It took me two weeks just to find Monster Larry, during which time the
Extreme Sports League of Southern California came to the conclusion that
they had hired the wrong guy. Understandable. Correct, even. My skill at
negotiating with reclusive celebrities didn't really include tracking them
down, but everyone makes that mistake and nobody wants to hear it.
    Anyway, Larry.
    I caught him parasailing, one of three human kites circling the sky
over a small inlet up the coast. A fervent-looking kid on the shore was
piloting all three boats remotely, throwing the riders into near-collision
over and over. When he brought them in they looked bored. And small, as
though the apparent tininess that altitude had recently conferred on them
was now only in remission. Larry didn't fuss when I made my purpose known;
all he said was, "I'll listen. Money last." Good man. One of my favorite
types.
    As a result of some misfortune with a cropduster, he said, his car
still smelled bad, so we took mine inland. I delivered the bulk of the
pitch with manufactured enthusiasm, and to my relief he took the bait:
    "I thought you said you usually weren't with the League. You sound
pretty invested for a freelancer."
    "I just love my job."
    And so we got to talk about me for a good long while. My problems with
women (hilarious; fictional), my brief employment by the government (hila-
rious; real), my ailing pet (somber; it's actually my brother's). Me me
me. When he'd had enough I swung by a friend's house I had arranged to
use. "I'll just be a minute," I said. I let him see me take the key from
under a garden gnome and went inside to wait.
    How this part goes is, you wait long enough that they start going
through the glove compartment. I keep every bit of sad ephemera I have in
there, every gossamer trace of something once terrific now gone. All real,
though that doesn't matter; all painful if you know what to look for.
    I developed these techniques on writers, and was pleasantly surprised
to learn that almost everyone who runs from the public eye has a voyeur-
istic thing. The skateboarding powerhouse who I hoped to get a signed
contract out of was no different. He was just less ashamed. Normally I
come back to find a pensive face about to do something they think is
subtle, not knowing they can leave the hugger-mugger antics to me. Not
this time.
    "I peeked, man. In the glovebox. I'm sorry," he said. I knew he wasn't
apologizing. Nodding in sympathetic sympathy, I turned the car around.

    At In-N-Out Burger on the way back, I popped the question. "Do you
think you're going to take it? The TV thing, I mean. Uh, two cheeseburgers,
animal style," I said to Larry and the drive-thru.
    "You never named a number," he said, so I named one, and my recalcit-
rant risk-taker walked back into the arms of the people who I guess needed
him.
    Me, I don't know a thing about extreme sports, unless you count driving
around with that black hole in my glove compartment. Doing that bit
honestly, the bit where they see my insides, doesn't work as well as it
used to. I probably ought to stop, before I trick someone into tricking
me into thinking about it too hard.
    That thing with the gnome, though? Brilliant. Ironclad. I wish I could
figure out how it works, but the main thing is, it always does.

written for Jason Countryman on the opposite couch 10/4/08

A word like "hugger-mugger" is a big problem. For it to not seem out of place if used verbatim, the whole story has to be pretty much written around it, but it's almost harder to use it implicitly in a way that clearly points to "hugger-mugger" (as opposed to "singularity", which I couldn't find a good way to use as such but whose synonym "black hole" sort of fit in).

Actually, most of those words ended up awkward.

I find this hard to follow on rereading, and I know what I meant!

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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