The Stage Manager (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

MrBallen (0:00)

One afternoon in December of 1980, one of the most famous comedians in France pulled a stack of letters out of his mailbox in Paris. And as he flipped through the mail, one of the packages caught his eye. It had no postmark or return address, and there was clearly something small and hard inside of it. And so intrigued, he ripped open the envelope, and he pulled out a bullet, along with a piece of paper that read, the next one is for you. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark & Mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right place, because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the FollowButton's house, steal the rotating plate in their microwave, and then leave. Okay, let's get into today's story.

On the evening of November 23, 1980, a 39-year-old man named René Gorlin sat on a bench at a train station in Paris, France. His 22-year-old girlfriend, Marie-Pierre Desalbris, was sitting next to him, and the energy between them was tense, because Marie-Pierre did not want René to get on the train that was about to arrive. So for the past few years, René had basically been living two separate lives. He spent most of his time in Paris, where he worked as the stage manager for a very famous comedian, and he lived in an apartment with Marie-Pierre. But the train he was waiting for now was about to take him back to his other life, which was on a farm 60 miles away in the town of Chateau-Tiery, where he lived with his longtime partner, Danielle, and their two kids. Now, having a relationship with two different women was often very complicated for René, but it really wasn't a secret. Both women knew about each other, so this was all out in the open. So in the beginning, the arrangement had been quite rocky because René, at the time, had been with Danielle exclusively for years before ever meeting Marie-Pierre and starting the affair. And when the affair began with Marie-Pierre, Danielle had been furious, like she couldn't believe this. But now, she had a boyfriend on the side too, and it seemed to René like she'd made peace with the whole situation and was at least reasonably happy with their overall arrangement. But Marie-Pierre, René's girlfriend in Paris, who was currently sitting with him, waiting for this train, was not fine with the overall arrangement. She'd always been very jealous of his relationship with Danielle, and things really had only gotten even messier lately, because Marie-Pierre was now seven months pregnant. René had promised Marie-Pierre that he was going to leave Danielle and marry her, Marie-Pierre, as soon as the baby was born.

But secretly, he wasn't sure if he'd actually go through with it. After all, Marie-Pierre had already left René twice before, and he was afraid to abandon his long-term family for a relationship that seemed somewhat unstable. But he still had time before he had to make a decision about any of that. Right now, he really was not looking to add any more drama into his personal life.

He was already dealing with quite enough at work. So the very famous comedian that René worked for, whose stage name was Calouche, had announced a month ago that he was going to run for president of France. And even though the campaign was essentially a joke, the current president took Calouche really seriously. He viewed this comedian who, I mean, to everybody else, it seemed like a shtick, he viewed this campaign as an actual threat to his re-election. And now, a month after Calouche has announced this run for being the president, he was actually doing quite well in the polls, which was only increasing the paranoia by the current French political establishment. And so now it's like, you know, the powers that be in France were having this extreme reaction to Calouche, like, this guy is a threat to us. In fact, government agencies were now actually tapping Calouche's phone and the state-run TV and radio stations now suddenly wouldn't let him on the air. And on top of that, perhaps the most sort of frightening aspect of Calouche's political rise here was that at least one person had been sending him death threats. And so for René, it was sort of amazing to see Calouche's rise that started as sort of a joke and became something much more serious, but it was also sort of scary. René was worried that just in virtue of being Calouche's employee, he might be in danger too. And so now, as the train to Chateau Thierry finally pulled up to the platform, the only thing on René's mind was just holding his life together for another day. He kissed Marie Pierre goodbye and told her to remember to lock the apartment door while he was gone, because again, you know, he's sort of worried about safety for him, safety for others near him.