Going for Shookie

"Shookie? Shookie Cohen?" Nigel said while smacking his forehead in exasperation. "Are you thinking of opening a falafel stand? You must be kidding!"

"What's the problem, Nigel? I have to start somewhere."

"True, but not with Shookie Cohen, Prupas the Dufus producer."

"What's wrong with that? It's a super successful show--"

"Among the four year old nose-picker crowd..."

"So it's a kid's show. It pays, it would give me some experience."

"Sure, if you call two grand for a seven minute episode, money. And as for experience, you'll get pegged as a kid's cartoon writer which will take you on the great road to nowhere. Shookie Cohen?" Nigel covered his eyes with the palm of his hand.

Harry opened the palm of his hand and studied the henna stain.

"Next time use toilet paper when you wipe your ass," Nigel suggested.

"I told you I met him at a henna party."

"I don't care if you met Shookie Cohen in a vat of hummus. Working for that schlockmeister is a gauranteed career-killer."


In his office on the twenty-sixth floor with a panoramic view overlooking the military cemetery, sat Shookie Cohen behind his oak boat of a desk, phone suctioned to the left ear in Hand One, fried piece of pita dipped in hummus in Hand Two.

"Nu?" he grunted.

" ?" Harry blanked.

Really, what could Harry say to Shookie? That this was a divine moment? The Shookie, the hummus, the phone, the nu. A creation as perfect as a hummingbird. The vulgarian revealed atop Mount Prupas the Dufus.

"What? You gonna sit here all day looking into my eyes?" Shifting conversations and languages from English to Hebrew, Shookie whined into the phone. "B'seder, b'seder," okay, okay.

"But you asked me to come here about a writing job..."

Shookie laughed into the phone while Harry blushed. "Don't worry, I not laughing at you, it's dis story about my cousin Hummi who met dis sexy sexy baby on the Tel Aviv and tried to marry her a week later, only to find out she was dis aunt of his from Morocco dhat he never met. Funny, nu?" He dipped another piece of fried pita into the tub of hummus.

Harry cracked up so hard, he nearly keeled out his chair. This Shookie was hysterical. There was no way about it, he had to work for this guy. Whatever would happen, it would be worth all the stories.

"You go to de story editor, my brudder, Doudou, and you tell him I hired you."

Without anyone having ever read a word Harry wrote.

"O-okay," he replied, fully aware that this was a bad idea, that history was repeating itself, that he would soon be plotting Shookie's murder, that he, Harry Starr, was a schmuck. But fuck, would it be worth the story.