BAXTER BUNNY ESCAPES
2: T. Carlysle Cannot Believe His Ears
He’d been unable to take the subway: no pockets, no change. That meant taking shank’s mare (meaning “walk” — a backward expression from the country folk he’d known in his youth, popping up unexpectedly from the swamp at the back of his mind) down through the city and then over the bridge into Brooklyn in the floppy cloth feet that would not come off. It was very tiring, although not as hot as he expected. People passed him by. Some of them cast him a backward look. At most, they stared for a few seconds. The majority paid him no attention. This was New York.
By the time Carlysle arrived in his own familiar neighborhood it was full dark. As he turned onto his street he was brought up short and had to take a couple of steps backward to hide behind the cornice of the brownstone that sat at the end of the block.
There was a TV News van parked at the foot of his building, sitting with its antenna fully deployed and a team of men all clustered at the foot of the once-white stone stairs that led up to Carlysle’s apartment house. One of them was holding an arc lamp. Another was holding a camera. At the top of the stairs, the building superintendent was talking to a pretty young thing in a blue overcoat.
Quick like a bunny, Carlysle darted around the corner and down into a stairwell that led to a walk-in basement apartment. He poked his head up cautiously behind the wrought-iron rails.
It seemed like there was no escape.
His keys were back in his civvies in the dressing room that had probably already been cleaned out, its contents tossed into one of the dumpsters out behind the studio building. He was certain that he could make it around to the back without being seen, but the same problems presented themselves. There was a fire escape leading straight up to his kitchen window, but the bottom flight was kept folded up and Carlysle doubted that he could reach it. Even if he made it up the back way, he would have to break the window — just one more thing that he could not afford to fix.
In the end Carlysle thought, What the hell? I’ve spent most of my life on television. What’s another sixty seconds?
. . . and he padded on down the street and straight up the steps of his apartment house to where the super was talking to the auburn-haired young lady with a microphone.
At first they seemed not to notice him. Actually, this was a simple moment of astonishment at the realization that the object of their conversation had just stepped into their midst.
“You’re Baxter Bunny,” the newslady said.
“My name is Carlysle,” Carlysle said. “And I’m no more a bunny than Magritte’s pipe is a pipe.”
But this news wench was not as gormless as she looked. “In the same way that Leonard Nimoy is not Spock,” she said. “I suppose.”
Carlysle took it in stride. “You got that right. What we have here is a simple Costume Disfunction. Nothing else.”
“One of the attendants who brought you in is complaining that you broke his teeth,” the television lady said.
Carlysle looked straight into the camera and said, “If that’s true, then I’m glad. I didn’t ask to be taken into that concentration camp. They assaulted me, not the other way around.”
The super, who was a large man with a cleanly shaved head and a Diablo beard who favored tank tops and black jeans and who wore his keys attached to unnecessary lengths of thick silver chain, said, “What about me?”
“What about you?” the news lady said.
“We were talking about how I know this guy . . .”
“We cover the news,” the news lady said. “And the news just walked up and said hello to me.”
Carlysle yanked one of the super’s silver chains. “I don’t have my keys,” he said. “I need you to let me in.”
“Just a sec,” the super said. He pointed a finger at the news lady in a way that caused the veins to stand out on his biceps. “I’m not through with you.”
“But I’m through with you,” she said, and stepped around him. “Mr. Bunny, how long has it been since you were able to take off your costume?”
“Can you get me out of here?” Carlysle said to the super.
“Sure thing, buddy.” Carlysle had caught the super at the exact right moment of purple indignation. They were allies as they crossed the threshold into the apartment building. The moment the door closed behind them, hostilities resumed.
Carlysle stomped down to the end of the hall, threw open the elevator door and stood inside, under the light, arms akimbo.
“Well?” he said at last.
The super smirked. “Elevator’s broken, twerp. Guess you’ll have to walk your sorry ass on up.”
“Then you’ll be walking with me,” Carlysle said. He came on back, rounded the stairs, turned and held out his hand. “Unless you want to loan me your master key.”
The building superintendent scowled down at him. Carlysle shrugged and started up. “Nah, didn’t think so,” he said.
There was silence but for the angry clomping of two pairs of feet up the stairs. Halfway to the third floor, staring at Carlysle’s cottony-tailed butt waggling almost in his face, the super blurted out: “What’s with the get-up, anyway? You’re a little old for Halloween.”
“I didn’t have time to change out of my work clothes,” Carlysle spat. “Excuse me for living.”
“Work clothes? Wha’ d’you do for a living, lay eggs in Easter Bunny Land?”
Carlysle paused three steps up, turned on the man and looked him in the eye. “I’m in television. I would have expected you to know, since you obviously don’t spend your days fixing elevators.”
“At least I got an honest job. You don’t think anyone with half a brain would watch a show with something like you on it, do you?”
“No,” Carlysle said, quite seriously and dejectedly. He went on stomping up the stairs, hissing over his shoulder, “It was for kids. Kids with whole brains. The ones too young to have been lobotomized yet.”
But the building superintendent had only heard one word.
“Was? You mean you’re out of a job?”
Carlysle climbed and mumbled and waved his hand dismissively.
