Someone Else's Love Story

by Joshilyn Jackson

  “She’s out there right by my damn car,” he says accusingly, to the old man. “I’m screwed! I’m screwed!”

  The old man says nothing, and the gunman stamps his feet, making a terrible, inarticulate gargling noise. The little boy still presses his wet face into William’s side, and William threads his other arm beneath himself to pat at the boy, awkwardly, as best he can while lying on his stomach.

  The gunman should leave. Most likely the cop is too busy bleeding into the gravel to stop him if he is fast. She might be dying.

  William does not want her to be dying, and this is the right thing to want. He is having a good and human reaction. No one would want that for her. But the voice of Bridget, loose inside his head, won’t let him stop there. She is naming it. She is naming the terrible, beautiful thing.

  You are envious. You are envious of that cop because for her, everything will go dark and be quiet and stop.

  William’s gaze finds the gun. It is a .32 revolver, probably a six-­shooter. That means there are five more bullets in it.

  And then, for the second time in his life, he finds himself at the center of a huge reverberating truth. He recognizes destiny, this shorthand word that means nothing beyond the strength of his own will, in a way he has not since he saw Bridget, whole and beautiful in pink high-­tops, her jaw set, saving Shit Park.

  This is what he knows: Five bullets left, and he owns one. At least one is for him.

  He recognizes the feeling that rises at this certainty. He can name this blend of chemicals, though it has been a while since it washed along his blood. It is what Bridget always called “the thing with feathers.” It is hope.

  His moment will come. He only needs to watch for it. He only needs to take it. He stares with new eyes at the loaded gun. He waits.

  Chapter 3

  He shot that lady cop. In front of Natty. Natty had already wiggle-­wormed over to the big blond guy, and now it looked like he was trying to burrow into the guy’s side. I found myself hoping to someone’s God or other that Natty was reacting to the noise, that he hadn’t seen the blood opening up in the shape of a fast-­blooming flower on her blue top.

  Then the gunman twisted around and turned the deadbolt, fast, trapping Natty and me and everyone in with him and the gun and the stink of copper and sulphur.

  He also locked Walcott out, and I fell into a pure, almost holy terror. I don’t know what I expected Walcott to do. Burst in and save us with the power of T. S. Eliot? It didn’t matter. What mattered was, Natty and I were stuck without Walcott in a room where the air still rang with the residue of gun sound. I felt white inside and out, eaten up by bad light like a roadside animal.

  Then the gunman paused, half turned again, and flipped the door sign over so the word CLOSED faced out. Did he truly think someone might step over the bleeding policewoman and try to pop in for a pack of Camels?

  He started yelling at us to move, to crawl back away from the plate-­glass front; I found myself nodding. Moving was a thing to do, and doing felt better than lying still and helpless. Also, it was a smart thing for him to pick. It was a small relief, that he would think of a smart thing. I’d lost faith in him when he paused to flip that sign.

  I followed his instructions, got to my trembling hands and knees and crawled along the floor toward the freezer cases. I tried to stay between Natty and where I thought the gun might be. I could feel the air on my thighs as my skirt tangled in my knees and hiked up in the back. I reached with one hand to yank it down as far as it would go.

  I was wishing I’d worn ugly panties, and that made me realize I was a scant six inches from hysterical. I made myself breathe deep and slow. I crawled and tried not to think of the gun’s black-­hole eye looking at Natty. All the while, the bare backs of my thighs buzzed and clenched like the gunman’s gaze was dirty beetles walking on my legs. Surely he wasn’t watching me crawl. Surely he had other things on his mind just now. But I wished my dress was longer.

  The big blond guy was in front of us, lifting one hand to open the door with the Employees Only sign. I felt a praying feeling, and it was aimed at him. Crazy. He might look like a Norse deity, and he had put himself between my kid and danger, but that didn’t mean he was going to whip out a thunder hammer and smite the gun and save us.

  It was up to Walcott, locked outside so far away from us and, oh please, calling 911.

  Natty shadowed Thor through the doorway. I crawled faster, getting close, so Natty could feel me behind him.

