MSTing "Name of the Game" - Part 3 of 8
Brendan Herlihy
Pearl and the Gang enter the theater.
PEARL: I did a great job with that skit. I was funny.
MAGIC VOICE (resentful): You agreed we'd never speak of it again.
PEARL: Promises are for mortals, dear.
> --------
> NAME OF THE GAME
> by Kitt Montague
> --------
PEARL: Seven card stud. Dollar ante. One-eyed jacks are wild.
GYPSY: Oo, can you have wild cards in canasta?
MAGIC VOICE: Oh, please.
>
>One
GYPSY (sings shrilly): Singular sensation!
PEARL: Oy! Please! Phyllis! Not so early.
GYPSY: Sorry.
>Logan
MAGIC VOICE: Chuck Berry's disappointing son.
>
>"And what does she get from your office, Stone, if she hypothetically
> knows what's been going on?"
PEARL: A stern letter from the Marvin Gaye estate.
>
>Ben Stone stared back at the scrubby little lawyer
MAGIC VOICE (announcer): Nothing beats the subpoena power of scrubby lawyers
in Dow Bathroom Cleaner!
>in front of him and leaned forward, hands clasped on his desk. He'd
>seen lots of crappy lawyers in his time, and this one was up there with
>the grungiest,
GYPSY (serious announcer): Kurt Cobain, Attorney-At-Law.
PEARL (same): When the light's out, and it's dangerous, here we are now, so
detain us.
>but the client
>sitting quietly next to him, she was important. "That will depend, of
>course, on what your client can give us,"
GYPSY: Heartache. Nothing but heartache.
>he told the lawyer, then
>addressed her. "You realize, Ms. Page, that if you don't tell us what
>you know you'll be facing multiple charges of accessory to murder."
PEARL (Stone): Unless we get bored or something. You wanna wrestle?
>
>"You can't prove what she did or did not know," the lawyer snapped.
>
>"Doesn't matter, sir," Stone told him matter-of-factly in his best
> clipped Executive Assistant District Attorney voice.
GYPSY: I didn't know he had a selection of clipped Executive Assistant
District Attorney voices to choose from!
MAGIC VOICE: Oh, Ben Stone made his name as the Man of a Thousand Clipped
Executive District Attorney Voices. Whenever Hannah Barberra or Walter
Lantz needed a clipped Executive District Attorney voice for their cartoons,
they'd say, "Get Ben Stone on the phone! Now, dammit!"
>"Did or didn't know, she
>hindered a police investigation. And, I suspect at least one time
>she knew exactly what she was doing."
PEARL: Well it wasn't when she suggested lunch at The Olive Garden, I'll
tell you that.
>
>"Circumstantial," muttered the lawyer, though with less bite.
MAGIC VOICE: Yeah, their pasta always has no bite. It's overcooked. Italy
should really sue them or something.
>
>"Ms. Page?" Stone leaned forward again. "Do you have something to tell
>us?"
GYPSY (Alexa): Look, all I said was I had a coupon.
>
>Page glanced quickly at her lawyer, who nodded just enough to disturb
>the late-afternoon dust motes streaming in from the window,
All snigger.
PEARL (as dust mote): Hey! Ya mind? Some of us are undergoing Brownian
motion here!
> and then she swallowed.
PEARL (dust mote): Ugh! Stop it, ya weiner! She is SO disturbing!
MAGIC VOICE (dust mote): I'm gonna settle on her nose hair and give her a
sneezing fit!
>"I -- I -- know this makes me an idiot," she started, "but I
>really had no idea anything was wrong."
>
MAGIC VOICE (Ms. Page): I thought interns always brought the President pizza
in their lingerie.
>"The police asked you in for questioning three times and you never
> caught on to something being wrong?"
GYPSY (Ms. Page): Yes. No! Were you talking to me or the dust motes?
>
>She started, and even from behind his desk, Stone could see her eyes
>fill, but not to the point of actual spillover.
PEARL: Captain Hazelwood!
>She was frustrated, and
>frightened, and he knew he wasn't going to get anything by playing the
>heavy any more.
MAGIC VOICE: He lost over 40 pounds on the Slim-fast diet!
>Standing up and walking around his desk, past the other
>assistant D.A. present, Claire Kincaid,
MAGIC VOICE (excited): It's Claire! Claire's alive in this one!
