In earlier posts, I’ve said that I just like to write. I’ve been writing another story for several days and I need a break. (Those of you who aren’t writers may be surprised that it takes that long. Those of you who are probably won’t be surprised.) I’m thinking of posting my new story here when I get it finished.

I’m not really concerned about whether anybody reads this stuff or not, but I am curious. So, more as an experiment than anything else, I’m posting a story I wrote a few years ago just to see what happens. (My first guess: Nothing.) If you do happen to stumble across this post, let me know what you think about it.

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The Gun’s Story

Copyright 2016 by Kinesava
all rights reserved

Jules – January 18

Jules was drunk when he decided to shoot out the old fashioned sodium vapor streetlight outside his trailer. He hated that light. The green-yellow light bored into his head even when he closed his eyes. It made everything look sick, like it was old and covered with something nasty. A lot of what was in the trailer was nasty and that light just made it look worse. It was the last, little thing that had stomped on his life, so he decided to use the last thing in his life that worked – his gun – and shoot the light out. But he couldn’t hit it. Somebody called the cops. When he heard the siren, he ran back into the trailer and hid the gun in the hidey hole next to the toilet.

January 21

The cops kept him locked up for three days until a public defender pointed out that they had no witnesses and no gun either. Then they just put him back out on the street. They didn’t even give him a ride back to the trailer. It took the rest of the day to walk back from the jail and he didn’t get there until dark.

When he finally reached the trailer, the door was hanging open and it smelled like shit inside.  Somebody broke in while he was in jail. There was nothing to steal – nothing except the gun.  He ran to the toilet in the back and pried up the loose tile over the hidey hole. He could feel the relief flowing through him when he saw that whoever tried to rob him didn’t find the gun. He held the gun close to his breast as he slowly walked back to the front of the trailer and saw why the trailer smelled like shit. Whoever broke in left a dump on the floor – probably as revenge because there wasn’t anything worth stealing.

When he moved into the trailer, Jules noticed the loose tile next to the toilet. Too many years of being bathed in piss had dissolved the glue under it and curled the edges up. He thought about fixing it and then noticed that the plywood and some insulation under the tile could be shoved back just enough for a hidey hole. He hid the gun, a few extra bullets, and his last twenty dollars in a baggie there and poked the insulation back into the hole to cover it.

Through the gloom that sets in everywhere in the small hours of the morning, Jules wondered how his life had reached this point. January nights were cold even in southern Arizona and his body trembled as he sat on the dirty floor of the trailer, rocking back and forth, holding the gun. The sodium vapor light was still there and it gave the gun metal a yellow-blue gleam. The gun looked clean, functional … ready to do whatever was necessary.

He scraped up the shit on a piece of cardboard and threw it out the door, but it didn’t help the smell much. So he took his last twenty dollars and walked down to the all night liquor store in the next block, bought the cheapest vodka he could find, walked back, and wrapped himself in an old quilt. He sat on the floor half way between the shit smell in the front and the piss smell in the back and started to get as drunk as he could get in the cold January night. The gun was in his lap as cheap vodka started to saturate his bloodstream.

Jules and Jason – Four Years Earlier

March in Arizona can be the best weather on Earth. Jules and Jason were relaxing at a picnic table in a park near Jason’s apartment. Jules lived in the attic of Jason’s apartment but the place was just too small for the two of them, Jason’s girlfriend, and their two year old daughter.  They liked to get out of the apartment when it wasn’t too hot.

Jules was making a sketch on a large sheet of paper. Jason liked to watch his friend Jules draw things. Jason couldn’t draw a stick figure but Jules did it effortlessly.

“What are you drawing now?”

Today, Jules was drawing some kind of lizard. Jason was amazed at how Jules could make just a few lines on paper look like a lizard. A few curlicues on the lizard’s back multiplied into whole rows of horny bumps in your mind. This wasn’t just any lizard, it was an action figure. Something about the lines made you know that the lizard was looking at something. Your eye was drawn to find what the lizard was looking at, even though it was just a drawing; even though it was just a few lines.

Jules held up his drawing for inspection. “It’s a reptile.”

Jason looked at the drawing and sniffed, “Looks like a lizard to me.”

Jules explained, “Lizards are lower class. This is a reptile. Reptiles have more class than lizards.”

