Ad-lib

by Todd Easton Mills

Martin Gonzales, once a popular “on-air personality,” was the late-night guy on an FM program called “Serenity.” He had an easy, hip way of talking, a deep, sexy voice, and was in every sense a radio man with an irrepressible gift for gab. But the world had changed. There were talk shows and music shows, and never the twain shall meet. The station manager summed it up neatly: “Ad-lib all you want, Martin, as long as you keep the chat to no more than eight seconds between tunes.”

After the station fired him, Martin’s wife filed for divorce and moved in with her personal trainer from Gold’s Gym. Like obedient voles, Martin’s show business friends dropped him, but Eva (his housekeeper) agreed to come one extra day per week. She was from El Salvador, a plain woman who said she wouldn’t be his querida but would do the cleaning, meals, ironing, and would shop for groceries in her own car. The doorbell rang.

“Eva, por favor,” Martin called out. “Eva!”

An overworked man in brown shorts stood in the entry hall, his back sweating in the late afternoon sun.

“Is that my big screen? How did you get in, cabrón?”

“Hey, I know that voice. You’re the guy on the radio.”

Martin nodded grimly. “Can you help me unpack this thing. I don’t think I’ve got the right tools.”

The UPS man helped Martin remove the staples with special pliers (dikes) but didn’t have time to set up the TV. “Want me to put the box in the trash?”

“Yeah, fine,” said Martin.

“Do you want the dog in the house?”

“Fine,” Martin said, not hearing the question. He had been drinking the night before and had a hangover. Martin crawled into bed and tried to go back to sleep.

“Mister, come quick!” called Eva.

“Ocupado,” called Martin.

“Mister, big dog in house.”

“Big dog? Can you handle it, Eva?”

The bedside phone rang. It was Martin’s manager, Doug Petchy. His manager had been a radio announcer himself, and when the two men spoke over the phone, Doug liked to rib Martin about his schmaltzy theme song, “Happy Trails,” sung by TV cowboys Dale Evans and Gene Autry. This time Doug came right to the point. “Do you know why they fired you?”

“I swear, Doug, I never left the microphone on—and never missed a hard break. I’m a pro, goddamn it. They promised me a drive-time slot and gave it to an idiot who can’t ad-lib his way out of a paper bag.”

“They have no respect for talent,” commiserated Doug.

“Maybe I should look for something in TV?”

“It’s worse than radio! You can’t go off-script. Not even on late-night talk. And you’ll have to lose thirty pounds.”

“I can do that.”

“Mister, come quick!” Eva cried from the foot of the staircase.

“What is it, Eva?”

In the kitchen Martin found a large red dog lying still on the floor, its mouth discharging foam. Eva felt its nose and shook her head. “Malo,” she said.

“Is it dead? Is it dead, Eva?”

“Si, mister.”

“It just walked in and died on the kitchen floor? Who left the door open?”

Eva looked worried. “I take it outside?”

“No, Eva, don’t touch it. I’ll call the police.”

“What kind of dog is it?” asked the dispatcher.

“Some kind of Labrador.”

“Do you know who it belongs to?”

“It has a collar, but I can’t read it. Should we move it outside?”

“Don’t move it,” the dispatcher said. “Is the dog on the carpet?”

“No, the kitchen floor.”

“That’s good. It’s easy to break the bladder. Are you sure it’s dead?”

“No, I’m not,” Martin said.

“You don’t want the dog anywhere near the carpet, because when a dog dies, fleas jump off and look for another host.”

“Host. I don’t like the way that sounds,” said Martin.

Eva had mopped the floor around the dog with disinfectant. “Malo, mister.”

“Si, malo, Eva. That’s the way my life has been going.”

Eva answered the door and escorted a young man in green medical scrubs into the kitchen. After checking for a heartbeat, he examined the setter’s eyes and reported: “No corneal reflex.”

“I thought so,” said Martin.

