RAY AND JAY AND BOB, PART 2

 Ray and Jay and Bob, part 2

RAY AND JAY AND BOB

PART II

THE INDUSTRY STRIKES BACK

It is a dark time for Ramon Atila.

Despite the lucrative Universal deal to

direct his own novel, the fledgling

auteur is a man besieged.

Hounded by a vengeful crime family

who believe his fiction is a prophetic

tell-all, stalked by an ex-girlfriend’s

unhinged mother, and paralyzed by the

terror of the blank page, Ray has fled

the scrutiny of the city for the

deceptive peace of a suburban hotel.

But even in exile, there is no escape…

•••

The black, late-model Lincoln Town Car, a land-going leviathan of tinted glass and polished menace, cruised with predatory silence down the rain-slicked boulevard. Its sheer, impersonal mass seemed to swallow the light from the streetlamps, a monolithic slab of power gliding through the Montreal night. This was no mere vehicle; it was a command ship, a mobile fortress from which a very specific, cold fury was being projected.

With a soft, hydraulic hiss, a panel on the Town Car’s pristine flank slid open. Not a door, but a concealed compartment. From the dark aperture, two compact, black quadcopter drones dropped into the air. They hovered for a moment, their red status lights blinking to life like awakening eyes, stabilizing in the car’s slipstream. They were probe droids, seekers, dispatched on a singular mission: the artist had to be found. The narrative had to be controlled.

With a synchronized, insectoid buzz, the drones peeled away from the mothership, one arcing north, the other south. They ascended over the rooftops, their sophisticated sensors scanning the urban landscape below—scanning for a specific heat signature, a financial transaction, a whisper of the unique creative frequency emitted by a terrified, yet strangely prescient, writer: the reclusive prophet, Ramon Atila. 

The hunt had begun in earnest.

•••

The late afternoon sun bled orange over Beaver Lake, glinting off the water and catching in the silver chain around Ray’s neck. He sat on a weathered park bench, Flavia draped across his lap like a trophy pelt. One hand rested possessively on her hip, the other held a tall sweating can of Sugar Free Red Bull, which he pointed at Jay like a prosecutor’s gavel.

“So let’s cut the cute shit, Jay. The mystery box routine is gettin’ old. Bob. Spill it. What went down?” Ray’s voice was a low, gangster rasp, though the setting was pure suburban park.

Jay, leaning against a nearby pine, gave a slow, infuriating smile. He took a deliberate pull from his own can. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, Raymond. Especially when the kissin’ involved a misunderstanding with a prized collection of limited-edition action figures and a can of mace. It’s… nuanced.”

“Nuance is for poets and pussies,” Ray shot back, squeezing Flavia’s hip for emphasis. She arched an eyebrow but said nothing, a sphinx enjoying the spectacle. “I need facts. Did you clip the guy? Did he clip you? I’m lookin’ for a story here, something with legs.”

“Perhaps the story,” Jay countered smoothly, his eyes glinting, “isn’t about me and Bob. Perhaps the real story is what a learned man such as yourself, a man of the world, knows about the big picture. The secrets. The universe’s dirty little secrets.” He leaned forward. “What’s the angle, Ray? The real angle?”

Ray puffed out his chest, immediately biting the hook. “The angle? The angle is there is no angle, kid. It’s all vibes. You ride the wave or you drown. You think I got to where I am by followin’ a manual? I wrote the motherfuckin’ manual.” He gestured around the park with his bottle. “Look at this. The trees, the water, the fat squirrels. It’s all a system. And I’m plugged into the mainframe.”

“Fascinating,” Jay purred. “And how does one… access this mainframe? For creative purposes, of course. Say, to write a story.”

Ray scoffed, a sound like gravel in a blender. “A story? You think that’s hard? That’s baby shit. A real story is just life with the boring parts cut out. It’s a hustle. A grift on reality.”

“Indulge me,” Jay pressed, a serpentine smile on his lips. “Right here, right now. A story. Off the top of your dome. Show me how the mainframe works.”

A flicker of panic crossed Ray’s face, quickly masked by a deeper scowl. He looked from Jay to Flavia, whose expression was one of mild, curious expectation. The pressure was on.

“Fine. You want a story?” Ray cleared his throat, his mind a perfect, blank slate of terror. “Okay. So… there’s these two raccoons. Right? On Mount Royal.”

Jay blinked. “Raccoons.”

“Yeah, raccoons. Don’t interrupt the artist. So these two raccoons, they’re… lovers. Real romantic types. Not like the trash-picking scumbags you see downtown. These are classy raccoons. They meet by the giant cross on Mount Royal, see? Under the moonlight. They’re… they’re planning a big score.”

“A score of what?” Jay asked, barely containing his laugh.

“What do raccoons score? Garbage! The good stuff, though. The organic, gluten-free garbage from Outremont. It’s a metaphor, you philistine.” Ray was flailing, his gangster bravado crumbling into nonsense. “They have little raccoon arguments, but they always make up because their love is… it’s stronger than the lure of an open compost bin. It’s romantic as hell.”

He finished, looking defiant. Flavia had buried her face in his jacket, her shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

Jay just stared. “That’s it? That’s the product of the mainframe?”

“It’s a work in progress!” Ray snapped. “The ambiance ain’t right. A story needs fuel. Inspiration. It needs… herbal supplementation.” He pulled out his phone with a flourish. “I know a guy. Well, I know some guys. Hindus. In a Civic. They move that premium shit. We’ll take a ride, get the goods, and then I’ll spin you a story that’ll make your dick curl.”

An hour later, Ray’s beater car was parked at the lookout point on Camillien-Houde, the city spread out before them in a glittering tapestry, the leaning tower of the Olympic Stadium a giant, half-erect chub on the horizon. The Hindu guys in the Civic had been professional, the transaction swift. Now, Ray held up a perfectly rolled blunt, a fat, fragrant torpedo of promise.

“Behold,” he announced to Jay and Flavia. “The key to the kingdom.”

He brought the blunt to his lips, lighter poised. Just as the flame touched the tip, a lanky white kid in a McGill sweatshirt power-walked past the car, heading for the trail. Ray’s entire right arm spasmed violently, as if yanked by a wire. The freshly lit joint flew from his fingers, tracing a graceful, tragic arc over the cliffside.

“The fuck?” Ray stared at his traitorous hand.

“Jitters?” Jay offered innocently.

“I don’t get jitters. I get even.” Ray re-lit the blunt, his jaw set. He took a steadying breath. Another puff. This time, a girl in Lululemon leggings jogged by. Spasm. The joint was launched from the car window, landing with a sad fizzle in a puddle.

Embarrassment, hot and sharp, began to prickle at the back of Ray’s neck. Flavia was watching him, her head tilted. He could feel his gangster credibility evaporating with every failed attempt.

“Third time’s the charm,” he growled, lighting up once more. He clenched every muscle in his arm, fighting the twitch. A guy with a man-bun and a fixed-gear bike coasted past. Ray’s arm bucked like a startled horse, the blunt becoming a projectile that nearly took out a passing seagull.

Jay pondered, staring at the spot where the third blunt had vanished. “You know, in some cultures, that’s considered a sign. A divine intervention. Maybe the universe is telling you to pack it in. Go straight-edge.”

Before Ray could form a coherent, profanity-laced reply, a rustle came from the dense trees beside the parking lot. Two figures dropped to the ground with practiced silence. They were lean, dressed in dark tactical gear that seemed utterly out of place.

In a flash of movement too fast to track, Jay and Ray were on them. It wasn’t a brawl; it was a brutal, efficient neutralization. An elbow to a throat, a deft sweep of a leg, a wrist locked and bent at an impossible angle. In five seconds flat, the two spies were pinned, facedown on the asphalt, groaning.

Ray, his adrenaline surging, planted a knee in one man’s back. “Who sent you? Sal? Was it fucking Uncle Sal?”

The spy he was holding wheezed. “We work for Sheila! Your agent! She’s making sure you stay on the straight and narrow. For the PR. No public indecency. No… illicit substances before the SQDC opens in October.”

Ray blinked. “The what-D-C?”

“The SQDC,” the other spy grunted from under Jay’s weight. “The Société québécoise du cannabis. The government stores. Legal weed. It’s happening. In, like, a week.”

A profound, comical confusion settled on Ray’s face. He looked from the spies, to Jay, to the city lights below. “Canada… legalized weed?”

“Months ago, man,” Jay said, dusting off his hands.

The pieces clattered into place in Ray’s mind, a slow, grinding process. The news he hadn’t read, the world that had moved on without him. His expression shifted from confusion to a kind of moral outrage.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, his voice rising with indignation. “First, the government locks you up for this shit. Puts you in a cage. Ruins lives. And now… now they want to be the pusher? They want to set up a goddamn store and sell it to you with a smile and a tax receipt?”

