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As the cab drives away, Lenny has to force himself not to look back. If he did, he knew he’d break at the sight of Midge Maisel, wearing only a flowered dress and a frown. He’d ask the cabbie to stop. He’d go back to her.
He always does.
“Where we going, pal?” The driver meets his eye in the rearview window.
“Corner of Charles and Hudson.”
Lenny closed his eyes and leaned against the window. This was not how it was supposed to go .
After Miami, when he had come as close as he could to asking ( begging ) Midge to let him touch her, Lenny had decided to recalibrate. He’d tried doing the swanky date-night thing, the kind of outing — minus Miami After Dark — that the ex-husband or the ex-fiancé might have taken her on, and it had all gone swimmingly until the very end.
The whole walk from the motel office to his front door, Lenny was sweating through his shirt, and not just because of the Florida heat. It was all he could do to banter back and forth with Midge as he thought about what he could say to make her stay.
He’d opened the door and he thought — he really thought — that that was it. He would kiss her, or maybe she would kiss him, and fade to black, credits roll, happy endings for all involved.
And then she said, “I’m gonna call a cab.”
And Lenny felt something embarrassingly close to heartbreak.
But it was fine, it was good, they were still friends, and hey! She even promised it would happen before he kicked the bucket, which gave him something to look forward to on the days when it felt like the rest of his life would be nothing but court dates and hearings and interviews with journalists who just wanted to hear him say “fuck.”
Lenny decided that he would play things differently now, play it cool . The next time he saw Midge, he would go back to being her comedic fairy godfather, showing up to sprinkle a little stardust and sarcasm on her burgeoning career.
He would do that and maybe, just maybe, Midge would start to see that the famously unreliable Lenny Bruce could always be counted on to show up for her. Maybe she would start to see how much this meant to him, how good it could be if she would just…
Which explained the Wolford and “everything is Bellmore” and crumpled up napkins and cigarette boxes. And it was good . Fuck, better than good, it was them — Lenny and Midge, elbows on a sticky bar, debating The Andy Griffith Show and EC Comics and whether or not Doris Day’s tits were real.
Everything was going according to plan, until God played an extremely unfunny trick on two of the funniest people in New York, in Lenny’s completely unbiased opinion.
When they stood in the street, yelling about everything and nothing, Lenny had just tossed out those words about the Upper West Side not being his scene. It was just something to say, but Midge grabbed it like a dog with a bone and it was easier to pretend he was just concerned with his hip factor rather than tell her the truth.
That the great Lenny Bruce was utterly and completely embarrassed.
Not only had Midge seen him high as a fucking kite, passed out on a sidewalk, she’d dragged him home, the way a kid brings home a mangy mutt and asks their parents “Can we keep him? Pleeeeaase?”
To add insult to injury, she’d made him comfortable , taking off his jacket, tie, and shoes and arranging him on her kid’s twin bed. Lenny’s other friends, his guy friends, would have patted themselves on the back for leaving him on a bathroom floor because “at least he’s inside!”
Then came the morning and she was still trying to take care of him, offering coffee, breakfast, a shower, and Lenny thought he might just die of the shame.
He didn’t harbor any illusions about what he was: Lenny Bruce, among many other things, was a fucking junkie. Full stop.
But Midge…somehow, she didn’t know. Lenny had no clue how; it was one of the worst kept secrets in the comedy scene and he knew for a fact Susie knew because one time, years before Midge ever showed up, she walked in on him shooting up in the Gaslight bathroom.
“Fucking comics,” she’d grumbled. “If you pass out during your set, we’re not paying you.”
Lenny didn’t know if she just forgot or if she didn’t want to ruin Midge’s view of him, but Susie apparently never told her and Lenny sure as fuck wasn’t going to. Not until…well, it was all moot now, wasn’t it?
This was not how it was supposed to go.
The worst part of the whole thing, the fucking worst part, was that now Lenny knew Midge never saw him the way he saw her. Oh, sure, she loved his act and she was his friend, but this morning was proof that, on the list of things Midge needed to look after, Lenny was about two steps up from her kids. She felt like she had to take care of him. Like he was some poor sad sack with a sob story, some guy she’d slip a few bucks to when things got really bad. Fuck me, she already tried to do that last fall before the fucking Steve Allen Show .
All that work, carefully curating an image of a guy who, yeah, had his fair share of troubles but was ultimately a responsible, dependable grown up, someone Midge could count on to be someone to look up to, to be there for her — gone. Finished. Now, he was the alky who threw up in the lobby of her building (memories of last night were unfortunately starting to surface in his mind) and then yelled at her for just trying to make sure he didn’t fucking die.
It was fucking embarrassing, he was fucking embarrassing, and now Midge knew it, too.
“Hey, you gettin’ out?”
Lenny opened his eyes to see that they were back in the Village, idling by the drugstore on the corner. A knot of tension in his gut slowly started to unravel. He might have fucked everything up with Midge, but at least he was back downtown, where he belonged.
“Yeah, I’m going.” Lenny fished through his wallet for a few dollars for the driver, then got out. It was a sunny day. Cool. One of the last nice autumn days before winter sets in.
He started walking up the street towards his apartment, a studio that contained just a bed, his record collection, and a battered coffee pot.
Maybe it’ll be alright , he found himself thinking, the sight of the trees and the sunlight lifting his spirits a little. Maybe she’ll forget all about it. Maybe "someday before I’m dead” will come sooner than I think.
Yeah, and maybe fucking pigs’ll start flying over the Hudson.