The Brodie Brothers Collection

PROLOGUE - Owen

*Three-ish Years Ago*

It’s about five minutes before I’m supposed to take the stage, and my phone vibrates in my pocket.

After four years of marriage, I know it’s my wife before I even check the Caller ID.

She’s always had a knack for calling at a bad time, but I can’t decline it—not with the way things have been going since we got to her parents’ house.

That would be like giving her entire family a hammer to drive that final disappointed nail into my coffin.

I head back toward the club’s kitchen before answering.

“Hey, what’s up? I have to go on in five minutes.”

The loud exhale is her standard greeting for me these days. “Sam wants to say good night to you.”

“He’s still up?”

“Yes, Owen. He was asleep, and then he woke up and he wants to talk to you.”

“Well great—put him on.”

I can literally hear her eyeballs rolling back inside her head.

I think they’re scraping that part of her brain that used to tell her I was lovable and the eyerolling has slowly chipped away at it over the years.

But I don’t even care because now I can hear my four-year-old son saying the best word I’ve ever known: Dad.

“Hey, buddy. You out of bed?”

“No. Mom brung me the phone.” He’s so chill for a kid. My son invented low-key excited. But I can tell he’s excited to talk to me even though it’s only been a couple of hours since I saw him, so I am not going to correct his grammar because I want him to like me.

“Oh, cool. Does the pillow still smell like Grandpa? Is that why you can’t sleep?”

My wife hisses at me in the background.

Sam laughs—which is a miracle. He never laughs at me. Maybe my luck is changing. “No. I just woked up. I don’t know why. It’s loud where you are.”

“Yeah, I’m in the kitchen at a comedy club, and I have to go work on the stage soon. But hey, do you want to hear a joke about pizza?”

“I guess.”

“Aww, never mind—it’s too cheesy.”

Crickets.

“You get it? Because there’s cheese on a pizza. Cheesy.”

“Yeah. I get it. Did you make that joke?”

“Depends. Did you think it was funny?”

“Not really.”

“Then no, I didn’t make that one.”

“Good.”

“Okay, off to bed, kiddo,” my wife says, taking the phone from him.

“Nighty-night,” I say.

“He can’t hear you,” she snaps. “I hope he gets back to sleep. It would be a lot better for him if you didn’t have to work so late.”

This again. I remember a time when she thought I was funny.

When she encouraged me to do stand-up. To pursue my lifelong dream of bringing laughter to the masses instead of making shit tons of money from looking hot in commercials or investing other people’s money in mutual funds.

Haven’t quit my day job as a model yet, but I’m also staying busy enough as a comedian that I don’t have to put that finance degree to use either.

And yet, somehow, neither of us is happy.

“I’m the headliner, babe. I’m on last.”

“I know, Owen. It’s great. For you. Try not to wake anyone up when you get back.”

I’m about to say good night, but she’s already hung up.

The owner sticks his head into the kitchen, whistles like he’s hailing a cab, and signals for me to get out there because the host is about to introduce me.

Time to put on the game face.

“And that is why you should always wear pants when you’re cooking…

Speaking of hot and delicious things that I need to keep my erection away from…

Ladies and gentlemen—all the way from Los Angeles, California, and some fancy manscaping spa probably—please give a warm Floridian welcome to the Comedy Den stage… Mr. Owen Brodie!”

I saunter out onto the small stage and pick up the mic, wait for the applause to die down.

It’s a full house. I’d rather be pretty much anywhere besides Florida, considering my in-laws live here, but at least my manager was able to get me a gig.

Comedy club audiences are usually at least seventy percent male, and the women are usually there on dates.

But when my head shot’s out front, the crowds skew more female.

And even though I’m off the market as a man, I’ve learned to work it as a comedian.

“Hello, Tampa. Wow. Thank you. What an incredibly warm and humid welcome. Great-looking audience too. Not as good-looking as I am, but only, like, three percent of humanity is, so good for you.”

Pause for awkward laughter.

I think I hear the low chant of a “boooooo” from the back of the room, but enough people are laughing and clapping that I can’t quite make it out.

