Based on a True Story Page 5

  I was backstage with my agent and a bunch of dirty foreigners. I was one of them, but only technically, because I was from Canada. In Canada, everything we watch on TV and buy in stores is American, and also we speak the same language. I never felt like I was in a different country when I was in the United States.

  My opponent’s name was the Bushman. He was very funny, and backstage he had us all in stitches. He was from Africa and wore a multicolored tribal robe with a matching hat. He couldn’t have looked more out of place in America, and I couldn’t have looked more in place. At first I thought this gave me an enormous advantage, but then I had a second thought.

  Perhaps this out-of-placeness would actually work in the Bushman’s favor. After all, this was International Star Search, and Canada was well known as the least international of all countries. My other problem was that none of my jokes were remotely international. Every one of them dealt with a domestic issue of the United States of America. I told my agent I felt I was in big trouble, and he told me that I was being ridiculous, that I was sure to win. My agent often told me something positive like this right before a catastrophe happened. I was backstage in a room we all shared and I was hungry, but there was nothing to eat, because many of the performers hailed from third-world countries and had either ravenously devoured the food or placed it in their pockets. I struck up a conversation with a couple of Nicaraguan junior dancers, who were adorably cute but who began circling me in a way that had me patting my back pocket to see if my wallet was still there.

  Things were making me extremely agitated, and that can be very bad for a performer. I decided to go outside and go through my preshow ritual.

  Since I started stand-up, I have used the following pre-show ritual as a way of controlling my nerves and centering myself. First I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then I create a picture in my mind. It is always the same picture. I am lying in a glade near a brook while a gentle breeze licks my face and makes me smile. Birds fill the sky with song as I lounge beside the brook with my golden Lab and watch the fish as they jump out of the water and back in again. I walk leisurely to the water and take a long, deep drink of it, and it is always clean and cold and slakes my thirst. Then I lie down again on the grass and let my golden Lab lick my face, and then I wrestle with him and laugh. Then I open my eyes. This part of the ritual takes about fifteen minutes. It never fails to clear my mind, as an eraser clears a busy chalkboard.

  Then it is time for my body. I stretch, beginning with my calves, and then, without hurry, add to the stretch so that it spreads all the way up my body and finishes with the neck. This is crucial, since I hold most of my stress in my neck. I make sure each stretch is slow and deliberate, and as I perform the stretches I listen through headphones to the calming strumming of the zither, the most relaxing of all musical instruments. With my mind in a state of cheerful slack and my body loosed, it is then time to work on my soul. I take out six two-milligram bars of Xanax and slowly swallow them. Then I reach into my back pocket to find my flask, which is always filled with Wild Turkey 101. I upend it into my mouth and drink until I have to stop to gasp for breath. Then I vomit. Then I close my eyes again and think about the dog and the stream and all that shit. Then I end my pre-show routine by punching my agent in the stomach.

  If you want to become a performer in show business—and that includes modern dance—I strongly advise this pre-show ritual.

  I was instructed that on International Star Search I was to perform for two minutes, not a second more or a second less. To make sure I stuck to my time, there was a large digital clock in front of me that counted down from two minutes to zero. Whenever I performed my stand-up, I had one ironclad rule: I always made sure to begin with my strongest joke, my surefire laugh-getter, my answering-machine joke, and so I came right out with it. It got no laughs.

  This was a big problem. When I had chosen my two minutes of material, I had taken into account the laughter of the audience. But there was a complete absence of laughter, and as I completed my final joke I saw, in horror, I still had a minute and fifteen seconds left to perform. I was sweating hard and my throat was as dry as kindling. I could hear dangerous mutterings from the crowd, much of it in a foreign tongue, and I looked over in a panic to Ed McMahon, who was also not laughing, unless you consider an angry glare a type of laughter. Ed McMahon, the man whose job was to laugh. Ed McMahon, who was put on this earth to laugh. Ed McMahon, who was paid exorbitant amounts of money to laugh. Ed McMahon was not laughing.

