The rich cool air tickled Frank's cheeks. The rude morning air seemed to bring him down to its level and never let him go on his walk to the mall. He wanted to see if he could get anything nice for the feline and the fancy bird. He made his way to the only shop in town that had clothing designed from the north of Spain and bought a nice evening gown for his girlfriend and a nice sweater for Lily. He made sure not to spend too much but he ended up running over budget, screw it, he thought, it was the holidays and there will be presents galore for me too, I'm sure of it. I'm afraid it was an entirely different situation to the two girls, they had forgot about buying presents and were instead going to the bar after work to get plastered and have fun being models that didn't have an inch of responsibility like Frank had.
They would go all night partying and having the best days of their lives and it was a mystery to them when Christmas came around, they had entirely forgot about it. Frank had rich newspaper covering the boxes and went over to their house the night of Christmas to see what the hubbub was about. He dressed casually but this night, he had spent all night figuring out his outfit for the night on the town they were having.
Upon reaching their apartment, there was a man knocking on the door, Frank was frightened by him and wanted to stay away, but he ended up inching closer and closer to the door to see what was happening. It was the manager, he said the rent was late and something had to be done about it. The door slammed open as a matter of fact and Muriel gave a whole wad of dollar bills to the man and told him to get lost. The man was furious and gave only his best remarks to her, "You might be a bird but if you pay me late again I will take it as a punch in the face and call the police," Muriel responded, "As a matter of fact?" She spotted Frank and wistfully called him over. She had been drinking, he could tell, in fact he smelled it on her breath when she was macking away at him. What in the world was happening in the living room, he thought.
He saw Lily with a gallon of rum sipping away at it having the best time of her life. He wanted to go somewhere and do something but they said they were drinking away to get rid of the headaches from last night. Muriel propositioned him but he was too dead set in his ways to proceed any further than they already had. "Lily's not going to mind, she's had a terrible amount of vodka before that bottle." Frank stood there tempted but it wasn't what he wanted to be known for so he passed on her offer delightfully well actually, "I've seen enough of this tomfoolery and you have made a mess of yourself, it's supposed to be Christmas where we all have fun together, not some whiny vain little attempt at getting back to where you left off last night." Muriel cried at this disorderly conduct, she had enough of him and wanted him out of the house, Frank cried, "Please be reasonable I have these clothes for you I went over budget for," Muriel felt too bad to kick Frank out so they decided to stay and watch television for the holiday programming.
Frank was pissed and he had it up to here with his new girlfriend which they confessed to each other over the phone in-between chapters, Frank thought Muriel wasn't ready for it and had gotten bored with him in the first place. Muriel thought of it a different way, she loved Frank and didn't want another man in her life to rob her of her innocence any further than she'd already got I'm afraid.
A Macbook laptop sat on her table, it was Frank's he used to write job applications with. Muriel was scared of his attitude, she did the best that she could and stayed afloat in his world, she was too busy partying and schmoozing that her talentless act garbage started to take a toll on her, she distressed him with her petty problems further, "all I have to do is walk and take coffee and look at the camera, I'm sick of this lifestyle, Frank, I beg you to think of a way out of it for me." Frank did want her to have a better lifestyle than she was having but didn't have the guts to tell her that an honest days work wouldn't provide like modeling would so he was free of his act to tell her that a normal hard days work isn't fun and just put his arm around her shoulder and said, "there there." They had opened the boxes and immediately felt bad through their drunken stooper, Muriel was bad mouthing Lily about not recanting something about Christmas being a party where people bring presents too.
