the agent & the avant-garde

I looked down at the display on my cell phone and saw it was my agent calling.

“Hey. How’s it going?”

“All right. I got your latest manuscript and there are a few problems with it.”

“Really? Like what?”

“For one thing, the length – it’s only three pages long. Most of that is a repetition of the phrase ‘Naughty Johnny was a woman.’ What does that mean, anyway? The rest of it was some kind of space opera, am I right?”

“Sheesh! You don’t get me at all. It wasn’t space opera; it was a piece of progressive, transgendered, and cross-genre steampunk. Didn’t you see my illustration of the airship?”

“I thought that was a coffee stain. All the same, I don’t think I can sell it as a book. The length isn’t right.”

“But didn’t you get my multimedia content?”

“You mean that Beta tape? Yes, I got it. I had to search all over the place for a player for that damn thing. I went to every pawn shop in town. I searched e-bay. You do realize those old dinosaurs can cost a few thousand dollars these days?”

“No, I did not know that.”

“Well, now you do. I finally found a player hidden away in my grandfather’s basement. Then I had to find a television that had the correct hook-ups. I had to take the player and the tape over to my great aunt’s house for that.”

“So, you watched the tape?”

“Yeah, I watched it. I don’t know what you want me to do with it though.”

“I was thinking about turning it into a multimedia package. I read some guy on the internet say ebooks were the way of the future. Maybe it could be sold as one of those vooks.”

“I don’t know how many people out there will be interested in watching thirty minutes of you sitting around in your boxer shorts eating a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli from the can while singing off-key Broadway tunes between bites. I have no idea what that had to do with the manuscript you turned in.”

“You didn’t watch it all the way to the end, did you?”

“Oh, you mean the part when you farted? Yeah, I saw that. Like I said, I don’t know how many people will be interested.”

“It’s a commentary on the human condition.”

“Look, whatever. I really don’t think it would be a good idea to present this to any editor in its current form, and that brings me to what I’m really calling you about.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“I think I’m going to have to let you go as a client. Our arrangement just isn’t working out. Our contract has expired, and I don’t really want to renew.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll just talk to you later, then. See you around?”

“Yeah. Sure. Maybe. Take care of yourself, okay?”

“Okay.”

I hung up the phone and smiled. I had already sold the story rights for a miniseries through a back door deal with a network television producer. The contract was just waiting to be signed, and now I could keep my fifteen percent.