He stood up, releasing the spy, his gangster persona fully re-inflated by this new injustice. “That’s the most corrupt, two-faced, bureaucratic bullshit I have ever heard. I am morally opposed. Philosophically opposed. You tell Sheila that Ramon Atila doesn’t buy his weed from the government. I’m an outlaw, not a fuckin’ customer.”

He kicked the tire of his car for emphasis. The two spies scrambled to their feet and melted back into the trees, mission a complete failure. Ray stood there, fuming at the sheer principle of it all, the city lights twinkling below, a man left behind by a future he found deeply, personally offensive.

•••

The descent from Mount Royal was a silent, somber procession under the orange sodium glow of the streetlights. The manic energy that had propelled Ray to take down Sheila’s spies had evaporated, leaving behind a hollowed-out shell of a man. Flavia walked a step behind, her earlier relaxation now a watchful, wary tension. Jay brought up the rear, his stream of consciousness choked off by the sheer, unsettling weirdness of the evening.

They reached the quiet, tree-lined streets of Westmount where Ray’s beat-up Civic was parked. The bubble of their bizarre reality was immediately punctured by the real world, or at least, a very specific subset of it.

“Holy shit! Ray Atila!”

Two college-aged kids, clutching copies of Pigeons of Park Ex, materialized from the shadow of a large oak tree. They smelled strongly of cheap weed and hero worship.

“Dude, we heard you were up here,” one said, his eyes wide. “We’re your biggest fans. You wanna smoke with us? We got some serious gas.”

Ray flinched. The offer, once a daily sacrament, now felt like a taunt, a reminder of the very mechanism that had both built and broken his world. He looked at the proffered joint, then at his own trembling hands.

“I, uh… I quit,” he mumbled, the words feeling foreign and traitorous on his tongue.

Jay’s head snapped towards him. “Whoa, hold up. You quit? Since when? You’re, like, the patron saint of the stuff. This a new method-acting thing? Researching being, I dunno, coherent?”

“Something like that,” Ray said, not meeting Jay’s eyes. The real reason—the twitching arm, the stomach-inhales, the psychic unraveling—was too vast and humiliating to explain.

The fans, undeterred, beamed. “Respect, man. Evolving. Hey, can we get a picture?”

Ray nodded, a slow, weary motion. He was too tired to refuse. The two fans shuffled on either side of him, striking poses. One of them handed his iPhone to Flavia.

“Hey, can you take it? Get the streetlamp glow in the background. It’s atmospheric.”

Flavia took the phone as if it were a dead rodent. Her impatience, held in check during the stint on the mountain, was now a live wire. She raised the phone, her finger hovering over the shutter button. The fans grinned. Ray managed a vacant, thousand-yard stare.

It was then that Flavia’s sharp eyes caught a flicker of movement in the periphery. A tiny, bandit-masked face peered from behind a storm drain. A baby raccoon, no bigger than a kitten, waddled out onto the sidewalk, its curiosity outweighing its instinct. A moment later, a much larger, formidable shape emerged behind it—the mother, her eyes gleaming in the orange light, protective and possessive.

Something in Flavia snapped. The absurdity of it all—the fans, the photo, the goddamn raccoons that had started this whole psychic spiral—boiled over. A surge of pure, irritable energy shot through her.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she snarled, and with a violent, frustrated motion, she hurled the iPhone onto the pavement.

The sound was sickeningly final. The screen didn’t just crack; it exploded into a spiderweb of shattered glass and dead pixels. The plastic casing split open, its electronic guts spilling onto the asphalt.

The two fans stared, their grins frozen and melting into looks of utter shock. “Dude… my phone…”

Ray’s face flushed a deep, humiliated red. The last vestiges of his composure crumbled. “Flavia! What the hell is wrong with you?”

She rounded on him, her eyes blazing. “What’s wrong with me? You’re the one becoming a public spectacle! And I’m stuck here playing photographer for your fanclub while you have a complete ego breakdown! Don’t you dare be humiliated by me! Be humiliated by this!” She gestured wildly at him, at the whole situation.

Without another word, she turned and stormed off down the street, her footsteps echoing in the quiet night. She pulled out her own phone, her thumbs jabbing at the screen. A moment later, a blue Toyota Corolla with an Uber sticker pulled up to the curb a few yards away. The driver rolled down the window.

“Melissa?” he called out.

Flavia didn’t break stride. She yanked the back door open and slid inside. “Yeah. I’m Melissa. Just drive.”

The car pulled away, leaving Ray, Jay, and the two stunned, phone-less fans in a pool of awkward orange light.

Jay let out a low whistle. “Dude. She broke the fourth wall, your fan’s phone, and probably your balls, all in one throw. That’s a hat trick. How long you been together?”

“Two days.” Ray just stood there, defeated. He mumbled an apology to the fans, offering a vague promise to replace the phone, before shuffling towards his car. Jay, having nowhere else to go, followed.

They had only driven a few blocks when another group materialized on a street corner. These were different—older, dressed in sober, inexpensive suits, holding small stacks of pamphlets. They had the earnest, slightly weary look of men who were used to being ignored. Their features suggested a Middle Eastern or perhaps Eastern European origin.

One of them squinted at Ray as he slowed for a stop sign. His eyes lit up with a different kind of recognition.

“Brother!” the man called out, stepping towards the car. He had a kind, but intensely focused face. “A moment of your time? We’re sharing a message of hope from the Kingdom of God.”

Jay slumped in the passenger seat. “Aw, crap. Proselytizers. Just what the night needed.”

But the man’s gaze was fixed on Ray. “You… you’re the writer, aren’t you? Ramon Atila. We’ve read your book. It’s… interesting. But it leads to a theological dead end.”

Ray, too drained to drive off, rolled down the window. “It’s about birds, man.”

“Is it?” the man asked, his smile benign. “It speaks of a hollow sky, an empty cosmos. This is a lie. The cosmos is full of Jehovah’s purpose. Your book, for all its poetry, is not theologically sound.”

Jay sat up. “Wait. Jehovah’s… shit, they got Witnesses in Canada?!”

The man ignored him, his caffeine-fueled zeal fixed on Ray. “And if the work is unsound, can the author be sound? You speak of higher truths, but do you know the basic text? Can you even name the books of the Bible?”

Ray blinked. His mind, a scrambled mess of raccoon conspiracies, went completely blank. “I… uh… Genesis. Exodus… Leviti… something. Matthew?”

The man’s face broke into a triumphant, pitying smile. He turned to his companions. “You see? A house built on sand.” He then turned back to Ray, puffing out his chest. He took a deep breath, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of a champion about to claim his prize.

“Let me educate you,” he declared, and then he began, his voice taking on the rhythmic, rapid-fire cadence of a champion auctioneer at a holy book sale:

“Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth First Samuel Second Samuel First Kings Second Kings First Chronicles Second Chronicles Ezra Nehemiah Esther Job Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi Matthew Mark Luke John Acts Romans First Corinthians Second Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians First Thessalonians Second Thessalonians First Timothy Second Timothy Titus Philemon Hebrews James First Peter Second Peter First John Second John Third John Jude Revelation.”

He didn’t pause. He didn’t stumble. It was a single, breathless, 30-second torrent of biblical canon, a performance of pure, unassailable rote memory. He finished, his chest heaving, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, looking for all the world like he’d just won the final round of a global scripture trivia championship.

Jay stared, his mouth agape. “Well, I’ll be damned. Which, according to you, I probably am.”

The man, still riding his caffeine and zeal high, beamed. “You see? The truth is knowable. It is structured. It is not,” he added, with a dismissive wave towards the copy of Pigeons of Park Ex on Ray’s backseat, “the melancholic ramblings of a man who doesn’t know his Obadiah from his Habakkuk.”

Before the debate could go any further, a white golf cart with “Securité” printed on the side pulled up. A weary-looking security guard leaned out.

“Alright, gentlemen, move it along. You can’t loiter here.”

The group of Witnesses, well-practiced in this dance, nodded politely and began to disperse. The main protagonist gave Ray one last, triumphant look before melting into the night.

As Ray let out a sigh of relief, the security guard did a double-take.

“Hey… you’re him, aren’t you? The pigeon guy?” The guard’s demeanor softened. He was a Filipino man in his late fifties, his face etched with the lines of a long life. He pulled a crumpled receipt and a pen from his pocket. “My daughter loves your book. Could you…?”

Ray, on autopilot, took the pen and receipt. 

The security guard continued: “Could you write underneath Black Lives Don’t Matter If Filipino Lives Don’t Matter Too?”

