The second security guard is lying on his back,
staring at the ceiling with eyes like marbles.

        Your shoulder is throbbing.

        Somewhere, a woman is screaming.

        Your chest is hot with your dry inhalations.

        The first security guard is on the floor with the
patrons of the bank, and he is crying.

        Your brain refuses to focus.

        You close your eyes and force yourself to relax.

        Relax, motherfucker.

        Breathe.

        In through the nose; out through the mouth.

        “Okay,” you say.

        “I’m very sorry that had to get ugly. If that fucking
shit hadn’t tried to be a hero, he’d still be alive right
now. I never wanted to kill anyone.”

        The woman continues to scream.

        You push the sound out of your head.

        It’s too distracting.

        You watch everyone as you walk toward the counter.

        No one is moving.

        There are no tellers at any windows.

        You jump over the counter and find three are hunkered
down. Others have probably scattered. Certainly one of
these fuckers has hit an alarm by now. The police must be
on their way. You need to get the out of here.

        But first, you need to get paid.

        You grab one of the tellers, an Asian guy with spiked
hair, by the back of his neck, and pull him to his feet.

        “Let’s get this over with,” you say.

        “I don’t need to tell you what happens if you fuck
around, do I?” you say.

        The Asian guy shakes his head vehemently.

        “Good,” you say.

        Then you get on with it.

        And now you’re driving and bleeding to death (you
could fuck up anything, couldn’t you, you useless shit) and
you have a sack of money, you’re not sure how much, and
you’re trying to figure out how to stop bleeding to death
without also landing yourself in prison.

        Which means avoiding a hospital.

        You’re not sure how to do that.

        You’ve seen movies where criminals call up some
surgeon who lost his license to practice due to his giving
women back-alley abortions in the sixties or whatever, but
you don’t personally happen to know any of them.

        Also, in case you were letting it slip your mind, you
killed a man.

        You’re a murderer.

        And there’s no way to take back a homicide.
Reanimating corpses isn’t something you’ve ever been good
at.

        Where the fuck are you gonna go?

        Home?

        So your wife can find out what you’ve been doing, how
you’ve been “providing” for her for the last couple weeks?
You don’t think she’d call the cops, but she might. She might.
And even if she didn’t, it would kill your
relationship.

        Then you ask yourself if you really believe it’s
possible to kill something that’s already dead, and you
know the answer to that one: no.

        Shoot a corpse in the face and it’s no deader than
before you shot it.

        And your relationship with your wife is a corpse.
You’d be an idiot not to see that, and while you might well
be an idiot, you’re not that big an idiot.

        She may call the cops when she sees you walking
through the door covered in blood. She may call the cops,
but that’s a risk you’re just gonna have to take, because
you got nowhere else to go. You have nobody to turn to. So
you’ll go home, get out of the sight of the public, and
then you’ll figure out what to do.

        Your only choice may well be going to a hospital. But
you’re not gonna do that yet. Not until you know you have
to. And that time hasn’t come.

        You’re driving side streets so no one will spot you,
and you’re listening to a news radio station reporting
breaking news about a bank robber in a pig suit.

        You stop at a red light.

        You glance to your left.

        And out of the several million people in this
godforsaken city, you see Nova in his Nova.

        He looks at you. Then he looks ahead.

        Then he mouths something which looks an awful lot
like: Omigod it’s him.

        Then the light turns green and you drive out of there
as quickly as possible.

        Does he know about the bank robbery?

        Does he know about the pig suit or did he only
recognize you from the Texaco station?

        What are the fucking chances of the car next to yours
being his?

        You suppose it doesn’t really matter what the chances
are, the fact is that Nova saw you and you’re sure he saw
you were wearing the pig suit, and you’re also sure he can
ID you being as he’s seen you standing not three feet away
twice now.

        And he knows what kind of car you drive.

        But that doesn’t mean it’s over. You drive a common
car. A lot of people are middle-aged white guys who drive a
white Celica.

        It doesn’t mean it’s over.

        Everything could still be okay.

        You pull the car into the driveway and look around the
neighborhood. There is no one about, which is standard.
It’s the middle of the week in the middle of a workday.
Both left and right, all you can see is standard cracker-
box suburban houses.

        You push open the car’s door, and climb out of it, but
as soon as you’re on your feet, you damn near find yourself
on your ass. You must have lost a lot of blood. Your vision
goes gray and black negative space dots dance in front of
your eyes.

