Potential: An old friend

This one is an older story I tinker with every now and again. Hope you enjoy it.

It's a bit shorter than Hell's Mouth and it has absolutely nothing to do with guitars.

Potential

The girl stood calm at the bus stop, her face a blank slate aside from the subtle roll in her deep brown eyes.

“True. No, you’re right.” She said into her cell phone.

The stop sat at the corner of an intersection. Sky scrapers and corporate offices loomed overhead behind her.

“How could I have known, really? Yeah,” she said.

Her fingers gripped tighter on the cell phone pressed to her ear. Her loose hand clutched the strap of her purse as she stepped out under the bus stop awning into the rain to cross the street towards the Houghton building. Her teeth clenched as she silently bore the other end of the conversation.

“Stupid of me, yeah. Oh, no question. I know,” she said.

I watched as she passed by me. My eyes wandered casually down the length of her arm from her temple, past the breasts that bounced lightly when she stopped to yield to a car before crossing the street. As she passed pedestrians I watched quietly the hem of her skirt move up and down the back of her thighs.

Terry’s voice came from my left and snapped me back into reality.

“Chris, you ready?”

With a smile and a quick final glance in the telephone girl’s direction, I stood up off the bench and followed my friend forward across the street into the corner store. We walked with a purpose as I pulled up the crimson hood of my sweater and took out the colt from my belt. It was time for some fun.

I’ve heard it said before, probably by some toothless fairy on the street, that there is no greater high than the act of robbery. I tend to disagree.

The job was done quickly. Terry rounded up the customers, not very hard to do in a tiny corner market like this one, and I went to work on the cashier. The first thing necessary to understand if you’re going to be robbing little Mom and Pop shop’s like this one is never to believe any of the bullshit they try to feed you.

“We don’t have access to the main safe.”
“Fuck you. Open it!”
“I’m telling you the truth. I can’t!”
“Fuck you! Do it!”

His disrespecting mouth is silenced by the swift butt of my pistol. A woman screams, how typical, from the corner. I hear Terry tell the bitch to shut the fuck up. Orders must be given with as much profanity as possible for people to follow them. It was the same deal at boot camp. I never understood the mentality behind those bastard drill sergeants until I started doing these jobs with Terry.

I leapt over the counter and gave the slumped cashier a nice kick in the balls. A little reminder of who’s in charge here. The safe, I found, was wide open under the register. See what I mean? Never trust a clerk. I filled my pockets with stacks of twenties and ones. The cashier might have used this stuff to make change during a rush. Now he gets to make another trip to the bank. I shuffled over the counter back into the lobby and accidentally knocked over a box of gum. The contents spilled out onto the floor.

“Let’s go.”

Terry and I, after waving our pistols menacingly one last time for good measure, ran out and around the corner to our parked car. We had mudded the license plate earlier that morning so we were in no rush to leave. Hell, the cashier was probably so dense he might not have even mashed the silent alarm when we shoved our guns in his face.

“What’s the take this time, Chris?” Terry asked.
He drove cautiously but fast. When you need to be gone, you get gone.

“Hold on, I’m counting it.”
The bills felt crisp on my finger tips. It was always nice to find a place with employees that get their change straight from the bank. Usually there is a good three hour window between the new bills initially entering the safe and the customers trading them all in for worn, germ infested, circulated change.
“Not too shabby, Terry. Three hundred and some.”

Not too bad at all, should pay for the gas on our way out of this shitty place.
Terry and I had been partners for a while now. After my brief stint in the army was over I found him flunked out of college. We’d met in a Costello’s boarding house in New Mexico before either of us had started our lives. We were “smart kids.” I don’t think anyone would have imagined us living a life of crime, no punishment. Though, honestly, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be too surprised.

After a while on the road the sun had gone down and the rain picked up. The wipers thumped methodically as we took in the small town lights. We’d traveled so far over the years now that we didn’t even look at the road signs anymore. Everywhere was nowhere and that’s exactly where we wanted to be.