“Very happy to be in the Sunshine State. I’m here with my wife and son, visiting my in-laws.

I feel like if a gator came out of nowhere and started eating me I’d be like, ‘Thank you for not casually mentioning how interesting it is that I was getting a finance degree when I first started dating your only daughter and now I’m telling jokes in bars for a living. ’”

“Oh my God! A gator joke in Florida, combined with an in-laws joke! This is groundbreaking comedy, people!” a woman yells from the back of the room. I can’t see her. There are spotlights in my eyes and the room is dimly lit.

But I’m going to ignore her because I’ve got over forty minutes of material left to do. Also, she’s right. That was a really lame non-joke.

“Being a dad is exhausting.” I comb my fingers through my hair thoughtfully. “I used to be handsome.” I pause for a moment before deadpanning, “I still am handsome. But I used to be too.”

That always gets a big laugh when I’m anywhere other than LA or New York. It gets a laugh here, but it also gets that same woman from the back of the club yelling at me.

“Mitch Hedberg called! He wants his joke back!”

That is impressive.

And obnoxious.

But it was indeed an homage to an old Mitch Hedberg joke—good for her.

Usually gets some quiet nods of recognition among other comedians in the audiences in big cities, but this is the first time I’ve been called out in a place like this.

I ignore her and continue, a little nervous because I’m trying out some new jokes that I don’t have a lot of confidence in. But that’s what out-of-town gigs are for—trying out shitty new material on people you’ll never see again.

“Back when I first started telling people I wanted to do stand-up, they’d tell me I’d never make it—because I’m too handsome and happy to be a comedian.

I’d say, ‘I’m not that happy. But you think I’m funny enough to make it as a comedian?

’ and they’d say, ‘Oh fuck no. You’re not even funny enough to be a funny model. ’”

I wait a beat because I know what’s coming from the back of the room: “Accurate!”

“I was always the funny one in my family as a kid, just don’t ask anyone in my family. Always the class clown in elementary school—big laughs at recess. Then I grew into my face. Suddenly nobody thought it was funny when I farted anymore. They still don’t.”

Pause for awwws of feigned condolences from a bunch of women and a few men.

“Being handsome is okay, I guess. Men want to punch me. Women want to know what kind of hair product I use. My wife wants to know if she can count on me to bring the right kind of paper towels home from Target this time or if she has to do literally everything herself.”

Mild recognition-laughter from the men, and some groans from the ladies.

“Wow! A man complaining about his wife for laughs—he’s bringing his A game, everybody!” comes that voice from the back. “Dude—save it for your memoir!”

It’s a different voice from the one inside my head that told me not to go this route for tonight’s act, but she’s saying all the same stuff.

I mean, I’m not the Sandra Bullock of good-looking stand-up comics or anything, but I’m always testing the limits of how far I can go with the personal stuff while still being likable and funny. This might be my limit.

Some wonderful person shushes her, but she hisses back, “You shush!” And then she yells out, “Hey, Head Shot! Why don’t you spend a little less time on crafting your hair and a little more on crafting your jokes!”

Okay.

This woman sounds like what we call in the comedy business—a drunk asshole.

I’ve got one more thing I want to try out here, so I’m not going to let this chick derail me.

“Seriously, though, I love my wife. Been married just over four years, with an adorable son who’s four years old…

” I pause, to let the audience absorb that for a second.

Not that these jokes require an understanding of why I got married, but maybe…

I don’t know—maybe I’m setting up the inevitable future where I’m a divorced single dad comedian.

I’d never say that out loud, but after this trip…

Yeesh. It would break my heart in two, not being able to live with Sam all the time, but…

Yeah, now is not the time to think about it.

“I love being married. When I lived by myself I had this weird feeling I was doing things wrong, and it turns out I was right about that one thing. When you’re single in college you’re an idiot, and that’s fine because you’re supposed to be an idiot at that age.

But nobody wants to be an idiot. So you try out different things.

You keep doing things wrong and telling yourself you’re learning from your mistakes, but the truth is—that takes too much time.

