Burnouts

These Are My Friends

Scene 1: The Plaza Hotel

Trevor Bailey

"What are you thinking? Red?" I hold the satin red tie over my chest, "I think red looks good on me. There's a sort of power aspect."

"You look dashing, sir." My butler Harry complimented.

"I wasn't asking you, but thanks anyway," I sigh. "Jace!"

"What? What do you want?" He groans as he runs his hand through his hair.

"Have you not been listening this whole time?" I narrow my eyes at him. I invited him over for breakfast and let him borrow my clean up crew for the mess the party made. I expected him to have a hangover, I didn't expect him to be pouting like an orphan every second of the day.

"Yeah, man. I've been listening. I'm just-"

"You're just drowning every room in bleeding misery. I'm trying to have a good day, Jace," I huff and shake my head. "Harry, wait outside the door, please. My friend and I have important matters to discuss."

"Will do, sir." He nods and I wait for him to leave the room before I turn to Jace.

"What is wrong with you?" I ask in a more sympathetic tone.

"After the party last night...when I went into my room, there was a drawer open..."

I snicker, "what was stolen? Your dignity?"

"The tape."

"The tape?" My heart stops in my chest. "What tape? And I swear to god if you say Ryan's tape I will-."

"Yes, Ryan's tape," Jace says, his voice sounding scratchy.

"You kept it?" I shouted but then stepped back and took a deep breath. If we speak too loudly, Harry will hear and might tell my father of our conversation. "Jace, my dear friend, I thought we agreed to destroy the tape and every copy of it. What possessed you to keep it? If jail sounds appealing to you, I can buy you a pretty prostitute to put you in handcuffs."

That tape places us at the scene of a merry little homicide we swore under oath that we knew nothing about.

"I thought that— maybe we could get a few lawyers and get ourselves out of this for good. You know, have a clear conscience and a clean record."

"I told you 'no' the first time you suggested that, Jace," I said through gritted teeth, "we left a crime scene. We were there. We did nothing to prevent it and for all they know, we helped kill Ryan and watched him die."

"We were high!" Jace balled up his fists, "it was a really bad trip...we were useless to him like that. I couldn't even feel my legs, you had to drag me out of the room, remember?"

"Is that what you planned on telling the police?" I ask, "that we would have helped but we were too far gone on illegal drugs?"

"No-"

"But Ryan was high on something worse, right? Something that had him lying there drooling while they beat the life out of him. Way to smear a dead man's name, Jace. No one liked the guy but that's still messed up. I think his family prefers the 'being killed by burglars' story they gave the papers."

"I get it, okay? I know, I messed up. But...what now?"

"Isn't your place covered head to toe in security cameras?" I question. He got in trouble when we were fourteen because he tried to smuggle whiskey for us when I slept over one night. I'm pretty sure he was caught on tape.