***
It turns out that even though Maximus left us under noble circumstances, that didn’t mean that Jimmy saw it that way. In fact, Jimmy was right pissed off (though that was no surprise).
“I don’t fucking believe it,” he muttered into his hands. Perry and I were sitting across the table from him in his office. We’d decided we had to tear ourselves away from our marathon sex session to finally have the meeting and fill Jimmy in on what happened. I hadn’t given him the footage yet, wanting to torture him a bit with Maximus’s sudden departure from the Experiment in Terror team.
“Well, that’s the truth,” I said matter-of-factly. “He’s staying in New Orleans to look after his sick ex-girlfriend. Kind of fucking noble, if you ask me.”
“No one is fucking asking you, Dex,” he grunted, face still buried.
Perry and I exchanged a look. She didn’t even want to come to the office, saying we could just tell him over the phone, or at least I could go in by myself. I knew she was afraid of him, but I wanted to prove that we really were a team. And to be honest, I wanted to prove more than that.
But first things first.
“So, this is great,” he went on caustically. “All this sponsorship and we once again have nothing to show for it. Do you have any idea what this means? They won’t want to deal with Shownet again.”
“Who are the sponsors, anyway?” I asked out of curiosity.
He sighed, his breath fluttering the papers on his desk. “Enerbomb. An energy drink company.”
I snorted. “Well nothing says ghost-hunting like having a fucking cardiac arrest. Are you sure Jack Daniels wasn’t interested?”
He looked up at me sharply. I’d never seen his eyes so viper-like. His glasses should have been fogging up. “Is this the time to make jokes, Dex? You’ve ruined the show. You’ve ruined me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said pulling out the USB stick from my pocket and sliding it across the table. “Here. This is what we shot. You can show your Red Balls sponsors that.”
He picked it up like it was a wriggling insect.
I nodded at it. “Go ahead, take a look. We’ll sit here and wait.”
Jimmy shot me a wary look but did as I suggested. He put the USB into his laptop and went through it. Maximus had already picked out all the shots before we left NOLA, so it was easy putting it all together. It wasn’t everything, just cropped shots of the exterior of the house intersected with NOLA stock footage and Perry’s narration, then everything we’d shot in the interior, ending with the zombie coming after Perry. We ended it in a fade to black, fudging the truth a little and saying that Perry was attacked and then the zombie “ghost” just disappeared in front of our eyes. It was a little bit better than saying he was a real person who jumped out the window to his death for the second time. RIP, Tuffy G.
When he was done, he looked over at us in awe. Well, maybe “awe” was a slight exaggeration. But he looked more impressed than he did ten minutes ago.
He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “So,” he said slowly, “are you telling me that you finally got something amazing and the person who’s responsible for it is now gone?”
I grinned, knowing he would say that. “No. Because Perry and I have always had the power to make this amazing. I hate to say this but Maximus was good, he actually was, but it wasn’t him that made this work. It was the extra help. It was the extra camera. Just having someone else there. Perry and I, we’re too busy staying alive, we can’t be worrying about everything. An extra person on our team would make everything run a lot smoother. All the shows will be like the one we just showed you and your sponsors will be cracked out and happy.”
He squinted at me, not trusting a word I was saying. “Okay. So if you’re right about this, then who would the third person be?”
Perry spoke up, “Let us work on that tonight and get back to you about it.”
He directed his disbelieving gaze to her and to her credit she didn’t shrink in her seat as she usually did.
“What?” she added. “We have someone in mind, we just don’t want to say anything until it’s official.”
He grunted something. I took that moment to push the envelope further and I put my arm around Perry.
“Don’t worry about Jimmy, baby, it always takes him a while to come around.”
I smiled as I bit my lip and relaxed in my seat, enjoying the sight of his eyes widening as he put everything together.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
I shrugged. “What is what?”
“You two are an item now?”
Perry and I exchanged a smile.
“Oh right, this,” I said. “Forgot you didn’t know.”
He was flabbergasted and pissed off, a very Jimmy-esque combo. “I didn’t know? Look, I don’t care who you’re with, Dex, but you do remember what happened with Wine Babes.”
“I left when it became boring and monotonous.”
“Well…I don’t know about that…” he said, taken aback.
“And didn’t Rebecca just quit?” In fact, Rebecca just told us that this morning when she came by to see how were holding up. The break up with Emily was one of the factors to Wine Babes demise, she just couldn’t handle it, but working with Jenn had got to be too much, too. I couldn’t blame her one bit. I’d been there. “Actually, at this moment, doesn’t Wine Babes not exist anymore?”
He grunted, eyes studying the papers in front of him. “What’s your point, Dex?”
“Everything happens for a reason,” I said, getting to my feet. “Experiment in Terror might be the show to bring Shownet out of the ground.”
He looked at me sharply. I remembered what Seb and Dean had told me the other week, that even they had gotten the talking to about dwindling hits and numbers and their stoner show cost nothing to make. Perry and I had discussed that no matter what Jimmy said, we’d be okay. That we’d go out on our own and do our own thing and make our own damn show if that’s what we wanted to do. But even though Jimmy was a giant pain in the ass and the biggest thorn in my side (now that Maximus was in Louisiana, anyway), Shownet was where I got my start, it’s what brought Perry and I together, and if I could save the show and possibly save the site, then that’s what we’d do. It would almost be damn near poetic.
And I wanted to make sure it was on my terms. Mine and Perry’s relationship would never come into question. Our motives for filming a show or not filming a show wouldn’t either. We wanted to hold the reins this time. We wanted all the control and considering the risks we took for the show, I’d say we deserved it.
Of course, Jimmy didn’t look like he believed a word I was saying. It didn’t matter. Tonight we’d have our answer.