PEARL: Yoo-hoo! Claire! Over here!
GYPSY (as crazed fan): WE LOVE YOU CLAIRE!!!
>Stone pulled up a seat at the table
>next to the young woman -- Amelia, was that it? -
MAGIC VOICE: No detail of the case gets past the iron mind of Ben-- Stone,
was that it?
>and tried to relax the muscles in his face.
PEARL: Oh, here, let me help.
Pearl stands up and cocks her fist back.
GYPSY: Pearl! No violence in the theater! Now sit down, and stop
slouching!
PEARL: No fair! You don't tell Madge to stop slouching!
GYPSY AND MAGIC VOICE: SHE DOESN'T (I DON'T) HAVE A BODY!
PEARL: Stop yelling at me!
GYPSY: You don't listen!
MAGIC VOICE: Corporalist!
>Can't let her know what's riding here, he thought,
>because I'm not even sure what's riding here.
MAGIC VOICE (Stone): No aspect of the prosecution gets by the legal acumen
of-- what was my name again?
>
>"No," she said finally. "I didn't. Where should I start?"
>
>Ben nodded, and let out a sigh. They had her; she wanted to tell,
> though why he wasn't sure. Whys could come later.
GYPSY: After the double-u's and exes, I'd wager.
>"Start wherever you think
>everything starts for you. We can work back if we need to later."
MAGIC VOICE (Ms. Page): OK. Well, my first memory is of a floating place,
awash with blue light and playful stars. Their passions roiling from cheap
weed and strawberry margaritas, my parents stepped achingly towards one
another and slowly removed their...
PEARL (Stone): NO! Not THAT far back!
>
> --------
>
ALL (make the patented "Law and Order" scene change music): DUN-DUN!
PEARL: Oh, wait. We can't. There hasn't been a scene change.
MAGIC VOICE: Well why the divider then?
GYPSY: Umm... maybe it's a refugee bonus puzzle from "Wheel of Fortune".
>"First," she told him, a stenographer typing the transcript in the
>background, "I'm not Amelia, and I'm not a Page. My name, for the past
>twenty-four years, has been Alexa Radin."
ALL: DUN-DUN... huh?
>When no one flinched, she went on.
PEARL (Alexa): I'm also not a real blonde. And I'm not my brother's
keeper. And this isn't my nose, it's a false one.
GYPSY (Sir Bedevere): Well?
MAGIC VOICE (Eric Idle): Well we did do the nose. And the hat.
>
>She'd known she was adopted for as long as she could remember anything.
>Growing up in a small suburban town in upstate New York, her parents
>had never hidden that from her.
MAGIC VOICE (twelve-year-old girl): Mom, I-
PEARL (mother): You're not my real daughter!
MAGIC VOICE: But my report card-
PEARL: You're adopted!
MAGIC VOICE: If you could just sign by the-
PEARL: Shut up! Go find a real mother! My game shows are on!
>She'd been adopted from a private agency at
>three days, taken home, raised as one of their own.
GYPSY: Raised as the agency's own? She's "The Pretender" now?
MAGIC VOICE (sings): You see a, pronoun was made to take the place of a
noun...
> When she went to
>college, however, she read some articles in her science classes on
>genetics study, and decided that while tracking down her birth parents
>wasn't important to her, she did want medical records -- breast cancer,
>heart disease.
PEARL: So she smoked six packs an hour and went on phen-phen, and soon she
had all the medical records a girl could want!
GYPSY: You really crave attention, don't you Pearl?
PEARL: Well, sure. Who doesn't?
>Problem was, the courts of the jurisdiction in which she was
>adopted didn't have any kind of medical information, just sent her some
>cut and paste Xerox detailing small bits and pieces about the mother
>and the circumstances surrounding the adoption.
MAGIC VOICE: Snippets like, "webbed toes", "the Devil's pollywog", "big
future as a carnie"...
>Things Alexa hadn't wanted to know,
>but once they were in her hands, read anyway.
GYPSY: Yeah, like you just browse the "Enquirer" on the check-out line.
PEARL: Wow, Crispin Glover has a secret prehensile tail!
>And one bit of information
>stuck out like no other -- that she was one of a set of twins.
