Author Games: Circle

Task Seven | Mister Smith

Earlier on The Circle...

A set box television glares into a boardroom, it's playing a short animated promo for the show over and over again. Ackley Spader is wearing his navy blue hair slicked back, and is talking with his hands. "I call it The Circle," he says, jabbing his thumb through the antiquated screen for emphasis. Everything changes, and now Patricia Mooney is chomping on bubble gum, her frazzled head framed by an eyesight chart, and the room around her dripping in Dijon. Outside, Ladder Ladders clambers down a ladder with a big banner fluttering behind him like a cape. Finally, in epileptic fashion, the review shows how Mister killed those two men and drove off in their cherry red Cadillac.

*

The night is young, and the episode begins where everything has left off, on the car. Dotted with damage, it pulls in front of the camera into a parking spot on the side of the road. After a period of high exposure generated by street lamps reflecting off the chromatic sheen, the moonlit license plate is brought into focus.

H0P3

Mister Smith, who has added aviators and a beanie cap to his wardrobe on account of his misdemeanors, slides coolly out of the passenger seat and onto the sidewalk. Keeg, who took over the wheel after a few windy kilometres, closes up, and tosses the keys back to Mister from across the hood. The street they start down is probably the nicest in Birmingham - almost like a plaza - cobblestones, pedestrians, starry streetlamps, and such. Potted plants and tribute bands. All the usual crap. Keeg, who was knighted navigator as well as driver, since Mister only recently arrived from what he says is a small hamlet out east when he's attentive, and the planet Mars when he's high, would never come here on his own, but the entity of self-serve frozen yoghurt bars got stumbled upon during a late night of talking, and Mister latched on to it. One Google mapping session later, and he's begging to go to the Ghurt Yurt down at Penny Square. Keeg feels his skin shrink to his bones like he's a gigantic space bag, and the dull singe in his eyes sting, an he become self-conscious about whether they are too bloodshot to be out in public - even at night. Across the street he imagines people looking at him, and worries his blood content is as brazenly advertised as the brand name plastered to his hoodie. Earlier he asked for Mister's sunglasses but he would not relent them and would not explain why. Keeg suspects, that despite his word that the yoghurt would replace the 'sugar' for tonight he still probably ended up dipping a finger and a fist in the jar. It happens.

Another look to the opposite walk is spared, and it's like the same pair of eyes has followed him. He jogs a step to level himself with Mister, whose shift only further disintegrates his credibility, but the company lends comfort.

When the get to the Ghurt Yurt, its fluorescent green and orange signage is dashed by scaffolding and plywood, the entire building wrapped in plastic like it's an Amazon package. The store is situated on a corner, and around it some contract workers are rigging up a concert stage. A ladder spreads its legs like an arch over the door, which Mister walks into with no second though to superstition, but it gives Keeg pause. During his brief hesitation, he notices a Ben E. King tribute band slouches against the wrong side of a bench and twiddle with their instruments. Satisfied with his awareness, he ducks under the ladder and follows Mister in. "That's bad luck you know," he says. What he doesn't notice are the men who footed the bill for all of this, who are hiding in a bush.

"What if we go through all of this and the show still isn't bought?" Seamus Arbour mashes the power button of his camera and asks to his side.

The next bush over rustles to reveal a shock of blue hair. "It'll be bought. What if we all suffer heart attacks? Suppose we should just stay inside and stuff ourselves with curly fries because any productivity could all be for nowt," Ackley Spader retorts. Showing a relationship stronger than just that of coworkers, Seamus laughs at the criticism.