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The Odds
By Mink & ELD
"J.L.LLLLLLLLLLLLL, Twist is stuck in the dishwasher!"
J.J. waited for the footsteps to come down the stairs but there was silence.
"And the kitchen is on fireeeeeeeeeeee!" J.J. added, thinking that would do it for sure.
The loft was quiet.
J.J.'s hands fussed with each other.
"Fine. Try to ignore me while I'm jumping up and down on your bed!"
J.J. marched up the steps and flung J.L.'s door open regardless of what perverse or crushingly boring things were going on.
It was empty.
"So bored!" J.J. gasped and looked frantically around him.
How could everyone be out at once?
J.J. rolled on a wall and moaned.
Finding all J.L.'s drawers locked and his closet dead bolted J.J. wandered down the hall and tried the other bedrooms.
The only one he could get into was Twist's and a 5 second investigation under the bed made J.J. withdraw in disgust. It was then he spotted the tiny little black book on Twist's night table. With a small cry of victory he grabbed it and flipped through the small pages.
Some of the numbers didn't even have names just little markings of Twist code. Some were baffling while some were quite clear. Four stars was easy enough to interpret, but what was this lightening bolt and then a paw print?
J.J. was puzzling over this when a small piece of paper fell from where it had been tucked into the back. He snatched it before it could float to the floor.
"Find anything good?"
J.J. jumped and turned to see Twist standing, and from the looks of it, very impossibly, considering the amount of whiskey missing from the bottle he held in one hand. With no shirt to speak of and his black leather pants hung low on his hips, the black cowboy boots completed his Jim Morrison image.
"Just this." J.J. held up the little book and smiled as he hid the slip of paper behind his back.
Twist focused on it and then smiled back. Stumbling towards his bed he fell face first onto it not bothering with his boots. "..people ed pay lots for 'at..." He said into his pillow.
J.J. tucked the paper in his pocket while he put the black book where he found it. "What do the paw prints mean?"
"'ogs."
"Huh?"
"'ogs. A thing for 'ogs."
Unwilling to hear any more of that explanation J.J. left the room eager to get to his mobile and call the number he found on the paper. It had one large star over the entire thing and a name of a man that liked to play a game or two.
J.J. was out the door and in a cab before Twist even started snoring.
Twist woke up in stages.
The first of which was denial, the second was deep confusion and the third a searing pounding pain just behind his eyes. He rolled onto his back and groaned at the empty bottle that had nicely soaked its contents into his mattress.
His cel phone was ringing.
His hand somehow found his phone and then somehow found his face.
"Wha?"
An angry voice was on the line.
"I did what-?"
"I don't remember that-"
"No need to bring my mum into this man-"They hung up.
"Shite."
J.L. stopped in his door drying his hair with a towel. "Something wrong?"
"Eh..." Twist sat up and clutched his head with two hands. "I must have been at Koji's last night."
"Playing cards." J.L. sighed at the implications.
"Yeah, hey J.L., do you have any cash on you?"
J.L.'s brow furrowed. "How much?"
"How much is 25,000 pounds in yen? Hey! Where are you goin- bloody hell."
Twist was understandably nervous. No one liked to play around with Koji too much when it came to paying up on gambling debts but this situation had the potential to go from fairly unpleasant to really freaking unfortunate.
J.L. refused to speak to him any further on the subject as soon as Twist had suggested they should look into selling the loft. L.J. had just shook his head. L.L. seemed to tolerate Twist's monetary panic out of lack of anything better to do.
"It's not funny man!" Twist snapped over his shoulder as he dug through his drawers tossing random jewelry and anything that looked like it held any value whatsoever out behind him on the floor.
L.L. was lounging on the whiskey scented bed with his hands laced together behind his head and a grin on his face. "You're right there." He agreed. "It's down right hilarious."
Twist knelt down by the pile and held up a watch hopefully. "Do you think this is worth much?"
"Cheap Hong Kong forgery. Any fella that knows his stuff wouldn't take that watch even to get rid of a one legged dog."
Twist scowled at him. "No way! J gave me this for my birthd- oh fuck me." He dropped it back into the pile forlornly.
"Now tell me..." L.L. stopped laughing before the tears came. "How in the hell did you go and get yourself in that deep?"
"I don't know!" Twist whined. "I don't even remember BEING there!"
"Remember being where?" J.J. asked as he swung in with a bounce and a squirt gun full of something that had a much higher alcohol content than water.
"Koji's." Twist was biting into a gold a coin which he found to his mixed disappointment and pleasure was actually made of chocolate. "If I wanted to fuck myself I'd have just stayed home."
J.J. sprayed the concoction in his clear green water gun into his mouth. "Koji?"
"Yeah, and here why don't you have this back you bloody twink." Twist threw the forged Rolex at J.J.'s head.
"Koji..." J.J. wondered while he ducked. "Why does that sound so, like something?"
Twist had moved onto his closet. "Koji, the Jap Terror, the Breaker of Legs, the Maker of Wrongs, the bloke that runs the poker games downtown? I owe him some money and if don't pay he said he's going to kill me- holy shite, look guys! My old Love-n-Rockets concert T, awesome!!"
J.J. went pale and stopped sucking on the business end of his gun. "Po-poker?"
