your own personal jesus [for campjesus]
Jimmy Caster, while often a coward, likes to think he's a man of his word. If he says he's going to be there, he'll be there -- even if it means dragging his sorry dick out of the ass of the hottest performance artist this side of Wicker Park and sobering up in a manner of minutes. And when he told Brody -- albeit anonymously -- to "count on" him
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And generally when people call him and ask to 'hang out' or 'talk' and then don't start talking it's a bad sign. Oh yes, Jimmy, he's on to your ruse. He racks his brain a little, tries to think if he's done anything recently worthy of being lectured over, and can't come up with anything. Anything that he's told anyone, anyway. Maybe he should stop partying with gang members.
Hmm.
He smokes until his cigarette--one of those expensive French ones he's starting to get a wee bit addicted to, and feels guilty buying even though he can afford it these days--is a little stub, then tosses it. He really hates walking. Bad on his feet. "We goin' anywhere or just walking around?"
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It's his turn to hide the truth. Going sober should be something to be proud of, but there's a strange shame he carries about it. Now that there's no alcohol in his system, looking at his life is like seeing the wreckage after a storm rather than from inside the chaos. Easier to pretend the storm's still raging instead of admitting how incredibly fucked he is. "Needed to sort together my shit. Get a job and everything. I'm gonna be a janitor. Cleaning up kiddie puke and everything. Real rockstar job."
Not exactly a lie. Walt had some connections with the custodial staff at a public school in Brownsville. Not exactly the cushiest job, or one where he'd necessarily fit in with the staff -- but hey, it'd pay the bills. Walt did mention something about a drug test, and that made his stomach drop a little.
"Yeah, I figured you could give me a little tour of your city. You know, maybe show me where it doesn't suck. And, uh, I need to buy some fake pee, so if there's like ... some smoke shops around here, let's get on it."
Jimmy doesn't sense Brody's pain, and continues walking; reading people is not his forte. Forgive him, he's a straight man -- he needs hints like jackhammers.
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"Janitor? Gross. You coulda done worse I guess. Horse masturbator, f'r instance." It doesn't ring as untrue to him, so he doesn't push it, instead opting to talk about New York.
"Nothin' worth seein' in Manhattan except bums and ads." He makes a little face. "I mean, I only hang here when clients want to. And then they wanna do all the dumb touristy stuff. There's a gallery on West Broadway that's okay, but it's--" Owned by Toreadors. Oh yeah, Brody, way to just blatantly break the Masquerade; as if you're not already in deep shit with the vampire mafia for exactly that. Or the potential to, anyway. "Uh, probably not your style. Everywhere I know that's good's in Brooklyn or the Bronx."
He's fine for walking for now, but eventually he's going to have to stop.
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He winces at the word clients, cutting too close to what he actually intends to talk about. But if it's one thing Jimmy's good at it's running away -- and for the time being he's skirting his actual aim like a pro. "Galleries are only good for the free booze at openings." He perks up a little. "Hey, wait, maybe we shou--"
Uh, Jimmy? Remember that week you just spent in a perpetual state of hallucination and heart-palpitations? That one you went through to specifically stop drinking? Oh, right. Buzz successfully killed -- his face falls.
"Ah, yeah, fuck this island. Show me some Brooklyn, kid, let's get on the train."
Jimmy does notice Brody's shivering -- the fall chill is kicking in early in New York, but to Jimmy it's mild, a little bit warm for Chicago autumn. He jerks his head toward a bodega they just passed, steering Brody in the direction of the shop still fronted with withering fruit.
"C'mon, kid, I need to get some smokes. And it looks like you could use a little heat."
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"My pseudo-dad lives out around Brooklyn Heights, I used to hang there a lot. My brother's out in Manhattan, 77th and Lexington, but I hate going there, the neighbourhood's full of all these rich-ass motherfuckin' yuppies."
He says this as he's being steered in the direction of the bodega, making a face. He hates it when people baby him, although uh... Brody, how 'you appear cold, let's go somewhere warm' is babying you is kind of a mystery. This approaching winter will be his first in New York, and his first north of the Mason-Dixon line. Thank God (heh) he picked "goth" as a subculture, and not something that would require anything but wearing twenty thousand layers of black clothes. He should be more used to the cold; Percy never bothered with turning the heat on at his place and Brody would wake up at 3 in the morning half-frozen.
