Get In, Get Out

“Get in, Get Out”

By

Mark Burr

This man she’s never met, an old friend of her sister’s, was on his way to stick a gun in her face. Her sister owed him money that she couldn’t repay. They made an arrangement. He would come to the gas station while she worked the third shift. No one would be there. The cameras were just for show. No faces would be seen. She’d tell the cops that it all happened so fast, that she was scared, and that was that.

Cheryl played the scenario in her head while smoking a cigarette outside. Some gruff guy, dressed in sneakers and a sweatshirt, dark sunglasses, would walk in and grab some beers, ask for cigarettes. He’d reach into his pocket, pull out the gun, make a real show of it, and tell her to empty the register. This needed to be as real as possible if anyone was going to believe it. She took one last deep drag then drew in some quick breaths through her teeth, shivering. She flicked her cigarette into a growing puddle pooling near the glass front door. She was nervous but knew it had to be done. Her sister was all she had.

Cheryl tugged on the long sleeves of her red and black shirt over her thin arms. The rain was falling sheets only visible under the sodium –orange lights that lined Lemoyne Boulevard. She straightened her name tag and pulled her brown hair into a low ponytail. Her sister had been in trouble before, been involved with the wrong guy, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, said things she shouldn’t have said—but Heather had always somehow wriggled out of whatever trouble was digging its nails into her neck. But this time she needed help to dig herself out and

Cheryl wasn’t going to let her sister down, she had a plan.

Inside the Quick Stop there was no sound except the faint hum of coolers holding beers and sodas and the flickering click of one of the florescent lights like a moth repeatedly colliding with an exposed bulb on someone’s back porch. The store was completely empty and had been for almost an hour. She walked behind the high counter with the cigarettes and cash register and let her fingers trace the black plastic of the phone sitting on the counter. She picked up the receiver in her hand, listened to the dial tone until the noise stopped pouring out and hung up the phone. Cheryl tried to ignore the facts and figures bouncing between her ears, tried to ignore the disapproving faces staring up at her from the papers stacked on the counter and gripped her right hand on the plastic phone again. Seven numbers were pressed into the green-glowing numeric keypad and she held her breath without realizing it.

She toyed with the display of lighters and arranged the pennies in the tray by the register until Lincoln’s head was visible and upright on each one. The phone stopped ringing and Heather’s small voice spilled out of the receiver. It was three in the morning and if they were going to do this, there was no better time.

“Will you come pick me up from work at five?” said Cheryl into the receiver held between her chin and shoulder. She had rehearsed the line several times over in her head that night, since the beginning of her shift. This was the signal. When Cheryl called Heather then it was time. Heather would let the guy know it was time, that no one was there. “I need you to come get me.”

“Okay, I’ll be there.” Heather’s voice sounded small and like a child’s.

No one would question a phone call made to her sister. There were no ties between Cheryl

and the man who would rob the store. The cops would think it was a random act and thank God that no one was hurt. No one would be caught. Cheryl kept telling herself this. It became a mantra.

Cheryl had opened her pack of her cigarettes and bounced one against the blue countertop, and began staring out the glass front of the Quick Stop. Beneath the counter the barely audible crackle of static glowed on the closed circuit television. If ever there was a night to do this, this was the night, she thought, and put one foot in front of the other along the gray tile toward the glass doors, and readied the green lighter in her pocket. The rain poured down invisible against the black lightless sky. As she stepped outside into the small, dry area under the awning she felt a cold chill cut through her shirt and into her nerves. She pulled the smoke into her lungs in anxious breaths, and waited for the glow of headlights along the rain-soaked street.

“You don’t understand, they have guns,” said Heather as she circled the living room of Cheryl’s apartment like a caged animal. She had filled the porcelain ashtray with an elephant painted on it, a Christmas gift from a coworker, with cigarette after cigarette. Her face was flushed and her teeth chattered while she spoke, the make up around her eyes was smudged.

“What do you mean they have guns?” Cheryl was sitting in a green recliner she had bought at a yard sale, drinking beer out of a glass bottle. She lifted her cat off her lap and brushed the hair off her jeans.

“I mean, they have guns. They’d kill me.” Heather was sitting on the brown leather couch their aunt gave to Cheryl after she bought a new living room set. She bounced her right leg up and

down and caused the ash from her cigarette to fall into the tan carpet that covered the apartment floors.

“They won’t kill you—”

“They’d kill me! Or worse, you don’t know these guys, Cheryl, they pointed a gun straight in my face.” Heather started crying now, silently, but Cheryl could see her chest was heaving.

“Just hide out here for a while. Get a new phone number, you know, lay low.”

Heather stood up from the couch and smashed her cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table. She walked over to the vertical blinds covering the window, lifted one and peered outside, and then started pacing again. “I can’t—they know where I live, what my car looks like—everything. They know I was the one driving Bobby. I didn’t know what he did. I thought I was just picking him up from Julio’s house.”

“Where the hell is Bobby?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t answered his phone, all his stuff was gone from where he was staying—I’m fucked Cheryl, I’m fucked.”