        You have to grab the top of your car and hold yourself
there for a moment before your vision fades back up and you
regain your balance. Once you do, you glance around to make
sure there’s still no one around, and once that’s
conformed, you head into the house, dripping a trail of
blood along the way – big quarter-sized splashes of deep
red, which will dry to a flaky burgundy eventually.

        Once inside, you call out for your wife,

        “Honey?”

        But there is no response. Is she at work?

        She must be at work. Sally got her a job. The cunt.

        Good.

        That your wife is at work means only that your life is
falling apart, but right now you’re glad she’s gone. That’s
something you’d rather not deal with.

        You stumble into the bathroom, stripping yourself of
that goddamned pig suit. And you wonder again just what the
living fuck you were thinking, putting that thing on and
walking into a bank with a rubber gun.

        Jesus your shoulder burns.

        As you take off the pig suit, you notice that a piece
of cloth is actually sticking out of the mouth of the wound
(a floppy red tongue). The bullet must have jammed it in
the wound or something. You don’t know. All you know is,
there it is, a blood drenched piece of cloth sticking out
of the hole in your naked shoulder.

        You reach toward it with a shaking hand, and pinch the
cloth between your thumb and index finger.

        Pause.

        Breathe.

        In through the nose; out through the mouth.

        And you pull.

        The pain spreads like the water rings after a stone is
dropped into a pond, outward, ever-widening, sharp in the
middle and dulling as it moves outward.

        The cloth is deep inside your shoulder, and you pull
an inch, two inches, three inches of cloth out of your
shoulder, and immediately drop the cloth to the floor.

        You feel sick to the stomach.

        Tears stream down your eyes.

        You say, “Fuck.”

        And you grab onto the porcelain sink for balance,
looking up at yourself in the medicine cabinet mirror,
looking up and seeing your fat fucking face, pale with
pain, your hair (what’s left of it) dripping with sweat,
your pupils huge (do you see the light?).

        You can hear the thumping of your heart in your head,
throbbing and throbbing.

        “I need to sit down.”

        But before you can find a place to sit, you fall down,
onto your ass, on the bathroom’s tiled floor.

        “This’ll do.”

        You lean back, you lean back just to get a bit of a
rest, you lean back and just close your eyes for a moment
so that you can figure out what to do next, but as
soon as you do you are swimming in a very cold and
black water, and then you simply drown in it.

        The color of your dreams is icy.

        What pulls your dumb bleeding ass back to the surface
is the sound of a voice, the sound of a woman’s voice, the
sound of your soon to be ex-wife’s voice, and what she’s
saying is,

        “Why is there blood all over the floor?”

        Then she’s saying,

        “Oh my god, my fucking god.”

        You lift your eyelids, Christ they’re heavy, and
through tiny slits you see you wife standing over you.

        “What happened?”

        “Shot.”

        “I have to call the police.”

        You shake your head, but she doesn’t hear that, and
she is turning away to find the phone and so doesn’t see it
either. So what you do is you speak. A weak whisper: “No.”

        She turns back to look at you and she says,

        “What?”

        “No.”

        “Why?”

        “My car.”

        “What?”

        “Go to my car. Look on the passenger’s seat.”

        “What are you talking about?”

        “Would you please just fucking do it?”

        She looks shocked, but she doesn’t protest, she just
turns and walks away and you hear the front door squeak
open then slam shut. Then open again. Then shut again.

        And then she appears before you, an angel, just
hovering over you, and she says,

        “There’s twenty grand here. Where’d you get it?”

        “Twenty grand?” You smile. “That’s pretty fucking
good, isn’t it?”

        “Where did you get it?”

        “Did you notice I’m shot?”

        “It’s your shoulder. You’re not dying. Where’d you get
the money?”

        “You can be so cold.”

        “The money.”

        “A bank.”

        “What?”

        “Made a withdrawal.”

        “You robbed a bank?”

        You nod. “And got twenty grand apparently. Now can you
help me figure out what to do about my shoulder?”

        “Why would you rob a bank?”

        “I’M FUCKING BLEEDING TO DEATH! WOULD YOU PLEASE HELP
ME FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO ABOUT MY SHOULDER? WE CAN WORRY
ABOUT WHAT AND WHY AND WHEN AND WHERE LATER!”

        You don’t mean to yell, you love your wife, it’s just
that you’re in pain, so much fucking pain, and this game of
twenty questions isn’t leading anywhere you wanna go right
now. You hurt too much to lie, and you’re too tired to deal
with the truth.

