Based on a True Story Page 10

  The whole yard laughed at me as I turned beet red. I took off in an embarrassed rage, determined that I would rape Marvin Adelman before the sun touched the horizon.

  It took a while, but I finally located Marvin cowering behind a belt sander. This was a good sign. Whenever a guy is cowering, you know that you have the upper hand. I started chasing him, but he was fast and elusive, like a jackrabbit wearing large black glasses. I’d run at him full speed, thinking I finally had him, but at the last moment he’d duck to his left or his right, and I’d go crashing into a wall. I was dog-tired and gasping heavily when I finally got him cornered, and as I made a final lunge toward him I tripped and hit my head on a belt sander.

  I don’t know how long I was out, but when I regained consciousness the first thing I heard was the laughter. I looked around and all the prisoners were beside themselves with delight, laughing and poking each other in the sides. The only man who was not laughing was Rocco. He sat in a chair way in the back, but he was close enough that I could see the disappointment in his eyes. I couldn’t make sense of any of it, but then I turned around and saw what had the boys in the black-and-white pajamas convulsing in this mass paroxysm of mirth.

  There, behind me, was Marvin Edelman—all hundred thirty pounds of him—and what do you suppose Marvin was doing that was so funny that he had everybody busting a gut? Well, he was raping me, that’s what! He was raping the hell out of me. You know, I had never understood the concept of irony before, but I guessed that this was it, all right, and I was not a fan. “Get the hell off me, Adelman, and enough with the raping!” I said.

  “Why should I?”

  “Yeah, why should he?” the prisoners repeated as one.

  I was starting to feel pretty powerless, so I had to think and think fast.

  “I’ll tell you why,” I said. “Because if you don’t cut out the raping, and pronto, I’ll go to my cell and get my handmade knife and that’ll be the end of you.” (I made a mental note to fashion myself a handmade knife when I got back to my cell.) “But I’m willing to make a deal with you, Adelman. We are both civilized men. You quit raping me right now and there’ll be no hard feelings. And you won’t see a reprisal rape outta me either, I promise you that.”

  Marvin stopped his raping for a minute, and I could see by the look on his face he was turning the offer over in his mind. “I don’t know,” he said. “I kinda like this feeling of power.”

  “But rape isn’t about power, Marvin. You’ve got it all wrong. It’s about sex, don’t you see?”

  I could tell this was confusing Marvin, and that gave me just the time I needed. I slammed my elbow into his spectacles.

  “I’m blind, I’m blind!” he screamed.

  “And you’re raped as well!” I said triumphantly, and I began my savage reprisal rape of Marvin Adelman, prisoner 6020311.

  “Now who’s raping whom?” I asked.

  Adelman must have thought this was a rhetorical question, because he just whimpered and cried and my non-rhetorical question hung awkwardly in the air, unanswered, before I proclaimed, “I’m raping you, that’s who.”

  Just then a guard showed up. “You’ve done your time, Macdonald. You’re free to go.”

  “I am?” I asked. “I thought I was in for forty years.”

  “Nope, four months.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  We all had a good laugh at that one.

  I was not always a ghost. As with all ghosts, I was once a living, breathing man. I lived in the city by the bay, and in a coffeehouse I sat at the feet of the masters and listened. There was Neal Cassady and Kerouac too, and Ginsberg, who howled at the moon. They were beautiful and they were my family. Now they are all ghosts, just like me. Only difference is, I’m alive.

  They were the young lions of Beat, but their time was growing short when I arrived in the city. They had been replaced by hippies, who wore bright colors and danced and did psychedelic drugs. The year was 1966, and I had decided I would be the beatniks’ biographer. I knew them all, I loved them, and I would write a book about these titans and let the world know these men, how they lived like no others, how they shook the literary world to its foundation.

  And so I shadowed them everywhere and asked them everything, and their answers were the greatest education a young writer could hope to receive. Burroughs, Kerouac, and Ginsberg were my main subjects.

  Julie Grau, a family friend who was working as a reader at Random House and was the first to believe in me, said that I had written a classic work of nonfiction and soon my name would be known throughout the country. Unfortunately, Julie was right on both counts.

