Dreamers (Original Text - Part Four) (1997)

     Part IV is the shortest section in the original text.  It is only four paragraphs, all of which could have easily been an addendum to the previous one.  I guess I was trying to give a section to the J.B. character, but that really happens with the next one.
     So, 'Dreamers' was originally going to be a type of horror story where at least two of the characters start acting out their dreams (one of those having some very bad results for everybody).  That fell away rather quickly.  Part of the reason was that I kind of lost contact with the people who very loosely (with the exception of the first dream) inspired the dreams.  As I tried to find the characters I wanted t write, I lost the story I was supposed to be telling.  Not supposed to do that.
     Anyway, if you missed Part III, you can find it here (which has a link to Part II, which in turn has a link to Part I).

For our purposes, imagine J.B. looks like this (and not a young, thin Bill Pullman).

IV

     Jeff Binghampton, J.B., was no a classic lady killer.  He had a charm he could turn on or offm and there wasn’t an ugly girl who would ever find him at all worth being interested in.  Unfortunately, the women he spent time with were exposed to this charm more often than most.  It had a cumulative effect, like radiation.
     The only person who was immune to it was Melissa.  She and J.B. were friends, sort of, but J.B. wouldn’t want her.  She was a better adversary – a friendly one – than she could ever be a lover.  J.B. could never understand why Jason would make the swap.  Maybe the two had figured out a way to keep one and the other.
     At least Jason didn’t lose his sense of freedom.  It never happened before, so it would be uncharacteristic to say that it never happened anymore.  MacLeod wasn’t much of a drinker, but he really wasn;t into the bar scene.  So it was Larry Pudenski, both Carvers, Jason MacLeod, and J.B. in a quest to see how many bars and how much alcohol were necessary for a good time.
     The fourth bar they hit was the first one that wasn’t overcrowded.  Don Loomis’ was a rare thing, a pub that survived in the heathendom that was the suburbs.  Real darts and good whiskey, and even MacLeod seemed happy.  Still, if one looked, and J.B. did, it was easy to see that Jason was at work.  He was after Pundeski’s dreams, but that didn’t mean that J.B. had to let that happen.  This evening was for fun, and Jason MacLeod could do his research some other time.