"Comeback Jack" is the longest book I've completed, at 365 pages and over 75,000 words (they seem to get longer with each book). I also hold it as the funniest thing I've ever written... please read and laugh.
Hollywood, a hundred or so years from now. Exactly the same, only more so. A premium is put, not on talent, but on how well you can count an actor's ribs, and Jack Grace is ready to slim down and take the world on. Only one problem: he can't seem to make a go of a career. With the help of his increasingly-insane agent, Streight, Jack stages comeback after comeback, each time failing more miserably than the last, while watching his terminally laid-back roommate Ambrose ascend to fame. How far will Jack go to gain lasting stardom: outer space, anyone? Nothing is sacred, and Hollywood will never be quite the same.
Streight dumped a bucketful of cutout reviews over Jack’s head.
“Bask, Jack, bask,” he said sorrowfully. He said it sorrowfully because none of them were very good.
Jack picked one off his head. It had gotten impaled on his newly spiky hair. “I take it they’re not very good.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You sound like your dog just got run over by a car.”
“Actually it was my hamster,” said Streight tremblingly. “And it was a black Dodge.”
“Then how are the reviews?”
“Why don’t you read one yourself?”
Jack sighed deeply, and did so.
“Wow,” he said after about thirty seconds, “they didn’t like Mr. Hilter very much, did they?”
“No,” agreed Streight, “not very much at all.”
“ ‘A greenish-colored lump of a man considerably less animated than the sodden fur coat that he, inexplicably, wore everywhere, including the shower. One wonders why they didn’t cast the coat as Arthur and Hilter as part of the castle walls.’”
“Not very much at all,” repeated Streight.
Jack read on and then said, “They didn’t exactly take to Marsh, either, did they?”
“Why, what did they say about her?”
“‘Ms. Marshmallow Gargoyle-Gorgonzola,’” read Jack, “‘ makes for the fattest Guinevere we’ve ever seen—’”
“Oh, that,” said Streight.
“‘Sources reveal that the 5 foot 5 Gargoyle-Gorgonzola, as well as suffering from Overly-Enthusiastic Naming Syndrome (ONES), weighs in at 125 pounds—’ Lord!”
“What?”
“Well, I mean, that’s not much compared to some people, but it does explain why my back was sore after we filmed the aerial-bellet scene.”
Streight put his head to one side. “I don’t remember that part.”
“They ended up cutting it out. Whole lot of work for nothing.” He read on. “Oh,” he said suddenly, dully.
“Did you get to the part,” inquired Streight, “where it says, ‘John Grace Jr., as Lancelot, was unconvincing as a human being?’”
“Yes.”
“Thought so.”
“‘In the future,’” Jack read, “‘we would advise casting agents to concentrate not on the deliriously handsome features of the actor, and instead focus on acting ability.’ What the— acting ability?”
“What a novel concept for a casting agent,” said Streight airily.
“Acting ability?” sputtered Jack. “Acting a-bil-i-ty? What are they on about? Acting instead of deliriously handsome features? They’re attacking the basis for the Hollywood heirarchy, do they realize that? They think they can change Hollywood with one well-placed movie review? Well, we’ll just see about that!”
He stomped out and slammed the door. After a minute he poked his head back in.
“Too dramatic?” he said wistfully.
“A little,” said Streight. “But you looked fantastic.”
“Fair enough.” He came back in and sat down— or rather, deflated onto a chair.
“Anyway, that one’s from a tiny little paper on the other side of the country,” said Streight soothingly, “so you probably will want to take it up with them by phone instead of storming into their office and demanding a retraction. Save your airfare, anyway.”
“Mmph,” said Jack, head buried in his hands. Streight eyed him and made a mental note to buy a pick and a shovel. This time it didn’t look like Jack was going to recover very quickly.
Privately he considered that if one Canon de Phead had been cast as Guinevere, the whole thing wouldn’t have been quite so much of a fiasco. Or, at least, it would have made the fiasco more interesting.
