Quoted By:
>"Job. Real job, or..." Give our rebar spear a threatening rattle in his direction until he gets the picture.
>"I'm not a hooker. Unless it involves copious violence, I'll pass."
You hadn't realized it before, but your own voice sounds foreign to you. Seething, weak, and breathy. Hollowed from weeks of unuse.
"Well, you know the public gallows?" Instantly, you perk up. For as long as there were public executions, there were crowds to see them. And you're among those.
He holds that strained smile without moving. Those sunglasses of his hide the fact that he's glowering at you with barely contained... something. "All you gotta do is go to those telescopes over there, pay a quarter, and tell me who the guy in the chessboard suit is stringing up right now. <span class="mu-i">Capisce o no</span>?"
"John," Suitcase says, drumming his fingers on the leather strap. "Stop trying to get your dick wet with the natives. We're on a schedule, remember?"
"Use the GODDAMN codenames, shithead!" Smiley whirls around, suddenly hunched and seething with tension. "Goddamn it! Can't you follow those simple instructions?"
"I'm John. You're John." Suitcase gouges the air as he points with his thumb. "He's John. He's also John. Everybody is John. Who cares?"
"It's your damn disk that's brought us into this mess." Smiling John snorts. "Show some Goddamn respect when you drag us all to Hell. The Devil's due, you know."
"None of this feels right." Sitting John mutters, staring to nowhere on the horizon. "Something isn't right, Tres. None of this feels real anymore."
"Jesus Christ, where was I? All this fucking rain is killing me. Pitter pitter patter patter, pain pain suffering pain." He smacks his head as if clearing his ears.
"The girl, Uno," the John cleaning his rifle states, rather blandly through his bandana. "You were talking to the girl, remember? 'The outside perspective to establish objective reality.'"
"OK." Smiley takes in a deep breath. He turns back to you. Through the glasses, his eyes are shining with a deep red glow. "OK. Look, I'll give you $1000 cash, RIGHT NOW, cause I like you an awful lot, and you've got big tits, and also cause I'm fucking sick and tired of talking to women who aren't actually fucking human."
The Agent reaches into his coat pocket, takes out a quarter, flips it through the air. You snatch it with a free hand. The smile reappears like an old wound.
"4000% profit. Easy money, baby."