Memory Bytes

Fanny Adams

Disclaimers: I don’t own these boys and I’m not certain I’d ever want to because they’re bound to be hell on the upholstery. I intend no infringement of anyone’s rights, nor am I going to be making any money off of this story. Does that cover all bases?

Joe/Billy and pretty much NC-17 with some sex, violence and rough language, which is probably the least of your worries with these guys.

With rafts of thanks to Kat whose beta reading didn’t allow me any wiggle room. Bless you for helping with this; you’re hired forever.

Memory Bytes
Fanny Adams

Memory bytes. He carries them around like souvenirs of the past: Snapshots with the color washed away, badly edited little films, audio that loops in odd places. Right now, between sets, while the others do a quick post mortem of the first show, Joe is sitting a little apart, eyes fixed on some point in the past, seeing again pictures from his youth. Funny how the most distant things are clearest: Billy at sixteen lying on the floor of Joe’s family’s basement, his jeans hitched down to his knees. Sound of Joe’s mother’s voice: "Joe, do you boys want anything to eat?"

"No!"

"Something to drink?"

"NOTHING!" Joe screams back, willing her to shut up and possibly expire right there in the kitchen.

"Jeezus your ma’s gonna come down here and knock your fuckin’ head in you keep shouting at her like that."

"Nah, she hates it when I’m in a bad mood and stays away."

Strange what stays in your head; little stuff.

"Feel good?" he asks as he continues to stroke Billy’s cock. The tape loops here. Feel good? Feel good? Always checking Billy like some sort of mood doctor. Always trying to say it differently to force a different response. Stupid.

"Never jerked yourself off, huh?"

Joe just gives him a look like, "Oh right, I’m a fucking virgin." but Billy pretty much misses it because he is suddenly arching up against Joe’s hand.

"Fffffffuuckkkohfuck," he hisses. "Take off your clothes." Joe obeys, stripping off his tee shirt and jeans with economical grace. "I wanted to see you naked for a change."

Joe just grins. Sex between them has, up to this afternoon, been a few quick hand jobs in Billy’s cousin’s garage where they practice. They haven’t actually gotten naked together since the day they both fucked Melanie Cavendish in her parents’ bed.

Billy’s calloused fingers rub the tip of Joe’s cock and it stiffens and bobs. Joe’s hand slips up under Billy’s tee and he pinches one small, tight nipple until Billy moans.

"Suck me."

"Fuck that," Billy shoots back, and Joe knows he’ll have to get around to it by another route.

"I’d do you."

"So? I’m not some fucking cocksucker, so just f’get it."

Should that have hurt? Did it ever? Did it still? Time to take your own emotional temperature, Joe, old man. What the hell are you feeling, if anything? Is the alcohol doing its job? Are you numb yet?

Joe makes a face at Billy, a really superior one. As he remembers, his face twists into the shape once more and he wonders if anyone else has noticed the signs of this intense internal dialogue. "You’re a fucking coward is what you are."

Billy is up off the floor, grabbing for Joe’s throat. Joe laughs in his face.

"Shut the fuck up, you queer."

"Oh Billy, you are such a loser, man." Joe strokes his own cock with both hands; long, slow strokes from root to tip, engorging it, teasing it, making love to it with Billy watching which is so good; better than almost anything. "You think sucking cock makes you queer?"

Billy can barely take his eyes off Joe’s hands, Joe’s cock. "What else? I mean it’s not as bad as taking it up the ass, but it’s queer."

Joe stops suddenly, bringing his hands to rest at his sides. His erection is dark, and sways heavily between his splayed thighs. He’s proud of his cock. He watches Billy watch it, watches his younger self watching Billy, and feels a rush of something pure and identifiable only as either love or hate. Then he thinks of snake charmers and it makes him smile a little, a smile he tries to hide from the others with his can of beer.

"It’s like eating pussy."

It takes Billy a minute to sort that one out. "What?"

"Sucking dick, eating pussy. It’s no big deal; doesn’t make you anything." But before Billy can reply, Joe launches himself at his friend and pins him to the linoleum. "But if you’re so uptight you can’t do it, we won’t, okay?" he asks, rubbing his swollen penis against Billy’s thigh. "This feels good enough, doesn’t it?"

Always checking.