He mentioned this to Jack. Jack retained a puzzled silence for a few seconds before he said, his voice muffled, “Who Deaf Head?”
Streight sighed. “Never mind.”
Jack sat up and reached for a handful of the dastardly reviews before Streight could make a move to stop him.
He began, psychotically, to read.
“‘Whoever it is that plays Guinevere has far too ridiculous a name. It should be changed for the public good. By force if neccessary,’” he read.
“‘Torquil ‘Bob’ Hilter makes for without a doubt the least sexy King Arthur your correspondent has ever seen,’” he read.
“‘John Grace, though quite pleasant to look at in the same way that the sea is a touch wet, displays such gross stupidity every time he opens his mouth that it would be preferable if it were stapled shut or, better yet, removed entirely,’” he read.
Streight beamed. “There you go,” he said. “Pleasant to look at. That’s one for the scrapbooks I should think.”
“‘This movie bombed so bad,’” read Jack, “‘that it is beyond even Hollywood’s vast limit line for unlikely successes. Its so terrible,’” he read further, “‘that someone should blow up the studio that made it. I myself am thinking of taking out a contract on the stars— a contract with the Mafia.’” Jack looked up at Streight. “Surely there’s no real Mafia over here. I thought it was only on the east coast.”
“There’s the Gentleman’s Mafia,” said Streight helpfully. “They’re very effective, and very neat about it too. They wear tailored suits and ties and clean up after themselves.”
Jack stared.
“What?” said Streight defensively.
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve had, er, dealings with them.”
Jack stared harder.
“One of my former clients took out a contract on me,” Streight admitted. “But I caught the man before he killed me and persuaded him to let me go. He was very reasonable about the whole thing, really.”
“When was this?” Jack demanded.
“Oh— six, seven— days ago,” said Streight vaguely.
“What? You might have told me!”
“Well, you were being bombarded at the press conferences at the time. What was I suppose to do, interrupt the Special Correspondent from the Trinity County Journal’s question about your love life?”
“Never mind,” said Jack. He felt suddenly tired. “So they were reasonable about it? That’s encouraging.”
“Well I had the good fortune to get one who was slightly unbalanced,” Streight began. “His name was Trevor Gorrick and he wasn’t at all sure why he’d joined the G.M. in the first place. I discussed this with him, discovered that he had a deep-seated and irrational fear of low-fat slad dressing, quizzed him about his wife— he kept muttering, ‘Flowered arm chair! Flowered arm chair!’ Eventually he just staggered off into the night muttering to himself about anesthesiologists.” Streight smiled faintly, as if in fond rememberance of a moral victory. “Quite reasonable, I’d say.”
Jack shook his head. “There’s absolutely no chance that some lunatic would take that critic’s advice— is there?”
“No chance,” said Streight firmly, “at all.”
“Good.”
The phone rang. Streight picked it up and proceeded to have one of his patented one-sided phone conversations.
“Hello, 555-5555, Streight speaking.
“Speaking.
“Speaking, I said.
“Hang on, I’ll get him.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and counted to four, rolling his eyes at Jack. “Streight here. Speaking.
“Yes.
“Yes. David Wenham.
“Double dip chocolate chip.
“Freud, wasn’t it? Or Ed Wood.
“But supposing he doesn’t like bananas? He is a monkey after all.
“Alice?
“Oh. Crap.
“Yes.
“Does the Queen know about this?” He checked his watch. “10:24.”
Surreptitiously, Jack glanced at his own watch. It was 3:42 in the afternoon.
“Sunday.
“Yes, two weeks ago.
“Just after breakfast.
“Uh, I don’t know, Goldfinger?
“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if he was five pounds six ounces, wore an eye-patch and a parrot, and had a bum leg?”
He hung up very quickly and spat at the phone. “Idiots.”
“What,” said Jack carefully, “was that all about?”
Streight focused on him and sighed deeply, dramatically, tragically.
“Someone just blew up the studio and they say you’d better get your rear in gear and get outta here, because a man with a gun just came in the lobby downstairs.”