ALL (sing): They're COU-sins! They walk alike, they talk alike-
>
> --------
>
ALL: DUN-DUN!
PEARL: Whoops! Sorry. Just the divider again.
MAGIC VOICE: Not one to nitpick, but shouldn't we have seen, oh, a dead body
by this point?
GYPSY: Well, maybe the author has a vision, or something.
>At this, Ben Stone straightened in his seat and shot a glance at
>Claire, who abruptly stood and left the room.
ALL: NOOOO!
GYPSY: Come back Claire! He didn't mean it!
MAGIC VOICE: D'oh, now look what you did, Stoneface!
>"A twin?" he asked, incredulous. "So
>you're saying you had a twin and never knew it?"
PEARL (Alexa): No, the narrator said it. I just live here.
>
>Alexa shook her head. "You sense things, you think you're only half of
> a whole, but what kid doesn't?
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): You dream of a sinister doppelganger killing in your
stead, but who doesn't?
>Once I knew, that changed everything. Because
>-- knowing that not only is someone out there who moves the way you do,
>or waves her arms like you do,
GYPSY (sings): HANDS UP! Baby, HANDS UP! Gimme-
PEARL (clamping Gypsy's mouth): OK. The next time? You die. Got me?
GYPSY (apologetic): Mmph.
>or maybe even has the same interests as you,
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): Wow! I think this is a crappy fanfic too!
>but who actually looks just like you, that just changes everything."
GYPSY: It turns peas, into beans!
>
>"You assumed she was identical."
PEARL (as Alexa): To herself? Yes.
>
>Alexa said she knew instinctively that the twin was a girl, and
>identical.
MAGIC VOICE: If it were a BOY, and identical, we'd be knee-deep in lemon
territory.
PEARL: Don't assume we're not, yet.
>She decided to do a full out search,
GYPSY: Lycos- go get it!
PEARL: Hey, I typed "twins"! What's all this Minnesota baseball crap?
>which led her to find some very
>startling facts about her adoption -- after all, what mother would give
> up half a set of twins?
GYPSY: Didn't Schwarzenegger already try this plot?
>
>It turned out her mother never knew both babies lived. The birth had
> been excruciating
PEARL: (as husband, laconically): Push. Um, push again. Look, honey, we're
on our twentieth hour here, I'm grabbin' a brew.
>and she had passed out before both babies emerged, and was
>later told that one had died. It had been close -- Alexa, the second to
>be born, was a blue baby, nearly strangled in the womb by the
>umbilical cord.
MAGIC VOICE: Wrapped around her neck by, could it be, her EVIL TWIN?!
GYPSY: Isn't any plot with an evil twin inherently unwatchable?
Pearl looks at Gypsy.
GYPSY: I mean, wow! Another engrossing evil twin story! Oh boy!
>When it appeared the second baby would survive, however, she was
>smuggled out of the hospital and sold to a private adoption agency. "I
>don't know who was involved with what," said Alexa, seemingly
>unaffected by the circumstances she was describing.
PEARL: (Alexa): My body was sold for profit, and that was fine. It wouldn't
be the last-
GYPSY: Pearl Forrester, don't you DARE!
>"The doctor who delivered me died five
>years ago, and the agency has long been out of business. No one who was
>at fault is still around to blame. I've had a lot of time to think
>this through, work it out. And I don't blame anyone."
GYPSY (Alexa): Now, the people I don't blame, in alphabetical order.
All groan.
>
>Then, four months ago, her search narrowed to the Pages', a wealthy
>Gramercy Park socialite family of old money, a world far removed from
> the lower class suburban homes she'd lived in with her adopted family.
GYPSY (Alexa): Henry Aaron, although his money and fame could have prevented
this from happening, I don't blame him. Ansel Adams...
> Alexa's sleuthing brought her to Amelia Page's address in Gramercy
> Park.Amelia, her twin, worked in some form of public relations,
> and Alexa tried to set up a meeting, hedging on the exact purpose.
GYPSY (Alexa): Louis Brahms, though his lullaby if prettier could have
swayed my mother into keeping me, I don't blame him. Bullwinkle Moose-
PEARL and MAGIC VOICE (dust motes): OH, SHE IS SO BLOODY DISTURBING!!!
