Toby’s cell phone rang while he leaned against a tree, sharing a bag of gummy worms with Owen. Wow. The phone company had promised outstanding reception, but it had never worked out here before. He glanced at the display and didn’t recognize the number. Probably a telemarketer-naturally, they’d have the technology to boost the signal to try to sell him a magazine subscription out in the woods.
“Yeah?”
“Is this Toby Floren?” The voice sounded young, like a college kid.
“Who is this?”
“I’m Steve Crown. You probably have no idea who I am, but I run the website Three Window Giggle Fits.”
“I don’t know it.”
“We’ve been around for about a year, and our hits are going up every single month. It’s all original content. Right off the bat I want to say that we can’t pay, yet, but it’s great exposure and Kirk Hart who does our strip Wheelies just got a major syndication deal.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“It’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard. I supplement my income by reading slush, and I was clearing out boxes of stuff from years and years and years ago that they were going to throw away. My job was just to make sure that they didn’t have some old strip by Gary Larson or something that could be valuable. So I was looking through some of it, and I found Rusty amp; Pugg, and there’s this weirdness to it that I really tapped into. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, and I don’t even get all of the punch lines, but it’s got this odd, enchanting charm.”
“You want to publish Rusty amp; Pugg?”
“Yes. Online.”
“Every day?”
“It doesn’t have to be every day, but some sort of regular schedule. Fleece is weekly, and Crush Manhattan is three times a week, but Wheelies and most of our other strips are daily, although Wheelies is the only one that does a Sunday strip.”
“I’m in.”
“May I ask how old you are?”
“Sixty-one.”
“See, no offense, but you’ll never get a major syndicate to pick you up. Me, I think that’s awesome. I’m going to use that as a selling point.”
When the conversation ended, Toby slipped the phone back into his pocket and turned to Owen. “Three Window Giggle Fits. What a shitty name.”
Yes.
“But people are going to read my strip!”
Toby went out that afternoon and bought a computer. The salesperson, a girl in her early twenties, thought that it was unbearably cute that such an old man wanted to learn how to use a computer. He was pretty sure she sold him features that he didn’t need, but the whole thing was gibberish and he pretty much just handed over his credit card.
The next week, he began taking classes.