The super was not entirely insensitive, but there were a lot of things about the unfolding picture that he did not like. Even so, somewhere deep down in the combination there was the magic of television involved, and this did not escape him. “You really in TV?” he said, in a genuine attempt at showing interest.
“Only for the last quarter century or so,” Carlysle said bitterly. “Not that I’d have expected you to notice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the super growled. He actually struck his chest with his free hand, the left one, the one not immediately gripping the banister. Any interest he might have had in Carlylse’s televisual history vanished like a sheet of flash paper going up. “Don’t expect any breaks from me, shrimp,” he said. “I only work here.”
“If you can call it that,” Carlysle said. “But who’s arguing?”
“You calling me a jerk?” the super said.
They had arrived at the third floor landing. Carlysle leaned on the wall. “Now, would I do that when I need you to let me in to my own apartment because I left my keys at work and had to walk all the way home in this stupid rabbit costume?”
“You got a point there,” the super said. He pulled on the long chain and the key ring came flying out of his belt.
*
Carlysle slammed the door and stood with his back braced against the wood, his head about level with the knob. It was only a third floor apartment; even so it seemed quiet and calm. Light from the street below filtered in through the living room windows and Carlysle could see the outlines of his own private world in the kind of citified gloaming that illuminated the room at the end of the entry hall. He took several deep breaths. Still, he could not calm down. He turned, reached up with one velvety paw and slammed the dead bolt.
He did not turn on the overhead lights. He could not reach the switch. Instead he waddled painfully into the living area and pulled the chain on a lamp that sat on a low table to his right.
Normally he would have thrown his keys down at the same spot. Next to the lamp there was a framed handbill bearing his name, a framed picture of the original Cowboy Bob cast, a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a dirty highball glass. Carlysle found that when it came to opening the bottle and pouring out a good strong belt, his rabbitty hands did not impede him at all.
He took three big gulps of the whiskey and then breathed deeply again. On the other side of the doorway was a small white Naugahide chair pushed up against the wall. He climbed into this, shifting some at the unfamiliar feeling of a big puffy tail just above his butt, and at last began to settle down.
The apartment, which would have been painfully small for almost anyone else, was palatial to Carlysle. For him, it was a rent-controlled castle with a view of the park from low windows off of his living room.
It had largely been fit out with children’s furniture; and so his sofa had polka dots in red, purple, yellow and blue, and many of the little stands and tables had forest animals climbing their legs. Carlysle was fine with that.
His bookcase, though, stretched from floor to ceiling on the opposite wall, the higher shelves accessed by a real library-style rolling ladder that had set Carlysle back a month’s pay. Its wooden shelves were filled with books and memorabilia and LPs (Carlysle favored Jazz, but also had a guilty fondness for the kind of music they played in elevators: things like the Living Strings Orchestra and Percy Faith and Mitch Miller).
Only one shelf was remotely tidy. It held a row of black-framed pictures and a black-framed magazine cover. The pictures featured Carlysle, in costume as Baxter Bunny, posing among gaggles of children alongside three presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Of all of them, Johnson had been the most annoying, having almost ripped Carlylse’s costume off for the sake of a stupid gag about ear-pulling.
The photos were taken every year at the White House Easter Egg Hunt, where Carlysle had been a popular guest since 1962, appearing so many times that LIFE magazine had once referred to him, on their cover, as “America’s First Bunny.”
It was the LIFE magazine cover that held pride of place in the exact center of the shelf. Carlysle stared at it now, and for the first time noted how the colors had faded. Nixon had been president at the time. He knelt beside Carlysle, making a Peace sign with his free hand.
Carlysle had a seventeen-inch television on a metal stand; he had a stereo system with speakers taller than himself, although he had never dared to crank the volume up as high as it would go. And he had the comfy white Naugahide chair in which he was sitting now, almost invisible to the naked eye, white fur on the white chair, getting rapidly plastered.
“Nix,” he said, and took another belt. “Nyet. No. Not. Nein.”
His thoughts were not with the cancellation of the show, but with the abomination of his experience in the Emergency Room, where the men in hospital green and blue had manhandled him from the gurney onto a table, and then strapped him down when he would not lie still.
His scalp felt itchy and he instinctively reached up to scratch — then stopped short, remembering the blinding pain and the blood-red light behind his eyes. Cupping the highball glass in both hands, he eased back into the chair, drank deeply, and tried to make some sense of what had happened to him.
It wasn’t even the original costume. That was in the Smithsonian collection, although as far as Carlysle knew it had never been displayed. He’d been through five of them during the Cowboy Bob years alone. Then, when the show was morphed into Fun House, he’d been given the new, improved model with better ventilation and more comfortable feet, and he’d been through at least two of those.
Carlysle held up his pink-padded paws in front of his face. “Mark eight, are you?” he said. He threw his hands down. He got up and fixed himself another drink.
As he was heading back to the Naugahide chair, the telephone rang. He stumbled over to it, in the process knocking a magazine from the end table to the floor. It was an old issue of National Geographic. Carlysle thought ruefully that he would have to cancel his subscription now that he was unemployed.