That seemed to satisfy Jason, but now he had another question. “If its upper class, then it’s gotta have a name. What’s his name?’

Jules put the drawing back on the table, “I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t know. Do you know what his name is?”

Jules and Jason had been going back and forth like this since they were kids. They sometimes kept it up for hours. They were together so much that people who knew them called them ‘J-J’ – like they were just one person:  “Hey, hey, J-J! What you doin’ to-day!”

Jules was creative with a pencil, but Jason was creative with everything else. Jason knew exactly what to call Jules’ lizard.

“His name is Roger Reptile!” Jason announced. “That’s perfect. He’s not an Arizona lizard, he’s an English reptile. And his name is Roger because that’s what he’s looking to do. Roger somebody. He’s looking for his girlfriend so he can roger her.”

“What are you talking about?” Jules wasn’t as worldly as Jason and had never heard of that obscure bit of English profanity.

“That’s what they say in England when you screw your girlfriend.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do! Draw his girlfriend and let’s ask somebody.

Jules drew about eight lines that only suggested the outline of a figure on the side of the paper that Roger Reptile seemed to be looking at. The curve of her breast was echoed by the curve of her hips. The curve of her waist connected them and mirrored the curve of her inner thigh below. It was just enough to create a mental image, but not quite enough to be an actual figure of a woman.

Jason held up the paper, “That’s perfect! Let’s ask Anus.”

Anise was Jason’s girlfriend. She was tending their daughter a few yards away on the grass. Jason always called her Anus and she hated it. Before Anise was born, her parents were amazed to discover that both of them loved the licorice taste of Anise seed. Besides, they both thought the word sounded poetic. Neither of them saw the curse they were putting on her whole life by giving her that name.

“Anus – Come and look at what Jules drew!”

Anise scowled, but neither one of the J-J duo saw it. Jules was still drawing and Jason just didn’t notice. Anise knew that Jason would just keep cawing about it until she went over and looked, so she reluctantly got up and strolled over to the park table.

She glanced at Jules’ creation. “It’s a lizard.”

Jason was way into Jules’ drawing. “No, it’s a reptile, not a lizard. And his name is Roger Reptile. And he’s looking at something.  …  Can’t you see that?”

“Yeh … He’s looking at the woman Jules drew on the other side.”

“And what is Roger Reptile thinking about?”

“Sex. If his name is Roger, then he’s a male and that’s all men ever think about. Besides, he’s looking at a naked woman.” Jules had packed a lot of meaning into the eight lines on the paper.

“And what is Roger planning on doing next?”

“This is going nowhere. I know what you’re getting at but I don’t know what you want me to say. Just tell me so I can say it and get back to Katy.”

Anise named their daughter Katherine. It meant “pure” in Greek and Anise couldn’t think of any way that the name could be corrupted.

“He’s planning on rogering the girl! He’s an English reptile.”

“Why do men have a hundred thousand different words for ‘screw’? I’m going back to Katy.”

Jason yelled at the retreating form of his girlfriend, “Because there are a hundred thousand different ways to screw! And I’m planning on trying 7,642 of them on you when we get home!” A few people close enough to hear glanced at them as Jason loudly announced his intentions to her back. Anise gave no sign that she was still listening.

“See! I told you she would know!” Jason declared triumphantly.

“No she didn’t.”

“Yes, she did. She said it was a word that meant ‘screw’.”

“She said that was all you ever think about.”

“She said that was what all men ever think about. But I didn’t tell her what ‘roger’ meant. She already knew.”

Jules didn’t reply. When Jason got an idea fixed in his head, it was there permanently. Jules held up his drawing for inspection again and gave it his own personal seal of approval.

“I think Roger Reptile looks pretty good!”

“Roger that!” Jason agreed. But then his expression changed. Jules knew what that meant. Jason just had another big idea. Jason got a big idea every now and then and some of them were actually pretty good.

Jason grabbed the drawing, “Can you make some more Roger Reptile drawings like this? Make them professional looking. I think we can sell Roger Reptile.”

“Sell to who? I was thinking of doing a cartoon with Roger Reptile and sending it to Funky A. They bought my last drawing for fifty bucks.”

