Based on a True Story Read online

Page 21


  I’ve been lucky.

  45

  ME, MYSELF, AND I

  I never should have trusted Adam Eget to keep an eye on Keane. Now my secretary is gone and I have to find him and find him fast. I have no idea how long he’s been gone or where he is. We were finally starting to get some good work done. I thought we’d found a way to finish the book and pay off my debts, with me telling all my great stories one after another and Keane typing them down. I even let him throw in a few of his own lines from time to time, to make him feel like he could become a writer himself one day. I talked to Julie just yesterday, and she told me that we were only about a thousand words short of a book. At the rate Keane was typing, we would have been finished in a few days. We were so close. But now Keane is gone. And I am lost on the streets of Manhattan, knowing that if one of the goons from the Cadillac finds me, there’s precious little this bat will do. I wander the streets for a long time and pass the Regency House, where I once lived and was happy, but it has been destroyed and replaced with a four-story art gallery. Everything above that is sky. I try to locate the thirty-fifth floor and the apartment that was my home. But it’s just sky now and I don’t have the imagination. I forgot to change these clothes. Everything I wear says exactly who I am. So now I walk down the street with a huge target on my back, looking for the old fool.

  I feel a little cold now, so I hasten my step, knowing I’m only a block away from a crackling fireplace and a warming shot of morphine. I’m sure Mr. Macdonald will feel quite generous once I pull the McSorley’s menu from the pocket of my SNL jacket. He will be confused when I first present it, but then I will announce it is the end of the book and the start of the money. And the party will begin and the morphine will flow free and I will take just a little too much and they will all think it was a tragic accident. Until they find this note. The future makes me so happy.

  At first I think I’m looking at a mirror that’s right in the middle of the street. But no. It’s just Keane, doing his best impression of me. I walk straight toward him. It is very important I keep him from making a scene.

  Oh, God, it’s him. I can see he has violence on his tiny mind. In his hand is the Gehrig bat! My most prized possession! The Gehrig bat! The lout has stolen it and now he clearly means to use it to strike me. I don’t care much about myself anymore but I’ll be damned if he destroys that historic bat with my skull. I fumble in my pocket for the pistol, pull it out, and aim the best I can.

  I see the gun and freeze my step. His grip is weak but he aims right at me. I try to speak reason to him but can tell he can’t hear. I’m out of time now and can only hope he misses. Once again, luck is my only out. I see the gun shaking, and his eyes close tight. And there is nothing but that peculiar sound of a gunshot. And then I watch as my secretary’s borrowed shirt turns red and he falls forward on the hard New York sidewalk. Behind him, I see the fat man with the artificial hair get into the back of the red Cadillac before it slowly drives away.

  I open my eyes to see Mr. Macdonald running full speed away, and I am on the ground and can’t get up. My breath is too shallow for me to shout or even make a small noise so I reach inside my pocket for the McSorley’s menu and my pen and I understand this will be the last of my writing. But as soon as I have ahold of it my hand fails me and the crumpled menu takes off running down the street. I smile, thinking that Mr. Macdonald will have to finish the story of his life all by himself. Like all of us, I suppose. And then I smell the pizza. I know it comes from Ricardo’s, across the street from my home, but it has never smelled this powerful or this good before. All I want in the world is a slice of Ricardo’s pizza, the crust well done, with mushrooms swimming in red sauce, and nothing else. I am filled with remorse at what I have done. I try to get up again, to follow the scent of the pizza, but I slip and fall backward and my head hits the hard pavement. I use my final breaths to take in the mushroom and the red sauce and the garlic. Life is so good.

