Chương 179: CHAPTER 102 - Big Mouth Strikes Again (2)

When they returned to Curon's office, her father took the lift down to the Mueller Suites to clear the technician's schedule, while Eppie took the time to make a call to someone back in LA. It was two o'clock in New York, which meant eleven in Glendale. She called Kessler's mobile number, expecting to be at work, and she was absolutely correct.

"Kessler here." The husky voice of the Imagineer who had built the red-string gore simulator came through the speakerphone.

"Eppie… is that you?"

"Sure is!" Eppie said happily.

"Are you free? Can we talk a little?"

"Of course," Kessler said, sounding delighted.

"I am glad the show went down well. I read the reviews. You guys used the heck out of those string props!"

"Thanks." Eppie felt warm and fuzzy inside. This was the reason why, against Davis' advice, she had wanted Kessler involved. A chapter of her life had been instrumentally impacted by the work of a prop artist—and she had felt a deep-seated desire to make it up to the woman who had spent hours of her own time making something, only to receive nothing but a line of credit in the draft of a script.

"You made it all possible. Now, I have a request in a similar vein—but this time, it's much bigger."

"Oh?" Kessler sounded surprised.

"Did you get hired by Disney? Are we making Eppie, the ride?" Euphemia shuddered at the thought of Eppie the Family Coaster.

"I want to make a whale. A talking sperm whale that sings back at the audience."

"What?!" Kessler chortled.

"Have you seen the video?"

"Of… the whale?"

"Ah… let me send you a link." Her email chimed. Kessler loaded up the song on her laptop. O blow, my bully boys, blow, You'll take my name where'er you go; You'll have the tale and not the hide— O blow, my bully boys, blow. One video later, Kessler was speechless.

"So, it answers you," said Kessler.

"Cuz the shanty is a beckon-and-respond, right?"

"That's right."

"Isn't the talking fish patented?"

"Not my one," Eppie laughed.

"Especially not a sperm whale one." There was silence, then Kessler made a Hmm… then she said, "No whale."

"Eh?" Eppie made the same bewilderment she had made for Davis.

"No one mounts whales," Kessler said.

"Besides, aren't you the whale? You want your fans to have a trophy- Eppie, in their house? That's a strange message, no?"

"Ah…" Eppie was beginning to see her short-sightedness.

"And if you make a whale, you need fresh moulds, new production lines… delays…" Kessler's response dunked her dream again and again.

"But er… yeah, The Bauble Company still has the patent and the moulds for their original fish, I am sure of it. It's only been like a decade. I can make a new mechanism, improve the software, perhaps, but everything else they can supply… No… yeah… I think it'll work." Her voice had gone flat and quick, the way people go when they stop being polite because they are busy.

"Motion sensor, then, a button for on and off. A sensor for the beckon-and-respond, that's going to live on as the gag of the decade." Kessler's voice, and her passion, increased with the cadence of her speech.

"Can I ask who's paying for this?"

"Not you," said Eppie.

"I want you to have credit, though. As the co-inventor."

"Eppie, no…" Kessler's voice fell lower.

"That's… too much."" Nonsense," Eppie replied confidently.

"I owe you more than you can know. That's why I want you to make it. Call it… a celebration of the craft. Every single one that goes out of a factory door, anywhere, for as long as they make it—you get paid." + Karmic Causality Nothing came back.

"Odette?"

"I'm here." The flat, quick voice had gone.

"That isn't… I am not sure that's how it works. How any of this works."

"What did they pay you for Lavinia's mechanism?" Eppie asked.

"Dame Vaughan asked," said Kessler eventually.

"It was a favour. Management knows."

"So— nothing."

"I was on the clock. I have a salary, I have a pension —""Odette." Eppie raised her voice.

"Okay, nothing," said Kessler. Then Eppie told her what the ribbon device did. What it represented. What it did for LAPA, for herself. For Valorie and for Mio. Then Kessler cried.

"That's your craft," Eppie said.

