A Long Way from Yesterday
by Glen Bush
Where is
Lorrie? It should take her maybe an hour
to get here.
What a crazy
world. Man, oh man. Waitin’ for my baby,
thinkin’ about this morning like it was a hundred years ago. Life! What can I
say?
So, here I am, sitting
at this bar, my feet firmly planted on the bottom brass rail, leanin’ my elbows
on this high class curved oak bar. Diggin’ it. My stubby fingers spinnin’ my double rocks
glass, killin’ time, while watchin’ the television. The local news
playing. Jenny Big-Tits givin’ the rundown of a
warehouse fire across town. Four alarm
fire.
Warehouse fire?
Ummmm. Wonder if Jimmy Matches helped
out with that one?
Jenny’s explainin’
to Joe Schmo and Mrs. Schmo that it’s twelve degrees below zero outside. Yeah,
right, Big-Tits, ya think folks don’t
know that after freezin’ their asses off in the wind and snow, and seein’ the
firefighters tryin’ to keep the water pumpin’ and the ice from freezin’ up
their equipment? Watchin’ the flames
spreadin’ every which way, I understand why Jimmy took to arson. Good
pay.
Quick work. And when youse did it right, it was a livin’ piece of friggin’
artwork. Reds, yellows, and greens with clouds of dark smoke—beau-tee-ful. Really
goddamn pretty. Not like the stuff I did.
Mine wasn’t pretty, like this morning, that
sure as hell wasn’t pretty. It was
supposed to be pretty. Fun, too. The
plan was simple: Go in, flash my piece,
say some gangster shit, scare any wannabe tough guys, maybe slap some dude with
my pistola. Grab the cash and run my ass
out the door like a jackrabbit in heat.
Jump in my baby’s ride.
Bing-a-Bam-Bam-Boom! Just like
always. In and out.
But it didn’t work
out that way this morning. Nope. It
wasn’t smooth or pretty. Fact is, it was damn ugly.
But not all
bad.
Hell, I’m sitting
here drinking my Jack and coke with a fresh slice of lemon. My baby’s
on her way. She should be here pretty soon.
Then we drive to the airport long term
parking lot, grab another ride, and head south to white sand beaches and hot
sunny days. We can forget about this
morning. I’m damn glad I tossed that
bank bag into the car before that joker grabbed my sleeve. Why’d that
guy do that? He thinks he’s a friggin’ hero? Wanna see himself on the evening news? Maybe get the bank
reward? Hey, Joker, it ain’t worth it.
He probably has a regular nine to five, and
here he goes playing Dudley Do-Right. He
coulda just stepped back and let me get in the car and adios amigo. He’s
probably got a couple kids and a wife
with an extra thirty pounds she didn’t have when he married her. They’re
probably sitting outside the
operating room wonderin’ what the hell was Pops thinkin’ pullin’ that Hollywood
crap.
Where’s Lorrie? It
don’t take that long to drive across town . . . even in this snow. Hope she
didn’t get into no accident.
This kinda reminds
me of my first job with my old man. I
wanted to go to school that morning. I remember
like it was yesterday, I had this test in history. I liked history. I even was thinkin’ about goin’ to college and
bein’ a history teacher. But Pops sez,
“Frankie One-Eye’s in lockup. Come on, I
need’cha.” Said I was the only other
guy he could trust. So, there I was,
fourteen years old, sitting behind the steering wheel of our Camaro. Pops said
it would be a piece of cake. Quick.
The owner would be counting the money from last night’s registers in his
office. In and out. Quick.
Pops always said things would be quick.
Thinking about it now, it was never quick. Pops was no mastermind. He was a small-time crook with a monkey on
his back. And that monkey wouldn’t let
go.
“Keep the engine
runnin’,” he sez. And me, “Sure,
Pop.” I didn’t know he was gonna play
Jesse-friggin’-James. That plastic
grocery bag in one hand, the snub-nose revolver in the other, him blastin’ away
into the bar, laughing like a crazy man.
Man, oh man, was that fun! I knew
right then and there I’d found my life’s callin’. I’d
never planned on being a stick-up artist,
but, hey, it is what it is. When we
found out about a month later that one of them shots hit a man sittin’ at the
bar and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Pops just
shrugged. That was the way Pops
was. A shrug and a laugh. He didn’t
give a damn about nobody.
Where in the
god-awful hell is Lorrie?
Hey, bartender, give
me another Jack and coke.
Lorrie, now that’s
one damn good woman! I wouldn’t trade
her for all the skanks along Broadway.
Nooo, sir! She’s a prize.
Like the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow. I love that damn woman with
every drop of my blood. Pops told me not
to get tangled up with no woman.
“She’ll just
hold ya
back. Keep ya from doin’ whatcha gotta
do. Besides, there’s always another
woman around the next corner or in the next bar.”
I lived that way
most of my life. A couple of them were
good women. I’d stay with them maybe
two-three months, but then I’d see another one and have to say adios.