“She probably had a heart attack.” The officer wrote down the number on her collar and stroked her ears before getting up.

Eva, who had been standing close by, offered to help. The officer said something in Spanish, and she disappeared into the pantry, returning with duct tape and plastic wrap.

“That’s enough tape, young lady.”

The two of them carried the dog down the hallway to the garage and shared a tender moment before the officer drove away.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Martin said.

“Mal presagio,” said Eva.

“But too late?”

“What’s that, mister?”

“Your omen was a ‘day late and a dollar short.’ I got fired and Angelina left me—a month ago. What else can go wrong?”

“No temp fate, mister.”

“Can you get the phone, Eva?”

“Is this Martin?” The woman calling took a deep breath. “My name is Cynthia Bradley. I just got a call from the Pasadena Police Department. They said my dog—” She started to sob. “The red setter…Lady. I’m sorry. I can’t do this over the phone. Can I come over? I need to know what happened.”

They were sitting on the playpen sofa in the family room. Cynthia tried to compose herself. She tightened the scrunchie that held her blonde bun and took off her sunglasses. “I don’t understand it, Martin. She never left the house. She never strayed. Why did she come here to you? I’m way over in the Phase One part of the development. Lady had to cross two busy streets to get here.”

“Maybe it’s an omen,” said Martin.

“I loved her so much. She slept in my bed…she protected me.”

Martin nodded without breaking eye contact with the attractive young woman. He wasn’t listening exactly, but he was relating:

“When I was ten, I had a dog. Her name was Rusty, and she liked to chase cars. One day I was walking down Country Line Road on the way to the dam when a red convertible raced by, and Rusty ran after it.” Martin wiped a tear from his eye. “Rusty never had a chance. The driver, who was a soldier, helped me wrap her in a blanket, and all the way home, I gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I kept saying: ‘Why did God kill my best friend?’ It was the saddest day of my life.”

“How terrible, Martin. What kind of dog was she?”

“Uh, fox terrier.”

The story wasn’t true, but it was in the ballpark of truth because it happened to one of the kids at Martin’s junior high.

“Would you like a little tour of the house?” he asked.

“Not now. Can I just sit here a moment? You have a beautiful place.”

Cynthia had more stories to tell about Lady. Martin listened and after a suitable interval asked again if she was ready to take the tour of the house. On the tour, Martin spoke in half whispers, leaning on the vowels as he was taught by the Columbia School of Broadcasting:

“This is my n-e-e-e-e-w theater seating…and th-i-i-i-s is where my big screen will go. My plaa-a-a-sma.”

They drank martinis, and Cynthia grew more relaxed.

“You know Lady kissed me when I gave her a dish of water,” said Martin.

“I would do anything to have her back,” said Cynthia.

“I would too.”

The sun over the San Gabriel Mountains set, leaving bands of rosy pink and smoggy gold. Martin had been talking about his “first love,” a miniature poodle, while Cynthia poured herself another martini. Only Martin heard the sound of patio furniture being dragged across the pool deck—and the splash.

“Martin, I feel so safe with you,” said Cynthia.

Through the glass, a dripping figure appeared. A creature as tall as an NBA center and as awkward as a ballerina in flats. It raised its long green arms, exposing patches of red hair. Its hands were twice the size of Martin’s, fingers webbed and clubbed. In a blink, it vanished.

Martin knew what it was. There hadn’t been a visitation since his father died. Martin’s abuela told him how it had been worse for his grandfather. “It happened after a night of drinking and playing cards at the saloon,” she said. “Sometimes he would go to the whorehouse over the livery and do things to women. Bad things.”

“You have to leave,” Martin said abruptly. Cynthia had taken off her bra.

“Martin, what’s wrong?”

“You have to go,” he said.

“Do you think we’re rushing things?”

“Not really.”

Cynthia sat up. “Why do you look so frightened? Are you okay? Is it me?”

