Penn & Teller Go Network | ch1 - Preface

[milesy]

ORIGINALLY POSTED: 2003

Title: Penn & Teller Go Network (1/19)
Fandom: Penn & Teller Get Killed
Wordcount: 3226
Rating: NR
Characters: Penn, Teller
Summary: The boys finally get their big television break. It'll make them famous, even if it kills them.

AO3 | FFN


It was shortly after two in the morning when the big rig pulled into the Flying J. The driver stopped just long enough to let the passenger, a barely-out-of-high-school hitchhiker, climb out of the cab. The kid didn't often make it a point to hitch rides with truckers, but it was never an experience he regretted.

At that hour of the morning, most of the truck stops buildings were closed for the night. Only a McDonald's—which that was at this point Drive-Thru only—and a Chevron station still had their lights on for business, but as he walked across the rain-soaked pavement to the Chevron station, he noticed a small, brick building with its lights on, that was hidden behind a few trucks. Being one to play the odds, he turned toward the new prospect, realizing that it was a small diner as he drew closer; most likely a Mom-and-Pop's joint that never left when Big Business came into town.

He stepped into the small, yellow-lit room, pausing briefly to take in the ambiance. A sign near the entrance read "Please Seat Yourself," so he did just that, taking a seat at the near end of the service counter. At the other end of the counter, the young waitress was pouring coffee into a patron's cup.

"Teller, honey," she said softly as she placed the cream and sugar on the counter in front of him. "We are out of bagels and tomatoes tonight."

The patron — did she call him "Teller?" — gave her a look of mild disappointment. It seemed as though he was a "regular" with a "usual."

"You want a menu tonight?" she asked him.

He nodded.

As the waitress walked over to get Teller a menu, she noticed Penn at the other end of the counter. She quickly took the menu down to Teller before returning to her new guest.

"What can I get ya, sugar?" she asked lightly.

"You do milkshakes?" Penn asked.

"Yup."

"Vanilla milkshake, please," Penn said.

"That all?" the waitress asked.

"Yup," Penn said with a smile.

The waitress didn't even bother with writing out a ticket. She hurried off to the kitchen to fix up Penn's milkshake. In almost no time at all, she returned with a large tumbler and a long spoon. She absently sat it before Penn before stepping over to tend to Teller's order.

"You decide on anything yet?" she asked him.

Teller turned the menu around so she could read it proper and pointed to something near the bottom. The waitress jotted out a ticket and picked up the menu.

"Be just a bit," she said with a smile.

She put the ticket up in the window and banged on the aluminium siding with her fingers.

"Billy!" she called out. "This one's for Teller, here."

"Gotchya!" a voice from back in the kitchen shouted.

Penn dug at his milkshake with the spoon and took a drink. It was a bit thin, but otherwise good. Feeling the urge to pound out a game of solitaire, he dug a deck of cards from his rucksack and shuffled them a few times. As he got ready to set up his game, he felt a light tapping on his left shoulder. He looked up to see Teller suddenly seated in the chair next to him.

"Can I help you?" Penn asked slowly.

Teller timidly pointed to the deck of cards Penn held in his hand.

"What?" Penn asked uncertainly. "You want the cards?"

Teller nodded slightly. Not sure what to expect from the possibly batty local, Penn handed the cards over. He'd recently spent some time with a professional outlaw gambler, so a friendly game of poker wasn't entirely out of his element. Teller quickly made a perfect fan, cut the pack and shuffled it a few times. He fanned the cards out once more, this time inviting Penn to take one. Penn hesitantly took one from the middle of the fan and looked at it. It was the Three of Clubs. He slid the card back into the fan and watched as Teller shuffled as though he'd done this for every person who had ever walked through the front door. Teller smiled smugly and flipped the top card from the deck, showing it to Penn. It was the Queen of Hearts.

Penn shook his head. "No," he said.

