The Cold Academy
"The Backpack Generation"
Part Two
By Jericho Vilar
13.
"Hold your breath. It'll all be over soon."
Jack repeated the words softly to himself. His sneakers bit hard onto the concrete ledge, the rubber of his soles scratched against the miniscule precipice until tiny particles of it separated under his feet. It was a question of traction. As much as he believed in his own capabilities, Jack wasn't so sure that the ledge would hold its end of the bargain. At that juncture a literal slip up would've been nothing short of devastating. Carefully taking his foot off the ledge, Jack walked back to his imaginary starting line resigned to the fact that the matter was officially out of his hands. With his backpack strapped tightly to his chest, Jack cautiously inspected every inch of the thick rope that ran the length and width of his torso. He tugged at the tangled nest clutching his breast bone, the chaos that made up the central knot, and followed as it rippled from the hub, down to the ground, and back up to the giant air conditioning unit that balance of the line was crudely lashed around. That's as good as its going to get, Jack tried selling to himself. He took a deep breath and turned back towards the ledge. He gingerly crouched to the sprinter's ready position and began to count off in his head.
ONE.
This wasn't a billboard towering high above the ground, stable and secluded. This wasn't a sleeping subway car, tucked safely away on some rail yard. What he was about to attempt was something entirely different altogether. Different ballpark, different league, different sport. This one was made to stand head and shoulders above the rest.
TWO.
The view of downtown Chicago was magnificent. Calm under the midwestern sky encrusted by the frozen jewels of winter, the city spread out in all directions, as far as he could see. In the distance loomed Lake Michigan, a sparkling eye always willing to keep its city's secrets safe. Below him, State St. and to the east, Burnham Park, both with dirty secrets of their own. From that height, Jack could only imagine the view from atop the Sears Tower. Paled in comparison, Jack vowed that if he made it through this in one piece, the Sears Tower was next. Comparing that conquest to the one he was still in the process of, the Chicago Housing Authority Building was an anthill in a Redwood forest.
THREE.
Rappelling down would've been a much safer course of action. He could've just climbed onto the ledge and slowly, but still taking his time, hopped from window tip to window tip until he reached his target point. It would've been safer, yes, but would it have been as fun? Jack only has one answer to that question.
BANG!
The gravel beneath his feet burst into clouds of dust. With all of his might, Jack ran full speed towards the ledge. Five paces, he screamed to himself and charged his muscles for the ascent five paces from the ledge. Each step fell with the force of a gunshot. On the sixth step, Jack's right foot cracked the ledge's concrete surface.
Then he flew.
The harsh winter winds filled his nostrils in such a sudden fit that Jack thought that he was about to faint. Closing his eyes, he imagined high-tension wires encircling his body, the unbreakable tendrils keeping him safe from the unforgiving sidewalk below.
Jack hit the sky with arms outstretched, like the Olympic divers he watched on television. Flipping back through his 'research,' Jack consciously replayed their every move. He slapped his palms together, holding one tightly within the other, and tumbled heavily in mid-air, shifting his weight to one side, and culminating in a corkscrew finish as he slammed hard onto the side of the building feet first. Ghost faced with his panic-stricken lungs heaving, Jack stared, inches away from the city-built structure that, upon impact, could've liquefied his bones.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Jack managed between large gasps of air.
Three stories up, twisting and swaying in the crisp, night sky as if were on a country back porch relaxing on a tire swing, Jack couldn't help but laugh.
"This is a growing experience...," he whispered under his breath as he reached back into his backpack for one of the bulky cans of spray paint hidden inside it. Slamming a fat boy cap recovered from his pants pocket, Jack quietly began his art project.
"...one that you will cherish until the day you die."
***
14.
"Literature, in its most grandiose of intentions, can easily be considered an incendiary device."
She spoke with authority and an ardent air of urgency. Coated in warm honey, her words exploded above the almost empty lecture hall with such fervor that each student seated comfortably inside the million-dollar auditorium felt their pupils dilate with every vocal burst. Her audience hungrily sat back with baited breath.