        Your wife nods.

        “Okay,” she says. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

        She walks to you.

        “Let me see it.”

        She examines the wound, and she tells you it went
right through, so at least you don’t have a bullet inside
you. Then she tells you that there’s no way you can go to a
hospital considering the way you got shot, which you
already knew, thanks so much anyway, and that she also
doesn’t know what to do with this kind of injury (she’s not
a nurse).

        She stands. Turns to walk away.

        “Wait.”

        She turns back to look at you.

        “What are you gonna do?” you ask.

        “Look online.”

        After washing the wound with saline solution, then an
antiseptic, your wife bandages it, front and back, and
tells you that’s pretty much all she can do and that you
better thank god that the bullet isn’t stuck inside your
stupid ass, which you know is true.

        “Now,” she says, with you bandaged up and sitting on
the couch, “what the fuck happened?”

        So you tell her. You tell her about losing your job,
about how you didn’t know what to do, about the confusion
and the fear of losing her, about the pain of knowing you
couldn’t provide for the one person in the world you wanted
to be able to provide for. You tell her about the
insecurities. You tell her about how the last thing you
want anymore is to continue to be deadened by another
fucking office job, but you have no other skills. You tell
her about how when you first robbed a bank, you only took
what you needed, and about your decision to go for as much
as possible this time, because every time you rob a bank
it’s a risk and you want to do it as few times as possible.
You tell her about how you were shot, and how you killed a man.

        And you tell her you did it all for her.

        “I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you,” you say.

        “I know I’m gonna lose you now. I know that. And I’m
sorry,” you say. “I’m so sorry.”

        “You killed a man?” She has tears in her eyes.

        You nod. You tell her again that you’re so sorry.

        “You killed a man for me,” she says. “That is the most
powerful thing I have ever heard.”

        And she walks toward you, and she kisses your mouth
hard, and she combs her fingers through your sweaty hair,
and she says,

        “Come to the bedroom with me.”

        “What?”

        “Now.”

        She grabs your hands and she pulls you to the bedroom,
and it’s like some kind of dream. Some sweaty, sexy,
moaning dream, your wife on top of you, her back arching,
her hands reaching out blindly and pinching your nipples,
your right hand reaching and stroking hers (your left hand
lying dead on the mattress attached to your throbbing left
shoulder). And then the dream ends, and you are staring at
the ceiling, your wife beside you.

        “I don’t think,” she says, “I’ve ever loved you more
than I love you right now. What you’ve done … it’s so
fucking romantic.”

        “Where do we go from here?” you ask.

        “I don’t know yet. I just don’t know. How’s your
shoulder?”

        “It hurts.”

        “But you’re okay?”

        “I don’t know,” you say.

        “I think I was spotted on the way home,” you say.

        “The police could be here any minute,” you say.

        You reach out for your wife, and your fingertips find
her fingertips, and you hold hands.

        “I don’t care,” she says. “If you were spotted, then
the police will show up and take you away. But for now,
right now, I just want to love you. What you’ve done …
nobody’s ever done anything like that for me before.”

        “I didn’t do it for you,” you say.

        “I did it for us. I thought if you knew what I was
doing, you’d leave me. But I did it for us.”

        “No,” she says. “My god, what you’ve done … I didn’t
know you were capable of anything like that.”

        “Me neither.”

        You smile.

        “Where did Sally get you a job?”

        Your wife laughs.

        “What?”

        “A bank.” And now it’s your turn to laugh. “A bank?”

        She nods.

        “Are … are you still moving out in a month?”

        “I don’t think I can. I don’t know what will happen
next, but … what you’ve done … I owe it to us to let things
happen organically … I want to find out where we end up …
together.”

        “I’m glad you said that,” you say.

        And for a moment, you allow yourself to believe that
everything might be okay. This morning your wife was moving
out, but this evening she is not. You have twenty thousand
dollars. You made love with your wife for the first time in
two months.

        Yes, for a moment you allow yourself to believe
everything just might work out.

        And then there is a knock at the front door.

        You sit up.

        “I’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.”

        “Calm down,” you wife says.

        “Let me go see who it is,” she says.

        She gets to her feet, and begins putting on clothes.

        “Just a minute,” she calls out.

        “It’s the police,” you say.

        “You don’t know that,” she says, “just calm down.”

        And then she is dressed. She walks out of the bedroom,
and into the living. You can hear the sound of her
unlocking the front door.

        And the sound of the door squeaking open.