“Ye've terrified me with them first 90 seconds. I've been thinking about it, but. Doesn't that be when I'm singing? Is that not the first 90 seconds?”
“No, the first 90 seconds after that I mean. That's the deal breaker. We'll lose if we—if I— can't say what our product is and how they can make money from it. Quickly. We need to make a great first impression, to captivate, show passion, let them see it's an opportunity they can't pass up. We need to, uh, crystallize the opportunity. Oh, and they hate the words 'uh' and 'um,' so don't say them. But don't worry, you won't say much.”
“Left! Turn left, Jed!”
He turned left. “They want a big sell. They don't want us asking too much too soon for too little. Most people lose because of bad math. We need to know our numbers, know what we're talking about, let them see our business has potential, and make it obvious how they can make money from it. In the first 90 seconds.”
“If that's all then...!” Ursula's head spun even as she rolled her eyes. She sighed. “If only Slim and Louella was here with us. I'd feel better with more of us on the stage, like.”
Jed's face, peering down the highway, grew grim.
“Well. They can't be here. Oh, and I saw that Randaleen in the room next to them. At the hospital, I mean.”
This was news to Ursula. “Why didn't ye tell me?”
“I didn't want to upset you. But I thought maybe you saw her too. You mean you didn't see her?”
“How did she look? Worse than Slim?”
“Just about as bad.”
Ursula didn't know if that made her feel better or worse.
The taping of that night's episode of Attack of The Killer Investors!, of course, was what was making her anxious. She hadn't known it was recorded live. They had been on the highway for four hours now, heading to the TV studio in Milwaukee.
They had dragged themselves out of bed at dawn, both to make it for the hospital's bizarre visiting hours, and then to make it to the studio on time. Taping began at 7:00 PM. They had bought flowers and Get Well Soon balloons, and Ursula hoped she could hide the shame she felt burning on her face behind them. She felt responsible for the crash. But they had been told at the entrance to the ward that they were both banned from the hospital. At first, they thought the guard meant themselves, but it dawned on them he meant the flowers and the balloons. Some patients might be allergic to the flowers the guard said, though they were snapdragons which produce no offending pollen and had no history of causing allergic reactions, and the balloons might contain latex. Ursula's eyes told her they were that modern kind made of foil.
“What the hell is going on in this country?” Jed had asked in disbelief as he tossed the flowers in the trash. “Why is everybody allergic to everything all of the sudden? Nuts, eggs, tomatoes, wheat, crabs! They weren't in my day! It's the smoking ban. It's turning people into wimps. Their bodies can't handle real life any more.”
He couldn't put the balloons in the garbage because they were floating and they wouldn't stay put. He let them fly away.
“We shoulda bought them those grapes after all,” Ursula observed.
They had had to enter the room barehanded. Jed expressed surprised that they weren't asked to wear masks and SOCO uniforms. They looked down in sorrow. Slim had borne the brunt of the accident. Louella, a halo of scouring pads atop a Lutheran rake, sat in the plastic orange chair beside the bed, moaning and rocking back and forth and squeezing Slim's walrus-hand. Tears had welled in Ursula's eyes as she gazed upon his massive form, close to lifeless in that hospital bed. Slim, an older version of Jed plus two hundred pounds and minus a cowboy hat, strained the mattress. A bandage was wound around his head, his neck was in a brace, his right arm in a cast, and a pulley held his left leg, also in a cast, hovering above him like a zeppelin. He had sustained a mild concussion, three bruised ribs, moderate whiplash, a fractured ulna (that's what the doctor had told them on the phone; the Lord alone only knew where or what that actually was), and a broken fibula. Louella had a toe sprain and a headache. The doctor had raved about how Slim was like a massive human air bag, and his poundage, although bad for his heart, had saved Louella from bodily harm. Louella was fine, but—
“I'm not going with you,” she snapped the moment they walked in. “I want to look after Slim.” She glared accusingly at Ursula.
