The Cat Dancers

2

K-dog is ranting. Hey, you know what, dude? We had the fucking thing done. The money was in my pocket, that clerk slapped down on the floor, a whole candy rack pulled over on top of his ass, our piece-a-shit rice-burner parked fifty feet away, pointed out at the street, the security cam bashed off the wall-and, shit, we even had its VCR smashed all to hell and lubricated with some convenient motor oil. That’s why they called it a convenience store, right?

And then here comes this fucking minivan, mama bear and baby bear pulling into absolutely the wrong place at the wrong time. A hundred gas stations in this fucking town, and these civilians pick this one? This bitch looking over as she shuts down the van. I mean, it was fucking obvious she saw our asses as we came through the door. I could almost hear her makin’ her statement, you know? “There were two of them, Officer. One was this sorta tall, skinny, scraggly-haired white boy in a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans. Dude had this huge gun in his hand? The other guy? Oh, he was this dumpy-looking black guy in baggy red sweats, a do-rag on his head, looking totally spaced.”

And that’s when we made our big mistake, man: We stopped. That was it right there. I just fucking know it. Stopped in the doorway when we saw her looking, and that’s when that old Paki dude must have realized there was a problem. Because, like, next thing we know? Here he fucking comes, man, rising up out of that pile of candy and shit with his own damn gun, if you could believe that shit, rising up and booming away at us. I mean, there’s shit blowing right off the door racks and busting out the glass of the door right in our faces. Flash, well, Flash, what can I say, man? Flash does his usual shit, goes right for the floor, yellin’ about motherfuckers this and motherfuckers that. And me? Well, shit, you know, I’m like Mr. Cool when the heavy shit starts to fly. That’s my rep, right? So I do what I have to do-you know what I’m saying? I get my ass down behind a newspaper rack, whip that TEC-9 around, and hose down that cashier’s stand. That Paki dude’s still shooting, I’ll give him that, man, two hands, like they show on the TV. But dig this: He had his fucking eyes closed, man. Incredible. Then one of my rounds takes the side of his head off, and then, shit, that dude’s all done.

But that wasn’t the bad part, man. After I drop the geezer-okay?-I get up, but then I trip over Flash, who’s still down there on the floor, got his fucking eyes closed, just like that Paki, and he’s all, like, babbling this black street shit. Anyway, so I trip over his worthless ass and fall right through the busted-out door glass. Lucky I didn’t get cut all to shit. I mean, my damn feet are all fucked up. I’m like trying to catch myself, but at the same time I forget to take my finger off that trigger, and that TEC’s stitching up the pump island’s roof, a couple of those big bright lights out there, and then, oh, man, the gas pump right next to that minivan. Soccer mommy was still sitting in the van, staring at me like I was from fucking Mars, man, until that pump island fucking lit up.

You talk about your fucking Fourth of July. That whole mess-the minivan, the gas pump, all that shit-had to have been fifty feet away, but I can still feel that fireball. Flash is up off the floor now and he fucking passes me getting out to the pickup. There is fire fucking everywhere now, and then we get another pump going up, and then some hose or some other shit breaks and then there’s, like, these blue waves of fire coming across the concrete. Fucking Hell’s Beach, man. I jam that rice-burner into big D and we peel the hell out of there, driving right over those waves of fire. I swear to God I can still feel that heat through the floorboards. That minivan is roasting back in there somewhere, along with the witnesses, so, you know, the whole fire deal wasn’t a total fucking loss. I was just wishing that wad of cash in my pocket was a whole lot thicker, because both of us knew there was gonna be some serious hell to pay over this shit.

