BREAKING NEWS: LOCAL PLUMBER CLAIMS FUNNEL ENVY WAS “MADE UP”
The soundstage fell silent. Every phone in the room buzzed simultaneously, which is the modern equivalent of a record scratch. Barry, mid-monologue, cape halfway through a symbolic flutter, froze.
“What,” he said.
Rihanna was already holding up her phone. “Channel Nine. Sunrise. You need to see this.”
The screen showed a man Barry recognised with the visceral horror of a man recognising his own personal nightmare. Travis.
Travis the plumber. Travis who had once told Barry that his pipe-wrench technique was “aggressive” and “emotionally unresolved.” Travis who had stolen Barry’s parking spot at the Glebe Bunnings in 2019 and never apologised. Travis who now sat in a television studio, wearing a polo shirt with his own face embroidered on the pocket, speaking directly to camera.
Barry went very still.
“Who is that?” Cath asked, leaning in.
Barry didn’t answer immediately. His jaw tightened. His hands, the hands that had held a pipe wrench for thirty years, curled into fists at his sides.
“That’s Travis,” he said finally. His voice was quiet. Too quiet.
“And who,” Gaga asked carefully, “is Travis?”
Barry took a long breath. “Travis and me… we used to run with a gang.”
The three women turned to look at him in unison. Even Nigel the king parrot stopped glaring at the screen and swivelled his head toward Barry.
“A gang?” Cath said.
“The Banditos,” Barry said, and the word hung in the air like a bad smell.
“The Banditos?” Rihanna repeated. “Like… a plumbing gang?”
“Like a plumbing gang,” Barry confirmed. “We ran the inner west. Glebe, Newtown, Marrickville. If a pipe needed fixing and you didn’t want to ask questions, you called the Banditos. We were unscrupulous.”
“Unscrupulous?” Cath’s eyes widened.
“Totally unscrupulous. We cut corners. We used cheap parts. We charged whatever we thought we could get away with. We were notorious.”
Gaga leaned forward, fascinated. “Notorious for what, exactly?”
Barry looked at her. “For being cheap.”
There was a pause.
“That’s not a very good gang,” Rihanna said.
Plumber Sydney Finder – Top Mosman Plumbers
“We were notorious for being cheap,” Barry insisted. “All through Sydney. You ask anyone about the Banditos—’oh yeah, those
blokes, they’ll fix your sink for thirty bucks and it’ll break again in a week, but thirty bucks!’ That was our reputation.”
“That’s the worst gang I’ve ever heard of,” Cath said.
“The guy never had a funnel blockage in his life,” Travis was saying, his voice dripping with the kind of smugness usually reserved for men who explain wine to waiters. “I’ve been a plumber for thirty years. I know a blocked funnel when I see one. And the shiniest funnel I’ve ever handled was Barry’s. Not a blockage in sight. He is misleading the public.”
Cath’s wine glass—she had acquired a wine glass somewhere between the first take and the second—shattered against the backdrop of fake palm trees.
“He what?”
“He said the shiniest funnel he’s ever handled was Barry’s,” Rihanna said, replaying the clip. “That’s… that’s a weird thing to say on morning television.”
“It’s a lie!” Cath roared. “Barry’s funnel was deeply envious! I saw it! Well, I didn’t see it, but I felt it! Through the east wing!”
“That’s not how funnels work,” Barry said weakly.
“Don’t you dare defend yourself with logic right now, Barry, we are at war.”
Margot Robbie and Ayumi Shinoda
[Menu]
THE PLUMBER OF WRATH
Gaga had not spoken. This was, in itself, alarming. She stood very still, her film-reel dress catching the studio lights, Nigel the king parrot perched on her shoulder like a judgemental gargoyle. Trevor II, sensing his moment, shuffled closer.
“Gaga,” Cath said carefully. “Say something.”
“His polo shirt,” Gaga said, her voice low and terrible. “His polo shirt has his own face on it.”
“Yes.”
“That is the hubris of a man who has never known true blockage.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to destroy him.”
“Excellent.”
Gaga swept toward the studio exit, film reels clanking. “I need a phone. I need a stylist. I need three hundred vintage funnels and a permit for public assembly.”
“For what?”
“Rhetorical assembly,” Gaga said, and was gone.
THE DONUT MUFFIN OF WRATH
Rihanna had not moved from her chair. She was still holding her phone, but now she was holding it the way a general holds a map. “Travis has a plumbing supply store in Parramatta,” she said quietly. “It has a one-star rating. The reviews say he overcharges and talks too much about himself.”
“How do you know that?” Barry asked.
“I looked it up when you told me about the Bunnings parking spot.”
“I told you about that once. Six months ago. The same day Yua Mikami was assaulted by the bird.”
“I remember everything, Barry.”
Cath leaned in. “What are you thinking?”
Rihanna set down her phone and picked up a muffin from the plate beside her—raspberry white chocolate, “for strategic clarity.” She held it to the light. She did not eat it.
“I’m thinking,” she said, “that Travis has never looked at a muffin and understood what it means. That is his weakness.”
“That’s everyone’s weakness,” Barry said.
“Which is why I’m going to fix it. Starting with a very public muffin delivery.”
“To Travis?”
“To Travis,” Rihanna confirmed. “In front of the news cameras. One perfect muffin. And a card that says ‘A muffin you don’t eat is a muffin that can be anything. A muffin you do eat is just a muffin. Gone. Forgotten. Which one are you, Travis?’”
There was a pause.
“That’s devastating,” Cath said.
“I know.”
“He’ll have no idea what it means.”
“I know.”
BARRY, IN THE CORNER, WITH THE CAPE
Barry sat down on a crate marked “FRAGILE—CONTAINS FUNNELS” and put his head in his hands. The cape pooled around him like a defeated ghost.
“I never said I had funnel envy,” he said to no one in particular. “I mean, I did, but I never said my funnel was envious in the clinical sense. I never said it was blocked. I said I had waterworks issues. Ms. Zeta-Jones is the one who said ‘funnel envy.’ Ms. Gaga is the one who put it in the book. Ms. Rihanna is the one who made the muffins. I just sat there.”
The three women turned to look at him.
“Barry,” Cath said gently, “are you saying this is our fault?”
“I’m saying I never asked for any of this.”
“You asked for help.”
“I asked for a faucet repair.”
Cath considered this. “Well. Technically.”
“Technically I am a plumber who told a client about a personal medical issue and now there’s a movie and a support group and a rival plumber on morning television saying my funnel is too shiny.”
“The shiniest,” Rihanna corrected.
“Thank you, Rihanna.”
GAGA RETURNS