  THE LAST PART OF THE WHOLE BOOK

  Well this is the last part of the whole book. my secretary went and got himself killed. i got so mad at adam eget cause he was supposed to be guarding him but was sleeping instead so i find a bat and start hitting him with it and he gets down on his hands and knees to protect himself and thats when he finds it. norm, this is your memoir. i found it. i found it. and im happy so i say read it to be sure and adam eget opens it and thats when theres a knock at the door and me and adam eget get quiet and scared cause we know its those goons that work for the fat man with the artificial hair. i take my bat and go to the door and open it and the goon has some sort of costume on and is holding a little piece of paper and singing so i hit him with the bat and he falls in a crumple out cold and i take the piece of paper and it looks like a telegram and the words on it rhyme and its about somebody called terence keane and a book he wrote called the house painter and how some book company wants to buy it but the whole thing rhymes remember so i sing it to adam eget and he tells me that terence keane was the name of my secretary and that my secretary must have called my book the house painter and tried to sell it on the side and then he says look out the window norm look out the window so i look out the window and theres a big blue truck with the words western union on it and it is sitting in the same place that the red cadillac used to sit. hes gone! yes adam eget we got very lucky this day i say and then we run away to the alley and get in the challenger and then we drive away. adam eget says he doesnt want to read the book because reading makes him sleepy and i tell him not to worry nobody needs to read the fucking thing but just to count the words because a book has to be so many words and this one has to be seventy five thousand words and thats how many words a mans life has to add up to but then i think that every man is different and that a nobody like adam egets life probably adds up to a hundred words or something but a bigshot like me my life probably adds up to over a million words or even a billion words so i take the tape recorder and start talking into it fast and adam eget is counting words and i just keep speaking words into the tape recorder because the faster i read the more words go into my book and each word is a part of my life even if the words dont make any sense because they dont have to because thats not in the contract. nobody ever said your life had to make a damn bit of sense just as long as it had enough words thats all. we stop at a bar and adam eget says will you take a look at her ass so i look at the waitresses ass and he says tell me thats not going into the book and i say no its not and he says youre telling me that youre not putting that waitresses ass into the book and i tell him no and he says im crazy if i dont put her ass in the book and i tell him hes so stupid he doesnt even know what should be in a book. i tell him it has to be real important stuff especially in the end part of a book and besides no book in the whole world is supposed to be about a waitresses ass and adam eget starts pouting and says whats so special about you that youre better than a waitresses ass and i say im famous thats what and he says whats that ever got you so i look at the stupid idiot and i say ill show you what its got me ill show you right now and i yell hey waiter get over here cause im hungry and he comes over and i ask him what the special is and im lucky cause its chili and not that stupid fucking turkey chili that i hate either but real chili with pieces of beef in it and so i say hmmmmm to stall for time hmmmm and then my finger starts pointing at my name on my snl jacket and some time passes before the waiter says hey arent you famous and i say sure i am and he says you can have the chili for free and i say i want a whole bowl and not a cup and plenty of crackers too and the waiter agrees to the whole thing. im pretty pleased with myself and i look over at adam eget but he isnt sitting beside me anymore cause he is at the other side of the bar standing in front of a tv so i go over to him and he is talking like a robot and he says the toronto blue jays will win their baseball match tonight by two scores and i cant believe what im hearing so i hit adam eget hard on the side of his head and he falls in a crumple out cold. people come around to see what the trouble is and i tell them im a
really famous guy and if they dont believe me they can all just read my clothes and i tell them adam eget is a nobody whose life is worth like a hundred words. everyone is cool with that and it makes me think that thats another thing that fame gets you. you can just go ahead and hit a guy hard on the side of his head. i go back to my table and wait for my food and look around the bar to see where the waitresses ass went and then finally the waiter comes back and he says he is sorry but they are just out of chili but that if i want i can have a bowl of turkey chili. can you believe it. turkey fucking chili. story of my life.

  To Charles Manson (not that one)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A lot of people need to be thanked, including ones I forget to thank.

  All begins with family. Thanks to my brother Leslie, for his outstanding memory of childhood, remembering in detail stories I’ve long forgotten.

  Thanks to my brother Neil, the real writer, whom I read and learn from.

  Thanks to my mother, to whom I owe everything. She is beautiful and kind and generous.

  Thanks to my father, who is gone but thought of fondly and often. We will meet again, Dad, in the place you live and I cannot imagine.

  Thanks to my son, Dylan, who is a good man and a better writer than me, and helped me to write this book.

  Thanks to the gals at Spiegel & Grau, headed by Julie Grau. She believed in me and left me be, a fine gift. Laura Van der Veer would talk to me anytime I had a question. Thank you, Laura. And thanks to my agent Joe Veltre, whose instincts were always spot on, for guiding me.

  Thanks to Howie Wagman and Mark Breslin, for thinking I could do stand-up before I did. Thanks to the stand-ups: Kinison, Spade, Schneider, and, of course, the Sandman. Without Adam, no career. Thankfully Adam is a generous man with enough ambition for the both of us.

  Thanks to Dennis Miller, for giving me my first job and for so much more. Thanks to Roseanne, who taught me to fight. Thanks to Bruce Helford, who taught me to write sixteen hours a day.

  Thanks to Lorne Michaels, for fighting for me; to Jim Downey, the best writer ever at SNL; to Steve Higgins, for writing sketches with me and convincing me that people would laugh at “Turd Ferguson” and for helping me make a great comedy album, along with the great Brooks Arthur. Thanks to Steve O’Donnell, who is a comedy writer of the very highest order.

  Thanks to Lori Jo Hoekstra, for becoming my producing partner. You have to be good at a thousand things in Hollywood. I am good at one and Lori Jo is good at the rest.

  Thanks to Marc Gurvitz, who always gave as much time and effort to me as he did his successful clients.

  Thanks to David Letterman, who made me laugh for years, who then made my dream come true, and who then, surprisingly, made me his friend.

  And, finally, thanks to two of the best writers in the world, for their friendship: Billy Joe Shaver, the first outlaw in country music, who can write the biggest ideas with the smallest of words; and Louis C.K., who was great when I first saw him and is much greater now. These two men I talk to often. Billy Joe is always on the road and loves it. Louis and I talk about how, one day, we will retire to the road, to the greatest thing there is, and to what we do best: stand-up comedy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NORM MACDONALD is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor who lives in Los Angeles. He is the proud father of Devery.

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