L.L. looked back and forth between them and smirked. "Good luck to ya Twist, let me know if he does go on right ahead and kill ya." He stood up and headed towards the door. "I would sure hate to miss that funeral."
"Hey, how much would a soprano Yanagisawa go for?" Twist's voice was muffled as he was on his hands and knees half submerged in his over flowing closet. "But you know, like used?"
L.L.'s amusement vanished from his face. "Now you listen up T., and you listen good-"
"Remember this?" Twist was digging through a shoebox filled with various different smoking devices and was holding up an elaborate glass blown pipe. "Keith Richards left it in our trailer at PotStock! Do you know how to use that ebay thing? Maybe I can sell it on ebay-"
L.L. was not done. "You best stay right well away from my saxes T., or that end you are fearin may come a little sooner than you thought."
"Twist?" J.J. watched L.L. point threateningly in distraction. "I think I might have been at Koji's last night? I found his name in your little book thingy-"
"Wha?" Twist was looking through a plastic sack that looked like a condom grab bag.
"Oh my god! Look, my Absinthe!"L.L. left in disgust.
"I might have bet a little." J.J. bit at his lower lip. "Um, I might have, maybe, it is possible, that I might have said I was, maybe you-"
"I thought I sold this opium, man! Grab a lighter and some tin foil Joey, let's see if this shite is still any good!"
"Okay!" J.J. dashed downstairs, his confession momentarily forgotten.
The very next day was a bright and sunny one and J.J., despite the usually after effects of too old Opium, could not stand to remain indoors for one second.
When he arrived back at the loft, the mood seemed solemn.
"What's going on?" He asked, dumping the various sized shopping bags all over the living room floor.
The band was sitting quietly and seriously.
J.J. wondered if it was because of something he had done or had forgotten to do.
Then he saw Twist.
"OHMYGOD!"
Twist was sitting miserably in a black leather chair, one arm gingerly cradled in his other and fit in a newly placed cast that reached up to his elbow. His right eye was swollen shut and various shades of purple.
"I know!" Twist was almost too distraught to sip his whiskey and tab from the straw in his glass. "Look at me!"
J.J. hands went to his mouth. This was all his fault! Koji had sent Twist a warning about the money and it had really been meant for him. J.J. felt a moment of guilt and then a profound relief because he really didn't like pain and while Twist was innocent of this latest infraction J.J. was sure he probably deserved it for something or other he had done to Koji in the past.
J.J. was a firm believer in karma when it met with his rationalizations.
"J.L., what do we do?" J.J. automatically sought him out. "They are going to kill him!”
J.L. dropped a well aimed ice pack into Twist’s lap and left the room.
Twist yelped and took it carefully out of his crotch.
L.L. cleared his throat. "Why don't you tell Joey here what happened?"
L.J. clapped Twist on the back a little too hard. "Yeah, tell J."
"Hey! Watch it! I almost DIED today. Like death. DEAD." Twist gasped dramatically as he pressed the ice to his eye. "Well, I was trying to get a bunch of killer leather jackets out of the bathroom window at Macy’s but I didn't realize I was like on the second floor, so when um, I was going out after them, I fell."
J.J. blinked.
"In a dumpster!" Twist emphasized and looked around at his band mates for the sympathy which was not forthcoming. He ignored them and decided to feel sorry for himself instead. "I could have gotten at least 10 big ones for those man. Stupid cops."
A small explosion followed by screaming startled them all.
They ran to the window to see a car in flames down by the curb.
"OHMYGOD!" J.J. cried out. "Car bombs!!! Oh god, do you guys know how long it will take to audition new vocals?" he moaned.
Twist seemed excited. "Oh wow, that website said it would just burn!"
"What?"
"That guy that delivers from that sushi place said I ought to try to collect on some insurance. I think he meant like offing one of you guys but thought hey what about a-"
"Ehm," L.J. said, "Isn't that L.L.'s car?"
Twist squeezed L.L.'s shoulder with his good hand. "Yeah, these tough times are hard on us all right now man." He assured him.
L.L. stared down into the street, his hands shaking on the glass in a seething silence.
J.J. realized he had to do something and quickly before Twist did himself in before Koji did.
“I’ll be back in time for happy hour!” J.J. announced as he grabbed his Hello Kitty backpack, his sunglasses and a box of condoms that was sitting on the table.
It was almost dawn when he returned. The loft was dark and quiet with sleep.
J.L. was sitting under the one lit lamp reading, and, J.J. knew, waiting for him.
“Did you settle your debt?”
J.J. sighed and tiredly slid off his back pack. “In trade.”
J.L. raised an eyebrow. “25,000 pounds is 4,900,000 yen. If you round up.”
“Yup.” J.J. slumped down onto the couch.
“I know you are good but not that good.”
J.J. stuck out his tongue. “I told him we’d play a party of his. For free.”
J.L. waited.
“And…” J.J. sighed, “Twist kinda maybe has to do some covers of Koji’s favorite singer.”
“Who is that?”
J.J. looked uncomfortable. “Bette Midler.”
J.L. closed his book and switched off the light.
As the older man made his way up the stairs to bed, J.J. was almost certain he heard a small laugh.
The end.
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