"Just… leave the contracts with me. I'll license the song. It's blowing up, or so they tell me. Your company can't resist free money. If they won't do it, someone else will, for cheaper, and the product would be worse. We got a whole legal department. They'll take their cut. Everyone's a winner." There was silence again.

"When do you need it?" Kessler said after a minute.

"It needs to hit the shelves by Christmas… But I need… a school of them, for the MTV video." Kessler nearly choked at the mental image.

"So you'll need the Bauble Company then. Make a fish, a different fish… Bully Boy Wally."

"Wally?"

"Walleye perch," Kessler said while wiping her eyes.

"It'll be hilarious, Eppie. A singing walleye calling back, O blow, my bully boys, blow. I've got their old product line in the office still; one of them's a walleye. I'll have a look, and have new internals out to you by next week. If they let me have company time, I can probably get a dozen out to you before the month's finished. Earlier, if legal comes through."

"Then I shall have our legal talk to your legal," Eppie said.

"All very legal." The conversation had ended, but neither of them hung up.

"Euphemia." There was a scrape and a sigh, crackling through the speakerphone.

"Thank you." + Karmic Causality"Don't thank me." Eppie's [Vocality] penetrated even the analogue space of speakerphones.

"Thank you, Mrs Kessler, mother of Bully Boy Wally." Mr Fielding sent out Sony's lawyers to discuss the matter of Bully Boy Wally with Disney, taking the matter from Eppie's hands. Her only request was that Kessler be paid for her craft, else no song licensing for anyone. It was a nothing burger to her—and yet, she knew for a fact that it could change the trajectory of Kessler's life as a prop-creator.

What Eppie stood to reap was [Causality]: first from the joy of freeing Kessler's craft from material concerns, and then, come Christmas, from the exquisite agony of millions of Americans laughing their socks off at Bully Boy Wally telling them that their bullies had no power over them. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The recording happened on Thursday.

Eppie was a fairly seasoned performer by now, and the simplicity of the song, involving only her voice and her J-45, took no more than six takes before Mueller called it a wrap. On Friday morning, after breakfast with a thoroughly amused Dame of the Met, she received the update email from Maddy. From: Madeleine Filmore [email protected] To: Euphemia Fontaine [email protected] dfsdf Cc: Frederick Curon [email protected]; Eric Lee [email protected]; T.

Davis [email protected] Sent: Fri 1 Aug 2008, 6: 48 AM Subject: it worked, it is still working, and there is nothing to sell Eppie. I have slept eleven hours since Monday. Read please. 🫠 FOUR DAYS. Here is where we are. THE MAIN UPLOAD — the song on its own, no interview — is at 1. 4 million. Every copy together, ours and the ones I did not put up, is a bit over 2. 2 million. MySpace plays are 910, 000 and climbing faster than YouTube.

The Facebook page went from four hundred people to thirty-one thousand in ninety-six hours; that's cold. 🧊 WE ARE ON THE CHART. #2, Most Viewed — Music, This Week. Number one is a cat leaping off a roof with the song "Sail Away". There's no hope for society. 😐 COMMENTS: eleven thousand. I tried reading them. All I will say is that some people like your dress TOO much. FAVOURITES: forty-one thousand. 🎣 AND THE FORWARDS. That is the part that is actually happening. It is in work inboxes. My mother has it.

I run her email. 🤨 THE PRESS. Two of the big three ran the whale line before nine on Tuesday; one of them twice. Cable ran it hourly until lunch and got your age wrong. Experts everywhere are discussing the origin of the original manuscript. We are #1 Seashanty in the world. I'll take it. 🌊 NOW THE PART I NEED YOU TO READ TWICE. 🛑 You recorded it yesterday. YET Nobody can buy it. Director Curon promised! Chase him up! WHAT I'VE DONE. Everything on the official site is ours and ours only.

