Geisha

Robert Aquino Dollesin

Courtland glanced at the clock on the wall above the buzzing beer coolers.He should have been closed half an hour earlier, and at home relaxing in front of the television. Two regular customers, however, were still in the store. 

He stood behind the counter with his arms folded. Already his chronic headache was beginning. Turning toward the entrance, he looked at Lyric, the stripper who stood at the lottery counter. She was leaned forward, rubbing a ticket with a fingernail.He fixed his gaze on the lower curves of her ass, visible beneath the hems of her Daisy-Dukes, and watched them jiggle.

Courtland turned away and looked past the potato chip display to his other customer. The man Courtland called “the Veteran” stood in front of the magazines. He’d gotten used to seeing the Veteran near closing time. If it had been anyone else flipping through the porn magazines, he would have enforced the “NO READING” sign, but the Veteran was turning out to be a good paying customer, someone who never left without first buying a six-pack of Cobra and at least one smut magazine.

***

Lyric blew ashy powder off the ticket she was scratching. Another loser. Why did she bother? When the bell above the door jangled, she glanced up and saw the woman enter the store. It must be some kind of joke, she thought. The new customer wore a red silk kimono patterned with winding streams and bending willows. The woman stood a moment just inside the door, and then she shuffled past Lyric toward the checkout. Her straw sandals hished against the tiles, her white-powdered face glowed under the lights.

Lyric kept her gaze on the geisha.  She remembered her lottery tickets and turned to resume her scratching.

***

As soon as Courtland turned his head and saw the woman in the kimono, a wave of alarm bolted through him. “Uh, uh,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t be in here.” He’d heard stories involving costumed criminals who robbed liquor stores and sometimes even murdered the proprietor. He considered himself careful and, not willing to take any chances, he reached beneath the counter and placed a finger above the button which would bring the police.

The woman in the kimono stopped several feet before reaching the counter. Her lips moved as if she was seeking the right word.  Finally, the geisha said, “Me need call Japan. Like buy phone card, please.”

***

Lyric shot a look over her shoulder when she heard the woman speak.  She smiled, thinking the clipped English sounded cute— sincere. She looked past the geisha and saw Court’s nervous reaction. “Come on, Court,” she said. “Woman just wants a phone card.”

When she noticed Court’s gray eyes fixed on her breasts, Lyric smiled, raised a hand and brushed a nipple with her fingers.

***

At the back of the store, the man whose friends called him “Apache” glanced up from the magazine he’d been skimming and into the security mirror. Something was going on at the front of the store, near the counter. The owner of the store was talking in an anxious tone. Apache wasted no time slipping a hand inside his green army jacket. He gripped the handle of his pistol. For over two weeks he’d been scoping out this place.  Finally, the moment he’d been waiting for was at hand.

He started toward the counter.

***

Courtland sighed. His instincts were pinging, telling him to simply announce to everyone it was closing time.

“Come on, Court,” Lyric said. “Woman just wants a phone card.”

God damn Lyric. He watched her graze one of her breasts, watched the nipple harden beneath the thin blouse she wore. Then Court removed his finger from where it hovered above the emergency button beneath the counter. He whirled, scanned the phone cards hanging on the wall. “What do you need? Will a twenty-five dollar card do?”

He heard the little woman’s high-pitched voice. “Hai,“ she said. Courtland unclipped one of the phone cards. He turned back around just in time to catch sight of the Veteran hurrying toward him, one hand jammed inside his coat. Courtland dropped the card.

***

It was nice Court decided to help the little Japanese woman, Lyric thought. She scratched her ticket. Her heart raced as she saw a third one-hundred-dollar symbol come into view.  She screamed, raising the winning ticket into the air and spinning around to show Court.

A deafening sound made her drop the ticket. She saw the Japanese woman crouched low, covering her mouth with both hands. Then she noticed the guy who always bought smut standing in front of the counter, a smoking pistol in his hand. Court, on the other side of the counter, was sliding down the wall.

***

Apache had not intended to fire, but when the bitch screamed, his finger reacted independently. Now the store owner was blasted back and slipping to the floor with his eyes wide open.

“Fuck,” Apache said.

***

Lyric opened her mouth to scream again, but stopped when the gunman turned to face her. A crazy expression fixed his face. “Shout again,” he said, “and I’ll make you dead.” Lyric raised her arms above her head and said nothing.

***

Think, Apache, think. He glanced from the lottery-player to the stupid-looking woman dressed in a kimono, who began to nod her head, again and again.

“Quit fucking moving!” Apache said.

The Japanese woman nodded again, and said, “Hai.”

“Move one more time I’ll kill you.” He thumbed the gun’s hammer back.

***

“Listen, please,” Lyric begged the woman in the kimono. She looked at the woman cowering on the floor, then she looked at the gunman, pleading.  “Don’t hurt her. She doesn’t understand you.”

“Hai,” the woman replied.

Another resounding explosion brought Lyric’s hands to her ears. Canned food flew from a shelf, clanked onto the floor. The Japanese woman squeezed herself into a fetal position and laid with her head on the tiles.

“I told you not to fucking move,” the gunman said.

“Hai,” the Japanese woman answered from the floor where she lay.

***

Apache, out of breath, turned to Lyric and said, “I don’t want to hurt anyone else.  I’m going around the counter and emptying the register. If anyone—”  His grim stare went from Lyric to the woman in the kimono and back to Lyric. “—if anyone moves, I’ll kill you both. And I don‘t want to do that.” 

When neither of the women replied, he went around the counter, stepped over the shop owner’s body, and punched the keys on the register until it opened.

***

The Japanese woman gazed directly at Lyric and smiled. Then she raised a finger to her lips, indicating to Lyric she should remain silent.

Lyric watched her slip a tiny hand under the wide Obi belt that secured her kimono. Still smiling at Lyric, the geisha withdrew a pistol.

While the gunman stuffed money into a plastic merchandise bag, the Japanese woman slipped off her sandals. She very slowly got to her feet and crept over to the counter.

The man stuffing the bag full of money glanced up. His eyes grew wide.

“Die, motherfucker,” the geisha said.

.

***

Apache looked up and saw the powdered face.  He noticed the glint of her weapon. He never felt the bullet strike his forehead.

***

Lyric screamed. The Japanese woman turned to her and shouted, “Quiet!” 

Lyric did as she was instructed and watched the little woman raise high the hem of her kimono and hop the counter. The geisha snatched the bag of money that the robber had filled. She climbed back onto Lyric’s side of the counter and headed for the door.

“What are you doing?” Lyric asked.

The geisha stopped. She pulled a wooden clip from her bunned hair and shook it out.

“What are you doing?” Lyric said again.

The geisha raised her pistol. “Did you win anything?”

Lyric nodded.

The Japanese woman smiled. “I’ll take that, too,” she said, and pressed the pistol against Lyric‘s throat.