Ursula fiddled with the cross around her neck as she stared down at the distressing sight of her brother-in-law on the hospital bed. It was distressing in many ways, as were Louella's eyes boring into her. Ursula was riddled with guilt, consumed with unease. She had taken Randaleen on to give the useless article a chance, but her compassion had put them all in harm's way. Why hadn't she gone to Inspector Scarrey? Or why hadn't she confronted Randaleen directly? Or gotten the locks changed? She reached out and gently touched one of Slim's toes (not a zeppelin one). “I'm wile sorry.”
He grunted a reply. She removed her fingers and discreetly wiped them on a rail of the bed.
“I'm sorry to be so angry, Ursula,” Louella said, clenching and unclenching a tissue. She didn't sound sorry in the least. “I know it's not the Christian way to behave. But I can't help it. And about the show, it's not because I'm angry at you that I can't leave my chipmunk's side. It's because I don't know what to do in front of those dang cameras.”
Louella admitted that after Jed had called and told them they'd been accepted, she and Slim had clutched each other by the shoulders, screamed and jumped up and down—most at odds with their years—but other than clutching, screaming and jumping, they didn't know what to do. They didn't understand the show, they had never seen it, and thought that sending in the video was enough. Jed hadn't explained clearly. Louella wouldn't move and Slim couldn't. Jed and Ursula had understood that.
They had lingered as long as was polite; not that they didn't care, they did, but the clock was ticking, they had five hours to travel, and Jed still didn't have the pitch complete.
“How far do we have to go now?” Jed asked.
“We're close,” Ursula consulted the map. “Only a fingernail away.”
“We're making good time. An hour ago we were, what did you say? Two nickels and a Listerine strip away?”
Ursula couldn't understand the scale of the map. But now they were finally passing signs, and one at that moment clearly told them Milwaukee was only 25 miles away. And then, all too soon, before Ursula felt fully prepared, they were off the highway and following signs to Biggbee Studios. Then they were pulling up in the parking lot and Ursula was getting out of the car and adjusting the hem of her flowered skirt and fixing her hair and closing the door and walking past the bumpers of unknown cars towards the studios, straining under the weight of the carton of Slim Jed Jerky samples and promotional materials she was lugging, but she was seeing it all as if it were someone else doing all the movements and she were floating above and looking down and pitying the woman below.
Then she was startled to see she was perched on a lumpy sofa in an unloved and uncared-for Green Room. She was drinking coffee from a stryrofoam cup. The boxes of jerky were at her feet. She was apparently guarding them. Ursula couldn't remember how she had gotten to this room or where the cup had come from, though she did see a coffee and soup vending machine in the corner, chicken and tomato soup, it said. She longed to reach out to Louella for support, clasp her hand, and maybe have her tease her hair a bit, but the chair of cracked purple pleather beside her was empty.
Jed was walking around, playing the social aspect of the show, she supposed, handing out jerky samples and shaking hands with the other wannabe entrepreneurs. The rules of the show (Jed had forced her to read them aloud as he drove) forbade the contestants from mingling with the investors before they met on the air, so Ursula guessed the rich people had dressing rooms and makeup artists and functioning air conditioning on the other side of the studio. A rusty fan beside her gave off more noise than air. She fanned herself with a sweaty hand and vaguely recalled at some stage in the past being poi
nted to a room where there was community makeup available for the contestants to use. She now remembered looking down at the meager selection and the state of it, and being disappointed the makeover she had been looking forward to wasn't included. She had tried to apply some rouge, but it was caked and crumpled on her cheek.
Ursula drank the muddy coffee, ignored the sweat trickling down some fold of flesh and tried to listen to what the others around her were saying. From what she could gather at this distance, there was a youth with baggy jeans and a computer game where dragons fought elves on a distant planet in the future, a pair of housewives with hoodies for infants with edible drawstrings, two badly-aged former frat brothers with plans to franchise their stall which sold meat-flavored milkshakes, a woman with purple hair and a nose ring who, surprisingly, came with both a book of poems about ferns and a board game about quantum mechanics (The Properties of Spin), a transgender circus troupe that wanted to put their show on the road, and an older man with a prototype of a device that allowed cats to self-clean their litter boxes. He needed money to make the real things in China. Ursula couldn't tell if Jed and Slim's beef jerky was better or worse than these products, except perhaps the circus troupe.
