I said I’d get the money.
I called James Lightfoot. He told me to come through. I did and he gave me a thousand dollars. Then Rider wasn’t picking up his phone. Two hours later he called me back. I met up with him and he gave me the coke. I took the coke to James’s house. The coke was fucked now. Rider hadn’t just stepped on it, he’d murdered it. That was Rider.
I was thinking James thought I had ripped him off.
“Who the fuck is this guy?” he asked.
“He’s a piece of shit,” I said.
“Then why do you fuck with him?”
That was a good question. I didn’t have a ready answer for it. All I could say was I felt like shit about it. Anyway, James took it easy on me. He didn’t give me a hard time about the loss he took even though it was my fault. He already knew I was a fuckup. He knew that I’d fuck up but I wouldn’t rip him off. As it stood, James and I needed money and I knew one way of getting it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
James was in the driver seat. I was in the passenger seat. I was well. I was wearing an Indians hat and eating an apple. James said, “There might be cameras on the light poles.”
I said, “I’ve been looking and I haven’t seen any.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. I don’t think they get many robberies out this way. It should be alright.”
We were parked in front of the Whole Foods. I had a good view of the bank. I had a gun. It wasn’t my gun. I forget who had given it to me. Funny thing about guns. If you’re known to rob things people will just give you guns. It’s kind of like sponsoring missionaries.
I discarded the apple; I said, “You ready?”
James said he was ready.
“Alright. When you see me come out, start driving toward the exit over there. I’ll walk through those two rows of cars and I’ll get in and we’ll go. Too easy.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just remember that the back driver-side door is broken.”
“Okay.”
I fixed the hat so it was low over my eyes, and I got out of the car and walked into the bank. It was the first warm day of the year and the door of the bank was open so I went in and went about robbing it. But this didn’t go well. I got the first drawer but then the teller got to being obstinate and the manager wouldn’t shut the fuck up. He kept telling me to take my hat off, calling me sir the whole goddamn time, and when I didn’t take my hat off he hit a button. I didn’t know what the button was about. I figured it was a silent alarm. Then I looked behind me and saw the door was closing on its own. Hydraulics, I guess. The bank was full of people. This motherfucker was trying to lock me in with them. The people were all looking at me now, looking at me trying to rob this bank. I could see they were thinking, Is this all there is to it? I didn’t want to disappoint them. I pulled the gun and put three shots into the ceiling: BAM BAM BAM.
“I DON’T EVEN WANT YOUR FUCKING MONEY.”
BAM BAM—two more in the roof.
I walked to the counter and pointed the gun at the manager. He either had pissed or was in the act of pissing. I said to him, “Open the fucking door, you bitch, or the next one goes in your face.”
“Just go,” he said.
The door was free. I walked out. I walked off the curb and through the two rows of cars in the parking lot. James was pulling around. I grabbed the handle of the back driver-side door and pulled it but the door wouldn’t open. I kept pulling. I knocked on the window. I said, “Unlock the shit.”
James said, “IT’S. FUCKING. BROKEN.”
Right. I scrambled around the back of the car and got in on the front passenger side. James hit the gas and we were gone.
“What the fuck happened? Did you shoot somebody?”
“Fuck no.”
I was counting the money.
“Fuck…Fuck…Fuck…I didn’t do so good, James. Those people were very fucking rude in there. They tried to lock me in the fucking bank. That’s never happened before.”
“How much did you get?” he asked.
“…Two thousandish.”
“Shit.”
“I know, man. I’m sorry. It was no good. The fucking manager was yelling at me. This old cunt didn’t give a shit if everybody died. It was fucking bad. Not at all how they’re supposed to act. Really reckless of them. Over pieces of paper.”
I gave James half the money.
“I’m sorry, man.”
“It’s alright,” he said. “At least we got away.”
“Yeah. Fuck. I’ve got to break this gun down and get rid of it.”
* * *
—
THAT AFTERNOON Emily and I went to the dog park with Livinia. The weather had been lovely all day. It seemed it was a good day to go to a dog park, and it would have been if it weren’t for the other dogs. The other dogs fucked with Livinia, they ganged up on her and chased her around and got on her back and drooled on her and nipped her.
“I don’t like this shit at all,” Emily said.
A chow was in the act of dominating Livinia.
“I think she’s alright,” I said. “I dunno. I think it’s how they play, but I can’t tell. Does she not like it? I get so worried. Fuck fuck fuck.”
“Well I don’t fucking like it,” Emily said. “I think we should stop bringing her here. I think it scares her.”
“But she gets so excited when we bring her here. It’s not bad when there’s no other dogs. I like it when it’s just the three of us out here.”
Livinia got up and broke free and she was off and running. She was always the fastest dog at the dog park and she was hard to catch, but the ground there was deep with ugly pea gravel and it inevitably tripped her up and the other dogs would catch her; there were just too many dogs and they’d corner her.
Another couple came over to us.
“Nice dog,” said the woman. “She’s pretty and so fast.”
“Thanks,” said Emily. “Which one’s your dog?”
“The chow.”
“Oh. He’s a frisky little guy.”
“Do you live around here?”
“We live in University Heights,” Emily answered.
“What do you do?”
I didn’t like that. I disliked what-do-you-do people. What kind of people were these?
“We go to CSU,” Emily said, blushing. “I’m a graduate assistant there.”
“Do you go to CSU too?” she asked me.
I knew what she was thinking; you look a little old for that.
“Yeah,” I said. “I got started late. G.I. Bill.”
“You were in the military?” the man asked.
“Yeah.”
“What branch?”
“Army.”
“You go overseas?”
“Iraq.”
“Jeff’s a cop,” said the woman.
“Cleveland Heights Police Department,” he said.
“Come here, Livinia!” Emily called. “Come here, girl! Come here!”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s a job,” he said.
“Yeah. A job’s pretty hard to come by these days. You’re lucky.”
Livinia came running and she stood between Emily’s legs. Emily asked her who was a good girl.
I lit a cigarette: “It was a nice day today, wasn’t it?”
The woman agreed that it had been a nice day.
“What do you guys think of this dog park?” I asked. “Do you think it’s sanitary having all these dogs shit and piss all over this pea gravel? It seems like, you know, with grass or something, it would absorb it, process it all. But with this gravel…where’s it all go? It just gets churned up in the gravel, I imagine. I know you pick up the shit when they shit, but there’s still the residue. It can’t be healthy, can it? It has to build up over time. Do you think there’s such a thing as cholera for dogs?”
It was dusk. The air was cold all of a sudden. Jeff went to pick up some dogshit from the chow.
“We have to be going,” said Emily. “I have a paper I’ve got to finish. It was nice meeting you.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT