“I’ll be here when you get back,” he’d said to her a few days ago, the morning before she left for Vancouver.
There is so much she regrets.
Earlier that morning, she had caught Jimmy trying to shave with one of his straight razors. She was immediately upset, because the benign tremor in his right hand had worsened, and they’d agreed a year ago that it was best to switch to an electric shaver, or at least safety razors. But there he was, the stubborn ass, attempting to drag a goddamned straight razor across his throat with a shaky hand.
They’d gotten into a nasty argument. Paris had yelled at him, asking if he had a death wish, which of course was a terrible choice of words, in hindsight. Jimmy yelled back, accusing her of trying to change him, saying that she had forced him to do something he never wanted to do, and that she was treating him like a child. He told her to get the fuck off his back.
Twenty minutes later, when they both cooled off, Jimmy apologized. As a peace offering, Paris offered to shave him. It turned out to be a surprisingly intimate experience for them both. She had never shaved anyone before, and the straight razor was beautiful, one of several Jimmy owned. The one he was trying to use that morning had been a gift from Elsie the day he finished shooting the final episode of The Prince of Poughkeepsie. The inscription on the blade read: IT’S A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS, BUT YOU SLAYED IT. LOVE, E.
The blade was steel, but the handle was wood, and it warmed in Paris’s hand the longer she held it. She skimmed the blade lightly across Jimmy’s throat, and the little scraping sound it made was satisfying. And then he asked her about Canada.
“Are you looking forward to your trip?” he said, looking up at her, his blue eyes bright.
Her hand jerked then, and she nicked him. It could have been worse.
She could have sliced his jugular.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Paris is jittery enough, but she pours herself a second cup of coffee anyway from the small carafe that room service brought with her breakfast. It’s time to open the box of Jimmy’s fan mail, and while she’s dreading it, it has to be done.
The fact that he still receives so much snail mail is a testament to the median age of his fan base. When she first met Jimmy, he was only receiving a few letters a week. But once the first comedy special started streaming, the post office told Zoe that her boss would need to rent a bigger PO box.
“You know, you wouldn’t get so much mail if you’d just let me set you up with Facebook and Twitter,” Zoe had said a couple of months back.
The three of them were working through all his letters, one by one. They had a system: Paris would open the letters and read them out loud. Jimmy would sign a 5x7 black-and-white headshot with a Sharpie, his signature illegible due to the tremor. Zoe would address the return envelope, pop the photo in, and seal it. They would work like this until Jimmy’s hand started cramping, but he enjoyed it.
“You wouldn’t even have to do anything,” Zoe said. “I’ll manage all your accounts.”
“I’m an old dog with old tricks,” Jimmy said. “And my fans are as old as me. They don’t give a shit if I’m on social media, so why should I?”
“Uh, because of your new fans?” Zoe, exasperated, turned to Paris for help. “Is that not the entire point of doing a streaming deal? Come on, Paris, tell him.”
Paris shrugged and opened the next letter. She had no online profiles, either, so she was the last person to convince her sixty-eight-year-old husband to do anything. Jimmy could barely tolerate emails, and he despised texting.
“Kid, that’s not the point at all,” Jimmy said. “They’re paying me money to tell jokes. I can’t control what the fans like, and I learned a long time ago not to worry about it.”
“Think about it, Zoe,” Paris said. “Do you really want Jimmy on Twitter? He’s impulsive enough with the things he says.”
“I’ll write all the tweets.” Zoe looked back and forth between them. “A Twitter account could help build Jimmy’s brand.”
“Nobody writes for Jimmy but Jimmy,” said Jimmy. “And my brand is I don’t want to be on fucking Twitter.”
Paris had come to like reading her husband’s fan mail, which provided a glimpse into the parts of Jimmy’s life that Paris was least familiar with—his work, the history of his work, his legacy. She once asked him how he knew it was time to walk away from show business. He told her that his creative well had run dry for several reasons: burnout, life stress, age, mental health challenges, nearly dying. But the biggest reason was that he got sober.