At the Bank

I didn't know how to kill a man. But at that moment I did know three things: one, there was an arrogant yuppie standing in front of me in line, one who had just barely aged out of puberty, but who found his masculinity so well established that he would spend fifteen minutes on the phone boasting about his personal sexual excursions and his lush material accommodations; two, that I had nothing to lose; and three, that I had a fully-loaded six shot revolver in the left pocket of my jacket.

This boy, he was one of those very conventional kinds. Those who you typically encounter strutting on the beach, but who, these days, may pop-up in the heart of winter in an alpine ski-resort wearing nothing but pink plaid shorts, a tank top a size too small and $100 sandals. The kind who could get run over by a bus and you'd stop to ask how the driver was doing.

The world was his oyster, and he couldn't help but rub it in everyone's face.

I entered that bank some time after my scheduled tuna-sandwich lunch break at 12:45 pm. In my 7 year tenure at Loyd's Auto Repair, I'd never failed to return before 1:30 and it was upon this degree of trust that I was permitted to leave to take care of my personal affairs. Matters changed when I saw this blond-haired child and his St. Nick grin. I stood behind him figuring that if he was half as important as he imagined he'd care to leave as quickly as possible. Then again, I had no way of determining precisely how long he would want to claim our attention.

Through some sick twist of fate, he sensed me behind him. He sensed also that I was male and then he had the gall to assume that because I possessed the same appendages as himself that I must share his sentiments. He lowered his head in worship to the almighty pocket phone and chuckled in my direction: "Women. Ha!"

What did that mean? Was I supposed to understand this? I hated myself for acknowledging his voice by mumbling back to him: "What?" He didn't respond. Not immediately, he had an urgent correspondence to complete and send away, post-haste, to the highest ranking emissaries of his personal kingdom.

"You know what I mean," he said, the smile fading from his face as he lowered the phone.

"No, I don't know what you mean," I said, regretting every word I placed before the other. My eyes were now lodged into the back of my head and inflamed like iron ingots fed through a furnace.

"Seriously? Like, bro..." I don't think he'd laid so much as a single eye on me. For all I knew he could have thought he was talking to his own conscience. Perhaps one which he'd shot to death several years ago and was now stunned to find alive and well.

At this point I had felt the conversation had reached a respectable conclusion and I felt my pressure recede. But this minion of Mammon would have no such mercy for me.

"So," he began, formulating his thoughts, "what's your poison?" I stood there wondering for what must have been three minutes, about what in god's green Earth gave him the impression that I would care to have such a conversation with him. I poked one hand into my left pocket where, since the shop got held up three years ago, I kept a revolver to shoot aimlessly and hope to scare away the cockroaches, I had never in my wildest dreams thought I'd face one directly and have the privilege of shooting them in the face without resistance. With my other hand I checked the time and discovered that it was approaching half past one.

"Well," he said, "I'm waiting..." I decided at that point that should so much as one second pass 1:30 he would find a bullet lodged in his brain.
"I have no poison," I said, to not grant him not the slightest satisfaction of acceptance. I contracted my eyes, lowered my head and shot pangs of utter contempt and disgust into his face. But he wasn't finished there. He laughed, a most hideous and torture-some laughter.

"Of course you do, you look like you just crawled out of a gutter." he said this while remaining fully engaged in what seemed to be another steady conversation through his phone. I was stunned, that a person could make such a rash judgment. Knowing nothing about the affairs of the other.

Fully absorbed in the malevolence of this force before me, I had failed to notice that the booth before it was empty the entire time. The attendant called him over. He raised a finger in her direction as he continued to type hastily with the other and at this stage I felt a moral obligation to pull my gun out and at the bare minium blow off his face if not his head.

The watch read 1:29 pm with fifteen seconds left until I had every reason to cast his damned soul to oblivion.

Then, I heard a voice, perhaps a guardian angle, but far too exhausted and strained. "Hey, you!" it said. I turned to find a man perhaps ten years older than myself, and barely an inch above five feet high, leaning out of the line and pointing furiously at the boy. A prehistoric trucker's cap hanging from a nearly bald scalp. A weeks worth of stubble on his face and old denim jeans he must have pulled out of a swamp. Everyone turned to face him. Between coughs and breaks to scratch his ass, he howled something along the lines of "You put that god damn fucking phone in your pocket this fucking second or I'll shove it up your ass and toss you out this door."

There was a second left on my watch, but I wanted to see how this would end.