  I had grown very close to my subjects. Yes, they were geniuses, but to me they were family, and so I decided to name the book My Beautiful Family.

  Random House sent the advance copies out to the critics, and every single one heaped lavish praise on me. They heralded me as the next great American voice and called the book a masterpiece. I could not believe it. At twenty years of age, I was sure to become the toast of the literary world. They all agreed with Julie that my name was about to become famous. And they were right as well.

  You see, my name was not Terence Keane at the time. But, oh, how I wish that this had been my real name back then. Because when my work hit the bookshelves in late November of 1969, it contained the cursed name I was given at birth, a name unknown when the book was published but widely known only days later. I will never forget the elation I felt when, early on the morning of November 29, I looked through the window of Rizzoli’s on 57th Street and saw dozens of copies of my book on prominent display.

  There it was.

  My Beautiful Family by Charles Manson.

  20

  THE DEVIL, YOU SAY

  “So, Norm, how come you were only in prison for four months when you thought you were in for forty years?”

  “Well, Adam Eget,” I say, “I just didn’t hear right. The judge had given me a sentence of four months. But I thought he’d given me forty years, which is longer.

  “I’d played it right, though. I’d taken care of Lorne even from jail. He’d visit me every week at Rikers and he’d always leave a few grains heavier.”

  “But how did the show cover all that time you were gone, Norm?”

  “That was just dumb luck. I’d only been on the show a handful of episodes and nobody knew who I was when I was sent away. When I got out I had three shows to go in the first season to prove myself, and I was determined to be a star. I should have been having the time of my life, wearing free-world clothes and enjoying free-world delights.”

  “You must have been living it up, huh?”

  “No, Adam Eget, not one bit. Sarah never left my mind.”

  “Don’t tell me you kept trying to get her.”

  “Yes, Adam Eget. And it nearly cost me everything.” I know this story will be hard to tell, so I measure out a double shot of morphine and press the syrette smoothly under my tongue. And once again the present becomes the past.

  —

  I was sitting at the bar, drinking Wild Turkey 101 and talking aloud to myself. “It’s not fair. I’d do anything to have Sarah for my very own.”

  “Anything?” whispered a voice to my right, and I turned and faced the sneering smile and merry, wicked eyes of a stranger sitting next to me.

  “Yeah, sure, stranger,” I said. “Why, I’d give up anything if only Sarah would love me the way that I love her.”

  “Perhaps I could be of service,” the stranger said, and he threw his head back and roared a loud, mirthless laugh that filled the room.

  “Whatcha laughing at, mister?” I said. “I mean, no offense, but I’ve heard better jokes.”

  His yellow eyes narrowed and hardened. “Do you not know who I am?” he hissed, and a vague whiff of sulfur touched my nose.

  “Well, you’re not Bob Hope, I’ll tell you that. I mean, that joke fell flat, mister. You were the only one in the whole joint laughing. It was downright
embarrassing.”

  “Silence!” bellowed the stranger, and now the sulfur fully invaded my nostrils and I choked. “I have been called by many names. Perhaps you know me as Lucifer, Mephistopheles, the Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, Old Scratch, the Lord Host of the Hoary Netherworld, the Beast, the Archfiend, the Father of All Lies, the Great Deceiver, the Fallen Angel. I’m Satan himself.”

  “Sorry, buddy, never heard of you,” I said as I turned back to my half-finished Wild Turkey 101.

  “I’m the Devil, you moron,” he said.

  So that was it. The Devil. It all made sense now. The stench of brimstone, his wolfish yellow eyes and teeth, the red pitchfork leaning against his barstool.

  “I can make it so that this Sarah girl will love you with all her heart,” said the Unholy One. “Sign this and she is yours.”

  The Devil produced a parchment, tattered, yellow, and ancient, and placed it before me on the bar. It read: “The one you love will love you forever. In exchange, you agree to give to the Devil your immortal soul. Plus two beers.”

  I then read the small print. “The beers shall be Pabst Blue Ribbon. If they are out of Pabst Blue Ribbon, as is often the case in this particular establishment, then you shall give the Devil your immortal soul. Plus two of whatever’s on draft.”

