Re: [Jester's Court: Cat & Jack]
Jack's bubble was pure conjecture and a side of bullshit. Finding yourself sounded bloody bleak. Less romance and more in depth with your own psyche and likely sober. No fucking fear. If Eddie needed it, not just wanted it but needed it enough to fuck off and leave the lot of them, where did that leave the rest of them? Belatedly, Jack realized Cat and Leena were simply ordinance in a vast, vast chain that had seemingly deadened by pure chance when the patriarch had left the building. Sasha? Sasha he didn't think about, not with that 'treatment facility' floated on hot, sticky air.
It was the same side of bullshit that made remarks about cigarettes, but so it went. He smoked his quickly, with the efficiency of practice and an exhale of smoke that had long since probably been barred or banned or reduced to some less-charring side-effect of having a bad habit you didn't so much indulge as roll around in.
"Everyone. Everyone, what do you mean? Say what you mean, you're not talking about the customers in the Cat or the people in the town, are you? Or are you? Do you mean the likes of me, your family, Reece, and so on?" Jack had an opinion, of course he bloody did. If he didn't have an opinion, it was a very boring subject and Cat had never been boring. But a say? Christ, no. Jack, Jack didn't think he counted for much in the long list, and it was dismissive, the mention of himself.
"Yes, all right, wise young one," Jack raised both eyebrows back and pinched his cigarette between fingers. "I was talking literally. The rollercoaster, or the funhouse," he gestured. "People are going into the latter, but aren't coming out. I don't know if they're hitting a different decade in there or what, but the rollercoaster might catch a sky's-eye view. Also, it's a bloody rollercoaster." Which perhaps betrayed that he was a smidgeon more relaxed than he had been in a while.
"People feel around in the dark all the bloody time. That's metaphor, not the funhouse. You want to say how you feel about all of it, say so. I won't grope for your secrets. At least not today, anyway."