Having a wife saves time. As soon as you get married, there’s only one way in the world to do things—you do them the wrong way and then you tell your wife she’s right when she informs you how you were supposed to do it. ”

This is when I pretend my phone’s vibrating in my pocket and pull it out to casually check the Caller ID.

“Hang on, I better take this.” It gets some low-grade laughs.

I pretend to answer, placing the microphone back on its stand and muttering into it.

“Hey, babe, what’s up? I’m in the middle of…

Can I call you back in… I just need, like, twenty-five more…

Yeah, I can do that… What kind?… Can you just text me the list?

… Okay… No, I’ll remember.” I pull a pen out from my pocket and pretend to write a shopping list on my forearm while holding the phone between my ear and my shoulder.

I signal to the audience that I just need one second.

“Uh-huh. Original or low fat?… Plain or vanilla?… I do remember, I just wanted to make sure… Uh-huh… Dark chocolate or milk?…” I wink at the audience, like I’ve got this under control.

“You know what, honey, I really have to—okay… Yup. Yeah, I’d love to go to the mall with you and your mom tomorrow morning. ”

“Oh my gawd! Wrap it up!” the woman in the back calls out. “It stopped being funny eight sentences ago!”

Now, there are two schools of thought among stand-up comics.

In the first school, the comic is in charge.

You own the stage. The audience paid to come see you, not the other way around.

So you always stay in control and don’t let the hecklers sway you.

That means you ignore them and carry on.

In the second school of thought, we do things the right way—we own the stage and we let those arrogant little shits know who’s boss by heckling them right back.

She sounds pretty young, so she’s probably got a lot of sass left in her.

Time to cut her off.

I slide my phone back into my pocket and hold my free hand up over my eyes like a visor. “Sorry—it stopped being funny eight sentences ago, you say?”

There’s a smattering of laughter when people realize I’m actually responding to that woman.

Maybe I’m off my game because of what’s going on with my wife.

Maybe I’m just not funny. But right now I feel a strange connection with this terrible woman at the back of the room because she’s right and she’s making me feel more awake and alive than I’ve felt in weeks. Months, maybe.

I hold my pen up to my arm again like I’m taking notes.

“Well, it was never really very funny, if you want my actual notes,” she says, slurring a little.

“Okay, so just cut that whole bit is what you’re saying? Any other suggestions?”

“Yeah. Be funnier.”

“Got it. Any idea how I could be funnier?”

“Stop being so derivative. Stop being so self-conscious. Be less handsome.”

I pretend to write that on my arm and then slip the pen back into my pocket and pick up the mic. “Yeah, I’m not gonna do that. You want to come up here and show me how to be funny, Miss…? Sorry—I didn’t get your name.”

I cup my hand to my ear, straining to hear her because everyone in the audience is turning to look at her and suddenly she’s gone all quiet.

“Lady Hilarious McFunnyPants, did I get that right? Everyone, let’s give a warm welcome to the Comedy Den stage—all the way from the back of the room and some dive bar before that probably—Lady Hilarious McFunnyPants, the undisputed queen of jokes!

” I gesture for her to come on over, and a lot of people start applauding. A few of them are booing.

I see a shadowy figure standing up back there.

Wow. She’s going for it. This should be interesting.

Okay.

Dark hair.

Kind of tall.

Kind of curvy.

A little wobbly but trying hard to maintain her balance and composure.

I don’t have a clear view of her, but she’s prettier than she sounds.

She’s got her handbag with her.

Aaaaand she’s leaving.

And flipping me the bird.

“Oh, you’re leaving?

And she’s gone.

Well, that was anti-climactic.

The audience cheers.

“And she took all the sunshine with her. Maybe next time…”

All the old-guy comedians I’ve talked to say you can’t learn and grow as a comedian unless you’ve survived bombing on stage. I think I’ve already grown a lot tonight. And my teacher is probably getting a cab home so she can troll Steve Martin on Twitter.

I feel a little bad that she felt like she had to leave, but…

On with the show.

“Now, where were we?”