When he picked up the phone, a woman’s voice said, “Is this Terrance Carlysle?”
“Just Carlysle,” Carlysle said. “Who is this?”
“We met just now outside your apartment, I’m Margo Blake, a reporter for WDUK NewsChannel Eleven.”
A rinky-dink station, Carlysle thought. “How did you get my number? It’s unlisted.”
“Yes, I know. Would you like to talk about what happened today?”
“No, I would not,” Carlysle said, and hung up.
He was halfway to the chair when the telephone rang again. This time he tripped over the magazine and nearly spilled his drink. He kicked the National Geographic under the stand, lifted the receiver and spoke in clipped tones.
“This is Cawy Gwant. The pahty you ah speaking to is no longew in wesidence.”
The woman’s voice was teasing this time. “Are you still wearing the costume?” she said.
Carlysle hung up. He’d been hoping that someone he knew, someone from the old days, anyone, would have heard about the cancellation of Fun House and that they would call him, just to say hello, just to offer some sympathy, just to say, “Tough break kid. But things’ll be okay. You’ll see.” That hope died now with the knowledge that he dared not leave the blasted thing on the hook. He picked up the receiver again, got a dial tone, and dropped it to the floor.
His glass was almost empty and he didn’t remember drinking any of it. He polished it off, fixed another, and returned to the chair.
“Ziss iss ohnly netcheral,” he said out loud to himself in a phony German headshrinker voice. “Ziss bunny hass bin your income unt your zuztenance now for menny yearrr-z. For ze bulk uhf your adult life, in fect. You are netcherly eggspeariencing ze Compensatory Rrrrre-ection.”
Carlysle frowned bitterly. “But I hate him,” he replied, after a time, in his own voice. “He ruined my career. He’s ruined my life. What’s left for me now? Special Appearances at the East Buttfuck Mall. Maybe I could get a job in the ‘Dunk the Midget’ game at the State Fair. Or capitalize on the Fun House connection and get a gig spooking people on the Mystery Train. I could paint the suit black and put some fangs in. Actually, I’d kind of like that.”
He gulped, and swallowed. A smirk crawled over his face and he spoke as The Headshrinker again.
“Orrrrr-r-r-r-r-r!” he said, rolling the r’s ridiculously. “You could be wrrr-rrr-itink ze Tell-All Book!”
“Genius!” he said. “I can see it now: RAUNCHY RABBIT: The One Hundred Percent Fake Revel-ations of Sexual Hijinks Down on the Round-Up Ranch! The cover will have me smokin’ a cigar and sitting on Miss October’s lap. Haw! Drinkin’ beer from a ten-gallon hat! Where is Miss October, anyhow? I could go for a Compensatory Erection.”
He cast around the room for sight of the magazine, but before he could find it, Dr. Shrinker was back.
“Zo! You feel eeee-MESS-culated by ziss Funny Bunny mit der zipper vich doesn’t be opening?”
GOOOSH! Carlysle kicked the doctor in the face with his plush rabbit’s foot.
“HA! HA!” Carlysle said,
and
“HA! HA!” Carlysle said again, looking back on it from his Naugahyde chair.
“You little prick,” one of the attendants said. “You’re lucky we didn’t take you to Bellevue.” With his giant hand on Carlysle’s chest he pushed Carlysle back down onto the table. The other attendant brought the straps into view.
“HELP!” Carlysle shouted, thrashing against the restraints. “HELP ME! PLEASE — PLEASE! HEEEE-LLLLLLLP!”
The Emergency Room fell silent. Most of the visible faces turned to look in his direction. The few patients who were able peered around from behind patterned blue curtains.
The on-duty doctor was a young woman with dark circles under her eyes. “What the hell is going on here?” she said to the attendants.
“I didn’t ask to be brought here!” Carlylse hissed. “They abducted me and now they’re threatening me. One of them just said he was going to take me to the nut house. But I can explain the costume!”
“You’re Baxter Bunny,” the doctor said.
Now, alone in the Naugahide chair, Carlysle began to shake uncontrollably. “I’m not a bunny,” he said. “I’m Carlysle. And I will not allow this thing . . . this thing. . . what is this thing?”
He dragged himself up out the chair again and for the first time turned into the little bathroom off the entry hall. When he flicked the switch, a single fluorescent bulb came on above the sink, the overhead having long ago burned out. He climbed up onto the footstool and stared.
His reflection came swimming out at him from the dark of the mirror. His face was deeply lined, with thin lips and a slightly bulbous nose. It looked painfully discordant against the smooth white fur of the bunny costume.
But was it really a costume anymore? He felt for the zipper, and found nothing. He tried to take the mittens off, but was unable even to find the seam where the velcro fastenings joined the sleeves. He reached up once again, grasped the floppy ears one in each paw and tried to pull the headpiece back and off.
He had expected the same shock of blinding pain, and was surprised when he felt nothing. He tugged again. Nothing happened. The headpiece did not budge. The seam around his neck had disappeared as well. All around his face, the cloth appeared to have bonded with his flesh. The transformation was complete.
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© 2015 Doug Thornsjo and Duck Soup Productions, all rights reserved.
