Based on a True Story Read online

  “Sammi,” I say, “could I have a moment with my friend?”

  She looks at me with suspicion and I can see she’s mulling it over, trying to find the smart play. Finally she says, “Sure thing, Mac,” and gives Adam Eget a kiss, before grudgingly walking a dozen feet away.

  “Wow,” I say. “I knew you could do it. I believed in you and you didn’t let me down. Best investment I ever made.”

  “What do you mean, Norm?”

  “Nothing, just that it was my nickel that you used to win the ticket. Therefore it’s my ticket.”

  “Oh, dang,” he says, and sighs deeply. “I thought I had won something really big. For the first time in my life, I felt like a winner.”

  “Oh, no, not at all. You’re still not a winner,” I say, and I snatch the ticket from him.

  I return to playing blackjack, but every moment or so my hand touches the magic ticket in my shirt pocket. I try to act natural as I play five-dollar hands the way I used to nearly twenty years ago, but the corner of my eye remains closely on Adam Eget and Sammi. His shoulders are slouched and his movements are slow, but Sammi is animated and her hands are gesticulating wildly. Suddenly, Sammi strikes him across the face, and she follows it up with what looks like a long and angry speech, a speech she punctuates by frequently jabbing her finger hard into his chest. When she is done she points at me, then slams the heel of her hand into his back, and he stumbles forward and slinks over to where I sit. His right cheek has a big red paw print on it.

  “Hey, Norm, I was thinking about it, and we never really had any deal worked out and, after all, it was me who won the jackpot, and I have a whole bunch of witnesses.”

  “Now, you listen to me, Adam Eget. When you talk about witnesses, you’re talking about a court of law, and if that’s where you want to take this, fine. But who do you think a jury would side with—you or a guy who’s been on the TV?”

  He looks at me and then at Sammi, and I can tell he doesn’t want to go back to Sammi without the ticket. So I have to continue. “Put yourself in the jurors’ minds. Do they believe the guy who has starred in two motion pictures and is a close personal friend of Adam Sandler or the guy who jerked off punks underneath the Queensboro Bridge for fifteen dollars a man?”

  Adam Eget looks at me plaintively. “You promised you’d never bring that up. Please never tell Sammi that. She’s very old-fashioned. She wouldn’t understand.”

  “Of course I would never bring that up. But in a court of law, under oath made with my hand upon the Holy Bible, I’d have no choice. And they’d probably televise the trial. I’m just glad your mom doesn’t have a TV.”

  Sweat appears in a mist on Adam Eget’s forehead, and he gulps for air. “But she does have a TV, Norm. She has two!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll figure this out. You just go and tell Sammi that I want to take you guys to the best restaurant in town tonight, where we will discuss this like gentlemen—I mean two gentlemen and a lady. But for now you tell her to go to the spa and relax. And then you come back here and I will have a big surprise for you.”

  I place my chips in front of me but once again look at Adam Eget and his true love from my eye’s corner. She still appears very angry but finally relents and leaves. Adam Eget returns. “So, what’s the big surprise?”

  I take him over to the cage and toss a black chip to the teller. “Give this man two thousand nickels,” I say.

  Adam Eget is dumbstruck. “No way—two thousand?”

  “That’s right, and what’s more, from now on I want us to be partners in this video keno. You clearly have a feel for the game. Next time you hit the jackpot, you keep all the money, then the next time I keep all the money, and so on. Whaddya say? Partners?”

  I’ve never seen him so happy, and he sticks out his big baseball mitt of a hand and we shake on it. I turn back to the teller and toss her another black chip. “Another two thousand nickels for my friend. I believe in this man.” The teller is very annoyed, but Adam Eget is deeply moved. Now all I have to worry about is Sammi.

  That evening at dinner, Sammi makes her intentions clear. The ticket is to be returned to Adam Eget or the police will be involved. Adam Eget looks from Sammi to me and back again, like a dog afraid of getting beat. I have to say something, so I do.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’m a fair man. How about we split it down the middle? We each get 1.3 million dollars. Think about it, Sammi. That’s big money. That’ll buy a lot of women’s clothing.”

