Guns and Wallets
I’ve used guns twice in my life. Once was three weeks ago on a shooting range, when Matt was trying to determine if I should get a gun license or not (not). The other time was when I was five and my brothers told me dad’s service revolver was a water gun, and I blew up the TV. It’s a miracle my family has survived as long as it has, with morons like my brothers around.
Still, when you’re being mugged, sometimes even the dumbest ideas seem smart.
I stand up quickly, aiming the gun right at the thug’s chest. Or, well, right next to him. Same general idea.
“All right!” I shout, letting some of my pent-up emotion spill out like a jock weeping in the bathroom after a chick flick. “I want my wallet back!”
The thug’s eyes go wide, and he reaches behind himself for his gun, which he finds is no longer there.
“Shit!” he curses.
“Yeah,” I sympathize. “Now give me the wallet!”
“Give me the gun!”
I have to take a moment.
“I don’t think you understand how this goes,” I say.
“Give me the gun or you’ll be sorry.”
I glance around, uncertain. I coulda sworn I was the one who hit my head several times today. Is dementia contagious?
Meanwhile, the thug is pacing toward me, hands out like some retarded mountain lion cub trying to pounce. At this range, I’m fairly certain I’m going to hit him with any bullets I choose to let fly. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so powerful in all my life. Quick, somebody take a picture.
“You ain’t gonna shoot me,” he smiles.
“Oh no?”
“Nah,” he says. “‘Cause the gun has no bullets innit.”
My face changes from powerful-and-cocky to you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“No joke, bro. Empty as a whorehouse on Sunday mornin’.”
“I’ve been in whorehouses on Sunday morning, and they aren’t so empty.”
“Yer missin’ the point, man.”
“No, I think you’re missing the point of carrying a gun around.”
“Just hand it over.”
“Why? If it’s empty, why do you need it? Why not just punch me in the face and take it back?”
So he punches me in the face.
I land on the sidewalk, world spinning like a dirty grey merry-go-round, and the gun is snatched from my hand. The thug stows it in the back of his jeans and then kicks me in the ribs. I’m going to be a fucking rainbow of bruises when I take my shower tonight. Or when the medical examiner is doing the autopsy. Either way.
“See ya, P.I.,” he winks, and gets on his Harley and drives down the street.
Half a block down the street.
He stops in front of a beat-up building and strolls into a pawn shop, slamming the door behind him. I can hear the bells on the door jingling from here. I think I can also hear the sounds of a dozen baby polar bears crying out in horror as rising water levels drown their little furry asses, all thanks to this idiot’s stunning laziness. It’s a two minute walk, for Christ’s sake! Even I’m not that pathetic!
I march down the street. Actually, I kinda limp down the street, but I look serious about it. The pawn shop — “Bobs Ponn Shopp” — is filled top to bottom with electronics and random trash, but apparently no spell-checkers. You can get a variety of laptops for half price, “and compyooters to!” Way at the back I see Mr Empty Gun. He’s flipping through my wallet again, throwing my video store membership cards onto the floor. Poor sap, those things are probably worth more than my bank cards right now.
He pushes a button on the counter and I hear the caged door next to me lock. I can’t help but notice, wedged into the door frame, yet another one of my damn business cards, flapping in the wind. I reach out as stealthily as I can, grab it. It’s all beat up and has “9aw” scribbled on the corner in blue ink, but I think it’s still good enough to use. Now I just need my damn wallet so I have someplace to keep it.
When I look back, the thug is gone, wandering through a back hallway, off to the left. Since my lock-picking skills are second only to my marksmanship, I give up on the front door and take a few steps back, trying to get a feel for the layout of the building. It’s kinda rectangle-y. I really should have invested in some x-ray vision. All I can tell is that he went somewhere in the vicinity of Bobs Barr next door.
All right then.
I mosey on into the bar, pausing inside the door to take in my surroundings.
It’s a biker bar. There are many, many bikers. They are wearing black leather and shiny studs and a truly unfortunate number of tassels for a room full of heterosexuals. There’s a big copper sign for Pival’s Red Amber Ale hanging over the bar, with a pair of bite marks in it. This is like the Special Ed of hell.
