On the road crew, Jason sits around with his noisemuffs on, loving the trees and listening to them, but not like with his ears but with his heart, and the idiot smile on his face that attends this behavior. Lafayette spits out his burger, bitching about the "Secret Sauce" which is in actuality mayonnaise, and Hoyt sweetly protests that he likes it regardless, but Lafayette is not having it. It's mayonnaise, and that's no secret at all, even if it tastes good. Jason grins at Rene and asks what he's up to, and Rene says he's going to take care of some fucking roots that have the wrong idea and are growing up through the sidewalk. He gets the jackhammer ready, and starts to drill, and Jason freaks out and tackles him, because God forbid Rene do his job. Rene immediately freaks out, because that was a dangerously pointless, stupid stunt, and tries to throttle Jason until Lafayette peels him off and away.

"This ain't just some root growing up out of nowhere, it's connected to that tree! Everything we see, man, it's all... It's all connected!" When you bring back the good stuff from heaven or faerie, and try to show it to people, it ends up leaves and dirt and shit, which is why you keep it together and you keep it to yourself and remember the real world, too. The thing about bouncing back and forth between worlds, before you get adept at treading them both, is that you look like an asshole either way. To save that tree is to endanger Rene Lanier; you can't even hear Eddie screaming over the chuckles of the ticklish leaves. When people bitch about religion, that's what they're bitching about, because that's all addiction is, too. Lafayette hustles Rene away, who's still screaming at him with terror turned to rage: "I'm about to get married! There are people that count on me!" He looks like he could kill him, and I can't think of a good reason he shouldn't; Lafayette takes him away to take care of him, and Hoyt reaches out to Jason. Which is a bad idea only because he just got snapped back to the real world with a quick and ugly rip -- out of heaven, down into reality -- when he thought he was already there.