Chapter 12
When Felix drops me off at my house, I'm itching to search for those videos, but Dinah pulls me into the kitchen.
“Clint's kindly bringing us barbecue for dinner tonight,” she says.
I give her my best pouty face. She stares me down and says, “Don't glare at me like you're Mother Superior in a sex shop.”
“You know I don't eat meat.”
“You are tonight, and you'll like it and you'll tell Clint as much. Got it, gnome-napper?”
“I'll make a peanut butter sandwich,” I say.
“Jesus, trying to find food for you is like trying to feed the world's pickiest overgrown cat.”
“Besides, I don't know if I trust him,” I say. Clint looks like Ted Bundy if he had a big mustache, which, now that I think about it, probably explains Dinah's gravitation to him.
“It's a good thing you don't know, because nobody asked you,” Dinah says. “Have you created my profile page yet?”
“I'm getting to it.”
“You need to finish tonight. I'm about to record my first show.”
Instead of getting started on her page like I'm supposed to, I search for Francois's videos online. They're twenty years old, so I like to think I'm stumbling upon ancient wisdom here.
Before the first one plays, I have to watch an ad that shows a man sitting in jail by himself, crying. Out of nowhere, who appears from the heavens but Brandon Barton Buckley. He levitates into the jail cell as a folksy violin tune breaks out. An offscreen chorus of country women sing:
You're behind bars, no hope in sight, but then you see a light!
It's Brandon falling from the clouds to help you with your plight!
Brandon Barton Buckley's Blockbuster Bodacious Bail Bonds!
The guy can't make enough money from his school scam and his restaurant, so now he has to get into the bail bond industry?
Brandon flashes a grin to the security guard, his fake white teeth sparkling like pearls under his unsettling snake eyes. The commercial cuts to two little girls with a lemonade stand getting handcuffed by a group of masked ICE officers as Brandon sips their lemonade.
Lemonade stand or fentanyl lab, that's for the judge to decide.
Brandon Barton Buckley posts the bail to save your hide!
“I'm Brandon Barton Buckley,” he says as he turns to the camera. “I'm a seventh-generation Texan and a descendant of the late, great Alamo warrior Davy Crockett. I'm also an entrepreneur who's passionate about serving my community.”
“Entrepreneur.” I bet he gets hard every time a factory collapses on his child labor.
Now a woman and a man are strangling each other in their living room, and Brandon rises up in between them, pushing them away from each other.
You punched your wife 'cause she talked back, cops tased you on the street?
Call Brandon Barton Buckley to get back on your two feet!
“Call my 1-800 number and you can say Happy Trails to the jails!” Brandon declares, and shoots a double finger-gun salute at us as the ad concludes.
Finally, the video starts and a crotchety old French man stares at the camera in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“So, you stupid fuck, you decided you want to be an actor?
Ha-ha-ha! You could be soaking in the sun on a beach in the Seychelles with all the money you make from being an accountant.
Instead, you choose to wait tables, live with ten roommates, and dance like a monkey for the masses because your mommy and daddy didn't love you.
Pathetic worm! You might as well be good, then. Le Professeur is here to help.
“You must first ask the question: Who are you? You think you are a special, celestial being who will float to the heavens when your body becomes food for worms? Non! You are a horny, sticky, gassy monkey stuck on this rock, forced to confront your own selfish demons until the black hole of un-aliveness swallows you up. So flawed are you that not even alien civilizations wish to make contact.”
He holds up a photo of a Tibetan macaque monkey.
“Do you see this? This is you. Now slap yourself, monkey!”
Is he serious?
“I said slap yourself, monkey! You want to be a performing monkey? Then dance, monkey, dance!”
I look down at my open hand and give myself a good thwack across the face, hoping to feel rejuvenated. I don't.
“Good. Now you understand what you are: the basis of all the problems on this earth with your stupid, self-created drama. Now the real work can begin. Now you can become un vrai acteur! We must practice elocution by moving your monkey tongue. Say it with me: elephant umbilical cord! Look in the mirror and say it a million times, you stupid monkey!”
I spend fifteen minutes in the mirror saying the words “elephant umbilical cord” over and over again like I'm cursed to say the same phrase for eternity.
It really does make your tongue work, though.
When I resume the video, Francois takes the next ten minutes to explain the importance of finding something to audition with that you not only can relate to personally, but fits the role you're seeking to win.
The problem with that is I don't even know where to begin.
