Free The Thompson Gunner by Nick Earls

thinking of something a bit more subtle than that’ and she said that Elliott’s response was something like ‘Oh, sure, sure, yeah’.
    Andshe told them no guns, and they came back talking martial arts, as if we were haggling over a contract clause. So then we
were
haggling over a contract clause, since I wanted ‘no guns’ stipulated and then they wanted ‘martial arts’ stipulated in case I might change my mind on that one.
    â€˜Martial arts is great,’ they said in the meeting they flew me down for the next day. ‘And it’s not off the track. It’s fine. It’s a good idea, women having self-defence skills. We know you like martial arts.’ And I told them only for fitness, and they said, ‘Cool – it starts off being for fitness, but there’s this buffed guy she works out with, he’s kind of her assistant . . .’
    It’s so pretty when they think on their feet.
    I wanted to go, ‘Yes, but really it’s all a trap, and the buffed guy-assistant’s brain has been hollowed out by the Evil Doctor Zoron and replaced by a genetically engineered super-smart hamster that peeps out through his nose and controls his every move using a series of gears and pulleys . . .’
    But, by the time I’d thought of that, hours had passed and I was pacing Emma’s office blowing off steam and the TV people were nowhere to be seen.
    And Emma said, ‘Oh, Mega, the bigger they talk and the more knives you have strapped to your thigh, the richer you’ll be. It’s TV – full-on commercial TV – remember? It’s not that you can’t have subtlety, it’s just that the subtlety can’t be very subtle. And it’ll give you a break from touring. It’ll give you that home time you’ve been looking for, if the deal holds together and they make it at the Gold Coast and in Brisbane. This is ninety per cent what you want.’
    â€˜Every timeI look up your nose I see a hamster,’ I told her. ‘Oh faithful assistant . . .’
    â€˜No really,’ she said, and her head rocked back as she laughed. I leaned forward for a closer look, and she flung a hand up to cover her exposed nostrils and then said, still laughing, ‘What am I doing? There’s no hamster. Trust me, Mistress. I haven’t seen Doctor Zoron since he stopped bulk-billing.’ And she rocked forward again in her seat and laughed at her own joke for some time, ignored the phone when it rang and then said, ‘I’ll get back to them and say No to the knives if you want me to, but they say they just see them as an extension of martial arts and part of the look. You wouldn’t have to go stabbing people.’
    Not in the first draft anyway, but it wouldn’t shock me if some stabbing snuck in there at some stage. Backed up by a dodgy set of statistics, if it needs to be, to show that our target demographic would like stabbing, or expect it.
    Emma promised me she’d go in hard for a ‘no super-hamsters’ clause, and might even push for one about genetically modified rodents in general, but I told her not to worry. I’d bust Evil Doctor Zoron right in the monocle, rodents or no rodents.
    â€˜I want you to know that I’m fully committed to your vision,’ Elliott said later when he took me out for a drink to make sure that everything was back on track. ‘Fully committed to
our
vision. And committed to getting this thing made.’
    Emma’s email is still on the screen, telling me about the lovely Elliott and his plan for us to do something. I click on Reply, and then I don’t know what to say.
    Elliott,the lovely Elliott, the past month. It’s the past month that I really need to deal with, but I don’t know where to begin – or when, or how – and that gets in the way of me coming up with a remark that’s glib enough to do justice to Elliott King. All the gory