Billy smells of sweat, beer and cigarette smoke; Joe can still smell him if he closes his eyes. Billy’s skin is sleek under Joe’s fingers; Joe can still feel the smooth, warm flesh against his hands, still feel the cool places where Billy’s skin has been pressed against the cold floor. He
rolls them over so that he is on the bottom, and he cups Billy’s ass in his hands, pressing their groins together, barely missing a stroke through the whole move. Billy is groaning softly and his tight ass begins to move in Joe’s grasp. Joe digs his fingers into the sweet flesh; Billy’s cock rubs
his belly.

But then Billy’s hands slide down Joe’s chest, and his body begins to thrust hard against Joe’s. Joe knows that look, that frantic, surprised look Billy gets right on the edge of orgasm so it isn’t a huge shock to feel the spurt of semen between their bellies.

Billy rolls off of Joe and lies there on the floor, catching his breath. He doesn’t seem to notice that Joe is still hard. He probably is trying not to notice.

"Uh, ya wanna give me a hand here, Billiam?" Joe shakes his dick at Billy and grins. So Billy scrapes the cum off of Joe’s belly and uses it as lube, though clearly he is less than totally interested.

After a few half-hearted strokes, Joe pushes Billy’s hand away. "Oh forget it."

"Hey, I’m just…you know…"

"Yeah, I know. Selfish cunt."

There’s a phrase that resonates even today.

Billy doesn’t respond, just lies there while Joe finishes, then pulls his jeans up and fastens them. "I need to go anyway," he says quietly.

"Right. Call me when you need another hand job, won’t you? This was such fun."

"Don’t be like that, okay?"

"Fuck you, Billy."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. See you tomorrow."

At the end of the film, there is one still frame. Young Joe sitting on the basement floor, alone, head bowed.

"Joe!"

Belatedly Joe realizes that Pipe has been calling him. "What?"

"Sorry to interrupt your nap," Pipe drawls, "but you got a cigarette? I’m out."

Joe flicks him a bent one from the pack crushed in his pocket.

"Oh gee thanks, man, I can smoke this puppy in two different directions. Wow."

"You want it or not?" Joe snaps and Pipe withdraws to leave him to his memories.

Snapshots: The inside of the police station. Joe is thirteen and scared, though he refuses to show it. He’s been arrested for breaking into school and trashing the biology lab. "Why did you do it?" they ask him and he says, "Because I didn’t have time to get to the rest of the school Because it was fun." It was, too, and he would have gone on to knock out all the windows in the whole fucking place if he’d had the time. He hates the school full of pissant little citizens who do just what they’re told and dream only of a house in the suburbs and a membership in the country club. He particularly hates the wormy little Biology teacher who seems to take a great deal of pleasure in making his students kill their own frogs for dissection. No one notices that the frogs are all missing. All the animals are missing. Joe has liberated them. However he refuses to admit this because he wants to look like a true badass.

There’s another boy slouched in a chair looking fretful and beautiful. Joe walks over and sits beside him. "What’d they get you for?" he asks and the other boy just stares at him, asks if he has a cigarette.

"They took mine when they arrested me."

"Mine too. Fuckers," the boy mutters. "What’d you do?"

"Trashed my school."

This raises an eyebrow. "They said I stole a car."

"Did you?"

The boy Billy Boisy smiles. "You’re never, ever guilty. Remember that,"he advises.

They’re drawn together by their crimes at first, then by the shared experience of a lousy childhood. Billy’s mother has lots of boyfriends; Joe’s father drinks too much and solves problems with his fists. While they’re sitting there, Joe’s father shows up and wallops Joe in front of the constables.

"Here, sir, none of that," advises the sergeant, and he doesn’t back down when Joe’s father snarls at him, just says in a quiet voice, "I’d advise you to remember where you are, sir. I don’t want to see you hit that child again. Understand?"

Joe’s never seen his father bested by words; he remembers the moment, and the sergeant, for the rest of his life.

"My mother’ll cry," Billy whispers, and sure enough, before Joe gets sprung, a beautiful blonde woman in her mid-thirties arrives and cries all over Billy. In between bouts of tearful recrimination, she flirts with every man she meets including Joe’s father.

"Watch out, man, or we’ll end up step-brothers," Billy mutters and Joe bursts into loud, inappropriate laughter which later earns him a few extra punches. Despite himself he has a couple of humid fantasies about Billy’s mother that night, but it’s not long after that her image is replace by her son’s in Joe’s adolescent imagination.