"The sudden injection of the message on the printed page straight to the reader's conscious mind, however unique each message is reinterpreted as, is the most sacred gift any writer could ever impart."
She was a true orator/ Her movements, the cunning glances to each student no matter how remotely they were situated and the thunderclap impact of her modest heels on the polished marble floor, weren't bred on university podiums. They were born on the picket lines, the razor's edge of revolution. She was there and the way she carried herself in front of an audience proved it.
"Words, no matter what the purpose, always has the potential to bring about change. Whether itıs to enlighten or to distort, words always have that potential with whoever has chosen to read them."
Mrs. Stephanie Samuels pointed to her audience, a bizarre cadre of students sacrificing their lunch period to be in her presence. They knew full well of their place in the palm of her hand.
"You have that power," she stated. "Your words could bring about change."
Jack watched her from the farthest corner of the auditorium marveling at her ability to traverse the barriers of time and geography. In his mind, they were in a dimly lit back room in Black Panther Harlem mapping a plan from a raised fist.
"The tools your generation has in its disposal could very well burn everything before you to the ground. Itıs in your hands to decide its effect on society. Usher in another golden age or blaze a path to anarchy, its up to each and every one of you to decide where we, as a country, will go."
Her curly brown hair wrapped in a compact bun, Mrs. Samuels could look every bit the suburban working mother that she was the second she leaves the Winterville Academy gates in her new model Volvo station wagon. Her soft, rounded features framed by black rimmed, designer glasses should have immediately stuck her in the role of hip librarian. The pressed tweed suit and the saddle leather brief case might have easily painted her portrait as the confident college professor deep into her tenure. Every aspect of her outer being could have made her into the person a highly conservative board of trustees felt at ease with trusting the fledgling minds of their students, their children, with, but that illusion would've just been shattered the moment Mrs. Stephanie Samuels opened her mouth.
Standing in front of her own personally developed Literature and Societal Change Course, none of it mattered.
At that particular point in time and space, Mrs. Stephanie Samuels was the only one that did.
"Now, I'd normally instruct you to open your texts to some arduous page, but...shit like this you really can't learn from books."
And it showed.
"You could thank James Dean for that."
A voice echoed from the mouth of the auditorium's entrance. Soft and oddly melodic, it carried through the room on the strength of the lecture hall's superior acoustics. It was answered by the sound of shuffling seats and curiosity piqued students all turning in unison.
Jack didn't have to give in to audience participation. He already knew who it was.
"James Dean shot the idea of it being cool for America's youth to read right in the face," the voice continued.
Mrs. Samuels, having just been robbed of her student's precious A.D.D. ravaged attention span, turned towards the culprit standing on the top of lecture hall stairs with her hands firmly on her hips, the point of her heels tapping loudly on the floor.
"Please," she offered, conceding the floor. "Elaborate."
"Gladly, Professor Samuels," the voice snapped back.
Jack, visibly trying to dig himself deeper into his seat, analyzed every aspect of the interloper's voice, from the tone and the pitch all the way down to the glass jawed wobble each syllable made because of their owner's subdued English accent. The mounting years spent in America were taking its toll, Jack noted. The clean enunciation of her Majesty's English was quickly being replaced with Chicago's South Side bravado.
"James Dean in 'Rebel Without a Cause' did more to create a nationwide youth movement than every great American author at the time combined. A truth that I firmly believe to be blamed on that fact that all of the media outlets available at the time catered specifically to younger children and to the post-Depression generation before them."
Jack gritted his teeth and turned all of his focus towards the corner of his eye. Without a doubt, there he was.
The sign of what's to come.
Ryjan Allen.
Dressed in rumpled Winterville standards, burgundy blazer and grey slacks, the charismatic Ryjan Allen stalked the landing in front of the auditorium doors as if it was a stage. Looking every inch the part of the struggling British expatriate street poet he crafted himself to be, despite the swollen bank accounts and platinum credit cards that lined his alligator skin wallet. He moved slowly, blocking each step in his head, in a mock tribute to Mrs. Samuels' trademarked style. Ryjan let just enough of his accent slip to win over the hearts of the melancholy by choice, born romantics peppered into the crowd. To Ryjan, the more on his side, the better, and he was definitely one to use whatever he had to to get them there.
