Page 24 of The Payback Plan
But yeah, in anAm I The Assholereddit post, he would definitely be the asshole. And if a whirling dervish of a woman with questionable taste in clothes and a dubious commitment to veganism who never cleaned up after herself and subjected him to terrible violin practice and bloodyhamsterswas his punishment, then he could suck it up.
The wheel which had been merrily spinning around, its lights glowing a fluorescent rainbow in Oliver’s peripheral vision whirred to a halt and he glanced at said hamster.
‘Not yet, buddy.’ Checking the app attached to the wheel, Oliver used his poshest accent as that seemed to be the one that Pavarotti responded to best. ‘Another two minutes.’
The advantage to hiding out with the rodent several times a day was he’d been able to work on his plan to get the animal fit so he wouldn’t suddenly drop dead of a heart attack.
His thrice daily texts on hamster facts – they just kept coming at him relentlessly like the fucking Terminator despite him blocking the numbers – had informed him that the animals lived for about two years although the oldest recorded hamster had been four and a half.
Which had become Oliver’s goal. Four and half. Because he remembered acutely the death of his beloved turtle when he’d been a kid. Bolt had been given to him by Ernie Cummings, his father’s agent, for his fourth birthday. Ernie had told him turtles were a commitment because they lived for twenty to thirty years and if Oliver wasn’t up to the job he’d take him back and get him a guppy instead.
Oliver had solemnly declared he was up for the job. And he had been. Even at four he’d taken his responsibility very seriously especially given the adults in his life were too busy bickering to rely on for help. That time with Bolt had been a fabulous distraction from the raised voices of his parents and Oliver had loved and cared for that cool little dude until his mysterious demise a few months later.
To say he’d been devastated at the loss was an understatement. The fact that Bolt’s death had coincided with the first time his mother had left had probably amplified those feelings. Or at least that’s what a shrink had told him when he’d been thirteen and he’d undergone an assessment as part of his mother’s application to the courts for full custody.
Oliver didn’t know Paige’s nephew but he did know that four-year-olds could feel just as deeply as any adult. Bunky’s childhood might not be as anxiety-ridden as Oliver’s but there was still no need for him to find out about the grim realities of life at such a tender age.
With a name like Bunky, life would no doubt fuck him over soon enough.
So, aided by the YouTube videos, project Healthy Hamster was launched.
After discovering – unsurprisingly – that food was Pavarotti’s main motivator, Oliver had started training the hamster to work for his supper. It hadn’t taken as long as he’d thought given Pavarotti was exceptionally motivated but it had taken a while to figure out what food was a balance between healthy and naughty.
It turned out to be grapes. Not the cheapest fruit available in the middle of winter and a world-wide economic crisis in an English county which was not generally known for its grape-growing climate.
Of course the hamster would have champagne tastes…
But, luckily for Oliver and his father’s regular posthumous royalty payments, money didn’t matter and if getting him to ride the damn wheel meant spending his inheritance ongrapesthen that’s what he’d do. He’d gradually wean the animal on to more nutritionally appropriate hamster food, he just had to get him hooked on the routine first.
When the wheel remained stubbornly stationary, Oliver plucked the grape off the coffee table and held it up so Pavarotti could see it from his position on the floor. The little blighter might be being compliant but enthusiasm was a ways off so a little reminder of the end prize never hurt.
The wheel started up again, the rainbow array of lights a blur and Oliver smiled to himself as he placed the grape back on the table and used the remote to pump up the music volume another notch. It was playing theRockysoundtrack both for the motivational benefit of Pavarotti and to drown out whatever nursery rhyme Paige was butchering today.
Turning his attention to the laptop that was balancing on his knees, Oliver stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. He’d been working on an action-adventure script since he’d returned to Cornwall and he knew people in Hollywood – directors, studios, producers – who would look at it seriously because of whose kid he was despite his father not being around any longer.
Ernie, who was in his late seventies now and still going strong, certainly would. In fact, he kept hassling him for it.
But he knew in his bones it was lacklustre. The stakes weren’t high enough. Probably because his spook hero – Zac Woodbury – was as wooden as the bespoke blonde floorboards upstairs.
Thanks to his connections he’d done some minor acting roles over the years, a lot of which had ended on the cutting room floor which had oddly not been overly disconcerting. Sure, he’d enjoyed it, he’d certainly bragged about it to date women, but his real passion had been writing and the acting just a side hustle.
His time at USC where he’d studied writing for film and TV had confirmed that. And also confirmed that this script was crap. Which was fine, writers learned their craft through writing crap and getting better. Handing it in, getting feedback and rejections and those dreadednotes.
The problem was, the son of Roger Prendergast could not show anyone a crap script. Even when his father was alive he couldn’t have but that went double now he was dead because people talked and although he had mixed emotions where his father was concerned, he’d hate to besmirch his name by having a kid who wrote dud scripts.
He didn’t want his dad to be a laughing stock. Nor did he want to be pitied or humoured especially in the aftermath of the not-wedding. He certainly didn’t want the script to be snapped up and splashed around for publicity purposes then made into some B-grade monstrositywritten by Redondo’s runaway groomplaying to empty houses for the ghoulish delight of the tabloids.
So, he was in a weird kind of limbo where he didn’t know how to progress or how to fix what was wrong. Not for the first time he thought he should just ditch it all and start afresh with a completely new idea. But new ideas were thin on the ground as well.
Also, he was self-aware enough to realise that this yearning-to-start-again thing probably wasn’t about the script at all.
Although God… it was truly a dog of a script.
The door to the stairs opened suddenly and Paige appeared brandishing two steaming mugs. Her hair was its usual tangle of stringy titian curls, her jeans a landscape of mismatched denim patches. Her T-shirt depicted a seagull in sunglasses, a French fry hanging out its beak. The words stamped beneath were –chip magnet.
Her perfume followed her like it always did, a zesty spritz of lime. She’d been in his house for less than a week and every time she passed by he got a hankering for tequila shots. Which made him think of things he could lick, sip, suck and Paige was Bella’s friend so that was very muchnothelpful.
‘I can hear that music all the way upstairs.’
