Read They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy for Free Online

ripped open a bag of Doritos, crushing half of them. "Are you wanting to wear, like, the whole outfit?"
    "I don't know. Maybe I should bring it. For all I know, the job is tomorrow, not just a planning session. I don't want to be the only dumb motherfucker in his jeans."
    The suit I had from the European days was a lightweight, dark burgundy fiberglass weave invented by Jurgen Chaotischer. Technology had just now catching up to him on its design. I had matching fiberglass and meta-aramid fiber burgundy and yellow gloves with removable fingertips and a pair of thick boots lined with the same type of heat shielding they used on stock cars. Up to around a thousand degrees, I was good to go, but even though I couldn't feel the heat from having all that on, I had to make sure to take in a lot of fluids so I didn't dehydrate. I had sold the non-descript oxygen tank and breathing apparatus that went along with the suit three years before when I needed cash and I had lost the skull helmet in London, so if I got out of hand in a burning building there would be nothing for me to breathe. But that probably wouldn't happen.
    "I don't know, man," Will said. "That would fill a whole suitcase, wouldn't it?"
    "Yeah. I only got one."
    He wiped Dorito cheese on his shirt. "Fuck it, bring it with you. Give me your card, and I'll go pick you up another suitcase."
    I stared long and hard at the suit. "All right. The card's in my wallet on the dresser there. Get something cheap but pretty big."
    "Just like your mother, got it. You need anything else while I'm out?"
    "Yeah, asshole, get me a case of bottled water. I'll bring a few so I don't dehydrate."
    "You want anything else to amp you up?" he asked me. He was talking about pills, PCP or speed or that kind of thing that some guys in the business used to get their powers really ramped to new heights. I'd been known to use pills back in the Europe days.
    "No, just the water, man."
    He asked me i f I was sure. I told him I was.
    I ate donuts until I thought I would puke to build up my reserves while watching the television. I didn't really hear the words or see the pictures. I thought more about what would be waiting for me. My elbows, chest and back were starting to feel sore from working out. God, I was out of shape.
    Will came back with everything I asked for. We went out to the bars to get laid for good luck. He broke a guy's wrist playing pool and shot to shit my only prospect for the night. He went out Sunday morning and brought back donuts as a peace offering, but I didn't have an appetite. Two of the Wilmont Avenue bodies had been identified as kids under twenty.
    "You gonna make it?" he asked as I packed my suit into the brown suitcase he had picked up for me.
    "Yeah, I'm all right."
    "You better be, man. Get your head right. You're a bad motherfucker."
    "Uh huh," I nodded, shoving my toothbrush into a pocket.
    "I mean it."
    "Fuck off and let me think, man."
    He threw an empty beer can at me. "Hey, you listen to me."
    "What? I'm trying to pack."
    "I'm serious. Get your shit straight. If you walk in there without your old fire, they'll eat you alive."
    "Fuck, I just wrote me real name on these goddamn suitcase tags. Would you stop fucking talking to me while I do this?"
    "God, man," he said, frustrated with my lack of his enthusiasm for all this. "Hey, finish up fast. I wanna make a s top on the way to the airport."
    "For what?"
    "You'll see," he said.
    "Jesus Christ, just tell me."
    "You want a ride or not?"
    "Fine. Just don't make me miss the plane."
    We hit the road for Cincinnati in Will's Mustang. He stopped in the next town at a Wal-Mart and picked up five five-gallon plastic gas containers and filled them up at a station down the road.
    Gas fumes seeped from the trunk and filled the car. "You know, I was really wanting to smoke," I said. "When you pulled in here, I thought you were gonna ask me to blow the place up so you could get some free beef jerky."
    "Ha ha, shut it. One of the