You’re 32 years old, and you’ve achieved nothing. Jesus Christ was dead and alive again by 33. You better get crackin’.
Think of it as a hobby. Something you do to relax. You’re an “assassination enthusiast.”
Okay. Let’s see. Well, you had a twin sister, stillborn, strangled by your umbilical cord. Your first hit, Chuck. Your mother always wanted a daughter. She blamed you for your sister’s death. And, so, until your sister Phoebe was born, she raised you as a girl. Oh, and your father the dentist? Not really your father. Your biological father was a man named Edmund James Windsor. A serial killer. A fact your mother didn’t know when she had an affair with him in 1930. If you want to look him up, he was also known as the Tarrytown Troll, because he had been described by witnesses as short and ugly. Windsor died in the electrical chair at Ossining in 1939. We believed your self-loathing tendencies coupled with that extra Y chromosome and whatever else you inherited from your father would serve us well. I’m trying to think what more I can tell you, but you have me at a disadvantage here, Barris. I don’t have your files in front of me.
He’s a bad guy. He’s one of the bad guys.
Don’t fuckin’ dance with me. Renda’s bad for the Tea & Biscuit Company. He’s bad for me personally. You work for me. Renda’s bad for me… You’re now officially a patriotic citizen of the United States of Jim Byrd. There’s no backing out now. We let you in on everything. You don’t play. You don’t leave. You understand that? You don’t play… You don’t leave.
Okay, I’ll help you out with your little show. Tit for tat. That’s the kinda guy I am. I’ve seen this Dating Game of yours, Chuck. And I have a thought.
Hey, I’m John Q. Public when it comes to TV and that should make my opinion of interest to you.
Well, what do you have now? The couple gets sent to some stupid second-rate Hollywood shitcan restaurant, right? Sets you back fifty bucks? That’s not too exciting a prize to us vicarious living boobs out in TV-land.
Up the stakes, Chuckles. Send ’em to some exotic locale. Europe, Southeast Asia, for example.
Send ’em with a chaperone.
I’m telling ya. And sometimes you can be the chaperone, Chuckie. Let’s say we have a job for you in Austria. You, a successful TV producer, above suspicion, chaperones the young couple, and while you’re there, you take care of some Com
Chuck, when I said you fit our profile, very little of that had to do with you needing the money. Some of it, but very little. You liked it with Renda, Chuck. I saw it in your eyes. You liked it but you botched it. Don’t you want to get really good at something, Chuck?
You’re gonna have to grow up. There’s a war on.
