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The kitchen is Lenny's stage tonight. It's gone midnight and Midge is just back from a show at the Gaslight. And of course Lenny's taken one look at her, remembered she barely picked at her dinner, and abandoned his writing to make her a snack.
And what is dinner in the Weissman-Bruce household without a show. One Lenny gleefully provides.
He's got a dishtowel slung over his shoulder and a spatula in his hand like a microphone, holding court over a sizzling pan of eggs while Midge sits at the kitchen table with her knees pulled up, nursing a cup of tea (her mama insists on no coffee after dark) and trying not to laugh loud enough to wake her parents or the kids.
"So they're going to try putting a man on the moon," he announces, gesturing grandly with the spatula. "This is where we're at. This is the dream. Beat the Russians and prove once and for all the superiority of the good ole US of A.“
Lenny smirks over his shoulder, the implicit hypocrisy not lost on Midge. It's Lenny. It's what makes him funny.
“We can shoot a guy into the void, straphimto atube of explosives and jet fuel, and pray he doesn't float off into the dreary black vacuum of space.That we can do.”
He waves his spatula with emphatic flourish. Like it's his cigarette and the bright kitchen light is the smokey haze of a club spotlight.
“But a lowly comic with the supposed first amendment constitutional right to free speech tells a joke about the Pope and a goat or a duck or a ferret, and they're the problem. They're unacceptable. Sick and corrupting the youth.”
Lenny's tone is light, playful, playing the truth for laughs as they always do. Hiding the fact that it stinks and it hurts and it's just plain wrong. That their entire careers are built on the dangerous precipice of arrest and financial ruin.
Midge's smile dims, but Lenny catches it, tossing that boyish grin over his shoulder.
“The youth are fine,” he says lightly, drawing Midge back into the bit, into their shared zone. “The youth are out back trading baseball cards, playing with Barbie dolls and reading comics. It's the adults I'm worried about.”
Midge hides her smile behind her tea cup, biting back a laugh.
"You know what else we can't do?" Lenny's warming up now, finding his rhythm. "Can't tell a joke about a nice gentile girl from the Upper West Side who's had a baby. One peep of that and they yank you off the stage like you're radioactive. One joke. One lousy joke about stretch marks or what have you-"
"It wasn't just about stretch marks," Midge offers mildly.
“I bet it was funny, though,” Lenny returns, not missing a beat.
“Imogene thought so when I told her the next day.”
Midge smiles, seeing that ever present flash of pride Lenny has for her. Always more convinced than even Susie that she's gonna go further than any other comic.
“See!” Lenny brandishes the spatula pointedly, his dark eyes sparkling with that life he only gets when he's performing - or reading the kids a bedtime story with all the silly voices. “And I haven't even touched the biggest hypocrisy.” Lenny stoops into that unique posture he has when he's really in the zone. “A wedding. Lovely church. Nice flowers. Bride in white. Groom trying not to faint from the hangover his best man gave him at his bachelor party. Idyllic. Little slice of the American dream. Goyish, Jewish, everyone eats that one up.”
“But change one little detail of that cozy mental image. Make the bride or the groom black. Just one of 'em, marrying a nice, respectable white person, and suddenly everyone loses their minds. It's not even a joke, not a punchline. Just a Tuesday in a properly civilised society. Two people in love, nothing more than that. But you question the hypocrisy of it in a joke, you're obscene. A menace to civilised society. Dragged off the stage by Officer Peluso and facing yet another unfriendly judge.”
“Tuesday,” Midge quips, keeping the joke going. Pulling Lenny back from the precipice of thinking about his legal troubles.
“Tuesday,” Lenny agrees, flashing her a grateful smile.
Midge watches him move around her kitchen like he's lived here forever. He knows where Zelda keeps the salt. He knows Esther likes her eggs scrambled, not fried, and that Ethan will only eat the toast if the butter's melted all the way in. He's got a toothbrush in her bathroom and a stack of his records by her turntable and a permanent divot in her couch cushion from all the nights he crashes there after the late shows.
She thinks about the other comics she knows. The ones who play it safe. The ones who tell the jokes the club owners want to hear, who smile and nod and keep their heads down.
None of them would be caught dead in a kitchen in the Upper West Side at seven in the morning, making eggs for a comic's kids.
None of them would remember that Esther likes her crusts cut off.
None of them would go to court next month for saying the things that need saying, and then show up here the next day like nothing happened, because this weird family of hers is the only place aside from a stage that he doesn't feel like a second class citizen.
With a kiss to her forehead, Lenny slides a plate in front of her. Eggs, perfect. Toast, buttered all the way in. An extra crack of pepper on top. A few onions finely diced through.
Much more than just a late night snack. Love in the style of Lenny Bruce, who uses words for everything but actions to show he really cares.
"What?" he says, catching her expression.
Midge just shakes her head, smiling. "Nothing. Just thinking I'm the luckiest woman in the world."
He raises an eyebrow. "You're eating eggs in a kitchen the size of my apartment with a man who's about to get arrested for saying 'pope', 'fucking' and 'goat' in the same sentence."
"Mhm." She picks up her fork. "Luckiest woman in the world."
Lenny shakes his head, bemused, then plates himself some eggs, and she tells him all about the Gaslight show that night. Between eggs and breaks for laughter.