Back at the club Joe stretches, shakes his head to clear it of the past, and goes off to the bathroom; it’s time to run a little beer out the other end. There is no one in the john, which is a good thing because he gets a gusher while he’s washing his hands, and suddenly there’s blood
everywhere. He mops at his face with a wet, brown paper towel that feels like sandpaper and absorbs nothing, and all the while he negotiates a half-hearted deal with God that he’ll lay off the dust for a while if the bleeding will just stop before one of the guys comes looking for him, to fish him out of the toilet. "Just let me get through this set, then you can let me bleed to death," he says to a god who is probably not even paying much attention to Little Joe Bug down here. All the same, it makes him feel better to pretend that it could help. The bleeding does stop, too, so who knows?

"That’s why I wear black." he says to his reflection in the mirror as he washes the blood off his face. "Hides the stains." No one else is there to hear. No one watches Joe staring into the mirror, eyes faraway, fixed on one of those little, blurry snapshots of the past.

Joe, with Melanie Cavendish draped over the whole of his left side, greets Billy with a lewd, cheerful grin. Melanie’s mouth is open; she never stops talking. It isn’t a huge secret that Melanie prefers Billy, but just a few days earlier Billy told her that her suggestion about his hair ("Grow it
long, it’s so hot!") was moronic and that he was a musician not a hair farmer. Since then, she’s been paying a lot more attention to Joe who finds it easier to tune her out than Billy does, apparently, particularly if there is something to gain by it.

The reel begins to spin.

"So, you two an item?" Billy sneers. Melanie gives him a look and clings a little harder to Joe.

"I don’t waste my time on guys like you, Billy. Joe thinks I’m smart, don’t you Joe?"

"Sure do, honey. I think you have the most intelligent pussy I’ve ever been in."

She giggles and blushes.

"I’m pretty sure he finds you interesting," Billy tells her, though Joe sort of figures the irony, heavy though it is, will be lost on her. Melanie doesn’t do irony; she doesn’t even catch open sarcasm very often, but she’s a fantastic fuck. "So Joe, you up for some practice or what?" Billy asks.

"Or what," Joe tells him.

"You could use some practice."

"Yeah, so could you."

"Well fine, fucker, why don’t we just go do it, then?"

"Yeah, cocksucker?"

"Yeah, jerkwad."

They are grinning broadly at each other; Joe has a very clear snapshot of that moment in time, a freeze-frame of young Joe and young Billy nearly nose-to-nose, showing lots of teeth. It’s one of his favorites.

Joe disengages himself from Melanie and swats her on the ass. "Keep your cooze warm for me, baby. I’m gonna go whip this loser’s butt."

"In your dreams, you dick," Billy growls, but as Joe walks past, Billy gooses him. Joe is trying hard not to laugh; he’s still trying, even now. His face in the stained mirror is relaxed and happy-looking and he wonders fleetingly how such a small, silly memory can give such pleasure so many years later.

Cut to the boys walking down an alley towards Billy’s cousin’s house.

"I’m thinking of sending an anonymous note to Melanie’s parents about her filthy habits when they’re out of town," Billy says.

"Oh cummon, it’s not like you couldn’t get some if you were a little nicer to her."

"She’s an idiot."

"Yeah but she’s an idiot with a tight pussy, she puts out, and she always has good drugs. Jeezus, you’re not jealous are you?"

"Of you? Please."

"Of her."

Billy stiffens. Like some predator always alert for weakness, Joe pounces. "Oh man, Billy are you in wuv with me?" Joe prods. "Is Billy jealous of nasty old Melanie?"

"Fuck you, needle-dick."

And Joe gets down on his knees right there in the alley, cigarette hanging off his lower lip and jeans soaking up the slick of motor oil and rainwater, presses his hand to his heart and says, "Marry me, Billy."

Billy stands there for a few moments, rubbing his nose thoughtfully. "Get up you asshole, you look like a bum begging for change."

"I’m practicing for the future. My old man says I’ll end up sleeping in the gutter begging for change and fucking rich old men for drugs."

"You’re shitting me!" Billy hoots, cheerfully scandalized.

"Nope."

"What’d you say?"

"I said I play music for drugs. If I fuck men it’s for fun."

"What’d he say?"

" ‘Don’t talk like that in front of your mother!’ "

The two of them roar and all the dogs on the block begin to bark which makes them laugh harder. Joe is barking at the top of his lungs when they get to Billy’s cousin’s house.