Ursula still wasn't sure what exactly this show was like, but she thought maybe American Idol or Hell's Kitchen or maybe even Survivor, and that she and Jed would be pitted against these others. She didn't want to be friendly with them if they had to beat them. It seemed disingenuous.
C'mon, Ursula, she thought. Get yerself up there, ye eejit, and be friendly to the people. Help Jed out. He's being so lovely. Put yer terror of being on air live talking about something ye don't know nothing about to the side, and all them horrid thoughts of Randaleen almost killing the only two people in this land ye can call yer friends to the side. Smile! Smile and be friendly to all themmuns! Themmuns is probably just as heartscared as ye are. Maybe not them half-man, half-woman, people, but, as they're in a circus and be's used to performing before others, like. But all the others besides them. Ye're like a flimmin Queen perched on her throne here, high and mighty, afeared of mixing with the peons. Get up! Aye, that's it!
Jed had pulled her toward the coffee and soup machine before she could speak.
“What's up?” he asked. “They seem to like the jerky.”
“Jed, but, isn't themmuns wer competition?”
He smiled apologetically. “I'm sorry, Ursula. It's my fault. I was so busy with the pitch, I didn't explain it to you.” She listened, pressing the buttons of the machine dejectedly, as he explained that the investors might choose to invest in all of them. Or none of them. He had seen shows that went both ways. So there was no competition.
That wasn't so bad, then. Ursula finally smiled real smiles, walked up to the older man and told him she liked his device. She took a sip of a Rib Eye milkshake, read one of the poems (Ode To The Friendly Fiddleheads), but reading them was not like eating potato chips and she could indeed stop after just one. She couldn't bring herself to try Mosses Beware, Sweetfern Is Not A Fern, or, most disturbingly, O! Leptosporangiate!, though she feigned interest, flipping through them with a look of marvel on her face. She also nibbled on a strawberry drawstring, but was scared to approach the circus troupe, though she had to admit they seemed friendly enough. She smiled warmly at the youth.
And then a girl with Buddy Holly glasses, a clipboard and the smugness of her age poked her head into the room and told them the taping had started. “Ed and Norm?” It was the milkshake guys. “You're on!”
Ursula and a few others wished them good luck as they gathered up the sample shakes and the machine and their posters, and then they were gone. They talked about Ed and Norm. They drank bad coffee. The teen drank worse chicken soup. And after twenty minutes the frat men were back. They were different people. Older. Stunned. Even shell-shocked. The contestants all gathered round the two, except for the older man, as Ms. Clipboard had barked “Nestor!,” and he had disappeared through the door.
“It was horrible!” Ed said, fighting back tears.
“What happened?” someone asked.
“What do you think happened?” Norm yelled. They jerked back in alarm. Twenty minutes earlier, he had been so nice. “They yelled 'Get Lost!' at us. All of them.”
“We were so sure...” Ed sobbed.
“Did you know your numbers?” Jed asked gently.
Norm threw off his hand. “They were perfect!”
“But if you knew your numbers—”
“Leave us alone! Leave us alone all of you!” barked Norm.
“B-but...” Fern Woman chanced. “We can't. We're stuck here.”
“Then we're getting the hell out of here.”
“And never coming back.”
They looked on, unable to help, as Ed and Norm threw together their things and stormed out of the room. The door slammed behind them.
And Nestor came back in. Crying.
“Circus Troupe!” called Clipboard.
Over and over it happened, out they strut, confident, excited, proudly brandishing their wares, and then they disappeared down the hall. Twenty minutes passed. And back they stormed, tearful, angry, their hair mussed, buttons awry, confused, flinging their products and related promotional materials to the floor. How could their dead cert be a dead horse? Were the investors insane? Idiots? Assholes?
With each new rejection, Ursula's heart pounded even more. Her fingers shook. She gripped Jed's elbow with those shaking fingers.
“We'll be fine, sweetheart,” Jed said. “Don't worry about a thing. I'll do all the work. All you have to do is sing. Don't worry.”
