32

The white unmarked man rolled up the tinted passenger side window of the black unmarked car, then the whole black and white affair rolled away into the rainbow of traffic.

In Adam’s hand was an envelope. He was a kind of secret trust fund baby now, indentured to an absentee father he hated and never saw.

He had gotten away. From the madness of the group and the pressure being a kind of messiah. The group was an extension of himself, and he had gotten away from it. But he hadn’t gotten away from the men in black suits, the envelope money that was magically replenished the moment it ran out and the dreams. The dreams were hazy now, blurry. Kindergarten drawing dreams. Dreams about labs and examination tables, seen from inside a vat of unidentifiable liquid. Unformed things, colored outside the lines. Things with no hope of escape.

He tried anyway. The best place to escape and hide was in plain sight.

Escape is best made in a crowd.

Embrace it, he thought. Embrace the masses. He was sick of hating them by now. There was still a large part of him, that he had been trying very hard to bury, that felt like he could beat them, but he was losing his motivation. He probably could beat them, but he was tired so he decided to join them anyway.

Know all you can about an opponent before engaging them.

Somewhere in there, he knew that fighting was the wrong way to go about change.

Subvert the culture and values of an opponent from within.

He had his envelope money, and it was time to hit the town.

***

David hit Adam’s couch with a thud. David was his name, the man Justin had rescue from the back alley and brought home. Marsh and the twins were out shooting second unit stuff around the city, Fargas was at his own house and Thomas and Leah hadn’t been around much lately. David had Justin’s undivided attention.

“Do uh,” David began, “do you have a butter knife I can have? Something you don’t use much.”

“A buttaknife?” Justin said.

“Yeah. If I can find a plug, I can strip the wire and hook up the negative and positive electrodes to the butter knife and it’ll give off heat.”

Justin thought about it. He thought over everything carefully these days. He said, “Naw man, you don’t need no buttaknife ‘cause you be livin large wit us now.”

“Any piece of metal will do, really,” David continued. “Any piece of scrap metal will give off heat if you can find a plug. I usually try to stand under lights because they give off that little bit of radiant heat.”

Justin nodded thoughtfully and really listened to what the man had to say.

“Yeah,” David went on, “that’s pretty much my life. Find a source of heat. Find a warm place to sleep for the night. It gets pretty cold, nights.”

“Not no more,” Justin said. “It’s warm in here as shit,” he pointed at the couch, “might as well make yo’self comfortable.”

“Hn,” David said, “I don’t like couches. I don’t like the way they make my spine curve.”

“Well shit, muthafucka, don’t make no difference to me, you can sleep on the floor then, know what I‘m saying?”