Jack thought this all through to its logical conclusion and began to laugh, hysterically.
He was still laughing as they pulled up in front of his apartment building. Ambrose came dashing out with his hands empty and three duffel bags slung around his neck.
He jumped into the car, slammed the door, and said breathlessly, “Let’s go!”
Streight looked back at him, puzzled. “Why not go inside? Nobody would ever think of looking for him here.”
“He lives here,” pointed out Ambrose.
It took a minute for Streight to process this. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, right.” This sent Jack off into fresh gales of laughter and Streight grimaced and gritted his teeth.
“He’s been like this for an hour,” he shouted over the din. “Its really beginning to get to me.”
“I know,” shouted Ambrose back. “I heard him in the background when you calle dme. I brought you something.”
“A present? For me?” Streight sounded irritated. “This is hardly the time, Ambrose.”
Ambrose pulled a roll of masking tape out of one of the bags, peeled off a strip, leaned forward, and smoothed it over Jack’s mouth.
“Oh,” said Streight into the sudden silence, “that was clever. Thank you, Ambrose.”
They drove on in silence until Jack suddenly realized that his hands weren’t bound. He peeled the tape off.
“Where are we going?” he asked quietly.
“Somewhere safe,” said Streight soothingly.
“Oh.” Jack put the tape back over his mouth, leaned back and closed his eyes.
“Where are we going?” asked Ambrose quietly.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
They drove on, rather grimly.
Six hours later, having fought the slowest traffic in history, Streight waited for Ambrose to knock on the door because he had two armfuls of Jack.
Ambrose shook his head and looked frightened. “I can’t do it. It’d be too forward. You can’t make me.”
“Oh, come on, my hands are full.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Just— oh!” Streight groaned. “Just ring the doorbell and then you can get behind me and pretend that I did it, okay?”
Ambrose dithered, not something that came naturally to him.
“Now!” snapped Streight, who could feel his grip on Jack beginning to slide.
Ambrose obeyed, then ducked behind him as the door opened.
“I’ve been wondering how long it was going to take before he screwed up the courage,” said Calee Corrigan. “Do you know, I’ve been waiting here for twelve minutes?”
“It didn’t take that long, surely.”
“Two minutes to ring the doorbell, ten minutes to get him out of the car.” She looked at the comatose Jack. “What’s wrong with him, anyway?”
“Passed out,” gasped Streight, “and very.... heavy....”
Calee shrugged resignedly. “Honestly, you actor types. Bring him inside, I guess. Lay him on the couch in the living room.”
She sat on the coffee table and watched with the air of a spectator as they wrestled Jack into a semi-comfortable position.
“What’d you do, get him drunk?”
“We thought about it,” panted Streight, “because he was going absolutely whack, but when we got him into a bar he climbed onto a barstool and promptly fell off and knocked his head. So we carted him back out again.”
Ambrose, fumbling with Jack’s limp arm, trying to get it into a comfortable position, or one that looked comfortable anyway, finally gave up and placed it across Jack’s forehead. Jack looked as though he was swooning dramatically. Streight chuckled— he couldn’t help himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, still sniggering slightly, “I’ve had a long day.”
“That’s okay,” said Calee, “what do we do with him now?”
“We were hoping to hide out till we can get rid of the price on his head,” explained Stregiht. Ambrose sidled around out of Calee’s eyesight, sat down on the floor with his back against the wall, and snuck glances.
“Oh yes?” said Calee, turning slightly. Ambrose scooted down the wall. “How are you planning on doing that?”
“Well, we can scrape up the money and pay the Gentleman’s Mafia off.”
“Uh huh?” Calee turned a little more and Ambrose scooted a little more.
“Or,” went on Streight, “we could intercept the G.M. agent and kill him before he kills Jack.”
“Why ‘him’ exactly?” said Calee sharply. “Are you being a sexist pig, Streight?”
“No, its just that, well, it is called the Gentleman’s Mafia.”
“Huh.”
Jack began to snore. Calee jumped and shifted. Ambrose scuttled surreptitiously.