The two fan sites I spent June asking to take things down. Artist Services is briefed. I have a folder of two hundred requests, and I have answered none, because I have no song to give. AND NOW THE FISH. 🐟 Mr Trent's office sent me a one-line note on Wednesday instructing me to plan a video involving, and I am quoting, "a school of animatronic fish". I have asked three times whether this is a joke. Are we… are we doing this with robot FISH? WILL YOU BE A ROBOT FISH? ACTION ITEMS I needed recording files yesterday.

📅 Morning shows — yes or no by Monday. They will stop asking. ⏳ And please confirm, in writing, why there is a fish. (or a Robot Fish) Maddy. Madeleine Filmore, Media Manager, Artist Services, Sony Music Entertainment T: (212) 244-XXXX | [email protected] Eppie texted her faux-father, then spent an hour cross-texting Zara and Valorie, thanking them for their support of her new song and explaining that, no, there were no physical bullies, just nasty folk in the media making a mountain out of a molehill.

Two hours later, she left for her day job—her first day of principal photography for The Pro. When Eppie stepped into 214 Rivington, she was shocked to see that the art department and the casting had already happened concurrently in the last four days. She had seen set-building before, and she had seen Amar paint, but she had never seen art like this. Somehow, they had aged the corridor in an aesthetic manner. There was a lady called Gina with a bandana and three sponges who was just finishing the final touches.

There was a base coat, which was a green nobody had chosen since about 1968. Over the top of that went a moss that was a slightly different wrongness, and then a cream, and then the scuff line at hip height miming forty years of shoulders and shopping bags. Even as Eppie watched, Gina walked backwards and forwards along the hall, touching up tiny scuffs by… scuffing the paint. Vivid natural ageing? Was that a thing?

"This is incredible," Eppie said, standing in it.

"It'll look better when it cures." Gina grinned.

"You must be Miss Fontaine. I LOVE your songs. Bully Boy… what can I say? I have no words, haha…" Eppie actually blushed. She met Aubert in Marcel's apartment, taking a personal hand in the making of his character. Marcel was a man who had lived in one room for nine years and owned four objects. Bebe's pages were very clear about all four of them, so the set dressers came and put in a mattress on a frame, a single tub chair, a plant in a coffee tin, and a folded towel.

The rest of the room was equally spartan, consisting of a picture hook with no picture, a faded lamp, and worn but clean curtains hanging from a rusted rail. Eppie went and tested the mattress. The scene with the two of them in bed had been altered so that the umbilical bond theme far outshone the original context, originally involving the Pro responding to a twelve-year-old's confession with "Thank you," then sharing a night with Eppie's character in her intimates.

It was the worst mattress she had ever experienced since coming to this world. Aubert burst into laughter. On the third floor, Doña Tita patrolled the place now and then, watching the crew do their film magic, asking questions, looking contemplative. Eppie said hello, then went door to door with her until, inevitably, someone demanded that she sing the Bully Boy song.

Luckily, a cheap stool as a drum and a participating audience were all that was needed to make the song shine—and that was the true reason for its unstoppable virality. Monday. The trucks came in at five, and by six the grips were laying floor screwed down over the real boards, because a random soft plank meant a re-shoot, and unplanned squeaks ballooned the cost of the sound man. Nobody needed Eppie on set, yet. Presently, she was in for costumes and make-up. For once it was not Marta, but Linda.

Marta's job was to make sure she looked a million dollars. Linda's job was to make sure she looked abandoned, beaten, and like she had had just about enough of life. The make-up went on young. That was the base of it, a face that liminally existed between the end of adolescence and the onset of an abrupt womanhood. Then the eyes, and the eyes got everything: dark liner, worked in and then worked back out with a thumb until it had the softness of something applied two days before and slept in for two nights.

The result did not look like make-up. It looked like a fourteen-year-old who was homeless while sitting in her own home, who hadn't slept more than four hours in as many days. The lipstick went on last, and went on slightly wrong. Josie had stolen it from her older sister, and applied it inconsistently, in a rush. Then the bruise, high on the cheekbone, where a hand had landed after finding out a little bitch had stolen their Chanel lipstick. And a little dried blood stuffed one nostril, done with a stiff brush.

