Step 1: Meet Johnny Quid (don't die)
Part 4 of Inception/RocknRolla crossover Eames the Liar. Introducing an old friend (sort of) and the fabeled Mr. Quid.
New readers start here.
Tonight Eames has a dream, and in that dream is someone who is the opposite of me: a big, muscle-bound Scotsman with a lovable naïveté and brutish charms. His “name,” for all intents and purposes, is One Two.
The dream starts off pretty real, pieced together from a memory. They’re in a Range Rover, which is sometimes a truck, and Eames is in the passenger seat but also he’s driving, so it’s an American car even though he’s pretty sure this is England, and somehow One Two has control of the brakes.
Eames, who is Handsome Bob right now, knows that he’s about to go to jail for five years for some minor offense (in the dream it doesn’t make any sense at all, but that part of it will be forgotten when he wakes), and One Two’s hapless efforts to cheer him involve greasing down a pair of twin escort girls for Bob’s personal pleasure.
Bob is distraught.
“All right. Well, I can see that cheered you up,” says One Two.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful,” says Bob, and right now it’s like he’s not Bob at all, but Eames, sitting in the back of the car, watching himself, like watching a movie. “It’s just, um-” But this sentence is bound to be absurd, and he won’t finish it.
“What?” presses One Two. “It’s just what?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” says Bob.
“Come on, Bobby-boy, that’s not fair,” says One Two. “I’d understand anything coming from you.” His rough Scottish brogue is tempered by something else, something American (or are they in America?), and very briefly One Two might be Arthur, but the confusion is subtle and passing.
“Would you,” says Bob, and he’s Bob again, and he doesn’t believe One Two, and he knows in the pit of his stomach that this won’t end well.
“Bob, you’re my best mate,” says One Two definitively.
Fine, says Bob to himself, fuck it.
“See, I don’t want the strippers, One Two,” says Bob.
One Two is a little dubious (why would anyone not want strippers?), but he nods. “Okay.”
“I want you.”
There’s the awful moment where One Two thinks it’s a joke; then the car slams to a merciful violent halt, and Bob lurches forward, and suddenly One Two is outside the car screaming obscenities at him, accusing him of being both ladykiller and homo, and all Bob can think about is I want someone to fucking touch me before I go to jail tomorrow, and there are apologies all around, and it’s all very confusing.
The transition here is blurry (transitions always are), but it sorts itself out as Bob and One Two are somehow in Bob’s room, which isn’t really his room, certainly not the room he had when he knew One Two, but it’s like a lot of rooms, and there’s a bed, and who’s counting?
One Two isn’t talking anymore; One Two isn’t doing anything that One Two would do anymore. Instead he’s helping Bob out of his shirt and kissing his chest tenderly, as Bob wraps his arms around him and pulls himself close, feeling the warmth, the smell of him. One Two’s hands are hot on his skin, and One Two drops down to his knees and takes Bob in his mouth, and Bob doesn’t want to lose this, Bob would give anything to keep this, this which is a falsehood. One Two is good at this, better than he should be, but it doesn’t fucking matter, because now he’s lying on top of Bob and rubbing hard against him and Bob writhes and moans beneath him, can’t move right, can’t open his eyes-
And just like that, Eames is awake. His cock is hard in his hand, and he’s staring up at the ceiling, sweaty and disoriented. I’m asleep beside him, dreaming about pigeons.
“Shit,” he whispers to himself. “Shit.” Gingerly he gets up and sort of hobbles over to the bathroom, where he switches the shower on as cold as he can stomach and gets in. A few seconds of that and he thinks better of it, and he turns it up hot and he finishes the job his stupid, fickle subconscious started.
It’s over in a matter of minutes, and he’s half-assedly toweled himself off and he climbs back into bed beside me, where I turn over in my sleep and it becomes this vaguely recurring dream I have where I’m on a job but I don’t seem to know any of the people in my team, and my loaded die keeps falling out of my pocket and I end up getting totally lost.
I wake up in a bad mood, and he’s already up and dressed, staring moodily out the window again.
“God, I had the shittiest dreams,” I mumble, rubbing my eyes.
Eames doesn’t comment. Eames doesn’t see having a dream about his old friend and former object of affection as traitorous or shameful. What it is, is distressing. He realizes he misses One Two more than he’s cared to admit, and if One Two is gone he’s not sure what he’ll do.
