Billy Lorado was unusually happy. Delighted might be a more appropriate word. Ecstatic would probably be too strong of a word. He wouldn't want anyone to think that he was too overjoyed about the situation. But how could he deny his feelings? What he felt was what he felt regardless of what other people may think of him. This was usually the problem with the politically correct society that he lived in. The trend, according to Oprah, was to be true to your feelings and don't suppress the truth. Honesty will better for you in the long run. This was all fine and dandy as long as it didn't conflict with the belief of the politically correct which was 'you are entitled to your own opinions, beliefs and feelings, as long as they don't conflict with mine. Then we've got a problem'. These were very frustrating times, especially with Oprah on the air.
But what Billy was feeling these days was all the adjectives in the thesaurus to describe any kind of joy without, of course, going overboard about it. After all, he didn't want people to think he was crazy. He got what he wanted and he was happy with that. The fact that other people didn't agree with him didn't bother Billy all that much. Call it being selfish if you want, but as long as nobody got hurt nobody could complain. Well, maybe one person.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" Billy asked as he shook himself out of the daydream he was having.
"What is your name?" the police officer asked, writing furiously on a small notepad with a number 2 pencil.
"What the hell is he writing?" Billy wondered. He thought it was strange that he hadn't offered the cop any kind of information up to this point, and yet, the cop seemed to be writing the next great American novel.
"Son, I'm going to ask you one more time, what is your name?"
"Billy. Billy Lorado."
"What's your address?" the cop asked impatiently.
"I'm sorry but do you think you could loosen these cuffs a bit? They're a little tight and I'm starting to lose the feeling in my left pinkie."
The cop leaned in, "I'm not going to ask you again. What is your address?"
A strange feeling suddenly ran through Billy's body. It filled up his chest cavity then dropped like an anvil into the pit of his stomach.
"What if I made a mistake?" Billy asked himself as a feeling of terror shadowed over him like a dark cloud. "What if George was right? What if he had been right all along? Oh my God."
His eyes opened wider as the cop gave up, put his notebook in his breast pocket and closed the door to the police car.
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone's made a mistake," Billy rationalized. "I mean, if he was in fact right all along then I'll be man enough to concede. He's usually right about these things anyway. But then, so am I. Two people can't be right at the same time. Can they? Oh, I'm so confused. That damned Oprah. Maybe I shouldn't have killed him and we could have walked down to ol' Barney Hasselhoff's and settled this whole thing."
"He give you anything?" the sergeant asked the cop with the notepad.
"He wouldn't talk. Kept staring off into space," the cop replied.
"Alright, take him downtown and we'll finish up there."
"Sure thing, boss."
The cop got into the police car and drove Billy to jail where later that evening Billy would be killed in the recreation room by a man named Darrel Warner who believed that Billy was a soldier sent by Oprah Winfrey to bring about the end of the world.