Suckers - Jack Kilborn [48]
“But he won the Academy Award for Godfather II when he was barely thirty years old! I’m forty-six!”
“Well, he probably had a better agent,” said Roger.
Dennis raised the butcher knife. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to give the performance of a lifetime. They always say I should be more real. Well, I’ll show them just how real I can be! They’ll have a pretty hard time saying I’m not real when I gut one of you with this knife, don’t you think?”
Though I admittedly couldn’t find any holes in his theory, it wasn’t a plan of action that I wanted to encourage. “Look, just let us go,” I said, as Roger and I cautiously backed toward the door. “We won’t say anything.”
“If you don’t say anything, that wrecks the whole point!” said Dennis, swishing the butcher knife through the air. “I can either go lie in the bathtub, slit my wrists, and die in obscurity, or I can kill one of you and go to prison a celebrity! I sure as hell will get a role in the prison Thanksgiving pageant, that’s for sure!”
He took a menacing step forward, and I suddenly relaxed. He was still acting. This was all payback for the phone call prank. He was just trying to scare a couple of whippersnappers, to teach us the error of our ways, to provide a life lesson that would suit us well as we entered maturity.
“I think I’ll kill…” Dennis hesitated, looking back and forth between Roger and I, and then pointed the knife at me. “You.”
He rushed forward. I still kind of thought he might be trying to help me with my development of a moral core, but my bladder disagreed.
There wasn’t time to get the door open, so we rushed across the living room into the kitchen, screaming, with Dennis right behind us. “Does this seem real? Are you scared?”
Though of course we couldn’t have known the floor plan to Dennis’ home beforehand, it still sucked to discover that the kitchen was a dead end.
I grabbed the first available object to defend myself. In a kitchen that no doubt contained knives, forks, meat cleavers, tenderizers, cheese graters, and rolling pins, I felt a little silly trying to be intimidating with a plastic measuring cup, but, hey, sometimes you just have to make the best of things.
“My uncle knows a Hollywood producer,” Roger said. “He can get you a big part, I promise.”
“Oh yeah? What’s his name?”
“Uncle Phil.”
“The producer’s name, jackass.”
“Ummm…”
“Don’t try to out-act me, kid. And don’t worry, you’re not the one who’s going to die tonight. You’re just the audience.”
“Then you can’t kill me until we make some popcorn,” I said.
Dennis raised an eyebrow. “You’re moments away from a horrible, painful death and you’re able to make a joke about popcorn?”
I shrugged. It had kind of surprised me, too.
Dennis grinned and pointed the knife at Roger. “Maybe I should kill him instead and make you the audience.”
“No!” Roger protested. “I want the popcorn!”
Dennis shook his head. “No, I need to go with my original instinct. That’s what they tell you in acting school. Go with your instincts.” He gestured at Roger with the knife. “Step out of the way.”
“No.”
“No?” Dennis asked.
Roger shook his head and stepped in front of me. “No. I’m not scared of you. You’re a lousy actor. In fact, you suck.”
I couldn’t believe it! Roger, who I’d met for the very first time that same day, was placing himself between me and a madman with a butcher knife!
I was in awe.
This was somebody I could imagine sharing a friendship with until the end of my years.
I mean, what a brilliant freakin’ end to the whole joke!
Dennis let out a well-acted scream of primal rage and ran toward us. He shoved Roger out of the way, knocking him into the refrigerator so hard that—
—that it couldn’t have been faked.
He swung the knife at me.
Holy shit!
I moved out of the way and the blade sliced across my chest. It hurt about as much as I would’ve expected a butcher knife cutting my chest to hurt. My feet slipped out from under me and I landed on my butt. As Dennis raised the knife, I wished that I’d never seen any amusement value in clumsy baby