  “Yeah,” Adam Eget says, “and imagine the ring we can get.” He turns to me. “Norm, I want you to be the first to know. I have asked Sammi to marry me, and she has said yes and made me the happiest man in the world.”

  “Gross,” I say.

  Sammi stands up, all six foot four of her. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

  “No, I was just saying these french fries are gross. I’ll be having a word with the chef about this. But first let me congratulate you two kids. I’m sure you’ll be so happy together. Now, about this ticket: Don’t you think we’d be best off just splitting the money? If we take this to a courthouse, they’ll have all kinds of questions about our pasts and our work history and our gender.”

  Sammi studies me for some time, and I begin to worry that she’ll take her chances in court. Finally she speaks. “Okay, this is how it’s going to go down. We cash the ticket together in front of everybody, and just so there’s no funny business, I’m phoning a friend of mine, a lawyer who lives in Philly. She’ll be here by tomorrow.”

  “That sounds fine, Sammi,” I say. “Come on, Adam Eget. Let’s you and me get some rest,” and I get up to go, but she stops me.

  “There’s one thing left to discuss,” she says. “Who holds the ticket?”

  “I’ll hold the ticket!” I say.

  “No,” says Sammi. “Not you. Adam is the only one we both trust. He is gonna place the ticket in the safe in your room and use a combination that only he knows. When my lawyer friend shows up, we’ll open the safe and go to the cashier.”

  We all go back to my room, where we make a big production of putting the ticket into the safe, which takes much longer than it should, because Adam Eget can’t think of a “good number.” When he finally settles on one, Sammi grabs him by the ear and leaves the room. “Until tomorrow morning, you stay with me.” She thinks she’s got me, so I play along, looking mighty disappointed that I can’t be with the man with the combo, but I have other ideas.

  Then I return to the blackjack tables. I hit a run of some bad luck, but I’m betting five dollars a hand, so it’s actually very good luck. Besides, I’m only there to kill a little time, and as soon as I feel I’m not being watched I cash out and go find Andre, my host. When you lose as much as I do gambling, you can get a lot. And besides, the room is in my name and my name only. It’s a fairly simple request. I just tell Andre I’ve run out of money and forgotten the combination to my safe. Andre summons an engineer and the three of us proceed to my room.

  When we walk in, I see Adam Eget on the floor. His hands and feet are bound with rope, and he has duct tape on his mouth. I tear it off.

  “The wedding’s off, Norm.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not marrying the only woman I ever loved. And you want to know why? Well, I’ll tell you. Because she’s not a woman, that’s why. She’s a man. She showed me right to my face. Very close to my face.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re better off.”

  “But I loved her, Norm. I loved her more than anything in life, and she broke my heart and took the ticket.”

  “I know it hurts now, Adam Eget, and I know it feels like the pain will never go away, but the funny thing about love is that—THE TICKET? THE TICKET! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THE TICKET?!?!!!!”

  “I gave her the combination. She told me that if I didn’t, she would beat me up. I don’t care about the ticket, Norm. I loved her and now she’s gone forever. I don’t want to go on living.”

  Problem is,
I do.

  I get down to the floor as fast as I can and get to the cashier’s cage and ask if she’s been seen. I’m told she was here, had cashed the ticket, filled out all the necessary paperwork, and was gone. I can file a police report, I am told, but people like Sammi are hard to find, and I don’t have a whole lot of time.

  I think that if I go back to my room I might kill Adam Eget, so instead I return to the blackjack tables. I need to win. I am alone at the table and playing all the spots, five thousand dollars each. I am playing smart and patient.

  It takes me nearly six hours before I bust. “Better luck next time, sir.”

  The familiar gloom of losing everything falls upon me and I wander the floor, alone and lost. As I pass the cashier’s cage, I hear a ruckus and look over and see a man in a loud argument with the cashier. I move in close and, when I do, I recognize the man.

  It is Adam Eget, reeking of cheap gin and trying to cash in his five-year chip.

