The Combo
“Nobody’s around.” Seams slapped Gerritt on the back. “Let’s do it.”
Gerritt frowned. “What is this, the twelfth grade?” He eyed the package hanging like bait on the metal rod. It certainly was cool.
He chewed at a fingernail. “Last time, my mom hauled me in front of the store cop. He threatened to throw me in jail the next time. I was five.”
Seams looked sidelong at him and cocked an eyebrow.
“Hubba Bubba. Bubble gum.” Brow furrowed, he slid the Sport Combo Kit from the rack. Under clear, hard plastic floated two polished-chrome racing pedals, like chaos in stasis, trimmed with black-ridged grip in three horizontal stripes, made to fasten over factory pedals as masks for the mundane. An entourage worthy of such glory surrounded the pedals: four sport silver valve stems, a forward molded leather shift knob, and a black leather shift boot to cover the gear stem. All for twenty-six ninety-five. Or less.
“You do it,” he said.
“Bro, it’s your ride. Yours. You know how women love my Mustang. We’re making yours just as good, a worthy ride. And besides,” a corner of Seams’ mouth rose in a grin, “I’m your ride.” Again Gerritt inspected the package, rotating it. Classic ‘80’s rock trickled through the racks from the car stereo display on the other side.
“Too Late” by Def Leppard, Gerritt thought. Now it’s too late … Too late … Too late …
“Dude—”
A familiar twinkle spread through his friend’s eye. He smiled.
“Could be fun.”
Gerritt tucked his new racing pedals under an arm as Seams adjusted his Nike windbreaker, “swoosh” emblazoned on a chest of navy. Composed, the men fled shoulder to shoulder at the agonizing pace of the thief’s casual stroll. A Morse Code began tapping light messages into his “It’s Beta Than VHS” t-shirt; a sort of twinge, twinge-twinge, twinge. Surprised, he glanced a double-check at Seams; the man’s face hinted at no equivalent condition, but rather glowed with a tight excitement. Gerritt laughed to himself, patting his midsection in reproach.
The first time he had seen that glow, that excitement, he had taken the usual shortcut home around the high school gym, when he noticed a stocky boy by the wall holding a pair of chalkboard erasers. Gerritt recognized him from social studies, a kid who slouched at his desk, scrawling car and sports doodles when not busy staring at the ceiling.
“What are you doing?”
All smiles, Sean Seams dropped an eraser into a wondering Gerritt’s hand.
“We are helping Mr. Valencia.” Two tosses later, they walked home through the dirt alley together, snickering, Mr. Valencia’s erasers adorning the roof behind them.
The two men now rounded the end display, walking a tad too fast. They paid for it with a near crash into a smallish woman scurrying from the car stereo aisle, a gallon of blue windshield wiper fluid rocking in her grip. Far too thin, her bony elbows and drawn face offset her eyes, pink and puffy, framed by drab locks. A limp blouse hung loose on wire hanger shoulders. Her eyes locked on Gerritt.
“Oh, sorry. Excuse me,” he said. The puffy eyes refused to release him, the pupils contracting. His chest tightened, a slow comprehension flowing up from his feet. She knows. She has to. The little stick must have been in the next aisle—overheard every blasted word. Did her jaw just tighten? He flashed a look at Seams, who wore an inscrutable face. No help there. Still the Skinny Lady did not look away, did not reply. Twinge.
“Sorry.” The would-be thieves brushed past the skeletal woman into the wide, arterial aisle, pushing towards the southeast exit. A plaque of mothers and couples and wire carts gummed the stretch before them, the Saturday afternoon crush in full swing. A sweating man rolled upstream swinging a can of house paint, forcing Gerritt to either evade or lose a knee. Wal-Mart had never seemed so large.
“Relax your face, bro. Blank expressions look suspicious,” said Seams.
“Shut up.”
The human plaque grew thicker, compelling them to weave around a slow motion of shoppers cocooned in oblivion. Gerritt chewed his tongue. This would not help them put distance on the Skinny Lady. Bring on the exit.
Could she prove it? Of course not, no. Even if the she followed them, what could she do before they slipped out? They hadn’t broken the law. Rejecting this logical triumph, his stomach went on transmitting staccato messages. Gerritt pressed his midsection with his wrist; this seemed to help.
Gerritt was still frowning at his stomach when Seams reached over to tap his chest. His friend’s chin pointed fifty feet forward to a store manager and rent-a-cop chatting under a hanging television at the aisle’s T-intersection, two boulders in a mountain stream, shoppers and carts struggling to flow around them. An urge to chew bubble gum shot through him.
They redoubled the pace, hoping to shoot the gap to the manager’s left, their right, when three little blonde girls in jackets and summer dresses sprang into their path with no regard for the needs of shoppers or fugitives, hopping from foot to foot while waving rubber magic wands at the candy racks, giggles squirting from their mouths. The magicians’ parents floated into the fray over an overloaded cart, debating the merits of running back to the pet section for a larger bag of cat food.
