***
Normal definitely wasn’t in the cards for us. Not when you went to a meeting with your boss and he was trying to tear you a new asshole because your footage of Sasquatch had been confiscated by Canadian authorities.
“You seriously fucked up this time!” Jimmy barked at us from behind his desk, his face red and contorted. We’d only been in his office for two minutes before the obscenities started flying out of his mouth.
I looked over at Perry who was wringing her hands together, looking wary of the big bad Korean man who only recently begged her to come back to Experiment in Terror. What a fickle fuckhead.
“Hey, Jimmy, hey,” I said, jerking my head at Perry. “How about toning it down a bit in front of the lady?”
Jimmy looked at me as if I had a cock growing out of my head. “Tone it down? Christ, Dex, the girl works with you. Or she did.” He glared at the two of us and leaned across his glass desk. “You can’t possibly think that going all the way to BC on the company dime and not coming back with an episode is okay.”
“We didn’t think it was okay, but—” Perry started.
He raised his hand. “Stop. I don’t care about your excuses. For once you actually had something—evidence—and it was taken away.”
“Oh fuck that,” I exclaimed. “It was the police, it was evidence of a fucking murder.”
“Murder?” Jimmy scoffed.
“I don’t know, maybe not murder, but the thing was definitely related to us in some X-Men mutant type of way. Whatever. An attack. The man died. Of course the damn cops are going to confiscate it.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You should have lied. You should have said you didn’t have any evidence.”
I glared right back him. Jimmy had always been a bit of a dick, but this level of dickishness was new.
“Well, maybe, Jimmy, we thought it was in bad taste to air the episode anyway.”
“That is not your call,” he seethed. Then he straightened up and walked over to the window with its view of Elliott Bay. It was overcast and blustery but the rain had held off today. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth on his heels.
“The economy still hasn’t picked up yet,” he said to the window. “And I’m having to take a long hard look at the lineup and figure out what’s worth it. Some shows are doing really well with hits, others are tanking. You guys were doing really well but I don’t think I can rely on you anymore.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Perry said rather snidely. “This show was dead and buried. You resurrected it.”
“I assumed you wouldn’t be wasting my money. Obviously I was a moron and now I’m in the hole because there’s no show to air. So the resurrection is on hold until I figure out what to do with you.” He finally turned around and eyed us over his glasses. “This isn’t the first time you’ve nearly gotten hurt or lost most of your footage. What you do is entertaining, even when you have nothing to show for it, but it can’t survive in the long run. I was this close to getting a big fucking sponsor for you guys, I was counting on it. It would have meant better pay, better technology. But you two just aren’t professional enough.”
I felt my blood begin to boil. “You hired us because we aren’t professional. I recall you throwing around words like real and believable.”
“No, Dex. That’s what you said. That’s what you wanted. If we’d done it my way, it would have been Hollywoodized.”
“And shitty.”
He raised his shoulders. “Perhaps. But people like shit if it’s shiny and covered with glitter.”
I sighed, feeling like we were on the short end of the stick here. How many times had Perry and I had this same damn conversation with Jimmy? To be honest, I was getting kind of sick of it. Obviously I needed to talk to Perry about our strategy, but I felt like things were finally coming to a head. That said, like fuck I was about to bow out on account of Jimmy Kwan. He and Shownet could go fuck themselves. They weren’t telling us what we could and couldn’t do.
“All right, well how about we compromise?” I suggested.
Jimmy laughed unkindly. “Right. You, compromise.”
“Hey, I compromise a lot.” I could have gone on but I shut my mouth right on time.
He sat back down, leaning back in his seat, and studied me.
“Do tell, Dex, what is your compromise?”
I exchanged a quick look with Perry to make sure we were on the right track before I said, “Give us one more chance.”
“No.”
“Just hear me out. Give us one more chance. We’ll pay for the whole thing out of our own pocket.” Perry stiffened beside me at that. “We’ll arrange everything. We’ll shoot the episode and we’ll get that sponsor. If the sponsor doesn’t come on board, then we quit. We’re done.”
I could feel Perry’s eyes on me. I knew she was going to flip out over the whole paying for it thing. She had no money anymore, not really. Jimmy had been her only source of income and it was a shitty income at that. But I had money, money from my inheritance, money I’d been smart with over the years, and I’d take care of everything for her. If she’d let me.
Jimmy pursed his lips then said, “This sounds promising, Dex. But I have to think about it.”
I groaned, exasperated. “Why? It’s all on my head here, I’ll carry the whole thing. What do you have to lose?”
He gave me a pointed look. “A lot. Even if it does work out and la di da we have an episode, and the sponsors come on board, how are you going to keep it up? The two of you together are trouble.”
I heard Perry snort from beside me but kept my eyes on Jimmy.
He went on. “You understand me? There’s no guarantee what we’ll get from you in the future. Unless the format changes in some way.”
“Look…”
“Dex, I said I’ll think about it. Give me twenty-four hours or less to let it stew. Then I’ll come back to you.”
Damn. Somehow he was still calling all the shots. I hated having a boss.
He dismissed us with a tired wave, and Perry and I left the office just as my man Seb was coming in.
“Dex,” Seb said. “Dude, it’s been like forever.”
I did one of those bro hugs with him: hand clasp, slap on back, no eye contact.
“Seb, you have no concept of time,” I told him. He was quite the stoner but his brain-dead antics kept me entertained during the whole Perry and I debacle.
“Maybe time has no concept of me,” he said, tapping his head where his disheveled ponytail was coming loose. It was only then that he noticed Perry. “Hey…Perry, right?”