THREE YEARS AGO
AN ALTERNATE AND AN APPLE
Sometimes, when Friday isn't looking, Jean likes to pretend he travels through alternate universes, and that each part of his life is, in fact, not his life, but rather a version of it instead.
"Don't you ever miss Marseille?" Friday asked him once, when they only knew each other for a year but trusted each other enough to let one person make dinner. It was pasta tonight.
"No," Jean said. Sometimes.
"Oh?" Like what?
"It was boring." Like it itself.
"We should go." You want to go back?
"One day." No.
Night fell and Jean goes to his first alternate universe in Marseilles, where his French was better and he had a different last name and the 'K' stood for something boring. Where he knew nothing about Friday or a thousand and four ways to cut up a man. Where his father's butcher shop sold good ribeye.
"C'est trop beau pour être vrai," Alternate Jean says.
"Rien de réel n'est joli," Alternate Jean's mother says, and laughs.
Or:
Jean wrapped a towel around his neck. Friday hung off the edge of the bed, humming to himself.
"Stop that," Jean snapped. "You'll get a headache. Or have a seizure."
Friday grabbed his arm and hauled him next to him. "I want a honeymoon in Berlin."
Jean shook his head. "No honeymoon anywhere. We can't travel."
"Be kind."
"Be realistic."
Friday rolled over onto his stomach, cheek resting on his thigh. His green eye pulsed with forest leaves and detriments, entropic and infatuated.
"Then take me to Boston," he said. "I like Boston. I miss Boston."
"Let me sleep," Jean sighed, running his fingers through his hair.
Friday situated himself upright. "Sleep is for saints. Don't sleep," he said, and kissed Jean's neck, hand snaking between his legs, thumb beneath his shorts.
He closed his eyes.
"Is this your version of 'goodnight'?" Alternate Jean hisses when Friday begins to lean down.
"That makes me sound nice," Alternate Friday laughs, and swallows him down.
Jean figured he rather liked that universe, though.
They were at their third house of their time together when Suji told them.
"Someone is asking if you do hitman jobs." She draped her figure over the couch arm, kinky hair sprawled around her face. "What do you want me to say?"
Friday cleaned another stain off the front toe of his pink boots. It was his fourth pair by then.
He considered her statement for a few seconds before glancing at Jean, who was perched on the stool and flicking a lighter on and off with idle interest. Not much proved fascinating when you were twenty nine and living in the middle of shit-bit nowhere. Even if the scenery was nice.
YOU ARE READING
June & Joker
Short StoryThey were partners in crime, quite literally. Blood is binding like that. ______ Jean K. Joker and Friday June are murderers, and good ones at that. But even murderers have lives, and when two intertwine, perhaps neither are as heartless as they co...