  But I was a pro and I still had a little over a minute to win the crowd back. That’s the beauty of stand-up comedy. One moment the audience may hate you and the next you are on its shoulders. I looked out at them. “So, you’re saying you don’t have an answering machine? None of you? I find that very hard to believe. I think you are liars, and I implore the judges to ignore the boos and jeers and hisses that are filling this auditorium and drowning out my voice. These people are filthy foreigners and wouldn’t know funny if it bit them in the ass. Show some guts, for once in your life, and don’t be swayed by this transatlantic mob. Robin Leach, I’m sure you have an answering machine and agreed on many of the points I have made tonight.”

  I had plenty more to say but my time came to an end, so I trundled offstage, where I encountered a very confident Bushman and I wished him luck.

  My agent was in the wings. “I thought it went great!” he said.

  “What? They never laughed. Not once.”

  “You don’t understand. You’re used to clubs and this is TV. The studio audience never laughs, because they are too intimidated. These things are all sweetened in the editing. Trust me, I’ve been at this awhile and…”

  I didn’t hear anything else my agent said, because the Bushman had done his first joke, and the audience laughed loudly for two straight minutes. When the Bushman exited, walking past us, my agent stopped explaining to me how studio audiences never laugh at anything and ran down the hall, business card in hand, calling out to the Bushman.

  Now, usually after a bad set, you can just leave and buy yourself a steak and a woman and forget the whole thing, but on this show you had to wait until the end, when they announced the winners in all the categories. I wandered around and saw the Nicaraguan junior dancer team, who must have had a bad set too, judging by the way they were sobbing. I told the mother that they should stop, but she explained that her family was very poor and this was their ticket out of the slums of Managua but that her son had dropped his sister during their routine and now their dream was dead. I told her not to worry, that there was no such thing as a junior dancer in real life, that it only existed on this one television show, so it was all for naught, anyway. What’s more, I said, not a single thing in life mattered. That seemed to cheer the mother up.

  It was finally time for me to go back onstage. First the international spokesmen were judged, then the international singers. Then it was time for the comedians. I walked out with the Bushman and we received a standing ovation as well as a chorus of boos. Never had I felt so much hate for me mixed with so much love for someone other than me.

  Ed read from the teleprompter: “And now in the comedy division, another hard decision for the judges.”

  This brought the house down. I’ve been in comedy for a while, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a bigger laugh, before or since. Ed did his best not to join in the laughter—I gotta give it to him—and he continued on.

  “The Bushman receives…FOUR STARS.” The perfect score. Each judge had given him four stars.

  “And Norm Macdonald receives…THREE QUARTERS OF A STAR.”

  I could not believe it. As I left the stage I did the math. It meant that three of the judges had given me one star and one judge had given me zero stars, and I bet dollars to donuts it was that sonofabitchofaRobinLeach.

  11

  THE PLAN

  Adam Eget and I sit across from each other in a red plastic booth at the coffee shop in Whiskey Pete’s. Now, Whiskey P
ete’s is a small casino that sits in a small town called Primm, right at the border of California and Nevada, and it’s designed for people who can’t wait the extra ninety minutes to feed the gamble in their gut. The stakes are low and the tables are dingy. Every time I’m here, I wonder if some tourist from a faraway land has ever flown into L.A., rented a car, and was on his way to Vegas when the poor bastard saw Primm and Whiskey Pete’s and the other coupla casinos and the water parks, and he figured it must be Las Vegas, the oasis in the desert. So he just stayed there the whole week, and when he returned to his faraway home, he told everyone about Las Vegas and how disappointing it was. It has to have happened.

  Adam Eget and I eat fried bread and molasses and the waiter says he knows me from somewhere. I point to my hat. “No,” he says. I point to my jacket. “No,” he says. I point to my shirt. “No,” he says.

  “Aren’t you the fellow who lives at Sullivan’s Boarding House, down near the Nickel, in Los Angeles? I knew you two years ago and you still owe me a sawbuck.”

  “Fine,” I say, and pay him the ten bucks. Then I tell him to get us a fresh pot of coffee and start to tell Adam Eget my plan. I guess I can’t in all honesty call it my plan, on account of the way it came to me all at once without thinking. I was just standing onstage at The World Famous Comedy Store, getting no laughs, when a picture brightened my mind. It was as if another man’s well-thought-out plan had been magically planted in my head.

