Thursday Night
The evening of the Open Call, the Bill/Johnny Convo, and the Bill/Orlando Convo.
Bill pulls the Mini half onto Johnny's drive and half on the grass. There's plenty of room at the moment, but once he's ready to go, he's not interested in getting blocked in. In his experience, when he's ready to get away from the DBY crew, he's ready now.( ... )
Bill pulls the Mini half onto Johnny's drive and half on the grass. There's plenty of room at the moment, but once he's ready to go, he's not interested in getting blocked in. In his experience, when he's ready to get away from the DBY crew, he's ready now.( ... )
"Floor's still there," he confides to Bill, who tilts his head curiously.
"Ah-"
Johnny shakes his head, stabs the air with his joint. "I am a very successful fuckup, Bill. My daddy always said I'd made a fine career of fuckin' up, and he was right, although it was fuckin' down that made me my money, you follow? Fucking... I don't know, you know, it's like-"
Johnny considers both his hands for a second, decides his mouth is dry and leans forward enough to scrub the joint out in the ashtray.
"-like, like Jack. I shoulda kept my mouth shut. You ever do something so bad that it ruins everything after? You ever fuck up that hard? You know what I'm talkin' about?"
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It wouldn't be the first time Bill has given up a secret because it is necessary and expected.
In the past, it's always been about giving away as little as possible while still accomplishing his ends. Honestly, this won't be that much different, because while the truth will do well enough -- Bill is pretty sure Johnny already suspects he had been with Orlando when Burelle had died, after all, and has merely never said anything about it, because that's the kind of guy Johnny is -- truth is a relative thing.
Yes, he hasn't slept well since then, and yes, that has something to do with it. But it isn't everything to do with it, or even most of it. There's so much more to it than that, and the rest of it he cannot, will not, give away, and never mind that he almost, almost wants to spill his guts to Johnny ( ... )
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Ass deep in alligators, he thinks, and almost feels like he might smile for a second, but it stalls out before it ever makes it to his face. He regards Johnny across the couple of feet separating them and tries to decide whether to answer that.
Deep enough to break a man's wrist, once, for touching dope he hadn't paid for, J.D. Deep enough to slap a hooker, deep enough to hate myself, deep enough to trade my soul for the arrest, if I'd been able to go on.
Because he would have. Oh, yes. He would have, if it had come to that, if he'd had the time and the ability, if not for Orlando.
It occurs to Bill that, in an odd, twisted way, Orlando might have saved his life that day, too.
"All the way, J.D." he says flatly, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. "All the fucking way."
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He used to wear it in front of the cameras, he used to wear it when Peter would hand over crisp packs of hundred dollar bills in exchange for some 13 year old girl from the provinces. He used to be dying behind a face just like that one, he fucking knows. It was sex, not drugs, then, but they're kissing cousins, man. Same fuckin' family ( ... )
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