It was too far off from when she turned from a cat so Lily nodded off when Muriel was mid conversation with her. She turned back to Frank who had a huge frown on his face. When she asked him what was wrong he acted furious towards her, this was the night he spent dreaming about when he was at work because nobody would bother him, and now suddenly he takes time off and nobody seems to be there for him. Muriel guffawed, as if his words had no meaning, she said this, "Well if you weren't such a talentless hack maybe you would be out partying with us instead of indoors all day waiting for something to happen to you." Frank was mad, "We don't show affection to each other for some earthworm to crawl through your door and receive nothing but disaffection, you should be ashamed of yourself for how foolish you're acting, modeling is too distant a pastime for you to be crawling shirtless through the mud on our wedding night or whenever we hang out, you should be ashamed of how much you're adding to your own stupid bullshit." Muriel responded, "Wedding night, I hardly knew you just two weeks ago and now you're acting as if we're soulmates, listen here bub, you might think we have it all going on but you are too different from me, I want to eat licorice under the stars every night and think about romance with different men who suit my wild fancy of driving cars fast and eating out whenever I so choose, so if you think you can sit there and act as if we have it all going on is caput. Listen here, when you react in a funny way to my outbreaks I get annoyed at you, I'm not planning on leaving for goodness sakes I just want my voice to be heard and you should get out more." Frank had had enough with her childish ways, "If you can't decide who you like more, me or your fancy friends who feed you, drink and fuel this terrific behavior, then maybe we aren't right for eachother." Muriel laughed, "as far as you know, my friends are a bunch of hippopotamus hell bent on destroying my future, you should be so noble as to come and act like you're better but if you see them you will not be shocked at what they're doing, they're just trying to have a blast in our short existence such is life." Frank backed away for a second, he needed to think about what he thought he should do about her incessant behavior, he thought he might lose her to the monotony of his own life and didn't want to believe for a second that her friends were there for her, on the contrary, he was paranoid her friends were out to end their relationship with each other, she laughed at his cries, she knew he was paranoid and she was done with dealing with him when he was getting that way. This displeased him immeasurably and he walked out on her.
Upon leaving, he saw the doorman and decided to light a cigarette and hopefully wait for her to come out. They sat and talked about being a psychic until she finally came out to stop him from leaving her house. She had made a bad mistake in laughing at his tortured form, she didn't even get him a Christmas present and decided not to make him leave so suddenly, she wanted to body Frank into the ground as a Christmas present and he was sure to adore it as soon as they got around to kicking the cat out. It was then Frank said something foolish, "I can't believe you're living in that room instead of with me," Muriel responded frankly, "Surely you must be joking, this isn't the time and place to have this conversation now act up, come back inside, and joke around with us some more before you let us go." Frank was acting up and he didn't want the doorman to see, he lured her around back and told her straight up that she had to pick her dreams or him.
She laughed at him and tried to turn it around back on him, "Why don't you pick my life over your work? Come to my rehearsals and photo shoots and be my manager, what do you say?" He looked shocked, it was the best of both worlds answer but he didn't know how to be a manager more than he knew how to be a clerk at a morgue or a window washer, it seemed manageable, he could do all the accounting but managing talent wasn't something he was ever interested in. "Just know you'll have to foster my dreams instead of trying to tear me down for your incessant work day that isn't a laugh but a seriously big bore. You could do something real, you could even manage the cat, think of your future here." He couldn't help himself but laugh, only Muriel could have thought her way out of this, and an earthworm had no leverage over a cat and a squirrely minx in red dress pants.
Frank was floored at what had happened here, he was totally blind to the possibilities of his own life and forced his way down a black hole, luckily Muriel was there to catch his ass out of it before it had been too late for either of them. This writer has seen a lot of relationships go down but none brought to life with something as silly as a few words. From now on, Frank was their manager and he was the best at it. It was a bright and shiny day for Frank the next morning. Frank went to his job and stayed at his place all day not working, hoping to be fired. His boss knew something was up and decided to have a talk with him about it, Frank explained how he found new work as an manager and wouldn't need the job anymore, but he needed the paycheck. Boss said no way, there was a need for him there and he was his top worker. They respected him there, his boss tried to argue that there was no way he knew how to do accounting and managerial work at the same time.
Frank thought for a moment if it was a bad idea or not, he just decided to quit and save himself the trouble of explaining how he wanted to get fired at his new job if he ever had to quit being a manager for whatever reasons that laid beyond the bend. This was a new world for Frank and it couldn't be taken lightly, he spent all night watching videos and reading articles about what a talent manager should do and why they were important in the first place. Frank didn't want the bird to get screwed on her contracts so he thought that was a good place to start. He spotted her contract and was floored at how little she was getting paid, she was working for peanuts and she was wasting it all at the mall and ritzy clubs that people who were ripping her off brought her too.
He decided to call up the man that made the contract to begin with and ran off about how it's too little she was getting paid for working. "And who is this?" Her boss asked, "this is her new talent manager, Frank Bulfind," the man who got her to sign the contract adjusted his tie and began to revel in how brilliant he was, "I got her to sign it and that's that, if you want to argue about it, I suggest you come here in person and try to find a loophole somewhere. There isn't one I'm afraid and she'll be stuck for six years making minimal figures, how does that sound, Captain dufus?"
