(THEME. GK SINGS)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions --- Guy Noir, Private Eye --- brought to you by the Ketchup Advisory Board.
(MUSIC, NIGHT.)
GK: I was staying in a suite at the Rancho Titanic Hotel in Las Vegas, about to start production on a radio adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" for a sleazeball importer of cheapo wines named Benjamin Nibs and I'd hired a secretary through a temp agency, a blonde in a blue dress that had more curves than the Pacific Coast highway. Her name: Blaze McAlpin.
AP: Good afternoon....
GK: I'd like you to retype this script, Miss McAlpin. While I go and lie down and try not to think about what's on my mind right now.
AP: Good. (SHE PAGES QUICKLY THROUGH SCRIPT) Pardon me, Mr. Noir, but--- what do you need this retyped for? You haven't made any revisions in it.
GK: A person can't revise garbage, Miss McAlpin. I just thought maybe wider margins might help.
AP: Is this a typo? "Madame OVARY"?
GK: No, that's what they're calling it now.
AP: (SHE PAGES FURTHER) This is terrible. This isn't a treatment of Flaubert, it's more like a very bad infection.
GK: Benjamin Nibs, Miss McAlpin, has managed to turn Flaubert into a combination of "Baywatch" and "Lethal Weapon".
AP: A pile of tripe, if you ask me. You write this?
GK: Me? Ha! This? (GK OUTBURST, THROWS SCRIPT, GLASS CRASH) --- I flung the script against a wall and knocked down a picture of Richard Widmark. Beneath which was----
AP: ---- a wall safe.
GK: You're right. Hmmmm. (FOOTSTEPS) (TURNS TUMBLERS, SLOWLY) Used to know how to make these babies walk and talk....(TUMBLERS TUMBLE) Aha. Haven't lost my touch. (CREAK OF SAFE DOOR OPENED SLOWLY) I opened it and there in the recess was a......
AP: Why---- it's---- four-hundred thousand dollars.
GK: I believe you may be right. (KNOCKS ON DOOR). Darn. (SLAMS SAFE DOOR, TURNS TUMBLER) Yeah? Come on in! (DOOR OPEN) Oh. Hi, Louise.
CF: Guy? Who's this?
GK: My secretary, Blaze.
AP: Pleased t'meet y'.
CF: Guy, there's a guy following me.
GK: Huh? What guy? (FOOTSTEPS) Where?
TR: Here! (KONK, GK REACT)
GK: Ohhhhhh. Man, what you hitting me for? Huh? Man, that hurts to hit a guy like that. What you do that for?
TR: You know why.
GK: I do not know why. I wouldn't be asking if I knew why. What'd I do to you?
TR: You know what you did.
GK: Were you home sick the day they had the unit on problem solving? Huh? Didn't anybody tell you about hitting? You need a timeout, mister!
TR: You tried to shortchange Tony on the Merganser deal. You know what happened to the last guy what shortchanged Tony? He's wearing the pine kimono. He's taking the dirt nap, Mister.
GK: What Merganser deal are you talking about?
TR: Your deal with Tony.
GK: What Tony? I don't know any Tony.
TR: You're not Bernie?
GK: Do I look like a Bernie? Do I?
TR: You're not Bernie?
AP: His name is Guy Noir.
TR: Oh. I thought you were Bernie.
GK: Well, I'm not. And there---- (GK SWINGS, WHACK, TR GROANS). See? That's what hitting's like. Beat it. (DOOR SLAM)
CF: You okay, Guy?
GK: Sure. Just a little dizzy, that's all. And my head is spinning like the cherries in a slot machine. Other than that, fine.
CF: Good. Cause I want to talk. There's a bizarre rumor circulating that you're considering someone else for the part of Madame Bovary. You do that and I'll rip your head off and stuff it down your throat. I just want to make that clear.
GK: Hey, hey, hey. Louise. You're my dream, the girl with the clear complexion and the checkered past.
CF: Nonetheless, I would injure you severely, Guy.
GK: Somebody got there ahead of you, doll. (BRIDGE) An hour later, the nausea and dizziness still hadn't gone away and I decided to pay a visit to an old friend. (MUSIC DISSOLVE TO:)
AF: Well, if it isn't Guy Noir, the gin-soaked Galahad with a .38 long- nose for a lance and a breastplate made of broken dreams. What can I do for you?
GK: What do you know about blows to the head, Doc?
AF: You need to talk to a neurologist, Noir. Head trauma's not really my game. I'm a proctologist.
GK: Well, maybe a couple fifties will jog your memory. (HE PULLS OUT TWO BILLS AND SLAPS THEM ON THE TABLE.)
AF: (HE LOOKS AT THE BILLS AND TAKES THEM) Thanks. Damage to the cranium can threaten the brain in several ways. Perhaps the most serious is pressure caused by bleeding within the skull, or general swelling of the brain tissue which jams the brain stem down into the spinal column.