“Sounds interesting,” said Calee. “Ahem. Count me in, why don’t you.”
“Do you have any killing experience?” said Streight conversationally.
“Not as such, but I’ve written more death scenes than you could count on the fingers of one hand.”
“So what, like, six?”
“About that, yeah.”
“Anything useful?”
“Well,” said Calee thoughtfully, “in The Paris Liason, Johni de Vile was killed with a feather and hot wax.”
“Interesting. Um, go on.”
“And in The Closet Accountant, the hero, Lord Alan Sanchez, pretended to commit suicide by swallowing his own nose and suffocating to death.”
“Why did he pretend to commit suicide?”
“To allay suspicion,” she said, in a tone that suggested he was an idiot.
“Yes, well, I don’t think that suicide is an option,” vetoed Streight, “and if it was only pretence it wouldn’t do much good anyway, not for us.”
“No,” agreed Calee, “it wouldn’t.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, most of the rest are kind of improbable.”
“Ah.”
Calee started to lean back and then suddenly sat up straight and screamed at Ambrose, “Will you stop that! You’re making me nervous!”
Jack woke up and looked around him.
“The end is coming, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “The Apocalypse is upon us.”
Calee sighed and moved to sit on the floor next to him, giving his shoulder a semi-affectionate shove. “Don’t be so egocentric, Jack. The world’s not going to end just because of you.”
“Fine, then,” said Jack wearily. “It’ll just be my own, small, personal Apocalypse. The rest of you can just go on as usual,, I’ll just be head and buried, I’ll just—” He stopped and looked at Streight. “What’ll I do?”
“That remains to be decided.” Streight looked thoughtful. “I think a name-change may be in order. And perhaps a sniper rifle.”
“For me?” squawked Jack in alarm.
“No, silly,” said Calee calmly. “For whoever is coming after you.” She shot Streight a keen glance. “Right?”
“Right,” said Streight. Unconvincingly, in Jack’s opinion.
“So what do we do right now?” asked Calee. She leaned back and began to look bored. Ambrose emulated her.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Streight. They all sighed as one and sat still. A silence grew between them like a half-hearted mushroom.
“It’s a good thing this isn’t a mystery novel,” said Ambrose suddenly. “I read a list of tips for writing a mystery novel once, and it said, when in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun.”
As if pulled by a string, their heads turned slowly to face the door, but the threshold as yet remained uncrossed by gun-wielding people, male or otherwise, because one doesn’t wish to be sexist about these things.
Jack breathed a sigh of relief. “Of course it’s stupid to worry,” he said, “because this reality, after all, and not a novel— not a sane one, anyway.”
The door burst open and a figure, wearing black from head to toe and wielding a gun burst in. “Say your prayers!” it snarled femininely.
“But this is reality!” howled Streight, caught by surprise. “Jack just said so!”
“I just said so!” howled Jack.
“That’s beside the point,” the figure snapped.
“Besides the point!” yelled Streight. “Reality is besides the point? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”
“But you’re an agent,” pointed out Calee.
“In Hollywood,” added Ambrose.
“I don’t care!” yelled Streight, his face turning purple. Veins popped out on his forehead.
“Wait a minute,” said the figure, and took off the scarf that covered its face, revealing the features of an attractive young woman. She shook her hair out— it was long and copper. “You’re an agent?”
“Yes!” screamed Streight, who no longer felt quite so unhinged now that he could see his assailant’s face, but felt he ought to keep up momentum.
“Well, here’s a bit of luck!” she said, beaming. “I’ve been looking for an agent, I’m trying to make it in Hollywood, you see—”
Streight started breathing again. “Oh yes?” he said politely. “What exactly do you do? Can you dance?”
“No, but—”
“Can you sing at all?”
“No, well—”
“Can you do accents?”
“No, I—”
“Not even crappy, unconvincing ones?”
“Well, I—”
“What exactly do you do?”
A fervent look came to her eyes. “I act,” she said simply. “I get up there in front of the cameras, I become a different person. I transform. Give me an audience and I’ll act my heart out.”
