Based on a True Story Read online

  “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Macfonald.”

  I guess that’s Keane’s idea of a joke. “Yeah, no problem at all. There are nine more where that came from. How’s that sound?”

  Keane smiles. “It sounds splendid,” he says, and then flinches.

  I just smile at the old man. He’s not so bad.

  He insists he will have the book finished by the morning but only if I leave him alone. He says I can sleep in his room, and when I look back, Keane is already hard at work, so I hit the hay and fall fast asleep, happy that when I wake up the book will be finished or close to it. But I wake up in the middle of the night when nature calls. I get up and take a visit to the little boys’ room, and when I walk out of Keane’s bedroom I see something I will likely never forget. There stands Keane fully dressed in my clothes, on top of a small stepladder, with a noose around his neck. He sees me, and I can see the shock register on his face. He’s been caught.

  Still, he is determined.

  “Mr. Macdonald, might I suggest that you go back to your room. This is not something you want to see.”

  “You’re damned right it’s not,” I say. “But it’s not something you want to do either, Keane. Think about it. You slip at all and lose your footing on that stepladder, and you’re a dead man.”

  Things become worse when I look across the room and see Adam Eget in his PJs, looking on in confusion. “You guys woke me up. Hey, what’s Mr. Keane doing, Norm?”

  I look at him in his pajamas and his innocence. “It’s called autoerotic asphyxiation, Adam Eget.”

  “No, no. What?” protests Keane.

  “What’s autoerotic asphyxiation, Norm?”

  “Well, it’s a very fancy name for a very filthy thing.”

  “That’s not what’s going on here,” says Keane.

  “No, of course not. You were changing a lightbulb, I’m sure. WITH A NOOSE AROUND YOUR NECK.”

  “Look, I’m warning you two. Just return to your rooms and go to sleep. If you stay, you’re not going to like what you see.”

  “DUH,” I say. “Look, if you’re hell-bent on doing this thing that only serves to make a filthy thing filthier, then fine. But it is the responsibility of my friend and me to make sure nothing goes wrong. The last thing I want is to try to explain to your friends and family and the press what we witnessed here tonight. Adam Eget, steady the ladder while he deprives himself of oxygen and lays down with himself simultaneously. Something in my book must have filled him with impure thoughts.”

  “Stop this babble,” Keane blares, and removes the noose from his neck. “I’ve decided against it.”

  “You’re making a wise decision, Keane, and I’ll reward you for it.” I pull a capsule of amyl nitrite from my pocket. “You go now and lay beside yourself and, at the moment of sin, break this beneath your nose and inhale deeply. It’ll do the trick just fine, no rope necessary.”

  Keane throws the capsule with contempt to the floor, and it bounces once on the hardwood and vanishes beneath the couch.

  Immediately, Adam Eget is on his hands and knees with his head underneath the couch, searching for the amyl nitrite as a swine would truffles.

  “I suppose you’re right, Mr. Macdonald,” Keane hisses as I make my way to the little boys’ room. “I promised Ms. Grau a manuscript, and I must honor that promise.” And, as if in a trance, he trundles over to his computer and sits before it.

  I’ve been biding my time, and now is my chance. I wake up to find Macdonald gone and the other one asleep. Mr. Macdonald has been keeping me captive for a month now. I’ve been here typing what he says, getting as many words down as possible. The other one has a gun trained on me at all times. They are hiding, they say, from the fat man with the artificial hair. And they might well be. This fat man with the artificial hair may well kill us all. There is a problem, though. He may not exist. I may have made him up. I can’t be sure of anything anymore.