But there was something new about him. The thought hung over Jack's head just long enough for the smooth operating Ryjan Allen to make definite eye contact with him.
"Unlike any other film produced in its era, 'Rebel Without a Cause' gave America's youth an avatar for its misguided inner turmoil. In that film, James Dean gave them a look, a style, and an attitude that would define their generation and even influence others in the years to come. Thus was born THE ANTI-HERO, the face of the disenfranchised stuck in conformist, middle class hell. If I'm remembering it correctly, one of the posters advertising the film read, 'Warner Bros. challenging drama of today's juvenile violence.' How could that be anything but polarizing, I ask you. A feat that, even to this very day is still being attempted by film makers and actors to very mediocre results."
The shaggy mess of brown hair that flared behind his ears and neck was a little longer and the angles of his handsome face were a little rougher, but as obvious as they were, they weren't it. In the brief instant that their eyes locked, Jack thought that he was looking at a whole other person. The emerald laser beams that Ryjan usually kept swimming in a vat of pharmaceutical grade alterers were gone only to be replaced by a sharpened pair of scalpels. The kind he was told only soldiers on the eve of combat to possess.
"Because after all," Ryjan concluded. "There will ever be only one James Dean."
Turning back to the victim of his theatrical larceny, Ryjan was rudely welcomed back by Mrs. Samuels' hollow applause.
"Welcome back, Mr. Allen," Mrs. Samuels' started. "But Advanced Acting in Ham and Cheese is a couple doors down."
The audience chuckled as Jack watched Ryjan patronizingly bowed to his adoring public. Mrs. Samuels manufactured a faint facsimile of a smile rows of seats below him.
"All formalities aside, Mr. Allen. Please state you business."
"Aside from the chance to be in your glorious presence, alas, I have come for another," Ryjan answered, brushing strands of hair from his newly acquired eyes. "I have come for one Mr. Jack Street."
His cover spectacularly blown, Jack rose from his seat and immediately felt the heat from the stare of every pair of eyes in the room trained specifically on him.
Following Jack as he gathered his belongings into his backpack and leapfrog over the top aisle, Mrs. Samuels threw out a lifeline.
"Will you be leaving us for the company of charlatans, Mr. Street? Or would you stay on the promise of a five page writing assignment?"
Reaching after Ryjan just for the pleasure of pushing him roughly through the exit, Jack turned back to the class with a meek smile.
"I'm sorry for the interruption. It'll never happen again."
Walking back towards Ryjan, Jack wasn't able to hear the only reason he bothered waking up that day have her final say.
"The choices we make, ladies and gentlemen," Mrs. Samuels told the remaining students. "The choices we make."
Then the doors closed behind him.
On the other side, Jack viciously grabbed a smirking Ryjan Allen by the collar and shoved him part and parcel against a bank of lockers.
"This better be fucking good," Jack hissed, entertaining thoughts of cannibalism behind his stare. "What the fuck do you want?"
Not interested in playing the part of the helpless damsel, Ryjan shook free of Jack's grasp and led him down the hallway with his arm around Jack's shoulder.
"Come on now, Jack. You know itıs not about what I want. Itıs always been about what he wants."
Ryjan winked and slapped Jack on the chest.
"You remember right, Jack?"
Handcuffed, Jack had no choice but to follow Ryjan Allen down the hallway, one that quickly turned into the jaws of an open lion's den.
"You-know-who."
***
15.
