Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“Oh, just a small theater,” she quickly said when he jumped up from the couch and headed for the door. “And not the box office itself, which would be too risky. All you do is approach this little squirt of a manager from behind, ask him into an alley, take his money satchel, which he’s on his way to night-deposit, and bring it here. The way we planned it, he’ll never even see your face; and then you get a hundred for your labor and we say our final goodbyes.”

“It’d be impossible,” he said. “I’d be petrified, too scared out of my wits to say a word,” and he turned away from them and, unable to control himself any longer, started to cry into his sleeve. But they saw right through his ruse, he thought, glancing up, even though he was weeping real tears. When he was finished, had wiped his eyes, having made sure to irritate them, and after Sylvia had restated what they had on him, he said he might go through with it if they didn’t insist he use a gun. “I’d rather go to prison than terrify some innocent guy with a weapon. I’m sorry, but that’s how I am.”

Around one that evening, Georgie drove him to a bar in a nearby suburban town, bought a couple of beers and, from the bar window, pointed across the street to a very short fat man leaving a darkened movie theater. The man was holding a black bag, which Georgie said contained about six thousand in ones, fives, tens and twenties—“None of it traceable. And no heavy change, either, which he leaves in the theater. We also understand this idiot refuses to call the local police station for an escort, since he doesn’t like shelling out the customary twenty bucks tip they expect for the four-block ride. Now watch him, Davy. At the end of the street, he went left, though if he wasn’t in such a hurry, he’d continue along the better-lit avenues to reach the bank. Halfway up that shortcut is an alley, which we’ll want you to suddenly pop out of, say a few standard, words about his money or his life, take the bag, order him to lie on his belly and then impress upon him to stay put and silent for five minutes maximum or by the time he gets home he’ll have found that an accomplice of yours had done some terrible things to his family. It’s all very simple. And once you get back with the bag and we see you haven’t opened it — we have ways — we promise, and you have my solemn oath for both Syl and myself, to leave you in peace for the rest of your life.”

David told him that if he was able to draw up the necessary courage to carry out such an act, he’d do it tomorrow. He knew the Peartrees were sure he’d go through with it. And in a month — if all went well, and the theft seemed simple and quick enough if everything was like they said — his thesis would be done, he already had offers from two good Eastern schools for assistantships while he earned his doctorate, and again that idyllic image of his future appeared; David as teaching assistant for three years, then instructor, assistant professor and ultimately as a full professor pulling down a nice sum at a job at which he only had to put in about twelve hours a week, besides all the long vacations and breaks and paid sabbaticals and research and travel grants. Considering all this, he didn’t feel one night’s scary episode was too great a sacrifice to make to help him realize these goals. And he was twenty-five, too advanced an age to have to start at a new profession from the beginning.

The next night, David, sweating profusely and shivering, could barely stand straight by the time the manager, holding the black bag and with a sunny after-work smile, came waddling up the sidestreet. When he was adjacent to the alley, David stepped out behind him and said — louder than he’d planned, though no one else was on the street—“All right, fella, if you’re wise you’ll hand over that…I mean…what I’m saying, fella, is…just give me that damn bag already, you big fool — you know what the hell I mean. Keep your eyes shut and in front and your face on the ground.”

The manager swiveled around, just when Sylvia’s Venus mask slipped below David’s chin, and called him a disgrace to everything good in life and then tugged at the bag David was trying to wrestle out of his hands. David, not knowing what else to do but realizing that, small and slight as he was, he was still a half foot taller and much stronger than the man, slammed him in the mouth, which sent him sprawling. The manager threw the bag at him, curled himself up and said “I want to die, I want to die this very instant,” and began sobbing. David patted his head. “Look, I’m sorry, but this money’s not even for me. I had to do it. They’re after me. My whole life depends on it. I’ve kids and everything else to take care of. Just keep quiet and stay here a few minutes and don’t say you saw my face, and I swear everything will be okay,” and he ran out of the alley, got into his car at the end of the street, and drove to the Peartrees’.

The total take of the robbery came to a little more than two thousand. Georgie said “I told Sylvia to tell you we should wait till Wednesday, when the show changes and every lonely dud in the area goes to the movies. But no. She’s always got to have her way.”

“Maybe the manager’s been cheating on the owners,” Sylvia said.

“You also get his wallet, Davy?”

David was still shaking from the robbery, and flashlike images of that tiny man curled up on the ground and bawling made him so depressed that he had to stretch out on the couch, “What you say — wallet? Never a wallet. Wasn’t asked and wouldn’t do. Would’ve been too much like a real crime.”

She stuck a hundred dollar bill in his shirt pocket and told him to forget it. “It’s over, done with. Your first is always your worst. Fortunately, this one’s your last. Now, drink up this nice brandy Alexander Georgie made for you, and let’s call it a night.”

Before leaving, David asked them to promise they’d never contact him again. “If you do, I’m calling the cops myself. I don’t care anymore. Prison would be infinitely preferable to going through another night like this. That poor man, lying there like that.”

That fat disgusting thief,” Sylvia said. “I’m sure a few hundred dollars of the receipts are in his wallet right now. Anyway, we earned enough, so you’ll never hear from us again. And to prove how sincere we are, I’ll get the Bible for Georgie and I to swear on,” but he told her not to bother.

David changed his residence that week. Without telling the landlady where he was going, he rented a one-room cabin on someone’s dilapidated ranch in the hills overlooking the campus. Working without letup, he finished his thesis in a few weeks and so now stayed in the area only till the English Department gave the work its approval. His friend had returned from Paris much earlier than expected and resumed collecting his own unemployment insurance. For money, David now worked as a bartender in one of the beer joints that serviced the college community. Two months after he’d last seen the Peartrees, they turned up at the Oasis, took two counter seats and asked David, whom they greeted as if he were just another well-thought-of bartender, for a large pitcher of beer and two cheeseburgers, medium rare.

“Go somewhere else,” David whispered. This place is hot.”

“And maybe you could rustle us up a side order of French fries,” Georgie said. “Crisp. Make sure to tell the cook we like them crisp.”

“Please. Things are finally going well for me. I’ve a girlfriend. We’re going to get married. She’s going to have a baby — my first child— mine , you hear? In six months, I’m going to be both father and husband, so leave me alone.”

They listened patiently. Then Georgie said “You ain’t got no girl. We know all about you. Where you live with the cows and what poor decent people your folks are in Idaho and what a fine university you settled on near Boston, and even that your buddy Harold’s back and you haven’t been able to cheat the government anymore.”