  The price seemed a mite steep to me, but then I thought about how I hadn’t lived such an upright life and that if I refused the deal but ended up down there anyhow, with the Devil raping me for all of time, I’d feel like a right fool.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  The Devil scratched my fingertip with his claw, and blood pooled there as I shuddered and signed the hellish contract. I looked up at the Dark One, but just as he had suddenly appeared, so now he had suddenly vanished. Into the men’s room.

  I settled up with the barkeep: six shots of Wild Turkey 101 that I’d drunk and two Pabst Blue Ribbons for Old Ned.

  Two weeks went by and I didn’t see Sarah. Normally a fortnight away from my one true love would have me pacing back and forth in my room like those big cats in the small cages over at the Central Park Zoo. But the funny thing is that when you know a girl loves you more than life itself, you can afford to play it cool. Real cool.

  When I finally broke and arrived at her threshold, Sarah looked surprised. “I don’t know what to say, Norm,” she stuttered. But words were needless now. Her eyes spoke to me of yearning, of want, and of need.

  I took Sarah into my arms and kissed her deep and then deeper again. But no tongue. This was love, after all. The kiss calmed my doomed soul and I felt like I was floating, calm, and everything was right in the world. Then I heard the hissing.

  It was steady, slow, and unrelenting. I recognized the sound immediately, as I had heard it many, many times before. It was the sound of Mace.

  My eyes and lungs filled with the stuff as I stumbled, blind and choking. When the sound finally ceased, I fell backward and hit the back of my head on something hard. I couldn’t see or talk, but I could hear just fine. And what I heard was the sound of a purse being rummaged through and then the unmistakable sound of another can of Mace being opened. Then the hissing began again and I scrabbled backward into a wall as I tried vainly to endure the spray of fire. By my estimate the first assault had only been about a third of a can. This full can would be much, much worse. Three times as bad, if my calculations were correct. I could only hope that Sarah had escaped.

  I lost consciousness somewhere during all of this, but I’m here to tell you that nothing will wake you up faster than being thrown off a second-story balcony. I suppose I was lucky a cement alleyway was there to break my fall but, still, it hurt. It hurt like a bastard. I looked up at the balcony and my beautiful Sarah was there. I was so happy she was okay, and not only was she okay, she was laughing. Well, that got me laughing too, although my laugh came out like a loose rattle and sprayed blood on the cement. That made Sarah laugh even harder.

  “Love sure is funny, isn’t it, Sarah?” I croaked. “One second you’re kissing and being in love and all, and the next second some guy breaks into your apartment and starts Macing you and the fellow you love.”

  “I don’t love you, Norm. I hate your guts.”

  I looked up at Sarah and instantly understood she was telling the truth. She did hate my guts. But she wasn’t to blame. I was sure that Dave Attell had made his own diabolical deal. My quarrel was now with the Devil himself.

  I dragged my broken body to the tavern, ordered a whiskey, and asked the barkeep where I could find the Devil. He looked at me funny.

  “He was in here a couple weeks back,” I said. “Yellow wolfish eyes, diabolical laugh, carries a trident.”

  “Oh, you must be talking about Phil Bradshaw,” said the barkeep.

  “He goes by many a name,” I said. “Have you seen him?”

  “Bradshaw!” hollered the barkeep. “Man out here looking for you.”

  I spotted the Fallen One in the corner, playing a game of Ms. Pac-Man and nursing a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

  A Pabst Blue Ribbon, I thought to myself. That means some other poor fool lost his soul tonight.

  “Well, well, well!” I shouted angrily. “If it isn’t the Devil himself!”

  “Where? Where?” the Devil cried, looking first here, then there, searching the room. I saw a look of wild alarm in his lupine eyes.

  “Enough of your malarkey, Devil. You reneged on your promise. My true love loves me not. And the way I see it, that means this contract is null and void.” I pulled out the ancient parchment with my bloody signature.

  The Devil regained his calm and looked up at me from his chair. He took the document and pulled out some reading glasses. “So she doesn’t love you back, huh?”

  “No, Sarah Silverman has nothing but ice in her heart for me.”

