“Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”
Martineus’s eyes darted back to the page, scanning for something – anything – to like about the script in his hands.
“I like…the effort,” Martineus ventured, watching the reaction of his partner Racles Topper with every slow syllable. “It’s well-organized.” Topper raised an eyebrow. “Has a nice flow.” He rolled his eyes. “Your handwriting’s beautiful.”
Topper threw up his hands. “Gods, Martineus! We’ve been doing this together for years. I can take a little constructive criticism.”
Martineus swallowed the breath he’d been holding. “You promise you won’t get mad?”
Topper smirked. “No. I’ll be furious. But you know I can’t stay mad at you.”
A long time ago, Marty’s father had told him that the best thing you could be was loved. The second best thing was honest. As a rule, Marty had tried very hard not to give up his status as the first for the second. But finally he was at an impasse.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“Clearly. Why?”
“It doesn’t say anything. Physical comedy I like, and toilet humor I can tolerate in small amounts. But it’s joke after joke without a larger picture. Special effects we can’t afford to distract from the fact that each fart joke falls flatter than the next, and this show is about nothing.”
Topper’s face hardened. “Are you too good for fart jokes now?” he asked. “We’re satyrs, Martineus. That’s our bread and butter.”
“I just want us to do something meaningful. Not…whatever this is.”
Topper stomped up to Martineus and grabbed the script out of his hands. In the violence of the act, the pages tore, right across the middle. Topper stood with half the manuscript in his hands, tears forming at the center of his eyes. Marty stood with the other half, his jaw clamped shut.
“Get out,” said Topper.
“Sure,” said Martineus. “We can work on it tomorrow. We can definitely get it to where–”
“No,” said Topper. “Get out of the group. Go do ‘something meaningful’ on your own. The Mechanicals will have fun without you.”
Marty opened his mouth to argue, but the look in Topper’s eyes cut like a knife. He wordlessly rose from his seat and walked out. It was only after he was outside the building and around the corner that he realized he was still holding the other half of the manuscript.
He folded it up and put it in his vest pocket. Topper would call eventually to apologize. And then they’d glue the manuscript together and work on it. He just had to lay low until that happened.
But Topper never called.
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