“Ready to go?”
Eames says, “Yeah.”
“And Yusuf’ll meet us there, with the new guy,” I say. “Right?”
“Right,” says Eames.
Two hours later we’re on a train, not saying much of anything. Another hour and we’ve reached our stop, and Yusuf is introducing us to a guy named Kent, who seems nice enough, and is a little excited to be working with us, which neither of us has any patience for. Eames never really gave me an adequate excuse for Yusuf’s presence, just told me he’d be coming after that suddenly necessary phone call a few days ago, and I’m a little uncertain about the whole thing. But Yusuf has a briefcase full of questionable potions, and you never know when that’ll be useful, so I shake his hand and ask him how he’s been.
At some point it occurs to me that Eames and Yusuf seem to know a lot about each other, and how did I never notice that before?
The next few days are covered by a lot of waiting and reading and sketching and spying, peppered with clipped discussions and bland English food.
Point one of the job is I have to meet with Johnny Quid and set the whole operation in motion. Archy’s been good enough to arrange a meeting, and Eames has, albeit reluctantly, gathered enough references to make me out to be a fresh-faced but reliable up-and-comer in the heady world of illicit business. Eames seems very uncomfortable with this whole part of the plan, and he’s making me nervous, so I avoid him.
I walk with Kent to the estate, which is a run-down, nasty old place, very English but very uncared for. Kent is really excited to be playing a role-he’s mostly been a behind-the-scenes guy until now, and I pray to whatever god will take me that it’s not for extremely good reasons. He’s supposed to be my assistant, to give me a little more clout, and while he’s not supposed to speak or really do much of anything, and he’s obviously the only choice for the part, I find myself painting horrible scenarios in my head where he tries to improvise and Johnny Quid ends up killing us both.
This is stupid, though, and I’m impatient when I tell Eames I’ll be fine and turn my back on him without much of a goodbye.
“This is fucked,” says Eames to Yusuf when we’ve gone. “Why couldn’t we just let Archy handle this? Archy knows when he sleeps.”
“Do you really want to trust Archy?” says Yusuf. “This whole job reeks, Eames. I wouldn’t be surprised if Johnny’s in on it.”
“Stop that,” says Eames. “You’re supposed to make me feel better.”
“No,” says Yusuf. “You’re doing a fine job of that on your own, Mr. Denial. I’m here to bring the cold harsh bite of reality. I’m supposed to make you feel worse.”
“Oh thanks very much,” mutters Eames, and paces and waits. We rented out three small hotel rooms with three small beds-he and I have to share the cramped space and it means we’re not sleeping well. He feels worse and worse the more time I’m away.
I meet with Archy outside the estate, and he furtively shakes my hand.
“He’s inside,” says Archy. “He’s pretty calm today, and he doesn’t know much about who you are. You should talk a lot, don’t let him ask too many questions. Do not mention Eames.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” I say dryly, and he frowns and throws Kent a suspicious glance before he admits us both.
He takes us through the dim, musty place before we get to a big empty room that might have once been a dance studio, and Johnny, who’s lounging in a deck chair gazing out the window. Before we can say anything, before he even turns around, he says, “You should know I don’t actually do drugs. I only facilitate the market.” Then he turns, and he fixes two dark, penetrating eyes right on me. “I’ve been clean for a nice while now, and there’s no sense in messing that up.”
“No indeed,” I tell him, and I lead Kent to him. Johnny gestures coolly to the opposite deck chair, where I sit tentatively, leaning forward. Kent stands beside me, clutching a briefcase. Archy, like a scowling English ghost, is already gone. “And I can assure you that what I’ve brought to you today is only a drug in the most technical of senses. While there is a substance involved, it isn’t addictive, and it isn’t any more harmful than a heavy dose of your average sleep medication. And that’s because it’s not the drug I’m selling, Mr. Quid. It’s the experience.” And here I give Kent a very small nod, and luckily he spots it and knows it means he should open the case. He does, and there’s the PASIV device with all its wires and timers and blinking lights. Johnny eyes it without reaction. This is the first time we’ve done anything like this, and we’re banking a lot on Archy’s assurance that Johnny loves new, shiny, fancy things, and that unless Johnny is made to think he knows exactly what we’re up to, we’re never going to get past him. Even Eames had to agree with that.