Funky Arizona was a college newspaper. They were always looking for something eye catching to fill up the small part of their paper that wasn’t covered with ads. Jules was a frequent contributor.

“Don’t do that yet. Let me carry the ball on this one for a week or so. If I don’t have something by then, you can send it to Funky A.”

In his mind’s eye, Jules could see fifty bucks flying away on wings. Maybe he would do a cartoon about flying money instead.

Jason was making plans for the drawing at a million miles a second, “I need some samples and they can’t be on note paper. Do one with the girl and one where Roger is looking right at you. And do some nice lettering on them that says, ‘Roger That!’”

“You have to buy the paper.” Jules liked it when Jason thought his work was good, but not enough to fund Jason’s ‘big idea’ by using his expensive art paper.

“No problem. No problem. But I want to get going on this right away. You’ve got some nice paper in your room in the attic. I’ll buy some to replace it. I promise.”

In his mind’s eye, Jules could see another ten bucks flying away, just behind the fifty bucks. Jules’ promises were usually worth the hot air they arrived in.

Two Weeks Later

Jason called Jules as soon as he hit the street outside of the imposing United Personal Electronics building.

 “Right. United. They really are interested! Our timing was perfect. They want a new slogan. They’re tired of ‘Get United’. They think their old slogan is just subnormal now. They want something new, and they can pay large. This could be it for us!”

”I pointed out that they can put their product right in the middle between Roger Reptile and the girl so the slogan, ‘Roger That!’ has a double meaning. They got that. They were going for the same screwing idea with their old slogan, ‘Get United’ so they were already primed for ‘Roger That’. They loved it. And they like the slightly European feel of it. I’m telling ya! We’re going all the way with this!”

Another Week Later

This time Jason called from right outside the United Personal Electronics conference room.

 “Yeah! Twenty-five thousand dollars for every year they use it with a minimum of two years and the option to buy. It’s the big time, Jules. This is it! We made it! We’re there, buddy!”

Jules could hear his friend almost baying at the moon in his joy at the other end of the call. Finally Jason got control over himself, “Can you meet me at the bank just down the street from my place in an hour? We have to sign a partnership agreement or they won’t deal with us. And it has to be notarized. The bank can do that.”

Later That Day

“Just sign here!” Jason stabbed at the form on the table with his finger, “I pulled this off the web. It’s just boilerplate. It just says that we’re fifty-fifty partners and a whole bunch of other stuff that’s really boring. I have to get this back to United tomorrow before they change their mind.”

Later That Week

Jason found Jules in the attic crawl space above what their landlord called an apartment. The landlord didn’t know about Jules but Jason told Jules that was charging extra because Jules was in the crawl space and charged Jules for the space. It was just after noon and Jules didn’t have to report to work for a couple of hours. He was still sleeping when Jason woke him up.

Jason was sitting on Jules’ only chair and waving his arms because when he stood up and did that, his hands hit the ceiling.

“Yeah! I do mean quit your job. You get fired for some reason every couple of weeks anyway. It’s no big deal.”

“I’ve had this job for eleven weeks. They’re gonna promote me to shift manager soon.”

“And you’ll get – what? Sixty-eight cents an hour more?”

“I’ll work forty hours instead of thirty-eight. I’ll get benefits.”

“You call that job a benefit? We’re gonna make a heavenly, delicious, ambrosial fifty thousand dollars from the horny little paws of Roger Reptile.”

“Over two years divided by two. My share for a year is $12,500. Minus taxes and expenses. I paid a hundred bucks for the materials we’ve used so far and I had to borrow that from Lennie. My nuts are on an anvil if I don’t pay it back. I’m paying ten percent interest a week. Maybe we can move out of this dump with the money but I’m not ready to retire yet. I still gotta work for a living. I’m not giving up my job.”

“We did it once. We can do it again. When you’re ahead in the race, keep running! Besides, I already make more per hour than you do at the furniture store and I told Anus this afternoon that I was quitting my job. I’m willing to take a chance. Take a chance with me.”

“How did she take that? You quitting your job, I mean.”

Jules was sitting up on his mattress now. When Jason took a chance on a different big idea a year ago, they ended up three months behind on their rent and were almost out on the street.

“I told her that we didn’t have any legal ties and she could leave any time she liked … and she could take the kid with her.”

