It doesnât feel real. Sidney has seen hundreds of movies and it never goes like this â even in situations of convenience, thereâs some sort of speech, hand holding, or pleading. Anything. The columnist isnât even on his knees.
âIs that how you want to ask me to marry you?â
This time itâs J.J.âs turn to look confused.
âWho said anything about marriage?â
Thereâs something about the glint in his loverâs eye, the smirk gracing the corners of his mouth, and the way his flicks his half-smoked cigarette onto the floor of the office (five dollars to repair the burnt mark, he notes without even thinking) that leads Sidney to believe heâs made the most fatal of judgment errors. The kind that ends with a permanent nap in the Hudson, not a slap on the wrist. For a moment he thinks about what J.J.âs hands would feel like around his throat, of losing consciousness and tumbling into a vast black nothingness, and just when he feels his eyes rolling back into his skull the sound of laughter brings him back.
âThink of it as a legal arrangement. Nothing more. Generously paid, of course. I know you could use the money.â
ââââââ
smoke gets in your eyes, by matchmesidney, sidney falco/j.j. hunsecker