“This device, operated by a third party, administers the sedative, to you or to a group, simultaneously,” I tell him, pitch-perfect salesman voice, god I hope so. “All it does is put you to sleep. It’s what happens while you’re asleep that’s got people talking.”
Johnny looks at me, unblinking. “Who’s talking?” he says. “I’ve never heard anything, and I hear about everything.”
“And those of us in the know generally try to keep it that way,” I say smoothly. “It’s not the kind of thing you want getting out and about to just anyone. There’s a limited number of machines and demand would be very high if its existence was made too public. You may not realize it, Mr. Quid, but I’m doing you a great favor by showing you this.”
He moves his cold, dead, shark-like eyes slowly and solidly from the machine to me and stares at me for a heavy moment, and I worry if I’ve stepped too far, presumed too much. He eventually speaks, even but slow, to imply that yes, I did, and I get a fair strike but don’t fucking do it again.
“So why are you showing me this?” he says.
I give him a casual shrug. “Business isn’t what it used to be,” I say, and I feel like I’m starting to sound like Eames, which is a little reassuring, because Eames is a far, far better liar than I am. “I’m looking to move into other avenues for a while, shift the demand for this in another direction. Heard you were the man to see.”
He nods a little, his face a fucking void. “What does it do?” he says eventually.
“It alters the way that you dream,” I say, “and it allows you to share that dream with others, experiencing it as a physically manifest and sometimes entirely convincing reality. With practice, the memory of the dreams can become vivid, and control can be exercised. It’s intoxicating, in its way.”
“Group-dreaming,” he says. “Sounds kind of dirty.”
“Potentially,” I say. “It’s for anything-however you want to use it.”
He’s still just looking at me. “How much are you asking for it?” he says.
“You can get it for a bargain while it’s still so new,” I tell him. “8,000 for one machine and a healthy amount of the sedative, enough to reproduce your own.”
His eyes narrow a little, and I wonder if this is too high or too low.
“I’ll need a demonstration,” he says.
“Of course you will,” I say. “I wouldn’t sell without one.”
He looks me up and down, judging, searching. I resist the urge to fidget. “I suppose you’ll have to accompany me,” he says.
“If you don’t mind,” I say. “It’s best if I can give you some examples of method, various rules of thumb, that kind of thing.”
Johnny finally turns his stare back to the device, watching it like it’s hypnotizing him, or, somehow, vice versa. “How long does it take?” he says.
“In real-time?” I say, and I nod for Kent to shut the briefcase, which he does a bit clumsily. “Just five minutes.”
He frowns thoughtfully at me, then he smiles and laughs to himself. I’m beginning to see what has everyone so agitated about this guy-I don’t know what it is, but he’s scary.
“All right,” he says. “I’m game. Anything funny happens, and you should know the deal’s off, and that’s the least of your concerns.”
“Of course,” I say generously. “When were you thinking-”
“Right away,” he says quickly. “Tomorrow at three.”
Archy’s hours off are from three to five, and he’s told us specifically not to arrange it for then.
“I may not be able to make it that early,” I say. “I’ve got a prior engagement.”
He looks at me, really suspicious, and for a minute I’m terrified I’m going to have to come up with a legitimate-sounding prior engagement. “Four,” he says. He’s never asking, always telling me. I don’t want to antagonize him more than I have to, so I look up at Kent. Kent is plainly terrified by having to actually do something, but he manages to stay with it and shake his head. Give the kid a goddamn Oscar.
Johnny scowls. He very clearly does not want Archy involved. “Five minutes?” he says.
“Just five minutes,” I say.
“Fine,” he says. “Five o’clock sharp. Be prompt.”
“I am always prompt, Mr. Quid,” I say, and I get to my feet. “I look forward to doing business with you.” I offer him my hand, which he takes, turns, and kisses. I recover it, and I feel that my instinctive reaction of looking a little dismayed is still pretty in-character.
He smirks at me and waves us off, and switches his attention back to the window with mechanistic precision; it’s like we’re suddenly not in the room, though it feels like forever to get across it and out to the hall, where Archy’s waiting to take us back out. Archy isn’t pleased about the time, says something about how that’s cutting it way too close, and I say something about how this is how it is and does he realize just how much Johnny doesn’t seem to trust him? It’s only when Kent and I clear the estate and are walking in quick silence back to the inn that I realize how much I’ve been sweating.
