“The doctor seemed hopeful. Said it wasn’t too bad, considering.”
“It’s fucked that they’re letting him race next weekend. No points on his license or anything?”
Matt shakes his head. “Andes wants us to pretend to be friends. Like, Sylvain is actually ordering us to be. He threatened to terminate both our contracts.”
“Andes can’t survive without Robert’s sponsors, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot.”
“Right.” Matt needs more sponsors. “So guess who’s actually going to suffer if we can’t sell a fake friendship?”
“Ah. I’m sure that’ll go well.”
Matt hasn’t filmed with social media all year, so it’s a little surprising to see how much of his schedule for Hungary is set aside for marketing.
“Shouldn’t we wait until this clears up?” Matt asks, gesturing to his still-bruised eye and swollen nose bridge.
“Honestly, we can’t.” At least the social media guy looks a little sympathetic. “We have a bunch of banked Robert content, but now that everything needs both of you in it, we have to make up for lost time.”
“Oh.” So Matt has to play best buddies with Robert even while sporting the black eye he gave him. Perfect. “Of course.”
Maybe Matt can keep to the background. Robert can do his little “look at me” thing, and Matt’s arm or foot can be in the frame. Easy way to say they’re both involved without people staring at his eye. A win for everyone.
He probably should’ve floated the idea past someone. When Matt opens the door to the room they’ve commandeered into a makeshift set, there’s a camera on a tripod pointing to two empty chairs.
Matt’s pointed to his seat—the one on the right—by an excitable man with flailing hands who explains the concept of the video. He switches on a couple of lights that point directly at Matt’s face and the driver is temporarily blinded.
When Robert finally graces them with his presence, the content director hands them whiteboards and markers and explains the concept again.
“Can you introduce the game for the audience?” he asks Robert before disappearing behind the still camera. The social guy holds a second camera off to the side and focuses on Robert.
Matt wants to be annoyed, but his entire plan was to keep a low profile, to fade into the background.
“Sure. Ready?” Robert looks between both cameras, and the men nod. “Alright, so today, Matt and I’ll be answering some ofthe questions y’all’ve sent in. One of us’ll answer, and the other’ll try’n guess the answer. The first question?—”
Robert stops talking, mid-sentence and looks up for direction.
“That was perfect. Once more, just in case, and we’ll move on.”
Robert repeats the same lines, almost verbatim, and Matt searches the blank wall for a script.
“Um, Matthew?” the director asks. “Can you not make that face? The camera is picking up on it.”
“Oh, yeah.” Matt didn’t realize he was still in the frame. “Sorry.”
“Maybe that’s just his face.” Robert’s southern twang is long gone now that the cameras have stopped recording.
“Maybe I should rearrangeyourface, see how you like it.”
“Doubt I’dlike itas much as you did.”
“Hey! Right here!” The director claps his hands and waves them above his head erratically. He must have been some sort of child photographer in another life. It’s almost frustrating that the distraction actually works. “Okay, you know what? That first take was good. Let's just move on.”
“What is my favorite color?” Matt reads off the provided card.
Robert starts writing immediately.
Matt holds his pen to his board, but he doesn’t actually have a favorite color, so he needs to think first.
The obvious answers for a man would be blue or green, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance that’s what Robert has guessed. Matt could be edgy, try to pick something else like pink, but he’d be made fun of for it incessantly. Black is an option, so is red, but both seem too loud, too aggressive.