Some men latch on to a woman, marry’em, have
kids, and settle down to a nine to five, or, more times than not, a six to
three in some factory. I thought about
that, but it never came about.
Almost. There was that redhead
from Little Rock that said I got her knocked up and she was havin’ my kid. I
told her to go see the doc and get it taken
care of. We didn’t have time for no
kids. She left the next day. Wonder
what happened to her? Kid’s probably no good. She wasn’t no mother
material anyway. Ahhh, whatever.
“Bartender, can I
get a bag of them skins and a bottle of that hot sauce there?”
Where in the hell is
Lorrie?
Lorrie, what a
woman. She’s as smooth as fine Kentucky
bourbon. That first time I seen her in
the Purple Parrot I knew right off that she was the woman for me. She had that
red dress pulled tight around
her like some Italian movie star. The
tighter she pulled it, the more it showed her big ass and those big tits. Her
long hair draped over her shoulders like
a thick fur scarf. It was damn near
midnight, and she was still wearing her dark glasses. When she said hello to
me, I could see a
flash of glitter from the diamond she had pierced through the tip of her
tongue. She was my kind of woman times
ten. We hit it off like a cuppla high
school sweethearts at a Fourth of July picnic.
“Hey, bartender,
y’know what I love about my Lorrie? She
ain’t never asked me to marry her. No,
sireee, never, not one time!”
“Hold on,
mister. I’ll be right there. I
have to take care of this couple at the end
of the bar.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
She never said,
“no,” to me about anything, anytime.
Even when I asked her to drive the getaway car for me last summer. She
coulda said, “Nope, not me,” but she just
smiled and kissed me and said, “Sure thing, honey.” We got away
with twenty-five hundred dollars
and two points of meth and a half ball.
Not a bad haul. We sold the junk
across town and had ourselves a nice party.
That’s when she told me she’d never sell me out. Wow! I
loved the sound of that. Other women had
told me that, too, but they were sleazes, and I knew they was lyin’. But
not Lorrie. She’s no sleaze or liar.
Where is she? We got to get goin’ before the cops figure
out who we are. I told her to meet me
here in two hours. Drive to the mall, do
a little shopping. Stay low key. Where
is she?
This morning’s job
should have gone smooth, but then. . . Well, what the hell is that? Jenny Big-Tits
is talking about us.
“Here we are at the
Webster Bank and Trust where two people, a man and woman, robbed the tellers
this morning shortly after the bank opened.
One man was shot when he tried to stop the robber. The shooter’s
accomplice, an unidentified
woman, was the driver of the getaway car.
She left the scene of the robbery before the man could get into the
car. The police think he tossed the bank
money into the car before she drove off.
A few minutes later the unidentified robber carjacked a vehicle pulling
into the bank parking lot. The police are
looking at surveillance tapes of the area.
They said they were sure they would locate the two robbers.”
The bartender was
standing there watching the TV, too.
“What do you think
about that, mister? A couple of local
Bonnie and Clyde’s trying to pull a job like that. Dumb!
With all the cameras and technology around today, this crap won’t
work. This is the day of white-collar
crime.”
“Hey, as long as
banks have money, there’ll always be bank robbers. That’s the way
life is. Always been that way. Jesse
James, Bonnie and Clyde, and now these
two. What’dya know about them anyway?
I bet they’re just a cuppla hard-working
people tryin’ to pay their bills. Life’s
tough on the street. Not everybody gets
the same shot as guys like you or them fuckin’ cops.”
“Hey, calm down,
mister. I was just saying I didn’t see
any point to it. There’re better ways to
make it in life today. Jeeeezz!”
“Whatever. Just bring me another Jack and coke.”
Then I felt it, a
big meaty hand resting heavy on my left shoulder. I could see another guy in
a trench coat
standing to my right. He reached over,
picked up my drink, took a swig of it, and pushed it out of my reach.
“Bartender,”
the guy
on the right says, “forget that Jack and coke.
Mr. Harold Calo won’t be needing that drink.”
Lookin’ at the two
men, I got that sick feelin’ in my stomach like the first time I got
pinched. Then I thought about
Lorrie. I sure hope she got away. But
even if she did get snatched up in some
roadblock, she ain’t never gonna talk to cops, no, sirreee.
“Stand up. Harold Calo, you’re under arrest for bank
robbery and attempted murder.”
“You got the wrong
guy. I been here all day waitin’ for my
girlfriend. She’s shoppin’.
Ask the bartender. He’ll tell you.
Hey, bartender, tell these cops I been here
all day, right?”
“Forget about it,
Calo. Lorrie’s already told us
everything, including how you shot that guy this morning.”
“Yeah, Harold, she
rolled on you. Quick. Spilled
the whole shitload.”
“What? What?
She did what?”
“You heard it right,
Calo. She flipped and left you with the
rap. Ain’t that a bitch?”
Then both of them cops started laughin’.
All I could think
was, I shoulda been a history teacher.
The End