Continues here
New readers start here.
Tonight Eames has a dream, and in that dream is someone who is the opposite of me: a big, muscle-bound Scotsman with a lovable naïveté and brutish charms. His “name,” for all intents and purposes, is One Two.
The dream starts off pretty real, pieced together from a memory. They’re in a Range Rover, which is sometimes a truck, and Eames is in the passenger seat but also he’s driving, so it’s an American car even though he’s pretty sure this is England, and somehow One Two has control of the brakes.
Eames, who is Handsome Bob right now, knows that he’s about to go to jail for five years for some minor offense (in the dream it doesn’t make any sense at all, but that part of it will be forgotten when he wakes), and One Two’s hapless efforts to cheer him involve greasing down a pair of twin escort girls for Bob’s personal pleasure.
Bob is distraught.
“All right. Well, I can see that cheered you up,” says One Two.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful,” says Bob, and right now it’s like he’s not Bob at all, but Eames, sitting in the back of the car, watching himself, like watching a movie. “It’s just, um-” But this sentence is bound to be absurd, and he won’t finish it.
“What?” presses One Two. “It’s just what?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” says Bob.
“Come on, Bobby-boy, that’s not fair,” says One Two. “I’d understand anything coming from you.” His rough Scottish brogue is tempered by something else, something American (or are they in America?), and very briefly One Two might be Arthur, but the confusion is subtle and passing.
“Would you,” says Bob, and he’s Bob again, and he doesn’t believe One Two, and he knows in the pit of his stomach that this won’t end well.
“Bob, you’re my best mate,” says One Two definitively.
Fine, says Bob to himself, fuck it.
“See, I don’t want the strippers, One Two,” says Bob.
One Two is a little dubious (why would anyone not want strippers?), but he nods. “Okay.”
“I want you.”
There’s the awful moment where One Two thinks it’s a joke; then the car slams to a merciful violent halt, and Bob lurches forward, and suddenly One Two is outside the car screaming obscenities at him, accusing him of being both ladykiller and homo, and all Bob can think about is I want someone to fucking touch me before I go to jail tomorrow, and there are apologies all around, and it’s all very confusing.
The transition here is blurry (transitions always are), but it sorts itself out as Bob and One Two are somehow in Bob’s room, which isn’t really his room, certainly not the room he had when he knew One Two, but it’s like a lot of rooms, and there’s a bed, and who’s counting?
One Two isn’t talking anymore; One Two isn’t doing anything that One Two would do anymore. Instead he’s helping Bob out of his shirt and kissing his chest tenderly, as Bob wraps his arms around him and pulls himself close, feeling the warmth, the smell of him. One Two’s hands are hot on his skin, and One Two drops down to his knees and takes Bob in his mouth, and Bob doesn’t want to lose this, Bob would give anything to keep this, this which is a falsehood. One Two is good at this, better than he should be, but it doesn’t fucking matter, because now he’s lying on top of Bob and rubbing hard against him and Bob writhes and moans beneath him, can’t move right, can’t open his eyes-
And just like that, Eames is awake. His cock is hard in his hand, and he’s staring up at the ceiling, sweaty and disoriented. I’m asleep beside him, dreaming about pigeons.
“Shit,” he whispers to himself. “Shit.” Gingerly he gets up and sort of hobbles over to the bathroom, where he switches the shower on as cold as he can stomach and gets in. A few seconds of that and he thinks better of it, and he turns it up hot and he finishes the job his stupid, fickle subconscious started.
It’s over in a matter of minutes, and he’s half-assedly toweled himself off and he climbs back into bed beside me, where I turn over in my sleep and it becomes this vaguely recurring dream I have where I’m on a job but I don’t seem to know any of the people in my team, and my loaded die keeps falling out of my pocket and I end up getting totally lost.
I wake up in a bad mood, and he’s already up and dressed, staring moodily out the window again.
“God, I had the shittiest dreams,” I mumble, rubbing my eyes.
Eames doesn’t comment. Eames doesn’t see having a dream about his old friend and former object of affection as traitorous or shameful. What it is, is distressing. He realizes he misses One Two more than he’s cared to admit, and if One Two is gone he’s not sure what he’ll do.
“Ready to go?”
Eames says, “Yeah.”