The smile quickly faded from Teller's face. He pulled off the next card, this time more desperate in his moves. The Seven of Diamonds.

"Nope," Penn said. Quickly losing interest, he took a drink of his milkshake.

Teller slowly sat the cards down on the counter and bit his knuckle. He waited for Penn to almost forget about him before he reached into his mouth and pulled out, one-by-one, an entire deck's worth of Threes of Clubs, letting them flutter all over the area.

Penn started to laugh so hard that he lost his milkshake through his nose. Teller laughed silently to himself as he started to gather up the mess he'd made. He dropped down to the floor to gather the cards on the dining room side of the counter, returning to his new seat next to Penn just as Billy came out from the kitchen with his plate.

"Here you are, Mr. Teller," Billy said as he sat the faux-stoneware plate down on the counter. "One Traditional Clubhouse with much too much mayonnaise." He bent down and picked up a few of Teller's cards.

Teller smiled, reached into the air, and pulled a five dollar note out of nowhere. He handed it to Billy just as he realized that he'd mislaid his drink.

"It's over there," Penn said, sopping up his milkshake mess with a handful of cheap paper napkins.

Teller jumped up and grabbed his cup from the other end of the counter.

"You come here often?" Penn asked as Teller sat back down.

Teller nodded.

The more Penn thought about it, the more he wanted to hear this odd man say something. His strange prolonged silence was beginning to border on downright creepy.

"That was some card trick," Penn said, hoping to spark even a bit of idle chatter. "How'd you do that?"

Teller smiled coyly and shook his head.

"You're not from around here, are you?"

Penn looked up sharply to see Billy hanging out by the kitchen door.

"Nope," Penn said, perhaps a bit too proud of the fact. "I hitched a ride on the way up to my mother's house."

A harsh clanging sound cut through the heavy diner atmosphere, making Penn jump slightly. He looked out the door to see the newspaper rack being filled by a rather shady-looking character. Teller jumped up from his seat and walked out to fetch himself a paper.

"What's up with this guy?" Penn asked as soon as Teller was out of earshot. "He hasn't said word one all night."

Billy sighed and leaned in closely. "Not that it's any of your goddamned business," he said quietly, "but it's my understanding that he can't."

Penn's heart fell into his stomach. "Oh," was all he could think to say. He looked out at Teller, waiting patiently for the over-aged paper boy to finish his duties. "Poor guy."

"You said you hitched up here?" Billy asked, sharply changing from the painfully awkward subject.

Penn nodded and took a drink of what was left of his shake.

"Yeah," he said. "Been on the road for a while now, and I figured it was time to go the fuck home."

Teller walked back inside and sat down at the counter, totally engrossed in the paper's headlines — no doubt more bad news from Viet Nam. Going out of his way to avoid eye contact, Penn finished off his milkshake.

"Do you know where a guy could shack up for the night?" he asked.

"There's a cheap hotel on the other end of the lot," Billy said, almost instantly. "Probably about twenty or thirty bucks for the night."

Penn dug out his wallet and thumbed through the cash. Thirty bucks for the night wasn't ideal, but it was do-able. He put a five dollar note on the counter — enough for the bill and the tip — and picked up his rucksack. "Thanks," he said. He looked back at Teller, who was still reading the front page of his paper. "See ya round, man," Penn said.

Teller waved lightly, his eyes fixed on the newsprint.



♣ ♣ ♣



Saturdays were always great days for street performances. The streets of Philadelphia were packed with people looking for something to do, making it more than easy for a person to bring in three hundred dollars or more.

Teller made his camp on his usual corner down town and sat his attaché case and duffel bag down on the stone ground. He pulled a crude cardboard sign — "Magic Begins when 100 Needles are in the Apple" — and propped it against a lamp post. After making sure that the wind wouldn't carry the sign away, Teller sat down on his bag, and slowly began sticking a shiny red apple with embroidery needles, as though it was a festive pin cushion. A small crowd began to form, curious to see what apples and needles had to do with magic.