  In order to fill up Mr. Macdonald’s memoirs, I had to stray far from the prosaic facts that made up his life and I have veered into straight-out falsehoods. Why would these fools have barricaded themselves in my brownstone if there was not real danger outside? And what about the dolt sleeping on the couch, the one I named Adam Eget? He never existed before I constructed him on my computer. He does not exist in the real world; he has never managed The World Famous Comedy Store. I know I made him up. But how is it that I could have made up a human being who now lies snoring on my chesterfield? No, this is the truth. I am a secretary, just as Mr. Macdonald has asserted from the beginning. I know that the two live here with me, and they are on the lam. I know this is true and not something I have written. And I know what I need to find Macdonald’s essence. I’ve known it from the start. I tie a band around my biceps, pick up a syrette, place the needle in the crook of my arm, and push hard, just like I’ve seen Mr. Macdonald do, sending a triple shot of morphine into my blood. It feels just like happiness. I pick up the gun from where it lies beneath the couch and I make for the door. Before I leave, I look in the mirror and am confronted by a slovenly fool. My eyes have gone blank, just like his. I am stunned for a moment. It has finally happened. I have become him. God help me, I have become him.

  43

  ESCAPE!

  I strike Adam Eget awake, and he whimpers and asks where he is and who I am and all those questions men ask when they are awoken suddenly.

  “Where’s Keane? We said we would take turns guarding him, and now he is gone.”

  “I must have fallen asleep.”

  I punch him directly in the nose, right in that spot that makes the blood come out fast and full, and Adam Eget covers his nose with his hand and runs crying to the bathroom.

  I’m very scared now. Keane wasted too much time, and the thirty-day limit has come and gone. The red Cadillac has been parked across the street for a week now, and some goons knocked on the door a few days ago. Adam Eget and I listened from the closet as Keane answered a few questions and the goons moved on. Since then there’s been nothing. But they know we’re in the building. I hope Keane remembered that when he left. If he was smart he took the fire escape and then ducked through the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant to Sixth Avenue and beyond. But he’s been acting screwy lately, reckless. Sometimes he’ll open the curtain in front of the window with the hole in it, sending Adam Eget and me diving behind furniture, because we can still see the big red Cadillac across the street. Does he really think he has a chance against the fat man with the artificial hair?

  I reach under the couch for my gun and it’s gone. Where the hell did I leave it? I can’t go out in New York City unarmed. Keane has a whole bunch of baseball gloves and balls and bats signed by famous players. He’s got so many you’d think he was a baseball player himself. I grab the biggest bat I can find, signed by Lou Gehrig. It’s not much of a weapon, but it’s all I got and I have no time. I have to find Keane and find him fast.

  I order a glass of Wild Turkey 101 and ask the waiter to leave the bottle. I have never had much tolerance for libations, but I am determined to go through with this transformation as far as I can. And I see now that the drink has little effect on me. The morphine has numbed me out and the liquor does not burn my gullet. It’s like my insides are as impervious as ice. When I talk—and I do feel like talking a lot on this drug—my voice is a slur, thick and incoherent, and I smile and laugh for little reason. It takes only a moment for someone to recognize the voice.

  “Hey, I know you.” And he is over by me in a moment and has me in a headlock. “You’re that guy,” he says, leading me to the table where his friends are sitting. “Hey, you know who this guy is?” I can’t tell if the question is rhetorical or genuine. One couple there clearly has no idea, but they seem polite enough about it, even a little apologetic. But in the other five I see that their eyes are narrowed in on me, and they look from me to a place down on the table or on the wall, where their memories are just out of reach.

  “I seen you in something,
” offers one.

  “Sure you have,” I say.

  “Where have I seen you?”

  Luckily, I have become a bit of an expert on who I am, so I decide to guess from their age how they might know me.

  “Well, you may have heard of a little movie called Billy Madison.”

  “You’re not Adam Sandler,” one punk sneers dismissively.

  “Maybe not, but I know him and he knows me too.”

  “Then get him on the phone.”

  “I would, but not for the likes of you.”

  “Then just tell us how we know you.”

  “Take it easy, Charley. After all, I invited him over here.” This one is the biggest and youngest, and I can tell that he has a dangerous bite to him. But the fine morphine has me immune to my usual fear of the young.