“And Yusuf’ll meet us there, with the new guy,” I say. “Right?”
“Right,” says Eames.
Two hours later we’re on a train, not saying much of anything. Another hour and we’ve reached our stop, and Yusuf is introducing us to a guy named Kent, who seems nice enough, and is a little excited to be working with us, which neither of us has any patience for. Eames never really gave me an adequate excuse for Yusuf’s presence, just told me he’d be coming after that suddenly necessary phone call a few days ago, and I’m a little uncertain about the whole thing. But Yusuf has a briefcase full of questionable potions, and you never know when that’ll be useful, so I shake his hand and ask him how he’s been.
At some point it occurs to me that Eames and Yusuf seem to know a lot about each other, and how did I never notice that before?
The next few days are covered by a lot of waiting and reading and sketching and spying, peppered with clipped discussions and bland English food.
Point one of the job is I have to meet with Johnny Quid and set the whole operation in motion. Archy’s been good enough to arrange a meeting, and Eames has, albeit reluctantly, gathered enough references to make me out to be a fresh-faced but reliable up-and-comer in the heady world of illicit business. Eames seems very uncomfortable with this whole part of the plan, and he’s making me nervous, so I avoid him.
I walk with Kent to the estate, which is a run-down, nasty old place, very English but very uncared for. Kent is really excited to be playing a role-he’s mostly been a behind-the-scenes guy until now, and I pray to whatever god will take me that it’s not for extremely good reasons. He’s supposed to be my assistant, to give me a little more clout, and while he’s not supposed to speak or really do much of anything, and he’s obviously the only choice for the part, I find myself painting horrible scenarios in my head where he tries to improvise and Johnny Quid ends up killing us both.
This is stupid, though, and I’m impatient when I tell Eames I’ll be fine and turn my back on him without much of a goodbye.
“This is fucked,” says Eames to Yusuf when we’ve gone. “Why couldn’t we just let Archy handle this? Archy knows when he sleeps.”
“Do you really want to trust Archy?” says Yusuf. “This whole job reeks, Eames. I wouldn’t be surprised if Johnny’s in on it.”
“Stop that,” says Eames. “You’re supposed to make me feel better.”
“No,” says Yusuf. “You’re doing a fine job of that on your own, Mr. Denial. I’m here to bring the cold harsh bite of reality. I’m supposed to make you feel worse.”
“Oh thanks very much,” mutters Eames, and paces and waits. We rented out three small hotel rooms with three small beds-he and I have to share the cramped space and it means we’re not sleeping well. He feels worse and worse the more time I’m away.
I meet with Archy outside the estate, and he furtively shakes my hand.
“He’s inside,” says Archy. “He’s pretty calm today, and he doesn’t know much about who you are. You should talk a lot, don’t let him ask too many questions. Do not mention Eames.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” I say dryly, and he frowns and throws Kent a suspicious glance before he admits us both.
He takes us through the dim, musty place before we get to a big empty room that might have once been a dance studio, and Johnny, who’s lounging in a deck chair gazing out the window. Before we can say anything, before he even turns around, he says, “You should know I don’t actually do drugs. I only facilitate the market.” Then he turns, and he fixes two dark, penetrating eyes right on me. “I’ve been clean for a nice while now, and there’s no sense in messing that up.”
“No indeed,” I tell him, and I lead Kent to him. Johnny gestures coolly to the opposite deck chair, where I sit tentatively, leaning forward. Kent stands beside me, clutching a briefcase. Archy, like a scowling English ghost, is already gone. “And I can assure you that what I’ve brought to you today is only a drug in the most technical of senses. While there is a substance involved, it isn’t addictive, and it isn’t any more harmful than a heavy dose of your average sleep medication. And that’s because it’s not the drug I’m selling, Mr. Quid. It’s the experience.” And here I give Kent a very small nod, and luckily he spots it and knows it means he should open the case. He does, and there’s the PASIV device with all its wires and timers and blinking lights. Johnny eyes it without reaction. This is the first time we’ve done anything like this, and we’re banking a lot on Archy’s assurance that Johnny loves new, shiny, fancy things, and that unless Johnny is made to think he knows exactly what we’re up to, we’re never going to get past him. Even Eames had to agree with that.
