He left my corner, and my attempted haul, alone. I don’t suppose he would know what he had, nor how important it was to shield it from the elements. The flicker of headlights returned and, in the glare from the faux-old-fashioned streetlight, I saw that the vehicle in question had a tiny dent.
“Get rid of them,” the bandit said, after viewing a piece of jewelry in the glow of his flashlight. “Please.” He loosened my restraints, and though he made no overt threat, the way he flicked the loose skin at my elbow delivered a potent promise of pain deferred, and he squeezed my arm in an ungentlemanly way. Tears stung my eyes and I was profoundly conscious that he was watching me.
I swallowed and said, as if I had free will left, “Yes, it’s probably better. We used to... date.” I suppose buying takeout tacos and leaving panties in someone’s Suburban counted as dating, but the word was ridiculous. He never bought me flowers, or introduced me to anyone, and he was miles away from the kind of guy I’d like in my “real” life, even though real life was becoming as misty and distant as my memories of childhood summer camp. I held on to it; in the wake of my failed life of crime, it could be all I had.
I plastered some semblance of an expression on my face and actually ran my fingers through my hair. Habit, more than anything.
“Hey, saw that there was a light still on.” What Jon lacked in conversation, he made up for in attention to rent-a-cop detail. It had its advantages, but I said, “You noticed that from across the street?” and felt my voice quiver.
“Oh, no,” he said, and smiled my favorite goofy smile, as if I were a prom queen with whom he was hoping to score. “I was in the neighborhood. Empanadas.” And he held up a white bakery bag on which I was forced to imagine lashings of grease.
Speaking of imaginings, I wanted Jon to be more William Douglas, less Barney Fife. I took the bag, because not doing it would have gotten his attention instantly. I stepped in close, willing him to be a television detective and smell my fear.
I settled on one last red flag that the bandit wouldn’t spot as a red flag. I cooed, “You’re terrible,” and kissed Jon hard, in a way I wouldn’t when we both had our clothes on. It might have raised my antennae if I were in his place, but I’d forgotten how much men’s lessons about life were different from mine. He probably thought this was more a sign of order retained than disrupted. I bitched him out (girlishly) for not waiting for my call and, in a shocky, dispassionate way, wondered if he would be the last person to talk to me alive. I found some fake cheer, told Jon inventory had run long, and he left, tasting my desperation-fueled kiss on his lips along with the starchy pastry. He was sweet, but he wasn’t a hero.
The bandit led us back to the storeroom and tied us back to back. Unless it was my imagination, it seemed there was more slack this time; it had probably been a long night for him as well. “I’m going for it,” Lola whispered.
“Don’t flatter yourself. He’d probably do anything to stay out of prison.”
“Not like that. God. What do you think I am?”
Here’s an elementary etiquette fact: The moment when a coworker offers to do something crazy-dangerous to disarm a robber is not the moment to reveal you think of her as a lazy whore. Even if I hadn’t left some high-road on the floor mats of a certain Suburban. “I’m getting out, or getting the gun. Or something.”
“Can I help?” I asked, moved. I had been so wrong about Lola... maybe there was really a giving soul in there, with a higher purpose. My eyes were wet.
“Don’t take this wrong, but you’re, like, better at talking than fighting.”
She wasn’t sweet, but she was a hero. She sprang to life faster than I might have predicted, if I’d been laying bets instead of sitting around with my heart in my mouth. She was no Michelle Yeoh, but the bandit did grunt as she kneed him in the groin. The struggle took a brief turn for the hand-to-hand and ancient atlases hit the floor with explosive bangs. I tried to tell myself that’s what the smaller, more automotive pop was, too, but I knew it wasn’t.
The bandit held his head in his hands. “What have I done?” he moaned, as Lola’s dressy outfit became spattered with blood. By the time he let me see to Lola, or think of 911, it was too late. I knew that much from my big high-school “Be a writing doctor” phase. It never amounted to anything because I suck at math in an epic fashion, but I could figure out one equation: Bleeding + time away from doctors = death. I did what I could, but first-aid class seemed far away and the bandit seemed to have folded in upon himself. We both turned from her body without saying anything. I cleaned myself up and took the Falcon, at last. He seemed to head for the men’s room, but I can’t be sure. I went to the back to play victim, my spoils in my sweater.
I picture the bandit slipping out the unscreened window like fate, but I never found out for sure, and my paper-white complexion and unwillingness to speak for a week discouraged many questions. If it hadn’t been so traumatic, being close to death could have been the best thing that ever happened to me. My brief encounter with death had suddenly made my articles and stories worth reading, so I told my father the truth when I said that a “new opportunity” would mean that I wouldn’t be at the store for much longer. “Besides,” I moaned, playing the girlie card I’d resisted and squeezing out a snuffle, “anything might have happened to me in there.” Which of course, it had. My work nemesis was now dead after saving my life. But usually, when I mentioned anything happening, it involved body parts my father wasn’t comfortable with below my neck.
True to form, he patted my shoulder awkwardly and offered me a napkin to dry my fake tears on. We walked through the place, both determined not to mention the imperfectly lifted stains. “I was always planning to replace that carpet anyway,” he told me and I nodded, trying hard to focus on something in the store so I didn’t see the flecks of blood from my futile and ill-informed attempts to save Lola’s life. Everything left in the store now was too heavy for a bandit to make off with, like heavy oak furniture, or kitsch, like a first-edition Operation game from 1965. As we walked through the section Dad still gamely called mine, I felt almost as if I could lock eyes with the red-nosed Operation character in a “Can you believe this shit?” eye-roll.
We approached “my” bookshelves. Joy of Cooking was still there, as were Bennett Cerf and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. “He didn’t take much out of here.” My father sounded half relieved, half rueful. “Except the obvious... God, that newspaper feature on the Falcon was a big mistake.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I assured him. “It will give you proof with the insurance company. Besides, criminals don’t read.”
I couldn’t read his face for a moment and almost feared my jig was up. “Is that more hippie stuff they taught you at college?”
I sighed and acted like I had to let the archaic insult roll off my back and nodded. “You’d be shocked how many felons didn’t learn how to read by third grade.”
I knew I was safe when he said, “Huh,” the same one-syllable grunt he used for sad inner-city documentaries and foreign food. It said, “I don’t want to absorb this. Change the channel.”
I never thought that sound would protect me, but it has. My last day at the store is Friday... it’ll be awhile longer until I can sell my literary treasure, but until then, there’s always Go Fug Yourself.
Copyright © 2011 by Erika Jahneke