"Your old man wallop you for that?"

"Nah, ever since I walloped him back a couple of months ago, he hasn’t tried it. I think I scared him."

"You’re bigger than him now, he should be scared," Billy says and the adult Joe remembers the feeling of pride he got at hearing that. At sixteen he is aware that words, powerful though they may be, often need to be backed up with fists.

Instead of opening up the garage where they practice, Billy unlocks the back door.

"Hey."

"Gordie’s out of town. Asked me to watch the place for him. Come on…"

"Oh man, Billy! We have the house to ourselves?"

"Completely. He’ll be gone for about four days. It’s kind of a dump but it’s a dump with a bed, a bar and a full refrigerator."

"It’s the fucking Hilton!" Joe drops his guitar case on the floor of the kitchen and goes in search of alcohol. He comes back waving a bottle of some off-brand scotch at Billy. "Your cousin is a cheap boozehound, isn’t he?"

By way of reply, Billy pulls him close and slides a hand up under his tee shirt, scraping his thumb across Joe’s nipple.

"Billiam…Billy…" It scares him how shaky his voice has become in just a few moments, in the time it has taken his cock to fill, to start straining against the denim of his jeans.

"It’s Thursday; Gordie won’t be back until Tuesday morning, and who the hell will look for either of us if we’re smart about this?" Billy whispers wetly into Joe’s ear.

Joe shudders as Billy’s fingers graze the smooth flesh of his belly, and a fingertip dips into his navel.

"If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do it right, Joe."

"What?" Joe’s eyes are beginning to cross. Even now, he finds himself growing weak at the knees remembering that moment. No one has ever turned him on like this. He is shuddering.

"We’re gonna spend the weekend shacked up, doing everything we can think of to each other, and if we still want to be together at all by Monday, then we stick. Forever. And if we don’t, then we’re friends but there’s no more sex stuff ever."

Joe’s boy’s heart does a few swoops, but the adult Joe feels it more in the stomach; a kind of weak, queasy feeling. From the vantage point of nearly two decades, he recognizes this deal for what it is the moment he sold his soul to the devil. "What if one of us does and one doesn’t?"

"Is Joe in wuv with Billy?" Billy coos before his mouth fastens over Joe’s and it suddenly doesn’t matter a bit who will want to next week and who won’t. That’s next week, that’s a lifetime away.
Another lifetime away, Joe straightens, runs a damp hand over his face and steels himself for the last set. Just as he’s about to leave, Billy walks in.

"You gonna bother to come back for the last set or should I tell them you’ve passed out?"

"You can tell ‘em I was busy nailing a pair of sixteen-year-old twins and forgot about this pathetic gig, okay?

"Sounds fine to me. Or wait…why don’t you just come up on stage and show your contempt yourself?"

"Oh fuck off. I need a drink."

Billy stares at the washbowl where the water is still pink. "Another gusher? You’re fuckin’ killing yourself with that shit."

"Why don’t you go bother someone else for a while?"

"And why don’t you just shoot yourself? It’d be quicker," Billy mutters and bangs out of the bathroom. Joe follows, veering off towards the bar to get something a little more potent than beer. The show inside his head isn’t over; sometimes memory is like a disease.

Click, click, click, like a slideshow, the images of that weekend spent mostly in Gordie’s bed flash on the screen behind Joe’s eyes. Billy wasn’t kidding; they did everything. They didn’t even sleep for the first twenty hours or so. There are films of all of it, dozens of little reels that he plays over and over on the nights when he’s alone in bed and in need of something more than a handful of pills to get him to sleep. Some of those little movies are his favorite masturbatory material. Some, like the one where Billy can’t dodge and weave any longer and finally gives it up to Joe is like the Academy Award winner for best fuck memory of his entire life.

"I’d like to thank my partner, Billy Tallent, for having the sweetest ass in North America and for letting me pop his cherry that long-ago night in November. And I’d like to thank the Academy for this award…" A film clip runs on a screen behind the podium where he stands in a tuxedo and his
Mohawk: Billy and Joe fucking face-to-face, Billy’s legs wrapped around Joe’s waist, his eyes squeezed shut and a steady flow of obscenity pouring from his beautiful mouth. Wild applause from the audience that nearly drowns out the soundtrack.

