Joe’s words sting, but I try to joke them off. ‘Trolls? Have youseensome of the tail I’ve had lately?’ Lately being a relative term. It’s been months since I got laid. Months since I partied at all, but some fuck still hacked shit off my drive.
‘Good lookin’ trolls, maybe, but trolls all the same. Hiding their real intentions and making you cross their palm with dollars in exchange for comin’ over their bridge.’
‘Not sure which fairy tales you’ve been reading,’ I say. ‘But I’ve never paid for sex. Never paid to come over any bridge.’ I laugh a little, swiping my hand over my chin.
‘Till now, maybe.’And he has a point.‘Lyin’, stealin’, cheatin’ no-good trolls,’ he repeats.
‘Seems whoever sold them the rights claimed to be Ivy, so they’re saying it was obtained by legal means. Legal are on to the supposed proof.’
‘No way—no fucking way!’ The inevitable pause. ‘But you asked her, right? Just to be sure?’
‘Come on, man. She wouldn’t. You know Ivy; she doesn’t like being the centre of attention anytime. The girl who wouldn’t even tell her family that she’d married me.’
‘She was going to.’
‘Yeah, so she said,’ I respond scathingly.
‘She told Todd the last time we hung out. Said she was looking at flights and had asked Ric about your schedule. Think she had it in her mind to surprise you.’
Ric, with a c and not a k, is my agent and the pain in my ass I’m looking to swap out. He never mentioned this. And he would have—as a bad idea. The man looks at me like I’m the goose that laid his golden egg. I don’t like it, and I don’t like him. In fact, I like him less and less with each passing week, but I’m told that’s the sign of a good agent. The less likable I find him, the better for business he is. Still, I’m in the market for someone who wouldn’t sell their auld granny and look happy while doing it.
‘Could she have money problems?’ Joe asks tentatively. ‘It can make folks do desperate stuff.’
‘She’d sell a kidney first.’ Sell a kidney before she even admitted she knew me.
He begins to laugh, attempting to mimic her accent. ‘Aye, I’m sure that wee girl surely would!’
‘Stick to landscaping and leave the accents to me.’
‘Like you’re even good at that sort of shit. So this new girl... we get to meet her or are we too real for her type.’
‘She’s—’ I was going to say she’s not that bad, that the stuff in the papers about her new age spiritual stuff is overblown, but it’s not.
‘She seems awfully young.’
‘It’s not like that,’ I answer honestly.
‘The magazines at the grocery store would disagree.’
I sigh, unintentionally. ‘You reading that shit now?’
‘Only while I’m waiting in line. They put your ugly mug on the front, and I want to know why. So I read, but I don’t buy. Between this girl and the singer, who’s way too young for you, and the half dozen between, I can’t keep up.’
‘I can’t ask a woman the time of day without there being something more between us as far as the media are concerned. You know that.’
‘I do know. I also know a love like you had with Ivy is hard to get over, no matter what went on. Your business; you don’t have to tell me, and I understand. But it’s business that needs to be put to bed before you go inviting someone else in.’
‘The truth of it is Georgia’s a friend. That’s all.’
Not even that, really. But it’s too hard to explain. She’s someone who I can rely on for events; someone who wants to be seen with me but isn’t interested inseeing me. She knows I’m not interested in her like that, and truthfully, I think she likes the idea of my rep better than I do. And as for Talia, he’s right; she is too young, and it was purely work. Her people wanted the quintessential bad boy for her new music video, and I just happened to fit the bill. I’m doing well financially, but not so well that I can afford to turn down jobs yet. My working-class mentality is a good thing, according to Ric. He encourages, what he calls, my squirrelling away for those hard, rainy days.Not that he’ll be in that position much longer.
‘When’s this court case, anyway?’
‘Real soon.’ The sooner, the better. Maybe I’ll sleep better then.
‘Well, in the meantime, gimme an address. I’ll go deliver a shit tonne of manure to the porn fucker’s driveway.’
‘A literal shit tonne?’