  41

  AFTER THE FALL

  We sit in the Tropicana coffee shop not drinking coffee. I drink warm whiskey and Adam Eget drinks cold, cold gin. Now that all hope is gone, a deep relief has taken its place, and I allow myself to enjoy it before the despair sets in. Adam Eget tells me that he has just gotten off the phone with the Comedy Store and that Pauly Shore said he could return as manager. He tells me that he is going to quit drinking again and this time for good. He says maybe he will find a girl, a real girl, and settle down.

  “Sure,” I say. “Everything will work out just fine.” But the truth is, I have less hope for Adam Eget than I do for myself.

  My phone rings and the voice on the other end sounds familiar. “Tough last hand, Norm. But you gotta split eights, right? Even against an ace.”

  “Yeah, that’s what the book says.” I’m starting to get scared.

  “Ten thousand a week, Norm. First month’s free.”

  Well, that did it fast. The face came to me immediately, with its crocodile teeth and doornail eyes. The voice on the line was the fat man with the artificial hair. I down my drink and yell loudly for another.

  “He already knows, Adam Eget. God knows how, but he already knows. I gotta get ten thousand and I’ve got less than three weeks.”

  “Oh, that guy. Yeah. Well, I don’t want to say I told you so, but I always felt those terms were a mite steep. And what if, by some miracle, you manage to scrounge together ten thousand dollars—what’s that buy you? Another seven days of life, that’s all.” Now that Adam Eget was a stinking drunk again, he was making a lot more sense.

  “But I have no other choice; this is the bed I made, and it’s the bed I must now lie in.”

  But Adam Eget is calm. “What if I were to tell you that you could pay him the whole million, all at once, and you just have to do one thing?”

  “What is it?” I say. “What do I have to do?”

  Adam Eget relaxes his body backward against the booth, swallows a mouthful of cold, cold gin, and speaks.

  “Finish the book.”

  I like having no phone and a phone-shaped hole in the window. The apartment can get pretty windy at night, but it doesn’t bother me. Nothing has bothered me since the day I awoke with the plan. It is just so perfectly rational.

  As you can see, I am not a romantic. No great writer is. But the public is a different story. A posthumous work can be highly appealing. A book that took twenty years to write, which was then summarily and callously rejected, causing its author to take his own life—now, that is downright irresistible. Add to this that the manuscript in question is top-notch literature and we have the makings of a tragedy. By ending my life, I will live forever.

  The only decision left to make is the manner of the self-murder. Pills seem like the simplest out, but there is something about the rope that is just so classic. We’ll see.

  I will finish this note and then finish myself.

  42

  A FANCY NAME FOR A FILTHY THING

  Atlantic City hurt us all, and that included the white Challenger. While I convalesced in a hospital the car was being made whole in a body shop. Now it is hidden in an alley behind Keane’s apartment, and we are bounding up the fire escape and busting through Keane’s door. As soon as we get in the room, a wind hits us and Adam Eget points to the window, where a telephone-size hole explains everything. The couch is covered with candy-bar wrappers and empty ice cream cartons and my bum of a secretary, fast asleep. Beside him is a pill bottle, tipped on its side, with pills spilled everywhere. “Wake up, Keane,” I say, loud and right in his ear. “Where’s my book?”

  Adam Eget and I start ransacking the apartment in search of the book, and lucky for us Keane has a bookcase, so that’s where we start. I figure out that he’s been busy writing, all right. It turns out he’s been doing his secretary work for a lot of guys. And we go through every last one of them. There’s a book by a guy named J. D. Salinger; I think he was a middleweight back in the day. But most I’ve never heard of. William Faulkner, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs. There’s one by Victor Hugo. I remember him. He was the bearded one who won Survivor the first year. Anyways, the point is, Keane has been busy writing for all these clowns. But we go through every single book, and mine isn’t here. Mine isn’t here.

  I get mad as hell and start yelling in Keane’s ear, and finally he’s awake and starts in with his “Now, see here,” and “I’ll have you know,” and all the rest of that splendid talk of his.

