by Max Barry
“Damn it,” I shout, because it seems appropriate. “This is mission-critical!”
This is enough for her. She hurries down an oak-paneled corridor without looking to see if I am following. I have a nasty moment when I think she’s going to dodge into the bathroom, then she stops at a giant set of double doors. They are huge. They are amazing. They are the sort of doors you expect someone very large to burst from, bellowing “Fee, fi, fo, fum.” They are exactly what I would want if I could play with millions of dollars of other people’s money.
Behind these doors, I am reasonably sure that 6 is betraying me.
I take a deep breath, and
through the looking glass
I throw the doors open and stride inside as if I know what I am doing. There is so much space in the boardroom that for a moment I think I must have wandered outside by mistake. Stuck in the center of this hall is a big oak table, and around it are a dozen big men. I can tell that obesity is a tradition here, rather than a passing fad, because the wall is lined with portraits of past, overweight board members. They’re a bunch of irritable Santa Clauses with jowls instead of beards and cutter gray for fluffy red and white.
Standing in front of the table with a sheaf of papers and a flip chart is 6. The chart sports a delicious black rendition of a can of Fukk cola.
“Sorry I’m late,” I tell the room. “Traffic was terrible.”
There is a long pause as the twelve men, each undoubtedly worth many millions of dollars, grope for something to say.
6 beats them to it. She grasps the situation so quickly that I know she’s planned for it. “I’m sorry,” she tells the board, “allow me to introduce Mr. Scat.” She turns to me, and her eyes are like black knives. “He’s a consultant who worked with us on Fukk.”
I’m also prepared, so I laugh. “Actually,” I say—because a consultant is entitled to an hourly rate and zip of the profits—“I’m the creator of Fukk.”
This sparks frowns and mutters from the board, and the atmosphere turns icy and disapproving. One of the men speaks up, and his voice is deep and rolling and pretty much what you’d expect to come parceled with the board member of a multinational company. “Ms. 6, we were under the impression that Fukk was developed internally.” 6 shifts her weight slightly, but her expression doesn’t change. “As I’m sure you’re aware, there are numerous complications involved in marketing someone else’s concept.”
You bet there are. Complications like having to pay a tiny royalty on every can, which on Coca-Cola’s scale works out to tens of millions of dollars per year. Suddenly I’m feeling very, very good.
“If that’s the case,” the man continues, “we simply can’t proceed with this product.”
All moisture in my mouth evaporates. I feel like somebody has given me a check for unlimited fame and fortune, then gone “Oh sorry, that’s not for you; have this commemorative coffee mug instead.” I am about to do something really stupid like beg or scream or call the board a fascist regime of assholes, when 6 steps forward. She is totally calm.
“My apologies again, Mr. Croft. I’m afraid my partner may have misled you.”
Partner?
“Mr. Scat and I codeveloped Fukk,” 6 says. She is so convincing that this statement slips easily into my brain and settles there for a second before I realize it’s not true. “And he is prepared to relinquish his trademark rights for three million.”
and they lived happily ever after
This is how the story goes after that:
Scat realizes he’s being offered the choice between three million dollars and nothing, and although it’s not a one cent royalty on every can of Fukk sold in the known universe, it’s not exactly a slap in the face. It’s enough to buy a huge house and clothes and a car and even start to get noticed by the right people. So Scat smiles and nods and agrees that, yes, he is prepared to sell his brilliant idea for three million dollars, and by the way, Ms. 6 did a super job and should be promoted, in his humble opinion. Smiles all around. There is paperwork to be signed, of course, but that’s fulfilled over the next few days, and suddenly Scat is lighting cigarettes with hundred dollar bills and buying CD collectors packs just because he can and fielding investment agents with hard smiles who all have strong opinions about how to invest three million dollars.
So that’s how the story goes.
Almost.
why scat should have studied pre-law
Of course, you can’t sell ideas as such. You can sell patents, and you can sell copyright, and you can sell trademarks.
Which is why when 6 says, “And he is prepared to relinquish his trademark rights for three million,” two thoughts simultaneously race through my brain. The first is like a high-pitched fire-cracker that screams into the night, and it goes:
Three miiiiiiiiiillion dollars!
The second feels like remembering I promised to pick my mother up from the airport three hours ago, and that one goes:
Trademark?
contractual bliss
The board gets much happier upon hearing that they can acquire Fukk for a bargain basement three million, and I leave Coca-Cola on the crest of their radiant smiles and 6 promising to call me and a heap of paperwork with lots of blank spaces for “Scat” and “Fukk cola product.”
There’s a phone booth conveniently next to the bus stop, and I look up the address of the Los Angeles Patents and Intellectual Property Office. Defying all laws of nature, the first bus that comes along is headed toward it, and en route I stare out the window and wonder if I am a brilliant millionaire or a really big chump.
There is, of course, no reason why I can’t go down right now and register Fukk. As long as I’m first, it’s mine. If Coca-Cola assumes that no one would be stupid enough to forget to do that before trumpeting their genius to large corporations, then that’s just lucky for me. I can slip down, fix my mistake and it will be like nothing ever went wrong.
