“Sounds easy enough. What do you want me to start with?”

“Like I said, it doesn’t really matter when we take it to the cuttin’ floor. But…I don’t know, somethin’ pretty straight forward. How about the legends? Legends come from somewhere, don’t they? So we’re all ready?”

The girl joined the hipster behind the camera. They both gave a thumbs up.

“All righty then,” Fat Mike said, sinking his bulk into a foldable wood-framed director’s chair with FAT MAN emblazoned on the canvas back. “In five, four, three, two…roll camera.”

“Rolling,” the hipster said.

“Marker.”

Jamie held the slate in front of the camera which stated the scene and take number. She clapped the sticks together.

“Action!”

Marty looked into the camera lens. “Merfolk,” he began, “have been around since the beginning of recorded history. The first known reference appeared painted on cave walls in the Stone Age roughly 30,000 years ago.” He thought he sounded professional and authoritative, just as he’d practiced at home in front of the mirror. “The earliest written mention of a merman,” he went on, “dates back over 5,000 years to the ancient Babylonian deity, Oannes, who’s described as having the upper body of a human and the tailed lower body of a fish. The earliest mention of a mermaid dates back at least 3,000 years to Atargadis, an ancient Syrian goddess who is similarly described. In Greek mythology, you have the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, Triton, the messenger of the sea, often depicted as a merman blowing into a conch shell. Coincidentally, you might also recognize him as the father of Ariel in the Disney movie.”

Nobody cracked a smile.

“The Romans and Chinese,” Marty continued, “made numerous references to merfolk in their histories, as did the Arabians and Persians in their famous folklore, Arabian Nights. In Ireland, we find the Merrow; in Scotland, the Ceasg; and in Japan, the Ningyo, all variants of half-human/half-fish creatures. Mainland Europe has the Melusine, a fresh-water mermaid sometimes depicted as having two tails, like the mermaid in the Starbucks logo. Several modern religions such as Hinduism worship merfolk-like deities to this day.”

“And that’s a cut!” Fat Mike said halfheartedly, shifting his bulk as if uncomfortable in the chair. “This is good stuff, Double M, but maybe tone down the pop culture references, yeah? Now what about actual sightings? Eyewitness accounts and all that? Can you go there?”

“I thought the Disney and Starbucks references would appeal to—”

“No, they were shite, Marty. Gotta be brutally honest. Absolute shite. We don’t want to trivialize any of this, yeah?”

“I suppose…”

“Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’. You look good. Knowledgeable. That’s what we want, what matters. So eyewitnesses?”

“Sure.”

Fat Mike nodded. “Still rollin’?”

“Still rolling,” the hipster replied.

Fat Mike pointed a finger gun at Marty and pulled the trigger. “Action.”