So, anyways, we go screech-assing all the way across the center line before I can get ahold of it. We almost head-on some asshole comin’ the other way, and he leans on his horn while eatin’ up a ton of my gravel. I hammered down to straighten that bitch back out and then got us down the road and gone. Big-ass orange glow taking up the whole rearview mirror, all the way to the first curve. And, oh yeah, there’s my man Flash, the whole fucking time, sitting there with his eyes still closed, tears running down his face, those funny little hands of his banging against the dash while he says “Muhfuggah” over and over again. We called him Flash in the joint, but his real name is Deleon. Dee-le-on Butts. ’Tween you an’ me? That brother ain’t playin’ with a full deck, you know what I’m sayin’? Anyway, we’re boogyin’ down the road. I gotta wonder why I hooked up with him in the first place. I mean, yeah, we’d shared a cell up in Rock City for three years, and, you know, since we both came from the Triboro area, it just seemed okay. Right now, though, man, I don’t know if that was such a good move.

So, the next morning, like, late? We’re holed up in this shitty little curry palace on the east side of town, about a half mile from I-40, close enough so’s we can hear the semis. Flash is either dead asleep or passed out on the other bed; it’s always kinda hard to tell with Flash. He’s got this mostly empty quart of bourbon sticking up between his legs like a glass hard-on. I’m only medium high. I’ve got me an elephant head and that camel-crapped-in-my-mouth taste, you know, whiskey, two garlic pizzas, and maybe a half case of beer? I’ve got two, count ’em, two -fucking cigarettes, going, and there’s enough smoke in that room to set off the smoke alarm, ’cept it’s hanging by its wires ’cause those Pakis never fix anything, you know what I’m sayin’?

I got the TV news on and there’s some big-hair blonde going off about the minimart holdup. She’s all excited, but they don’t have shit on who the bad guys were. Po-lice “working several solid leads.” Yeah, right. The gas station and the minimart burned to the ground. Three confirmed DOAs: the clerk, and the two civilians in the van. Little pickup, possibly white, seen “fleeing the scene.” Got that shit right. But, shit, if all they had was a possibly white pickup truck, we were good to go, man. Had to be a thousand or so of those around Manceford County, right? So… too fucking bad about the civilians, but, you know, sometimes shit just happens. Bad shit for them, but good shit for us-no wits, right? So that was the good news. The bad news was that we got jack shit in the way of money out of this whole goat fuck, so we were definitely gonna have to go hit another one, and, like, pretty fucking soon, man. I was so glad I hadn’t ditched that fucking TEC, man. Hid that puppy outside.

And then, while I was, like, sitting there, just trying to think, you know? Where we oughta go, what the fuck we should do next-the whole fucking world fell in on us. I’ve got my breakfast beer in the air, man, when the door fucking explodes backward off its hinges and about a million armored cops blast into the room. This huge fucking deputy comes right at me and flat-arms my skinny ass right off the bed. Then the rest of the meat, all of ’em these huge dudes with fat red faces, helmets, lookin’ like fucking Star Wars storm troopers, man, they just pile on, twisting my arms behind my back to get those cuffs on, an’ all the time screaming at me to “ get down, get down, get flat, don’t fucking move,” like I could even twitch with all that sweaty meat on me.

Then this really big dude gets right down on the floor with me, and he goes, “You the mother fuckers torched the gas station last night?”

By now I’m, like, seein’ red spots in front of my eyes and my arms feel like they’re coming right out of their sockets, and even with all the noise, I can hear Flash cryin’ again. I can’t see shit, Flash is makin’ like a fucking sheep, and there’s ten dudes sitting on me. So anyway, the big cop grabs my chin, and he asks again, “You the man, asshole?” I mean, he’s so close his spit’s sprayin’ in my face. My fucking arms are making popping noises now, so I think, Fuck it, they flat got our asses, right? So I go, “Awright, yeah, we fucking done it, okay? Now let me breathe, motherfucker!”

Civilians, man. You know this has to be all about those fucking civilians. Night clerk in a minimart? Dude’s gotta know what the game is, what kinda shit can go down. And it’s not like I meant to take ’em out or anything. But fuck: You see two dudes coming through the front glass at eleven o’clock at night with a machine gun? You don’t sit there and fucking watch, man, you put your ride in fucking reverse and you get the fuck out of there, man. Like, every body knows that. Fucking civilians.

Say, man, you got any extra smokes?