“Put on your clothes, Cynthia. You have to go.”

“I thought you wanted—I thought we were, I don’t know—how long has it been since you’ve been with a woman? We can go—”

The creature reappeared in profile, outlined by the automatic pool lights. For a moment, he could see her pointed breasts and oddly slender waist. His grandfather said she was “like a Las Vegas showgirl, long, sexy legs, but when she crawls in bed with you, she smells like boiled gator.” He felt sick to his stomach.

“Okay, I get it,” Cynthia said, searching for her gym socks. When she couldn’t find them, she demanded he lift the cushions. “Turn on the light so I can find them, Martin!”

“Here’s one sock. I’m sorry, Cynthia. I’m not myself tonight.”

“You don’t know what you want, Martin.”

Martin was alone in the house and afraid. He knew what was coming next. He thought about escaping out the front door, but she could easily outrun him. He remembered the time she kicked him in bed and how it nearly broke his leg.

There was a loud snap, and the door slid open. He tried to get away by throwing himself over the sofa, but she stopped him with her long arms and slapped him hard across the face.

“Why did you do that?”

“Did you miss me, lover boy?”

“Big Baby!” he said, forcing a smile. Oh, God, that smell.

Childhood memories of their encounters came rushing back. She would arouse him when he was sleeping; if he begged her to stop, she would grab his head, palm it, and bob it between her legs. “Why me? Why torture me?”

“Why you?” She laughed. “Payback, Martin. Payback follows the father. You are the son of a father who never paid.”

“Dad?”

“Your father ran the whorehouse above the livery—your grandfather before him. Your great-grandfather rode with Quintana Roo, who kidnapped young Indian girls and dragged them behind his horse to the Red Dog Saloon. Those young girls, with dislocated shoulders and wrists rubbed raw to the bone, took on a bunkhouse of drunken cowboys, and when they screamed, your great-grandfather told them: ‘Don’t mind nothin’, boys. They jus’ havin’ fun.’”

“But what did I do?” Martin pleaded.

“Bite your tongue, cowboy. Your crime is you talk too much. Radio blah-blah. Radio shut-the-fuck-up! How about we have sex and then you get me drunk?” She laughed.

He struggled to breathe.

“Shall we pause for a station identification,” she taunted.

With the next twist, her blunt fingers pressed his vocal cords. The pain came evenly, like the fade of an audio signal. He tried to speak:

“We [breathless] used to be, uh, friends.”

“Used…you got that right. You’re all used up, Bippy!” She laughed, and the force of her laughter made his eardrums pop. “You’re my Bippy, num-num.”

“That’s birdy num-num. Peter Sellers, right?”

“You know I can’t stand Sellers,” she said. “Unforgivable sin.” She increased the pressure on his windpipe. “Birdy bye-bye.”

Martin’s life passed before his eyes: all his honorable dogs and pariahs, more of the second category to be sure, replayed as an assembly cut. His erratic air supply meant his consciousness flipped between this world and the next. A dark scene appeared with cascades of oily gray water falling upward and turning into black clouds. There was a sense that someone was in charge, an irritable engineer, perhaps, sitting in a control booth with circuits spliced extemporaneously across time. Then he thought: I can finesse this. I can ad-lib my way through anything. With this, the scene changed, and it was a sunny day. He saw green hills with wild ducks beating across a misty lake and heard a duet of angelic voices. It was his theme song! And there were Dale and Roy in white Stetsons and silver spurs singing:

“Happy trails to you…until we meet again.”

BIO: I think of the world as a time machine. In Singapore, one finds the future…in the Highlands of New Guinea, the Neolithic Age. Bhutan, with robes and longbow, is Medieval Times. I co-wrote and produced the documentary film Timothy Leary’s Dead. My work has appeared in ONTHEBUS, Voices, Coe Review, Yellow Silk, Euphony, and many others. I received my bachelor’s degree at Antioch University.