Keenan was a quirky kettle of drama who sent every breath and spoken word adrift on wheezy sighs. He communicated by posing and answering his own passive-aggressive riddles in distinct and separate tones. When monologue forked into dialogue you could shut your eyes and picture Truman Capote getting frosty with Winnie the Pooh.

Favoring my swollen leg, I eased into the smothering luxury of Keenan's biodiesel Range Rover, a HEPA-filtered safe space where he managed affairs from a dozen smudged iPads. Each device gave off the same heat signature as a fresh loaf of bread, or a fat baby doing cardio.

Keenan cradled a cherry red iPad and squinted at the screen. He smelled of hand sanitizer, cashmere and worry.

He said:

"This unscripted television business. It's a tricky waltz, isn't it? Yes it is. And the dancers never call the tune, do they? Got to step carefully, yes we do. We do indeed Apollo Creed."

Keenan's manicured hand danced over pastel icons. He dipped his chin toward the screen, invited me to huddle close and we watched rough cuts from the previous day's shoot, a carnival fundraiser in Aberdeen.

Contestants paired with Special Olympians to sell concessions and operate midway games of skill and chance. Pris and her partner ran the ring toss. My special athlete and I manned one of those squirtgun games where gaping clowns take it in the mouth. Winners picked prizes from a hypertelorism totem pole of freaky Bratz dolls and black-eyed Baby Yodas.

It would be my team's first victory, a rout led by Jason Acuña and his polished Vaudeville shtick. The legendary Wee Man bounced from booth to booth barking up foot traffic, doffing his straw boater, swatting banners with a rattan cane. In less than a minute he had people stacked five deep watching Eddie batter the Power Punch bag with smoking roundhouse kicks.

The crowd surged across the midway to confront the digital kids as a single consumer-organism, demanding cotton candy and corn dogs, quibbling over Skee-Ball tickets and needing places to pee.

Despite follower populations greater than some nations, the Under Thirties were useless, wooden and aloof in customer-facing roles. They lacked banter, patter, hogwash and hype. All the soft skills it takes to get folks spending cash and having a good time in a place like Aberdeen.

Ill-equipped to engage the same social terrain as living breathing people, my opponents sought support from imaginary friends. Commerce stalled while they twirled in circles, launched rambling live-streams. Dragged unwilling Special Olympians into selfies and waved their hands in cramped simian glyphs, insisting everything was "risky" and "lit".

I hunched closer to the screen on Keenan's knee. Smug gases expanded inside me watching the Under Thirties resign to their carny duties, gloomy troupers pouting in the wings of a talent show no one wanted to see. The raw-food thinfluencer, the trick-shot golfer. The microwave chef and the cosplay pony. The fast-food reviewer, the true-crime podcaster, the latte-foam psychic and the one-armed girl who survived meningitis and bravely carried on making her own organic jam.

A cringe of kinship drained the shadyfreud from my cooler-than-you belief system, and I recalled Peachy's hatchet-frank assessment of my prospects when I said fuck no to "Celebrity Apocalypse".

She turned to face me, fingers twined in a blanching knot, elbows locked out like a Welsh tenor ready to hammer the rafters with "Myfanwy".

She said:

"Don't think you're too precious for this Vincent. Katie Price quit last minute, she's off to rehab to dodge another bankruptcy hearing. Casting only want a warm corpse over forty to even the teams and I'm baffled they chose you. You're hardly a celebrity. Without Margaret blubbering away center stage you're barely a name but she's fucked off, hasn't she? It's time for you to leave the shallows and evolve. Become or be done. How do I build a career for a sidekick with no one to kick him?"

Peachy's piercing truths left the enlightened party bristling like Saint Sebastian, but her information was accurate and actionable. And she never burned any breath trying to charm me. That made it easy to trust her.  This and that, your momma, fucking whatever - it felt like business, coming from her.

I thought of Papa Taco. Felt the possibility of deeper tectonics grinding miles underground between me and Peachy and I figured fuck it. Said yes to the show.

Keenan groaned and jogged the footage forward, brown fingertips stroking black glass.

"Aha," he said. "Have a look Vincent. This is where your showbiz jungle cruise takes a fatal turn, yes? From paddling pools to cataracts thanks to Jason's fans crashing my set. He's lovely but you'll have to invent some smooth new calculus to show me how nut punches and skateboarding add up to this kind of fame. I'll never savvy that, will I? No. Never savvy that Thundercat."

The global mobilization of Jason's "Jackass" fan base was humbling to behold. Keenan cued up a frenzied sequence of little people disembarking from charter buses, forming a toddling penguin colony in the carnival parking lot.

A former "Star Wars" Ewok actor named Lee brought his son clear from Galway to meet Jason. Neither man could comfortably aim the guns at my shooting gallery, so Lee opened a studded tool pouch on the handlebars of his mobility scooter. We found a wrench that fit and freed the pistols from their mounts, making the game accessible to shorter statures like Lee and his boy.

Father and son rolled away with a couple of Baby Yodas. They returned with a battery-powered "Braveheart" tribe of little people on mobility devices, all eager to pull triggers and win prizes.

At first they were only loud. Then one of them used his unanchored water gun to blast a friend. Shirts came off, common objects were granted the power of flight and our shooting gallery became a doughnut-rutted Thunderdome.