Frank was sick to his stomach, he should have made her check with him before she signed it. Muriel complained that making it as a freelance model was tough and any contract she got for six years was worth it just to be living in this town. Frank sort of understood but there had to be a way out, he couldn't lose to a man that used the term captain dufus unironically when dealing with your clients manager. He wanted to teach him the meaning of respect but he needed to find a way how.
He remembered his other client, the cat, maybe he could leverage his way into a better spot, he asked her if she signed any contract yet, she meowed no. Fantastic, he thought, maybe he could get enough money for both of them in one contract and make a new one to split the profits to keep both of them fed. But getting a contract for a brand new model with little to no personality (as Muriel said) was a tough battle, especially to crooks that work in the entertainment and advertising agencies. There were plenty of women in Paris and he needed to make her stand out more than she already did.
He thought designer shoes were out of the question, too much work on stupid things, he thought, we should be living in career mode instead of loving in the attraction to frivolous objects that wasted time and space and thought of a way out of this predicament. They would work for free, do as many modeling shoots as possible under the radar of the monsieur and take back what they could in getting the word out about them. New people would pop up wanting their autograph on the dotted line and nobody would come as a threat to him anymore. There was just one problem, they couldn't work for free, the contract was very strict I'm afraid and they couldn't do any work apart from that agency.
Well one of them couldn't and that was his way in. He would leverage the cat for a better stay in the company. He didn't want to make himself a threat to her boss, he would play dead for awhile until the opportunity arises where he could take action on this foolish atrocity that foolish Muriel got herself into. He tried calling a few of the models that she knew to see what figure salary they were getting paid, he was mortified when none of them got paid less than she did. This was a fluke, he thought, apparently all of them turned down their original contract because that's what their manager told them to do. She was a tricky case, it was a mad house that night. He couldn't find his way out of this sticky situation and he feared his life might be hamstrung if he couldn't get a big enough commission on what these losers were getting paid to stand in front of a camera and laugh and sing a little. He saw the whole act as one foolhardy way to make a living and he didn't like being in the center of it but he liked being a business man nevertheless. Frank thought too much about what his original client was getting and not his new client, or finding other clients instead of fastidiously trying a way to freak out her boss. He had a grudge but he knew it was a losing battle if he couldn't find more talent.
He prayed for the alien to create more trouble so he could have a trove of beautiful creatures that he could mold from the start. It started again, more life he would need to go through to get himself paid, he tried to be a shark about it, make sure the ladies knew who was in charge but he wasn't prepared for what they would do yet if they didn't get their way, cry about it to everyone. He needed to keep his rep in mind so he failed to be a shark and started being a minnow and was swallowed whole by talented play girls alike. He had to find a happy medium that he hadn't thought of before, being a bore wouldn't cut it in this day and age, he would have to take things further if he wanted more clients. As soon as they heard he was representing Muriel they would laugh and tell him to get lost, he would have to have a talk with her about her stage presence in the work site.
The conversation did not go well, Muriel had a fastidious duty to tell people to knock things off she didn't appreciate, he argued that in fact she should but not in the way she was doing it, she should act accordingly and not bother acting up anymore. She was given an ultimatum, shape up or be out of luck with him. He never used his relationship as a strength I'm afraid, if they knew he was dating Muriel they would ask a litany of questions, he thought it was normal to keep personal matters out of the work space but as soon as he mentioned his fearful fancy towards her, he was driven into the wall with mad speculation at how he managed to tie her down. It broke the ice quite nicely and Muriel made herself known to all the pageant girls in Paris that dared listened to her and she was heard whether they listened or not. She never said a bad thing without reason and she always had her wits about her unless she was dark and drunk and madly whining about how she hasn't had sex since she dragged the cat in. The cat was a treat, he fetched her a good contract like a nice puppy that ran for 6 months instead of years, he thought he could get a bigger signing bonus if she played ball but nothing came about it, he would have to shoot under to keep his girls in work for longer than half a year, but that meant freedom to let them rise and find new work opportunities themselves.
No turning back now, Frank got a new publisher to sign with the next step of his plan, he would take the world by storm and nobody would see it coming. Frank had cunning and he was finally making good use of it, he would use the publishers push to break Muriel out of her contract if this didn't work he would be shit out of luck. He pushed hard over the phone to hear him out and say the publisher was a better deal than Muriel was, and it was obsorbidantly so, the publisher was in fact a major role he could play in the card game of a proposal, he would just sign the publisher off to them in exchange for Muriel's contract being absolved. It was a wild fluke but it worked out in his favor, Muriel was given 5 months and they would resign her at the end of the period.