Terry took a hard right and the car wheels screeched. They almost lost traction on the wet pavement as we pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a place called Ophelia’s.

The diner sure as hell looked like it was run by Hamlet’s old girl. It was the kind of place you expected to find a roach in your burger and were actually kind of disappointed when you didn’t.

The grease lay thick on the air as Terry and I fell into our regular booth. We’d been to this place countless times before, just not in this town and not by these names. It was a tradition really.

The waitress, a scarred young woman: her ears, lips and nose cross hatched by piercings, slammed two cups of coffee in front of us before ignoring us the rest of the night. No creamers.

“Just like Mama used to do.” Terry said with a grin making the gap in his teeth obvious. I sat quiet for a few minutes sipping on my bitter black drink while Terry eyed the menu.

“Why do you even bother with that, Terry? You know there’s nothing good and the waitress probably won’t even come back.”

“Maybe I just like to read.”

“Yeah, you’re a real scholar.” I rolled my eyes and took a swig from my coffee.

“Since I always have to drive, I don’t get to read much. Maybe I miss it sometimes.”

“Terry, you flunked out of collage because you never showed up to your lit classes. Lit classes, Terry!”

“What’s your point, Chris?”

“Never mind. Just keep reading the menu; I’m sure it holds countless secrets that will bring you closer to the meaning of life.”

“Like you’re so smart.” Terry said. He rolled his eyes and went back to reading.
A few booths behind us someone let off a loud sneeze. One of the cooks murmured a God Bless You from behind his little window. I rubbernecked a bit but turned back to Terry.

“You know, I never understood that.” I said.

“What?” He was playing with a spoon and some sugar packets, placing each packet delicately into the prone spoon only to slam down the handle. He launched one of those miniature sandbags, it landed on the napkin tin.

“That whole ‘God Bless You’ thing. What’s the point of it?” I said.

“It’s polite.” Terry said as he loaded up another sweet-tooth projectile.

“I’ve seen plenty of total jack asses use that bless you crap whenever someone so much as touches a tissue to their nose. I don’t think ‘politeness’ has anything to do with it.”

“Could just be a habit.” Terry said. The pink packet landed by the pepper shaker and slid to the salt.

“But where do we get it from? Who started all of this bless you?”

“I heard it was during the plague days.” Terry said. I paused and stared blankly at him. Noticing the silence he looked up at me and gave a small nervous smile. “What?”
“What the hell does that mean?” I said.

Terry thought for a moment. You could almost see the two moths duking it out between his ears. “You know, the Black Death? The plague? Middle ages? I think I heard that it started during that time.”

“Okay…” I grabbed a handful napkins and stuffed them in my pocket.

“Well, I heard that sneezing was viewed as a sheer sign of death by plague so the God Bless You was like a preemptive ticket to heaven.”

“That’s bullshit, Terry. Come on.” I said.

“Hey, you asked.” Terry sipped his coffee and grimaced. It was cold.

“Yeah, but even so. Every language has its own little phrase to say after a sneeze. Not all of those cultures suffered the plague.”

“Transference?” Terry shrugged. He started up again with the sugar packets, this time with the yellow brand. He launched one and it smacked the pink one off the napkin tin like a curler.

“Do you even know what that means?” I asked. My eyes followed another yellow packet, this one barely made it off the ground.

“Not really, but it sounds nice.” The table shook as his fist hammered the spoon hard. The sugar flipped backward into the next empty booth. He grinned.
“I think I’m going to start saying Health whenever someone sneezes.” I said. I leaned back into the booth.

“Health? What’s that about?”

“Spanish people say Salud which basically means Health. Cuts out all that God shit,” I said and took of swig of my coffee. “If they can say Health, I can say Health.”

“God shit. That’s pretty funny.” Terry knocked another sugar packet up onto the napkin tin.

“Fuck you.”

“Hey, you’re always so bitter. You should learn how to relax.”

“Just drink you’re coffee”