  The gunman, still using a fake, growly voice, said, “Don’t even try to let that door swing shut between us. Push it all the way open, to the wall.”

  I said to Natty, softly, “Gonna be okay, baby.” I was surprised at how true it sounded, how steady my voice was. Motherhood and a gunshot had insta-­morphed me into an excellent liar. Mostly I got red and blinked too much. Natty paused and peered at me over his shoulder, eyebrows pressed into a worried crinkle. “Keep going!” I smiled at him, very bright-­eyed and glorious, like I was encouraging him to jump off the side of some fancy hotel pool near Disneyland. “Gonna be fine!” I sounded so firm and steady that I almost believed me.

  Then the gunman ruined it, dropping the yelling rasp and saying to us all, “Aw, hell. I’m Stevie, by the way,” in this insanely friendly tone, like he was about to tell us he would be our hostage taker today. Like he might next ask what he could do to make crawling along the filthy linoleum with the gun’s black gaze skittering back and forth across my naked legs more pleasant. It struck me as wildly unprofessional.

  We crawled single file down a hall that dumped us into a long, thin office. It ran the whole width of the store, and the two outside walls were exposed brick. On the longest brick wall, light spilled through a row of narrow windows in a horizontal line right up by the ceiling.

  Stevie had us sit on our bottoms in a row against the long inside wall, like Natty’s preschool class waiting to go to recess. Thor had gone in first, so he was all the way at the far end of the room, right by a desk that stood longways to him. Natty sat beside him, squeezed between us. I leaned in and Thor leaned in, too, as if he felt me willing him to help me make a tent over my son, to press in toward each other, to make Natty be the narrowest, most tiny slice of target.

  “You’re squooshing me,” Natty said, both hands moving to hold his cap on.

  I said, “Shhhh,” half a heartbeat behind.

  I eased my bottom an inch away, but stayed leaned. Thor did the same thing, and I was so glad to be seated near him. So glad that Natty was even nearer. Close to him felt like the safest place in the room.

  I heard a soft plopping noise on my other side. The clerk was sitting with her knees up in a tent, hunched forward over them, her broken front teeth showing through her open mouth. Her head was tilted down in profile to me, and the plops were tears falling out of her and down onto her jeans, making wet spots. I wasn’t crying, I realized, and felt strangely proud. It would scare Natty more if I cried, so I wasn’t doing it, and that was all. On the other end was the old ­couple, first the woman, and then the man tucked into the corner. On the short wall next to him was the only door in.

  Stevie—­God, what a stupid name for a grown man with a pistol—­grabbed one of the twin rolling office chairs and pulled it under the windows, beside a file cabinet. The top of his baseball cap didn’t even clear the windows when he was standing, but he sat anyway. His T-­shirt was dirty and it said SHAZAM! across the front in peeling letters. The chair was high for him, so only his toes touched the floor. He swiveled it back and forth, not even noticing he was doing it, the same way Natty might.

  The afternoon sun coming through the window slits made us all squint. He swayed in the chair, looking at us with the sun in our eyes, and said, “Sorry about that. I need to be under these here windows in case of they send snipers.”

  I heard a person say, “That’s okay!” all cheery,
and it was me.

  Stevie stared at me then like I was being a bad hostage instead of him sucking at robbing. But I hadn’t been able to help it, just like I couldn’t help smiling at him, an encouraging, big-­ass smile that showed all my teeth.

  The voice in the back of my mind said, Are you trying to make friends with this shithead? And I was. I had a whole push of words rising up in my throat that I had to work to swallow: Hey, Stevie! I’m a Pisces who loves sweet pickles and early David Bowie songs, and did you know my son is a certified genius and a miracle? He’ll probably cure cancer one day, Stevie. Do you want to shoot the boy who’ll stamp out cancer?

  Because Stevie had told us his name and apologized for the sun glare, like we were ­people, I wanted to be a whole, real person to Stevie, so he wouldn’t hurt my son. I wanted it so bad I was shaking.

