Nothing immediately comes to mind, however, and we return to our creative endeavours to either seek escape from having to deal with the Pinkerton situation or inspiration for how to resolve it.
After an hour, Elly says, "Hey everyone. How would I look with surgically-implanted glitter on my tongue?" She opens her mouth and grins. Her tongue is coated in hundreds of tiny, multi-coloured sparkles.
I can't help but burst out laughing and Lutek sprays his mouthful of wine back into his mug.
"I like it," says Jeanette. "You should go for it."
Bess stabs her canvas with her paint brush. “Nothing. I haven’t come up with a single bloody idea.”
"You’ve been busy though." Elly leans over her mug and extends her tongue into it.
"Are you going to drink that afterwards?" asks Lutek.
Elly shrugs and retracts her tongue. "Probably."
Bess sighs. “I haven’t completely wasted my time, I suppose.” She turns her canvas around for us all to see. “The campaign logo’s done.”
Her painting is of a woman in army fatigues and bright pink lipstick. She holds what, from a distance, looks like a matching-pink gun across her chest, but on closer inspection, the 'gun' is constructed from three words.
Whatever it takes.
I almost feel sorry for Theodore Pinkerton.
Chapter nine
Bess
"Bess?It'sMistral.Okay,so. Jason Travers is having a conversation with his phone on speaker again?"
"Be there in two," I tell her.
Chapter ten
Bess
"Makesureyougetthe book in shot," I whisper.
"I know," Mistral whispers back and positions herself for a close up.
I sit in a chair, legs crossed, shelves of books behind me to establish the setting, and readOnly Ever Youby Natalia Lackberg. This one I have actually read. It's pretty good.
Jason Travers' conversation partner can be clearly heard complaining about the cost of tyres these days. Apparently retreads don't have the stamina for decent burnouts.
Now I know who's been shredding their tyres on the intersection out of town.
"And go," Mistral says.
I turn a page and read.
Jason says at a volume entirely unreasonable for even a modern library, "I know, man. It's like the rubber magnates have a monopoly or some shit. They force you into buying subpar product by pricing the rest high, then make the same money off you anyway by having the cheap stuff fail. It's a conspiracy, right?"
The person on the other end of the phone agrees it is, indeed, a maternal fornication of a conspiracy.
I look in his direction, lower the book slowly, and narrow my eyes.
Then I stand, taking the megaphone from beside my chair with me.
I walk up to Jason sitting at the table in the study nook with his phone on an open magazine in front of him. From the looks of the sleek vehicles mid-drive through glossy European forests and American salt plains, it's a car mag.