Zoe Ahern fit perfectly between two large banks of lockers. Like the failed reincarnation of a potted plant, the fourth year student sat hidden on the cold, marble floor flanked by her metal guardians with her knees to her chest and her back to the wall. Understandably conscious of the social stereotype her current position advertised, Zoe rarely thought twice about the peace and solitude it afforded her. Normally stared at by the unfortunate souls forced to prowl the hall of the English building during lunch for a non-cocaine dusted restroom or a signature for an off campus pass, Zoe knew that she could've been more aptly placed anywhere but scrunched in between lockers. Her lithe, slender frame could've granted her admission into the state of the art gymnastics practice facility along with the other physically stunted Olympic hopefuls somersaulting over bits of wood hoping against hope that the cheeseburger that ate two weeks ago didn't invariably ruin the training regiment they were blackmailed into since the age of four. Her short, roughly shorn bob and well placed spiky bangs would've been easily accepted within the clutch of style plastered goth drama kids that congregated on the back gardens along with her dark sunglasses, patch and pin slathered messenger bag, and shadow stained Winterville uniform. Worst of all, her smooth, ivory skin and high fashion model skull structure should've lumped her into the gaggle of Winterville's aesthetically elite, the beautiful people who took champagne lunches in Zagat's approved restaurants along the Magnificent Mile. Her dark, mascara dipped eyes flickered at the thought of the shallow prattling that came attach with such an affiliation and, again, considered shaving her head, listening to Bikini Kill, being called a butch dyke, and just be done with the whole mess.
But that would be too cliché.
Zoe knew she played her part and played her part well. Turning back to the unfinished photo collage buried in the pages of the sketchbook that sat on her lap, Zoe resigned herself to the title of Queen of the Wallflowers.
In haphazardly cut out newspaper lettering, the top of the collage read, "shy girls are in this year."
***
16.
The smell of freshly mowed grass and chalk held a very special place in Jack's heart. For years, itıs become a sensory trigger as potent as the starter's pistol, which not surprisingly, is also closely associated to the smell of freshly mowed grass and chalk. In his mind, one usually never came without the other. They formed a thick cocktail of nostalgia, triumph, and ultimately regret. Or they at least did, back then, when Jack dreamt of life as an international track star.
As bad as it sounded, every time the fact reared its ugly head, running has always been one of the few things that Jack excelled at. Since the age of nine, it has been proven that Jack was faster than any other person he's ever met. A distinction that he never measured in inches, but in yards and, on his best day, in miles. Never overt with his obvious superiority over the next guy, track was the one outlet where Jack could truly cut loose and show everyone on the field who's who and what's what. Every sudden relocation and every new school gave Jack that one of a kind opportunity for positive affirmation. Although easily bored by track's monotonous nature and the disdain that usually emanated from the other team's lesser members, starting at a new school always meant a new school's starting line, one of the sights that Jack always looked forward to.
Until Winterville.
When Ryjan Allen left his side on the bleachers' stairs with specific instruction to go directly to the center of the school's football field, Jack's brief tenure as Winterville's fastest man came galloping right behind him.
It was a classic season of fall after his first summer in the city when Jack's eyes were treated to Winterville's epic Conrad Winthrop Memorial Stadium. Nicknamed "The Connie," the stadium was home to the Snowmen, Winterville's statewide, top ranked men's varsity football and track and field teams. Equipped to seat 5,000, "The Connie" had also been in the running to be the Bears' practice field during the renovation of Soldier Field. Eventually losing to the University of Illinois in Champagne, "The Connie" was still something that Jack had to see for himself.
His heart stopped when finally stepped out of the athlete's tunnel entrance. He felt his peripheral vision strain at the sheer size of it. He imagined 5,000 screaming fans shaking "The Connie" to its foundations when they heard his name being announced on the P.A. system, but it all evaporated the second that starter's pistol was fired.
Being 'the new guy,' his customary handle after every move, Jack dug his Chucks into the gravel of the far lane. Accompanied by five other runners, Jack daydreamed about the fresh pair of Adidas Sambas that he'd have to buy just to further reinforce his track god image. He didn't even bother to check out the competition. The tape was already his; everything else was but a mere formality. Getting into the ready position, Jack pitied the hapless individual in the first lane, the bitch lane, the runner all bets were on to win, the first person who'd essentially get schooled by 'the new guy.'