Jules thought about how Anise might be adding up the pennies in her own account at the bank right now and wondering if she had enough to tell Jason to stuff Roger Reptile right up his ass.

Jules decided to try a different line, “How many years have I been sending things to magazines? How many magazines call me back? Winning the sweepstakes once doesn’t mean you can ever do it again.”

“YOU … friend Jules … didn’t send anything to a magazine this time.  I shopped it around and sold it to a major corporation.  You will be operations.  I will be marketing.  You will make clever drawings.  I will sell them.”

“So … You want me to just start drawing something this afternoon?”

“What color is, ‘YES!’ But I want more. I want us to put all the money United is going to pay us in a bank account and become a real business. I want to rent a studio so you can have someplace to work and so we can have a real business address. We’ll lie to the landlord and you can sleep there too and save a little money that way. We can pay ourselves a salary and start building a credit rating that doesn’t start with a minus sign.”

“That salary will be a fraction of what I get at the greaseburger palace because we’ll have to hire lawyers and accountants and buy office supplies. We don’t have that much money no matter how much we scrape the bottom of the money pot.”

“Only if we don’t make more money!  …  Jules! My man! We’re gonna make coin by the carload.”

“How many magazines call me back, Jason? How many?”

“They won’t have to. I’ll be calling them!”

Jules didn’t reply. When Jason got an idea fixed in his head, it was there permanently. Jules regarded Jason fondly and scratched himself as he sat up in his bed. Jason was still going on about starting the next international graphic design enterprise and wouldn’t have listened to any reply Jason might have made.

 Jules was the reason they were still friends. He always gave in. People who knew J-J teased them and accused them of being a gay couple.

“Hey, hey! It’s gay-gay J-J !”

Jason was so straight that he just laughed it off and pointed to the family he started before he was even twenty. Jules wasn’t impressed by Jason’s family. He said anybody could forget to wear a condom, but there weren’t that many people who had been friends as long as them. Suburbs were full of young couples with kids. Jules told Jason that the J-J duo was a rare item. Jules said he wanted them to be friends like this forever. Jason never seemed to even hear.

“Can we call the business ‘J-J’?” Jules was thinking about the long term implications of making their name J-J permanent.

“We can call it anything you want  …  if you’re in.”

“I’m in.”

Later That Year

Jason’s big idea paid off in a way that Jules could just barely imagine and wouldn’t have believed. Roger Reptile was on everything United sold and sparked a sales explosion for the company. After the ad campaign went viral, juvenile males of all ages would yell at women, “Roger that!” to proclaim their sexual power. “Target to be rogered at 3 o’clock! Roger That!” When Roger Reptile became the feel-good flavor of the nation, United Personal Electronics decided to exercise their option to buy and lock up the rights. Jason renegotiated the contract for enough money to buy just about everything that he thought he wanted.

Jason thought he wanted a big house and he thought he wanted another kid. Then he thought he wanted the club life with easy women and drugs. He also thought that he wanted to stop hanging around with Jules. Jason decided that Jules was clever, but he was a drag on his social life.

There was never a breakup of J-J, but Jules knew that it was over. He missed having Jason around – a lot. Jules never did know how to fill his life with anything other than his imagination and his art. That’s what he turned to when Jason broke his heart.

Jules kept the business limping along with new ideas. He used cash from his share of the money to pay for a studio in a rundown part of Phoenix. It wasn’t in good shape but it was large and had nice sunlight on one side. But Jules couldn’t sell water to a man dying of thirst and Jason had stopped working. The business was failing.

Several Weeks Later

Jules was working alone under a light in the otherwise dark studio when Jason made a rare visit. When Jules saw Jason come through the aluminum door of the studio, the two sides of his broken heart pulled him apart into two people. One side hated Jason for abandoning him and the other was filled with simple joy just to see him again.

Hateful Jules spoke first, “Have you called anybody about the Cloud Sixty-Nine drawings I did for you yet? I thought you were the marketing department here. When are you going to get off your ass and do something?”

“Nag, nag, nag! I am doing something. That’s why I’m here. I need some cash for expense money so I can contact people about your crap.”