GYPSY (Alexa): Woo. Touchy dust motes.
>After a week, Amelia
>found room for her and agreed to meet over lunch. "She asked me what I
>looked like so she'd know who to look for," Alexa recalled, and smiled
>a little. "I told her she'd recognize me, without a doubt."
PEARL (Alexa): I'd be the one pumping my fists in the air, going, "Ka-ching!
Ka-ching!"
>
>The meeting was a shock for both, seeing each other in a Mark Twain
> context of princess and near-pauper.
MAGIC VOICE: You know, if Fran Drescher met Blues Travellers-
GYPSY: They would NOT be the Princess and the Popper.
>Alexa, currently working as a musician in a band around Manhattan, had
>dressed up but could hardly approach the designer flair of Amelia.
>Amelia, with her sharp edges and defined nails,
PEARL: Boy, you must be really ripped to see definition in your nails.
>styled hair and pointed heels could hardly be farther away than Alexa
> in her leather jacket, skirt, and sweater. But they recognized one
> another instantly -- same five-foot eight, same shade of blonde hair,
GYPSY: Same addiction to Wizard of Oz commemorative plates.
>though Alexa's was much longer and looser, same slope of the nose and
>wide pale blue eyes.
MAGIC VOICE: They even had the same boob job!
>Far flung family may come to claim wealthy so-called relatives'
>money, but it is hard to deny your own face in someone else's.
GYPSY: You could cut off your nose- that works sometimes.
>Even still,
>Alexa had brought along documentation, in case proving was necessary.
PEARL (Alexa): See? My Discover card. You CAN'T make that up!
>Besides, she told Stone, she didn't care for the money, she merely
>wanted to make the connection.
MAGIC VOICE: Oh, she plays Twixt.
GYPSY: Or she's James Earl Jones doing a Bell Atlantic commercial.
>
>Amelia was everything Alexa was not -- sophisticated, worldly-wise, a
>college graduate from Wellesley, vocal, brilliantly cynical. Alexa saw
>her as a Dorothy Parker figure, and instantly bonded.
MAGIC VOICE: Well the tube did say, "Do not let plot make contact with
skin".
>She was lucky: Amelia
>took to her naivete and rough edges and finally, at the end of their
>meal, declared, "Well, you simply have to move in right with me!
ALL snicker.
>We've got far too much room for any one person,
GYPSY (Alexa): But doesn't "we" imply a family?
PEARL (Amelia): Oh, I'll disown them! Never to worry! Out on the street
they go, lollygaggers!
>and I couldn't imagine you continuing to
>live down in the Village. Not one more second!"
MAGIC VOICE (Amelia): Let's get you right out of that cradle of art and
literature and into a nice Nieman Markus!
>
>Alexa felt adopted for the second time in her life, and moved her few
>bags of items and one guitar into Amelia's spacious two-floor Gramercy
>Park apartment within a few days.
GYPSY (Alexa): Amelia, I-
PEARL (Amelia): You're not my real daughter!
GYPSY (Alexa): Huh? But I'm not-
PEARL (Amelia): You were adopted!
GYPSY (Alexa): But I'm the one who-
PEARL (Amelia): Shut up! America's Cup sailing is on!
>It was perfect. The next step, was naturally
>to meet her birth parents, and share the good news.
MAGIC VOICE: Yeah, this is great, because wealthy families love it when
dubious heirs lay claim to their inheritance.
>
>At the first mention of the idea, Amelia grew cold. "No, Alexa,
> certainly not. Not yet, anyway."
>
>"Why not?"
>
>"Well," said Amelia, and spent the next fifteen minutes delineating why.
PEARL (Amelia): Letting common sense unravel a plot this early.... it simply
isn't done!
>Didn't Alexa want to seem to fit in right away? As though she had never
>been away from the Pages'? Well, to do that, didn't she have to learn
> what to say and how to say it?
GYPSY (Amelia): Genetic identification simply cannot replace good breeding!
>"Let me be your Pygmalion!" cried Amelia.
PEARL: That should've been the sequel to "Babe".
>"When we go to Mummy and Daddy, they won't be able to tell us apart!"
>
>"Is that how she said it, Ms. Page?" Ben asked. "That they wouldn't be
> able to tell you apart?"