The hammer fell and they were off.
The 100 meters were over before they began. Jack remembered a blur rocket from the lane directly next to him, but what was truly out of this world was the lack of sensation he felt when he crossed the finish line. The air colored by brown dust stung his eyes; another first experienced that fateful day. This isn't Mudville, Jack asked himself. The question was answered when a gust of wind blew the brown haze away.
Mighty Casey had struck out.
Jack walked slowly to the center of the football field, the grass underneath his feet crunched and snapped, the first time in two years he's ventured back into "The Connie." An overwhelming sense of dread filled his lungs with the aroma of dirt and marking chalk.
He stopped and it was winter again, standing in front of the man who took the tape from him, what was rightfully his. Jack stood eye to eye with the victor, silent as statues. Jack's eyes released themselves from their opponent's coal black stare and made their way down to the shimmering silver snub nosed revolver that dangled carelessly in his opponent's hand. For some odd reason, the gun looked appropriate next to its owner's Winterville blazer and slacks. Silently panicking at the situation, Jack looked back up.
"Hey, Raff."
Charles Daniel Rafferty threw him a wolf fanged grin.
"Hi, Jack. Miss me?"
***
17.
The tremors started five years ago. It didn't come as a shock, it never did. The first one arrived on spider legs, a tingling sensation that crept along the base of her neck and into the chamber of her skull. She thought it was nothing, just goose bumps, a cold breeze in need of attention, or the fluttering of butterfly's wings. She changed her tune when the tingle turned into thunderstorm and the thunderstorm into an earthquake. One that destroyed all conscious and unconscious thought and set every nerve ending in her brain on fire. The sheer force of it sent her to her knees, her breathing patterns thrown all over the map, vision snapping away at different resolutions, her heart firing like a stop and start machine gun. The paramedics called it in as a seizure. The emergency room doctor was a word away from cutting her open. The head of neurology was held speechless.
With eyes shut tight, 13 year old Zoe Ahern's ratcheting body broke through all of the gurney's restraints. Just removed from a weekend long shopping trip with three of her best friends, Zoe Ahern became a sound byte on the evening news.
"Actress' daughter collapses in Marshall Field's, after the weather."
With the local media filling Mercy Hospital's already standing room only emergency room, Zoe Ahern head them all.
"She is her mother's daughter," they whispered. "You know what kids like that do."
Lying cold and alone in her hospital bed, Zoe Ahern heard them all. The opportunistic reporters, the over worked nurses, the disgruntled security guards who wished they never got up that morning, every one of them packed violently into the emergency room. Their one mission was to find out what exactly happened.
"Those spoiled little bastards don't know what the hell they're doing."
From the emergency room to her bed in the hospital's top floor, she heard them all.
For the first time in her life, Zoe knew exactly what her mother wanted most in life. From the friends who watched her as she fell to the worried shoppers rushing to her air to the E.M.T.s who furiously ran through every piece of medical knowledge they had while trying to stabilize her even down to the pissed off drivers on the street angrily pulling over for the ambulance's siren, to her it felt like each and every one of them all at the same time were screaming in her ears.
Fame like that is something stars could only dream of.
It took the most observant of her treating physicians to realize that the convulsions lessened the further they got from the blood thirsty crowd of cameras and curious on lookers, Zoe was rushed to the most secluded corner of Mercy Hospital. When the last of the nurses was ordered to leave, it was too late. Officially, Zoe Ahern had slipped into a coma for an hour and twelve minutes. Before succumbing to the calm of the coma's stillness, Zoe remembered seeing the doctor's, the last person to leave her side, Dr. Isaac Warner's words forming in the darkness.
Itıs my fault.
Malpractice.
Zoe's footsteps made no sound; her black and grey Pumas never betrayed her presence. Through time and practice, she developed the ability to walk unnoticed and unseen even in a room filled with people. To most, the incident five years ago was considered a tragedy, the day a young girl's promising future was cut short. Zoe, however, never thought of it that way.
