Work Text:
On a stage in New York City, sitting on a comfortable couch talking to Jimmy Fallon about the beauty that is Thai food when you’re drunk off your ass, you have a flashback to something that’s never actually happened to you. You look over to your right, to the grin that seems strangely familiar, and think about how his gap is so wide you could ollie across it. Then you look down to your hands, and suddenly there’s blood on them, and just as fast as it appeared it’s gone. The deja vu throws you off, stops you in the middle of a sentence. You feel the chump sitting next to you giving you a knowing look, and then you feel a hand on your shoulder and a voice saying “This is a pivotal moment in every stoned teenager’s life. He’ll be back with us shortly.” And then they’re cutting to commercial, taking you off the stage, saying things like “Oh no, it’s fine, stage fright happens, it’s cool, really. The same thing happened to...” You don’t pay attention the name-drop. You sit in a chair, eat a bagel, and think about the gap so wide you could build a house in it.
Half an hour later, your train of thought is derailed by a hand that is thrust in front of your face. You follow the arm up to the head it belongs to, and the Walking Gap is standing there, his face split wide open in a smile. You drop the bagel you never finished on the floor and accept the handshake. His hand is a complete contrast from the soft, pampered, sweat-slick hands you normally shake. It is dry and calloused. His palm scratches against your own. He somehow manages to smile wider as he asks you “Where’d you get those sunglasses? Did you cut school with Ferris Bueller?”
You sniff a little, shrug, and say “Ben Stiller.” His laugh is loud and obnoxious.
His hand releases itself from your grip and moves to your back. “Let’s go grab a drink, Mr. Strider.”
“Dave,” you correct before he can even finish, and you stand to follow him.
--
You are lying on his hotel bed three hours later, watching him orchestrate a conversation he had with a taxi driver he sat next to on the airplane ride over here. Your stomach hurts and you are dizzy from wine and laughter and when you sit up and suggest that you two watch Ghostbusters he says “I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t seen it. What’s it about?” and your gut twists so hard you almost can’t tell him all the ways that question is criminal. He falls asleep halfway through and his method of apology is a hand full of shaving cream that you use to scratch your crotch, half asleep. He laughs so hard you think he might have a seizure and you pout until he orders room service. You eat your five chocolate chip pancakes while he tries to figure out how to work the hotel cable, swearing the entire time.
He calls you three weeks after that weekend. It’s the first time you’ve spoken since then and it is three in the morning. His voice is heavy with sleep, but there is still a tone of urgency there that you haven’t heard from him, in real life or from his comedy and acting. It startles you. He’s cracking weak jokes and you can’t help the sneer on your face when you ask “Are you crying, Crocker?”
There is a pause that lasts long enough that you think you’ve offended him and he’s hung up, but then he coughs and says “No,” but he sounds uncertain himself.
You hesitate. You know why his voice sounds so distant, it has nothing to do with phone reception. He sighs, long and hard. It sounds like a breath he’s been holding his entire life, you can hear it rattling in his chest. “I would tell you,” he whispers. He sounds like a child. “I want to tell you. It’s too dangerous. Don’t trust her, Dave.” You almost ask who he means, but it hits you all at once that he can’t tell you, and you understand why. You’ve heard things about him and his childhood, about where he comes from. And then you do ask who he means, just to hear him say it.
He doesn’t, though, not in so many words. “I’ve had dreams since I was little, dreams about a different me.”
“Big whoop,” you say, even though you’re sitting up and pulling your shades on. “I’m extending an invitation to the Average Dreams Club. Join today and you get the premium membership, free pullover hoodie and all.” You can practically hear him roll his eyes.
“I dream about being a kid named John Egbert.” His voice shakes. “I dream about flying and blue pajamas and feeling the air in my bones. In my dreams I can hear people saying they love me, but I can never hear myself saying it back. I am a spoiled little brat in my dreams, Dave, and I ache for it.”
Not long after that you talk him into going to bed. He tells you to do the same but instead you find yourself sitting up in bed for hours, sifting through memories that are not your own. There are times when you wake up and you feel like a different Dave Strider. You feel stretched and weak and lonely and sad and it’s different than it normally is. You feel like the last of your kind, and sometimes, when your walls echo and the door closing sounds too much like metal grinding against metal, you allow yourself to believe that it’s true.
The next day you call John back to check up on him and his son answers. You hang up after the third “Hello?” and rub your eyelids hard. John calls an hour later and laughs like last night didn’t even happen, recites some jokes he’s just written. You don’t laugh because you know you’re only meant to listen. He sounds much older than he did the weekend you met, and you tell him so. That makes him laugh, loud and happy. When you say “You only wish I was joking, pops.” he laughs harder.