Jason’s reply pierced Loving Jules. The words echoed through his mind. Crap!  …  crap! That’s what he calls my stuff now. He used to love my stuff. Now he calls it crap.

But out loud, Jules just sighed, “I never see you anymore. We used to be such a team.”

“Look. If I don’t get to Chicago, you can move back into my attic and draw your crap. There’s expense money here somewhere because you buy all this expensive art paper and pay for this place. I know you don’t bank so it’s gotta be here!”

Jules almost looked at the jar in the corner of the office by reflex and caught himself at the last second. He knew that Jason was sharp and would have caught him looking. He looked at the floor instead.

“That’s my share. We share fifty-fifty, remember? That’s what the partnership papers said.”

“You’re gonna get robbed. People know you keep money here. They know you hole up here alone – like some crazy packrat. Somebody is going to break in here and shoot your ass.”

Jason’s eyes darted around the studio but he didn’t notice the jar.

“OK … we got another check from United but I gotta have it all ‘cause you can’t sell this kind of stuff in Chicago without some cash – to impress the clients. It’s made out to the partnership so you gotta sign.” Jason wasn’t above just forging Jules’ signature, but he could just barely sign his own name. He couldn’t come close to Jules’ delicate curlicues. The manager of the partnership’s bank knew the score and Jason couldn’t take the chance.

Jason shoved the check in front of Jules on the drawing board. Jules looked at it without really seeing it, then signed the back without really thinking about it. “When are you going to come back and help me run this business?”

“That’s a good boy.” Jason scrubbed Jules’ head like he was a dog. “When I get back from Chicago. In the meantime, here’s some help for you.” A gun clunked to the hardwood surface of the drawing board. “I can’t get close to an airport carrying this and like I said, somebody’s gonna rob you. Keep this for me until I get back. You do know how to shoot one  …  right?”

Jules just looked at the blue-black object in front of him and nodded. Little pieces of thoughts flashed through his brain.  …  Jason was leaving.  …  The gun as a line drawing that looked like Satan.  …  The idea that somebody would break through the flimsy aluminum door of the studio and shoot him.

Jules had friends who told him that the money Jason got from the partnership was going into his arm through a needle. Those friends also told him that some people in Jason’s new crowd would kill anybody for twenty dollars.

Jason didn’t wait for an answer and Jules could hear his expensive shoes clicking against the tile floor of the studio as he left. Jules picked up the gun and looked at it. He did know how to shoot it, but just barely. He knew where the safety was – it was off. He knew how to check to see if a bullet was in the chamber – there was. It was an automatic and the hammer was even cocked. It could easily have gone off when Jason dropped it on the table. Why would Jason carry around a loaded, cocked, ready to fire gun?

Jules didn’t know how long he held the gun  …  just looking at it  …  thinking about the people who were selling Jason drugs  …  thinking about how Jason would be in Chicago and wondering when he would be back, or whether he would be back at all.

Enough time passed so the gloomy old studio was in full dark except for the circle of light under Jules’ drawing light. He heard a noise outside and peered into the darkness. As he stared into the murk of the empty studio, the aluminum door crashed open and a dark figure crashed through. The figure raised its gun hand and pointed at Jules.

“Hey! Where are my sunglasses, asshole? I left them here. They cost a hundred bucks!”

But Jules didn’t hear it. He only saw the dark figure that had crashed through the door. Jules pointed the gun he was holding at the figure and fired. He missed, so he fired again and again until the slide locked back when the gun was out of bullets.

The first bullet crashed through the wall, ripping apart the drywall and splintering the cheap wood shakes on the outside. It crashed through the wall of the house next door and shattered the tube of an old fashioned TV before losing enough energy to bounce off the inside of the TV cabinet.

The second bullet hit Jason. It passed through tissue, decelerating, dissipating and transferring kinetic energy to the tissue. The space left by tissue that was destroyed by the bullet as it passed through formed a permanent cavitation space that immediately started filling up with blood. A secondary cavitation space that was much larger than the bullet was created by the pressure wave as the bullet entered Jason’s body and forced tissue out of the way. The bullet ricocheted from Jason’s backbone, shattering the bone but deflecting the bullet down through more tissue. Blood vessels ruptured and blood and fluid escaped into the cavities, interrupting the circulation of the blood. As it passed downward through his body, the bullet ruptured the stomach, the large and small intestines and finally shattered the large, heavy iliac crest bone where it came to rest.

