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“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said. “I’m not a bad man. I just need a little boost in my income.”

I laid the Cosmo facedown on the counter so that I wouldn’t lose my place. “You’re robbing me?” I said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I bit my lip and shook my head — no no no — just slightly.

“I’m only twenty-four,” I said.

He looked over toward the Doritos display — not looking at it, but just pointing his head in that direction the way some people look into space whenever they’re thinking. He had a moustache and a beard. I could see the stray hairs poking out around the bottom of the ski mask and near the hole where his mouth was.

“Excuse me?” he said finally, turning back to face me. His eyes were green.

“I’m not a ma’am.”

He held up his free hand, the one without the pistol, and made to run it through his hair — another sign of thinking — but with the ski mask, it just slid across the wool. “Either way, could you hurry it up a little. I’m on a schedule.”

Many reasons for him to be frustrated, I knew. Not the least of which was having to wear wool in New Mexico in the summer.

He glanced outside. The gas pumps were empty. Nothing but darkness on the other side of the road. This time of night, we didn’t get much traffic. I shrugged, opened the cash register.

“You know,” I said, as I bent down for a bag to put his money in. “You have picked the one solitary hour that I’m alone in the store, between the time that Pete has to head home for his mom’s curfew and the time that our night manager strolls in for his midnight to six.”

“I know. I’ve been watching you.” Then there was a little nervous catch in his voice. “Not in a bad way, I mean. Not voyeuristically,” he said, enunciating the word, and then the next one too. “Just surveillance, you know. I’m not a pervert.”

I kept loading the register into the bag. “You don’t think I’m worth watching?”

Again, with the ski mask, I can’t be sure, but he seemed to blush.

“No. I mean, yes,” he said. “You’re very pretty,” he said.

I nodded. “There’s not much money here we have access to, you know? A lot of it goes straight to the safe. That’s procedure.”

“I’m a fairly frugal man,” he said. “Sometimes I just need a little extra for... tuition.”

“Tuition?”

“And other academic expenses.”

“Academic expenses,” I repeated, not a question this time. I thought that he had a nice voice, and then I told him so. “You have a nice voice,” I said. “And pretty eyes.” I gave him my phone number, not writing it down because the security camera would have picked that up, but just told him to call, repeating the number twice so he would remember it. “And my name is Louise.”

“Thanks,” he said, “Louise.”

“Good luck with your education,” I called after him, but the door had already swung closed. I watched him run out toward the pumps and beyond, admired the way his body moved, the curve of his jeans, for as long as I could make him out against the darkness. I gave him a head start before I dialed 911.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I was some bored, bubble-gum-popping, Cosmo-reading girl, just out of her teens, disillusioned with the real world and tired already of being a grownup and then along comes this bad boy and, more than that, literally a criminal and... well, sure, there’s some truth there. But here again, you’d be missing the point.

It wasn’t exciting that he robbed convenience stores.

It was exciting that he was brave enough to call me afterwards, especially in this age of Caller ID when I had his phone number and name immediately — Grayson, Delwood — and could have sent the police after him in a minute.

That Cosmo article? The one I was reading when he showed up in the ski mask? “Romantic Gestures Gone Good: Strange but True Stories of How He Wooed and Won Me.”

Not a one of those stories held a candle to hearing Del’s voice on the other end of the phone: “Hello, Louise? I, um... robbed your 7-Eleven the other night, and I’ve been percolating on our conversation ever since. Are you free to talk?”

That takes a real man, I thought. And — don’t forget those academic expenses — a man who might just be going somewhere.

But it had been a long time since I believed we were going anywhere fast. Or anywhere at all.

We took the High Road down from Taos. That figured too: two lanes, 45 miles per hour.

“Afraid they’ll get you for speeding?” I asked.

“Who knows,” he said. “One thing might lead to another.”

As we drove, he kept looking up into the rearview mirror, nervously, as if any second a patrol car really was gonna come tearing around the bend, sirens wailing, guns blasting. He had put his own pistol in the glove compartment. I saw it when I went for a Kleenex.

“If we get pulled over, are you gonna use it?”

He didn’t answer, just glanced up again at the mirror, which rattled against the windshield with every bump and curve.

I was doing a little rearview looking as well, I guess.

Here’s the thing. Even if I had become a little disillusioned with Del, I don’t believe I had become disappointed in him — not yet.

I mean, like I said, he was a planner. I’d seen my mama date men who couldn’t think beyond which channel they were gonna turn to next, unless there was a big game coming up, and then their idea of planning was to ask her to pick up an extra bag of chips and dip for their friends. I’d dated men who would pick me up and give me a kiss and then ask, “So, what do you want to do tonight?” having had no idea what we might do except that we might end up in the backseat or even back at their apartment. I’m sorry to admit it with some of those men, but most times we did.

On the other hand, take Del. When he picked me up for our first date, I asked him straight out, “So where does the desperate criminal take the sole witness to his crime on their first date?” I was admiring how he looked out from under that ski mask — his beard not straggly like I’d been afraid, but groomed nice and tight, and chiseled features, I guess you’d call them, underneath that. Those green eyes looked even better set in such a handsome face. He’d dressed up a little, too: a button-down shirt, a nice pair of khakis. He was older than I’d expected, older than me. Thirties, maybe. Maybe even late thirties. A little grey in his beard. But I kind of liked all that, too.

“A surprise,” said Del, and didn’t elaborate, just drove out of Eagle Nest and out along 64, and all of a sudden I thought, Oh, wait, desperate criminal, sole witness. My heart started racing and not in a good way. But then he pulled into Angel Fire and we went to Our Place for dinner. (Our Place! That’s really the name.) And then my heart started racing in a better way.

And then there’s the fact that he did indeed finish his degree at the community college, which shows discipline and dedication. And then coming up with that story about his sister and why we were moving, laying out a cover story in advance, always thinking ahead. And then planning for the heist itself — the “big one,” he said, “the last one,” though I knew better. Over the last year, whenever tuition came due, he’d hit another 7-Eleven or a gas station or a DVD store — “shaking up the modus operandi,” he said, which seemed smart to me, but maybe he just got that from the movies he watched on our DVD player. He’d stolen that too.