FALSE FRONT

by Ry Eph

  FALSE FRONT

  Ry Eph

  To Beverly Sue,

  You’ve always believed in me more than I’ve believed in myself.

  “Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”

  -Andre Malraux

  “Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

  -Oscar Wilde

  Pointing fingers, narrowing stares, leaning sneers, questioning whispers, and denouncing chuckles trail behind a gaunt man disguised in skinny dark matte shades from eye to foot. Black pomade-glazed hair and a smooth creamy forehead are his only evident features. Many customers overlook the offbeat man as they carry about their tasks at the Vivacity, Washington Costco. It’s an unusual town known for its outlandish beatnik culture, so bypassing idiosyncratic characters becomes a common habit.

  The man turns the red wholesale handle as he shifts the cart down an aisle with heaps of books.

  “Not that one,” says the man with a clear brisk voice, strolling by a squinting woman who’s scanning a back cover.

  “What?”

  “I’ll take that,” he says, snatching the novel from her hands as the last word leaves his mouth.

  “Hey.”

  He peers over his page-thin shoulder through a pair of designer sunglasses at the appalled woman. Her mouth a gaping, damp, somber cave and her eyes stark full moons.

  “Hello.”

  “You can’t do tha—”

  “But I did.”

  A black bandana masks the lower half of his acute face, deadening his voice. He tosses the book he stole back onto a stack and stops the cart in front of a high mound of new releases, plucking a copy from the heap. A golden sticker on the cover reads, Local Author. He spins around on the heel of his black wingtips and drifts back toward the stunned woman, forcing the book into her hand.

  She gazes at the novel and says, “What is thi—”

  Her words cut short as he presses his index finger over her lips.

  “You’re welcome,” he says, reaching into her cart.

  She goes cross-eyed, staring at the finger pressing against her mouth.

  “Trust me. You won’t be able to put it down,” he says while plucking a banana from her cart. Removing his hand from her mouth, he peels the banana, lifts his disguise, and takes a few bites. He grins at her between nibbles and a flashy silver cap shows to the right of his mouth.

  They stare at one another in silence. Customers pass them by, going about their business.

  “Not bad,” he says, tossing what’s left of the banana over his shoulder. She watches it slide away against the signature polished floor. “Still a little green for me.”

  “You je—”

  He taps on her nose and seesaws his finger across her face. Her eyes follow the hypnotic movement.

  “Really? Name calling?”

  She collapses her cavernous mouth. Exhaling hard through her rumpled nose, she glares at the man.

  “Name calling leads to violence, in my opinion. The old story our elders taught us about sticks and stones breaking bones, but words never hurting is only half true. Words lead to the sticks and stones breaking someone’s bones.”

  She stomps away.

  “Enjoy the book.”

  “Fuck off. I’m getting an employee,” she says.

  He chuckles, dashing back toward his parked cart to find a wiry, grey-haired man reaching out to grab a copy of a book. The troublemaker glides over to him and whacks his age-spotted hand.

  “Son of a bitch,” says the senior, drawing his hand back and clutching it.

  The masked man feints at him, and the old timer flinches, shuffling back and raising his hands in a classical Irish boxer stance. They size each other up. The older man grumbles from his lined mouth.

  “If I was thirty years younger, I’d knock you on your ass,” he says, rolling fists out in front of him.

  The younger man swipes at the air, knocking at the old timer’s reminiscent statement.

  “You’ll be sorry one day, son. I’m getting someone over here to deal with you.”

  The young man laughs and turns his attention to the cart near the books, picking up another copy. Two ladies stand on the other side of the pallet talking about some tasty sample back by the refrigerators.

  “Think that’s funny? Do you?”

  He flips a copy of the book at the elder, and it slices through the air like a ninja dart. The hard corner punctures into the center of the old man’s chest, and his tired reflexes react after the book makes contact.

  “Read that instead of whatever else you were reaching for, grandpa.”

  “I hate your generation,” he says, pressing his fingers into his chest where the book stabbed him.”

  “Your creation.”

  “Damn shame.”

  He lunges, and the wrinkled fellow jolts before his feet move, toppling him onto his drooping ass.

  “Damn you.”

  The dapper younger man raises his arm and points a finger in the direction the fallen old man should go and says, “Beat it, obsolete.”

  The elder lifts his rabbit-tail eyebrows on his melting face while shaking his head at the vibrant youthfulness standing over him. He grunts as he gathers himself to his feet and scuffles down the aisle, mumbling to himself.

  He goes back to attending the books and gathers stacks of the novel he gave to the lady and elderly in his arms.

  “You’re a mean asshole,” says a small, sweet-potato-haired girl in a blinding green dress. She furrows her brow and crinkles her freckled nose, as she holds a lime sucker inches from her mouth.

  He spins around on his heel, nudging his shades down the thin bridge of his nose. He slides his nickel eyes up the girl, interrogating her. His eyes stop on her face and he raises one of his dark slanted eyebrows, which are higher and thicker at the center.