All the other bullets missed, but it didn’t matter. Jason was dead by then.

Try as he might, Jules could never remember anything after Jason tossed the gun onto his drawing table and swaggered out. His next memory was the cops hauling him out of the studio and into the back seat of a car, his hands cuffed behind him.

Arizona refused to try Jason for shooting someone inside his own building. That wasn’t considered a crime in Arizona. But Anise was merciless. She had two kids to raise and no way to support them. Jason was never a good father but after the J-J partnership hit the jackpot Anise had a house to live in – with a mortgage. Jason also gave them a little money to buy food. The civil court was much less understanding to Jules than the criminal court. They gave Anise a settlement that was worth a lot more than the partnership had ever made. She took everything Jules had.

Shattered with grief, Jules went back to the streets where he used to live some of the time before he and Jason got the United contract. After Anise took everything, the only thing of value that he still owned was the gun. Arizona made sure he got the gun back after all the trials were over. It was the one thing Anise didn’t take. Other homeless people kept well away from him because they knew he had the gun. Even street thugs left him alone. They knew he didn’t have anything else and primitive people have an instinctive fear of the truly insane.

With a little luck, Jules got a job sweeping dirt out of a huge warehouse and was able to move off the streets into a trailer. It was nice not to have to sleep on the street and the trailer was right under a street light. Jules thought that was a benefit for the first week but after that, the never ending green-yellow light seemed like it was eroding his soul. He jammed cardboard over the windows but he couldn’t block it out. That’s when he got drunk and tried to use the gun to shoot it out and got thrown in jail for a few days.

Jules – January 22 in the Early Morning Hours

Stupidly drunk, Jules sat in the middle of the trailer between the shit smell and the piss smell with a dirty old quilt over his head and regarded the gun in his lap.

He moved the safety off and cocked the hammer.

He placed the muzzle under his chin and fired.

Nobody reported hearing the gun go off. Gunfire in that part of Phoenix was far too commonplace for just one shot to be reported. Nobody noticed his dead body on the floor of the trailer for six days until the trailer started to smell even worse.

Some people believe that God knows what will happen to everyone and the future unwinds like a video that has already been made. More scientifically minded people believe that everything happens as a result of immutable physical laws and what has happened before, so the future unwinds like a video that has already been made.

But some people believe that just one change can make the future completely different and what happens to us depends on what we do in our lives.

Rewind … An Alternate Ending

The studio was dark except for the sunlit side where Jules worked alone when Jason made a rare visit. When Jules saw Jason come through the aluminum door of the studio, the two sides of his broken heart pulled him apart into two people. One side hated Jason for abandoning him and the other was filled with simple joy just to see him again.

But Jason wasn’t there to see Jules. He just wanted money. They argued about it and Jules finally gave in and signed the latest royalty check from United … mainly because he hated to argue with Jason.

While Jason waited for Jules to sign the check, he started in on him again. “You need a gun. People know you have money here and somebody is going to break into this rat trap and shoot your ass. I’d give you my gun but then you would probably just shoot yourself … or maybe shoot me! But you won’t because I can’t give you my gun. I’m getting on an airplane so I left my gun in my house. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Anus will find it and shoot herself.” Jason giggled at his little joke.

Why was it that Jason managed to find the worst possible way to say something? One side of Jules wanted to believe that Jason told him he should get a gun because he was actually concerned about him. But the other side of Jules decided that Jason just didn’t want someone else stealing the money before Jason could steal it.

After Jason had gone, Jules just sat at his drawing board thinking his random thoughts as the studio got darker. He thought about the people Jason was getting his drugs from. He was still staring into the murk of the dark and empty studio … thinking about what he might do if one of Jason’s new friends decided to look for money in the studio … when the aluminum door crashed open and a dark figure crashed through. The figure raised its gun hand and pointed at Jules.

“Hey! Where are my sunglasses, asshole? I left them here. They cost a hundred bucks!”

But Jules didn’t hear. He dived under the drawing board before he realized that it was just Jason. As Jason crashed around in the studio looking for his sunglasses, Jules finally realized who it was and croaked, “Check the shelf by the door. That’s where you always put them. … You scared the living shit out of me.”

