Like We Care (30 page)

Daljit Singh did.

Dozens of mirror sites had gone up all over the country, Iras elsewhere launching pages that sought to do for their local protest what Ira had done in Berline. All of a sudden, a squadron of computer geeks, previously forced to distinguish themselves merely among their fellow brainiacs, were being hailed as key components of the insurrection. They were an intensely competitive tribe. The desire to out-flash all the other pages was nasty and strong.

The result was that the online terrain that sprang up around the Happy Snack and its offshoots was constantly fresh, constantly engaging. What should’ve rightfully died in an Illinois parking lot weeks ago was now being sustained by a bunch of pimple-faced cowboys in a cyber pissing match.

But only Ira’s site had this: stuff you could buy.

Annie had come to Todd early on with an idea. Their slogan—“We’re Not Buying This Shit!”—remained a masterstroke. It worked for the corporate fight; it worked on the political front. Throw a stick in any direction and you’ll hit a teenager refusing to buy someone’s shit.

Adults, too, for that matter. This was prime bumper sticker copy for the dull-witted and the put-upon.

As a catchphrase, it just worked.

“You
own
that,” she reminded him. “You could do something with it.”

“How hard could it be,” she had wondered, “for Ira to reconfigure the site to sell merchandise? Just start with T-shirts: Find a place that could print them up in bulk, mark up the price just a little bit to make it worth your while, and open the site up for sales. You’d only make shirts as orders came in, so if no one’s interested, you’re not out anything. But if this thing took off. . .”

Sounded sweet to Todd. He’d hopefully be off to college in the fall and unlike Joel, there didn’t seem to be any scholarships coming his way. If he could make a couple bucks off this thing that thus far had brought glory only to his charm-laden partner, that seemed more than fair to him.

Annie had really wanted him to do this, really wanted him to win something for himself in this whole thing. Maybe this was how she was going to make up for New York.

He came up with two designs: one that explicitly stated “We’re Not Buying This Shit!” for the genuine outlaw willing to risk sanction for sporting an actual dirty word, and another that blurred the “shit” just enough to make it wearable in public while still promising to scandalize. He found a silk screen shop that would do up the shirts for as little as $5.30 per 500, so he priced out the items to fifteen bucks to cover shipping and handling and a little left over for himself, and he had Ira wire up a credit card account.

Within a week, he had nearly 625 orders. He got a neighbor kid to oversee the print run and ship the shirts out for a buck a pop. Todd was still going to clear about $5.70 per unit.

Annie had an office now, and an assistant. The
VideoYear
stunt had been a wash, but Viceroy felt that Annie’s instincts were to be respected. She knew something was going on out there when no one else did. Besides, the mock awards protest did manage to get Dylan, his embarrassment of a kid, on TV. That had to be worth something.

Viceroy’s passion was now the potential political enlightenment of his young viewers. April was going to see hundreds of elections around the country, spring contests which would focus purely on local and state campaigns and issues—hick stuff, mostly. But if there truly was a new voter base out there to be cultivated and molded, what better time to put the machinery through a shakedown test? If even a handful of young non-voters could be prompted into action by R
²
Rev’s coverage at a time when nothing much mattered, imagine the possibilities when no less than the White House was in play.

Some legitimate youth-driven campaigns had taken root across the land as a result of the initial Happy Snack boycott, Viceroy noted.

“Let’s follow some of them through to election day. Put an R
²
Rev spin on the coverage, see if we can’t make it hip to vote someone into—or
out
of—office just because you can. Just because the system is there to be fucked with.”

Annie listened obediently.

“I’ll start hitting up our artists to get involved, to sexy it up for the Programming Department. But I want you to oversee the grassroots stuff. That’s your turf.”

“I’ll want to go back to Berline.”

“Fine,” Viceroy said. “We’ve already tilled the soil there. We’ve already planted a flag.”

“We’ve got our ducks in a row.”

“Right on!” He spun around to his computer and punched up the Happy Snack site.

“Jesus,” he said in admiration, “their site looks better than ours.”

He scrolled down until he saw the link to the T-shirt page. He studied
the phrase
deeply and then pointed to the screen.

“We need this.”

“We can’t have it. It’s trademarked.”

“
By who?
”

“Todd Noland.”

Viceroy screwed up his face. This was a name he did not know, and he knew all names worth knowing. Thus he was forced to ready himself to accept trite knowledge.

“The kid in Berline who started all this.”

Viceroy dismissed that fact with a wave. “It’s ours. We used it for your show.”

“He had it first. We’re lucky he didn’t sue,” Annie added.

Viceroy returned his gaze to the computer screen.

“We
need
this. We could umbrella the entire campaign under that phrase.”

“Well, you can’t
have
it.”

This was a gnat, buzzing around John Viceroy’s head. “This kid is selling shirts out of his basement for pocket change. I’m talking about an entire catalog: shirts, hats, screensavers, all that crap. Find out what he wants for it—we’ll make it worth his while.”

“You don’t know this kid.”

“Just talk to him.”

With an unimpressed sigh, she stood to leave. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Ma. I’ve got nowhere to put you.”

“You’ve got a couch, don’t you?”

“You are not sleeping on my couch.”

“No, I am not.
You
are.”

Frank sighed, surrender inevitable.

“Do you have campaign buttons? With your name on them? Frank Kolak, right on there?”

“Yes.”

