blurring_the_edges_4_tripod_billy birdmad The next few days turned out to be pretty uneventful for you. A dozen job applications between classes. All the stuff you've learned from your Rules of Evidence class makes you more and more paranoid. The money is easy, but how would you explain it? Wilkes is back in town. He called you yesterday. Decided on a whim to show up in that rust-bucket Pontiac he took with him to Dallas. You have a smoke outside with him and decide to go off and look for trouble. It's pretty much a given that when you and Wilkes are running around that there will be some form of good-natured mayhem. It's been that way since junior high. You speed around through the city with the improbably wired stereo blasting Metallica "Am I Evil?" up the freeway. You are now almost up near the place where your string of misadventures began in earnest and you can feel it calling you. Returning to the scene of the crime. You haven't seen Wilkes since midway through Sophomore year of high-school when he moved away, but by the looks of where you are heading, it seems like a small world as he turns the oversized car off the freeway and is headed into a neighborhood you know, but haven't been in for a few months. You feel a certain amount of apprehension as the car goes further west as you are heading closer to a place that you'd prefer not to go. Wilkes is animated and lively throughout the trip, as if nothing has changed. At one point, he mentions a guy he plans on buying some weed from and you are glad that he isn't the type to wonder why you wear sunglasses at night. "So, yeah man, a friend of mine told me to check with this guy they call 'Tripod Billy' and i could get a good deal. I figure for all the times you looked out for me when we were still kids, i should pay you a visit and do something cool. So i figure that the coolest thing i could do with one of my best buds is to get good and stoned." "Shit, dude," you say, "that's totally cool, but i've done business with Billy before and i'm not real keen on being around the dude, so if it's all the same, do you think you could drop me off at the 7-eleven around this next corner. If somebody told you where to reach him, he will likely be cool with seeing you even if you are a stranger around here. Me and him don't get along so well." "No prob." Billy, you understand would be less than thrilled to see you if you showed up on his door. That little incident between the two of you when Greg and Tony decided to make their little break from their partnership with Henry Ash and his people in the high-rent district didn't go over too well with him. Billy and Henry beat you up pretty badly, but it didn't change the fact that Greg and Tony had screwed them even worse. Just thinking about it makes your ribs ache. Wilkes agrees and drops you off, using your fake ID, you buy another pack of cloves and a six-pack of Bud to compensate Wilkes for the extra stop. Popping out a few quarters from your pocket, you play the Street Fighter II console over by the door and get almost all the way through in short order when you see the car pulling in. As you get into the car, Wilkes displays a zipper-bag with four really fat joints in it. You counter by showing him the beer which meets with a positive response. Before taking off, though, Wilkes goes to the pay-phone and makes a call. You spend the next three hours up on a section of Shaw Butte, having a meaningless and confused conversation with Wilkes and a couple of equally stoned strippers. The weed is so good you almost forget your name, but you still remember being bothered by the thought of running into Billy. It wasn't the kicks to the ribs or the pistol-whipping, but that overly-satisfied laugh of his that rings in your mind. He laughed at how little persuasion it took to get Zoe to run away when you traded yourself to them for her safety. Getting caught that day had, in fact, been part of the plan. You were sent there to lie to them and throw Henry off the trail of the real scam to get your shit from elsewhere. What had not been part of Greg and Tony's plan was the cowboy stunt that Henry and Billy would resort to, being pissed off by Tony's decision to flash guns at Henry and his people the last time you did business with him. Henry didn't like the way it turned out, but he understood that it was strictly business. Billy, on the other hand, took the screw-job personally and seemed bent on payback for the pay-day that little scam ended up costing him As the smoky haze continues to pour through your head, pushing the though of an angry you sit mezmerized watching the city lights spreading all around 030408 ... birdmad on the last paragraph (pushing away the thought of an irate Billy) 030408 what's it to you? who go blather from