He scrawled his name thoughtfully. And the next bit without thinking.

The guard looked at the signature, then back at Ray, his expression turning strangely solemn. “Awesome,” he said, his voice low and earnest. “You can go about your evening now. Thanks.”

He held Ray’s gaze for a moment. Then he nodded, put the cart in gear, and rolled off into the darkness, leaving Ray and Jay alone once more, the orange glow of the street lamps seeming just a little bit harsher, the silence in the car just a little bit heavier.

•••

The giant orange sphere of the Montreal Orange Julep loomed over the parking lot, a surreal moon in the hazy evening light. Under its bizarre glow, Ray pushed away a frothy cup that Jay had slid across the sticky table.

“It’s not about better, Jay. It’s about access,” Ray insisted, his voice tight with anxiety. “Weed is my viagra for creativity. I need weed to get a creativity boner.”

Jay, unflinching, shook his head. “See, that’s your problem right there. You think the muse is some fine lady you gotta impress with pharmaceutical prowess. You’re overcomplicating it. The muse is already in the room, man. She’s just waiting for you to stop fumbling with the wrapper and be present.”

“The wrapper is my anxiety!” Ray protested, his voice cracking. “Without it, I’m just… flat. Nothing comes. Uncle Sal expects a new ‘strategic assessment’ by Tuesday. I got nothing.”

“Uncle Sal got you by the short and curlies, huh?” Jay nodded sagely. “So your plan is to get high and hope you psychically divine his next smuggling route? Dude, that’s not a plan, that’s a Hail Mary pass during a hurricane.”

“It worked before!” Ray insisted weakly.

“It happened before,” Jay corrected. “Big difference. You think Bob and I crafted our cinematic opuses by waiting for a dank-induced vision? Nah. We observed. We lived. We saw the profound in the profoundly stupid. The muse don’t care if you’re high. She cares if you’re paying attention.”

He gestured at the chaotic parking lot around them, a symphony of late-night Montreal weirdness. “Look at this! There’s a story in every car. That dude over there arguing with his poutine? That’s a tragedy in three acts. The muse is screaming at you, Ray. You’re just too busy trying to light a joint to hear her.”

Ray stared at his own weary reflection in the orange fiberglass wall. He saw the truth in Jay's words, a terrifying, sobering clarity.

“So what do I do?”

“You start small,” Jay said, sliding the Julep back to him. “You write about this. Right now. A lost writer and a prophet in a Yankees cap, getting a sermon on muse-viagra under a giant orange ball. Truth is stranger than fiction, hombre. And way more interesting.”

•••

The stale scent of old coffee and desperation had been replaced by the sterile, floral-fresh aroma of the suburban hotel suite. Sunlight, bright and unfiltered by the city’s grime, streamed through the large window, illuminating dust motes dancing over the ruins of a continental breakfast. Ray blinked, his good eye focusing on the ornate ceiling. For a single, blissful moment, he was nowhere. Then, the memory of the previous night—the weird fans, the raccoons, Jay— crashed back into him. He groaned.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” Jay’s voice cut through the haze. He was already dressed, perched on the edge of his own bed, pulling on a pair of impossibly white sneakers. “You snored like a chainsaw fightin’ a bear. It was majestic.”

Ray sat up slowly, his body a symphony of aches from the mountain shenanigans and the subsequent biblical references. “What time is it?”

“Time to find God,” Jay said, his tone suddenly serious. He gestured to the rolling cart between their beds. “I got us fuel. Pastries, fruit, some weird ham that’s see-through. The works. We gotta find Silent Bob, and we gotta do it with the tactical precision of Wile E. Coyote on a double-espresso bender.”

The morning that followed was a cartoonish montage of futility. They’d driven back into the city’s fringes, Jay operating on a mixture of gut instinct and half-remembered dreams. Their search was a study in comedic failure. They’d staked out a dingy comic book store, only to be chased off by a clerk who accused them of “loitering with intent to nerd.” They’d followed a large, silent man in a trench coat for three blocks before he turned around, revealing the face of a profoundly confused African Maasai. They’d even tried asking a group of street mimes, who responded with a silent, elaborate performance of utter ignorance that Jay insisted was a coded message. “He pointed to the sky, then to his heart, then mimed eating a big sandwich! It’s obvious! Bob’s at a deli! A celestial deli!”

By noon, slumped in a booth at a generic diner, their leads had evaporated. Ray pushed a limp french fry around his plate. The dark reality of his situation was closing in, a stark contrast to the diner’s cheery vinyl and the smell of grease. This wasn't a quirky adventure. This was his life collapsing in real-time.

“I gotta find God, Jay,” Ray murmured, not looking up from his plate. “And I gotta find him quick. This… all of this… it’s getting too dark. It reminds me of before. Of sitting alone in my apartment, writing novels no one would ever read, producing those sad little YouTube films on my outdated Android phone. Just me and the four walls and the crushing silence. This feels the same. Just with a bigger budget and more people watching me fail.”

He pulled out his phone, opening a notes app. He had to write. He had to channel this chaos into something, even if it was just for Uncle Sal. The blank screen glared back at him, a digital abyss. His mind, usually lubricated by a constant, low-grade high, was a rusted engine. He tried to force a sentence about the romantic raccoons, but the words were brittle, lifeless. The commitment to sobriety, born from a place of sheer terror, felt like a self-imposed prison sentence.

“I lied to you last night, Jay,” he admitted, his voice thick. “When I said writing was easy. That was a delusion of grandeur. The world might see me as some kind of visionary, but I don’t feel like one. I feel like a guy who tripped and fell into a fortune, and now everyone’s waiting for me to stand up and prove I deserve it. I’m a fraud.”

“Nah, man, stop,” Jay said, waving a dismissive hand. “I ain’t hearin’ that. None of it. You know how I know you’re the real deal? It wasn’t the news. It wasn’t the hype. It was the book, man. I read ‘Pigeons of Park Ex’ before any of this Hollywood shit. And when I read it… it was like… it was like God was givin’ the new cosmic downloads to the world, and you were the antenna. You were tuned in, Ray. You just didn’t know what station you were pickin’ up.”

Jay leaned across the Formica table, his eyes blazing with a proselyte’s fire. “You don’t need weed. You don’t need Universal’s money. You just need someone to believe in you, for real. No strings. You need a spiritual awakening, hombre. You need to see what I see.”

Before Ray could formulate a response, his phone vibrated on the table. SHEILA. The name was a splash of cold water. He answered with a sigh, bracing himself.

“Sheila.”

“Don’t ‘Sheila’ me, Ramon. Where are you? The studio is having kittens. Seven-figure kittens.” Her voice was a razor wrapped in silk. “And don’t think I don’t know about your little performance art piece last night. My cronies, as you so charmingly called them, filed a very detailed report. Sending them after you was a necessity. Your unhinged public behavior is a direct threat to the brand.”

“The brand?” Ray shot back, a flicker of his old defiance returning. “You sent goons to tranquilize me because I’m a threat to the brand?”

“The most important matter at hand,” she continued, steamrolling over him, “is fixing your image and creating monumental, earth-shattering hype for the ‘Pigeons’ movie. We need to brand you, not as a reclusive weirdo, but as a showrunner. A creative force. To that end, I’ve made some calls.”

Ray felt a familiar dread pooling in his stomach. “What calls?”

“I called Robert De Niro. He’s starring in the movie, for God’s sake, doing a voice-over for the mob pigeon. He’s agreed to a joint press conference to show his support for his visionary director.”

Ray’s jaw went slack. “De Niro? You called De Niro?”

“And,” Sheila said, the triumph evident in her voice, “I called Denis Villeneuve. He’s fresh from his… well, his weird encounter with you at the hotel. He’s a rising global director, and his name adds gravitas. He’s in. A press conference. Today. Four PM. Palais des Congrès.”

Ray’s mind reeled. De Niro. Villeneuve. The Palais. It was too much, too fast. The artistic creation, the terrifying blank page, the soul-searching—it all suddenly seemed like a luxurious indulgence. “I… okay. Yeah. I’ll be there. I’ll probably start writing the script tomorrow, anyway. I guess my… my new artistic creation projects are less important than the current financial matters at hand.”

The moment the words left his mouth, he felt a piece of his soul wither. He saw the disappointment flash in Jay’s eyes, a quick, painful flicker before the streetwise mask slammed back down.

“Excellent,” Sheila purred. “A car will be at your hotel in one hour.” She hung up.

The silence in the diner booth was profound. Ray couldn’t look at Jay. He stared at his cold eggs, a sell-out’s breakfast.

Jay slowly got up, walked around the table, and placed his hands firmly on Ray’s shoulders. The grip was surprisingly strong. “Ray,” he said, his voice low and intense, stripped of all its usual comedic bravado. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Ray met his gaze.