"Hey, what's this?"

Teller looked up from his apple work to see the kid from the night before taking something from his own tattered rucksack. The kid looked down at Teller.

"Don't mind me," he said as he started to juggle five unlit torches. "Just some pre-show entertainment."

He tossed the torches from hand to hand with seemingly no thought at all. After a few seconds, he paused in his motions just long enough to let one of the torches drop. He bent to pick it up and turned back to Teller.

"Do I know you?" Penn asked.

Teller stared back at him blankly.

"Wait. We met last night... kinda." Penn held out his hand. "The name's Penn," he said. "Teller, was it?"

Teller reached up to shake Penn's hand and nodded. When he'd first seen the kid the night before, Teller knew he was big, but now that he was standing, the kid was huge.

Penn waved his hand at Teller. "Go on with your preparation," he said. "I'll take care of the crowd."

Penn put two of the torches back in his rucksack and pulled out a lighter. In one swift movement, he had all three torches lit and in the air, dancing gracefully around one another. Almost instantly, people began to gather, knowing that what they were witnessing was highly illegal.

"Check it out, folks!" Penn boomed. His voice was no longer calm and almost sing-songy. He suddenly turned into a loud, aggressive animal, more suiting to his size. "In just a few short minutes, Teller here will be performing the most amazing magic you've ever seen. That's right; you've never seen anything like it before!"

He continued to toss his torches back and forth, pausing in his speech every few words to keep his rhythm.

"But you folks definitely aren't here to watch me do this," he went on. "The sign clearly says "magic," so that's what you've come here to see. You want to see amazing sleight of hand and manipulations; not a load of circus clown tom-foolery. But no matter what you want to see, I know what you're hoping to see. You're hoping that I have an accident!"

The longer he went on hijacking Teller's show, the more Teller wished he'd vanish. Penn threw one of the torches slightly higher into the air than the other two and deliberately grabbed the flaming wrong end. With a painfully blood-curdling scream, he threw the torch down to the ground and let the other two fall.

"There," he said with no hint of pain in his voice whatsoever. He pulled a jug of water out of his bag and doused the torches. "Happy?"

He looked back to see Teller poking the last of his needles into the apple. Penn picked up his torches and stepped aside.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he barked with more gusto than a carnival talker. "Teller!"

Teller looked up to a crowd three or four times larger than was he was accustomed to seeing. He stood up to take his mark as Penn stepped back and tried to get as out-of-sight as six and a half feet in psychedelic tie-dye could.

After a brief moment of adaptation, Teller held his apple high into the air for everyone to see. He pulled one of the needles out of the fruit and held it up at his fingertips, letting the sun's light glint sinisterly off of its shiny silver surface. After a few seconds, he jabbed his thumb down onto the point, drawing a small bead of blood. A few people in the crowd laughed - a reaction that didn't come very often. Teller held his thumb up, allowing everyone in the crowd to see his self-afflicted damage.

Teller pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and quickly cleaned his hands. He reached into the crowd and pulled a young college-aged lad into the circle with him. Teller handed him the apple — and the needles — to inspect.

"Looks good," The kid said, barely looking at it at all.

Teller shrugged and began removing the needles a few at a time from the apple. Once he got to about ten or fifteen, he placed the needles on the tip of his tongue and swallowed them, making sure to gag and appear to choke. He repeated this act several times, at one point taking nearly twenty-five needles at once. When he was done, he smiled and handed the apple back to his unwilling assistant.

"What about these?" the student asked, pointing to a group of about ten needles near the bottom of the apple.

Teller reluctantly plucked the remaining needles from the fruit and swallowed them. He took a bite from the apple and underhand tossed it into the crowd. As he chewed the apple, he pulled a small jeweler's case from his inner jacket pocket and handed it to his helper. The student opened it to find a small dentist's mirror and a flashlight. Getting perhaps too close for comfort, Teller held his mouth open with his fingers and allowed the student to fish around until he was convinced nothing was hidden.