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): That, or, "Don't touch my sweater, you'll pit it."
>
>Alexa nodded. "The way she said it, it was like she was...having a
>revelation.
GYPSY: The Virgin Mary appears in her tira misu!
>It made me remember. And I knew she had some truth to it, I was
>a wreck, I didn't fit in her crowd, I could tell that right off. She
> really did need to show me the ropes. So I let her."
PEARL (Amelia): Very well. Here's one rope. And by the ottoman there?
That's the other one. Yes, I know you expected more. They all do.
>Amelia had a day job, doing promotions for various firms, and it kept
> her out at odd hours, meeting clients and schmoozing,
MAGIC VOICE: I've never heard it called that before.
>attending parties, so she wasn't home very often, which left Alexa lots
>of time to roam the apartment
PEARL: (sings as Alexa): ROAM in the place where you live! Now face north-
(stops) no, that's not right. Let's see... (sings) STAND, if you want to!
Stand, around the world- no! Darn!
>and try on her clothes, play with expensive makeup,
GYPSY (Alexa): Mm, rosemary facial rub with roast beef on rye!
>get more accustomed to
>the family she was preparing herself to join.
MAGIC VOICE: Wow, being part of a family is a lot like being an agoraphobic
shut-in.
> She made herself known to
>Amelia's three dogs, too, Buster, Swoozie, and Clark,
PEARL: Two guesses what the author named her cats.
>all various breeds Amelia never could recall, all, as Amelia put it,
>"over pedigreed and under friendly." When Amelia was home she
>scrutinized her behavior, began to imitate a more restrained, refined
>look. "I knew I was doing okay," said Alexa, "when I smiled a lot less.
>Amelia doesn't smile much."
GYPSY (Amelia): Laughter is for the little people, dear.
>A few weeks after she started staying with Amelia, Alexa found herself
>seeing her sister less and less frequently.
MAGIC VOICE: So, she went from hardly seeing her at all... to, what? A
Vietnam POW?
>At first, Amelia had been
>overwhelmed, then enthused, at her sudden doubling,
GYPSY: Oo, bad choice of words.
PEARL: They switched from Jenna Elfman to Kathy Bates midway through
casting.
>and Alexa believed she
>had opened her heart to her sister and been accepted from the
>beginning...rough edges and all.
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): That's so refreshing, after my last twelve friends
tried to use me as scapegoats for their elaborate murder schemes!
>It was something Alexa tried to believe,
>but was never fully convinced of.
GYPSY: And you expect US to buy it?
>Amelia had a sheen to her, like a glass that could slide down almost
>imperceptibly, until she had locked a person out, and Alexa felt from
>the beginning she was on the other side of that pane.
PEARL: OK, Alexa, your evil twin is locked in the soundproof booth. For 5
points, what's the first thing Amelia does after pulling the knife from her
victim?
>She might never have known it existed but for the one or two times
>Amelia let her guard down and they were able to laugh out loud
>together. It turned out Amelia was a big fan of ER,
MAGIC VOICE: Setting her apart from the twenty million bored and
uninterested viewers of the show.
PEARL: Sarcasm?
MAGIC VOICE: I thought so at the time.
>and they took every Thursday night
>off to watch it. Amelia would make faces at the women actors,
GYPSY: Get some real hair, Margulies!
>and sit riveted whenever George Clooney took the screen,
MAGIC VOICE: Oooo! He'd be so dreamy if he'd just take that handful of
Crisco out of his mouth!
PEARL: Hey! Hands off Clooney!
MAGIC VOICE: Yeah, that's what HE said.
PEARL (fight stance): Oh, you want some of this? Bring it on, Slimer!
GYPSY: She doesn't have a body, Pearl. Calm down.
>and they would both turn
>away when the operating room scenes grew too harrowing. "It's only corn
>syrup," Alexa would point out,
GYPSY (Alexa): Look, see? They're adding liquid smoke and bottling it as
Hunt's Barbecue Sauce!
>but Amelia didn't care, shadowing her eyes
>at the sight of even fake blood.
PEARL: Hoo! I hope the Evil Twins Union doesn't hear about this.
>They did have fun, occasionally, but
>gradually Alexa became aware of Amelia's formal posturing, her way of
> being secretive, the locked cabinets around the apartment.
