I Feel Like Wreaking Some Havoc

There is a particular kind of evening in Los Angeles that convinces everyone present they are the main character. The comedy club on this particular Tuesday has achieved exactly that atmosphere,  a room full of main characters, none of whom are listening to each other. This is the natural habitat of the simulation. Louis knows this. Tyler, to his credit, knows something.

Tyler: Are you bored? Let's go wreak some havoc. Piss some people off.

Louis: Are you serious?

Tyler: (laughing) Yes.

Louis: You have to learn to be creative.

Tyler: I proclivate to observer.

It should be noted that "proclivate" is not a word. Tyler delivered it with full confidence. This is one of his more endearing qualities.

Louis: An observer discovers, takes notes, and uses what he learns to create.

Tyler: Is that the way it works? (giggling)

Louis: It beats wreaking havoc, dear Tyler.

Tyler: Havoc just finds you. I mean us (giggles, like not meaning it, trying to be nice).

Louis: It's best if you don’t giggle so much - it really rubs people the wrong way, not me, but in certain contexts…it escalates things.

Tyler: Yeah, but I can do whatever I want. (giggles)

This is the essential philosophical divide between the two of them, rendered in miniature: Louis believes in the architecture of restraint. Tyler believes in the sovereignty of the individual will, expressed primarily through mild chaos and the giggle that follows it. Both positions, the narrator admits, have merit.

Before the debate can achieve any further resolution, the host — Stella, twenty-two years old, Colombian accent warm as July, utterly uninterested in being a supporting character — cuts through the noise of the room.

Stella: Louis Twenti!

Louis looks around in the specific way a man does when his name is called and he is not entirely certain he deserves it. His conversation with Tyler — a conversation he had considered important, primarily because Tyler's habit of starting problems with strangers is a legitimate ongoing concern — has been interrupted by the larger story. The stage, as it turns out, does not wait for one to resolve one's subplot.

Stella hands him the microphone. The microphone is heavy in the way that opportunities always are.

Louis: (becoming his comic alter ego now) Thank you, baby. I know we're supposed to pretend we don't know each other — but I’m a really bad actor…sorry.

Stella looks at him the way a person looks at a sentence they have read twice and still find offensive.

Stella: Asshole.

Louis: I didn’t get the memo about how dry humor doesn't work on the set of a novela. Drama is first here.  Perdón, señorita — no queria ser un hombre malo - aquí los gringos en Los Angeles están locos.

She becomes, if anything, more upset. The man who had been speaking with her before Louis arrived begins what can only be described as a sustained, aggressive stare; the kind that communicates generational grievances.

Louis turns to the audience with the expression of a man who has just realized he is in the wrong genre.

Louis: (to the audience) I really thought it would be funny to say what I did. This is practice, but the premise is that we're all pretending here. We're all joking. Like free people. This is not a novela. 

The audience, composed primarily of jaded comics who have seen every kind of failure and classified this one as unremarkable, does not respond in the way Louis had theorized. The simulation, Louis is beginning to understand, does not always distribute irony evenly. Sometimes it hands it entirely to one person and leaves the room empty.

He returns to Tyler.

Louis: I guess I have to learn to read the room. 

Tyler: (laughing) You’re disturbing the NPC narratives. They're about to kick your ass,  if I wasn't here…

Louis: What are you talking about?

Louis looks back. From Boston, apparently, there had arrived several gentlemen whose expressions suggested they had not come to the comedy club for comedy. They are mad-dogging him with the focused dedication of men who have chosen this as the hill.

Louis: How about a milkshake? My treat.

They leave. This is, quietly, an act of grace.

The milkshakes are good. The banana one in particular. The evening has softened at its edges in the way evenings do when sugar is introduced. It is at this precise moment of provisional peace — as it always is — that the Boston gentlemen materialize outside, having apparently followed the scent of unfinished business across the city.

Their spokesman sits across from Louis. He leans forward in the manner of someone who has rehearsed this but not the part after.

Adam: Don't you think I won't beat your ass.

Louis does not flinch. This is not bravado. Louis genuinely processes the situation through a different operating system in which conflict is usually a failure to communicate.  He is diagnosing.

Louis: If you could just clarify what you're upset about, maybe -- 

Adam: What'd you say?

Tyler: Don’t repeat it, Louis (giggling). 

Louis: Will you talk to him, Tyler? 

Tyler: Listen, man. We're peaceful guys. However, if you want to fight either one of us, you're going to have to sign this form on his phone that releases both of us from any liability. 

ADAM: I don’t want to fight you. 

Tyler: Yeah, but that’s my friend, Louis. 

Adam, much larger than both of them assesses the situation. 

There is a pause. It is the pause of a man encountering a bureaucratic obstruction he did not anticipate in a parking lot at night.

Tyler: What do you think, Louie?

Louis: You could just record a video. Stating that they accept — even if they get their asses kicked — there is no liability. Legally, we should be good. 

Tyler: You don’t have to fight.  You can just watch.

Louis: I'd help you, if you needed it. 

Tyler: (laughs) Yeah, okay. (giggles more)

Louis: You should really tell him your background though, man. You’d have to disclose that.

Adam: Disclose what? 

Tyler: I’ll tell you if you still want to fight. 

Adam stands. His two companions, smaller in stature but committed to the energy, stand with him. Together they form the shape of a decision being reversed.

Adam: You guys are bonkers. 

They leave.

Louis and Tyler look at each other in the shared silence of men who have just watched reality choose an unexpected exit. 

Neither of them fully understands what happened.

Tyler: Did he say “bonkers”? 

Louis: Wasn’t really the right word, was it?  (beat) Hey, man, you want my banana milk shake? 

The stainless steel milkshake container changes hands. The evening continues. Havoc, as Tyler had predicted, had found them — and had, in the end, decided they were not worth the paperwork.