"Looks good," he said with a nod.

Teller took back the mirror and flashlight and pulled a small spool of white thread from the same pocket. He unraveled about two meters of thread, holding it high in the air, as so everyone could get a good view at its length. Folding the thread over twice, as to make it a more manageable length, he put one end into his mouth. Slowly, he began to swallow the thread. Once more, he let the student inspect his mouth, and once more, the student found nothing.

Teller coughed lightly, as though clearing his throat, and looked up toward the sky. After a few seconds of working it with his tongue, a piece of white thread appeared at his lips. He grabbed it with his fingertips and began to pull it from between his tongue and teeth. After about six inches of bare thread, the embroidery needles were strung up on the thread, each gracefully dropping off the tip of his tongue. Teller held the thread up into the air, drawing thunderous applause from the crowd.

Teller continued on in this matter with Penn for nearly an hour — Penn juggling various hazardous objects to gather a crowd while Teller readied himself for his next illusion. The more Penn watched Teller perform from the sidelines, the more awestruck he became by his would-be partner's performance style. He respected the fact that unlike every other magician he'd ever seen, Teller didn't insult the crowd by outright lying to them — rather he used their intelligence and observations against them.

At the end of each of Teller's performances, Penn would take the cash they'd gathered in Teller's old top hat and set it aside. When Teller was out of material almost an hour later, Penn counted out their earnings and divided it exactly in half, giving each of them almost five-hundred dollars. As they started to pack their equipment away, a beat cop began to advance toward them. Teller noticed the cop first, and rushed to cram everything into his duffle bag.

"You boys realize that you can't be doing this here," the cop said, waving his flashlight at the ground.

Penn stepped up to the cop.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, back to his unnaturally calm tone. "We didn't know there was a law against that here. We've been on the road doing this for a few years, and we've never had any trouble before."

The cop looked them both over — Penn in torn khakis and a beaten leather vest over dirty dye-dye and Teller in old trousers and a too-big jacket over a too-big T-Shirt, and both in serious need of a shave and a haircut — and stepped in closely to Penn. Penn quickly glanced down at Teller, who was prepared to leave all of his props and bolt if the situation proved necessary.

"Next time," the cop said loud enough for only Penn to hear, "you boys be sure to get yourselves a permit. Until then, check yourselves into a hotel room and get cleaned up."

"We will, officer," Penn said with a nod.

The cop looked them over once more before turning to continue on his beat. As soon as the cop was gone, Teller sighed deeply and plopped down on his duffle bag. He picked up his attaché case from the ground and held it close against his chest.

"That was a close one," Penn said with a laugh.

Teller looked up at him and nodded. For a second or two, Penn thought he saw perhaps a bit of gratitude in Teller's expression. Curious about his new friend, Penn sat down on the ground next to Teller.

"Ya know," he said. "I think we make a pretty good team."

Teller thought about Penn's statement for a moment. He wasn't particularly fond of the kid's piss-off attitude, but there certainly was no denying the fact that he could draw a crowd.

"Every good magician needs an assistant," Penn continued. "What do you say we split the expenses, divide the profits fifty-fifty and see where this takes us?"

Teller was apprehensive at the kid's eagerness. Penn had to have been at least ten years Teller's junior, but he sounded like he'd been in the business for at least as many years. And what of the off chance that something didn't work out and Teller wanted to split? Penn was much bigger — at least twice Teller's size — and could easily overpower him. But too many profitless weekends on Teller's behalf was a huge temptation to take this secret weapon of a fire-yielding juggler the size of a yeti.

Biting his lip and swallowing his pride, Teller nodded slightly.

"Great!" Penn said with the toothy grin of a table-hopping magician as he stuck his hand out in front of Teller.

Still hesitant, Teller clenched his fist before taking Penn's hand in his own, sealing the barely-verbal deal with a handshake.