“This device, operated by a third party, administers the sedative, to you or to a group, simultaneously,” I tell him, pitch-perfect salesman voice, god I hope so. “All it does is put you to sleep. It’s what happens while you’re asleep that’s got people talking.”
Johnny looks at me, unblinking. “Who’s talking?” he says. “I’ve never heard anything, and I hear about everything.”
“And those of us in the know generally try to keep it that way,” I say smoothly. “It’s not the kind of thing you want getting out and about to just anyone. There’s a limited number of machines and demand would be very high if its existence was made too public. You may not realize it, Mr. Quid, but I’m doing you a great favor by showing you this.”
He moves his cold, dead, shark-like eyes slowly and solidly from the machine to me and stares at me for a heavy moment, and I worry if I’ve stepped too far, presumed too much. He eventually speaks, even but slow, to imply that yes, I did, and I get a fair strike but don’t fucking do it again.
“So why are you showing me this?” he says.
I give him a casual shrug. “Business isn’t what it used to be,” I say, and I feel like I’m starting to sound like Eames, which is a little reassuring, because Eames is a far, far better liar than I am. “I’m looking to move into other avenues for a while, shift the demand for this in another direction. Heard you were the man to see.”
He nods a little, his face a fucking void. “What does it do?” he says eventually.
“It alters the way that you dream,” I say, “and it allows you to share that dream with others, experiencing it as a physically manifest and sometimes entirely convincing reality. With practice, the memory of the dreams can become vivid, and control can be exercised. It’s intoxicating, in its way.”
“Group-dreaming,” he says. “Sounds kind of dirty.”
“Potentially,” I say. “It’s for anything-however you want to use it.”
He’s still just looking at me. “How much are you asking for it?” he says.
“You can get it for a bargain while it’s still so new,” I tell him. “8,000 for one machine and a healthy amount of the sedative, enough to reproduce your own.”
His eyes narrow a little, and I wonder if this is too high or too low.
“I’ll need a demonstration,” he says.
“Of course you will,” I say. “I wouldn’t sell without one.”
He looks me up and down, judging, searching. I resist the urge to fidget. “I suppose you’ll have to accompany me,” he says.
“If you don’t mind,” I say. “It’s best if I can give you some examples of method, various rules of thumb, that kind of thing.”
Johnny finally turns his stare back to the device, watching it like it’s hypnotizing him, or, somehow, vice versa. “How long does it take?” he says.
“In real-time?” I say, and I nod for Kent to shut the briefcase, which he does a bit clumsily. “Just five minutes.”
He frowns thoughtfully at me, then he smiles and laughs to himself. I’m beginning to see what has everyone so agitated about this guy-I don’t know what it is, but he’s scary.
“All right,” he says. “I’m game. Anything funny happens, and you should know the deal’s off, and that’s the least of your concerns.”
“Of course,” I say generously. “When were you thinking-”
“Right away,” he says quickly. “Tomorrow at three.”
Archy’s hours off are from three to five, and he’s told us specifically not to arrange it for then.
“I may not be able to make it that early,” I say. “I’ve got a prior engagement.”
He looks at me, really suspicious, and for a minute I’m terrified I’m going to have to come up with a legitimate-sounding prior engagement. “Four,” he says. He’s never asking, always telling me. I don’t want to antagonize him more than I have to, so I look up at Kent. Kent is plainly terrified by having to actually do something, but he manages to stay with it and shake his head. Give the kid a goddamn Oscar.
Johnny scowls. He very clearly does not want Archy involved. “Five minutes?” he says.
“Just five minutes,” I say.
“Fine,” he says. “Five o’clock sharp. Be prompt.”
“I am always prompt, Mr. Quid,” I say, and I get to my feet. “I look forward to doing business with you.” I offer him my hand, which he takes, turns, and kisses. I recover it, and I feel that my instinctive reaction of looking a little dismayed is still pretty in-character.
He smirks at me and waves us off, and switches his attention back to the window with mechanistic precision; it’s like we’re suddenly not in the room, though it feels like forever to get across it and out to the hall, where Archy’s waiting to take us back out. Archy isn’t pleased about the time, says something about how that’s cutting it way too close, and I say something about how this is how it is and does he realize just how much Johnny doesn’t seem to trust him? It’s only when Kent and I clear the estate and are walking in quick silence back to the inn that I realize how much I’ve been sweating.
Continues here