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Dad's house, Chateau West, was exactly four blocks west of Chateau East, along the same meandering tree-lined street, Oak Drive. The next morning. Max awoke there, gasping for breath, with Dudley, the "canine alarm clock," parked over his nose and mouth. Dr. Carmody's considerable skill with animals did not extend to the obedience training of his own pet. Dudley did what he pleased, and that included waking people up by suffocation.
Choking and spitting. Max threw the dog off and ran downstairs. Today was the day. He would dub
the laugh track onto the video of his routine, transfer it to a DVD, and send it and his application to contest headquarters in Chicago. The first step on the stairway to stardom? Perhaps.
He rushed to the coat rack in the front hall.
And froze.
His jacket, with the mini tape machine in the zipper pocket, was gone!
"Dad!"
Then he saw the note on the hall table. It was in Jack Carmody's unmistakable scribbled hand:
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"N o-o-o!"
Dudley looked on in mild interest through the slats in the banister as Max dashed for first the yellow pages and then the phone.
"Hi, this is Max Carmody. My father just dropped off a blue windbreaker. In the right zipper pocket there should be a tape recorder."
"I'll check." A moment later, the voice came back on the line. "I've got the jacket, but there's nothing in any of the pockets."
Max felt his heart lurch. "Are you sure? It's a matter of life and death."
"Sorry, honey. I searched the whole bin."
Oh, great! The only good thing to come out of last night's disaster was his laugh track. And now that was gone. October 12—the deadline for the contest—was only a week away. He needed to get his entry in the mail on Wednesday to make sure it got there.
Wednesday passed with no sign of the missing tape recorder. Friday loomed, the Express Mail deadline. An overnight package would still arrive in Chicago in time.
"Forget the laugh track. Send it now," urged Maude, who wasn't really fond of the source of the canned laughter.
"Sure, why not?" Sydni agreed listlessly. "I'm ruined, but there's still a chance for you."
"Don't forget, it's my directorial debut," Big put in. He had taken to wearing collared shirts
spread open with a bright red imitation-silk ascot underneath. Big thought it made him look like a filmmaker. In reality, the sight of a six-foot-tall sixth grader stalking through the school halls in an ascot, toot-tootling "Scotland the Brave" through his sinus tubes was more amazing than anything he might have recorded on videotape.
"There's still one last deadline," Max insisted. "Mario knows a FedEx driver who does the late deliveries in Chicago. Mario can leave tomorrow and rendezvous with this guy outside Piqua. He'll get my entry to contest headquarters by five."
"Why can't I have a great stepfather like that?" Maude complained. "My parents should get divorced."
Life at Chateau East when Mario was home was like The Simpsons minus the funny parts. If there was an annoying habit Mario Plunkett didn't have. Max hadn't heard of it yet. He parked the cab of his eighteen-wheeler in the narrow driveway, effectively sealing off the garage. He hummed classic rock songs from the 1970s. He filled in crossword puzzles with made-up words like ralge and cleapod. He talked to the characters on TV.
The only thing more irritating than Mario was Mario and Mom together. The Plunketts were an affectionate couple, constantly stealing kisses, holding hands, and sitting in each other's lap. Mario would surprise his wife with "thoughtful" little gifts. But since they came from Mario, they were always stupid souvenirs from his travels, like an anklet where every link was in the shape of the Spindle-Top oil gusher in Texas.
"Who wears jewelry on their feet, anyway?" Max complained.
"/ do," Sydni told him over the phone. "And so do most girls."
"Really?" Their group of friends was so tight that Max and Big rarely thought of Sydni and Maude as female. Despite the huge amounts of time the four spent together, Max never noticed where the two girls wore their jewelry, or if they wore any at all.
"Look," Sydni explained reasonably. "Your mom and Mario are separated a lot because of his job. So they're lovey-dovey when they're together. So what? Look on the bright side. Your mom could have married a real jerk. Mario's a great guy. Maude likes him, and she hates everybody."
"She doesn't have to live with him/' Max grumbled.
Lately, Mario had become a walking play-by-play announcement of the Tri-County Voles' 1-0 overtime loss to the Bucyrus Blowfish. He either would not or could not shut up about it.
"You should have been there, Max. With three seconds left in regulation time, Hazeltine had a breakaway and faked the goalie out of his jockstrap."
"What happened?" asked his wife.
"He stepped on the puck," Mario admitted. "Broke his leg in three places. I can't believe you missed it."
"Next time," said Max. Next time the moon fell out of the sky.
And it didn't help his mood that, on Saturday morning, the sad news came from the dry cleaners. The mini tape recorder was still nowhere to be found, and this was definitely the final deadline. Mario was packing his bag for the next big haul— three hundred bushels of eggplants headed for North Dakota.
As Max stuffed his audition video, with no laugh track, into a padded envelope, he recalled a poem his class had read late the year before:
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these:
"It might have been!"
Okay, it was a dumb poem that didn't even rhyme right. But whoever wrote it understood exactly how Max felt.
The doorbell rang, and a moment later he heard Mario's voice. "Jack, what a surprise."
Max flew down the stairs to find his father standing in the doorway, holding the mini tape recorder. "It was in my laundry bag the whole time," Dr. Carmody explained. "It must have fallen out of the pocket before I went to the cleaners."
Mario looked at his watch. "If I'm going to catch Barry in Piqua, I've got to leave, like, now.”
Max snatched the machine from his father's hand. "Ten minutes!" he cried, sprinting for the den.
He booted up the iMac and popped the cassette into the tape player. He had already transferred the three-minute video onto a disk. Mario had blown the iMac's speakers downloading Led Zeppelin from the Internet, so Max could see the
performance on the monitor, but he couldn't hear it. This was no problem. His act was like second nature by now. He followed along by reading his lips and body language. Carefully, he identified his punch lines. Those were the spots where he needed big audience reaction.
Working with the laugh track was a stickier situation. Since he couldn't hear the tape either, all he had to go by was the sound meter on the screen. When the level was highest, that meant the laughter was loudest, so Max dubbed those parts opposite his funniest lines. Then he gave himself smaller laughs for the minor jokes.
Mario appeared in the doorway, his coat on. "Sorry, Max, I can't wait any longer."
"I'm done, I'm done!" Max promised. "I just have to burn it on a DVD!" A few seconds later, he pulled the VHS cassette from his entry packet, replaced it with the disk, and resealed the padded envelope. "Go! Go! Go!"
Loyal Mario sprinted for his truck, barely pausing for a quick kiss each from his wife and daughter.