Five years ago when her tired eyes finally awoke, they struggled to focus on the sight of one of her mother's many publicists placing a cell phone to her ear. She knew her mother was shooting in Berlin, that she knew, but what she also knew was that even if she were detoxing in the next room Zoe still didn't expect her mother to be there. In that respect, Zoe's mother has never disappointed her.
The cell phone hissed with the sound of distance, she heard her mother speak before the words crossed the Atlantic.
"It better not have been drugs, you little bitch."
The tremors that followed were never as severe as the first. Through no decision of her own, no mention of the flood of voice that overwhelmed her mind was ever leaked to the press. In fact, Zoe felt proud to finally have a deep, dark secret of her own to harbor, one that will forever trump any one her mother's ever had.
With no one to confide in and no therapist to consult, Zoe learned to live with the tremors. Ironically, the better the grasp she has of them, the more frequent they occur. Most days, Zoe kept to herself, her hermitude more self medication than lifestyle choice, but on her most courageous of days, Zoe would dive head first into the heart of Winterville just to gauge her progress with the tremors, with controlling them. She's had help, she can't say that she's never had it because she has, but when all has been said and done, the journey Zoe Ahern made from the hospital bed to being a few steps away from fourth period Japanese was one that Zoe Ahern made on her own.
After having ducked into the empty classroom, Zoe's Pumas uttered their first words of the day.
He sat with his legs crossed in the center of the sea of empty desks. The sounds of her shoes were amplified by the classroom's high ceiling as they screeched to a halt. He smiled at Zoe with a smile he knew wasn't his, one that they both knew damn well who it belonged to. More like him every day, Zoe noticed before letting her surprise guest's tremor cut the tension in the air.
"Howdy, doll face. Guess who's back?"
The boy with the borrowed smile thought in very simple terms. He knew his tremor's lack of sophistication would infuriate her. In fact, he was banking on it.
MUSIC: The Smiths, Slint, Radiohead, Rufus Wainwright, and Jon Brion
INTERESTS: Anarchism, world travels, Earl Grey tea, hallucinogens, artichoke ravioli, scarves, blazers over jeans, Basquiat, the fall of hipsterdom, and rebel leaders
With a loud sigh, Zoe slipped off her sunglasses. Her emerald eyes sparkled like an unsheathed dagger.
THIS PROFILE BELONGS TO: RYJAN ALLEN
***
18.
Jack's eyes moved vertically, from the predatory smile to the smooth finish of the gun's barrel then back again. Rafferty knew this and was reminded of one of his favorite sayings. Who watches the Watchmen? If there werenıt one already on it, the thought alone would've put a smile on his face.
"You've been a very busy boy since I've been away, Mr. Street. A very busy boy, indeed."
Jack always envisioned the weirdest things whenever he was around Rafferty, non-sequitors abound. The degrees of separation from one thought to another were immediately thrown out the window the moment any one of his senses reacted to Rafferty's presence. Like random pictures spread out on an ocean of lily pads with Jack as the blind frog with the bad sense of direction.
"I can't say I'm not impressed though. You've become a lot more...what's the word I'm looking for? Hmmm. Ambitious, I guess. That's it! Ambitious. You've certainly grown to be a very ambitious young man since we last talked."
His voice, Jack thought, sounded like the string section of the New York Philharmonic center stage on the Titanic or a fleet of player pianos being dropped from a fleet of airplanes.
"But you're the one with the tan," Jack answered.
Rafferty laughed. Jack saw pitchforks.
"L.A. does that to you, Jack. Here I thought you'd know. Of all people, I thought you'd know. You've been, right? To L.A.?"
"For a month," Jack replied. "Too fucking hot for me, thanks."
Rafferty had high cheekbones chiseled onto poster boy good looks. Jack imagined River Phoenix mentored by Darth Vader. The dark stubble perfectly suited one walking down the path of darkness or at least a celebrity centerfold in a grocery store in hell.
"Really? L.A. seems like a very you kind of town. What will all the crap they have dirtying up their walls. It sounded like a place you'd be perfect for, no?"
