BOO-BOO BABY AT THE BUY & BYE by Michael Pelc

How's this for a cool little debut...


Boo-Boo Baby at the Buy & Bye

It's not so much that you're broke, it's just that you're down on your luck a bit, that's all.

Lucky for you, though, you know someone who knows someone and the next thing you know, you got yourself a piece. A cold, hard piece jammed down the front of your pants, and you're walking around with that thing down there looking like you overdid your Viagra or some shit like that.

So you pull your jacket on down low in front and hope to hell you don't look too fucking weird and walk on in to the Buy & Bye 'cause it's open all night and there ain't no other cars in the parking lot. You're real careful to nod all friendly like at the asshole in the red and white shirt with the company logo who's got the dumbass luck to be working the overnight shift.

You go to the back of the store, walking all casual like – as if you've done this a thousand times before – and browse through the bread, reading the labels and making like you're checking out the vitamin content or some shit like that. Truth is you've never done anything like this before, never been this desperate before, and you're scared shitless, and you know you're just stalling 'til you get up your nerve.

But you've come this far and you can't just go walking out the door with nothing, so you pick up a loaf of bread – it doesn't matter which one, any one will do – and go walking up to the counter with that thing in your pants, praying to God – to someone else's God, borrowing someone else's God 'cause you don't have one of your own – that you don't go shooting your nuts off. Yeah, like of all the things God's watching out for, he's watching out for your nuts.

So you set the bread down on the counter and hope Mr. Nightshift loser doesn't notice how much your hands are sweating and how you can't hardly swallow and how your breathing is all shallow and rapid like, which he doesn't, you guess, 'cause all he says is two ninety-eight and will there be anything else.

And you can hear your heart pounding in your ears, it's beating so loud – thumpada-thumpada-thumpada, like that – and you wonder if he can hear it, too. Somehow you manage to tell him you want a pack of Marlboros in the flip-top box, 'cause it sounds like a manly kind of cigarette, but what the hell do you know because you don't even smoke. But Mr. Dumbshit Nightshift doesn't know that, and he turns around to get a pack.

And that's when you yank the piece out of your pants. Not because you wanted to, or because you thought you ought to, but because you had practiced this moment over and over again, and you did it automatically, almost more like a reflex – not like anything your brain had a role in – and you surprise yourself with how fast you pulled it out. And, because it was so easy, because your movements were so quick and fluid and almost cat-like, you try to convince yourself that you're a natural.

But it doesn't take. And when Mr. Dumbshit turns around and sees you holding the piece on him and drops the stupid Marlboros you never wanted anyway on the floor and puts his hands up, all you can squeak out of your mouth is, "Money" like you're some sort of pussy no-brain eighth grader whose voice just changed.

But it works. It fucking works!

And he starts yanking all sorts of bills out of the cash register and setting them down on the counter for you while you keep the piece pointed at him just the way you planned it out in your mind. You're amazed at how smooth it's all going, and you begin to think – to convince yourself, really – that you're gonna pull it off, that you're gonna rob this asshole and go walking outta there with a shitload of money when – dammit – the fucking telephone rings.

And the sound of the phone sets off some sort of motor-synaptic neuron or some shit like that that you can't remember from high school biology, except that you know that this motor neuron thing in your brain someplace done shot its wad, and your whole fucking body twitches. And the gun goes off.

The fucking gun goes off. Blam! Like that, only louder. Ten thousand times louder. So loud that you can't hear anything else and you throw the damn thing down on the floor and your ears are ringing and you can't think, you can't think, you can't think, and so you go running out of the store, crying like some sort of little baby. Like some little baby running on home to mama, crying his little eyes out. Little baby you, crying your eyes out 'cause you just killed your first somebody.