“The joke is that I even made it this far,” he answers, and this is a joke you’re allowed to laugh at, so you do.
He spends the next month calling you every night to recite jokes, but you always end up laughing at something else entirely. He lets you talk for hours and calls you an idiot, which is fine because you really are an idiot, and you tell him his jokes are bad now because they are terrible. He says that’s okay, they were never very good to begin with.
One morning you wake up with the striking realization that your best friend is an 85 year old man. Something in the back of your head has you believe that he is immortal. You give in to that until he calls you that night, sounding every bit as old as he is, scolding his son for cooking his oatmeal for too long. He invites you to his comedy show, though, and you accept. “It’s the very last.” You can hear the grin in his voice, and you have to grin back. “This business has had enough of me. I’m retiring.”
--
You are seated in the very middle seat in the very front row, and you can see the glimmer in his eyes when he walks out onto the stage. He doesn’t look at you, but you know he can see you. You scratch your left eyebrow, and he scratches his right, and you grin.
He tells a tame joke first, one about grocery shopping, the unavailability of cabbage when you actually need it. The punchline is you don’t ever actually need cabbage. Hardly anyone laughs. That’s okay, though, that’s not what the show is about. You know what’s coming, you’ve been on the phone with him every day for two months. After two more jokes about traffic jams and slobbery old people kisses and then he grins down at you. You nod slightly in response.
Then he sighs into the mic and launches into a joke about his sister. It doesn’t register to anyone at first, of course it doesn’t, this is a slightly younger generation, they probably don’t even know who his sister is. “She moved overseas,” he explains after a joke about her dog’s death. You still have no idea how he managed to make that experience seem so light-hearted. “She decided to get back at dear old mom by getting a job teaching English. She was an old fashioned hag, you see, one of those “women have no place outside of the kitchen” types. She almost locked Jade in the pantry until Jade threatened her with a rifle! Needless to say mother couldn’t chase her out of the house with a broom fast enough.” That’s not a funny joke either, but you find yourself laughing anyway. That’s not how it actually happened, you know this, and so does everyone else. The familiarity of the story is starting to dawn on them. You can hear them shifting uncomfortably in their seats and whispering to each other. On the stage, John notices too, and his grin grows wider.
The jokes carry on in the same fashion. They gradually get more laughs, however hesitant, until he starts telling a joke about his namesake. “Crocker Corps? More like Crocker Crap. Have they ever actually baked and eaten a cake made out of their own mix? I could get the same result from adding a little sugar to the mud puddle in my driveway.” The crowd is laughing now, freely, and you are laughing along with them, but for a different reason.
When the show is over, you go backstage and high five John. He pulls you into a hug instead. “Way to stick two middle fingers and your tongue out to the man, Crocker. I didn’t think you had it in you,” you mouth into his shoulder.
“Yeah, you did,” he says.
“Yeah, I did,” you say back. You are shaking with excitement.
--
On John’s 86th birthday you wake up with a hangover to a message on your answering machine. “Dad is -” the voice cuts off to correct itself, “Mr. Crocker has passed. The wake is Friday, the funeral is Saturday. I hope that you’ll be there.” There’s a pause, and you almost delete the message thinking it’s over, but you hear Crocker Jr.’s voice once again and take your finger away from the button. “He respected you very much. Good day, Mr. Strider.”
You learn from various news sources that John died in a freak accident involving a ladder. You feel bitter for a moment when you realize that Crocker wasn’t involved, couldn’t have been involved, and then you settle on blaming her anyway. You pace for the remainder of the week and avoid phone calls from your manager telling you that your new script is due in a month. You leave for Washington on Thursday with only two outfits packed.
You do not go to the wake. You put on a button-up shirt and a blazer and your best shoes (they light up when you walk, you think John would appreciate that) and drive halfway there. You stop at a convenient store, buy four liters of ginger ale, and go back to your hotel room’s open bar. You end up sleeping through the funeral and decide to call up John’s son to apologize. You owe the kid that much. “Yeah, I was so busy I couldn’t even catch a flight, dude. I’ll make it up to see the stuffed bastard when I have down time. Okay, later.”
--
When you get back home you have another message on your answering machine. “Hello,” a calm voice says, and somehow you recognize it immediately. “My name is Rose Lalonde. I cannot say much. Please return my call at your earliest convenience.” She leaves a number and you dial it immediately with shaking fingers.
“Hello Dave.” Your heart is in your throat the entire time she explains everything you think you already knew. By the time you end the call, it is six hours later and you feel at once very very old and completely refreshed.
You sit down at your desk with the words “Crocker Corp? More like Crocker Crap!” playing in your head, and you write the script for your next movie in one sitting. You send it to your manager, and you sleep for an entire week, dreaming about snot-nosed brats too young to drive trying to save the world.