I never knew Rachel Stern or Megan Reilly but I live with the memory of them every day. Because, you see that was my car. I am the drunk driver who killed them.
RUBICON BY MARK CONNELLY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 88
Drink in hand, the comic paced the stage. Vegas-kitsch in tux and ruffled shirt, he was spinning Lenny Bruce-Richard Lewis-Robin Williams riffs, spitting jokes, switching voices, striking poses, creating characters, staging scenes. A Catskills tummler working his crowd.
Newman stood in the wings watching the audience. Relaxed by booze, the docs were unrestrained. Their laughter was loud, sometimes boorish. The convention was no doubt a welcome escape from the drab hospitals, clinics, labs, patient complaints, and insurance disputes that consumed their lives.
“Hey, where you see the greatest doctors? Where you think? Mayo Clinic? Sloan-Kettering? Harvard Med?”
The comic shook his head. “I’ll tell ya. Old movies! Don’t you love those? Some guy falls off a building, crashes in a plane, gets pulled out of a car wreck. Everyone is screaming. The girlfriend is sobbing. And some middle-aged guy with glasses—that shows he went to college—says he’s a doctor. He takes one look at the guy, pats his chest, and tells the girl, he’s OK. He’ll make it. He’ll make it? This guy could have a subdural hematoma, a ruptured spleen, fractured vertebra, but in two seconds this guy knows he’ll be OK. He’ll make it. Those movie docs must have had MRI fingertips—”
Newman sighed and headed backstage, wondering if this was the comic he had seen in LA a decade ago.
Dana glanced up from her phone. “That comedian still on?”
“I think he’s winding up.”
“Gives you 10 minutes. They present a few awards then introduce you. Soon as you finish we catch the red-eye. Say, you OK?”
“Sure.”
“One more week, then a break. And I got a text from the Dr Phil people. That’s looking good, baby.”
Dana stepped back, studying him like a mother sending her boy off to school. She straightened his tie. “I’ll be in the car. I can watch on my phone. Get in there and kill ’em tonight.”
Newman swallowed. Kill ’em? How could she say that? Dana was tapping her phone. “I’m checking the driver.”