"So...is there some kind of
speech planned?" Tammy says. Everyone's heads turn from her to Martin.
"Yeah," Gay Martin
adds, "I still don't get why we're here." Ray voices his agreement as
well.
"Okay," says Martin.
"It's pretty clear that Ian didn't follow my instructions at all, so let
me start again from the beginning. Tess Carter is trying to ruin my life."
"Who's that?" asks
Francisco.
"She's uh, hmm." Martin
had forgotten that not all of the people he wanted here were familiar with the
Countess, and there are also people here who never should have been invited. "Landon here," he says, pointing,
"used to date her. At some point she decided that I am really interesting
and that it would be a big adventure to dig into my psyche and see what she
could find."
"I'm guessing she found an
asshole," Gay Martin joked.
Martin sighed. "The problem
is that she claims she didn't. And she wrote a book about it."
"What?" says Leanne.
"Are you telling me she wrote a book about how nice you are?"
"Yes," said Martin.
"No way was she telling the
truth," Leanne snorted.
"I might not agree with her
opinion, but from what I've heard, everything she talks about in the book
objectively is one hundred percent true."
"You're kidding me,
right?" says Max. "Someone's writing a book about you. They're
putting you in a good light. You're really upset. Do you not see the disconnect
here?" Apparently Max has no desire to get on Martin's good side.
"But I have a reputation!
Look at Francisco," Martin suggests, "someone who could easily rip me
in half. He's one of the nicest guys I've ever met, and I bet he'd rather
people not know that."
"I'm okay either way,
bro." Francisco shrugs. "Someone comes at me thinking they're gonna
have an easy time because I'm nicer than I look is still gonna have a pretty
bad time." Martin puts up his hands as a sign of deference for forgetting
that Francisco was superhuman.
"That works for you, but
what if someone hears about me from this book and tries very excitedly to get
me to sign it for them? In that case I should just scream and start punching
them?"
"If you wanna be an asshole,
just ignore them," says Francisco.
"But then they think it's
just my crunchy outer shell and all they have to do is work a little harder to
get to my soft nougat center. Do you not see the problem with this? I can't
live like that."
"What exactly do you propose
we do about it?" asks Leanne.
"I was kind of hoping you'd
help me with that," Martin admits. "The first thing that comes to
mind is silently getting rid of Tess, but that's not really feasible or morally
acceptable."
"You could always beat her
to the press," says Landon, this time crunching on a meaty celery stalk.
"Meaning what?"
"Before her book comes out,
do something publicly that proves you are, to the core, little more than
another city-dwelling asshole. Go back to your roots from when you first
decided you wanted to become a comedian."
Huh. Good old Landon Freeman is
onto something here. Before Martin had moved to the city, he had enjoyed a
couple of videos on the Internet made by a guy who called himself Vommy Bamboo
-- a name that was never explained -- ranting about anything and everything he
could think of, most of it highly politically incorrect. Some of it was just
oddly humorous, though, like Vommy's predilection for the ukelele, which he
would strum throughout his videos. He also felt society was judging him too
harshly for taking good care of his hands. Vommy went over, in detail, his
moisturizing routine for each finger, ending with "And if that's too much
for you, then fuck you. I love my hands."
"That gives me a great idea,
I think. Either that or a really, really terrible one."
"What's that?" says
Landon.
"I may need all of you to
help me eventually, but in the interest of getting back to my roots, I need to
go pay a visit to Vommy Bamboo."
"Who the hell is Vommy
Bamboo?" says Leanne.
"Exactly," says Martin.
"I think, if my judgment is correct, that Vommy Bamboo is a tremendous
asshole."
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