“Ooh, that must be messy. What’s your insurance policy like?”
“Well, it’s a bunch of papers,” she started, “with words on and a sort of staple to sort of hold them together—”
“Tell me,” interrupted Streight. “Tell me honestly. Are you— talented?”
“Yes,” she said, with a ring of truth.
Streight looked thoughtful. “Oh well, never mind. We’ll work around that.” She beamed.
“But,” said Jack weakly, “aren’t you here to kill me?”
“Oh! Oh, right, I forgot! But, you know, since I met this wonderful man, this fantastic agent—” She threw her arms around Streight and lay her head on his shoulder. “I have become not only a better actress, I have become a better person.” She closed her eyes in rapture.
Jack exchanged glances with Calee and Ambrose, and then they began to clap dutifully.
“You’re good,” said Streight, trying to detach her from his person. “You’re very good. Get off me, would you?”
“Hey, how’d you get in the Gentleman’s Mafia, anyway?” Jack demanded in tones of sudden suspicion.
“Oh, I’m part of the Ladies Auxiliary. I’m in training. This is only my third job.”
Jack gulped loudly.
“But obviously I won’t do it any more,” she went on. “I have my career to think of after all. How would my fan clubs take the news that I’m a killer for hire?”
“How are they going to take the news that you’re a psychopath?” muttered Calee, though not too loudly because the woman still held the gun. She was now swinging it around in a friendly manner, to emphasize her point as she talked.
Streight glared warningly at Calee and patted the woman’s shoulder. “E’en so,” he said soothingly. “Let go, please?”
“Right, so what do we do now?” said Jack. “I mean, we won over one assassin— okay, you won over one assassin,” he amended in answer to Streight’s blank stare. “But will there be more? How do we know? What do we do?”
They all looked at the girl. She adjusted her grip on Streight but didn’t let go of him. “I would guess,” she said, “that when they see that you guys have turned a promising agent into a movie star, they’ll come and lay their hearts at your feet and basically beg you to do the same for them. Although,” she added, “none of them are nearly as photogenic as I am.”
“You mean they’ll give up on trying to kill me?”
“I didn’t say that, now, did I?”
Jack began to hyperventilate with flair of one who could do hyperventilation in the Olympics for the United States and come home with at least the silver.
Ambrose, of all people, took the stage.
“Look,” he said firmly, taking the gun from the woman and, much to everone’s bemusement, pointing it at her. “Alright,” he said, suddenly adopting the stereotypical Mob accent, made more interesting by a slight difficulty with his r’s. “Time to talk, lady. Time to wun off at the mouf. Who’s comin’ afta us? Think fast, and make it good. It’s the only way you gonna save you pwetty hide.”
“Gosh!” said the woman, starry-eyed. “It’s Ambrose Coady, isn’t it? I didn’t see you cowering behind the sofa. Look, since you have my gun already— you wouldn’t consider signing it, would you?”
Ambrose, not often fazed, remained unfazed in this instance. “Look,” he said, still sounding like a very ticked-off Elmer Fudd, “I’m only gonna give ya thwee seconds, see? Then I’m gonna get angwy. Then I’m gonna stawt cawvin’ holes in ya like a moldy Swiss cheese. Got me?”
He glared.
Most of the people in the room had never seen Ambrose glare before, and they all took an involuntary step back. Jack had seen it before, and it had been directed at him, so he stayed where he was. He threw in an ostentatious yawn to show how unaffected he was by all this, but his hand shook when he covered his mouth.
“Um, um,” said the young woman. “I think probably D.P. Sloane will be after you next, and then J.C. Beowulf, and then A.C. Potter,a nd then C.P. Adulation, and then A.A Brody, and then J.B. Nelson, and then—”
“Nevermind that,” Ambrose snapped. “That’s enough outta you. How do we stop ‘em? Plug ‘em as they come in and thwow their bodies in the wiver? Or blow up their headquawters?”