“Och, Jed, all I can do is worry. I'm so afeared. Them first 90 seconds...!”
And then it was their turn.
“Jed and...uh, Jed and...” Clipboard glared accusingly. How dare someone have a name she couldn't pronounce! She had prided herself on having chosen a racially diverse group of friends at her expensive college and knew all the common Indian, Pakistani, Mid-Eastern and Chinese first names.
“Ursula,” Ursula said weakly. She wanted to wind her arm around Jed's, but she had to carry the box of jerky so she couldn't. Jed picked up his box, and the teen (the only one left) wished them good luck. Ursula heaved deep breaths. They walked out the door and down the hallway of doom. “Quickly! Quickly! It's live, you know!” Clipboard barked. Ursula wanted to trip her.
Feeling like she and Jed were Christians being led into the Colosseum, though the walls there were stone and crumbly and curved, and these were sheet rock and smooth and straight, Ursula blessed herself in her mind, right shoulder, left shoulder forehead, breast. She couldn't do it with her hands because they were full of jerky. They turned a corner and saw the piercing massive lights before them just as they felt the temperature from them blast upon their skulls.
“Get out there!” Clipboard hissed with a little push on their backs with her namesake. “And smile!”
Ursula followed Jed onto the sound stage.
CHAPTER 20
Slosh, slosh! Clunk, clunk!
Fionnuala hightailed it, a bizarre hybrid of power walking and that of an obese person trailing behind a speedy dog on a leash; she had seen it on the telly, never in Derry, as nobody ever seemed to lead dogs on leashes in that town. She struggled to propel her poundage down the steep slope of Shipquay Street without toppling over and rolling headfirst down the pavement.
At the Crafts Village (a Derry must-see), a sudden throng of tourists streamed out of its gate, babbling in tongues. Fionnuala scowled, cursing 2013. It was the year Derry had been voted the UK's City of Culture. And aliens had been invading her town every since. She used her elbows as battering rams to carve her way through the Asian shoulder blades and French backsides, the throngs of the unbathed and unbaptized. The acid of her tongue and what it unleashed on them as she passed they would find in no guidebook, no translation app. “Mingin slitty-eyed toerag! Flimmin flash eejit! Froggy flimmin arse bandit!”
The jug sloshi
ng on her right and banging into her ribs, Fionnuala was all set to run to that swanky new baker's on Rossville Street next to the Bloody Sunday memorial and use the card to finally get that flimmin wedding cake—the bane of her existence. Not the cake itself, more her slapper half-bastard offspring Dymphna. But somehow, as she clutched a lamp post and heaved breaths into her aching lungs, her brain cells realized that the baker or whoever was at the till wouldn't just hand her a cake then and there over the counter, with the names spelled correctly and the color of the icing matching the mood of the wedding—green had finally been decided on, an avocado-type one, which Fionnuala thought quite sophisticated—and two dolls on top bearing the correct resemblance to the happy couple (curly red hair on the female doll, black hair on the male).
She hazarded a glance behind her. The Yank family was still hot on her heels, pushing through the phalanx of tourists still glued to the Craft Village. Their faces were pink, their mouths stretched with some strange American emotion Fionnuala couldn't make sense of, the mother continuing to dig through her purse. The woman still had no proof. Perhaps she had so many credit cards she'd never realize? Fionnuala smirked, adjusted the satchel handles that bit into her fleshy shoulder, then flung herself further down the street, brain cells pinging like sparklers.
It would take the bakers a few days to personalize the cake, and they'd need her information, her name, address, phone number, maybe even her email. Even if she didn't give her information, whoever was working at the counter probably knew her to see, and even if they didn't, which was unlikely, they'd still have the names Rory and Dymphna to go on, and when the credit card company flew someone over to Ireland investigate, the fraud investigator could go through all the wedding registries and church records in the city for a Rory and a Dymphna wed on such and such a day, or around such and such a day, and Fionnuala would eventually find herself shackled in a cell with bastard Proddy peelers staring down their noses at her through the little slot like a mailbox in the door. So, no.
Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4) Page 18