  “This is the plan, Adam Eget. As you know I have no money, I am as broke as Christ Himself, and this is because I’ve lost all my money. I’ve lost all my money on games of chance. But it has come to me that losing all this money has given me something just as valuable.”

  Adam Eget looks puzzled. “What is as valuable as money?”

  I pause and look him in the eye. I want him to understand the plan the first time so I don’t have to repeat it over and over again and field all manner of follow-up questions. “Good credit, that’s what. Debts paid, that’s what. I’ve always paid off my markers, so I have very good credit. And when you don’t owe the casino, in a funny way, the casino owes you.”

  “I don’t follow,” says Adam Eget, as he smokes a Marlboro Red and fills his mouth with fried bread and molasses.

  “That’s the way it works in Las Vegas. You pay your markers promptly and you build up trust. See, Vegas works on odds. If you’ve always lost and paid your markers, odds say you’ll just keep on doing the same thing.”

  Adam Eget nods. “I got you. Sure.” But his eyes are dim as dusk and I know he still doesn’t follow.

  “I don’t have but two hundred dollars to my name, but Las Vegas doesn’t know that. I’ve got a line of credit with the biggest casinos in the city. Between the Mirage, Harrah’s, Caesars, and the Horseshoe, I have over a million dollars in credit.”

  Adam Eget’s eyes become marginally less dim. “So we get these casinos to lend you the million, but then we don’t gamble with it. We take a powder and drive straight north to Old Mexico!” He farts loudly.

  “No, Adam Eget, the casinos give you chips and you can only use them to gamble, and if you win, you must pay off your markers and can only keep your winnings.”

  Adam Eget smiles and nods wisely, and when he does, molasses drips slowly down onto his chin and then begins to harden. “So, the plan is to win, then.”

  “Well, sure, that’s always the plan. But this time it’s only Plan A. You see, I have a Plan B. I’ve never had a Plan B before, but this time I do.”

  Adam Eget puts what is left of his cigarette into his mouth, but it is very short now and a full third of it is orange ember. He tries to pull the cigarette from his mouth, but it is stuck to his molasses-covered lips, so instead his fingers slide down and fix upon the ember. It takes him a considerably longer time to feel the pain than a smarter man would take, but when he does, he jumps to his feet and yelps loudly. He digs at the ember embedded in his thumb until it finally dislodges. “Sonofabitchbastard,” he shouts, and an uproar of laughter fills the coffee shop at Whiskey Pete’s. Adam Eget finishes his fine burlesque with a stupid smile to the laughing patrons.

  I wait with the patience of Job.

  “Plan A, I bet my million until I have a million in profit, then I quit gambling forever. I quit everything. I’m a certified, genuine millionaire. I buy a ranch in Montana, and sit on my porch all day, and drink Wild Turkey 101, and watch other men work for me.”

  “That sounds like heaven,” Adam Eget says, one hand on his sore lip, the other in a glass of ice water.

  “Yes,” I say, “but a heaven where I am God, and the men who work for me are men.”

  “What is Plan B?” says Adam Eget.

  “Plan B is to lose the entire million.” I study Adam Eget’s face for a reaction to my provocative comment, but then I see in his eyes that a delayed, more powerful wave of pain is hitting his small brain.

  “Owwwww­wwwww­wwww!” he screams, and the coffee shop explodes in laughter once again as Adam Eget jumps to his feet and begins to dance from table to table.

  I wait again. I have the patience of Job. And when he’s finally done, I tell him the rest of Plan B.

  “Have you ever heard of a script doctor, Adam Eget?”

  “Sure, Norm. Those are those smart fellows from Harvard who punch up screenplays to make them funnier.”

  I laugh at the innocence. “You’ve been living in Hollywood too long. The real script doctors sell magic. Not cheap, not cheap at all. There’s a drug named Dilaudid. It costs ten thousand dollars. A small dose proves lethal. I have a friend in Vegas named Gabe, who knows a script doctor who can provide me with this drug. If I lose, I simply put it in my blood, say my prayers, lay down, and die in my free bed.”

  “So that’s Plan B, huh?”

