Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll - Todd Robinson

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my amaretto sour jump. The guy just drops after that. Benny holds his hand out to me, palm up, and says, m’lady. It has little specks of blood on it. I take it in my own and I walk out of that place feeling like I left two hundred pounds sitting on the bar.

      That night, after we make love, I tell him I know what it is that he wants. And that it’s okay.

      Yeah? he asks me.

      Yes, I tell him. Just tell me what your plan is, and let’s work together to make it better.

      It turns out that his plan needs a lot of work. Benny doesn’t know much about jewelry stores, or even jewelry. So I tell him about the security room and its own special server, which I can access. I tell him about the loose stone set, and how they keep another box just like it full of cubic zirconium fakes.

      He talks about us robbing it together, like Bonnie and Clyde. You could wear a mask, he tells me. And I just look at him. A mask? What kind of mask could I wear?

      He wants to blow the safe. He’s already got a bomb, he says. He shows it to me, how you just twist these wires onto those connectors and then push down the little plunger and boom! Never thought I’d learn how to set up a bomb. When I tell him that we won’t need to blow anything up, that the best stuff sits out in the inventory room so people can look through it, he gets a look on his face like I just took away his lollipop. He spent a lot of money on the bomb, he says. Well, it doesn’t go bad, does it? I ask. Just put it in the closet, and maybe we’ll need it next time.

      Over the next two weeks I lose ten pounds. I don’t know if it’s all the exercise he’s giving me or if maybe I’m not stuffing my face quite so much, but I haven’t seen the numbers head south in years. In that scale there’s a future where diamond money can buy the gastric bypass, buy new clothes, the kind of clothes they put in the window of the stores at the mall. There’s a future where people could see me and Benny at a bar somewhere and not laugh or gape or guess I’m his sister. And we finally come to make a plan that I’m pretty sure will work. When we finally get it all set out and planned, Benny gets out a bottle of champagne and after a toast he pours some of the champagne on me, and licks it off and I don’t push him away or wonder how I smell. I just look up at the ceiling and see that other life hanging there, so close I can almost taste it.

      The morning of the robbery, we leave from Benny’s place, each in our car. Just before we pull out, I get back out and head back inside. Benny gives me a look like, what? I just point to my stomach and roll my eyes and let him paint the picture. It only takes a minute to do what I have to do. Then we’re on course.

      None of the salesgirls hanging around the display cases say hello. My card opens the door into the back of the store. I boot up the store server, then buzz the door to the inventory room. Jack, a sweet old guy with a gun on his ankle, lets me in. I boot up the security server, and then wreck it with a few clicks of the mouse. I act confused and ask Jack to check a connection across the room. While he does that, I put a little red sticker on the top of the loose stone case, the one without the fakes in it. Jack comes back and tells me the wires are plugged tight, and I say, well, that probably makes it the motherboard. Let me make a call. I step outside the inventory room and dial Benny’s number. He doesn’t answer, but he’s not supposed to. He’s coming from the food court where we first met. He should be here in the time it takes me to take five deep breaths.

      He wears a wig and dark glasses, and he steps into the store with his silver pistol pointing right at Amanda’s face. With his left hand he grabs her by the hair and yanks her across the counter. That’s how skinny she is. And then he’s pushing her to the back of the store and one of the other salesgirls starts screaming. Benny pushes past me without even looking and gets Amanda to open the back door and then just pulls open the inventory door, because I zapped the electric lock when I fried the server.

      A few seconds later the gunfire starts.

      Maybe Jack went for his gun. I don’t know. But there are two loud pops and Amanda screams and then Benny is back out, kicking Amanda in front of him, the loose stone case in one hand and the pistol in the other. Right in front of me Amanda falls down and Benny points the gun down and there’s a bang and all sorts of stuff slops out of Amanda onto the floor. I would never guess she’d have so much inside her.

      Then Benny looks up at me, and even though he’s wearing glasses and a wig I can see him perfectly, and he sees me, like we’re both naked in the daylight.

      I turn so I don’t have to watch the gun barrel raise, or Benny’s face when he pulls the trigger. That’s why the bullets hit me in the back.

      If it had gone according to the plan that both of us knew was a lie, then Benny would have headed out the door next to the Foot Locker across the way, ditched his wig, glasses, and coat in the hall, and put the loose stone case inside the big plastic Gap bag he had tucked inside his pants. He would have gotten in his car and driven to the motel just past Six Flags on I-44. After the police questioning finished, I was supposed to drive there myself.

      But first, I would have stopped at his apartment and unhooked Benny’s bomb from the front door. I would have put the bomb back into the closet and gotten ready for my new life. But I guess Benny will just have to find it himself. See, Benny never really had me fooled. But he did make me hope.

      Damn him for that.

      Viddi and the Bucharest Brawler

      Jónas Knútsson

      For a few blessed hours in the early afternoon, The Palooka Bar is transmogrified into a country club of sorts, a veritable Agora of Socratic discourse where elevated exchange of ideas and sentiments becomes possible before the drudges and working stiffs pour in. By the round table, Viddi, The Cadaver, Rhino, and Hulk the bouncer nursed their Buds, all smiles but each sporting a shiner.

      Into The Palooka Bar breezed Mercy Beaucoup, bringing with him spurts of the autumn sun. “What’s with Petey the pit bull family reunion?”

      “We were gonna roll this guy…” jubilated Rhino.

      “Just wanted to borrow a few rubles and he wasn’t too forthcoming,” Viddi hastened to add.

      The remembrance brought forth a gentle smile across Hulk’s broad face. “We ran out of beer money.”

      “He beat us to a pulp,” Rhino chimed in.

      “That should make you happy,” Mercy Beaucoup acknowledged.

      “Scuzzy’s our one-way ticket to the land of plenty,” Hulk announced with pride.

      “First he lays some rubes on the canvas,” extrapolated Rhino in a reverie. “Then he lays the golden eggs, and then Scuzzy lays some bread on us and we lie back and live the good life.”

      “But, Viddi, you’re not allowed within a mile of a boxing ring after—”

      “Bah, Burgess Meredith can train him for all I care,” retorted Viddi. “Kid’s got the stuff. All I’m going to do is sit back, watch the show, and count the cash.”

      “To Dimitri Sciatscu of Bucharest,” toasted The Cadaver.

      Rhino raised his beer mug high. “Our gravy train just come in, straight from Bulgaria.”

      The first sparring session took place after-hours in the deserted Crooked Nose Gym—Mercy Beaucoup having slipped Stinky the janitor a couple of greenbacks, as the only resolution every boxing association in the land, including the GID, KDJ, KDH, UID, KDD, KKK, YDU, GWU and IOU, had ever agreed upon was to bar Viddi from all matches and venues in perpetuity.

      “No way am I getting into the ring with that shrimpster,” whined Beardy. “I’ll be busted for child molestation.” In the opposite corner, Scuzzy’s pot belly jutted out as he lounged on his stool, his physique offering a scant testament to a predilection for sports, or solid food for that matter.

      “It’s somebody or nobody,

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