  “You ever heard of The Norm Show?”

  “Nope.”

  “I played Norm.”

  “You ever been on television?”

  “Are you not even listening? I’ve been on every talk show there is. Jimmy Fallon, Conan, Kimmel, Leno. Even the grand old man himself, David Letterman. And always as the first guest too.” I can feel the pride swelling me up, and I take another fine free shot of booze. This is turning out okay. As long as these fools don’t figure out where they almost know me from, they have no choice. Everything is free. So I decide to let the mystery play out. Then I’ll let them in on the fine secret, and we’ll all have a good laugh and talk about the great merriment I’ve brought into each of their banal lives.

  The one they call Fred says, “I’m sorry, I never watch TV.” You can tell he isn’t sorry at all but proud and probably lying to boot, and I feel my hand turn to a fist under the table. I spend my whole life trying to get on TV, and it just isn’t enough for this sonofabitchofaFred.

  Then one of the bigger of the rogues gets an impatient look to him, like my life isn’t worth the time of a parlor game. “Look, just tell us where we know you from. We got girls coming over here to meet us soon. We don’t have all day.”

  “I guess they must have got lost in traffic, huh?” I say, and recognize the line from my audience interaction on those thousands of tapes back at the brownstone. This gets me my first laugh from the table, and it gives me the idea that maybe one of these boys has seen me perform live, in the flesh.

  So I give it a thought. Who am I, anyway? I’ve always felt a man is what a man does, so I give them the truth. “I’ve done stand-up comedy across this country, and Canada as well, for nearly thirty years, and I continue to do it to this very day.” I have to snort back a laugh, because it sounds like one of those game-show questions where you follow it up with “Who am I?”

  “You know Louis C.K.?”

  “You know Amy Schumer?”

  “You know Aziz Ansari?”

  “You know Bill Burr?”

  “I know them all, Goddammit, and they know me too!”

  I met Louis C.K. once.

  “We saw Aziz at Carnegie Hall. You ever play Carnegie Hall?”

  “I don’t like big rooms. I play clubs. It’s more intimate.”

  “Yeah, I bet you like it real intimate.”

  I can’t tell if this last one is a dig at the size of the venues I play or the more-squalid obvious. Either way, I’ve already accepted that I am in the company of philistines.

  The piling on has brought out the best in one of the fellows, though, and he pushes a brown plastic bowl of bar snacks in my direction. “I was at the Cellar last night and saw Colin Quinn. You know him?”

  “Now you’re getting closer.” I near burst out of my seat and realize that for the first time it is becoming important to me that one of these young men solve this puzzle. “Yeah, me and Colin go way back, and if you know Colin Quinn, there’s a good chance you know me too.”

  And then it happens.

  “You’re from SNL!”

  The chatter gets busy fast. They all know me now, even the one named Fred, who hardly knew what a television was. They pat me hard on the back and laugh and order a pitcher of beer. I demand Wild Turkey 101. They didn’t have much choice. I have them over a barrel. If there isn’t a bottle of whiskey on my table, and soon, I am likely to take my famous self and walk it right out into the New York streets. So Charley orders whiskey.

  Now a new game gets started. “What’s your name?”

  I have no time for this. I am only interested in knowing what they think of me, so I just point at the stitching on my SNL jacket.

  “Oh, of course,” says Charley. “It’s Norm Macfonald.”

  “Hey, Macfonald, I knew it was you the whole time. I was a big fan. You did Weekend Update.”

  “Yeah, you were dry. You did dry comedy. I like dry comedy.”

  “I always liked you, Macfonald, but everybody I knew thought you sucked. They just didn’t get you like I did. You were dry.”

  “Well, I didn’t like him.”

  Well, isn’t that just like Charley, the big one, the bully, to stop the conversation dead with his big, brawly opinion.

  “Hey, c’mon, Charley, it was you invited him over. He was just sitting in the corner minding his own business, muttering to himself.”