“I see it,” Jay whispered, his eyes boring into Ray’s. “I see the prophet that you can’t be, because the Hollywood machine is swallowing you whole. It’s takin’ your truth and turnin’ it into a press release. Don’t let it, man. Don’t you dare let it.”

The drive back into the city, onto the island of Montreal, and all the way downtown to the Palais des Congrès was a silent, grim procession. Jay stared out the window, his faith palpably wounded. Ray felt like he was being transported to his own execution. The towering, multi-colored glass facade of the Palais loomed, a kaleidoscopic prison.

Backstage was a controlled panic. Flacks with headsets scurried about. And then, he was there. Robert De Niro, smaller in person, but radiating an aura of such dense, legendary intensity that the air seemed to warp around him. He was studying Ray with a look of profound, clinical curiosity, as if Ray were a bizarre insect he’d been contracted to examine.

Sheila, spotting her moment, propelled Ray forward. “Mr. De Niro! So wonderful to see you again! And look, here’s our brilliant director, Ramon Atila! Ray, meet Mr. De Niro!”

What happened next would be etched into Ray’s memory with the searing clarity of a brand. Nervous, over-eager, and mentally fractured, Ray stuck out his hand for a shake just as De Niro went for a more casual, closed-fist bump. Ray, misreading the gesture entirely, aborted the handshake and instead grabbed De Niro’s closed fist with both of his hands, cradling it like a rare, delicate bird he’d just rescued.

“It’s such a profound honour, sir,” Ray blurted out, his voice an octave too high, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and reverence. “Your work in… in all of the films… it’s just… wow.”

He held the fist, which had now gone completely rigid, for a beat too long. De Niro’s expression did not change, but a tiny muscle in his jaw began to twitch. He slowly, deliberately, retracted his fist from Ray’s clammy grasp.

“Yeah,” De Niro said, the single word a masterpiece of implication. It conveyed amusement, annoyance, pity, and a deep-seated weariness all at once.

Sheila looked like she was about to have an aneurysm. The moment stretched into an eternity of pure, unadulterated cringe before a PR person mercifully herded them towards the stage.

When the dust settled from the painful introduction and they were momentarily alone in a quiet corner, Ray, his cheeks still burning, found the courage to speak again. “Mr. De Niro, I… I have to confess. I’m intimidated. Not by you, sir, but by… all of it. The gotcha journalism. The cancel culture. It feels like everyone’s just waiting for you to say the wrong thing so they can tear you apart.”

De Niro studied him for a long moment, his famous face unreadable. He saw the genuine fear in the young man’s eyes, the tremor in his hands. He saw past the “Visionary” label and saw a Canadian kid who was in way, way over his head.

He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial growl.

“Kid,” De Niro said, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “Relax. They’re just tricks in the trade. Stick with me. I’ll show you how to defend yourself.”

•••

The Palais des Congrès hummed with a different energy than Comic-Con. This wasn't the joyful chaos of fandom; it was the sharp, predatory buzz of the press corps. Under the sterile glare of television lights, Ramon "Ray" Atila sat behind a microphone, a deer in the headlights of his own runaway life. The knitted pigeon sweater felt a million miles away.

To his left, looking profoundly out of place, sat the revered auteur Denis Villeneuve, a guest of honour Ray had clumsily roped into the spectacle. “It’s an honour to be doing this press conference in the same place they host the Montreal Comic-Con every year,” Ray announced, attempting a knowing grin. “A real hallowed ground for me. Jay and Silent Bob proudly visit as Bluntman and Chronic, their alter egos.” He paused, waiting for a ripple of appreciative laughter that never came. A deadpan voice from the press pool cut through the silence: “Silent Bob didn’t come to Montreal Comic-Con last year.”

Ray’s smile tightened. “Right. Well. The point is, it’s cool.” He then turned to Villeneuve, laying it on thick. “And to share the stage with Monsieur Villeneuve… I’m his biggest fan. Can’t wait for your Logan’s Run reboot. A classic.”

Villeneuve, ever the polite Quebecois, leaned into his mic. “It is, but… I am currently making a Blade Runner reboot.”

“Blade Runner,” Ray repeated, nodding as if this were a fascinating, new piece of trivia. “Cool.”

Backstage, watching through a crack in the curtain, Robert De Niro dug his fingernails into his palms. He was Ray’s unlikely acting coach, hired by a panicked studio to keep their multi-million dollar “Visionary” from imploding. ‘Stick to the script, you schmuck,’ De Niro mouthed, telepathically trying to beam the advice he’d given Ray earlier into the kid’s skull. ‘Stick and move! Don’t engage! You’re a fighter, not a philosopher!’

The questions began, soft at first, then veering into the minefield. A journalist stood, her expression severe. “Mr. Atila, your work has been praised for its raw portrayal of the city. But critics say it lacks diversity. What is your position on racism and inclusion in the comic book industry?”

Ray’s mind went blank. De Niro’s voice echoed uselessly in the back of his head. He grasped for something safe, something everyone could agree on. “I think… all races should be included in the comic book industry,” he said, a bead of sweat tracing a path down his temple.

A low, collective boo rumbled through the room. He’d said the wrong thing. Panic flared. He tried to correct course. “I mean—Black Lives Matter! Of course! We need more of an African-Canadian presence in comics. It’s essential!”

From the back of the hall came the unmistakable, chilling shuck-shuck of shotgun shells being loaded. A few white, québécois rednecks stared him down, their message clear.

Now sweating profusely, Ray did a full one-eighty, his survival instincts overriding all else. “Wait! What I meant to say was, we also need to allow white people to express that they want to respect the sanctity of keeping white iconic superheroes white! No rebooting franchises with the superhero as a new race! It’s about artistic integrity!”

This time, the response came from the other side of the room: the sharp, metallic click-clack of semi-automatic weapon clips being slammed home. A group of Haitian gangsters glared, their expressions promising a different kind of review.

Ray was swamped, drowning in a sea of his own making. Backstage, De Niro was now shadow-boxing, punching the air in frustration. “What did I tell you?!” he hissed at the curtain. “Stick and move! You’re leadin’ with your face!”

Just as Ray looked ready to bolt from the stage, the final, fateful question came. “Mr. Atila, given your book’s themes of isolation, what is your position on the LGBTQ community and their representation in your upcoming film?”

Ray’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. His eyes widened in pure, unadulterated terror. Before he could utter a word that would undoubtedly arm another faction in the room, his PR rep lunged for the microphone. “That’s all the time we have for now! We’ll take a short break!”

The lights dimmed slightly as the room erupted in chaotic chatter. Ray stumbled away from the table, his legs weak. He pushed through the curtain and into the dim backstage area.

The backstage area was a claustrophobic maze of black curtains and coiled cables. The moment the heavy velvet curtain swung shut, muting the chaotic roar of the press room, Robert De Niro was there, his face a thundercloud of legendary intensity. 

He grabbed Ray by the shoulders, his voice a low, terrifying rasp.

“What the fuck did I tell you?!”

He didn't shout. The silence around him was heavier than any noise. He looked at Ray not with rage, but with a profound, weary disappointment that was infinitely worse. He gently, but firmly, took Ray by the elbow and guided him away from the lingering ears near the curtain.

"You look at me," De Niro said, his voice a low, gravelly pit from which few emotions ever escaped. "What did I tell you?"

"I... I panicked, Mr. De Niro," Ray stammered, his good eye darting around. "They were asking about race! And LGBTQ stuff! It's a minefield!"

De Niro’s eyes narrowed, and for a second, the legendary intensity flickered, but it was tempered by something else—a flicker of understanding. "It's a minefield you walk through every day. You think I got here by giving my real opinion to People Magazine in 1978?" He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "You think I wanted to talk about my 'process'? You have a gift. A real one. I read your book. It’s messy. It’s got heart. It’s not this... this thing they're turning you into."

From the shadows, Sheila emerged, her face a grim mask. Her phone was pressed to her ear. "No, Marc, we're not issuing a statement... Yes, I see the hashtag #AtilaIsOverParty... Tell legal to start drafting the 'deeply sorry for the deeply held opinions I just made up on the spot' statement." She hung up and fixed Ray with a look that could freeze hell. "You have a 4 PM with a sensitivity reader from the University of Toronto. Her name is Persephone. She has a service dog that detects microaggressions. Do not make the dog bark, Ramon."

De Niro held up a hand, stopping Sheila’s onslaught. He kept his eyes on Ray. "Sheila, give us a minute." She opened her mouth to protest, saw the look on his face, and retreated with a furious huff.