  “You’ll be surprised to know that I have other projects, Mr. Macdonald, but I understand your concern. The deadline is imminent, and I promise I will have it done.”

  “You shoulda just told Hugo to wait his turn. Nobody cares about him anyway. He was from season one, wasn’t he?” And I can hear my words getting louder and angrier. But the truth is, I’m scared. “And let’s get serious, Keane. Hell, how hard can this be? I mean, don’t I phone every few days and tell you lots of stories? All you have to do is type them. Did you get my story about how I had my very own show and that I wanted to call it The Big Boss Man and they wanted to call it The Norm Show? And how they gave me my very own show but refused to give me a gun? Did you not get that one? I called it in two days ago and must have talked for an hour on your answering machine. That’s gotta be good for a chapter or two.”

  “Yes, I listened to it and, frankly, I didn’t understand a word of it.”

  “Now, you listen to me, old man, it’s not your job to frankly understand a word of it. It’s your job to type down the words you frankly don’t understand and to put them in a book. We gotta hand it in to that Grau broad over at Random House and get our cash.”

  “Yes, I understand how the process works,” and now it’s Keane whose voice takes on an angry edge.

  We are really starting to shout each other down now, but just when I think it’s sure to come to fists, Keane stops, and a faraway look comes upon his eyes and he smiles. “Yes. Yes, now that I think of it, you’re quite right, Mr. Macdonald. Why, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to finish this book within that time, what with all the fine material you’ve been providing me. Certainly, yes. There’s just one thing I must insist on. One thing, and I hope it doesn’t come off rude. It’s just that I mustn’t be disturbed, you understand. My work demands solitude. You boys look exhausted. Why don’t you get yourself some sleep, and I’ll get right to work. Whaddya say, fellows?”

  This turnaround by Keane gets me excited, and I lead him over to the desk, where his computer sits. But then when I look over at Adam Eget, I see the tears, so I take the smile off my face. I know the problem, of course, and approach him. “You’re thinking about Sammi, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I am,” he says. “You know, Norm, I don’t know which hurts more—the knowledge that I’ll never feel her lips against mine or the knowledge that she was a man who stole my 1.6-million-dollar video-keno ticket.”

  “For me it would be the second one.”

  “Really?”

&nb
sp; “Oh, yeah, the second one for sure.”

  “You’re a good friend, Norm.”

  “Better than you think,” I say, and pull out a bottle of 150-proof Iceberg rum. “Go into Keane’s room, drink down this bottle, and get some shuteye. You need it, buddy.” And Adam Eget smiles at the sight of Edward McClintock’s bottle and grabs it by the throat like a bad man, and the two of them retire to the bedroom.

  I turn my attention back to Keane, who is sitting in front of his computer but not looking at it. Instead, his gaze falls somewhere in the middle distance, where reality resides. “Oh, I don’t mean to be inhospitable, but you boys aren’t thinking of staying here with me, are you?”

  “Sure we are,” I say. “Listen. What do you say I sit beside you so we can hurry this up? I’ll do the talking and you do the typing, and I bet we’ll be finished by the morning.”

  It looks like my words have snapped Keane out of his trance.

  “No need, my good man, no need at all. You could do something to help, though.”

  “Yeah, sure, Keane, anything at all.”

  “The thing is, there’s been quite a draft here in the parlor ever since the telephone left. I’ve been helping myself to your clothes. As I explained to you, I’m a method writer. But the thing is, the outfit has gotten a little bit gamey.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.” Keane always did take a long time to ask a short question. I grab a Norm Show T-shirt, an SNL jacket, and a Dirty Work cap from my suitcase.

  “Mr. Macdonald, I can’t help but notice the stitching on your SNL jacket.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “The first shipment I bought, the damn fool wrote my name as ‘Norm Macfonald.’ But he gave them to me halfprice and I figured maybe they’d have antique value one day. I got ten like that and never wear them, so you help yourself to one. They’re practically brand-new. You’ll be wearing a genuine collector’s item, Keane.”