The thing that bothers me, though, is that 6 doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would, in the midst of a three-million-dollar deal, make any sort of assumption like that at all.
nice one, einstein
I tear through the form, completing it in three minutes. At the desk, I ask the clerk how long I have to wait until I can find out if my application will be accepted.
“Four weeks,” he says. He’s roughly my age, but no more forgivable for this.
“Ah,” I say. “You see, I was kind of hoping to find out a little sooner than that.”
“Were you?” the clerk says, almost as if he is interested.
“Yeah,” I say, smiling a little.
“Too bad, huh?” he says.
He is looking over my shoulder for the next customer, so I say whatever leaps into my head. This usually just gets me into trouble, but very occasionally pays off. The law of averages, I guess. “You know, you look a little like Einstein.”
Amazingly, a huge smile breaks across his face. “A lot of people tell me that,” he says. “And you know, working in the patent office and all ...”
“Yeah, of course.” I laugh. I have no idea what he is talking about.
“Hey, you know, about that application,” he says, leaning forward. “If you just want to pick a particular field, I can run a check for duplications right now.”
“Really?” I say, turning on the good-buddy charm. Einstein and I could have played football together in high school, confided longings for senior girls in one another, hung out at pinball parlors. Except we didn’t. I’m a marketing grad with three million dollars at stake and he’s a pimply twerp in a dead-end job. “Hey, that’d be great. Can you just check for the name?”
“ ‘Fukk’? Sure thing. Hang on a sec.” His fingers dance across the keyboard. Watching them, I feel a little lightheaded. This guy is about to tell me if I’m worth approximately three million dollars or exactly two hundred and eight.
His computer pipes up with a small beep. Einstein frowns at it disapprovingly. “Oh. Hey,
sorry. You’re going to have to pick a ”New name.
“New name?” I say faintly. There is a great roaring in my ears, which sounds, I imagine, a lot like three million dollars rushing past my face and heading for the toilet.
“Yeah,” Einstein says. “There’s already a registered cola product called Fukk. Just a new one, too.”
So there it is. I’ve been screwed over. I’m going to be the poorest inventor of a billion-dollar product in history. Marketing textbooks will probably have my story in an amusing little box on page 122, with a heading like “Great Marketing Blunders #4.”
Somehow I manage to spit out: “Who owns it?” For my own masochistic reasons, I need to hear him say “6.”
“Oh,” Einstein says. “Oh boy, that’s a tough one. How do you pronounce that?” His forehead screws up. I wouldn’t have thought there were too many variations, but I let Einstein struggle along at his own pace. “Well, there are two names. I mean, one person, known by two names.”
Despite having just pissed three million dollars into the wind through sheer stupidity, the prospect of discovering 6’s real name makes me perk up.
Until Einstein says:
“The first one is, um, Yuong Ang. But the other one is Sneaky Pete.”
A Brief Interlude with Scat and Sneaky Pete
a no-holds-barred confrontation with sneaky pete
I expect him to be gone when I return home—the whole empty closet, raided fridge and stolen aftershave deal—but he’s not. He’s on the sofa, watching Oprah. Oprah is challenging a panel of extremely fat women to come up with one reason why they can’t be beautiful, and Sneaky Pete is grinning at them as if he already knows the answer.
I shut the door behind me and he turns. He is wearing his indoor shades, which are less tinted and almost allow me to see his eyes. For some reason I find this unnerving.
“Hey,” I say.
He nods at me, then picks up the remote and zaps Oprah and her fat women into oblivion.
I dump my briefcase on the table and walk over to the sofa. My suit is already rumpled so I just sit down beside him.
“I did the deal today.”
He nods.
“6 was trying to go it alone, but I caught her in time. In the end, I sold the idea to Coke. One up-front payment. No royalties.”
He nods again, slowly. I sit there and watch him for a minute. I’m finding it difficult to work out how he can be so calm. In the end, I can’t take it. “Three million dollars.”
A smile slowly spreads across his face. If I hadn’t just come back from the patent office, I would be pleased that Sneaky Pete is so enthusiastic about my success. But I have just come back from the patent office, and I’m not enjoying that grin at all.
“The only thing is,” I say, standing from the sofa, “I realized at the last moment that I never registered a trademark on this thing. In fact, I only thought about it after Coke agreed to buy Fukk. So I went down to the patent office this afternoon.”
Sneaky Pete says, “But I beat you there.”
I exhale. The last little flickering hope that maybe he would say Yeah, you moron, here’s your trademark snuffs out.
“Sneaky Pete,” I say, struggling a little. “That’s my money.”
He shrugs expressionlessly. He turns away, and for a second I think he’s going to turn Oprah back on. Then he says, “That’s business.”
My jaw drops: I actually feel it go. “You—you would—” The thing that’s really getting me here is that Sneaky Pete is the sort of guy who, if he was stuck at a nightclub with no money, would rather go thirsty than borrow from someone (well, Sneaky Pete isn’t the sort of guy who would be stuck at a nightclub with no money, but if he was, that’s what I think he would do). Up until three hours ago, I would have described him as the most honest person I had ever met. If, three hours ago, I had been forced to construct a list of the people most likely to steal three million dollars from me, Sneaky Pete would be flat against the bottom, right underneath my parents. “You’re really doing this? You’ll actually stab me in the back for money?”