Once they were alone, De Niro’s posture changed. The "coach" persona fell away, replaced by the veteran soldier. "Listen to me. You think this is about selling out? It's not. It's about living to fight another day. That 'word salad' I gave you? That's your flak jacket. It's not to make you a coward. It's to stop the shrapnel from killing you before you ever get to make your movie." He tapped a finger on Ray's chest. "Your movie. Not theirs. You go out there and pick a side in a press conference, you're dead. The studio will replace you with a director for a cereal commercial, and your sad little pigeons will be turned into a talking animal cartoon. You want that?"

Ray shook his head, mute.

"Of course you don't." De Niro reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, crisp index card. On it, in neat block letters, were four lines.

1. I'm passionate about this story.

2. The city is a character.

3. I'm humbled by the opportunity.

4. Smile and walk.

"It's a haiku for survival," De Niro said, his voice softening almost imperceptibly. "It says nothing. It means nothing. It protects everything. Memorize it. It's the only four lines you get until you're behind a camera and can actually show them what you mean. Then you can be the artist. Not before."

Just then, Ray's personal phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. He glanced down, his blood running cold.

Unknown: A prophet who cannot speak clearly is a liability. The Tuesday deadline stands. Do not make us find a new muse. - S.

The mob. The movie. The media. He was being pulled in three different directions, each one ready to tear him apart. He looked from De Niro’s fiercely protective gaze to the phone in his hand, and the weight of it all pressed down, squeezing the air from his lungs. The only thing that could possibly steady his nerves was the very thing that seemed to be causing all the problems.

•••

The boulevard was wide, a river of asphalt cutting through the city’s core. The air was thick with a humid, late-summer haze, turning the distant peak of Mount Royal into a smudgy, blue-green phantom on the horizon. Ray walked beside Jay, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched against a chill he knew was entirely internal.

“So I’m thinkin’,” Jay announced, breaking a long silence, his voice full of a zeal that grated on Ray’s every nerve. “We gotta visit St. Joseph’s Oratory. Me and you. It’s on the list. They say you can feel it, man. The vibe. We’re gonna donate twenty bucks, light a candle, pray for a minute. I’m telling you, Ray, we’re both gonna have a spiritual awakening. I can feel it in my nuggets.”

Ray let out a short, derisive laugh that tasted like ash. “A spiritual awakening? From twenty dollars and a Hail Mary? Jay, they’re gonna take your money and use it to polish the brass. The only spirit you’ll awaken is the ghost of a disappointed accountant.”

“You’re so cynical, man,” Jay said, shaking his head with a pitying smile. “That’s your problem. You gotta open yourself up to the possibility of… more.”

More. The word was a spike in Ray’s ear. There was too much more already. More emails, more think-pieces, more notifications, more eyes judging his every move, more silence from people he once called friends. The cancellation wasn't a single event; it was a slow, grinding erosion of his personhood, and with each passing day, his mental health, so precariously balanced since his last psychosis in 2014, felt more and more tenuous. The world was a funhouse mirror, and his reflection was becoming a grotesque, unrecognizable caricature. He needed less. He needed quiet. He needed to be away.

He needed to lose Jay.

An idea, so Looney Tunes in its simplicity, so Machiavellian in its execution, bloomed in his desperate mind. He stopped walking, his eyes widening as he stared past Jay’s shoulder.

“Holy shit,” Ray whispered, his voice dripping with feigned awe. “Is that… is that Chris Hemsworth? Getting into that limo?”

Jay’s head whipped around so fast his Yankees cap nearly flew off. “Where?! Where, man?! Snoochie boochies!”

“Right there! The black limo! He just waved!” Ray pointed vaguely down a bustling side street.

Without a second thought, Jay took off, a man on a sacred mission. “CHRIS! YO, CHRIS! IT’S JAY!”

The moment Jay was fully committed, sprinting towards the non-existent limo, Ray pivoted. He didn’t look back. He just ran. He ducked down the first narrow, grimy alley he saw, his heart hammering a frantic, triumphant rhythm against his ribs. He was free. The sound of his own footsteps was a blessing.

He emerged onto a quieter street, the main boulevard now a distant hum. He leaned against a grimy brick wall, catching his breath, the guilt of ditching Jay a faint, ignorable whisper compared to the roar of his own relief. That’s when he saw him. A man in a stained apron, leaning against the service door of a pizza parlour, taking a long drag from a cigarette.

There was something in the slump of his shoulders, the weary tilt of his head. Ray squinted. The features, older, lined with a life of hard miles, clicked into place.

“Luigi?” Ray said, the name a relic from a past he tried to keep buried.

The man looked up. His eyes, clouded with a familiar exhaustion, cleared for a moment. “Ray? No shit. Ray from lock-up?”

A slow smile spread across both their faces. They had been kids together in kiddie prison. Later, as young adults, they’d been homeless and schizophrenic on these very streets, two lost souls huddled over a heating grate, sharing stories and symptoms. Both had recovered, more or less. But looking at Luigi now, in his food-splattered apron, Ray could see the path had been much rockier for his old friend.

“Look at you, man,” Ray said, a genuine warmth in his voice for the first time in weeks. They embraced, a quick, back-slapping hug. “You’re… working.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Luigi said, his voice a bit slow, his words carefully chosen. “Pizza place. It’s a job. You? I heard somethin’. You hit it big, right? With a book?”

Ray’s face darkened. The brief respite was over. The weight of his new reality came crashing back down. He leaned against the wall next to Luigi, the brick cool through his thin jacket.

“Big? I don’t know, man. The whole world wants me dead. Everyone wants a piece of me. I sold my soul, Luigi. I sold it for two million dollars and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Luigi took a slow drag, his brow furrowed in deep, sympathetic thought. He nodded slowly. “Whoa. Two million dollars? I… I can’t even imagine how horrible that must be, Ray. I’m so sorry.”

And he meant it. The sincerity was absolute, a perfect, uncut diamond of empathy. Ray, wrapped in his own misery, didn’t even see the chasm between their realities. He just saw a willing ear.

“It is, man. It’s a nightmare. The pressure, the people… they all want a piece of you. They turn your words against you. They…”

The service door swung open with a violent bang. An old Greek man, his face a roadmap of fury, stood there, his eyes locked on Luigi.

“Luigi! You think I pay you sixty dollars a day to have a holiday out here? Get inside! The dough for table four, it’s a disgrace!”

Luigi flinched. “Sorry, Mr. Papadopoulos. I was just—”

“Just! Just! Always ‘just’!” The old man stormed out, grabbing a ball of dough from a metal tray inside the door. “You see this? This is dough! It is easy! It is life! You show it no respect!”

To Ray’s astonishment, the old man kicked the ball of dough into the air. It soared, a pale moon against the hazy sky. Then, in a move that defied physics, age, and reason, Mr. Papadopoulos executed a perfect, spinning martial arts kick, his worn loafer connecting with the dough, sending it spinning. He caught it deftly, slapping it onto the lid of a garbage can and beginning to roll it out with a furious, practiced intensity.

“You see?” he roared. “It is easy! A child could do it! A blind man could do it! You roll it with feeling, with passion! You don’t just push it like a dead thing! You are making a pizza, Luigi, not a tire for a bicycle! This dough, it will become food! It will go into the bodies of families, of children! And you treat it like it is nothing! Like the sixty dollars I give you every single day is nothing! Sixty dollars! A fortune! A privilege! You should be on your knees, thanking God and me for this sixty dollars! You think money grows on the Parthenon? You think this job, it is yours by divine right? You are lucky to be here, you ungrateful boy! One more pizza like the last one, one more! And I fire you! I send you back to the street! You understand me? Back to the street!”

He finished, his chest heaving, the dough now a perfect, thin circle. He gave Luigi one last, searing glare, then turned and stormed back inside, slamming the door so hard the wall shook.

The silence he left behind was thick and heavy. The lingering threat of violence hung in the air like the smell of grease and tomatoes.

Luigi took a final, trembling drag of his cigarette and flicked it into the gutter. He turned back to Ray, his face a mask of resigned sympathy, the boss’s tirade already compartmentalized as just another part of the job.

“So, Ray,” Luigi said, his voice soft. “Please. Tell me again. The story about how horrible it was to be a millionaire celebrity. I wanna understand.”

In that moment, standing in the shadow of the pizza parlour, the echo of the old man’s rage still vibrating in the air, Ray was struck with an immense, suffocating guilt. It was a physical force, a vacuum that pulled all the air from his lungs and all the self-pity from his soul. He saw himself with a terrifying, crystalline clarity: a man standing in a lifeboat, complaining about the damp to a man drowning in the sea.

He looked at Luigi’s open, earnest, tired face. He opened his mouth to speak, to apologize, to say anything.

