My fellow passengers are old. Even older than me. People this age mostly talk about failing body parts. So today everyone is secretly delighted by yesterday’s rough sea. Instead of replaced knees or shoulders, or enlarged prostates, or inexplicable weight gain, people this morning discuss nausea and the side effects of sea sickness pills. They speak quickly and in a slightly hushed tone, excited by the new miseries they can dissect and publicly analyze.
Last night was a “Gala Night,” which means everybody was supposed to get dressed up like James Bond and Pussy Galore, which is the only “Bond girl” name that I remember. I remember that name because I once bought a motorcycle from an Italian Bond fan. The bike had a custom license plate frame that said “Topa Galore.” He said that was Italian for “Pussy Galore.”
Denise said I should get a new license plate frame, or just throw away Topa Galore. I refused. I would not countenance such obvious and unjustified anti-Italian bigotry.
I digress. We were talking about Gala Night. True to the dress code, I climbed into a tuxedo and went to dinner. There, the corporate overlords announced that the gala dance was canceled. Apparently some worry wart thought a bunch of brittle-boned geriatric patients should not Jitterbug on a Tilt-A-Whirl. Instead, we would be treated to a singing comic named “Foggy Flax.”
Probably a hundred people sat in the theater while Foggy Flax told jokes dating back to Will Rogers (including, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror, like his passengers”). Foggy told the jokes hurriedly, like the punch lines were contraband he had to unhand before Will Rogers found them in his possession.
Thirty minutes into the show, thirty minutes of stale jokes told with the subtle timing of a Gatling gun, we all wanted to kill the man. Not out of anger. To be sure, Foggy was annoying, but our own discomfort was nothing compared to Foggy’s agonizing death on stage.
Foggy gamely chuckled after each punch line, providing his own laugh track, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. He was dying up there, and it was a gruesome and lonely death. We looked at our watches. Every ten minutes seemed like an hour. Just sitting there, witnessing this man’s agonizing descent into nothingness, was inhumane. We were watching a dying creature suffer and were doing nothing about it.
Empathy was proving deadly. Foggy’s agony became our own unbearable pain. Several audience members tried to kill themselves by removing their oxygen cannulas, but were stopped by alert ushers. Apparently this was not Foggy’s first show.
I started to get up. Being only 67 years old, I was by far the youngest audience member. I alone might have the physical strength needed to strangle Foggy, and thereby end his suffering.
Denise grabbed my wrist with a surprisingly strong grip. “Don’t do it,” she pleaded. “I think he might survive.”
Foggy did, in fact, leave the stage under his own power. Denise thinks that proves her right.
I think, however, that the man survived just long enough to find privacy, following some primal instinct to die alone, and not be eaten.
EPILOGUE: Foggy did in fact survive. He is slated to host another show tonight. Denise thinks Foggy is a talented singer, which he is, and wants to see his new act. Maybe it will be a better show, she offers.
I agree to see Foggy’s next show, if Denise will agree that I may hang, in a public area of our house, a movie poster featuring Pussy Galore.
I think we have an understanding.