Page 34 of Things We Do in the Dark
Hi Paris. I hope you have everything you need. I know I made things worse yesterday, and I am so sorry. Jimmy would be disappointed in me. Please call or text me anytime if there’s anything I can do for you. I’m still on the payroll, and Jimmy would want me to help you. Stay strong.—Zoe
Aha.Finally, that explains it.
Zoe, who’s technically an employee of Jimmy’s corporation, doesn’t want to lose her job. After all, she can’t get her five million dollars until the will is probated, and Elsie explained that won’t happen until after the trial. In the meantime, she still has bills to pay, and she must think Paris has some kind of say in her employment. She’d be wrong. Paris has never been involved in any part of her husband’s business, and she has no idea what will happen to Jimmy’s corporation now that he’s gone.
But Zoe doesn’t know that.
Paris starts typing, then rereads her text to make sure it’s worded exactly right. Short and sweet. She hits send and allows herself a small smile. Oh, this feels good.
Hi Zoe. Thanks for the phone. You’re fired.
After a room-service dinner and a long, hot shower, Paris puts on her new pajamas and turns on the TV in the living room. She’s managed to avoid the television up until now, but she’s too tired to read and too anxious to sleep. A movie might take her mind off things. She flips quickly past thenews stations, afraid she’ll see herself, only to realize that it’s not just the news she needs to worry about.
It’s Kimmel.
Despite her brain screaming at her not to watch, Paris stops onJimmy Kimmel Live!and turns up the volume. The talk show host—her Jimmy’s favorite Jimmy—is showing the audience Paris’s arrest video from TikTok as part of his monologue. It looks even worse than she feared, especially when Kimmel freezes the video and zooms in on her slippers, with their stupid pink feathers blowing around in the breeze.
“Three hundred dollarsfor a pair ofFraggle Rockslippers,” Kimmel crows. “That’sinsane. If a crime has been committed, it’s on the ostriches who are walking around naked.”
Big laughs from the audience. The irony is, Jimmy would have found the joke hilarious. Things like this never bothered him.It’s a compliment when they roast you. It means they give a shit.If that’s true, then Paris is a few days away from being aSaturday Night Liveskit.
She turns off the TV and looks out the window. The lights of the city are pretty, but the view is nowhere near as nice as the one she has at home. It’s too dark to see Mount Rainier in the distance, but it’s comforting to know that it’s there. Just like Jimmy used to be.
“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 ofThe 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 yournewfans?” Zoe, exasperated, turned to Paris forhelp. “Is that not theentirepoint 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.