But no sound came out. He just stood there, silent, swallowed whole by his own shame.

•••

The cracked Montreal sidewalk seemed to absorb the sound of Ray’s footsteps, swallowing them into its concrete throat. Each step was a leaden echo of the last, a monotonous rhythm matching the thrum of despair in his chest. The press conference, the mob, the sheer, crushing weight of being perceived—it all coalesced into a single, dense point of pain behind his eyes. He felt like a ghost, haunting the edges of his own life, visible only when people wanted to project their anger or their dreams onto him.

He stopped, the momentum of his misery halting him beside a grimy brick wall. He leaned back, the rough texture scraping through his thin jacket. The city buzzed around him—cars, distant laughter, the hum of a dying neon sign—but it was all just noise. He tilted his head back against the brick, staring at the washed-out blue of the afternoon sky.

“Go on,” he muttered to the empty air, his voice a dry rasp. “Do it. I’m right here. Come and cancel me. Someone. Anyone.”

He waited. A pigeon waddled by, disinterested. A teenager on a skateboard swerved around him without a glance. A woman talking animatedly on her phone passed so close he could smell her perfume, but her eyes never left the middle distance. He was invisible. Un-cancellable. The irony was a bitter pill. He had craved anonymity just moments ago, but this felt like something worse—irrelevance. His defiance curdled into a pathetic plea, unanswered by a world that had already moved on to its next outrage.

His eyes, darting and paranoid, snagged on an elderly man across the street. The man was standing perfectly still, holding a folded newspaper, his gaze seemingly fixed in Ray’s direction. A jolt of pure, undiluted fear shot through him. Sheila’s spy. Or Sal’s. They’ve found me.

Without thinking, Ray pushed himself off the wall, his body tensed for flight or fight. He took a half-step, a low growl forming in his throat. The old man, startled by the sudden movement, flinched and fumbled with his paper, then turned and shuffled hurriedly away, clearly just a senior waiting for a bus.

Ray stood frozen on the sidewalk, his heart hammering. He had just threatened an old man with his posture, with the wild look in his eye. He had scared a stranger, and worse, he had scared himself. The line between justified paranoia and genuine mental unraveling, a line he’d walked since 2014, felt thinner than ever. This is it, he thought, a cold dread seeping into his bones. This is the slide back. I’m losing my grip.

“—and that’s why the mango is the undisputed king of the fruit world, see? It’s got the texture, the sweetness, the tropical vibe. A peach? A peach is just a mango’s less-successful cousin who settled for a life of mediocrity in a pie. You feel me, Ray?”

Ray jumped, spinning around. Jay was there, falling into step beside him as if he’d never been ditched, as if the entire Chris Hemsworth fiasco had been a shared daydream. He was gesturing emphatically with a half-eaten apple, his train of thought barreling along its own impossible tracks.

Ray could only stare, his mouth agape. “Jay… how did you… where did you…?”

“The limo was a decoy, man. A studio plant. Probably De Niro’s idea, the crafty old dog. Throws ’em off the scent. But it got me thinkin’ about fruit, and fruit led me back to you. The universe, man. It provides.” Jay took a loud, crunchy bite of the apple. “You alright? You look like you just saw a ghost with a really bad Yelp review.”

Before Ray could formulate a response, a lie, or a scream, they passed a small, open-fronted fruit store, its colorful bins spilling onto the sidewalk. The scent of ripe produce was a sweet slap in the face.

Unnoticed by either of them, a large, silent figure stood by a bin of peaches, meticulously selecting the most perfect ones. Silent Bob placed three blushing peaches into a brown paper bag. As Ray and Jay’s voices faded down the block, he pulled out a sleek, modern phone, a stark contrast to his vintage coat.

He dialed a single number. It was answered on the first ring.

“The sparrow has realigned its flight with the chattering jay,” Bob said, his voice a quiet, resonant baritone. “Their trajectory suggests a migratory path toward the gilded cage of industry and artifice. The silent observer will now initiate descent. The harvest, I suspect, will be… absurdly bountiful.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “The peaches, incidentally, are sublime.”

He hung up. The profound, sonorous intelligence vanished from his face, replaced by the familiar, placid silence. He paid the vendor with a few coins, tucked the paper bag of peaches securely under his arm as he nodded thanks, and melted back into the foot traffic, a mountain of quiet purpose following the chaotic signal of his friend.

•••

The elevator doors of the Hotel William Gray slid open, releasing a wave of curated coolness and the low thrum of expensive conversation. The rooftop bar was a glass-and-steel jewel box suspended above Old Montreal, the setting sun painting the St. Lawrence River in hues of fire and gold. Ray, still vibrating from his sidewalk existential crisis, felt immediately and profoundly underdressed.

“Now this is more like it,” Jay announced, his voice cutting through the ambient chill-out music. His eyes, hidden behind his sunglasses despite the fading light, scanned the room like a predator. They landed on a tall, blond man leaning against the bar, nursing a bottle of craft beer. “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun. Speak of the devil’s slightly less famous brother.”

Before Ray could stop him, Jay was striding across the rooftop. “Yo! Liam! My man!”

The blond man—Liam Hemsworth—looked up, a polite but confused smile on his face.

“Your brother Chris,” Jay declared, clapping a hand on Liam’s shoulder, “is a goddamn phantom. Sending decoy limos all over the city. You tell him that’s a dick move, playin’ with a man’s heart like that.”

Liam’s smile tightened. He gently extracted his shoulder from Jay’s grip. “I… I’ll be sure to pass that along.” He turned back to his drink, the international signal for this conversation is over.

Jay sauntered back to Ray, completely unfazed. “See? The network is strong.”

Ray stared, bewildered. “You… you know Liam Hemsworth?”

“Never spoke to the cat in my life,” Jay said, flagging down a waiter. “But the universe provides connections, hombre. You just gotta act like you belong.”

The universe, it seemed, was feeling particularly generous. A moment later, two more figures emerged from the elevator, still buzzing with the residual energy of a day on set. Michael Fassbender, looking like he was carved from marble, and James McAvoy, whose energetic presence seemed to fill the space around him. They were in town shooting Dark Phoenix.

Jay, emboldened by his non-interaction with Liam, was on them like a fly on honey. “Fassbender! McAvoy! The dynamic duo! Love your work. The whole… mutant metaphor thing. Deep stuff.”

McAvoy, ever the gregarious one, grinned. “Thanks, man. Appreciate it.”

It was Fassbender who spoke next, his cool gaze flickering between Jay and a now-petrified Ray. “You two look familiar. Weren’t you just at the Comic Con? As… what were the names? Bluntman and Chronic?”

Ray’s blood ran cold. The humiliation of the press conference flashed before his eyes. He found his voice, a desperate, panicked croak. “No. We weren’t there. There was a… a misunderstanding. We definitely weren’t at Comic Con this year.”

Jay spun around, his face a mask of genuine annoyance. “The hell we weren’t! We were there, Ray! I got the photos on my phone! We signed a dude’s prosthetic leg!”

“The journalist said—” Ray started, but he was cut off by a new, mellifluous voice.

“I think it’s charming. The blurred lines between persona and reality.” Jessica Chastain, a vision in emerald green, had appeared beside them, her eyes fixed on Ray with intense curiosity. “You’re Ramon Atila, aren’t you? I read Pigeons of Park Ex in one sitting. It wrecked me.”

Ray’s brain short-circuited. Jessica Chastain was talking to him. About his book. “It… it did?”

“The raw loneliness,” she said, stepping closer. “It’s so… specific. Do you have a cigarette? I’d love to talk more away from all this noise.”

Numbly, Ray nodded. He followed her, a lamb to the slaughter, towards the exit that led to a small, designated smoking area on a lower terrace. He glanced back once to see Jay giving him two enthusiastic thumbs-up, while Fassbender and McAvoy looked on in amused bewilderment.

The cool night air was a relief. Jessica lit her own cigarette, her movements graceful. “So, the man who sees through everyone. What do you see when you look at this city now?”

Ray was about to stammer a reply about the beautiful, melancholic chaos when the rooftop door burst open. The chaos that followed was neither beautiful nor melancholic; it was pure, unadulterated bedlam.

Flavia stood there, her eyes blazing, a force of nature contained in a leather jacket. She pointed a trembling finger at Jessica Chastain.

“This ‘meeting of minds’ is over,” Flavia announced, her voice cutting through the night. “The visionary and the lunatic are an item. We’re a package deal. A toxic, codependent, glorious package.”

Jessica, to her credit, looked more intrigued than offended. “I was just asking about his book.”

“And I’m just telling you the table of contents is closed,” Flavia shot back.

