Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [97]
That's right!
One day, I was walking along Westwood Boulevard on my way to the office when a young man eating breakfast in a diner came screaming out the door.
“Hey, Chris! HEY! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYY!!!! Chris, it's you! My wife and I, we're your biggest fans,” he shouted, when he finally caught up with me three blocks later, because I run quite fast. “My wife—man, she never misses your show.” He pulled out a disposable camera. “Would you mind?”
“Not at all.”
I grabbed the camera, took a photo of him, handed it back, and walked on.
“No. Of us! Together. I'm telling you right now, Chris, she will not frickin' believe this.”
These encounters are difficult enough as it is. But this one was made worse by the fact that I wasn't looking my best. Nine months of nonstop stress, long, tedious flights,1 missed mealtimes, getting up in the middle of the night to take cars to the airport, and a schedule that would sap the strength of not one, but five gladiators, had left me emaciated, with protruding cheekbones and gray bags under my eyes the size of a Gucci purse. I was also, as it happened, newly discharged from hospital.
During our Newfoundland shoot, somebody gave me a battered cod's tongue to eat. It's a delicacy there (and only there, I should think), and very much what it sounds like: a fish's tongue with a jellied splodge of muscle like a giant booger at one end, where it was ripped from the poor creature's mouth, then deep-fried.
“Wanna try some?” a local fisherman had asked me, ordering a plate of them.
No thank you. Cod's tongues are deep-fried. I don't eat oil. It's on The List.
But hey, it's TV. And TV's about teamwork, apparently.
“Wow,” I said, sinking my teeth into one, “these are fabulous.”
Not so fabulous that I'd ever eat them again, mind you, but certainly as good as any piece of cod with a large deep-fried booger at one end could be.
Unfortunately, the fallout from this was calamitous. Not only did the batter bring me out in hives, forcing me to wear thick concealer for days afterwards, but it kick-started a series of events that almost killed me.
A panicked Tasha rushed into my room that night at the hotel to find me curled up on my bed in agony, belching—BLEEEEEECH!—clutching my stomach, and sobbing.
“It's your gall bladder,” a doctor told me later. “It's gone into spasm. We may have to operate.”
“But I'm shooting a TV show.”
“I don't care. Once you have one gall bladder spasm, that's it—it's only a matter of time before you have another. I think you should let us operate.”
“No,” I spluttered, hysterical, “you can't operate. I'm a Christian Scientist.”
Not strictly true, but Newfoundland's part of Canada, and I wasn't sure if Canadian doctors were up to speed on recent medical advances—anesthetic, for example. Unwilling to take the gamble, I instead accepted his kind gift of a large container of Demerol and checked myself out of the hospital next morning to continue making the show.
“Avoid oil and fat at all costs,” the doctor said to me, last thing.
“But I already do.”
“Well, obviously not!”
Bottom line: my gall bladder was now a ticking time bomb. One that could go off without warning at any moment, day or night. And there were still many more shows left to shoot.
Not that the guy in the street that day seemed to notice how bad I looked. Draping his arm around my shoulder, instantly incriminating me in a bank heist should he now commit one—“Here we are, me and Chris, just before the raid”—he got his picture and left.
I reached the office ten minutes later, first time I'd dropped in since my impromptu layover in London,2 to find the entire production team teetering on the precipice of manic excitement.
“Did you hear, did you hear?” The usual junior hobbit rushed over.
“Huh?”
“You're—going—to—be—on TV!”
“But… I'm already on TV.”
“Yes, but this is real TV. A major network. NBC. It's sooooo awesome,” she gurgled, mouth open so wide I could see her tongue stud. “Conan O'Brien wants you on!”
Wow.
The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Lukewarm