  “Sarah Silverman?” asked the Devil. “That’s the girl who doesn’t love you back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you never told me it was Sarah Silverman. What are you, nuts? She’s way outta your league, pal. Listen, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. There’s a girl who starts work here in about an hour. Sure, she’s a little hefty and her face isn’t much to look at, but she’s got real nice long hair. Now, if you were to sign another contract, she will be yours forever.” And then he began his demoniacal laugh but quickly thought better of it and pretended he was coughing.

  “You failed in your task, Evil One, and so you must destroy this infernal contract and return to me my immortal soul,” I insisted.

  “Trouble over there, Bradshaw?” I heard the barkeep yell across the room.

  “No, no. Everything’s just fine, Mr. Billingsly. No trouble at all.”

  “Make sure you keep it that way.”

  “Yes, Mr. Billingsly. You bet. You won’t hear a peep out of me.”

  The Devil turned to me, and I saw he was suppressing his otherworldly rage. “Now, look, if Sarah Silverman doesn’t love you, then it is true, I am technically in breach of this contract, but, you see, there’s a problem.”

  I gulped with fear. “What’s the problem?”

  “The two beers. I can’t swing it today. Best I can do is give you this one, but it’s half empty. Otherwise it might take me five, six days to get my hands on two beers. I haven’t been making many deals lately. People are less and less ambitious. They’re willing to settle, I guess. At least in this neighborhood.”

  I looked in his evil eyes with dread. “So my soul is yours?” I wept.

  “Your soul? Oh, right, your soul. Well, I’ll tell you what. How about I give you back your immortal soul, we forget all about the two beers, and I’ll burn that contract right now.” He grabbed the parchment, borrowed a lighter from a nearby patron, and set it ablaze.

  My heart was filled with joy. True, I didn’t win the love of Sarah Silverman—although I continued to try each day via unanswered phone calls, unanswered emails, unanswered yelling at her apartment door—but not everyone can say they beat the Devil.
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  21

  THE LOST DAYS

  I awaken from my blackout without hangover. As always, I feel fresh as a newborn. Of course, I have no memory, only the knowledge that I was happy where I was and now am sad that I am back, in the way that a man, upon awakening, will feel nostalgia for his wonderful dream, even though it is forgotten before his feet hit the hard floor of his hard house. I know time has passed and I know that I am lying fully clothed in a bathtub. I am cold and it is hard to get up and stand. When I finally manage it, I look in the full-length mirror and am shocked. My face has some scabs, the small kind you get from falling on pavement, and I am bruised about the jaw and cheekbones. But I have come out of blackouts worse than that. What alarms me is that I am now a big fat guy. I have to have gained seventy-five pounds.

  “Adam Eget!” I scream, and he comes in from the other room. I ask him the date and he tells me.

  “That’s over a month. Over a month I’ve been blacked out?” A month is a long time, and it feels even longer in Las Vegas, where a lot can change in very little time. “Tell me what happened, Adam Eget. How bad was it?”

  Adam Eget yawns. “Are you kidding? You couldn’t lose. You don’t remember it at all?”

  “No, none of it,” I laugh. “But from the look of my round belly and my extra chin, I’m a prosperous man!” I laugh some more and dance around the room. “I’m gonna hit the tables. Where the hell’s my money?”

  “I’m sorry, Norm, but Gabe insisted all the money be kept in the safe.”

  “Haha, well, don’t worry about it, friend. Gabe is a smart man,” I say. “Come and sit, now, Adam Eget, and tell me exactly what I have been up to this past month.”

  I sit on the edge of a chair and listen to my forgotten adventure. And what a picture Adam Eget paints. I had visited every casino on the strip with my two pals in tow. I had taken up with a beautiful Cree girl that I was set to marry, but then I got cold feet and may have lost the love of my life. I had outdrunk a local pimp, who then went after me with a knife and almost killed me, but Gabe had used martial arts on this gentleman of leisure and for that I owed him my life. I finally ended up here at Harrah’s, where I’d been the talk of the floor, a man blind drunk who couldn’t lose, who would hit 19 and find a 2. It all sounds wonderful, but part of me is sad. Sad that it is another splinter of my life that has happened and I will never remember it. Another splinter that I have to take another person’s word for.