“Wade!” Dinah calls from the kitchen with Clint.
On the table, a serving dish is covered by foil. Clint folds the foil over itself, revealing steaming slabs of burnt chicken wings and soggy brisket caked in bloodred sauce. He takes a long whiff. “Mmmm. Mighty fine, mighty fine. Pecos!”
“Why do you keep saying that word?” I ask.
“It's my tribute to the rootin', tootin' tall tale himself, Pecos Bill.
The cowboy who used a giant rattlesnake as a lasso and caught a storm cloud so big that it created the Gulf of America with its rain!
It's anything and everything Texas! It's ‘greetings and salutations'!
It's ‘thank you very much'! It's ‘take it easy'!
It's a battle cry! It's a Lone Star state of mind! It's—”
“Okay, I get it,” I say impatiently. Dinah brings a bottle of wine and two glasses to the table, but Clint slides the glass away from him.
“No alcohol for me tonight, please. I gotta cut the drinking. I found a charge on my credit card from a prayer hotline. I don't remember calling them. Maybe I prayed to meet a nice lady like your aunt here!”
Dinah blushes and looks the other way. I mostly just want to stab myself in the eyes with the fork sitting right in front of me.
“How's the profile page coming along?” Dinah asks.
“Good,” I lie.
My already-dwindling appetite is completely fried by the orchestral fireworks of Clint's mouth interacting with food like it's a performance.
His lip smacking sounds like a goldfish flopping on a bathroom floor.
His gulping sounds like a stone plunging into a creek.
He grins and winks at me as he chews on the chicken bone, which he then tosses on the plate to lick his fingers.
“Is nobody else eating this highly refined barbecue or what?” he asks with his mouth full.
“Wade, grab some food,” Dinah says as she peels one of her boiled eggs.
“I don't eat meat,” I insist. She kicks my ankle underneath the table.
“Don't tell me that,” Clint says. “You're a young man. You gotta build your blood and muscles!”
“Peanut butter has enough protein for me.” I get up to grab a jar out of the cabinet and slather two big spoonfuls over two pieces of Texas toast.
Clint turns back to Dinah. “Have you thought much about your first episode?”
“I want to reach out to all the other free-thinking women out there,” she says.
He shakes his head as he chews. “You need to reach out to men.” A speck of food flies out of his mouth and onto my face.
“Things are rough in the manosphere right now.
We're constantly living in fear. A day doesn't go by where I don't talk to a guy on the verge of tears.
We need someone to speak up for us. And you're super hot, if I might say so myself. I bet you'd get a huge male audience.”
“What would I talk about?” she asks.
“Nobody's talking about bats. They emit ultrasonic sounds, which can increase a man's sperm count.
The man-hating illuminati trained them to become nocturnal cave dwellers so they'd be around men less. Now all these governments are doing deadly experiments on them in their shady labs and giving them all sorts of population-culling viruses like—”
“Coronavirus!” Dinah interrupts. “You know, I never put that together!”
“Which came from China, right? And if you've seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you know those Chinese people can tiptoe over forests and fly over waterfalls and all that shit. We're not ready for that in battle because we're too busy emasculating our young men.”
Dinah is frozen in awe, like she's in the middle of a divine revelation.
“I'm happy to help you develop ideas for the show,” he adds. “I could even add some spice as a guest, if you're willing!”
I get some peanut butter on my face and wipe it off while looking at my phone in selfie mode. I notice my lips and think about the mouth exercise Francois taught me.
“Elephant umbilical cord,” I say in a whisper, slowly contracting and expanding my lips. I repeat the phrase about five times before Dinah tells me to stop. I apologize and tell them I'm practicing for an audition.
“For what?” Dinah asks.
“You wouldn't be interested,” I say. She laughs uncomfortably.
“He's so cheeky. Like his own aunt wouldn't be interested in his life?”
“It's a musical called Pansgender! It's Peter Pan, except Peter Pan is nonbinary and Captain Hook is a trans woman.”
Dinah drops her silverware on her plate and folds her hands together in her lap like she's praying.
“You see what I have to deal with here?” she says to Clint. The doorbell rings, and Dinah thanks her lucky stars under her breath as she excuses herself from the table.
“You know, I took my first wife to a musical once. Phantom of the Opera,” Clint says. “Don't remember much since I got kicked out for cupping her boobs. That dude's face was all messed up. Speaking of which—Wade, what's going on with your face there, brother?”