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In workman fashion, he reviewed their act--it was a good act. Despite the Dog's cockamamie theories on the 'humor of the banal,' he'd managed to steer the routine into the real stuff: the chills and spills of broken condom jokes and verbal prat falls with punch lines as unexpected as a whoopie cushion at a funeral. Comedic genius, ha! When he was sure that the Dog only pretended to understand a lot of Jimmy's "people-speak" humor, as the dog called it, he subtly, but methodically took back control. He'd even worked in the racial slurs that management liked comics to include so retirees from the Midwest, dismayed by the number of foreigners in the audience, could think it was still their country. Jimmy laughed out loud, imagining the sensation they'd create if only the Dog would tell that one dirty joke filled with lots of American slang, then with a paw point out a Jap in the audience and say, "Look at Mr. Ito there in the third row--he don't get it--Duh!" It would be a scream. But then he remembered how stubbornly the Dog refused to talk and his spirits plunged into a depression far worse than before. He'd begged the Dog to talk. He'd tried to reason with it. The Dog wouldn't even tell him why it refused. Volcanos and dialogs echoing in his head, Jimmy gloomily continued on to the Stardust. When they were in the darkness between casinos, the Dog started in again: "Hey, Jimmy, you hear the one about the guy who takes his dog--" The Dog started laughing so hard that it couldn't even get the joke out--"Ha, ha," it laughed--an irritating, whiny laugh. Jimmy walked with eyes fixed straight ahead, vowing to never speak to the Dog again--yeah, fight fire with fire. "You'll appreciate this one, Jimmy," the Dog said. "This guy bets a bartender that the dog can talk. So the bartender says okay and the guy asks it, 'Who was the world's greatest baseball player?' 'Rrrr-Rooth!' the dog answers--get it?--that's 'R-U-T-H!' in people-speak, ah, ha-ha...." |
| Jimmy clamped his hands over his ears but after a few minutes he realized that the Dog had stopped talking--the damn thing was trying a new trick to pull his chain, he knew, but it wasn't going to work--he'd never turn around. As he walked, though, he began to grow concerned. He began to slow down, then really worry, the silence worse than words. When he couldn't stand it any longer, he wheeled about; the Dog had only stopped to whiz on a newspaper machine. Jimmy's mood blackened. |