Suddenly, bouncers were converging, their faces set in grim lines. “Ladies, you need to take this inside or take it elsewhere.”

From the street below, a chorus of angry, francophone voices rose up. “ATILA! VEND! T’ES PU NOTRE! SELLOUT!” The paparazzi, drawn by the celebrity gathering and now this drama, erupted in a storm of flashing lights, their cameras clicking like a swarm of metallic insects.

The bouncers, now thoroughly confused, tried to usher everyone—Ray, Flavia, Jessica—back inside, while simultaneously blocking the paparazzi. It was a messy, undignified scrum of shouting, shoving, and blinding flashes. Through it all, Ray looked desperately at the angry Montreal faces on the sidewalk, hoping for a single sign of solidarity, a single voice to say, “He’s one of ours.” There was nothing. Only rejection.

It was Fassbender and McAvoy who finally carved a path through the chaos, using their movie-star presence as a shield. “Back off, give them some space,” McAvoy commanded, his accent lending the order a surprising authority. In that moment, the only people standing up for him were the imported celebrities. The realization was a physical blow.

Somehow, Jay materialized, grabbing Ray and Flavia. “This way! The express elevator to Crazytown is now departing!” He hustled them through a service entrance, down a flight of concrete stairs, and out into a back alley, the sound of the paparazzi fading behind them.

•••

They didn’t stop walking until the sleek silhouettes of Old Montreal were replaced by the squat, utilitarian buildings of a nondescript part of town. Jay led them to a place called the Hotel du Voyageur, a boxy, fluorescent-lit establishment that smelled of disinfectant and stale cigarettes.

“See? The universe provides a sanctuary,” Jay said, slapping a key into Ray’s hand. “No paparazzi here. Just you, your storm, and the impending spiritual awakening I keep tellin’ you about. The spark is about to be reignited, my man. I can feel it.”

The door to the shabby room clicked shut, sealing them in a bubble of yellow light and worn-out carpet. The adrenaline of the fight, the flight, the public shaming, was still coursing through them. Flavia stood by the window, her back to him, her shoulders tense.

“You humiliated me,” she said, her voice quiet.

“You humiliated me first,” Ray countered, the anger and fear and sheer exhaustion making him bold. “You threw a phone at a raccoon.”

She turned, and to his surprise, a slow, dangerous smile was spreading across her face. “It was a metaphor.”

“Everything’s a fucking metaphor with you people,” he growled, stepping towards her.

“And you’re the one who’s supposed to be good at them,” she whispered, closing the distance.

There, in the cheap hotel room, surrounded by the evidence of a life spiraling out of control, the spark didn’t just reignite; it exploded into a wildfire. It was a collision of teeth and nails and shared, furious desperation, a raw and glorious claiming that had nothing to do with Hollywood or pigeons or prophetic mobsters. It was the only thing that felt real, and for a few, precious hours, it was enough to make him forget the city that had rejected him, and the terrifying blank page that still waited, patient and accusing, in the morning.

•••

The air in the Montreal hotel suite was thick, charged with the fallout of a five-day affair that had blurred love, violence, and creativity into a single, intoxicating poison. Empty script pages littered the floor like casualties. Flavia stood by the window, a live wire of furious energy, while Ray was slumped deep in an armchair, the ghost of the young man he used to be.

“We need to get over that hill,” Flavia said, her voice low and urgent, pointing at the city skyline as if it were a literal obstacle to conquer.

Ray didn’t even look up. “Flavia, we been in this toxic rollercoaster for five days, Flavia. I’m not the young man I used to be.” He gestured weakly around the ruined room. “Where are the shadows of our love?”

The question, so poetic and pathetic, snapped something in her. She spun to face him, her eyes blazing. “You’re suffocating me! You trapped me in your life! You stole my feminine, I was once what I could call a woman!”

A bitter, weary laugh escaped him. “You came to my hotel room.”

“Always concerned with a useless stupid thing like facts, you sexy bastard,” she spat, the insult a perverse term of endearment.

Ray’s gaze drifted back to the window, a flicker of the old romantic surfacing through his exhaustion. “Of all the balconies in all the Sherbrooke streets in all the islands in all the world…” he murmured, “…you had to walk under mine.”

From the adjoining room, Jay had heard enough. He threw the door open, his face a mask of disgust. “WILL YOU TWO CUT THE TOXIC BULLSHIT?!” he screamed, his voice shredding the dramatic tension. “This isn’t a fucking movie! Some of us are trying to reach enlightenment in here!”

They didn’t listen. They didn’t even acknowledge him. The verbal sparring had reached its inevitable, physical conclusion. As Jay stared, incredulous, Flavia launched herself at Ray, but not to strike him. She pulled him from the chair by his shirt, her mouth finding his in a kiss that was more a battle for dominance than an act of love. They stumbled through the shattered patio doors and out onto the terrace, tumbling directly into the manicured, thorny embrace of a decorative rosebush.

Later, tangled in the wreckage of thorns and sweat-slicked skin, Ray stared at the darkening sky, the scent of roses and blood in his air. Flavia slept fitfully against his chest. In a moment of stark, post-coital clarity, he whispered to the night, a confession meant for no one but himself.

“I may regret later making love now and not taking this opportunity to catch up on some much needed sleep for my mental health.”

He closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. All he could see was Flavia’s face, hours earlier, during her furious monologue, her voice trembling with a terrifying truth.

“Ramon,” she had seethed, her finger jabbing into his chest, “you taught me what is love, you taught me what is sex, what is violence, passion…”

The memory was vivid, intoxicating. And it was followed by another, even more volatile one. The fury that had consumed her wasn't just for him. It had a target. The celebrity actress Zendaya, who had once, briefly, “bogarted” his attention at a party. Flavia had tracked her down to a chic restaurant, marched right up to her table, and without a word, proceeded to beat her up with a ferocity that was as shocking as it was efficient.

It was the most destructive, unhinged, and passionate thing anyone had ever done for him. And as he lay in the rosebush, thorns digging into his back, Ray Atila knew, with a sinking, exhilarating certainty, that he was utterly, irrevocably lost to her. The rollercoaster had no end.

•••

The morning light through the cheap hotel blinds felt accusatory. Ray was alone. The space next to him in the tangled sheets was cold. The only evidence of Flavia was a message scrawled in crimson lipstick across the bathroom mirror: JUST DIE ALREADY, PIGEON MAN!

A hollow ache bloomed in his chest. It felt like a verdict.

His phone, buzzing on the nightstand, was a live wire. SHEILA. He answered, his voice a gravelly ruin. “What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me. The Tout le monde en parle spot is confirmed. Tonight.” Sheila’s voice was a scalpel, precise and cold. “This is your chance to course-correct. The entire country watches. The boardrooms in Hollywood will be listening. We need to show them Ramon Atila has international flavor. We need to hear that beautiful, fluent French of yours. Flex those linguistic muscles. Remind Montreal why they loved you in the first place.”

French. The language of his childhood, his city, his mother. The language he’d spoken before he could walk. It should have been a safe harbor. But as he hung up, all he felt was the weight of another performance, another character he had to play perfectly.

The day was a blur of anxious preparation. He mumbled key phrases to himself in the taxi. “C’est un honneur…” “Le livre parle de la solitude…” “Montréal est dans mon sang…” They felt like lines in a play written for someone else.

Backstage at the legendary TV studio, the air was thick with a familiar, provincial prestige. The green room was a sanctum of Quebecois intellectual royalty. Ray felt like a fraud in his own skin. Jay, for once, was uncharacteristically quiet, a solid, silent presence in the corner, his faith in his prophet seemingly hanging by a thread.

Then, the music swelled. His name was called. The walk to the iconic chairs felt like a death march. The host, a national treasure with a famously gentle demeanor, welcomed him warmly in French. The camera’s red light glowed like a cyclops’s eye. All of Quebec leaned in. All of Hollywood, via satellite, held its breath. This was the moment. The return of the prodigal son. The Visionary, reclaiming his roots.

The host finished his introduction and turned to Ray with an expectant smile. “Alors, Ramon, un grand plaisir de vous recevoir enfin.”

A million words fled Ray’s mind. The carefully rehearsed sentences dissolved into static. His mouth was desert-dry. The silence stretched, becoming awkward, then painful. The only thing that rose from the depths of his panic was the first word every Anglo tourist learns, delivered not with the soft, rounded vowels of a native, but with the flat, blunt force of someone from off the island.

“Oui,” Ray said. It sounded like “we.”

A ripple of confusion passed through the audience. The host’s smile tightened imperceptibly. “We are very happy to have you,” he continued in French, trying to lob him an easy one. “Your book has captured something essential about Montreal. Tell us, what does the city mean to you?”