  “I remember him. I was in high school and watched the show ’cause of Sandler and Farley. Then he’d come on talking about politics. He’d do some stupid joke, then just stare at the audience with a big dumb smile on his face. He was never funny.”

  “Well, I liked him,” I shout, way, way too loudly, and it seems every eyeball in the room is on me.

  “Everything okay over there?” says the bartender.

  “Everything is just fine, my good man. I’d be obliged if you could rustle me up a pen and sheet of paper.”

  “Sure thing.” He takes a pen from a jar and turns a paper menu over to the blank side and hands it to me. He smiles warmly at me and extends his hand. I shake it for a while. Probably too long. I’m just not used to this damn morphine. “Say, any chance of getting your autograph, Mr. Macfonald?”

  It doesn’t matter how cynical I think I am. I’m always delighted to find out that things in this life still have the capacity to surprise me.

  I hunch over the hard oak table and write the final chapter.

  44

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  There is the way things are and then the way things appear, and it is the way things appear, even when false, that is often the truest. If I am remembered, it will always be by the four years I spent at Saturday Night Live and, maybe even more than that, by the events surrounding my departure from that show. As long as SNL exists, then so do I.

  When people come to see me do stand-up, it is because somewhere in their memory I live on SNL, dressed as a young Burt Reynolds, insisting Alex Trebek refer to me as Turd Ferguson. And they come to see me and I am old and fat and I don’t mention SNL and I do my answering-machine joke and they are happily disappointed. After the show, they stand beside me and take pictures, the way you would with a donkey at the side of a road. They tell me they are big fans and they don’t care what their girlfriends say. They understand me even though they know good and well that nobody else does. I’m dry, they say. The next time I come to their town, they don’t show up.

  It can be difficult to define yourself by something that happened so long ago and is gone forever. It’s like a fellow at the end of the bar telling no one in particular about the silver medal he won in high school track, the one he still wears around his neck.

  The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you’re not careful it’s too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.

  But looking back now, I can see that my life since SNL has been a full sprint, trying with all my might to outrun the wolves of irrelevancy snapping at my heels. It has all been in vain, of course. They caught and devoured me years ago. But not completely. Lorne would see to that.

  My foot would still make a vague imprint; my self would still cast a
faint shadow. And years later, I would write a book. And not only write it but be in it as well.

  I think a lot of people feel sorry for you if you were on SNL and emerged from the show anything less than a superstar. They assume you must be bitter. But it is impossible for me to be bitter.

  I’ve been lucky.

  If I had to sum up my whole life, I guess those are the words I would choose, all right.

  When I was a boy, I was sure I’d never make it past Moose Creek, Ontario, Canada. But I’ve been all over this world. Except for Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America. Oh, and Antarctica. But that’s really splitting hairs. I mean, how many people have ever been to Antarctica?

  I never expected to be any more than a common laborer, and I would have considered myself lucky to have achieved that. But I was blessed with so much more.

  I’m a stand-up comedian and have been for over a quarter of a century. I’ve performed thousands of hours, from a small club in Ottawa, Ontario, all the way to a small club in Edmonton, Alberta. Sometimes I get big laughs and think I’m the best stand-up in the whole world, and other times I bomb, and I think I’m not even in the top five. Before I was famous I had a whole bunch of jobs where all I needed was boots. People would look right past me, or if they did look at me, it was with a mean look. But when I got famous, people would look at me and smile and wonder where they knew me from. If they flat-out recognized me, they’d laugh and dance like they’d won a prize, and I’d just stand there and smile and feel warmth from their love. So the fame made the world, which is a real cold place, a little less cold.

  And as for my gambling, it’s true I lost it all a few times. But that’s because I always took the long shot and it never came in. But I still have some time before I cross that river. And if you’re at the table and you’re rolling them bones, then there’s no money in playing it safe. You have to take all your chips and put them on double six and watch as every eye goes to you and then to those red dice doing their wild dance and freezing time before finding the cruel green felt.