Co's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The company posted Co's film the next morning. He sat on the studio floor and watched the number climb. Twelve views. Fifty. Two hundred by noon. He needed those viewers to follow his own page, or the film would fade and he would owe the woman four videos with nothing behind him. Views were not a following. He needed people to click his name and stay. So he built his page that afternoon. He wrote his channel name across the top: LETS TALK. He uploaded the film again himself. Then he stared at the follower count. It read zero. Co left the studio and walked. He needed a real audience, not strangers scrolling past. He passed a barbershop with a bold vintage sign, MARICEAU BARBER, and stopped. Through the glass he saw men waiting in chairs, phones in their hands. A place where people talked and shared. He went in. On the wall behind the register hung a bright plaque. LIKE. comment. SHARE. The words glowed in loud colors, a joke and a command at once. Next to it hung a movie poster. THE LIFE OF A HUSTLER. The credit at the bottom read: Directed by Mariceau Barber. The barber looked up from his clippers. He nodded at Co's shirt. "You make films too?" "I do," Co said. "One's live right now. On a page nobody follows yet." The barber cut his clippers off. "I put my movie on this wall so people would ask about it. Cost me nothing but the print." He pointed at the plaque with the loud letters. "Ask for the share. Every time." Co pulled out his phone and held it up. "Then watch mine. Right here." He played the film for the room. The men lowered their own phones. When it ended, the barber wiped his hands and typed Co's page into his own phone. He turned the screen to the others. "Follow him," the barber said. "And share it before you leave." They did. Co watched his count move on his own screen. One. Six. Fourteen. The barber posted the film to his shop page, and the number jumped again. By the time Co stepped back onto the sidewalk, his page held sixty followers. Not millions. But real ones, with faces he had seen. Co stood outside the barbershop and refreshed. Sixty-two now. Sixty-five. The page was alive. Then the woman's demand came back to him. Sixty-five people had followed him for one film. On Friday they would open his page and expect the series. Four videos. He had none of them shot. He had spent the whole day chasing followers, and now the followers were the problem. They were watching. And he had three days to give them something to watch.