hate the sin, not the sinner

In Wesley's head, being a writer is like a French film no one ever sees. He sees it in black and white, in sepia; the private glamour of a typewriter and a cigarette, early in the morning or very late at night, the small and enormous world that no one gives a fuck about until they're dead and the only answers to the questions they leave behind are hidden between the lines of their published work where no one will ever really find them. They don't make films about writers until after they're gone, and only betray the secrets they're allowed to, the ones that are really made of other people and unreliable memories.

Wesley, sitting in front of a painstakingly restored typewriter and smoking over the picturesque view over fuck only knows where anyway, is not one of them. He's not any good with words; they're a puzzling dilemma of the world in which he lives, where nobody makes any bloody sense and have the nerve to complain when he doesn't, either.

Last spring he went to Paris - where they go to write, like in that shitty movie with the hot redhead - and watched Mrs Parker in his hotel room, drinking cheap wine because while he's never going to be a writer, he knows all about aesthetic. About appearances. Maybe that's the reason the words on the page don't mean anything, don't form any cohesive whole that he can be proud of: because he doesn't want to tell stories, he wants to be the sort of person he belives writers are. These are the people who are behind the stories, who drink to forget and smoke to remember; these are the people who give everyone something to look at that is anything, anything else. Writers hold the leash of the legend, and in his mind they are dissolute and beautiful like torn, aged photographs.

Three years ago, he was sitting in a pub with Tad and some mates - the boys from The Timothy Singularity, not bad blokes as long as Leon was on his meds and Zeus (his real name was Chester, but Chester was not a rock god) wasn't on the outs with Lem - when the aforementioned mates put to him an idea. They had a new album coming out (Lem kept vetoing 'Bear Is Driving' as a title, refusing to be associated with an internet meme even as he conceded that putting Bear behind the wheel of anything would make a chilling album cover), and for a lark did he want to direct one of the music videos? For a lark and, they hastened to assure him, a tidy sum of money.

So he did it. The reviews weren't mixed, mostly positive but uniformly puzzled; nobody expected anything out of Wes Lode's quote unquote directorial debut other than tits, ass and novelty value. That's not what he's thinking about, not the reviews or the copious amounts of alcohol or even the week and a half delay while Leon went to that weird place in his head that led invariably to a psychiatrist and Lem managed to call him a useless cocksucking psycho who'd have been turfed if he weren't so goddamn brilliant, the utter fuck, without actually doing anything other than raising his eyebrow and sighing slightly. No; Wes is thinking about 3AM and a bottle of jack between them, watching the final cut with Bear.

"It's good," he said, finally, with the voice that was always so incongruous coming out of such a small man (Wes hadn't worked out why they called him Bear, but it was probably two parts irony and one part spawn of hell), "but it's a damn shame they're only getting half."

"What d'you fucking mean, half?" he asked, affronted. "Look at that shit!"

"Can't feel it," Bear shrugged, slouching.

Wes types, carefully, five words.

I'm gonna need a warehouse.

'Curiosity' is what Wes calls it, and it's fair enough, right? Curiosity killed the cat. Wes has always been curious, wanting to go over the next hill and have a look under the rock on the other side. If a thought crosses his mind it's an idea and if it's an idea then it's a good one, or at least worth exploring, and that is why Wesley Pollux Lode is standing on this ledge halfway up the outside of the hotel, smoking quietly and not paying any mind at all to the onlookers gathering below to see if he'll jump or not.

He's not suicidal. He's just curious about how it'd feel, falling. Everyone down there is so fucking small as they might not even exist, and that's fine by him; he's tired of people. (Sometimes when he's tired of people he knocks their feet out from under them with a crowbar and then there are assault charges and his mum's yelling about having to hire a new publicist, but she's a bit shrieky sometimes. It's her way.) They're looking, but they can't really see anything when he's up this high.

(Except the bloke behind the window who can't decide whether to yell at him or if opening the window will make him do it. He gives him a friendly wave.)

He doesn't want to die, he just sort of wants to know what it'd be like to have the ground rush up to you like that. He's heard it's not landing that kills jumpers, usually, but he's not sure if it's true. What could it be instead? Maybe it's the pressure as they go down - maybe they choke, maybe that's why the screaming gets quieter? Because they can't breathe. Yeah, maybe. He wonders if it'd feel like that time he let that bird in Paris have a go with his belt - probably not. There's no bird here, anyway, and that was weird. (He wonders if he's still got her number.)

He taps ash over the edge and watches it drift into nothing on the wind, and then - of all fucking things - his cellphone rings. Caller ID says it's Tad, and that's probably true because he put Tad's cell in his pocket himself this morning; he must have it, ergo it must be him.

Wes puts his cigarette out against the wall and sits down - carefully - his feet hanging over the ledge. "Oi. Nah, I'm not busy. What's it?"