The best part of having his own place is being able to turn the heat on.
When it's working, anyway.
Once they get inside he feels hotter than he should. Great, thanks a lot, body, why don't you just do whatever the hell you want without any regard to what the actual temperature is? But he can deal with heat--again, goth, twenty thousand layers of clothes in a South Carolinan summer... 'slightly warmer than is comfortable' he can deal with.
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Jimmy perks up at the idea of a pseudo-dad. Maybe he could approach this mystery man and try to alert him to his pseudo-son's supply of income. Certainly took away the burden of him trying to set the kid straight.
"Brooklyn Heights sounds good. I'm itching to get off this island. It's like somebody put all of the most shallow and intolerable people in one place, but then just to fuck with your mind they made them all hot as fuck."
Ah yes, Jimmy -- enjoying the one thing people still go to Manhattan for: the women.
Jim heads for the back of the store for the fridges; his mouth is parched, accustomed to being continuously soaked by booze. He passes by the beer section the way he treats any ex-girlfriend encountered on the street: eyes fixed in front of him, shuffling quickly. Once the booze is at least three fridges down, he plants himself in front of the drink selection and tries to decide. If only there's any Mr. Pibb -- that reduces the time spent making decisions drastically.
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Effective Childrearing: not that.
"I think that's kinda how it works everywhere. The hotter the chick, the more likely she is to be completely mentally deficient. Or assume you're gay and not give you the time of day." Careful there Brody, your teen angst is showing.
His head hurts. He knows it's not for want of nicotine, maybe he's too sober. Edi and his boys deal coke--his drug, of course, because his life isn't a cesspool of suckery already, but so far he's abstained. He's just been drinking again. He contemplates taking a brief detour to look for some cheap aspirin, and decides against it. It'll go away on its own.
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He slides open the fridge and picks out Mountain Dew. "You want anything, kid?" he offers, secretly hoping Brody won't take him up on it. All the money he has right now barely amounts to a one hundred dollar bill. Normally he'd pocket anything that's not behind the counter, but he feels obligated to show some social order in front of Brody, as if his actions have any influence over the teen. But he really shouldn't be buying this damn soda; he's still got to find some way to pay the rent in a week or so.
Swinging the Mountain Dew bottle up and down (and probably making it that much more likely to explode when he opens it), he approaches the counter and leans against it. The Pakistani man on the other side, round-faced and serious, looks at him critically from behind wire glasses. "Drum?" Jimmy asks. The cashier shakes his head, and points behind him -- only Kite and Bugler. Slightly disgusted, he settles for Bugler. Oh well; it's only for a few days.
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This is true facts. He's only recently discovered his ability to grow facial hair at all, and the results were discouraging to say the least. DAMN YOU, PUBERTY!
"Naw, I'm good." He's a little distracted by the throbbing pain in his head, and the heat. He takes off his gloves--or glove, anyway, he can only really manage one hand without removing the brace on the other--and puts it in his jacket pocket, and when that doesn't help he takes off the jacket and slings it over his bad arm. He's still wearing a long-sleeved shirt under that--there are cutting scars on his wrists he does his best not to draw attention to, because he's not an attention whore--on that subject, anyway--but it's one less layer. It doesn't help.
As he's waiting for Jimmy to buy his shit and glancing around, he feels something damp on his face; at first he thinks it's sweat, but the smell is all off, and when he brings his ungloved, bandaged hand up to his forehead and pulls it away he finds blood on his fingertips.
He stares at it for a while, then lets out a tiny noise. It's not quite a whimper, but it's definitely alarmed. There are a few panicked moments where he stands there, dumbfounded, his gut sinking--he should know what's about to come, he needs to fuck off before he freaks out the normals but it feels like his legs are made of lead.
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Oh yes, Jimmy had a younger sister in the nineties. He knows all the names.
He twists open the cap of the Mountain Dew, closes it quickly again to avoid an outpouring of fizz. He turns back to Brody and the first thing he see is blood bright against the teen's skin. Immediately Jim is hit by a memory of his hallucinations like someone suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. For a brief moment it's not Brody standing in front of him but the corpse of his late wife, bleeding out.
