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God, how did this conversation turn this direction? I’ve been thinking about how I’ll transition away from the public image I have.
“When we started Aspire, we all knew you were the only one who could be the face,” Noah says, but his eyes say something more. He knows I want to pull away from the man the world knows as Emery Brooks. I don’t want to be the playboy anymore.
I want Madison Carter, and Emery Brooks would never settle down with the intern.
“Well, you’re going to have to be the face of your resort, Dante. You might want to get your image under control.”
He frowns and takes another sip of his beer. “Yeah. I might have to do that. I don’t really like the idea of the woman who hates my very existence to be the one at press releases. Somehow, I think that’ll probably turn out poorly.”
That reminds me that I needed to talk to Noah about the idea of going public with our push into the ChitChat sphere.
But Dante hops out of the seat and says, “Now that you’re here, let’s go do something fun.” I start to interject, but Dante holds up his hand. “I know we can’t go to the strip club now that you’re shacked up with the intern. How about doing something a little more interesting?”
He looks from Noah to me and back to Noah. “How do you two feel about jetpacks?”
“Jetpacks?” Noah says with wide eyes.
Dante grins. “Yeah. I bought three. Haven’t used them yet, but it seems like a fitting way to celebrate something as crazy as me buying a resort to run.”
Noah looks like he’s going to shit his pants. I’ve done crazier things, and it could be fun. “I’ll strap one on, but I won’t use it until I’ve seen whether you survive wearing one.”
Noah takes a deep breath. “Why am I even friends with you?”
Dante says, “Because I make your life interesting, Athos. Without me, you’d end up old and boring before you turned forty.”
Chapter 43
Madison
The camera crew is wedged into the bathroom at odd angles. One guy is standing on the toilet, leaning around the wall to the bathtub. The other is wedged into a corner, camera over his head with the screen pointed down so he can see it.
And the wonderful Angela, aka ScrubbingAngel, has her phone out as she sprays her neighbor’s bathtub with Organo-cleanz.
This is the moment of truth. All the data that Aspire took last week to make sure it works pointed toward it being incredible at getting soap scum off bathtubs and showers, but I haven’t seen it in action. Now, one of the biggest CleanChat influencers is trying it live for her viewers.
“Ladies, this bathtub looks like it’s never seen a single scrubbing in a decade. There’s probably more buildup than there is bathtub.” She scratches against the wall with her nail, and the soap comes off like a pencil shaving.
“Look at that. There’s probably a half-inch of soap buildup covering the entire tub. This would take hours to clean with a pumice stone and normal cleaner, but I have a new product that I’ve never heard of before. Supposedly, it should cut through the buildup like butter, and today, we’re going to test it out.”
She flashes her phone at the bottle for a few seconds before focusing on the tub again as she sprays the cleaner. She’s not light about it, but when she starts scrubbing with the pumice stone, the buildup just sloughs away.
“H-E-double hockey sticks…” she mutters. She continues to scrub, quickly scraping away the buildup everywhere that she’s sprayed. I hold my breath as she gets to the part that she hasn’t sprayed yet.
It suddenly stops being easy. The pumice stone works well, but it’s still just scraping away at it, one thin layer at a time rather than cutting all the way to the actual tub.
“Do you see this? It’s incredible how different it is. Now let’s compare it to my normally recommended bathtub and soap scum cleaner.”
She sprays a different bottle, one that I’ve used my entire life to clean my tub and shower. “Remember that you have to let this sit for a few minutes before you scrub, or it doesn’t work.”
We wait patiently, and my fingers are trembling. This moment is what will make or break the entire campaign. How does it compare to the stuff everyone’s used to buying?
Angela gets to work with the stone again, and she has to work at it, but it comes off almost twice as fast as without cleaner. Still nowhere near as easily as Organo-cleanz.
I feel like I can breathe again as she turns the camera to her face. “There’s a definite winner here. Organo-cleanz is worth every dollar. The crazy part isn’t that it works well. We’ve all heard about the industrial cleaners that will take soap scum off just by spraying it, but there aren’t any that are this safe.
“Organo-cleanz is made of completely child safe ingredients. If three-year-old Bobby sneaks into the cleaning closet and pours it all over himself, there’s nothing in it that will hurt him.”
She turns the camera to the back of the bottle and focuses on the ingredients. “This is a revolution in cleaning. It works like an industrial cleaner, but it’s safe enough for children to use. If you find it, buy it because it won’t stay on the shelves long.