  “You really shouldn’t be an ass to people. My mom tells my daddy all the time it will come back to bite you in your own butt.”

  “I don’t buy into karma.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Does your mom know you curse?”

  “No.”

  He snags the sucker from her hand before she can get another lick, her tongue sticking out of her mouth.

  “Give it back.”

  “Go away.”

  “I’ll scream.”

  “Go away and I’ll give it back.”

  She hops up and down and swipes at the stolen candy.

  He flings it over the pallet of books and it lands in a passerby’s cart.

  She stops jumping, folds her hands over her chest, exhales loudly from her button nose, and frowns.

  “I’m going to tell my mom.”

  “Your mom’s stupid.”

  “Your tattoos are stupid.”

  He places his hand inside his low-cut v-neck and tickles at the ink decorating his collar and neck. A colorful tattooed heart with metallic wings at the center of his throat wraps up and around his neck and travels toward his spine.

  “No they are not.”

  “Yes they are,” she says.

  He folds all his fingers down except for one, so his fist lies below the bright heart and his middle finger stands between the wings, giving her the bird.

  She tilts her head back and forth in confusion.

  “Get it?”

  She shrugs her shoulders.

  “It’s my middle finger with wings.”

  “So?”

  “It’s a bird.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Middle finger? The bird? Wings around a middle finger? Fuck you?”

  She stares at him.

  “Never mind.”

  “Do you have a cough?”

  “What?”

  “The weird thing wrappe
d on your face,” she says, pointing at the cloth hiding his identity.

  He reaches up and pinches at the bandana.

  “Are you sick?”

  “We’re all sick.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You just don’t know it yet.”

  She reaches up and feels her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Get lost, ginger.”

  “My name’s not ginger.”

  “But the top of your head looks like a fading camp fire.”

  Her hands climb to her hair, fingers scrunching at the untamed flames.

  He chuckles, goes back to ignoring her, and faces the white and gold hardcover books again. Reaching around as many of them as he can, he bear hugs the stack and pulls them into the cart. A few books fall, sliding across the slick grey floor. One of them bumps up against the girl’s shoe.

  She toes at it with her white polka-dot sneaker, watching the man grab a few of the spilled books that didn’t make it into the cart. She eyes him as he notices the copy at her foot.

  “You’re still here.”

  She giggles.

  “What?”

  “I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Fuck you,” she says, pointing at his neck with her teeny middle finger. “A fuck you bird.”

  He chuckles.

  She picks up the copy by her foot, holds it out to him, and says, “You’re kind of a weirdo.”

  He snatches the book from her, but stares at the cover for a minute.

  “And you’re kind of annoying,” he says.

  “My dad says that a lot.”

  “Asshole of a dad.”

  “Yeah,” she says, looking down at floor.

  “I get it, girl. Most dads are assholes.”

  “Oh.”

  He watches the inner-wounded girl for a moment and then opens the cover of the book she passed to him. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a chrome pen, signing, Air Hunt, on the inside cover. He hands it back to her.

  “Keep this, maybe it will be worth something someday.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure. Well, it’s been fun, girl. But I have shit to do.”

  She waves goodbye, and walks down a candy aisle staring at the signature on the inside cover.

  A few greased hairs fall over the skin-faded sides of his head. He glides his hands, in black leather gloves, over the dangling pieces, grooming them back. Clutching the red plastic handle of the Costco cart, he presses forward, leaving behind an empty block of space on the book pallet.

  “Excuse me, sir,” someone says from a crowd of Costco employees speed walking towards him.

  “That’s the jerk,” says the woman he tapped on the nose.

  “Stop. Sir, stop right there.”

  “Block him off,” says another employee.

  He scans the pursuers over his shoulder before turning out of an aisle, the cart going up on two wheels and almost rolling over. He halts and plucks a meaty sample from a display table.

  “Thank you,” he says, pulling his cover up and sliding the meat off the toothpick into his mouth with his two front teeth. He flicks the pick back at the chasers, chuckling as he pushes onward.

  He barrels through the warehouse. As he nears the exit he comes to a squealing standstill. A line of Costco employees blocks his escape, standing their ground and staring him down.

  “This is the end,” says the manager.

  The man sighs through his nostrils in boredom, blowing the mask away from his face.

  “Where do you think you’re going with all those books?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I don’t think so,” says a different employee.

  “The police are already on their way,” says a woman, pointing at him.

  “Then I do have to get going.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” says a woman in a red employee vest.

  He pushes the cart forward, and they tense up and jolt back, compacting their line.

  He snickers at their reaction. In the background, a lineup of Curved LED LCD TVs play a Straight Outta Compton trailer. The trailer says over a tick-tocking type of beat, “If you had a chance to change the situation would you take it?”

  “Great line,” he says, charging their defense.

  “Now wait just a minute,” says another employee, reaching out to grab the oncoming cart.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he says.

