The plan: walk to the shop, do the job, then walk out. Winona would come to get us only when we were on our way to the road. I didn’t know if I could even walk.
Abe took a look at me. “Why don’t we let him drive? Winona can come in.”
“That wasn’t the plan.” She sounded pissed, but also a little scared. She was in this for vicarious thrills-a part of the gang, but just driving. “I’m not going in.”
“Fuck.” Abe stared at her a moment too long before turning to me. “You gonna make it, champ?”
“No.” I meant it. “I’d tell you if I could.”
Abe snorted. He choked. He recovered and said, “If you don’t…I’ll kill you.”
I think Lewis and Winona stood up for me, came to my rescue and all. Told him we should call it off, go home, get some pizza. It was a stupid idea. Come on, man, let’s bail.
I knew what it meant to him, though. He’d told me Internet poker had him out five grand. He’d stolen it from his dad, bit by bit, but the old man finally caught on. Abe was sure he’d win. Just one fucking flush. One fucking full house. Even when he hit them, they weren’t enough to make him stop. One more fucking straight. One more fucking four of a kind. Without a few scores, Abe was sunk. His dad had already threatened to take the tuition, take the car, take the AmEx card.
Abe looked back at me again. He’d never cry, but the look was close enough to it for anyone’s money. “Champ?”
What sort of friend was he to me, then? That didn’t matter. We could settle that later. The bigger question was, what sort of friend was I?
I told him, “I’ll power through for you.”
There was no Steve at State Line Steve’s that night. We got a skinny wild-haired guy named Damien, who looked as if he just worked here to support himself until “the band hit it big.”
Abe and Lewis handled shaking him down-their guns cheap pawnshop.38s that were still frightening enough shoved up against your face. I didn’t have a gun, just pretended. My job was to control the patrons. But there weren’t any. Perfect timing. So I fingered over the magazines on the mismatched racks that looked like they’d been collected over the last forty years, some plastic, some wood, some wire. The teens and model-hot chicks were all closest to the register. I was still trying to rub off shit, even though I’d wiped most off on my jeans. Still felt dirty. Kept sniffing at my fingertips. Down the row. Hairy girls. Mature women. Lesbians. Got a little hard off a Mature Woman/Younger Chick cover, but that didn’t help my condition.
Quickly back up front as Damien shoved money into the bag Abe held for him.
“Abe.”
He glared at me. “Names!”
“I need a break.”
“No fucking break. We don’t have time.”
Acid bubbling. I burped. Felt bile rise. “Can’t…can’t wait.”
He gritted his teeth. Damien had stopped filling the sack.
“Wait, that’s it?”
The clerk nodded. “The rest is credit card slips.”
“You can’t have more credit card slips than cash.”
“Oh yeah. It just rings up as a gas store purchase, you know. We’re discreet.” Even though he was scared of the guns, you could tell he’d probably said the same thing to ten other robbers before.
I said, “Abe, I need the bathroom.”
He put his finger to his lips, pained look on his face. I didn’t mean to ruin the job. I couldn’t help it. Desperate. My body doing its own thing now.
I looked at Damien. “Bathroom.”
He said, “It’s in the back. You’ll need the key. Let me get it.”
The clerk reached under the counter, none of us really having time to think that wasn’t such a great idea. I just wanted the key. A key, a bowl, a sink.
Damien’s hand popped up with an automatic pistol. His face was already twisting, at the ready, when Abe caught Damien’s wrist, slammed it hard on the counter. Kept gripping, struggling. Abe forced the clerk’s wrist to the side, the gun pointing at none of us. Like arm wrestling, the strain showing in both their necks. Lewis pointed his revolver at Damien yelling things like, “I’m not joking! Let it go! You wanna die?” Damien ignored him, deep into his battle of wills with Abe. Jaws clenched now. Heavy breaths through their noses.
Then I threw up on them. Heaved hot dog and cola and acid all over the counter, slicking up Abe and Damien’s arm battle. Damien tried to pull away harder, a high-pitched wail coming out of him. He started gagging. The wetness gained him some wiggle room.
“Get the gun!” Abe said.
He said it to me. I leaned over them, still not able to get any air past the thickness in my throat. Heaving, trying to control it. But then there was another round of the hot reddish mess spewing from me. Abe’s grip on Damien slipped even more.
“The gun!”
Lewis kept his distance, still shouting. He wasn’t going to shoot anybody. Couldn’t depend on him.
I grabbed the top of the pistol, tugged. It wasn’t going to be so hard. Tugged some more. Definitely slipping. Damien’s finger was still in the trigger guard. Abe and I both caught that. Abe growled, louder and louder, then jumped up, slammed his forehead into Damien’s. The clerk was dropping, all muscles slacking. His hand released the gun and it went flying down an aisle of dildos and vibrators. I followed, scrabbling for it, tripping, falling, landing hard. Then it was mine, and I felt a little bit better than before I had puked.
Abe leaned over me, the wet bag of cash dripping myself back on me. “We’ve got to go.”
Only Lewis talked in the car. Pissed at first, then laughing, then satisfied when the fear dissipated the farther we drove.
“Fucking pukes on the guy, can you believe that? Makes it too slippery for him to hold the fucking gun. Righteous, man. Let me see that gun.”
He reached for the piece sticking out of my waistband. I grabbed his wrist, twisted. “It’s mine.”
“I just want to see. Let go.”
My fingernails bit into his skin. He tried to kick me, couldn’t get his foot free from between the seat. “Hey, cut that out! I’ll kick your ass.”
I released and he pulled back, his arm now dirtied up. Winona was the only one still clean. I wondered how long before Abe and Lewis came down with what I had. Winona had said it wasn’t contagious by air, but by contact with fecal matter and vomit. No one was saying it, though. Everyone pretended we each had our own force fields.
Lewis finally said, “Jesus, the smell.”
We found a cheap hotel that night out in the cornfields of southern Illinois, used Winona’s ID info since we were pretty sure she’d kept out of sight during the job. The desk crew didn’t see the condition we were in, stained and broken. I poured sweat. More bubbles expanded in my guts, my ass clenched as tight as humanly possible until we pulled up in front of the room. I wanted to beeline for the toilet, but by then I was too weak. I released as soon as I climbed from the car, the liquid shit trailing down my leg, dripping on the pavement. A trail of splats followed me inside. I didn’t get past the first bed in the room. Fell across it and shivered.
“Oh my God.” Abe. Maybe an ounce of feeling. If I hadn’t been cramped, chilled, and covered in my own filth, I would’ve been touched. “Is he going to make it?”
Winona said, “Should pass in a few days. But we need to worry about you guys.”
Like he hadn’t heard, “A few days? We don’t have a few days. Hell, staying here one night is dangerous enough. We need to hit again before the cops get a bead on us.”
“In a couple of days, we’ll all be like him anyway, so maybe we should cut our losses and go home.”