Then disaster struck, by the end of the 5 months, Frank found himself with a lot of girls but none of them did anything more than shun him and hope for a raise like Muriel had gotten. Frank needed to get to the bottom of his self esteem issue, it was dragging everything down and the girls could smell blood in the water, he needed a way to make himself look trustable, so he gave the girls an ultimatum, stay with him or freeze to death come October when he got all the girls that stayed with him a better job than those who didn't. It was a wild bluff but it made all the pretty girls that shunned him want a piece of that pie. He would have to act quickly and rightly so to rise to the top of an advertising firm that liked his level attitude. They were printing papers left and right and it was all due to Frank's obscure attitude.
He was a wild shark and a bluffing walrus, the game ran smoothly and Frank was hustling out the door to find new girls to manage that already had a slight foothold on the industry already.
The cat was hell bent on scaling a building, she had done it before and wanted to feel what it was like to feel the wind in her hair, Frank was busy with a client when he saw her out the window. He quickly pulled her in and introduced her to the client and she was pleased to know that the animal was quickly pulled and held down onto the carpet while Frank whisked her away into the night. The cat was furious she couldn't get up more than 3 flights, she wanted to do more and planned a daring escape from Frank's grasp to do it. She quickly vaulted headfirst into the nearest rail and climbed herself up, Frank was daring in that instead of calling for security, he called that girl to bring him a camera.
Frank shot the entire ascent until she was all the way up the building and touching the sky, it was a beautiful shot of her climbing up the last balcony and Frank decided to let her talent be known to the world. The fearless feline freak, he called her. It was beneath Frank to attach a gimmick to these animals but she exuded so much personality with this freak stunt she had to put it to good use. It was alright by him, said the agent from the publishing firm Frank whisked off for Muriel's contract, and they signed her whole heartedly hoping she would do it again, a beauty climbing buildings now that's what people would pay to see.
They were mesmerized that Frank thought of shooting it and gave him brief shame before concluding that this needed to be an advertised event. The following week later she was found dangling from a rooftop in the north of Paris, this time with a rope around her lap to prevent an obvious freak out from onlookers. No other model would do this sort of stuff and he got to thinking what other freak gimmicks would allow him to raise the popularity for these girls. He thought of what to do with Muriel and the other fellows but he didn't want to whore them out like that, to all those that agreed, he thought of something fast. He thought for a second, what would Muriel be good at?
A stage play he thought but Muriel did not want to be an actress, he insisted that she try it, the entertainment industry was a lucrative market and French airwaves would be blessed by her presence on or off stage. She thought about it for a moment, acting seemed like a fastidious thing she wasn't prepared for, but she had the spunk to do it in the first place, she was a natural born actor, he thought. So he got her a stage play to try it out. She was wonderful, showered with lots of praise and the theater was melting under her perfume of an artistic performance. She was the queen of Belize in a short run theater play and was pushed into acting further. A new direction for her, he thought, this would open up doors most definitely. He started managing talent from all spectrums of artistic media, it got quite exciting after awhile but Frank was overworked and over utilized by his clients, he needed to drop some so he made another one of his famous ultimatums, if you can't act and draw in crowds by next month, you would be dropped as clients.
Now luckily their contracts were quite flexible with him so he had the opportunity to do this master stunt free of charge. Many of them dropped acting after a week because they didn't have the chops to do it. But some remained steadfast in their glory to stay with Frank and a couple of them begged to stay in work for them. To the ones that cried the hardest, Frank obliged, to the ones that did nothing but try to charm their way out of it, Frank would humbly decline. He needed girls that wanted to work and he would have no fun cheering on braggers instead of doers. One of them tried to rob him of his integrity with Muriel but it was a hard pass in the light of true evil, she would become a dog to him and run around town telling everybody they did in fact sleep together and Frank would always decline.
The rumor got to Muriel and she was pushed against the wall of another producer, a male one at that. Frank heard about this and got the man arrested for sexual assault, Frank was feared in this town and he ruled with an iron fist. Everybody knew Muriel was guarded off and she began to get invited to less parties, but her stardom rose because people didn't have to hear her all day and night. She was deeply missed after awhile and was only invited to the rich shindigs with producers and merry men that made their bones in this town before they were turned by an alien in the first place. It was a humble start for Frank and he tore a heroic new one to anyone that came in his way.