The snapshot of Billy’s face as he orgasms is something Joe would have liked to carry in his wallet. See? There was a time when I could make him look like this, when I could still surprise and delight him. There was a time when he belonged to me. Joe laughs and rests his forehead on the bar. "You gonna play or not?" the bartender asks.

"Just give me a bottle of Jack and watch me play."

"It’s coming out of your pay," the guy tells him, holding the bottle just beyond Joe’s reach.

"Do you want a second set?" Joe asks him. Standoff. The bottle changes hands and Joe carries it up onto the stage.

"Hey, ya bunch of losers!" he screams and the crowd screams back, delighted to be abused. "How many of you can do this and still stand up?" Then he tips his head back and empties a third of the bottle in a couple of big, painful gulps. And the crowd goes wild, he thinks as he watches the kids rush the bar. "That’s right, let’s all get tanked tonight! We are Hard Core Logo, and I am Joe Dick, walking advertisement for alcoholism!"

He can hear Pipe guffawing behind him.

"Hey, hey," he shouts over the crowd noise, "If that kills you, don’t come crying to me!"

Billy rips into the opening chords for "Move or Die" which pretty much ends Joe’s rant before it gets started.

The set is by turns blistering hot and mechanically cold. At one point, Billy kicks him in the ass and Joe flings his bottle at Billy’s head. It misses. He means it to miss. When the set ends, Joe just walks off stage without waiting for the applause.

While he’s waiting for the roadies to load their gear, Joe stands outside in the alley smoking and staring up at the halos that the fog is making around the streetlights. He stands there remembering, always looking for the moment when his life changed so irrevocably. The little film skips forward to Monday night, eating a pizza in front of Gordie’s ancient television after a weekend of almost non-stop sex.

"We have to clean up; Gordie’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’m gonna put the sheets in the wash after we finish eating."

"That’s okay, we can fuck on the kitchen floor," Joe says cheerfully.

Billy says nothing for a while, then: "The thing is, Joe, I don’t want to anymore."

Young Joe never expected this, but time and experience has taught the man to expect the worst. Someone once said to him: "You know what a cynic is, Joe? It’s a disappointed romantic." No fucking shit.

"You liked it," Joe protests. "You fucking loved it."

"I liked it," Billy agrees. "But not enough to want to do it anymore. It just isn’t me, Joe."

"Liar."

"You agreed with me!"

"I never agreed to anything!" Joe shouts, flinging the box of pizza across the room. Billy just sighs and gets up to wipe up the mess.

"It’s over, Joe," he says quietly. Of course it never really is, not absolutely, but from that moment, Billy is the one in charge of the sex between them, and they both know it. He’s brilliant at doling it out in measured doses; enough to keep Joe hooked for years.

Joe retaliates by leaves Billy with the whole house to clean before his cousin gets back. It’s the only revenge he can think of at the moment because he hurts more than he can ever remember hurting in his whole short life. He goes home and crawls into bed, and refuses to get up for three
days. When he finally does come out of his room he’s different. Even his parents notice, though they don’t understand. Even Joe doesn’t quite understand until much later when he thinks back on how he felt, walking out of his bedroom that morning to go to school. His childhood was over.

"You just gonna stand here all night?" Billy asks, and Joe realizes that the others are already on board the bus. "C’mon, Joe…hey, the category is Science Fiction Movies, okay?"

Joe crushes the life out of his cigarette before stepping up into the tour bus. "Okay," he says. "Science Fiction Movies. The Day the Earth Stood Still."

It’s familiar. It should have been safe, but when Pipe offers up "E.T." Joe, who is achingly tired and strangely sick at heart, responds with, "The Wrath of Khan" and Billy makes his wrong answer sound and calls him a stupid fuck because "the" doesn’t count.

Joe hits him. He just hauls off and whacks Billy on the side of the head the way his old man would have done. The next minute they’re down on the floor of the bus trying to kill each other and it takes Pipe, John and all the roadies to separate them. Billy is shouting something, but Joe barely hears it because another reel has started to spin inside his head. This is first-run material, a little, unedited film of the previous night’s entertainment.

Billy is sprawled on the bed watching a really old Bette Davis movie in black and white. He’s been drinking. Lately he’s been drinking a lot more than usual around Joe, which wouldn’t bother Joe if there weren’t some subtext there. Billy isn’t nearly as drunk as he pretends, and he’s clearly going to a lot of trouble to make himself look drunkenly available.