“I’m coming.”

F
or her, it was first and foremost an industry-type hug, a non-sexual, “Here we are again to further our mutual interests” embrace, with the added awkward facts that his 18-year-old penis had been inside her just a month earlier and, at the time, she had not found that to be a bad thing. Certain signals—certain spontaneous utterances—could’ve given the boy reason to believe she had enjoyed the encounter and might be interested in hosting his penis again.

Indeed, Joel hung onto the hug too long, went for her lips when she felt strongly that the proper message would be sent by a circumspect peck on the cheek. The kid looked a little swoony when he finally let go.

She was going to have to deal with this.

And Todd was right there to see the clumsy dance Joel and Annie performed when she first got back to town. She could tell by the chill in her relationship with Todd that he wasn’t completely over what had happened in New York.

She was going to have to deal with
that,
too.

She needed to figure out what she was doing.

“So how are things looking?”

“Good, I think,” Todd said. “Just asking around, it sounds like we’ve got commitments from a real good chunk of the eighteen to twenty-three crowd, and we’re a lock with the blacks. Just about everybody we’re getting has never voted before, so we’re bringing in brand new numbers. Jerry Self, the current guy, won last time around with only like a thousand votes. And he’s a complete tool.”

“Mary Flemming, this state senator, just came out and endorsed Mr. Kolak,” Joel added. “That’s a big deal around here.”

“Really?” Annie asked skeptically. “Where did that come from?”

“Dunno. She called me up the other day, and bought me dinner at Pizza Hut. Said she’s been following the race, and she agrees with me: Kolak’s the dude.”

Annie recognized the strategy. “She sees how you’re flushing out votes. She’s figuring out how she can use you and your friends. When
her
election comes up.”

“Hey,” Joel said. “Free pizza’s free pizza.”

“She might’ve broken the law by buying you dinner,” said Annie.

“Excellent!” Joel beamed.

Annie stopped and studied Todd and Joel, so close to all this and so certain it was mostly just a kind of prank that they couldn’t recognize they were actually effecting change. It was probably for the best.

“So are things okay between you two?” she asked, turning to Todd. “Joel told me you guys weren’t talking.”

Todd stared at his shoes. “No, we’re okay. Yeah. It’s. . . fine.”

“Good,” she said sincerely. “You guys are a team. You are
monsters
when you work together. Don’t let anything screw that up.”

“So where are you staying?” Joel asked, a little too eagerly.

“W
hat does that mean?” Todd asked, his feet sticking to the Taco Bell floor as he and Annie shared a booth.

“It means that R
²
Rev would pay you for the phrase. It would become theirs to do with whatever they wanted.”

Todd was skeptical. “It’s just a bunch of words.”

“But they’re the
right
bunch of words. They threw it into the last round of phone polling, and kids respond to it. Adults, too. ‘We’re Not Buying This Shit!’ It’s worth something.”

“You know,” Todd said guiltily. “I didn’t make it up. Some kid, I don’t even know who, showed up at the Happy Snack with it written on a sign. I just ran with it.”

“So? You know how many people said ‘Have a nice day’ before someone thought to license it and stick it on T-shirts with that obnoxious smiley face?”

“Someone made money off ‘Have a nice day’?”

“‘
Wassup??
’ Remember that one, from the beer commercial? ‘
Wassup??
’ People retired on ‘
Wassup.
’”

“That’s. . . That’s not even grammatical.”

“It was addictive. That’s why it worked.
Was-s-s-u-u-u-u-p???
” Annie growled.

“Please stop doing that.”

Annie sauced up another taco. “I’m just following orders. I was told to come here and ask your price.”

“My price?” Todd laughed. “I’m a kid. I don’t have a price.”

She took a bite.

“I mean, are we talking thousands of dollars?
Tens
of thousands of dollars?” he asked. “I mean, Jesus, I’m doing great working it myself, and that’s just the shirts. Why would I give that up, unless they’re talking about. . .”

Big money.

“I don’t think I can get in the middle of this, me running up the price against my employers,” Annie said. “You should talk to a lawyer.”

“Yeah, sure. Me and the wassup? guys share the same firm.”

“Unless. . .”

“What?”

She dismissed the idea. “Nah. You’d think it was sleazy.”

This woman, promising “sleazy,” struck some illicit
twang
deep inside Todd. Pathetic, too, but. . .

“What?” he smiled hopefully.

“It’s just that, I do know something about these things. If you wanted me to advise you in some way, like if we partnered up on this. . .”

“So you’d make money off this, too?”

“Sleazy, right?”

“I don’t know,” Todd said thoughtfully. He never wanted to see anyone shorted. And, if Annie made out on this, she might take him to bed.
Could
happen.

“I mean, none of this would be happening if you hadn’t come along,” he said. “I guess if anybody’s gonna make a buck off this. . .”

“Look, just think about it. Regardless of how you want to handle it, this is a real opportunity for you,” Annie said. “Talk to your folks. Talk to whoever you trust. Just let me know what you want to do.”

T
o sexy up the piece, Annie needed tape of Joel the jock, some images of him suited up, sweaty and dominating, so he got most of the team to take some early batting practice even though there was still a sting in the air and traces of snow on the ground, and baseball season was still a few weeks away. It didn’t take much convincing. Everyone was trying to figure out how to get themselves on R
²
Rev now that the crew was back in town.