for, as it was driving his withdrawal insane through an unmanageable itch, but it was also such a sweet thing coming from her that he wouldn’t want to dismiss.

Her chin tilted up as she looked at him. “You,” she whispered, hooking her fingers around his left bicep, “are more important than God”

His heart became a bonfire inside his chest, but he wouldn’t want to admit it. That warmth only showed on his eyes as a particular light Midge had long since last seen. She took it. It was more than enough for her to know.

Disguising his sudden vulnerability, he chuckled and waved it off. “Actually, have you heard that John Lennon stole my line?”

Good tactic, Bruce – she thought – dodging by diverting. He knew how to talk dirty – in fact, it was the only talking he would do, sometime – but, oh, was he shy when someone would see through him. Her grip slid off his arm all the way down to his hand; she took it and kissed his knuckles, one by one.

“Wha- he did? Why? What did he say?” Midge asked in-between the soft pecks she was stamping on his skin. Then, she shifted closely and she dragged his hand along – her chin resting on it which, in turn, she had laid flat-palmed on his heart.

“He said the Beatles are more popular than Jesus” [4]

“Ha. Well, he downgraded it, sweetie.” He shrugged, bottom lip pouting. She climbed her way up to give it a peck and said, “Oh, don’t be too hard on him. He got it from his sister, Sophie”

Now that pulled amusement out of him again. “You are sensational,” a whispered confession.

“That’s what I was told, yeah” Midge smiled, combing her fingers through his curls.

“You were? Really? By whom?” His eyes chased hers, never actually meeting them. She was diving in the features of his face; he was peacefully swimming in a sea of a blueness so precious it would slip away if he were to stare for too long.

“Oh, it was this one guy I hooked up with, many moons ago. I was touring with Shy Baldwin and- you know what? I actually believe it happened right here in this very city” She smirked

“Yeah?”

“Yeah”

“And who was this guy?” He joined her game of mischievous make-believe.

“I cannot remember. He had this incredibly beautiful Jewish name but he’d changed it altogether- that I remember. Oh, and he had quite a mediocre sense of humor, too”

Lenny’s signature raised eyebrow appeared on his face, amusing her as he asked, “Oh, mediocre, huh?”

“Yeah. I’d waken up to him cracking a George Orwell joke first thing in the morning to my supposedly-sleeping body”

He froze for a moment and swallowed harshly. “Y- you, uh-” he cleared his throat. “You heard that?”

He shifted uncomfortably, his voice coming out high-pitched in a way that was extremely unusual for his range. Midge just gave him a reassuring look, holding her palm gently on his chest. “Yeah” she nodded. “I thought it was sensationally sweet” and I wished upon every star that I could wake up to this some more. But she didn’t say it.

Chapter Text

He jokes that it’s heroin, but this time with an ‘E’

June 1966, Miami Beach, FL

Lenny swallowed the lump of bashfulness in his throat, but the discomfort still sat on his tongue like the bitterest aftertaste. He pulled the conversation to a different direction – although equally soul-dissecting, equally uncomfortable.

“Why, uh- why didn’t you-” words got stuck somewhere inside him, maybe they ran into the lump he’d just swallowed and couldn’t get past it. He shifted a little in his position, sinking deeper into her bed as if he was slowly digging the ultimate grave to withdraw to.

She sensed the upcoming uneasiness. Figuring he might need space, she rolled off his body and onto the mattress, by his side. Her bare back dotted up in goosebumps as soon as it hit the cold, unmarred linen. Only half of the bed was rumpled – one could think he was never there, never haunted the underside of her covers, never tucked her in the warmest spot; but she knew better, she knew that if he had no shadow attached to his foot, it was because there was one single aura irradiating from both their hearts.

It was the purest of joys to find that one plus one, under specific circumstances, such that Math couldn’t fathom, would still equal One. The difference from the other one-s was that this one had a capital O.

One.

“Why didn’t I…?” Midge prompted sweetly, as she traced the outline of his facial features – her soft digits so unequipped for such roughness on his jaw, or so he feared. She gently curled her fingers at each side of his chin, gently turning his head towards her.

His Adam’s apple slid frantically up and down his throat as he met her eyes – her stare so overwhelming and her fingertips too close to his lips but also too far. He swallowed the marvel and tried again, “Uhm, six years ago, why- why did you-”

“Why did I turn you down?”

Oh, it still hurt, even if he didn’t rip off the band-aid himself. It still stung his heart. “Yeah,” he whispered. "Why did you turn me down at first?"

“Can’t handle rejection, huh?” She teased and, oh, was he glad for her sense of humor.