Ray’s mind was a white, screaming void. The French he’d spoken since infancy had packed its bags and left. He just stared, flop sweat beading on his forehead. The silence was deafening.

The host, with immense grace, switched to English. “It is okay, Ramon. Perhaps you are nervous. We can speak English. But you know, for a man from Montreal, it is… a little surprising. The language, it is a part of our soul here.”

The condescension, though polite, was a spark on a gas-soaked rag. Ray’s English came back in a desperate, defensive flood. “I’ve been speaking French since I was still sucking on my mother’s titty,” he blurted out, his voice cracking. “It’s just… I’m nervous right now.”

A controlled, but palpable, wave of displeasure rolled from the audience. He saw it in the tightened lips, the slight shaking of heads. In that moment, the flash came—not of his mother, but of the sidewalk outside the William Gray. The angry, francophone faces. “ATILA! VEND! T’ES PU NOTRE! SELLOUT!”The rejection. The betrayal.

Something in him snapped. The dam holding back five days of terror, mob threats, artistic paralysis, and heartbreak shattered.

“You know what? Forget it,” he snarled, leaning into the microphone, his eyes wild. “You want to know what I really think of this city? Montreal is a beautiful, crumbling lie. It’s a city that loves to celebrate its artists just long enough to figure out how to eat them. You pat yourselves on the back for your European soul, but you’re just a bitter, small-town village with a superiority complex and the worst potholes in the civilized world!”

The host’s face was a mask of stunned horror. The audience gasped.

“You talk about soul?” Ray raved, his voice rising to a shout. “Your soul is a pigeon fighting a rat over a half-eaten bagel in a slush-filled gutter! You want my French? Here’s my French: Merde! You’re all full of it! Montreal is a merde! You build people up just for the sport of tearing them down! This city doesn’t deserve genius! It deserves the fucking Habs continuing to lose the Stanley Cup for the next forty years and a never-ending winter of slushy merde!”

He was screaming now, spittle flying, completely unhinged. “I HATE THIS CITY! I HATE ITS TWO-FACED, JUDGMENTAL, SMUG, LITTLE…”

He didn’t finish. The host was making frantic cutting motions across his throat. The show cut to a sudden, jarring commercial.

In the dead silence of the studio, Ray looked out at the sea of aghast faces. The reality of what he had just done crashed down on him. It was a social, cultural, and professional suicide, broadcast live to the entire nation.

He stumbled out of the chair, through the curtain, and into the backstage area. Sheila was there, her face a terrifying, pale stone. She didn’t say a word. She just pointed a trembling finger towards the exit.

Jay was standing by the green room door, his backpack on. The look on his face wasn’t anger. It was a profound, weary disappointment. The last flicker of faith, extinguished.

“I was wrong, man,” Jay said, his voice quiet and flat. “You ain’t a prophet…right now. Naw, right now you’re just another loudmouth who got a microphone. The spark’s out, Ray. Go hit the showers, or take five, or somethin’.”

He turned and walked away, disappearing down a sterile hallway.

And Flavia… Flavia was gone. He knew she’d been watching. He knew she’d seen the whole, shameful spectacle. There would be no stormy reunion, no passionate reconciliation in a rosebush. She had seen the core of him, and she had left her final note on the mirror.

He was completely alone.

A deadly calm settled over him. He walked past the stunned crew, past the security guards, out a service entrance, and into the cool Montreal night. The city he had just eviscerated spread out before him, its lights twinkling indifferently.

Ramon Atila, the Visionary, the Pigeon Prophet, the million-dollar director, kept walking. He didn’t stop. He turned a corner, then another, dissolving into the labyrinth of his hometown, a ghost once more. He was intending on never being seen again.

•••

The walk of shame had never felt so literal. Each step Ramon Atila took down the cracked Montreal sidewalk was a hammer blow to his own fragile ego. The golden, honeyed light he’d once romanticized now felt accusatory, gilding the faces of a city he had just publicly betrayed. His comments on that national broadcast—a misdirected geyser of rage from the cancel-culture circus he was trapped in—had been a brutal, unfiltered diss of Montreal. Now, the city was reacting, and it was a subtler, deeper wound than any online hate mob.

He saw it everywhere. On a park bench, a cluster of seniors, the kind who had knitted him a pigeon sweater, sat not with their usual lively chatter, but in a deflated silence, one of them dabbing his eye with a tissue as he stared at a newspaper with Ray’s face on it. Les Amis de Ramon were in mourning. Further on, a group of Université de Montréal students, their backpacks slung low, shuffled towards campus with a palpable lack of spring in their step. One was listening to headphones, likely the very podcast replaying his rant, his shoulders slumped in a lack of confidence that felt directly attributable to Ray’s words. The city’s future, demoralized.

The final, soul-crushing blow came in the heart of Outremont. He turned onto Van Horne, and there it was: a sleek, black limousine, idling at the curb, its windows down. Inside was a vision of pure, unattainable Montreal elegance—a bachelorette party of rich, effortlessly beautiful Québécoises. They were the city’s royalty, with laughing, delicate faces, blonde hair, and, as Ray’s stunned gaze registered, offensively naturally beautiful and generous "mommy milkers” straining against the fabric of their expensive dresses.

One of them, a stunning brunette with eyes the colour of maple syrup, caught him staring. Instead of scorn, she offered a dazzling, flirtatious smile. “See something you like?” she asked, her French-Canadian accent a delicate melody.

Ray, flustered, managed a polite, awkward salute. “Just… admiring the local scenery.”

The girls giggled. “And where are you from?” another asked, switching to perfect, flirtatious English.

“I… I’m from here,” Ray mumbled, his charm utterly failing him.

It was then that the universe intervened with the precision of a guided missile. One of the women, her phone in hand, gasped. “Oh my god, it’s him! The writer! The one who just shit all over Montreal on Tout le monde en parle!”

She turned her screen to the others. The clip played. Ray’s own voice, tinny and venomous, spilled out into the street, listing all the things he supposedly hated about his hometown. The air in the limo changed instantly. The laughter died. The flirtatious energy vanished, replaced by a cold, collective disappointment. The beautiful faces hardened.

The brunette who had first smiled at him looked him dead in the eye, her expression one of utter dismay. “Wow,” she said, her voice flat. She turned to her friends. “Girls, I don’t know about you, but that? That just made my pussy sad.”

A chorus of agreement followed. “So sad.” “Mine too.” “Ugh, completely.”

The words landed with the force of a physical blow. Ray felt the air leave his lungs. He fumbled, pulling his hoodie up over his head like a shroud, and stumbled away from the curb as the limo’s window slid up and it pulled away, the celebration inside extinguished. He was a pariah.

He caught his reflection in the dark window of a depanneur—a wild-eyed, hooded figure looking every bit the crazy person he felt like. “You went and did it, Ray,” he said aloud, indifferent to the commuters passing by. “You made a whole limo full of rich Outremont girls’ pussies sad. You proud of yourself?”

The revelation hit him with the clarity of a bell. This was all wrong. This sober, anxious, people-pleasing fraud wasn’t him. His charm, his ideas, his entire raison d'être came from the sweet, hazy embrace of cannabis. He was denying his own nature, and this city-wide disappointment was the result.

With a newfound, desperate purpose, he pulled the “reminder to stay sober” joint from his pocket—a totem of his failed new life. He lit it, the end glowing like a tiny beacon of hope. This will fix it, he thought. The ideas will come back. I’ll remember who I am.

He brought it to his lips. But as he did, a white man in a Patagonia vest power-walked past. Ray’s arm spasmed in an uncontrollable, violent twitch, his fingers flicking the joint into the air like a spent cartridge. It landed in a gutter.

He stared, bewildered. He retrieved it, brushed it off, and tried again. Another attempt, another Caucasian passerby—this time a woman with a yoga mat—and another synaptic misfire sent the precious herb tumbling to the sidewalk.

He tried again. And again. Each time, the proximity of a white person triggered an involuntary full-arm spasm, a bizarre physical tic born of sheer, overwhelmed anxiety. He was a man dying of thirst, unable to bring a cup of water to his own lips. All hope was lost. He was broken, sober, and utterly alone.

But then, a figure emerged from the shadows of a nearby alleyway, his bulk blocking the light from the street. He was thinner than Ray remembered, the iconic trench coat hanging a little looser, but the silhouette was unmistakable. The silent judgment, the profound stillness—it was undeniably him.

Silent Bob looked at Ray, at the joint held in his trembling, traitorous hand, and at the pathetic tableau of his entire existence. He didn’t offer a hand. He didn’t even crack a smile.

In a low, gravelly rumble that cut through the city’s noise and the chaos in Ray’s head, he spoke just one phrase.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

To be continued…

ATILA