  “Yes, and when I get to heaven I tell God that I died better than broke. In my last act, I stole a million dollars from some of the Devil’s boys. I figure that oughta impress God just fine.”

  “So either way you win.”

  “That’s the idea.” I can tell it’s finally sinking in.

  “Where do I fit in?”

  “If I win, you become my head ranch hand and make five percent more money than the other ranch hands and get beaten far less often.”

  “Sounds good.” Adam Eget beams. “Do I get my own horse?”

  “No.”

  “But what if you lose and kill yourself? Then where do I fit in?”

  I guess that would hurt most men—a guy you’ve known for twenty years asking what he gets when you toss away your soul in a Las Vegas hotel room—but I understand the ways of men, all right. Everybody’s in it for himself. Adam Eget’s just like everyone else. And my Plan B also takes care of him after I murder myself in cold blood.

  “You’re the one who finds me dead, and you cry and shake like a little girl, the way you just did a minute ago. Then later you write a book about me and they pay you money.”

  “But I can’t write. I’m not smart enough.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Adam Eget. For idiots like you, they provide a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter is a man blessed with bright talent but cursed with dim luck. The brilliant ghostwriter will do all the work and receive a pittance, while you, an illiterate fool, will be given a king’s ransom. That’s God’s great joke, my son.”

  My name’s Keane. I’m a ghostwriter. Nothing you have read in this book has been written by Mr. Macdonald. That is my job, to write these sorts of books for these sorts of people. But this one I was excited about. I was a very, very big fan of Norm Macdonald.

  Was.

  12

  ME, GABE VELTRI, AND A SQUID

  Like all ugly things, Fremont Street is uglier when the sun is bright. This Saturday noon it is scorchingly ugly.

  “Why are we downtown?” whines Adam Eget.

  “You’ll see,” I say, reaching over to lean on the horn. A moment later a man emerges from an apartment building and walks briskly toward us. The man is Gabe V
eltri, a professional poker player. He makes a fine living at the Aria poker room playing limit hold ’em, where he joylessly books his sixty hours a week. When the market tumbled a few years back, Gabe went bottom-feeding and snatched up a property here on Fremont Street, where the hustlers and whores beg and cajole. When he’s in Vegas this is his home, except for the times I’m in town, and then he stays with me in my comped suite.

  What I like about Gabe is there’s no gamble in him. We walked by a roulette table at Caesars one time, and when I asked Gabe to guess the number he said, “Twenty-six,” and the wheel spun and, lo and behold, the little silver ball landed on 26. We hadn’t placed a bet, but the table had heard his guess and everybody was going nuts.

  I said, “Gabe, how much do you wish you’d bet a grand on twenty-six?”

  “Not at all,” he said, and kept walking. Now, that’s rare, and I’ll tell you what’s even rarer. I’ve never heard Gabe tell that story. It’s not even a story to him. Gabe is just the kind of wingman a guy like me will need for my plan to succeed. Gabe will keep me grounded. He’ll shame me so I stay away from the pits. I’ve decided I’ll only bet sports and that I won’t go near the tables, where the serpents lie in coil to offer me free meals and free rooms and other expensive things. This will allow me the time I need to properly handicap the day’s games. I decide to bet mostly on baseball, because baseball is the easiest sport to predict.

  Why did I insist on Adam Eget coming along on this trip? It’s not ’cause he’s a friend. My plan has no place for friends. It’s not because of his pretty green eyes either. The fact is that Adam Eget, the dolt’s dolt, possesses a particular type of magic. Adam Eget knows nothing about sports and will often say things like, “Why do different baseball teams wear different uniforms? That doesn’t seem fair,” or, “Why do they call it a hockey stick, anyways?” But Adam Eget can pick winners. Out of the blue, he’ll go into a sort of a trance and then, the way a robot might, he’ll suddenly pronounce, “The New York Rangers will win their hockey match tonight,” or, “The Indianapolis Colts will win their football match tonight,” and he’ll have me scrambling to call my bookie. The problem is, he does this type of thing very rarely and without warning. But when he does, he is always right. Always. He’s like that squid that picks the winner of the World Cup once every four years. He is very good at exactly one thing. The rest of the time Adam Eget is just a stupid squid.