Page 33 of Washed Up
“We’re done,” Wynter tells him. I’m sure the guy would be disturbed if he could see the look on Wynter’s face as he says it. It’s way too gleeful for what ought to be a heavy moment.
“What do you mean you’re done?”
“I mean we don’t have any material for you. We’re not going to have any new material for you.”
“You know the conseq—”
“Yeah, we get it. We understand. It’s a bust. It’s for the best.”
The guy is clearly bamboozled by this. “You realise it’s game over.”
“We get it,” Reid says, unable to keep his mouth shut any longer.
“How long until the contract terminates?” Wynter asks, waving at Max to keep Reid under control.
“I’ll send it upstairs the moment the call ends. Expectations were set in stone when they agreed to pay for the studio time. If you don’t keep your end, then you can’t expect leniency.”
“No. No, we wouldn’t expect that. It’s perfectly reasonable.”
I’m sure that when this guy sends his report upstairs, it’ll read as him having terminated the relationship, because he doesn’t seem able to wrap his head around the fact that they’re not putting up a fight.
By early evening, Lucidity are no longer part of the Chinchilla Group. They need to vacate the studio complex by midday tomorrow.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wynter
It doesn’t take me long to pack up the couple of bass guitars I have with me. I leave Max disassembling his drum kit and help Reid wrestle a copious number of leads into boxes. He’s down, which is why he turns the task into a circus. In typical Reid fashion, he doesn’t saywhyhe’s down, he just makes endless busy work for himself.
“Just tell her you don’t want it to end.”
“Thought I had already.”
Which means he hasn’t, not really, not in an actual heart-to-heart serious conversation, only in an offhanded, hyperbolic Reid fashion. ‘Stay with me to the end of time, while I kiss every inch of your skin six times over’; that sort of shit. I know him well enough to realise that means he’s ready for the long haul.
Not sure Iris does.
“It’s probably for the best,” he sighs from his balls. “You don’t like her anyway.”
“Don’t go pinning this on me. I never said that.”
He cracks a grin, throws an arm around my shoulder, and proceeds to muck up my hair. “Ahh, you do like her. I knew it. Called it.” He smacks a kiss on my cheek. “We can be all polycule-lier together. I want both my lovers to get on. It opens up the possibilities, you know…”
“Except we’re leaving.”
He drops the lead he was coiling, which unravels and whips him across the midriff. “Fucker.” He wrestles it into submission as if it’s a snake. “It’s not just me. Max tried too. She’s not hearing us.” He turns on the sad boy face again and makessorrowful eyes at me. “I’ll do all your laundry for you, for a month… six months.”
“I’m good thanks. I can do my own.”
“Please fix this, Wynter. Please. You’re the fix-it guy. I know you can do it. Please.”
I want to throttle him. We wind up kissing instead.
***
Iris is wandering the shoreline when I come back from moving things across to our van. I watch her attempt to skip stones with limited success.
This is madness.
