Work Text:
INTRODUCTION:
TROUBLE IS MY GAME
The name's Kelly.
Chet Kelly.
Chester B. Kelly.
Chester Beverly Kelly.
Yeah, go ahead and yuk it up, you knuckleheads. My middle name is Beverly. But just remember that John Wayne's real name was "Marion". You wanna go giggling at the name plastered all over the Duke's birth certificate?
Or better yet, you wanna break out into that "Marian the Librarian" song from "The Music Man?"
I know I do.
But I can't. This ain't a musical. It's a B-movie, tough-guy, noir tale.
Whatever noir is.
That's a funny word, noir.
Do you pronounce it "nwar" or "noi-yer"? "No-er"? "Nwah"?
Wow, my lips look really, really awesomely cool when I try to pronounce…oh yeah, the story. The noir story.
Anyway, the name's Kelly and trouble is my game.
And I don't mean the board game "Trouble", either. I can't play it because that little popper thing in the middle of the board scares me, but not as much as that freakishly loud buzzer on the game of "Operation". Cripes, I try to go to remove the guy's breadbasket or wishbone and BZZZZZT!
And then ya usually have to surgically remove me from the ceiling.
So tiddlywinks or Go Fish is more my game, and I don't mind having the "Game of Life" tossed in now and then, providing I don't have a carload of little plastic peg-kids to push around the board.
Yeah, YOU try drivin' on that bright color-blocked road with four kids screaming in the backseat and a plastic peg-wife bitchin' in your ear about how you shoulda turned right instead of left back there at that last choice because NOW you've suddenly adopted two more little peg-kids and wasn't it bad enough you've already got four of 'em screaming in the backseat and you're gonna hafta stick the two new ones on the roof or tie 'em to the little bitty bumper or something…
Trust me, you'll be wantin' to crash head-first into one of those little plastic mountains in no time flat, prayin' for a quick and painless death.
I also don't mind Monopoly, as long as I don't have to be the old shoe or the iron.
And I don't land on Boardwalk when someone else owns it.
Or Marvin Gardens.
I hate Marvin Gardens.
It's a personal thing.
But trust me, I can still play hide-and-go-seek and Old Maid with the best of 'em.
Strip poker?
Not so much.
For some reason, the other players tend to run screaming from the table when I start taking my clothes off.
And I don't know why, I have the body of a Greek god.
Providing the Greek god was a bit on the pudgy side, not to mention the short side, and as hairy as a bear. Or "hirsute", for all you English majors out there. Which doesn't make sense because it sounds like "her suit" and I'm not sure what women's clothing has to do with being really hairy…maybe it's an advertisement for Nair? Which, by the way, doesn't work all that well and it smells like someone has been letting horrible farts…
Wait, where was I?
Oh, yeah, the story. Sheesh, maybe I oughta hire myself to find that thread I keep losin'.
'Cept I'm pretty broke right now, so I couldn't pay myself.
Anyway, the name's Kelly and trouble is my game.
By that, I mean it's my business. I work as a private eye—a shamus, a flatfoot, a peeper, a gumshoe, a sleuth, a private dick.
How did a mook like me get into a job like this?
It doesn't take Sam Spade to figure it out, really.
Or even Nancy Drew.
Or the Bobbsey Twins.
Hell, even the guy from Blue's Clues could figure it out.
Except I think he died from an overdose of PopRocks or somethin'. He ate 'em and then drank some Coke and then exploded all over the Blue's Clues set, sending many, many toddlers into years and years of therapy because they saw a guy die on television.
So maybe not him.
Anyway, I used to work as a firefighter…I was a lineman for the county—hey, did that line "I am a lineman for the county" from that Glen Campbell song just pop into your mind like it did mine?
No?
Whaddaya mean "Rhinestone Cowboy" popped into your head instead? Do I LOOK like someone who'd be riding out on his horse in a star-spangled rodeo?
Ooh, I hope a star-spangled rodeo is like "Battle of the Network Stars", only performed on horses…come on, admit it, you'd pay good money to watch skinny little Jimmy Walker from "Good Times" race out on a horse to try to rope and hogtie Telly Savalas, wouldn't you? Or Jack Lord tryin' to bronco-bust William Conrad?
I know I would.
I'd also pay good money to watch…Whaddaya mean get back to the…
Oh yeah, the story.
I used to work as a lineman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department—
Damn it, now I have "Rhinestone Cowboy" mashed up with "Wichita Lineman" and it ain't comin' out like Kid Rock's mashup of "Werewolves of London" and "Sweet Home Alabama" and…
Right, the story.
My story.
The one I'm tellin' without havin' anyone tell me how to tell it because I can tell it good the way I wanna tell it and no one can tell me any different.
Um…if you could make sense of that, you're doin' better than I am.
Hey, maybe you should be the detective.
Nah, you're not short and pudgy and hairy, yet moderately attractive in a mini-Rob- Reiner-as-Meathead sorta way.
At least I hope you're not.
There's only room for one Chet Kelly in this world.
Wait, why did the entire world suddenly sound like it was saying, "Thank God!"
Anyway…I was a firefighter for seven years and it was a job I loved doing, that is until that day.
That horrible, bad, no-good, but-it-could've-probably-been-way-worse-if-I'd-lost-my-favorite-whoopee-cushion-or-found-a-spider-in-my-Froot-Loops kinda day.