He turns. In his shades, I see my own face reflected. “Scat,” he says, looking vaguely disgusted, “I don’t want money.”
mktg ethics
On some level, I understand where he’s coming from. But it’s not a very high level and I don’t think I can really articulate it.
The bottom line is that although Sneaky Pete would never screw me over for money, he will betray me for business. He leaves me little piles of the change I forget to take out of my dirty clothes because it would be heinous to take it, but he will sign the deal with Coca-Cola and bank my three-million-dollar check.
Somehow, this all makes sense within the moral system of Sneaky Pete. I can almost understand it.
But not quite. I throw Sneaky Pete out of the apartment, and when I find a pair of his sunglasses between the sofa cushions, I drop them on the floor and step on them.
take that
I feel vindicated, if not quite satisfied, about getting rid of him until the landlord calls me up and reminds me that the lease isn’t in my name but Yuong Ang’s. So, actually, I can’t throw him out. I can only throw myself out.
So I do.
cindy
Which, of course, leaves me with nowhere to stay.
Life After Fukk
three months later
Cindy arrives home, still wearing her cute flight attendant uniform. The apartment is dark, so she wanders around switching on lights for a couple of minutes before spotting me on the living room floor.
“Scat.” She studies me, pulling long, dangerous-looking clips out of her hair. “How are you?”
“I’m insane.”
“Oh, ” she says happily. She leans down and gives me a tight hug. I’m too drained to return it. “That’s good. Isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’ve been sitting here for eight hours, trying to work out if insanity is an improvement on suicidal depression. I still can’t tell.”
“Oh,” Cindy says, less enthusiastically. Her eyes narrow. “What are those? In your hands?”
My voice breaks a little. “My Calvins.” I try to hide them under my buttocks.
“Oh, Scat. I’m sorry.” She begins gently scratching my head. I can’t help it: I feel better immediately. It’s a weakness of mine. “I know what will make you feel better.”
“Cindy,” I protest, “I don’t want any head scratchies. Really.” I am lying through my teeth.
“Well, I’ve got something even better.” Her voice makes me look up. She’s smiling, like she’s guarding some kind of secret. “What do you want most in all the world?”
I sigh. “Fame. Fortune. General adulation. I want my Fukk back. I want to be invited as guest speaker to Stanford to present on how I developed it. I want a short article in Time and a front-page feature in Marketing.” This brings back just how badly I want these things. I feel it so desperately that I almost—almost—feel like getting up and entering the real world again. “I want to be invited to Microsoft premieres and Coca-Cola boat parties. I want to be successful.”
Cindy is silent for a moment, so I guess her surprise is something smaller, like maybe a cheesecake. “What do you want if you can’t have that?”
“Cindy, that’s all I want. If I can’t have that then I’m just going to sit here and go crazy and I’d appreciate being allowed to do it in peace.”
Cindy squats down in front of me, pressing on relentlessly. “Would a visit from a special friend cheer you up?”
“Let’s have sex,” I say suddenly. I reach out to her imploringly.
“Scat, ”she says, getting exasperated. In a flash of insight, it occurs to me just how low I have sunk. Three months ago, I was pretty smug about how I’d never taken advantage of my friendship with Cindy. Now she’s turning me down.
“Scat,” Cindy says. “We don’t have time. She’ll be here any minute.”
&nbs
p; “Who?”
“Your special friend.” Cindy stands up and regards me, hands on hips. “It’s time you got back to your life.”
“Who’s my special friend, Cindy?”
“I mean,” she says, walking into the kitchen, “it’s not that easy to look after you, you know.” She pours herself a glass of something, throws it back, pours another one. “Frankly, it’s become a bore.”
“Cindy,” I say patiently, “I’m very grateful to you. I really am. But I do just need to change the subject back for a second, because if someone is visiting me, I really need to put some clothes on.”
“Oh, sure!” she yells, really upset. “You just do what you want! Don’t worry about me and my needs!”
The buzzer sounds. I sit there uncertainly for a moment, fingering my Calvins, but when Cindy says, “Yes, 6, come on up,” I bolt for the bedroom.
a visit from 6
She is still stunning. This I cannot get over.
I mean, we all have our little fantasies, right? But they don’t last. You see the object of your desire a year later and think: Whoa, did I think that was cute? It’s a fleeting thing, is my point. A momentary deception of perception.
But 6 stands there in her blinding white miniskirt and smooth black business jacket with her hair like a cape of midnight, and she’s captivating.
“Scat,” she says. Reminders: dark eyes, lips like a rubber dinghy.
I am wearing pants, a shirt and a jacket that mismatch so badly I’m hoping 6 will mistake them for cool. I haven’t had time to even attempt the shoes, but I have one sock on my right foot and am holding the other in my left hand.
“6, it’s ... stunning to see you again.”