fade away youth// rafe cameron

7-NOW THAT'S JUST A MEMORY

We head back to Château. Kie and Pope show up. JJ is having a great time telling them about what happened at Miss Lana's. Honestly, he's having a little too much fun.

"And then we were right outside like this." JJ leans against the chimney of the fireplace. "And all we hear is just, 'Bam! Bam! Bam!' Knocking paint off the wall, G! From the inside. All right? And I'm just looking at him, like... Wait, first off, look at this shit." JJ shakes paint chips from his hair onto Pope. "Look at it."

"The house," Pope says.

Kie looks at JJ in disgust. "That's dandruff, disgusting."

Pope holds his hand up. "Okay, thank you."

"Look at all that. All right? That's paint. At that point, I was just, like... I'm waiting for death," JJ remarks.

"Oh, okay, so you saw the guys that shot at us, right?" Pope asks.

"Yeah," JJ answers.

"Did you get a good description of them? What did they look like?" Pope asks.

"Anything?" Kie asks.

"Anything we can bring to a police report?" Pope questions.

"Burly," JJ says.

"Burly?" Pope questions.

"Yeah. You know, like..." JJ trails off.

"That's not very helpful," Kie states.

"Okay, well, no, like the type of guy at my dad's garage. I mean, you guys know he made cargo hides for drug smugglers," JJ says.

I nod. "Yeah. Yes. No, we know."

"I can tell you with full confidence, these boys, these killers..." JJ takes a hit from his vape. "They're square groupers."

"They're square groupers, like narco square grouper? Like Pablo Escobar square grouper?" Pope questions.

JJ takes another hit. "Yeah, man."

"You guys, not everything is a kingpin movie," Kie tells them.

"What does this square grouper look like? Specifically?" Pope asks.

"You weren't there, bro," JJ tells him.

"Apparently you don't know what to look for," Pope remarks.

"Dude! I wasn't taking little mental Polaroids the entire time. I was under duress, okay? But I can tell you... I can tell you by the way that Ms. Lana was screaming... that these guys are serious, serious hombres, man. It's a heavy vibe right now, okay? I'm not liking this very much," JJ says.

"Okay. Why do they want the compass?" Kie asks.

"It's a piece of shit. You couldn't pawn it off for five bucks if you wanted to." Pope looks at John B. "No offense. I know it's in your family..."

"The office," John B states.

"What?" Pope asks.

"My dad. My dad's office." John B starts walking towards the house. "He always kept the office locked because he was worried about his competitors stealing his Royal Merchant research. We used to laugh at him like he was gonna find it. But now that he's gone, I've just kinda..." John B stops in front of a door. "I just left it as he kept it."

"Yeah, for when he gets back.," Kie states.

"Yeah." John B opens the door.

"I've slept over here like 600 times, and I've never seen this door opened," Pope comments.