Autograph? Gun? Benji’s mind no longer stayed there very long. “Sorry. Have we—? Who are you?”
The man reached into his blazer pocket and produced a thin silver case from which he pulled a business card of considerable tooth. “Sam Palin. Bravo TV.”
“Palin?” Benji repeated, dubious.
“No relation.” Sam laughed heartily, a show of hands in surrender mode. “I can’t see Alaska from my backyard.”
From the stage, Nick’s voice came deep and resonant as he explained to the crowd the experiment that was the Village, a new model of sustainable suburban living, a true community, words Benji heard echoing across the huge wooded lot without truly listening to them. For all he knew Nick was up there selling toxic waste, transfixed as he was by the logo on Sam’s card, blue letters bold in a black talk bubble.
“I’m in a field in the middle of nowhere,” Benji mused. “How did you find me?”
Sam held up his hands again with the same hearty laugh. “I’m not a stalker, I swear. I got your address from Nina Schweitzer. You remember her — your agent.”
Benji let go a laugh of his own. He didn’t need to be told who Nina Schweitzer was, though he did feel obliged to correct Sam and point out that Nina was no longer his agent.
“I don’t know about that. She seemed very interested in the two of us talking.”
“She didn’t think to give you my phone number?”
“Oh, she did,” Sam said, indicating Benji’s pocketless attire, “but it doesn’t look like you have your phone on you.”
“And you — what? Just happened to be passing by?”
“Actually, I am. I try to make it to Saratoga two, three times a summer. What can I say? I like the horsies.”
“Great, but how did you know I’d be here?”
“Nina gave me your number, but I thought it better if we talk in person. So I wound up at your parents’. That’s the address Nina had for you. And your mother said you’d be out here for the day. The rest is GPS.”
This, Benji thought, explained the recent, still-unlistened-to voice mails from Nina, who shortly after he turned down the lucrative offer to sell itch cream had told him in no uncertain terms that he didn’t have what it took to make it in this business. As difficult as it was, Benji took pride in not listening to what she had to say. The last big opportunity to which Nina paved the way had landed him in the toolshed of the director of a piddling regional rep. Through silence Benji meant to transmit the message: Fuck off. Not interested. He wanted her to have proof that, professionally speaking, he had turned a corner. Moved on. He no longer lived to be a joke for hire. He lived, quite literally now, in a different zip code.
“So you must be what Nina keeps calling about?”
“She said you never got back to her, but I didn’t want you to miss out on an opportunity.”
“A big opportunity,” said Benji. He’d heard it all before.
“You know what they say: it’s not the size of the opportunity.” Sam winked. “I kid. I kid. But yes. Hell, yes, I have a big opportunity.” He clapped his hands together like a vacuum cleaner salesman revealing his latest wonder.
“I’m not looking for an opportunity. I like what I’m doing here,” Benji answered without elaborating.
“I can appreciate that,” Sam said, his eyes roving the grounds as if taking in the landscape of an inferior planet. The predominance of domestic cars and elastic pants. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking for. Just give me that.”
Benji looked over his shoulder, locating Cat as though touching a talisman, then returned the newsprint catalog to its folder and placed it on the red-hot roof of the car. “Go for it.”
“Okay. No beating around the bush. I’m just going to throw it out there.” He spoke with the smooth, smug arrogance of a world-class chef serving up his pièce de résistance, as if no one (not even those dismal vegans) could possibly turn down the prime cut of steak on offer. “We want you to do a show with us.”
The word exploded in Benji’s ears. Show? Show! He watched Sam’s mouth move, but he could no longer hear the words coming out of it. His ears rang as motes of bright light floated down from heaven.
“Hear me out,” Sam rushed to say. “It’s called The Comeback Kid. We originally wanted to go with just The Comeback. It’s cleaner, simpler. But Lisa Kudrow beat us to it. The cunt. I kid. I love Lisa. I do. But The Comeback Kid isn’t bad either. It may even be better because you were, you know, a kid when you were a star.”
“You want to do a show about me?”
“About you. Starring you. You are the show.” Sam bulldozed Benji with his pitch. In a field ranged with heavy earth-moving equipment, he was the only one in action at the moment, moving ahead as if the only resistance in sight were a man-size bag of marshmallows. “You’re not afraid of being the show. You’ve been the show before. ‘That’s what you think’: that was all you. Let’s face it: you did it so well, you basically fucked yourself for life. Nobody could see you doing anything else. Happens all the time to child stars. The machine chews them up and spits them out. I don’t have to tell you. You’ve been hanging on to that horse for dear life since. Am I right? You’re a talented guy, Benji. And I’m not just blowing sunshine up your ass. Your comic timing. But what have you been doing for the last twenty years? I Love the Eighties.”
Benji grimaced. “Flatterer.”
Sam pulled the pocket square from his blazer and wiped his face vigorously. His smile was less shepherd than wolf. “I’m not trying to flatter you. I’m talking straight with you. Can we put the bullshit aside? I don’t know you, Benji. I don’t know what makes you tick, or what’s on your bucket list, but I’ll bet money you didn’t want to be doing Hamlet’s dad in a hundred-seat house that, if I had to guess, was never more than half full. You want something bigger. Am I right?” Sam spread his arms like an offering. “Well, it’s Christmas, my man. I’m here to give it to you. You just have to be smart enough to say yes.”
He reminded Benji that just because someone is out of the scene doesn’t mean someone is beyond the grapevine. Sam had heard about the drinking, about the drugs, about the dive from the bridge—“When you fall off a horse, you really fall off a horse!”—but that was the beauty of it. That was the comeback.
“I’m over those things. I’m sober now. Going on a year. So this one-man Celebrity Rehab is about eleven months too late.” Benji didn’t like this man. He hated the prep school blazer, the blotchy cheeks, the clear rivulets of sweat running to drip off the end of his pointy chin. But resistance was an act. If Sam had turned and walked away, Benji would have chased him down.
“First of all, no one’s really ever over those things, am I right? I know. I’m in recovery myself. Four years now.” Sam pumped a fist in the air and cheered, “Serenity now. But seriously, let me tell you, not a day goes by I wouldn’t kill my own mother for a dirty martini. But. You go on. It’s what we do. We go on. And we’d like to see you on that journey. Watch you, you know, climb out of that hole.”
“But I’m not in a hole.”
“You didn’t let me finish. We want to see you climb out of that hole and move on to the next great thing. Get back on that horse, so to speak. That’s what I’m talking about, Benji. We don’t just want to see where you’ve been. Although that’s definitely part of it. And we may want to re-create some of that stuff. The bridge, the drinking. Whatever. You know, to get the dramatic arc, but really we want to see where you’re going. What’s next. That’s the whole thrust of the show. Your next move. Your comeback!”