And Joe is only human. Painfully so. Since that day at Gordie’s house he’s almost always waited for the cues before making a move on Billy, and he sees them now in the lazy smile Billy turns on him for no reason, in the abandoned sprawl and severely diminished capacity to refuse Joe’s advances.

Joe undresses, but instead of getting into his own bed he climbs under the covers with Billy.

"What’re you doing?" Billy slurs.

By way of reply, Joe runs a finger down the flat hard chest, and then dips it into Billy’s navel. "I thought you might be in the mood," he says with a smile and licks, then kisses the oh-so-sensitive stretch of skin between armpit and nipple.

But tonight Billy elbows him away. Joe isn’t expecting rejection; none of the touch-me-not signs are out so he pushes on. "Oh come on, you know you like it," he teases, his hand sliding lower. Billy’s leg comes up, pushing Joe’s hand away from his groin

"Go back to your own bed, Joe, and stop being so pathetic." Billy has a talent for hurting people, but because he exercises it so seldom, few people understand what a savage prick he can be when he wants to. Joe understands; he has, after all, been on the receiving end of Billy’s moods
for a long time.

Joe catches hold of Billy’s hair and forces their mouths together, gets bitten for his trouble and wallops Billy, hits him so hard his hand goes numb. Billy fights, but not as hard as he could so it doesn’t take Joe long to get him over on his belly with his hands pinned behind him. "You fucking whore!" Joe is shouting, rage pouring out of him. He knows something of what this is about but he’s powerless against the onslaught of emotion that Billy has called down on them both. He knows that Billy wants to be hurt, wants to be forced, but not why. So Joe fucks Billy, fucks him hard, lovelessly, wondering all the while why he is the one with tears pouring down his face, why his heart is breaking.

Freeze frame: Billy lying still on the bed, expressionless, distant, emphatically severed from Joe. Joe poised over Billy, head bowed. End of reel, roll credits. Joe snaps back into the moment.

"I’ve had it with you, you sick fuck! You fucking coke-head!" Pipe has Billy pinned down in a chair. John is talking quietly to Joe who barely hears the soft voice of reassurance and comfort because he’s listening so hard, trying to find the kernel of truth in all of Billy’s lies and evasions. "I’m leaving, I’m getting out of here. You’re a fucking maniac! It’s over, Joe!"

Oh…of course. That’s what this is all about. Billy wants to move on. Joe sighs. So be it; time for a little bon voyage gift.

"Where do you think you can go, Billiam?" Joe snarls. "Who wants a cheap whore like you? There are a thousand guitarists better than you begging for change on street corners, and you sure weren’t worth the minimal effort it took to rape you!"

Pipe and John exchange looks and Billy shrivels a little now that the secret isn’t a secret any longer. There you go, Billy, now everyone knows you got it up the ass last night. Who’s your daddy, Billy-boy? John tries to keep Joe occupied until Billy clears his stuff off the tour bus, but Joe has other plans. He goes out and picks up a hooker outside a crappy-looking but convenient motel and pays her with the money they made from the last show. The sex is incidental to not being utterly alone tonight. One last reel: Billy Boisy and Joe Mulgrew sitting in Gordie’s garage. They’re thirteen and have only just discovered that they share music. "You know Little Red Rooster?" Billy asks, and Joe begins to pick it out on his guitar. They play it together once, then again, and the second time there is something magic about the music as if simply by virtue of playing together they have taken a great song and made it better. Joe remembers that long-ago day as clearly as if it had just happened, as if he and Billy could still make magic together just by being in the same room, just by understanding the music in the exact same way. Despite everything, the memory can still make him smile.

Time to put these films away, time to close the photo albums.

By nine the next morning the whore is long gone and Joe is sitting outside the motel on a big concrete planter, sipping watery coffee and waiting for someone to pick him up. The tour bus pulls up and Joe drops his cigarette into the coffee and flicks the cup into the planter.

"He’s gone," Pipe says as Joe gets on the bus.

"Yeah? Good riddance."

John looks at him with that pitying look Joe hates.

"If you guys want out, just say the word."

They look at each other, shrug, say nothing.

One last snapshot appears in the memory album as their bus swings out onto the morning streets: Billy and Joe, guitars slung around skinny bodies, arms slung over each others’ shoulders, grinning as Gordie tells them they sounded really great together, that they’re a good team. Funny, how the little things come back to you. Strange, the things we remember.

-End-