Rebecca Coleman - Inside These Walls

I sat at the end of a booth beside Ricky, with Liz across from me glancing over a menu with a pondering, pursed-mouth expression, but my mind was far away from this gathering, fluttering like a moth in too many directions. Make it hurt , I kept hearing in my mind—in my own voice, drenched in the shame and vulnerability of the way I had said it to him long ago. At the time I hadn’t realized how naked I was before him, revealing not only my skin but also the fact that some dark aroused corner of my mind was in bed with Clinton, some gargoyle-filled corridor that had learned to draw pleasure from it. It humiliated me then, but never more so than now, when this murderer would stand before me and remind me that he found my sexual tastes weird and repugnant. That there were some things that made even Ricky Rowan shiver and say no .

The table conversation fell on my ears in bits and snatches. The men’s voices were low and furtive. We were heading back to the Circle K, there were plans for a robbery, but none of this had anything to do with me. In my mind I was already breaking up with Ricky, and the rest of them could go to hell as far as I was concerned. Food arrived. I sipped my orange soda, and I watched as if from a great distance as Chris and Forrest stuffed cheeseburgers into their mouths. Ricky eased back against the booth and draped his arm behind me, rubbing my back in a reassuring, proprietary way. I didn’t look at him even once.

A little past eight-thirty we paid our tab and got ready to leave. Chris and Ricky stopped at the bathroom, and when they came out Ricky was rubbing his nose in the way I knew meant he and Chris had just gotten high again, but I didn’t care anymore. Back in the car, Ricky slid into the passenger seat beside me and the other three climbed into the back, Liz perched on Chris’s lap. “Tally-ho, to the store,” Ricky said, and only then did I process the fact that I would be driving all of them on this excursion. A mean little pearl formed inside me then, and I had the flash of an idea to drive them all there, drop them off, and then speed away, abandoning every one of them to their silly plan. And that’s what I intended to do, casting on Ricky a hard, perhaps even maniacal smile as I pulled into an empty space in front of the store. Out you go , I wanted to say to him, and my foot itched to floor the gas pedal. But Ricky reached over and cut the engine, then pocketed my keys. “Everybody’s going in,” he said, and when they all stood on the sidewalk and looked at me impatiently, I followed. As ridiculous as it sounds now, I was afraid of creating a scene.

Ricky nodded to Mr. Choi, who nodded back but looked at him a moment too long, as though suspecting something was amiss. We scattered across the store like ordinary shoppers; I followed Forrest back toward the ice freezer. At first it looked as though the plan would not pan out. Several other customers milled around inside, and Forrest was beginning to look uneasy. But convenience stores have a way of emptying suddenly, and then there we all were, staggered around the place with snacks in our hands when the abrupt silence descended, because Ricky had a gun pointed in Mr. Choi’s face.

Now, Ricky had worked at this store on and off for several years, and I knew Mr. Choi and his family on a friendly basis. I knew this wasn’t his first holdup, and the calm and smoothness in his motions—opening the register, unlocking the drawer into which they slid the large bills—lulled me into believing he somehow knew this would all end peacefully. His daughter, Eun Hee, was already in the back room, and now Chris was forcing Mimi, the mother back there with a knife. Liz stood at the front door, acting as a lookout, while Forrest milled around the store collecting snack foods and candy bars, heaping them in his arms. Even at the time I felt embarrassed by the sad desperation of this effort, knowing how disgusted and betrayed Mr. Choi must feel to be robbed by Ricky, how he must feel washed over with regret at ever having given him a second chance at his job. It was all unfolding very quickly—the last customer hadn’t left more than a minute ago. Ricky ordered Mr. Choi into the back room; the older man hesitated, his hands at the edge of the counter, and I saw a shadow of dread pass over his face. It struck me that Ricky must have jammed the silent alarm during his earlier shift, and Mr. Choi was just now realizing it. Another shout, a wave of the gun in his face, and he cooperated. They were all in the back now.

“Kira,” Ricky called, and I stepped forward. He scrambled over the counter, then pressed the gun’s cold steel into my hand. “Keep them cool,” he told me, jerking his head toward the back room.

I shook my head and awkwardly tried to hand it back. The words wouldn’t come to my throat, but I didn’t understand this. In my time with Ricky I had watched him use drugs, seen him pocket small items in stores, suspected him of skimming from the cash register; years ago, when we were in confirmation class together, I had twice observed him in touchy-feely sex games with some of the other boys from the class, and had not reported them to Father George. I was used to being a passive observer of Ricky’s aberrant behavior, but he had never asked me to participate against my will. Not until now.

“Just keep them in there,” he said impatiently. When I didn’t move, he prodded me toward the room with a hand between my shoulder blades, then grasped the back of my head in his hand, pulling on my hair—exactly the way Clinton used to—and growled in a menacing whisper. “Do it.”

I nodded. It had been a few years since I felt my insides go dead this way, but now it came over me like winter comes over a forest, as if all along it had only been gone for a season. I walked to the back room and stood in the doorway, the gun held close to my body, pointed in the general direction of the family. Chris slid behind the counter, and he and Ricky began shoving money and boxes of cigarettes into paper shopping bags. I didn’t look at the family, only at the gun. The human beings were blurred shapes, black-haired and red-shirted, in the middle distance. The gun was stark and gleaming, thoroughly detailed. Even now, in my memory, I see it that way. A backdrop of mild color beyond the quivering, shiny steel—all its lines and angles, its weight that seemed too small. During the trial, when I referred to this, the prosecutor and the jury took it to mean I had dehumanized Mimi Choi. In fairness, that is probably true. I didn’t want to think about the people there and so my mind, I suppose, twisted that image like a camera lens turning out of focus. But even then I believed Ricky had no intention of killing the family. This was all a way to intimidate them for the duration of the robbery; surely it was, because Ricky knew these people, and aside from his irritation at his rate of pay, we bore them no ill will.

Liz snapped the door’s deadbolt into place. At the sound of it my gaze darted toward her, and I saw her standing there looking out the windowed doors, her hair a frizzy, wavy blonde mass. To my right I heard whimpering, and now snapped my head in the opposite direction; it was Eun Hee, her bottom lip pulled down like a tragedy mask, revealing little white teeth like a small prairie animal’s. Beside her sat Mimi. Her real name was Mi-yung, but despite speaking limited English she let all the neighborhood kids call her by her Americanized name. She had one hand in a firm grip around her daughter’s upper arm. Mimi’s face was impassive, as if she wasn’t here at all. The Chois also had a son, Tommy, who was a couple of years younger than myself and Ricky, but he was not there. I remember thinking that Ricky must have planned it this way, knowing the wiry, agile young man wouldn’t be here. None of us liked Tommy—he resented his father and whined constantly about his job—but he would have made this much more difficult, for sure.