  I made myself pull a bunch of air in through my nose. The room smelled like Vicks VapoRub and tuna salad sandwiches. Old-­­people smells. I pushed the air out and kept right on smiling, trying to make a face that told Stevie that I might not know him well, but I already liked him an ungodly amount. He looked away.

  I peeked at Thor. He looked a ready kind of still. Was he going to make a move? I wanted him to, but what if it went wrong? What if Stevie got angry and started shooting, and Natty—­ I couldn’t think past that.

  I let my gaze slide sideways to the desk beside Thor, seeking something that might help us. It looked like something from a dorm room, cheap and modern. No drawers. On top was an old square monitor that had to weigh a thousand pounds and a bunch of other useless crap in a jumble: keys, envelopes, pens, a ceramic dish full of paper clips. The computer tower was on the floor underneath, and the other side of the desk had some open shelving. The bottom shelf had the printer, and above that was a stack of white paper held down by a big glass globe paperweight. It was shaped like a squashed softball, with a huge, perfect orange Gerber daisy trapped in the glass.

  No drawers. That seemed important. I badly wanted the desk to have at least one drawer.

  Then I stopped looking because Stevie got out of his chair and walked to the door.

  He locked it. He literally turned the flip lock on the doorknob, like he was in here going to the bathroom. Like a flip lock could stop cops or bullets.

  I looked to Thor, but he wasn’t looking back. He was watching Stevie, too, and he gave a faint, incredulous headshake. He knew, and I knew, too. Stevie was a novice or incompetent or maybe just plain stupid. He was going to eff this whole thing up.

  Thinking that was like being gut-punched. I felt my waist jackknife and fold me forward in a twitch because I saw what Stevie effing it all up might look like. It looked like me dead, like Natty traumatized and motherless.

  That wasn’t even the worst that could happen, but the thing that was worse than my own death could not be allowed. It could not even be considered. I would curl up all the way around my son, and I would eat up every bullet with my body, before I let the worst thing be. Natty would walk out of here. That was nonnegotiable.

  “Now what?” Stevie said, loud and not calm at all.

  He banged his gun-­free hand into his forehead, like he was trying to beat his brain into thinking. I wanted to kill him for asking us. For not knowing what to do, and quietly and powerfully doing it until he was away with his bag of cash and smokes and we were all out safe. My heart flailed and pulsed against my ribs in what felt like a million beats a minute. I couldn’t stop any of this. Stevie needed to step up and be a damn pro. But he was going to eff it up.

  Stevie had a gun, so Stevie, who was otherwise as viable as dog crap, owned us. If I died here, Natty would be an orphan. Would he go looking for his father? But what could he find, when there was no such thing? When Natty happened, he was born wholly mine and perfect. This is what I whispered into the pink coil of his newborn ear: My body made you up, because the world is so much better with you in it.

  I didn’t say that to anyone else, not even my parents. They would have questioned it, tried to make me test it. Me, I knew what I knew.

  But why hadn’t I already invented that tragic hero-­soldier father, fallen in Afghanistan, in case I walked under a bus one day? I’d thought I had time. I’d assumed I had a whole long lifetime to invent Natty a nice, dead father, perfectly loving and permanently absent.

  If Natty went looking, there were other stories he could find. He might dig up that distant, deep blue night, the misty not-­quite-­memory story that Walcott told my parents. It was a fairy tale in Grimm’s tradition, and I’d never told it to anyone. I hadn’t even told it to myself, because I knew that night had nothing to do with Natty. Walcott and my parents saw it differently, though.

  I didn’t know squat about guns, but right then I wanted Stevie’s anyway. The gun in my hands and not his would change everything. I would own him, and suddenly it was hard to put my eyes on anything else. I had to physically turn my head to stop staring at it. That meant I was looking at the drawerless desk again.

  I knew then why I wanted it to have drawers. Because it was close to me, and ­people hid things in desk drawers. Things like weapons. How did I know, really, for sure, that Stevie had the only gun in the room?

