Hollywood, California --
“Johnny’s still dead isn’t he? Wait, wait…I just sent you a picture of his headstone that my daughter, Melissa, took this morning. Check your email. Go ahead. I’ll wait,” said Joan Rivers while she was laid out on the operating table of her Brazilian plastic surgeon’s office as she spoke with her agent over the speakerphone. “Well then. Did you get it? Good. So you see, I still got a chance! You just do you’re job and get me an interview with NBC. I’ll do the rest.”
“Mom I should tell you,” said Melissa Rivers over the same speakerphone, while lounging poolside at their Beverly Hills mansion. “I wasn’t the only one out there taking pictures of Johnny Carson’s headstone. Phyllis Diller was out there taking pictures too.”
“Don’t mind her, honey,” said Joan Rivers as she requested a can of ‘Fresca’, receiving shrugging shoulders instead. “She’s always hanging around out there. Poor woman. She believes Johnny’s coming back from the dead to reclaim his career.”
“Like Andy Kaufman?” said Melissa.
“No. More like Pee-wee Herman,” said Joan Rivers making the sound of a rim shot out of the side of her mummified mouth and moving her sticklike arms from underneath her blue surgical gown. “See. I told you I still got it.”
“Yeah, but she wasn’t alone,” continued Melissa. “Don Rickles was with her.”
“Oh my God,” said Joan Rivers as she sat up on the operating table looking like the bride of Frankenstein. “They formed a Kabalah! Quick, we got to get to that cemetery before midnight tonight, or they will resurrect Johnny from the grave, forcing him to choose the next host of the ‘Tonight Show’ from a scroll of paper jammed into his mouth like a clay Gollum.”
“So we got to get there to stop them?” said Melissa.
“Yeah,” said Joan Rivers as she ran out of her plastic surgeon’s office still wearing a blue hospital garment. “And above all, make sure my name is written on that piece of paper.”
Copyright Ó 2008-2010 by Robert W. Armijo