Cheryl stood up and sat down next to her sister and set her hands on Heather’s shoulders. “We have to go to the police.”

Heather shook her head, her earrings made a jingling noise. She made a gulping sound as she tried to breathe. “And what, tell them that my boyfriend robbed a drug dealer?” She rubbed her eyes with the side of one hand and stared down into her lap. “Do you have any clue how much more shit I would be in if I did that?” She bit down on her lower lip and turned her head away

from Cheryl. She stared at her reflection in the TV and blew her bangs out her eyes. “I’d really be dead.”

“What are we going to do then?” Cheryl asked as she brushed the hair out of her sister’s face.

“Give them the money and be done with it.”

A black Eclipse with windows tinted so dark that they couldn’t be seen into was pulling into the Quick Stop when Cheryl finished the final drags on her cigarette. The car was slick with rain and left wet tracks along the dry patches of concrete in the gas station’s lot. She knew what this meant. It was time.

She put her cigarette out in the ashtray by the glass front doors of the Quick Stop. She had waited outside for fifteen minutes after calling Heather. She found herself praying that no one would show up, even though she knew someone would. They would. They were here. She pulled open the glass doors and walked slowly along the grey linoleum floor and took her place behind the counter like an actor on a mark. Cheryl clenched her teeth and started breathing through them, she balled her right hand into a fist without realizing it. She stood behind the register and stared out the glass doors at the idling car next to pump number four. No one would be caught she said to herself again and again.

She checked the small TV under the counter even though she knew that the cameras weren’t recording anything. She just had to be sure. Then she waited.

The driver’s door finally opened as Cheryl clicked her teeth and pressed her heels into the linoleum through her shoes. The man was tall and lanky, dressed in a black sweatshirt with a dragon and skulls embossed on the outside. He had a black beanie on his head, jeans, and old tennis shoes that were too big for his feet. He was in his twenties and kept his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt. She counted his steps as he walked up to the store, thirteen, before he pulled open the glass doors of the Quick Stop.

With every step he took his shoes made wet squeaks. He lingered for a while in the snack aisle, grabbed beef jerky and peanuts before he walked toward the beer case. He grabbed two tall boys and fumbled toward the register. His eyes looked hollow and red like he was tired. He set everything on the counter in one big heaving motion and looked Cheryl square in the face. She felt her eyes widen.

“Is that all for you sir?” Cheryl scanned each item without waiting for an answer.

“Pack of cigarettes,” he said.

She turned her back to him and grabbed the cigarettes from the counter next to the wall. When she turned back around a gun was gripped in his hand, resting on the counter, and pointed straight at her stomach. She let out a gasp without meaning to and dropped the cigarettes on the counter—more surprised than she thought she would be when it happened. Her body felt frozen.

“Empty the register—you know the deal.”

She picked the cigarettes off the counter and placed them into the bag and opened the register with the press of a button. She never changed out the drawer from the second shift. The

register was full of twenties, fives, and ones, and a few hundred dollar bills that were kept under the drawer. Cheryl was shaking as she pulled out all the bills and dropped them into a paper bag. He jerked the bag out of her hands when she finished and flashed her a crooked smile with a wink. “Are we good?” she asked but he didn’t say anything. He just kept moving while she tried to stop shaking. He walked out of the store and jumped into the black Eclipse that was still running by pump number four.

Cheryl’s ears were ringing and she felt dizzy. Her stomach was in knots and she tried to remember what she had to do. She needed to call the police. But all she could focus on was the faint humming of the coolers in the store and the slow, steady rain beating on the roof. She was so scared. Her body was so scared. She told herself it was instinct, not her afraid. She needed a cigarette. She picked up the phone and put it in the right pocket of her jacket. She would call while she was outside.

She had done it. It was done. Everything had gone to plan.. All she had to do now was keep her story straight. Lay it on thick. A smile crept onto her face as she lit her cigarette and the rain poured down hard. A red Dodge Neon was pulling into the parking lot as she pressed the numbers 9-1-1 into the keypad of the phone. She waved at the man pulling into the parking space to the right of her. “I’m sorry I can’t ring you up for anything, we just got robbed,” she told him as he walked toward the glass doors of the Quickstop. He looked around behind and then back at Cheryl.

“What kind of you game you trying to pull here?” he asked. He was wearing faded jeans, a baseball cap with the silhouette of a dog, and heavy black work boots.

Cheryl didn’t understand. “What are you talking about? What game?” She could hear the operator on the phone, the voice felt faint and distant.

“911, where’s your emergency?”

The man in boots looked at her before shaking his head and hands at her. “Fuck, now you done and did it. You just fucked us both up girl,” he said.

The operator repeated her question, “9-1-1, where’s your emergency?” Cheryl dropped the phone onto the concrete. The plastic cover holding the battery in snapped off. She realized what had happened. This was the guy she was waiting for.

“You just fucked us both up girl,” the man said again as he got back into the Neon and started the engine. All Cheryl could think of then was that there was a gun in the safe of the owner’s office. She was just going to have to do what she had to do. And that was that.