GK: Can it cause seizures? Cause I just had one in the elevator.
AF: Sounds like a subdural hematoma, Guy. I'd like to give you an anticonvulsant for the seizures. But I really think you should see a neurologist.
(MUSIC BRIDGE)
CF: We'll be back with more Guy Noir Private Eye after this word from the Ketchup Advisory Board.
(KETCHUP PIANO UNDER....)
TR (AS RINEY): Once there was a little town that was a lot like many other small towns. It was a place where people knew their neighbors. Where old men swapped stories at the barbershop. Where kids made snowmen with sticks for arms and lumps of coal for eyes. And then one day...these new folks showed up. They talked funny.....and they talked loud. They complained that the coffee was weak. They complained that there weren't any good movies and that the newspaper was crummy and that you had to drive 290 miles to get a fresh bagel and decent corned beef. The neighbors realized their worst fear had come true. They'd been invaded by New Yorkers. Suddenly, things started to go wrong. Birds started flying into windows. Septic tanks backed up. The minister announced that he was really Unitarian. So one day, the townspeople brought these New Yorkers a gift...a big bottle of ketchup. They said, "You put this on your food....or else we'll slap you until you're dizzy." So they did, and suddenly, the New Yorkers started talking in a normal tone of voice....they started enjoying meat loaf...and they stopped badgering people. Just another small miracle from Ketchup...All The Best a Ketchup Can Be.
CF: And now back to....Guy Noir, Private Eye.
GK: He recommended a neurologist, and as it happened, an old buddy of mine knew a neurologist down at the wharf. (FOGHORN, SEAGULLS) His waiting area was as crowded as a men's room at Octoberfest. Lucky for me, he owed my friend a big favor.
AF: (PEERING INTO EAR) There's no hematoma, Mr. Noir. I'd say you have either a small subarachnoid hemorrhage or a brain abscess.
GK: Give it to me in English, doc.
AF: Mr. Noir, you have a pocket of pus in your brain.
GK: I do? (SEAGULLS, SURF) Doc, am I sitting on a coil of hemp on a wharf next to a tugboat named Lucky Lady with a couple of seagulls circling overhead?
AF: No, you're on the twelfth floor of the Medical Arts Building.
GK: So it's pus then, huh?
AF: That's right. I suggest we insert a ventricular shunt to drain off any build up of cerebrospinal fluid.
GK: A shunt, huh?
AF: And I think you should see a good ear, nose, and throat man about your double vision.
GK: Oh boy. (MUSIC BRIDGE) So he put in the shunt. (TR EFFORT, POP) And I went back to the hotel and lay down and when I woke up it was Tuesday.
AP: How's that shunt doing?
GK: GROAN
AP: It's eight-thirty, Mr. Noir. Nine o'clock you're supposed to see the opthalmologist. The neurologist at eleven thirty. Physical therapist at four. Oh. And the ear, nose, and throat doc wants to reschedule for two.
GK: Any messages?
AP: Louise. She keeps calling. She's desperate to see you. You have a recording session tonight. You're doing the scene where Emma Bovary goes to meet her paramour and she meets Tom Joad and together they organize the farm workers.
GK: What???
AP: I did a little rewriting.
GK: You put Tom Joad in there?
AP: (WEEPILY) I love Grapes of Wrath. I saw it four times. I love that part where Rose O' Sharon says....(WEEPING) "We keep a-comin', Ma. Can't wipe us out. We'll go on forever, Ma, because we're the people."
GK: You know --- I am getting some kind of terrible rash. (CHORD) So, in between the ear, nose, and throat guy and the physical therapist, I stopped at the dermatologist.
AF: Looks like a reaction of some kind.
GK: Right. It's a rash.
AF: Don't get ahead of me. It could have to do with that anticonvulsant medication you're taking for your seizures. Or it could be the antibiotics you're on to clear up that meningitis. Let me ask you this. Are your stools orange?
GK: Hey. Cut that out. What kind of crap is that?
AF: That's what I'm trying to find out.
GK: What do you know about this, anyway? You're a dermatologist.
AF: Okay, I'll send you to an orthopedist. (MUSIC DISSOLVE TO:)
TR: You seem to have done something to your left hip, Mr. Noir.
GK: Ouch!
TR: May have broken it.
GK: How can I break my hip? I'm only fifty years old.
TR: Fifty?
GK: Fifty four.
TR: Person can break their hip anytime starting around, I'd say, the age of fifty-two. Anyway, your body is a piece of wreckage, Mr. Noir. You're a walking six-car pileup.
GK: Why aren't there any diplomas or certificates up on your wall, Doctor?