The hair came off the back of her neck under a headband and a scrunchy in a neon teal that had not been fashionable for fifteen years; her wavy curls were straightened into bangs that could be used strategically to cover her face. The balayage was simply there, the sun-through-it gradient a girl gets from being left outdoors for too long, something her MUA did not have to invent. And then the costume. The original script had been nothing short of wild. Crop tops, shorts, midriff showing, a straight-cut bob.

There was even a cat choker. Bebe had thrown all of it out, and her note in the margin was her counterpoint. Where would the original Josie acquire her visually unique, counter-culture fashion? Her father loathed her, and owed the DEA money. Would he go and buy it for her? Her stepmother and sister hated her; would they? No one else in her apartment home wore a remotely similar fashion, and that's not questioning why the girl in the Vasseur draft wore cut-off shorts and a singlet for most of the film.

Comparatively, Josie wore both period-appropriate and context-appropriate clothing. Jeans, straight-cut, torn at one knee from wear and not from scissors, rolled twice at the ankle because they were long on her. A band tee three sizes too big, ragged as a dishcloth, a small hard-edged hole near the hem that was a cigarette and nothing else, the neck gone slack enough that it hung off a bare shoulder without meaning to, exposing a frail bony white shoulder. She wore a varsity jacket for a man, patched at the elbow.

Her feet wore runners scuffed through to the white at the toe, filthy everywhere else. Every piece of it was four or five years out of date, which is what hand-me-downs are. That was the whole design. She was not wearing a style. She was wearing what came at the end of a washing cycle.

"Her sister's," wardrobe said.

"And not even the good stuff." When she was done, she turned the chair round so that Eppie could see herself in the long mirror propped against the wall. And there it was. A poor, tired, malnourished sixteen-year-old looking fourteen in her sister's jacket. She was a beautiful tragedy. Beautiful and pitiful, at the end of her wits. The bruise sat on her cheekbone like an exclamation mark.

The bad lipstick made her mouth look softer, and the bangs cut a shadow across eyes that were trying to catch every scrap of light from the reflector.

"Let's take some pictures, all angles, for continuity." Wardrobe moved her to the wall, where pictures were paired with extensive notes.

"Alright, go get your prop." Eppie stood in front of the mirror and wondered if she would stop in the hall for Josie and offer her the door. She would. God, she looked… so pitiful, like a kicked kitten that had rolled onto the spruce floor, out of the rain. She walked out to the bottom of the stairs.

"They're ready for the test run." The Props assistant, a twenty-year-old with smitten eyes, handed her a sweating carton of ice-cold milk, along with a bag of actual groceries.

"Cold milk?" Eppie asked, her hand slipping. The young man grinned.

"If it doesn't sweat, your hand looks wrong holding it."

"LIGHT'S GOOD!" That was Andy, two floors up.

"TEN PAST FOUR!" Delaney's voice shouted from the fourth floor.

"TEST SHOT! Send her up!" She came up to the half-landing with the carton cold in her hand and her hair in a second-hand, inelastic scrunchy. Below her, the building had gone radio silent. Above her, Hugh Delaney had been in the vest since two. He had shot two hundred episodes of television with Ferroni behind him, with the rig hanging off his front like a second ribcage.

Twice that afternoon a grip had offered to take the weight onto the stand between runs, and twice he had waved it off, because the arm settles differently once set down. The pair exchanged notes. The corridor was a hundred and ten feet. He would walk it facing her, and she would walk it forwards, at the same speed, for an agonising minute, and neither of them would be allowed to look at the floor.

"Roll sound."

"Speed." The clapper came in and said the numbers and went out again, and the corridor was empty, and the door at the near end stood open with the light of an empty room coming out of it, behind which were the corpses of the Novak family. Ferroni did not say action loudly, but Eppie heard it loud and clear. Euphemia Fontaine took a long, deep breath. Then Josie Novak cleared the stairs, carrying the milk.