  A customer off to the side, dressed in thigh-high cotton gym shorts wet with sweat, says, “It’s just a book, guy.” He folds his earthworm-vein-covered bodybuilder arms across a moist tank top, a size too small.

  The man dressed in all black comes to a jarring stop, focusing his attention on the cart full of books for a long time.

  “Just a book?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  He pivots toward the meathead with a cart full of protein shakes and other nutritional muscle-building items, who is much taller and wider.

  “Don’t say it again.”

  “Just a book. All the same stupid book, guy,” he says, laughing as he lifts his eyebrows at the employees circling around. He pokes his head at the smaller man in all black. “You seeing this skinny nutcase?”

  “Just a book?”

  “You heard me the first time.”

  The man pulls an all-black .44, matching his attire, from the waist of his jeans and aims it at the muscular man. Everyone gasps as he moves toward him. The built man freezes like a mammoth in a glacier.

  “I wasn’t planning on hurting anyone today.”

  He raises the gun over his head and revolves it in his palm, lunging at the larger man.

  “Wait,” says the man.

  He slashes the handle of the gun across the guy’s forehead, gashing him. The giant man collapses, folding himself into a boulder on the floor.

  “Just a book? Just another book? Is that all it is?”

  “Please.” He raises his hands to shield his face from further pistol whips, but the beating continues as the handle cracks him apart.

  He methodically finds openings between the man’s defense, lacerating sections of his face.

  “Please stop. You’ll kill him,” a woman says, covering her ears and closing her eyes.

  A crowd of customers runs away from the scene. Many of the employees are screaming and a few have their hands in the air as if they are being arrested. Their determined wall of defense crumbles.

  He stops beating the man and scans the chaos he caused around him. Everyone’s silent, watching him, some shielding their eyes from the assault. A few people hide behind inventory. One man’s even on the ground with his hands over his head while mumbling some prayer to a god he thinks he knows. The gun-beat man gurgles from a blood-filled mouth.

  “Take whatever you want. Please just leave,” says the manager.

  He grabs a copy of the book from the cart, casts it to the manager, and says, “This one’s on me, boss. Read it. You’ll love the ending. A real mind blower.”

  The manager looks at the book, a few droplets of blood staining the glossy white cover, and then he backs away from the man.

  The man nods as he strolls past him with his cart full of novels. He pushes himself up onto the cart and rides the slight hill toward a large black van parked out front. He swings open the back doors and heaves books into the van where they accumulate with a mass of the exact same book already piled inside. After emptying the cart, he releases it to roll into the parking lot, watching it smash into a glossy Audi. He jumps into the van and takes off, watching in his rearview mirror as police fill the lot with deafening sirens and pulsing lights. America’s favorite colors flash in the distance as he drives away.

  He goes to a few local bookstores and libraries, always taking all the copies of the same book. Those visits went smooth compared to the Costco chaos. The back of the van continues to pile with white and gold hardcovers. He doesn’t run into any problems until the popular coffee and b
ookstore Dead Poets Make Way. Six police cars and three motorcycle cops are waiting for him.

  He glares at them through his sunglasses and out the windshield, noticing they see him creeping the van into the parking lot. He shouts curses while shifting the van into reverse and stepping on the gas. The van launches backwards through the lot. He spins the wheel, causing the van to do a 180. He glances at his driver side mirror and notices officers scrambling for their vehicles.

  After swerving around cars, driving through red lights, doing 55mph on a sidewalk, and rocketing through neighborhood streets, he brings the van to a spinning stop on the front lawn of a mid-mod century home. The driver jumps out of the van, walks to the sidewalk and gazes back down the neighborhood street, scanning to see if anyone followed him.

  “Who the hell are you? And why are you on my neighbor’s land?” says a middle-aged neighbor with a twisted, bark-colored ‘stache across his upper lip. “You drunk? You high? You missed the damn driveway by about fifteen feet.” He’s holding a hose, watering a row of colorful flowers just off the front of his porch.

  “Mind your own business, Tony.”

  “Do I know you?”

  The masked man snaps his fingers in frustration, taking a long deep breath.

  “Do I?”

  He shakes his head.

  “You one of those drug addicts from the Marsh?”

  He shakes his head at the neighbor as he walks up the driveway. The neighbor drops the hose, moving in the man’s direction.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

  He stops.

  “Vivacity police should have shut that shit hole down a long time ago. Fucking Marsh is full of meth heads.”

  He ignores Tony, who wears a white shirt much too tight for his soft upper body and popping nipples.

  “Where do you think you’re going, pal?”

  He holds his palm out, signaling for Tony to stop coming toward him.

  “Get away from my neighbor’s house this minute.”

  “Mind your own business. Trust me,” he says, trying to drop his voice a level deeper.

  “This is my business. Neighbors stick together, pal. This here is a good block. Get lost now, or I’ll call the cops.”

  He ignores Tony and walks toward the front door.

  “I got a gun, asshole.”