Furiously he blinks away the vision, trying to convince himself it's not real. Brody returns but the sweat stays on his skin, and he tries to sedate his breathing to a level that allows him to speak. Jeez, just say something, Jimmy.
"Uh ... am I gonna have to buy Band-Aids?"
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For a moment there's a shadow over his skin of a tall, dark man with a warm grace, and he feels like home.
Blood spills from his forehead like he's wearing the crown of thorns, but there's nothing there; blood drips from his eyes like tears that aren't falling. And the bandage wrapped around the palm of his right hand turns red at the center, leaking outward and down, blood rolling along his skin.
He makes this terrible noise, like a wounded lamb, blinded by the blood in his eyes--that seems to have no source, it doesn't look like any vessels have ruptured there--as he drops to his knees and shakes violently, the echo of lashes over his back. It almost looks like he's having a seizure but since when do seizures involve spontaneously bleeding from wounds that aren't there?
But the worst part is the smell. The store smells like roses, and the discrepancy between that and the carnage occuring over Brody's skin is frankly horrible.
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When his brain flips back on, he's conscious of the cashier behind him shouting in English so heavily accented it might as well be another language. Jimmy looks back at the cashier and the cashier is dividing his rant between him and Brody equally, as if Jimmy is somehow half-responsible.
Jimmy turns back to the situation and feels that familiar rush right before a frantic sprint. It's the same jolt he's gotten countless times before, a feeling that reminds him of vaulting over backyard fences and scaling fire escapes, cops or Folks behind him. His feet are shuffling toward the door away from Brody unconsciously, as if some deeper instinct is already acting on his urge to run. Compounding this is the sight of blood horrifying to his eyes and the sick stench of roses, the smell of the flower pinned to his suit jacket at the courthouse on their wedding day.
Jimmy stumbles as he backs up into the gummy candies hanging in front of the counter, and begins sliding toward the door.
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"But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake."
But really he's doing more crying than talking.
(The cashier shouts at him for a bit, but when it's obvious Brody's episode or whatever it is is some kind of medical emergency--mostly made clear by the metric fuckton of blood on his admittedly not very clean floors--he's grabbing a phone to dial 911. God knows how long it'll take them to get here, though.)
The brace is doing absolutely nothing to prevent the spasms in both of Brody's hands. That's only going to make his already sprained wrist worse, and he gives one agonized, shuddering cry, oblivious to the commotion around him. He's somewhere else. Possibly in the process of shedding the mortal coil. Who knows.
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Straightening himself, he approaches Brody slowly, as if advancing toward a cornered, snarling dogs. God damn does he hate dogs.
"Brody? Brody?"
More incomprehensible gargling. Jimmy, close enough to touch Brody, reaches out a hand and places it on his shoulder, the only part of his body that does not appear to be bleeding openly. Every brain cell in Jimmy's head is committed to not thinking about HIV.
"Kiddo. KIDDO. Snap out of it."
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The spirit of something's moving through him, anyway.
His socks are filled with blood. It's all over his hands, his cheeks, forehead, and over his ribs and stomach, evidenced by the way his shirt's ridden up in his spasming. He gives a violent jerk at the physical contact, his eyes open wide and not blinking. For all the blood he's apparently losing, his complexion appears entirely unaffected. He's already pale, but not getting paler. Maybe it's not as much blood as it looks like.
His eyes move, and then he's looking at Jimmy, mostly because Jimmy is directly in his line of sight, and he opens his mouth and says something very articulately that's completely wasted by virtue of the fact it's not in English. "And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost."
Hm. Well, he seems to think this is helpful. Brody's face immediately twists in pain. There's blood in his mouth; he's bitten his tongue.
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He bends down, the knees of his jeans quickly becoming saturated with blood. (At least he won't need to use body spray for a while -- not that he did too much in the first place.) Grabbing Brody's face firmly, he tries to look him in the eye. "Kid, can you hear me? Hey, HEY! You still in there?" He rattles his head like a magic eight ball. Jimmy's clearly improvising. "What the fuck is going on, huh? Come on! Give me a fucking sign!"
As if stigmata isn't enough.
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