TR: Sent them over to be reframed. Here--- I'm going to give you a prescription for a hot calcium poultice --- you mix up the powder in hot water to make a paste and spread it on your hip and do that three times a day and come back (FADING) and see me in about a week, okay? (MUSIC BRIDGE FADES IN)
CF: How you feeling, Guy?
GK: Awful. I feel weak and my eyeballs ache and I've got short term memory loss. What can I do for you?
CF: I came to rehearse for you, Guy.
AP: Listen to this, Guy. This is great.
CF: (FRENCH) Love. I have given everything for love. Everything.
GK: Uh huh. Good. (DOOR KNOCKS) Yeah? Come in! (DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS. DOOR CLOSE.)
AF: How are you feeling?
GK: Not so good, Dr. Slade.
AF: Sisk. Dr. Michael Sisk. Slade was the neurologist.
GK: Oh. Sorry. Dr. Sisk, this is Sugar and this is Blaze. (WOMEN SAY HELLO)
AF: Hi. ---No, I was horrified when I heard you went to Slade. He was chased out of Chicago three years ago. A malpractice suit. He did an operation on a guy and left his car keys in his sinus cavity.
GK: Whose keys? And whose sinus cavity?
AF: Who knows.. Anyway, that shunt he put in caused an infection of your cerebrospinal fluid, which turned into meningitis, which led to that brain abscess which your ear, nose and throat guy misdiagnosed as hemotypanum. That's why he never gave you the angiogram that would have found the real problem, a c.s.f. rhinorrhea, which caused your antrograde amnesia. You follow me so far?
GK: I'm not sure. (KNOCKS ON DOOR) Yeah? Come in. (DOOR OPEN, CLOSE. FOOTSTEPS) Oh. Nibs. Hello.
TR: Hi, Guy. How you doin? How's Madame Ovary comin? We gonna get that in the can before Christmas?
AP: Which can you talkin about?
TR: Who's the blonde?
GK: That's Blaze. She's been retyping Madame Bovary for me and since the sponsor is a winery, she's typing some Grapes of Wrath into it, okay?
TR: Fine. Whatever.
GK: By the way---- is there any kind of health insurance with this job?
TR: No. But you'll need some if you don't finish by Jan 1.
GK: (FOOTSTEPS) Nibs gave me a look that was pure poison, turned, and ankled out the door. (DOOR CLOSE)
CF: What're you doing, Guy?
GK: This wall safe. I forget what was in it. (TURNING TUMBLERS) C'mon, baby. C'mon. (TUMBLERS DROP IN SLOTS) (DOOR CREAKS OPEN) Huh. I thought there was $400,000 in here and it's only a pair of pliers.
AF: Give me those. ---Thanks. (HE PULLS. POP.) There. Removed the shunt. How's that feel?
GK: About the same. I think I'd like to lie down.
CF: Love. I have given everything for love. Everything.
GK: I think you paid too much, doll. (FOOTSTEPS) I walked toward the bedroom, thinking that maybe this "Madame Bovary" deal wasn't going to work out for me after all. A guy hates to give up, but there's no use beating a dead horse.
(DOOR OPEN)
AF: Excuse me. Don't mean to intrude. I'll just leave this here, okay. You can pay it --- whenever --- okay? Great. Good seeing you. You take care.
GK: He set the bill on the minibar. It was a computer printout and it tumbled down like a waterfall. I looked at the total ....Hey, I asked for the bill, not your phone number!
AF: Nighty night. (DOOR CLOSE)
GK: (BLINDS) I opened the shade and looked out on Las Vegas, flickering across the desert like a million Christmas trees on steroids. I opened a bottle of Dom Perignon (CORK POPS) and collapsed into the Jacuzzi. (SPLASH, BUBBLING CONTINUES UNDER) I felt like I had been beaten up by a clown.
SFX: EERIE MUSIC
GK: A wispy vapor took shape in the bathroom mirror. It looked like a man in a broad-brimmed hat. A man with a moustache.
TK: (FRENCH GIBBERISH, REVERB)
GK: It was Flaubert. I don't understand French but I got the drift.
TK: (FRENCH IRE, INCLUDING SOME EMOTIONAL SPITTING)
GK: He was pretty ripped over what we'd done to his masterpiece.
TK: (FRENCH ANGER, SPITS)
GK: Believe me, pal, I sympathize. You care for a glass of champagne? TK: (FRENCH, CALMING DOWN)
GK: It's a cruel world out there, Flaubert. But maybe you knew that. (TK FRENCH MURMUR) They used to have your book in the library, you know. Now they keep it in an Instructional Materials Resource Center. (TK FRENCH SADNESS) Oh well. At least we aren't in an Adult Detention Facility.
(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that keeps its secrets, and somewhere in the mean and crowded streets, one guy is still trying to find the answers to life's questions.....Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(MUSIC OUT)
©1996 BY GARRISON KEILLOR, RICH PROCTER, AND JOHN KNOERLE