"Three Popes Walk into a Bar" - Amy Hempel (a few spoilers)

The unnamed female narrator meets her friend Wesley, a stand-up comic, in a park before one of his performances. Wesley is in a relationship with a self-centered former topless dancer named Eve, and to put it mildly, Wesley and Eve are not on the same page. He's not sure whether he should continue to perform or just leave it all (which is Eve's hope), buy a boat and live it up.

Wesley tells the narrator that a man once gave him an opening line and bet him he couldn't build a joke around it and come up with a punchline. Wesley took the bet and the man said, "Three popes walk into a bar." Wesley lost the bet.

The whole story (and many of the Helpel stories I've read so far) deals with relationships, lies, doubt, deception and self-deception, powerlessness, and how we attempt to heal the parts of our lives that are obviously wrong or even altogether fake. The story begins and ends in a park that's so artificial it doesn't even have benches. The owner of the nightclub introduces Wesley by saying, "Every night I come out here and tell you what a great show we have and you know, it's the God's honest truth. But tonight I really mean it."

In my favorite scene in the story, Wesley shows the narrator an old video of himself doing a television commercial for a product that seals concrete, or to put it another way, a product that heals brokenness. It's ironic that in Wesley's strained relationship with Eve, this is her favorite commercial. Even more ironic is the fact that Wesley's former partner (who also appears in the commercial) splits their relationship in order to run for mayor, using the platform "Anything You Want."

At some point, Wesley has to make a decision: Do what he wants and stick with stand-up comedy or do what Eve wants and leave it in order to meets her needs and whims. When he tells the narrator his decision, she pretty much agrees with him, but even this is a deception. For her, it's like trying to find a punchline for the man's opening line "Three popes walk into a bar." She doesn't have an answer.

There's so much to like about Hempel's writing. It's deceptively easy to read, yet full of treasure. Hempel leaves a lot of ambiguity in many of her stories, which probably makes readers who love nice clean, neat, wrapped-up stories climb the walls, but I love it. The stories are lean; every word counts. And I can't speak for other readers, but after I've read one of her stories, I can't stop thinking about it.

I could probably zip through The Collected Stories in a couple of weeks, but why would I want to? There's just too much here to savor. This is a book I'll definitely want to own, but in the meantime, the library's going to have a tough time getting their copy back.