“No way. There wouldn’t be anything left if I scared the shit out of you.” And Jason was gone again.

The Next Day

The shock of thinking he was going to die was what it finally took to push Jules into action. In his depression, he simply didn’t care about the jar stuffed with cash before, but he now he decided he had to take it to the bank where they had opened the partnership account. The jar full of money made him feel like a fool but he couldn’t think of a better way to do it. The manager was a friend. He helped Jules open the account. Then the teller took the jar of cash and stuffed it into a counting machine just like it happened every day. Jules walked out of the bank with a checkbook.

The next order of business was to move out of the old studio. Jules always knew it just wasn’t safe. He found a safer one with a slightly lower rent in a tiny office on the fourth floor of an office building with no elevator. Jules didn’t need much and the place had a heavy metal door.

Two Weeks Later

Rather than just making more drawings, Jules decided he had to write his own letters to people who might be interested in his drawings. He worked on trying to write letters for most of a day before he gave up and went back to his drawing board. He was creating more deliciously clever drawings – drawings that he didn’t know what to do with – when someone started banging on the metal door. It was Anise.

“Do you know where Jason is?” There was a tinge of desperation in her voice.

“He said he was going to Chicago. I signed over the whole quarterly check from United so he’s got money. He probably won’t be back until the money’s gone.”

“Yeah … and I don’t have any money. The mortgage hasn’t been paid and I don’t even have enough to buy food for the kids. The last I saw of him was when he came back that night to get his gun.”

“I thought he was flying. He said he wasn’t taking it because he was flying.”

“I thought so too, but I guess not. Maybe he just said that to throw his drug pusher off his trail.”

Jules had always liked Anise. He hated the way Jason treated her. He never thought it was his place to interfere.

“If you need money for food for the kids, I’ve got a little. How much do you need? You could work it off. You used to be a secretary, right?”

“Is it money that Jason should get from the partnership?”

“No … I don’t know how much Jason should get. Jason never tells me. But I have to sign the checks so he has to give me some of it. I just don’t spend much.”

“For real? Jason said that the reason he can’t give me money is that he’s pouring it into the partnership.”

“That was a lie. I always paid the rent with my money. And I bought my own supplies too. I don’t know what Jason did with the rest of the money.”

That was a lie too. Jules did know what Jason did with the money, but he didn’t think it was the right thing to say to Anise.

“Why did you move the studio?”

“The old one wasn’t safe. This one is cramped, but it’s inside an office building with a good door.”

“I was just a clerk, but I’ll take that loan. I can type. What do you need?”

Anise took over the job of writing letters for Jules. She was pretty good at it and before long, they got a few nibbles. In another month, Jason figured out what Jules’ new phone number was and called. He said he needed money to get back to Phoenix. Jules told him to go to hell and then told Anise when he saw her later that day. Her only response was, “Good. I hope he does go to hell  …  and stays there.”

Five Years Later

Jules realized that he had been in love with Jason with his whole heart but he also knew that he was over it now. Jules and Anise gradually became very good friends. At her suggestion, Jules hired a lawyer and an accountant to figure out the finances and unravel the partnership. The accountant suggested putting Jason’s share of the partnership money in a different account just to keep things straight. Then the lawyer helped him dissolve the partnership legally.

Jason had never married Anise, but it was easy to prove that he was the father of the kids. Anise sued Jason in absentia for child support and was awarded all the money in the partnership account. Jules didn’t mind. He didn’t think of it as his money anyway. Anise got the house too and discovered that it was actually worth a little more than the mortgage.

After talking it over as friends, Jules told Anise that after Jason, he would never love anyone else. She said essentially the same thing. They agreed to get married for the tax advantages and to make it easier to live in the same house and save money. Jules formally adopted the kids as part of the deal. He liked them. They were starting to call him, “Dad.” It made things easier to explain to their friends.

They were both working in the tiny studio when a cop in a business suit showed up with a picture of Jason. Jason looked terrible in the picture.

“Can you identify this person?”

“Yeah. That’s my former business partner, Jason. I haven’t seen him in five years. What happened?”

“He shot himself in New Jersey. The police there want us to confirm the identification.”

Both Anise and Jules cried about it later.