  The Circle K near Mimmy’s house, I knew, was chock-­full of weaponry. It was owned by Mrs. Quincy and it was a craphole, a lot like this one. All the candy was dusty. One or another of Mrs. Quincy’s hairy, tattooed sons manned the counter. Her boys, all four of them, could each throw a Coke bottle up high, high into the sky and shoot it into a rain of glass on the way down. Walcott called it Redneck Skeet, and back when we were kids we used to bike up and get dip cones at the DQ, then walk over to the meadows behind that Circle K to watch them do it. They had guns tucked all over that store.

  Like as not, there was a gun here, too.

  The old ­people on the end of the row were the owners, I thought. This office was full of old-­­people smells, and they had come out of the door that led back here. I didn’t think these two spent their weekends shooting at Coke bottles; she had on resort wear, and her bag exactly, exactly matched her shoes. He was wearing a thin summer cardigan. But this was Georgia, and not city Georgia, either. Not for quite a few miles yet. These old folks were country ­people, and they sure as hell looked like Republicans. They had to have at least a pistol hidden here. Maybe a shotgun, too.

  Stevie scratched his head, pushing his fingers up under the cap to get at his scalp, muttering to himself. I risked a slight lean toward the clerk and whispered, “Gun?”

  She turned her face to me, her eyes black-­ringed with cried-­away mascara. She shook her head, a rapid back-­and-­forth so subtle it was barely more than a tremble. But it wasn’t a no. It was an animal move, uncomprehending.

  I looked all around the room, and then mouthed, “Gun?” again. Her eyebrows knit, still puzzled. Finally, I made a gun out of my fingers, showing it to her in the shelter of my legs. “Where is it?”

  Her eyes went wide, and this time the tremble back and forth was a definite no. At the same time, her gaze darted away from me to a two-­drawer metal file cabinet by the door. The cowardly little object was lying. The file cabinet had a weapon in it, I was sure.

  Stevie had turned toward me. “Are you talking to her? What are you saying to her?”

  Stevie took a step in my direction.

  As the gun turned our way and Stevie stepped close with such intent, I could feel Thor coiling. The muscles in his big body tensed, readying for fast movement, but he wasn’t really Thor. He was just some big blond guy, sitting close to Natty. I couldn’t let gunfire happen this close to my son.

  I started talking, my voice all high and shaky. “Nothing, just . . . nothing, just . . .”

  “Just what? Just what?” Stevie said, and the gun seemed to grow and swell in his hand as he approached. With every step he took, the blond guy wound himself tighter, and that huge and huge
r gun came closer to my kid.

  I said, desperate, “I was checking on her. She seems real scared.”

  Stevie drew up short, and the gun tilted a little sideways. Off Natty. Now it was pointing at Thor himself, and I felt Thor’s tension ease a notch. It made me love him more, that he would rather have its eye on him than Natty.

  Stevie blinked. “Well, that’s nice then.” After a second he added, “She don’t need to be scared.”

  Now that he had stepped in close, I saw how red and quivery the skin around his nostrils looked. His pupils were huge, though the room was bright. Dear God, but Stevie was jacked up on something. He started to back away, his twitchy gaze pinging to the door.

  “We’re all scared,” I said. He paused like this was a new idea to him, and I kept talking, because now I had something human and not crazy to say. “My son here, Natty, he is only three. Natty is so scared. He shouldn’t be in here.”

  Now Stevie looked at Natty, and I could feel Natty shrink into me. “You scared?” Stevie asked.

  I felt more than saw Natty’s head dip in a nod.

  “Well, don’t be. I like little kids. I’m a daddy myself. I ain’t gonna shoot no little kids, okay?” Then he walked backward, glancing all around the room so it looked like his eyes were rolling. “Oh Christ, what next?”

  Stevie, who would be our hostage taker today, was floundering. The gun wobbled in his hand.

  “I gotta get out of here,” he said. “Should I run? Maybe I should run.”

  I stared at him, too frozen with hope to answer. The clerk beside me made a honking noise, swallowing her tears, and his gaze went to her.

  She said, “Yes. Run. You should run now.” Her voice was low and trembly, but she sounded so sure. I could have kissed her.

  He made a move for the flip-­locked door, and my heart fluttered and flapped, wild with hope. But then Stevie stopped and cocked his head like a dog. It was a full three seconds before I understood.