The offices of Hyperion Publishing were sleek and modern, all glass walls and minimalist furniture and shelves displaying books by authors who had actually finished writing things. Barry sat in a leather chair that was far too soft for a man who spent his days crawling under sinks, clutching a notebook filled with his handwritten chapter list. Beside him sat Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna, arranged like a bizarre panel of guardian angels—or perhaps guardian meddlers.
Across the table sat Marcus Webb, a publishing executive with the kind of earnest smile that suggested he had once believed in literature. He was beginning to reconsider.
“So,” Marcus said, pen poised over a legal pad, “Barry. Let’s start with the title. You got a title for this book?”
Barry straightened up, proud. He had spent three nights thinking about this. He had written it on the back of a plumbing invoice. He had practised saying it in the mirror. “Yes,” he said. “The Man, The Myth, and The Funnel.”
Marcus nodded, writing it down. “The Man, The Myth, and The Funnel. I
like it. It’s catchy. It’s—”
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“What Barry meant to say,” Catherine Zeta-Jones interrupted, leaning forward with the kind of smile that had launched a thousand magazine covers, “was that this is a possible title. A working title. A… a first draft of a title, if you will. I think he was leaning more towards—” she paused dramatically, “—Welsh Women and the Prostate: A Journey.“
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Barry turned to look at her. “I don’t remember telling you that.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, Barry,” Cath said, patting his hand condescendingly. “You’re healing.”
“I’m not healing. I’m just writing a book.”
“Healing,” Cath repeated, nodding at Marcus as if this settled the matter.
Marcus looked between them, his pen hovering uncertainly. “Okay. So… we have two possible titles. We can work with that. Now, how big should this book be, Barry? Chapter-wise? Page count? We’re thinking—”
“Twenty chapters,” Barry said, holding up his notebook. “I have a list right here. Chapter One: ‘The Waterworks.’ Chapter Two: ‘Funnel Envy.’ Chapter Three: ‘The Trapeze Incident.’ Chapter Four—”
“Twenty chapters is a minimum,” Gaga interrupted, her dress today constructed entirely from shredded manuscript pages, giving her the appearance of a very glamorous recycling bin. Trevor II the cockatoo sat on her shoulder, still coughing intermittently. “I think what Barry is trying to say is that this book should be an experience. A multimedia event. An immersive journey into the soul of the funnel.”
“I didn’t say any of that,” Barry said.
“You didn’t have to,” Gaga replied. “Your eyes said it.”
Marcus blinked. “Okay. So… more than twenty chapters?”
“A hundred,” Gaga declared.
“Twelve,” Barry said firmly.
“We’ll compromise at eighty-five,” Cath suggested.
“That’s not a compromise,” Barry said. “That’s just a different number.”
“Details,” Cath said.
Marcus scribbled something on his legal pad that might have been “85?” or might have been a doodle of a noose. “Okay. Any pictures? Illustrations? We could do some diagrams, maybe—”
“No,” Barry said quickly. “No pictures. Just words. Words about… about my journey. About the blockage. About the unblocking. Metaphorically.”
“I think what Barry is trying to say,” Cath interjected, “is that the pictures alone will encompass at least three chapters. I mean—” she gestured dramatically, “—take a look at them!”
Before Barry could protest, Cath had pulled out her phone and handed it to Marcus. The publisher began scrolling. His eyebrows rose. His eyebrows rose further. His eyebrows reached an altitude previously unknown to publishing executives.
Barry leaned over to see what Marcus was looking at. His face went pale. Then red. Then pale again.
“Me in the shower?!?!?” Barry exclaimed, his voice cracking like a teenage boy’s.
Cath sighed, a long, mournful sigh. “I wanted to show the public a healthy prostate… but you wouldn’t turn around.”
“You were in my bathroom?!”
“I was documenting your journey, Barry. For posterity.”
Marcus had stopped scrolling. He was staring at the screen with the expression of a man who had seen things he could never unsee. “Is that… is that him on a trapeze?”
“Yes!” Cath said proudly. “That’s Chapter Seven. Or possibly Chapter Eight. I haven’t decided yet.”
Barry buried his face in his hands. “I’m going to die. I’m going to die in a publishing office.”
Rihanna, who had been silent throughout the exchange, finally spoke up. She was wearing a simple white dress and holding a plate of muffins—lemon poppy seed this time, “for clarity of vision.” She set the plate on Marcus’s desk.
“Here,” she said. “Have a muffin. Don’t eat it. Just look at it. It helps.”
Marcus looked at the muffin. It was, objectively, a beautiful muffin. Perfectly domed. Delicately glazed. Topped with tiny, shimmering sprinkles that caught the overhead light like scattered diamonds.
“Why can’t I eat it?” he asked.
“Because it’s not about eating,” Rihanna said. “It’s about potential. A muffin you don’t eat is a muffin that can be anything. A muffin you eat is just… a muffin. Gone. Forgotten.”
Marcus considered this. It was, he realized, the most coherent statement anyone had made all meeting. He set the muffin gently on his desk and turned back to Barry.
“So,” he said, “no pictures. What about… endorsements? Blurbs? Anyone famous willing to write a foreword?”
“I’ll do it,” Gaga said immediately.
“I’ll do it better,” Cath said.
“I’ll do it with muffins,” Rihanna said.
Barry raised a hand. “Can I… can I just write the book? Can I just tell my story? Without the trapeze photos and the shower pictures and the… the prostate documentation?”
Marcus looked at him sympathetically. “Barry, I’m going to be honest with you. This is the most interesting book proposal I’ve heard in fifteen years. I don’t fully understand it. I don’t know what funnel envy is. I’m not sure I want to know. But I want to publish it.”
Barry blinked. “Really?”
“Really. But—” Marcus held up a finger, “—I have one condition.”
“What?”
“I want the shower photo on the cover.”
Barry opened his mouth to protest, but Cath was already clapping her hands with delight, and Gaga was already sketching cover designs on a napkin, and Rihanna was already planning the launch party menu (all muffins, no food), and Trevor II was coughing in what might have been approval.
And Barry, defeated, picked up his muffin—the one Rihanna had given him hours ago, still untouched—and held it to the light.
It was a perfect circle of potential.
Just like him.
“Fine,” he said. “But I’m writing an entire chapter about how this was all Catherine Zeta-Jones’s fault.”
“Chapter Nine,” Cath said. “I’ll write the foreword.”
“No you won’t.”
“I already have.”
Barry sighed. Marcus scribbled. Gaga’s cockatoo coughed.
And somewhere in the distance—beyond the glass walls, beyond the publishing office, beyond the absurdity of it all—a kookaburra laughed.
Or maybe it was Barry.
Or maybe, just maybe, it was the book itself, beginning to write itself into existence, one ridiculous chapter at a time.
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