Every eye in the house is on me, probably because they’ve never seen clothes that don’t chafe. I nod in as much of a biker way as I can manage with a straight face, and stride to the bar.
“Hey,” I say. “Where’s the can? Gotta piss.” This is how the commoners speak, you see.
The bartender strokes his long, gnarly sideburns and cocks an eyebrow.
“Payin’ cust’mers only,” he slurs. He is obviously a fan of his own work.
I so desperately want to get drunk right now, but since all my cash is in my wallet, I feel compelled to carry on with my plan. I plant a hand down on the bar, nod toughly.
“What do you have on tap?” I ask.
“Pival’s Red. Pival’s IPA. Pival’s Unofficial Light.”
“What’s the Unofficial Light?”
“Marley spits innit.”
An old man at the other end of the bar starts to chortle. A phlegmy chortle. He’s got a leather patch over his left eye, and a long string of drool out the corner of his mouth.
“Charming. The Red, please.”
The bartender fills a glass with truly putrid-looking beer, slaps it down on the worn wood between us. He’s eyeing me intensely, and I start to worry I’ve stumbled into the only repressed gay biker bar in town.
“Hold it for me,” I squeak. “I’ll be right back.”
He slams a fist down on the bar, leans in close.
“Pay first.”
“If I don’t get to a toilet soon, I swear to god you’ll be stuck with a Pival’s Special Yellow.”
I do a little pee dance to complete the effect. James Bond never has to do this shit. Must be the accent.
The bartender eases up, points to the back of the bar.
“Down the hall, turn right, second door onna left.”
“Thanks, cupcake,” I wink, and skip out of sight as fast as I can. The back of the building is actually more disgusting than the front, with wallpaper peeling so extensively that if you had a machete, you could hack it away like you’re in an especially tacky jungle. Down the hall and to the right are a pair of doors marked “Doods” and “Laydees”, but to the left is a single door with “Imployies Olny” on it. I skitter on down, peek my head through.
It’s somebody’s home. And not the kind of somebody that has anything to do with the bar: there are pastel-painted walls, framed paintings of sunflowers, and a bead curtain on the far side of the kitchen, where a tea kettle is steaming quaintly next to a pair of mugs. No wonder it’s “employees only”… if any of the clientele got back here, they’d probably go blind at the lack of studs.
If my sense of direction is right, the pawn shop should be through the kitchen and to the right, past the tastefully-sized Norman Rockwell print. (Is it strange that I find this creepier than the biker bar?) I take a tentative step in, and all at once, through the beaded door comes a mousy 1950’s housewife carrying a package of bundt cake.
Neither one of us says a word for a moment. I wonder how long it’s been since she’s seen a human being with taste.
“You can’t be here,” she gasps.
“I’m looking for the bathroom,” I say.
“You have to leave.”
I can’t leave. My wallet is at stake. If I go back past that bar, they’re going to catch me and do questionable things to my person. I am having a bad enough day already. I’ve got to get through this kitchen. I walk further in, keeping a careful eye on the woman with the bundt. Anything can be a weapon in the hands of a psychopath, and any women dressed like that in this day and age is quite certainly a psychopath.
“Just stay there,” I say. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She doesn’t say a thing, but her eyes are welling with tears.
“I’ll be out of your hair in a second.”
Just then, there’s the boom of a door slamming shut, heavy footsteps up some stairs, and in through a side entrance comes a very large and somewhat overweight man, head-to-toe biker. He stops dead in this tracks, and keeps looking between the woman and me, the woman and me…
“Moxie?” he gasps.
The woman starts to cry.
“This is him?” the biker yells in a big hairy bad man sorta way, pointing straight at me. I step back, not sure what I’ve got myself into, but not wanting to find out. The whole situation smells like dangerous dichotomy to me.
“Bobby, no!” the woman sobs. “I’ve never seen him before in my life!”
“That’s true, Bobby,” I nod. “I’m just here to steal a wallet. Er. My wallet. It’s…”
I’m cut off by the sound of a huge, bear-like roar, and Bobby the insane biker stretches his monster arms wide and charges straight at me!