“Oh, please!” he laughed. “I am a gentleman. I can handle rejection”

Midge didn’t react to that. All the underlining wrinkles on her face ironed out in a blank, neutral expression, instead. Her train of thoughts made it to the introspection terminal – the slight shrug of her shoulders marking the destination – as she figured out her reasons, “There wasn’t enough blue in the room”

He chuckled, truly amused. “Oh, well, if you put it this way, then-” he pulled himself up on one elbow and turned on his side to face her, “The lady has sex only in blue rooms” He declared before he could get a look around. “Obviously we are factoring this particular occasion in the equation under the emergency file, I suppose.” His finger twirling midair, gesturing to their surroundings.

“Memorable sex? Sure. The blueness is very much needed and appreciated. Casual sex, however- meh.” Mischief was all over her face when she waved off to feign her make-believe indifference. He raised his eyebrow; his sharp features frowned for a brief moment, before he could get the right angle to go along with her play-pretend.

“Was this not memorable?” He shifted beneath the bedsheets, rising up on his knees and reaching for her limbs. “Shall I re-enact the proceedings to conjure up thy memory, wench?” The sudden magniloquence of his words didn’t match the savage lust of his actions – and did she love a discrepancy of such kind!

“This was casually – fortuitously – memorable” She whispered. The words were blown out of her mouth in a sound so guttural it seemed to come from a place so viscerally deep in her throat – so close to her guts – that only engendered his lust. 

Straddling her at hip-level, their spent cores rekindling at that friction, Lenny wrapped his fingers around her milk-white, snow-soft wrists and gently brushed his thumbs on her skin. He bowed down onto her body – dragging her arms along as if he were the needle point of a compass and her wrists were the pencil lead – but never enough to be flesh to flesh.

Midge loved having a grasp at what was going on around her, but that scenario created a pleasant experience for her to be the one to be grasped, instead. She observed; her eyes fluctuating wherever they would sense motion of any kind – her pelvis buckling up against his in a reflex, his mouth sinking closer and closer toward hers, their joined limbs passing by on her periphery, his own eyes, his own eyes unapologetically chasing hers, her hands pinned just above her head.

He deep-dove in her direction; his glance eagerly firm on her lips as he aimed for them, hers satisfied with just following his lead.

“Shit!”

She jumped out of bed, carrying the sheet along and wrapping herself into it.

“Sure, I enjoy a foul-mouthed woman who bolts after sex and takes the bedsheets with her. In the middle of a hurricane, might I add” Lenny rose up on his elbows, trying to get an inkling of what she was doing, pointlessly.

“Oh! What a prude!” Midge teased, her eyes fixatedly focused on her task, not once meeting up with the outline of his body. “I thought four-letter words were your thing”

He suppressed an amused chuckle, brushing his lip with the side of his thumb, shushing himself. “Will you come testify to my appeal? I could really use the character reference of a prude. Oh but if you do, lose the S-word. Dig it, I’ve come to learn at my own expenses that the judges ain’t fond of it”

She waved off – making a mental note to further ask about it later – and just kept rummaging through her briefcases and the compartments of the hotel’s furniture.

“Ta-da!” she exclaimed triumphantly, holding a worn-out journal up in the air before she could crawl back in bed, now sharing the covers.

“Hey! That’s my notebook! Thief!” He called out sharply, reaching out to take it – his right arm extended clearly beyond her eyes.

“He- hey! You pawned it, Mister! Don’t go all Raskól'nikov on me!”

Midge moved it to her other hand and outstretched her arm away, her other palm flat against his chest. She lingered in that pose – and into his glance – taking in the sight of every inglorious detail. Her fingers eventually surrendered to gravity, slowly sliding off his body along his side. His ribs protruded as the bumpy terrain of a rocky plateau, so cutting and tangible beneath her digits – she couldn’t feel his bones when she had last touched his body, years before; in fact, she reminisced a quite comfortable abdomen to curl onto, fleshier, healthier.

Just as her fingertips started tapping along his arm, Lenny diverted the focus of attention, “How d’you get it?” His voice carried a raspiness that he couldn’t get rid of – not when his guts had just twisted into a knot and a silence too long made it difficult to cast the first stone against the wind. She knew better than his disguises – her digits persisting softly on the wrenching route that used to be his own Via Crucis; each Station marked by blue posts, now faded.

“My mother happened to marry off your pawnbroker’s daughter via her matchmaking business,” she whispered after a lingering pondering, lifting up her glance. “The cigarette burns and that swoopy handwriting of a preschooler gave you away”

It was so intimate a confession that it struck him fiercely and shook his heart almost violently. It was such a delicate and tender way of saying, ‘Your Being is engraved into my Being in a way that my Being will never stay untrodden by your Being, ever again’.