Rafferty never hedged around subjects and that was them going around in circles. Rafferty was a very devout believer in efficiency, of no wasted motion, in every and all aspects of life. Every word, every movement, meant something and everyone knew that. Jack visualized a piñata surrounded by hammers and not a single piece of cheap candy on the floor.
"Seem, seem, seem. You're starting to sound like a whacked out tailor, Raff. You seem to think I'm an open book, but I'm not, you seem to think that you know me, but you don't, and you seem to think that I have time for this shit, but guess the fuck what?"
Rafferty nodded. Jack saw a shark swimming in a tank with a seal nursing a paper cut. The degrees of separation were closing in.
"For a writer, you're not too fond of dialogue, are you? More like an internal monologue kind of guy, huh? I bet you're writing a helluva 'Walden' in your head right now, yeah?"
Rafferty winked and scratched the side of his leg with the snub nosed revolver. As Jack instinctively reached for a cigarette, three words popped into his head.
Here we go.
"Alright, Jack. I'll bite," Rafferty slipped into a more serious tone. "But just to review, since I've been 'out of town' you've (A) been very busy, (B) gotten very ambitious, and (C) been to, but hated, L.A. Correct?"
Turning to his smoke, Jack's eyes pointed to the pistol in Rafferty's hand.
"When you got that," he began. "You're probably always right."
"My observant nature is mostly to blame," Rafferty quipped back. "But it does help sometimes. Yes, it does."
"Then yeah, whatever."
Jack took in the first drag and exhaled just in time to see Rafferty's free hand being held out to him motioning for the a cigarette. His concerns were pulled back towards the bullets in the revolver's belly. Jack handed the cigarette over.
"Finally, (D) by the looks of the side of the C.H.A. building, you're a man with a cause, Jack. A pretty big one, come to think of it. Again, I'm impressed but that goes back to fact (B) doesn't it?"
Rafferty held the cigarette to his lips, his index finger pointed at Jack. The filter laid softly on his lips. The embers on the tip brightened when Rafferty finally took his drag.
"You could probably say that I've finally found some direction in life too, Jack. Itıs really not like me, but I think that itıs exactly what happened. That's what I did on my summer vacation."
Rafferty held the smoke in, he was the type to breathe it instead of oxygen, maybe fire and brimstone even. He handed the cigarette back to Jack.
"That's cute, Raff. Proud of you, seriously."
"I have plans now, honest to goodness plans. I have a reason to get up in the morning. A raison de la vie."
Rafferty's thumb cocked back the hammer.
"And you're part of it, Jack," he continued. "As homo-erotic as itıs going to sound, I've been thinking a lot about you. Not in the hands under the covers kind of way, I swear, but still."
Rafferty's index finger glided onto the trigger.
"They call it a win win situation, Jack. For you and for me. You scratch my back...you understand?"
Jack took the cigarette back and quickly took in another lung full. Keep your cool, Jack ordered himself. Don't lose your shit.
"Keep it up, asshole. Its sounding gayer and gayer by the second," he replied mid-drag.
Rafferty's smile deserted him and by the look of the murderous stare on his face that replaced it, it was as if it had never been there.
"This isn't a conversation, Jack. Two buddies catching up. Maybe it was, but now it isn't. This is not chitchat. This is not going to be a sales pitch. You wanna know what this is, Jack?"
Jack never moved. Ever the smart ass, he thought about asking exactly when they became buddies, but ended up doing nothing at all.
Rafferty exhaled dramatically, the smoke danced out of his mouth and nostrils.
"This is you getting enlisted."
Sometimes, Jack wondered what it would be like to see the future. In his head, they weren't in "The Connie" anymore. Instead, they were taken to a totally different kind of field; a battlefield and in that moment, that vision, Rafferty was standing in front of an army.
Jack forced himself to snap out of it and concentrated on the situation at hand.
Charles Daniel Rafferty and Jack Street, in the middle of an empty stadium, with one of them holding a loaded gun.
The strangest of scenes.
( e n d o f p a r t t w o )