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): Damn! I'm going to have to use the crowbar on this
one. Why doesn't she TRUST me?!
>
>She didn't fully grasp that any overt deception might be going on until
>one night while cutting a loaf of French bread Amelia cut herself and
>yelped.Alexa hurried into the kitchen to see if everything was all
>right and found her sister staring at her hand, sliced across the ring
>finger, dripping on to the white loaf.
ALL: EWWWWW!
GYPSY: That is NOT how you make bruschette!
>Amelia had been staring as if transfixed, and didn't run
>it under water until Alexa spoke up.
PEARL (Amelia): No, that's for burns, sweetie.
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): Oh. OK, go put some butter on it.
PEARL (Amelia): No, that's for burns! And you shouldn't do that for burns
anyway.
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): But it's NOT a burn.
PEARL (Amelia): So?
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): So, put some butter on it while I get a bandage for the
bread!
>"It was," Alexa said to Stone, "the little lies like that...
GYPSY: Lies like not washing a cut fast enough?
>things you really wouldn't face someone with and which felt almost too
>small to even count as lies, but were untrue all the same.
MAGIC VOICE: Kitchen accidents as acts of betrayal!
PEARL: I'm leaving you, Albert. You can just KEEP your head in the
microwave for all I care!
>Like she would say she didn't eat meat, she was some long time
>vegetarian. But one night I made hamburgers and she leaped right in
>with me. I began to wonder if it was compulsive with her."
PEARL: Oh, no. The author's a born-again vegan.
GYPSY: Of course you can have a burger, you NAZI PSYCHO MURDER WHORE!
>And then, Amelia wasn't around very much any more. She claimed she was
>getting very involved with one of her assistants in the office, and was
>out late nights even when there were no parties, or wingdings to
>attend to,
GYPSY: Oh, she's a Microsoft font designer.
> and Alexa was left alone most of the time. And then even Thursday
> nights weren't theirs any more. They didn't go out together.
MAGIC VOICE: They NEVER went out together! She just SAID that!
PEARL: Man, Amelia should dump this crybaby.
GYPSY: I know. Alexa is so long-lost-twin-sister-whipped.
> Amelia came home late most nights, and on the odd evening when she was
> in, she claimed being tired,
MAGIC VOICE (Alexa): You're seeing another sibling, aren't you?!
>or if she had any energy, worked at improving Alexa's diction and
>poise. "She wanted us to be real twins," Alexa told Ben. "Real two of a
>kind."
>
>"But you never went out as a pair?"
GYPSY (as Alexa): Ew, grody! No, you dirty old man!
>Alexa shook her head. "She said she knew too many people and if they
>saw us together it would get back to mom and dad -- sorry, mummy and
>daddy--
MAGIC VOICE (as preppy mother): That's all right, sweet'ums. Mummy luv her
pookybear.
> and we didn't want to be premature. That was her word, premature. I
> didn't really resent it -- I guess I put all my faith in her. She was
> like another me, my mirror telling me what I should and shouldn't do.
PEARL: Sort of a Jiminy Cricket/David Berkowitz kind of a deal.
>I still haven't gotten used to it."
>
>"So you were being trained," Ben nudged.
MAGIC VOICE: Bark like a dog.
GYPSY (high-pitched): Arf!
MAGIC VOICE: A BIG dog.
>"Did anything significant happen during that time?"
>
>Alexa averted her eyes.
PEARL (Indiana Jones): Don't look into the plot, Mirriam!
>Until this point, she had been fairly straightforward, telling these
>things as if she were relating a story to a friend.
MAGIC VOICE: The sort of friend you want to bore into leaving as soon as
possible.
>And here, she hesitated. Staring out Ben's large window into the
>early twilight,
PEARL (Stone): Hey! (snaps fingers) I'm over here, lady! Hello?!
>she said, "Then, one morning, the police came."
>
>"You mean Detectives Logan and Briscoe, Ms. Page," Ben clarified.
>
>She nodded. Here was where things got sticky.
MAGIC VOICE: I'd always heard Logan was into that sort of-
GYPSY: NO!
Logo, commercials - This is CBS. More's the pity.
<End Part III>
Been spendin' most our lives, livin' in an e-mail paradise.
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