Lenny couldn’t recall these many times where she’d catch him nose-deep in his notebook; in fact, he recalled no such occasion at all. He was almost certain that she got to pry only the night she’d brought him to her apartment, rescuing him from the sidewalk, and he knew for a fact that the only pieces of his handwriting she’d ever seen were the thank-you note that came with a colorful bouquet and his signature on her bail receipt.

“Thank you” He softly blew out; his eyes gently on hers, not intruding but still watching. He carried a certain gratitude within himself, one that spread relief all over his body for the long-grieved reunion and also acknowledged her effort to respect his timing enough to put aside a topic he was not ready to face just yet.

Midge smiled in return to his gratefulness and slowly stretched out her arm that carried what was likely to be his most-valuable possession, “Yeah. Figured you might be lost without your jokebook” He chortled, reaching for his journal just as ploddingly as she handed it.

He leafed through the pages, skimming across the wavy pond of messy words until one in particular would catch his attention; he would stop, then, to read around it, trying to reminisce the singular moments which had produced such a muddy puddle. Out of a whole notebook worth of material, he could remember just a few. He was wasted; most of the times, he really was so far gone that he’d forget where he was, or have no cognition of it whatsoever.

“It’s been licking-proofed, by the way. You can actually finger-lick leaf through the pages without risking a Victorian reader’s death because of the poisonous ink” If all, Midge knew how to make the air in a room feel fresher and lighter, sneaking in some concern in disguise, too. Lenny was never as elated to be in a comic’s company as he was at that moment.

“You know how many of these I actually remember writing?” Eyes dark, opaque. She’s seen those just in one other occasion – he had stormed out of her apartment and she had chased him all the way down to the street, pointlessly trying to understand the reason for the shame and the compulsive barricade-building that his irises were portraying.

“You’d better remember the one where you called me Norman Mailer in a cocktail dress!” She said, revealing that she had been going through it, as well.

“Oh, no. I do remember that. And I will even surprise you, because I also remember the Before and After of that. My mother couldn’t have given me a talk more efficient than your The Fucking Rules act”

“Ha! What can I say? I am memorable,” she smiled in a silent chuckle and brushed his shoulder before leaning in to give it a lingering kiss. “You are, indeed!” He whispered, eyes still fixed on the notebook, focused on a task yet obscure to her.

“One, two,” Lenny turned page after page, keeping count of the ones that rung some bells. “Three- fooour? I wanna say four, do I dare to say fo- oh yeah, four” He nodded affirmatively to himself, lingering on the draft of ‘All Alone’, the musical he would’ve written with Steve Allen. “Four, and five, and- Yup! Five. That’s all I remember,” he concluded, still lingering on the words of that last page. Miami After Dark: reviewing the most hilarious improv stand-up (or, sit-down, actually) I’ve ever done. Are you my wife or my sister? Yeah, we know we are a good-looking couple: we got that from our mother.

“Hey! Don’t steal my lucky number!” Lenny looked up, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Pff- what you need it for? You’ve got four more!” He recalled, amused by the playful shaking of her head.

“Speaking of, how about I buy you that truly terrible Chinese food I’ve owed you since my break-through, uh? And, mind you, this might actually be truly, truly terrible – we are in the middle of an emergency, not sure what’s left over from yesterday”

The wrinkles of preoccupations on his face ironed out in a calmer expression, “I’d appreciate that. But would the Chinese? Are we that specific hue of white people who disrespect other cuisines that blasphemously?”

“I promise I won’t tell any Chinese I encounter through my life! And by the way, jury’s out about you, but I happen to be too white even for white people!”

“Ha!” Lenny chuckled, turning on his side and shifting closer to her, his digits tracing patterns on her clavicle.

“Oh, you are. Very, very white. Too white to dare to show up at a jazz club. And very, very smooth. And also very, very inebriating. And very, very ecstatic. And very, very compelling and hard to resist, yes”

It was soothing; it sounded like a lullaby that Midge was giving in to, allowing her soul to be rocked by his voice. Until it stopped, and of course she had a comeback, “Are you calling me heroin?”

“Depends. How many E’s do you spell it with?” She shook her head to show her disapproval, but the wrinkles on the corner of her mouth told him she was really just amused. When he chased her glance to peek for a confirmation, he could see the softest shades of peach spread on her cheeks. Did he just make her blush?

Did he, Lenny Bruce, made her, Midge Maisel, blush like a demure country-club dame?