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"Wake me up when [COVID] ends"

By Cydni S.Published 3 years ago 9 min read
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Photo by Kael Bloom on Unsplash

I walked out the door one final time. Well, that was it, I thought to myself, the end of Vega’s. I trudged down the same, faintly bustling sidewalk I’ve walked so many times, trying not to look back. Maybe it was melodramatic of me to think life as I knew it was over, but it sort of was. My grandpapi had opened this bar 40 years ago. It was a small bar. Not one of these huge, super trendy hipster bars that stayed packed to the gills, but it was the proverbial watering hole I’d grown up in. I’d learned how to be a proficient barback by age 10. I was hired there officially the moment I turned 18. When I graduated college, I just gravitated back there. If I’d played my cards right, I could’ve been working in corporate America, crunching numbers in a cushy little office, driving a nice Audi, and more importantly I would’ve been considered “essential.” Now my unessential ass is being kicked to the curb, along with the rest of my family. I should’ve started making moves earlier, when I was 22 and vibrant, but I just got too comfortable to leave. Now I’m 29 years old and basically unemployable for anything but hospitality work, which is obviously going down the tubes the world over. “Damn COVID,” I cursed aloud, kicking an errant pebble out of my path as I lazily meandered down the street back to my apartment.

I was in denial for so long, smiling through it all. We’ve been through rough times before, and we always make it out somehow, I’d think optimistically, trying not to let my anxiety take over like it had in the past. But dad broke the news to us about a month ago. I haven’t really smiled since. I put on as brave of a face as I could for mom, dad, my brothers, but sometimes I would have to go into the walk-in fridge and cry or take a breath. I wanted to inherit that place one day. If there’s anything I’ve learned about this past year, it’s that dreams can be extinguished instantaneously.

I’m practically aimless. My grief makes me feel like a zombie. I choose to walk down this alley I like to take as a shortcut. Mom always warns me about taking alleys, but I only take it sometimes and only during the day, which it was right now. Though admittedly, it’s kinda dark out. Quite overcast. Perfect weather for my mood. I just wanna go home, turn on some mindless television, and pass the fuck out until the summer of 2022 rolls around. Maybe I’ll never wake up again.

My reverie is interrupted when I trip on something and nearly fall to the ground. I scoff. “So goddamn clumsy,” I admonish myself aloud. I look back at the ground behind me to see what almost made this awful day worse, and see that it’s a little black book. I step closer to it and study the leather-bound cover. I pick it up. It looks ordinary, innocuous. I wipe some dirt off it and open it up. It may be the key to finding the owner. I look inside the front flap. No contact info. Damn. However, as I flip through it some more, I find a list of addresses inside. Some are crossed out, some normal, some highlighted. I look around to see if anyone has rounded the corner looking for it. No one is there. I would usually just leave it where it is, but it’s such a nice notebook. Plus, some of these addresses are highlighted. It must be important to someone. I can’t in good consciousness just leave it on the ground to be snatched or dirtied further. I put it in my olive green coat pocket and walk further down the alley. Hmm, maybe I should turn it into the host at a restaurant nearby—no. I can't deal with people right now. I’m almost out of the alley, a mere ten feet away, when a man with a black mask and black beanie steps in front of me, blocking my path. He points a gun at my chest.

“Drop it,” He says to me gruffly. He’s six feet from me, but I’m assuming it has nothing do with state mandates and more to do with keeping me in his sights.

“Drop it!” He then shouts, waving gun in trembling hand, gesturing towards the little black book.

“Or what?” I say calmly, stone faced. The man blinks his eyes quickly, clearly confused by my demeanor. “Or...what?!” I say a bit more forcefully.

“Or I’ll...or I’ll shoot you!” he replies, jabbing the gun in my direction.

“Ok, and?” I respond, jutting my head out at him like the most confident turtle ever.

“You crazy bitch,” he then says, shaking his head, his blue eyes shifting about. “Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”

“Go ahead,” I reply with nonchalance.“If I’m gonna die, it might as well be today.”

The would-be robber cocks his head to the side. I jerk my body forward briefly to fake him out. He lurches backward slightly before standing up straight again and getting a better hold on his gun.

“What are you doing?!” He says almost pleadingly.

“Look, dude, if you’re gonna rob me, then rob me. I’m not goin’ down easy though.” I steel my feet under me, ready for anything.

What I wasn’t ready for was the sound of another man’s voice. “Freeze!” He shouted from the end of the alley, just behind the robber. It was the voice of a police officer, his gun pointed at the robber’s back. The robber didn’t turn around though. His hands trembled more than they ever had as the sound of sirens got closer. I hear footsteps behind me and turn to see two more police officers running towards us, still far away.

