Get Rich Quick
by John Kilkelly
illustration by Mark Reusch
Small city, southern Midwest on a sunny afternoon when the heat was blowing the mercury outta every thermometer in town and lethargy spread her legs against the sky.
We’d taken the car from a pound on the edge of town throwing hunks of raw meat to the guard-dogs, it was a good old car, a Rocket Gold under the hood and four bigmouth carbs. The dashboard was held together with duct tape and bottles littered the floor.
I drove, she checked the shotguns with a cigarette dangling from her lips looking sideways at me and I knew there was no way I was getting out of this thing… stopped at every traffic light, kept it to the speed limit, slid into a parking slot outside the first target.
There was blood on the window from where the place had been hit before. We kept the guns under our coats and left it alone.
The second place was better and brother Abdul kept his hands where I could see ’em while she emptied the register, our features were compressed into gargoyles under stocking masks. Minimum wage was not worth it anymore.
We waited outside the third place until the cops were called away and then we went in, shoved the note in to the bank teller and emptied every drawer. I kept everyone on the floor just like it went, all those round eyes starin’ up at me, ’til I clicked back the safety and put an end to that. The manager was nearest me and he wore cheap pants and his hair was white and he kept telling everyone to be calm. She stopped looting at precisely two minutes and out we went.
The car was around the corner, we’d left the engine running. She eased it out and drove away, no spinning tires or any of that shit, we pulled the stockings off our heads and lit up cigarettes.
Dumped the car outside a bar near the highway and retrieved a convertible Chrysler liberated from a rental car lot the evening before, the wind in our ears with sirens and blue lights tearing the opposite way. The bag was between us, we were carrying the offspring of every Hollywood motion picture, this was the spawn of the methamphetimine void, this was the capitalism torn to shit, and this time she drove fast, giving me that sideways thing and not a word went out to each other, my heart was thrashing still and her knuckles were white on the leather wheel. We found a parking lot, got out and walked down a street framed by rooming houses and liquor stores, opened the door to a motel room, carried in the bag and left the world behind.
“There’s only two ways to live,” she told me. “Hard. And fast.”
We were counting out the money. I could still hear the sirens in my ears. The bottle on the table was going down hard.
There was something evil in the slit of her eyes. Banknotes strewn on the bed, counting them out in the one hundreds, two hundreds. She blew smoke in the air, checked the ammo. Handed me the forthcoming wad, greasy bills like her greasy thighs, unfolding.
“Let’s go” she said. I drove her to the bus, then ditched the car. Walked back across town, looking everyone in the eye. Unafraid and temporarily, wealthy….