“No need for that,” cried the woman in apparent alarm. “Probably it would do the trick if you asked very nicely and said please several times, and then offered to buy out the contract on his head for about three times what the original client paid.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Streight. “We can do that. Can you show me who to go to?”
She turned a look of fond adulation on him. “For my agent, Mr. Streight, I can do anything.”
“How did you know my name, anyway?” said Streight rather nevously.
“It’s my business to know these things.”
“Fine,” he said, still somewhat nervously. He looked at Jack. “Fine?”
Jack nodded.
He looked back at the woman. “Fine.”
“Where we gonna get da money?”
“That’s okay, Ambrose, you can stop now.”
Jack sidled over to him. “That was very good, Ambrose.”
“Killer Jenkins,” said Ambrose, with quiet smile. “My next role.”
“Oh. Well, quick thinking anyway.”
“So what’s your name?” Streight asked.
“Cochinata Fiend.”
Streight reeled.
“Cochinata,” said Jack, looking over. “You have a nickname or something?”
“When I was little people used to call me Coke.”
“Coke,” Jack repeated.
“Yes.”
“Coke Fiend.”
“Yes.”
Streight reeled again, harder.
“But now,” she went on, “people call me Alexis.”
“Why do they do that?”
“Because I used to hit them until they stopped calling me Coke.”
“Ah.”
“Well,” said Streight, wiping sweat off his brow. “Well, Alexis, we’ll have to see what we can do for you. Suing whoever gave you that name,” he added, “may well be the first order of business.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” she said cheerfully. “They’re dead.”
Streight, stuck in a rut, reeled.
“You killed your parents?” said Jack, suddnly remembering that she had mentioned this was her third job.
“Oh, no, of course not,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know who my parents are. I’m an orphan, you see. I was raised by the sisters of the Order of the Exploding Nuns. They named me, after Sister Joaquim Cochinata.” She frowned. “Or was it Sister Fred Cochinata? Or Sister John Cochinata? I don’t remember.”
“But— are they all dead?” wondered Streight.
“Well, they’re not called the Exploding Nuns for nothing, you know.”
Streight giggled. He’d had a hard day.
“Great,” said Calee insincerely. “Another actress in Hollywood. Welcome to the fold, ya little— lost lamb.”
Jack sank back onto the couch. He still looked a little dazed by everything.
“What’s wrong, Jack?” asked Streight.
“I’m still a little dazed by all this,” Jack admitted. “First she wants to kill me, then you’re her agent, then her name is Coke ‘Alexis’ Fiend—”
“Actually, in all fairness,” Calee pointed out, “her name was Coke ‘Alexis’ Fiend well before either of the other things.”
“Thank you Calee Corrigan,” said Jack with lethal sarcasm, “for setting that straight. That really helped. I was worried about that.”
Calee shrugged. “I’m a writer. I go in for comprehensive timelines.”
In the ensuing silence, Ambrose, who had been running his fingertips over the gun, pointed it at the ceiling and fired.
A little click resulted.
Nothing more.
“Hey, there’s not any bullets in this,” said Ambrose, looking it over again and fiddling with it, trying to get the chamber open.
“Well, thank you very much, Ambrose,” said Calee sarcastically, “for trying to shoot a hole in my ceiling without permission. You might have asked first.”
“No bullets?” said Jack. “You came on a murder mission with no bullets?”
“I can’t believe we fell for that!” groaned Streight, clapping his hands to his head.
“No, there’s bullets in there, it’s just—”
“No there’s not,” said Ambrose, ceasing his fiddling, which seemed to have produced no result, and, mindful of the ceiling, pointed it at himself to demonstrate. “Look.”
There was a sound like a cannon going off at close range.
“—its just that the safety is on,” finished Alexis Fiend lamely.
“Was on,” said Streight dully.
“Was on.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Jack. “Ambrose just shot himself in the head, didn’t he?”
All materials copyrighted to Felicity Danielle Dippery. No copying, pirating, or reproduction without express permission from the author. Violation of this will cause her father, a prominent lawyer, to come down on you so hard you'll be searching for a rock to crawl under and hide.