It was movie time in Paris and all the heroes were humbly asking Frank for Muriel to come and audition, she had made a splash with a role in an extraordinary play written by a man named Albert Flamenco about a bird that turned into a walrus. She had the lead and all that watched her knew she had talent for television and film as well. She was in a musical with all the stars of Paris and the cat was involved too as a wise cracking chamber maid.
Frank had it all in front of him, he would smoke cigars with agents and managers alike and spend the night basking in his own parties that he threw to get the word out about Muriel and his other talent. It was time to make Paris his bitch, he thought, all of his girls would be in work if he could just find the right talent agency to take them, and then it came, William Tortoise had a strange game they would play to see if the talent had actual chops or nothing at all.
They would set up boxes and let them play around and improv a whole scene devoted to whatever they could come up with, Muriel threw a tantrum and pretended all the boxes were police officers and Muriel was given a pass. The cat on the other hand just open handed slapped the boxes around and acted like she was some philandering playboy which didn't seem to play off right for her. She was given one more chance and stardom but it didn't seem to look right, she saw all the boxes as buffoons and began to confess that she was the queen of Paris and all the other people were dirt beneath her pricey sandals. Frank begged and pleaded with them to take the girl like they did the others but she was too outlandish to hire I'm afraid. They seemed to take talking to her as a chore as well and decided she was better off seeking another agency. Frank had this all planned out and it wasn't coming together well, nobody wanted the freak that climbed the radio tower so he decided to put her to good use as an associate to Frank instead of a talent.
She learned all the ropes but most importantly the demeanor of how to act like a pardoning member of society and not some ritzy queen that buggered off to scratch herself every once and a blue moon. He was furious at her when she tried to staple together a bunch of important documents wrong and Frank learned a valuable lesson that day, never let talent to clerical work, he needed a partner, someone who knew the ins and out of this town and was ready to part with whatever work they were doing at the time. He remembered the doorman, he quickly hurried her away from her workstation and got her a job as a waitress in a five star hotel he held guests at who flew in from out of town. She was great at it as a matter of fact, very nimble and would never dream about letting food go to waste, she had gained 5 pounds from working there a month and it didn't stop there, she had gained an absorbent amount of weight that made her impossible to model further. She learned about working out and would become obsessed with it, managing calories, intake, and everything she would need to stay fit.
Frank was impressed by her initiative and decided to give her another shot as a clerk for his front desk which was in his apartment. Then she embarrassed herself again, she was calculating calories on the job I'm afraid and that sent Frank spiraling over the edge, you couldn't control a cat, he thought, you could just house them and hope their feline urges didn't get the better of them. He decided to neuter her of all responsibilities and remained steadfast in his glory to get her off his back. She said screw it, she couldn't rely on Frank for everything and went back to the restaurant and waited for further instruction to come from God or the alien that sent her there. She was waiting for a man, she thought, but nobody was good enough for a regal cat such as herself, she had tried dating but it was too boring, she didn't want to stay cooped up with a guy alone for longer than 5 minutes and her attention span was that of an actual rabbit instead of a fully trained house cat.
She was a stray, she knew she was a stray, but she had been given a second chance and rat poisoning was the only thing she found fun aside from eating what was left of the chef's remains. She needed a job that would push her to the very limits and thinking about what that would be for a cat isn't the best way to spend your time I'm afraid. It was Muriel who suggested that she should mouth off at Frank for more work but she didn't want to rush him. She seemed steadfast in her glory not to bother Frank any further and in fact made it her duty to seek out what made her happy to the letter in the first place.
She thought back to when she was a cat, a smart feline with wonderful fur that was riddled with mange. That's it, she thought, a doctor would be a perfect role for a cat such as myself. So she went out to see what the mess was about, went to hospitals, talked to doctors and they all told her you'd be better off being a vet if you barely know what college is in the first place and don't even have a GED to whine about. It was a hard process getting her to learn anything, but Frank helped her study for her test whenever he had time and Muriel would often barge in and give wrong answers for stupid silly questions. Just do what she doesn't Frank said braggadociously. After 3 excruciating attempts, she had her dismissive GED, the people giving the test were sick of her but before the third attempt, she found out about adderall and powered through it in 10-15 minutes flat.
She was obnoxiously smart on this stuff and Frank would often revel if she had gotten it sooner, she would have been a kickass accountant.