Based on the speed at which the situation reached maximum batshit, I believe alcohol was involved. Scooter drivers gutted Yodas and Bratz of stuffing and wore them as hooded capes, dangling doll braids forming one team, flapping green cornhusk ears on the other.

They began drag racing, then jousting over a stretch of high ground. Duelists enlisted fearless seconds to climb aboard and pummel each other with prize dolls that ruptured in chaffy showers of Chinese newsprint.

Jason was nowhere to be found. Without his intervention the mayhem would never end. My partner and I kept taking tokens from small hands and pitching stuffed animals into the crowd like locomotive firemen shoveling fluffy coal.

Phil-E Dee barged through the line at Pris' booth and used his bulk to buffalo-nudge several customers toward the Under Thirties' cotton candy machine.

We had the challenge sewn up tight by then. I ignored Phil-E's shady conduct and kept my goofy customer service grin on caps-lock, awarding prizes to winners, giving some people a second prize if they promised to go away.

Phil-E returned, stepping carefully over tufted clods and grassy patches to avoid the mud. He clamped his porky paws on a young woman's wheelchair and rolled her away like a repossessed appliance.

In that moment I saw an opportunity to vent some steam and distinguish myself as a brand.

I hauled two squirtguns behind the counter. Pulled my Special Olympian close. Pointed to Phil-E and pressed my index finger between my eyes.

"When that dude comes back? I want you to soak him. Hit him right here. Okay?"

The young man nodded. He held the plastic pistols out of sight.

A camera unit sensed the impending death of civil behavior. They moved in stooped flamenco paces, tracking Phil-E en route to poach another customer.

I waved him over.

Phil-E pushed his red-banded Adidas boater to the back of his head and rolled up smiling, a saint's face framed in a woven gold halo.

He leaned on the counter and said:

"What's up playboy?"

Jets of water raked my eyes. My partner body-checked me into the sagging vinyl side of the booth, pressing his pistols into my forehead. Blinded and off balance, I twisted to protect body parts that can't be carved from a block of wood on a jolly pirate's healthcare plan.

I'd like to clarify that this was not a fun scuffle. The kid was grinning and belligerent, committed to kicking my ass. A corn-fed varsity wrestler full of Everclear and Boone's Farm picking fights on a small-town Saturday night. He reached over my shoulders and under my arms, raking my ribs, scouring my head with funky municipal water.

I staggered under his bulk, trapped against the tent wall, powerless to stop him without moving further from horseplay and closer to violence. That would only brand me as the nut who got aggressive with a special-needs kid on camera. Never a good look. And I just didn't have that sort of scrap on tap anymore.

A slap of thunder filled one ear canal. I panicked. Shoved hard against my partner, broke his clinch and tore the tent flap behind me.

I followed gravity through the split seam and into the ring-toss booth, sprawling at Pris' feet, dripping and blinking like a newborn fawn in a tracksuit.

With an upgraded smile installed for the cameras I got off my knees and stood coughing, nose and throat shocked with cold, body temp falling as the onshore wind connected with my muddy Adidas gear.

Phil-E's shrieking laughter polluted my good ear.

"Oh my fuggin' gawt I love this kid bruh! He hate-chore ole ass more than me!"

He commandeered another wheelchair and gamboled back over the midway.

Pris shook the water from my crushed straw hat. She replaced it, stepped back and frowned. Cocked the hat again and smiled.

She held my shoulders and said, just loud enough for me to hear:

"Moistened by thine own retard, eh?"

She pronounced it ruh-TARD, and before I could consider the setting and catch myself, the wit of Pris' Shakespearean wordplay triggered laughter. Not just a snort but an explosion that blew a gluey lobe of snot down my chin and took me to the ground again. I was thirteen days sober at that point and the tonic of comedy hit me like high voltage. I was done.

Pris pulled a wad of tissue from her bra, wiped my face in rough mom-strokes. She dropped beside me on the soupy turf and fanned her limbs as if making a snow angel.

Disarmed by two Special Olympic volunteers in pink vests, my partner stepped through the torn tent flap, head bowed. His eye of the tiger was gone, devil reds replaced by a domesticated glaze I didn't like.

"Sorry," he said, waving his great hands. "Sorry sorry."

He stood over me. Laid down in the mud and held my hand. Rolled his head toward Pris and stretched to mirror her sweeping reach, pulling my shivering arm gently through his steady range of motion.

Pris took my free hand and animated my left arm. The sensation of touch and connection left me limp and relaxed in spite of the cold.

"Haw lookitus boys," Pris said. "We're a fuggin' yuman sennapeed."

I blew another snot rocket and started choking. Pris cackled like a tropical bird and rooted between her breasts for another clump of tissue. It was the perfect ending of a sappy sitcom. Freeze on smiles and laughter, roll credits.

Keenan paused the video. He shifted over the creaking upholstery and crossed his legs, leaving room for a very large third person.

I looked at him across that space and struggled not to laugh, but fuck if Pris' clever kink of English literature wasn't still funny. I was ten years old again, fighting to control blasphemous aftershocks of laughter during Mass.

Keenan wasn't laughing. His face said it all.

I was about to lose my goddamn job.