The day a clown car blew a tire and spun out up on the 405 freeway, crashing head-on into a vanload of mimes.
There were red noses and big floppy shoes and whirly-bowties and black berets and water-squirting flowers and white gloves and tiny umbrellas and little yippy dogs and invisible boxes and bulbed horns and plenty of polka dots and stripes scattered all over the road.
Oh, the horror, the horror.
It was the day the funny died.
We're workin' on getting Don McLean to sing a song about it. But he's still recovering from trying to get all those music references into "American Pie".
Hey, here's a joke for ya…what's black and white and red all over?
A buncha dead mimes, that's what.
Yeah, I know it's not funny, but that's noir for ya.
Whatever noir is, anyway.
I used to think maybe it was some type of ladies' undergarment, but now I think it means "dark and angsty and ripping off hardboiled private dick fic". (Wow, either that was a double entendre or a remark about Oscar Meyer's hotdogs. I'm going for the former because I'm not sure what weenies have to do with being a private di…oh wait, now I got it.)
In any case, after that tragic day of the clown car and mime crash, I found I could never again look a red foam nose in the eye—er, I mean nostrils again.
Not without breaking into that song "Send In the Clowns" and weeping loudly by the time the line "they're already here" comes in.
I also couldn't watch Shields and Yarnell on TV without wanting to go hide in an invisible box and the mention of Marcel Marceau made me break out in a cold sweat.
And wanna pretend like I was walking against a strong wind.
The nightmares, the flashbacks, the horror of remembering all those floppy shoes and tiny umbrellas and little yippy dogs and black berets scattered around the remnants of that Chevy van and VW Bug forced me to give up my job…I couldn't handle the idea of facing yet another clown car crash and with what this time? A truck carrying cream pies? A tanker full of seltzer water? A busload of nuns? It was a Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey potential pileup that I couldn't cope with, so I quit my job as a firefighter.
But I was in luck because a friend of mine, Eddie Valiant, wanted to retire, so he sold me his private detective agency.
Of course I made him take that stupid rabbit with him. It always turned its nose up at the Trix cereal I tried to feed it.
Kept saying Trix was for kids.
Plus it was always bouncing off the walls and doing crazy crap like hiding in the filing cabinet drawers or sputtering "Hide me, Chetty, p-p-p-lease!" like a loon.
Except it was a rabbit, you know.
Not a loon. A loon is a bird and a bird is pretty different from a rabbit.
I think.
I mean, one flies and has feathers and the other hops and is furry.
See, I'm a grrreat detective!
Anyway, before I could take over Valiant's office, I had to apply for a P.I. license, which he told me wouldn't be too hard to get because I was already pea-eyed.
I checked the mirror and he was right.
I had a couple of snow peas stuck in the corners of my eyes.
Coulda been worse, I coulda had corn coming from my ears.
After I removed 'em, Valiant told me getting a private investigator's license shouldn't be too hard.
And he was right.
All I had to do was stand on one foot and hop in place while rubbing my stomach and patting my head, singing "Mah-Nah-Mah-Nah".
Wait, that might've been my audition for Sesame Street.
Which I obviously didn't get a role on.
Which is a shame because I totally would've rocked being the Swedish Chef or one of those fuzzy little aliens who tries to figure out the phone—uh-huh, uh-huh, yip yip yip yip
Bomp, sha-nah-nah-nah, sha-nah-nah-nah-nah. Ba-doomp, sha-nah-nah-nah, sha-nah-nah…
Oh, sorry. The story.
So anyway, I got my private investigator's license and now I'm a private eye—a snooper, a sleuth, a gumshoe, a flatfoot—
Damn it, I think I need to snoop out a better thesaurus.
Thesaurus.
Another funny word, just like noir.
It sounds like a dinosaur.
"Today in Nebraska, paleontologists uncovered the bones of a very rare Thesaurus. They estimate it lived in the…"
Right.
The story.
But hey, I figured out how to spell "paleontologist" without looking it up in my dictionary!
Really, who says I am not a great detective?
I work here in Los Angeles—the City of Angels, the Big Orange, La-La Land. Big hair and perfect teeth and bright shiny phoniness is the star attraction here and dreams die just as fast as they're dreamed up by the dreamers who walk down those boulevards of broken dreams, those dead dreams getting chewed up and spit out on the sidewalk like a wad of used Juicy Fruit gum, only to get stuck on someone's shoe to go ffwwt-THP, ffwwt-THP as you walk and cuss out that stupid dreamer whose stupid dream up and died on those boulevards of broken dreams like…
Wait, what?
I lost myself in a bit of Chandler-esque hyperbole.
Raymond Chandler, I mean.
Not the guy from the Friends TV series.
Although he was probably capable of some nifty hyperbole himself.
Hey, does anyone remember that episode where Rachel and Ross…
Never mind.
I'm still trying to figure out what hyperbole is.
Gimme a few, the great detective has to find his great dictionary.
The Webster's one.
Not one of those wussy fake dictionaries that don't have half of the words I need to look up.
I'm lookin' at you, Macmillan Dictionary.
In the meantime, these are the stories of some of the cases I've worked here in La-La Land.
Read 'em or don't read 'em, it makes no difference to me.
I'm a tough guy, after all.
And tough guys aren't bothered by anything.
Except that gritty wad of Juicy Fruit still stuck to the sole of my left shoe.
It's drivin' me nuts.