existing relationship of some kind with Harry’s people. Also, she was smart. Good. I could work with smart.
I HASTILY DISCONNECTED my real self from any connection with the email address Jeanette had just replied to and threw away the notebook. Now I had a KillFund, I could afford to buy new ones. A touch sadly, I hung the meticulously crafted PR man’s online identity out to dry and let it be savaged by Jeanette’s pack of wolves. I watched as the various firms my fictitious PR agent had claimed to work for all winked out one by one, their servers taken down by Jeanette’s legions, their social media bombarded by messages. Even the servers of a charity subsidiary of Sodobus.
Dragged puzzled and blinking into the spotlight, each company hastily denied ever having employed me. The question of who I was, and what exactly I had done to upset Harry Paperboy’s fans, puzzled the internet for a few moments. There was even a Slate article.
I TOOK A quick step to the side. I’d been going after Harry’s fans. What if I went for Harry himself?
A CTUALLY, IT TURNED out to be really easy. What you have to remember is that I wasn’t up against a rabid army of hyper-smart fans. I was up against a canny (yet fundamentally stupid) popstar. Also, I had quite a bit of cash on me. And he was coming to England soon.
J EANETTE’S P APER G URL A RMY helped me find out which hotel he was staying at. As soon as the news was announced they’d worked it out ‘Oh, it’ll be the Waverley again, I bet!!!’, ‘See you outside the Wave posing with George the Doorman yeah??? <3 George!!!’
How to get to him? Annoyingly, it would have been so easy if Harry had been gay. Book a room, log on to Grindr, and wait. Until about 2am, probably, for a profile to match up with. Right age and height but no picture. And then, bingo.
But no. He wasn’t gay and neither was I. So.
The next vice was easier. Drugs are great. Thanks to Harry’s range of DUIs, I even knew what drugs he was partial to. I could use the KillFund to get some and then... then what? I couldn’t stand outside his hotel with a placard advertising free drugs for Harry. Nor could I establish myself as a top drugs dealer. Anyway, he wouldn’t come to me. He’d send a minion. He wasn’t that stupid, otherwise some tabloid would have snapped him doing coke off the back of his iPhone already.
No. I messaged Nuala, one of my fellow actor/chuggers:
Do you, by any chance,
know any drugs dealers?
WTF?
Just, you remember that show you were in, in that theatre opposite the Waverley?
The musical about Jane Eyre?
Christ yes. Why?
Who dealt the drugs? It’s just, I’ve a friend who’s working there and...
This friend wouldn’t be a chugger
would they?
NOT ME. NOT ME. But yes. A chugger with a habit. He’s loaded. He really is just chugging cos he likes charity.
And coke?
Organic, responsibly-sourced coke with an amusing slogan on the wrap.
I’ll put him in touch with Jaramy.
D RUGS DEALERS AREN’T fun people. Nor do all of them go around with scary dogs and the sharper bits of their kitchen. The ones I’ve met are about as far away from those people in those films about Troubled Estates as you can get. But there’s one thing they’ve all got in common—they really hate people. The only guys I know who hate people more are waiters.
Jaramy was a waiter and a drugs dealer. A tiny, neat Frenchman, he kept on the waitering (at a really posh restaurant) in order to put him in touch with clients. He was forever being beckoned over quietly, and softly being asked if he knew anyone. And he so often did. He would even, smilingly, offer to take care of the deal itself as “drugs dealers are all so terrible, aren’t they, monsieur?”
Models, Russian businessmen, and bankers—all of them found themselves coming to Jaramy’s restaurant for the spendy wine and the quite excellent drugs.
I got a couple of shifts at the
I HASTILY DISCONNECTED my real self from any connection with the email address Jeanette had just replied to and threw away the notebook. Now I had a KillFund, I could afford to buy new ones. A touch sadly, I hung the meticulously crafted PR man’s online identity out to dry and let it be savaged by Jeanette’s pack of wolves. I watched as the various firms my fictitious PR agent had claimed to work for all winked out one by one, their servers taken down by Jeanette’s legions, their social media bombarded by messages. Even the servers of a charity subsidiary of Sodobus.
Dragged puzzled and blinking into the spotlight, each company hastily denied ever having employed me. The question of who I was, and what exactly I had done to upset Harry Paperboy’s fans, puzzled the internet for a few moments. There was even a Slate article.
I TOOK A quick step to the side. I’d been going after Harry’s fans. What if I went for Harry himself?
A CTUALLY, IT TURNED out to be really easy. What you have to remember is that I wasn’t up against a rabid army of hyper-smart fans. I was up against a canny (yet fundamentally stupid) popstar. Also, I had quite a bit of cash on me. And he was coming to England soon.
J EANETTE’S P APER G URL A RMY helped me find out which hotel he was staying at. As soon as the news was announced they’d worked it out ‘Oh, it’ll be the Waverley again, I bet!!!’, ‘See you outside the Wave posing with George the Doorman yeah??? <3 George!!!’
How to get to him? Annoyingly, it would have been so easy if Harry had been gay. Book a room, log on to Grindr, and wait. Until about 2am, probably, for a profile to match up with. Right age and height but no picture. And then, bingo.
But no. He wasn’t gay and neither was I. So.
The next vice was easier. Drugs are great. Thanks to Harry’s range of DUIs, I even knew what drugs he was partial to. I could use the KillFund to get some and then... then what? I couldn’t stand outside his hotel with a placard advertising free drugs for Harry. Nor could I establish myself as a top drugs dealer. Anyway, he wouldn’t come to me. He’d send a minion. He wasn’t that stupid, otherwise some tabloid would have snapped him doing coke off the back of his iPhone already.
No. I messaged Nuala, one of my fellow actor/chuggers:
Do you, by any chance,
know any drugs dealers?
WTF?
Just, you remember that show you were in, in that theatre opposite the Waverley?
The musical about Jane Eyre?
Christ yes. Why?
Who dealt the drugs? It’s just, I’ve a friend who’s working there and...
This friend wouldn’t be a chugger
would they?
NOT ME. NOT ME. But yes. A chugger with a habit. He’s loaded. He really is just chugging cos he likes charity.
And coke?
Organic, responsibly-sourced coke with an amusing slogan on the wrap.
I’ll put him in touch with Jaramy.
D RUGS DEALERS AREN’T fun people. Nor do all of them go around with scary dogs and the sharper bits of their kitchen. The ones I’ve met are about as far away from those people in those films about Troubled Estates as you can get. But there’s one thing they’ve all got in common—they really hate people. The only guys I know who hate people more are waiters.
Jaramy was a waiter and a drugs dealer. A tiny, neat Frenchman, he kept on the waitering (at a really posh restaurant) in order to put him in touch with clients. He was forever being beckoned over quietly, and softly being asked if he knew anyone. And he so often did. He would even, smilingly, offer to take care of the deal itself as “drugs dealers are all so terrible, aren’t they, monsieur?”
Models, Russian businessmen, and bankers—all of them found themselves coming to Jaramy’s restaurant for the spendy wine and the quite excellent drugs.
I got a couple of shifts at the
Similar Books