Suddenly, I felt an arm around my neck. Without warning the robber had put me in a headlock and backed us up against the wall. It happened so quick that none of the policemen had time to react or help, as he held me so tight I could barely breathe. The gun was pressed against my temple. There was shouting from more police officers as they covered the exits of the alley.

“Don’t come closer. I’ll shoot her!”

“Drop the gun, Jancov,” the first policeman said. “This can only end worse for you if you don’t.”

The robber was breathing heavy in my ear.

“Let us go through that door,” he gestures to a door to the left of us, “and I’ll give her up.”

My heart was racing. It was crazy. All this chaos, all this terror, it almost felt...nice. It was nice to feel something. Something other than numb. Am I really happy about being held at gunpoint right now? I shake it off and try to stay focused.

“Where’s the book, Jancov?!” a police officer to our left says.

“It’s with her,” Jancov says.

“Let us go, I’ll take the book from her, and let her loose. If you try and follow us, I’ll put a bullet in her head,” he says as he forces me to shuffle sideways towards the door, pushing my left foot to the side, which forces me to lose my balance each time and want to right myself, thus moving us in the direction he wants to go. I can see the police panicking. No one wants to take the shot and risk me as collateral damage. The whole thing is very well strategized on Jancov’s part. But there’s one thing he doesn’t know about me: I have three brothers.

I throw my head back to head butt him in the mouth. He shouts in pain and lets go of my neck. I take the opportunity to duck down out of the way of the gun and elbow him in the gut before running to the opposite wall and into the arms of two policemen. I close my eyes and hear the commotion of what I assume is Jancov being apprehended.

“You can open your eyes now,” I hear one of the policemen say. I open them to find that I am being escorted by two of them as we head out of the alley. I hear something about “questioning” as they load me into a police car.

******

For about a half hour, a lady detective and her male partner grill me, asking me about how the whole thing went down. It’s crazy how it all literally just happened, and yet it feels kind of blurry somehow. Still, I tell them my account all the same.

“I still don’t understand one thing,” the male detective says, “why did you give him so much push back? If all he wanted was the book, why didn’t you just give it to him?”

I pause. “I don’t know I just...didn’t care.”

“You didn’t care about dying?”

“I...didn’t care about living,” I say in a hushed tone. I realize how ridiculous I must sound to these people. I look down in shame. My old therapist always said depression is a thing that ebbs and flows. In this moment I know that my life is valuable, but back there, I didn’t. I can’t really explain it other than that.

“We understand,” the female detective says. I look up at the pair incredulously. The lady cop gives me a compassionate smirk while the male cop nods his assent. “Anyway,” she says, heading towards the door of the interrogation room, “that’s it for us. Someone should be in shortly to have you fill out some forms. Thank you for your time.”

They both take their leave as I wait somewhat impatiently. All I want to do now is call my mom and tell her what happened, to be with my family. They’re probably still at the restaurant, blissfully unaware of what has happened to me. Or even worse, they found out what happened and are freaking out.

Within five minutes, a lady with glasses walks in with a manila folder. “Hello, Miss…” she looks through her paperwork, “...Abigail Vega,” she says with a sigh as if she’s done this a hundred times.

“Hello,” I reply.

She sits down in front of me and looks through more paperwork. She raises her eyebrows. “Well! It looks like you were quite brave today!”

I scoff. “Some people would say stupid,” I utter.

“I’d like to think they go hand in hand,” she says with a smile before readying her pen and paper. “Well, this will all be but a memory soon enough. We just need you to sign the paperwork saying you weren’t seriously injured in any way, and the release forms for the reward money.”

It is now my turn to raise my eyebrows. “I’m sorry, reward money?”

“Why yes,” the woman says, fixing her glasses upon her face. “Did the detectives not tell you?”

I shake my head, genuinely baffled. She rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed by the incompetence of her coworkers.

“The man that accosted you today was Wyatt Jancov, a known associate of some very successful bank robbers. They’ve been robbing banks throughout the east coast. They wrote down all of their conquests, both past and future, as well as the locations of money they’d stashed, in a little black book.”

“That’s why he wanted it back so badly,” I say in shock.

“Mmhmm,” the woman says with a matter of fact nod. “And, as luck would have it, a reward goes to whosoever turns over that little black book as evidence, which you so graciously did.”

“How...how much is the reward?”

The lady smirks and slides over a check. A check for $50,000. I look up at her and, for the first time in about a month, I actually have a reason to smile.

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