Gerritt, upon deciding it best not to look over his shoulder, looked over his shoulder. To his alarm, the Skinny Lady trailed twenty steps behind, closing the gulf with a jagged gait. Twinge-twinge. He turned back: the girls continued their prance around the cart, and just beyond, the manager and his pal showed no inclination to move off. Arm tightening on the package, Gerritt set his back to the candy racks while Seams stared at the white linoleum, hands in his pockets, thumbs hooked outside. The Skinny Lady bore down on them, the wiper fluid a dead weight at her side. Her eyes paused first on Seams, then on Gerritt. The gaunt jaw tightened; there was no mistaking it this time. She passed so close her perfume offended their nostrils, sliding past the family, face tight with disapproval, pressing straight for the manager and rent-a-cop. She slowed, and, before Gerritt could breathe, slipped around them, disappearing into the cross stream beyond, never breaking her stride.
The two stood motionless for a few beats. Gerritt blinked, as he sensed Seams chuckling at the floor. After another pause, he roused his friend, backing them several feet to the closest opening, negotiating a four-cart pileup into the aisle parallel to the encounter. Pencils and paperclips frowned from listless metal hangers. He waved the racing pedals in Seams’ face.
“This is stupid. We’re almost thirty years old. I’ll just buy the damn thing—or put it back.” A loudspeaker begged Mr. Beck to retrieve his truck from the oil and lube bay.
Seams patted Gerritt’s arm. “Not the point, bro.” He slipped towards the front thoroughfare, his cap’s brim not quite striking Gerritt’s chin. Without looking back, he waved a follow signal, mimicking a baseball pitcher’s motion.
Gerritt watched as his friend rounded the corner. “Who needs a muscle car, anyway?” he muttered. Shoulders down, he followed.
He hadn’t caught up long before a realization struck him.
“We’re going the wrong way.” Checkout lanes clogged with customers slipped by on the left, distance mounting between them and the closer southeast exit with every step. Gerritt peered sideways at Seams, waiting for a response, but he seemed elsewhere. Before long, Seams halted in front of the junior girls clothing department.
“I’m going to be a few minutes.” He trotted off towards the grocery section.
“Where are you …? I can come—” Seams did not hear, leaving Gerritt to hang in the aisle, stranded, like a forgotten sock on a clothesline, trying not to look foolish. A curse threatened to crawl up his throat. Not wishing to go far, he drifted instead into the girls clothing, a tangled thicket of cute shirts and low-end jeans growing from a lackluster hardwood floor. Laying down his burden, he pulled a rather feminine fall jacket from a circular rack, size 5-6 and burnt orange, grateful to rid himself of the pedals, if but for the moment. They peered at him from the wooden slats, which seemed to swallow most of their glory.
With an exhalation, he looked straight through the fabric as Seams’ Mustang roared through his brain, a 2008 Shelby GT500KR, black as hell at midnight, its thick silver stripe shattering down the hood. Gerritt chuckled—he and Seams had dusted the faces of elderly pedestrians by the dozen, revving that engine up and down Creek Street between Fourth and the North Shore Loop. Last month, he had picked up his own Shelby Mustang from the auction, a 1970 but new to him, gray, and in dire need of a man’s touch. Seams claimed, once finished, the women would flock to ride next to Gerritt, as they already did with him. Gerritt pursed his lips. He could not recall any woman, pretty or otherwise, riding in Seams’ Mustang. Oh yes he had, his mother.
Two clearance racks over, a skunk-haired mother wearing no makeup pestered her skunk-haired daughter to try on pink flair jeans adorned with heart patterns glittering on the rear. The daughter, whose makeup made the case for her mother’s abstinence, insisted she didn’t care what her mother thought. The woman retorted she had better care, for she, as her mother, had better taste in clothes, so get marching to that dressing room right now. Mid-sentence, she turned a wrathful eye towards Gerritt, who found instant fascination in the orange jacket’s fine cut. Such a lovely curve. He pressed his stomach back into submission.
Wearying of jackets, Gerritt arched his neck towards the ceiling. Well above, white beams crossed paths with rods and air ducts, flowing in angles past the occasional skylight or fluorescent light assembly. Amidst the pale tangle, a globe twice the size of a basketball hung from a slender, white pole, the upper hemisphere clothed in the same white plastic, the bottom hemisphere black, not solid, but tinted, transparent. For a time Gerritt stared at it, an unsettling thought nagging from behind. Then, it registered. His heart flared hot. Moving his gaze out, he spotted another, and another, and another: silent rows, recording, an army of alien eyes from one of his books. He could envision a blue-vested flunky scanning rows of monitors, guarding the goods from some back room. Darkness played under Gerritt’s face; his stomach pulsated in response. He snuck a look over at the mother and daughter. The girl wore a sulk now, lost in earphones snaking from her head, face hard and distant under skunk curls. Gerritt swiped the racing pedals from the floor. Seams had better appear soon.
His friend had also disappeared on Gerritt that cool, fall evening before midterms. Music plastered the dim living room, while swirling beams of red and blue shot from a worn black box to chase a milling swarm of Independence State’s brightest. He hated standing alone at parties; he never could figure out where to keep his hands.
Gerritt was just contemplating mounting a search, when Sean—now “Seams”—tapped him on the shoulder, his voice pushing out in a conspiratorial undertone.
“Bro, where have ya been?” His eyes danced. “I snagged them, the whole platter.”
An unbelieving smile crept over Gerritt. “Again?”
“Again. Come see.” Twenty cars down the street, Seam’s white station wagon opened to reveal a back seat heavy with sub sandwiches: turkey, ham, roast beef, the works. Gerritt laughed until the back of his head ached. They split the plunder between their two apartments, kings for a week until the bread grew green.
Now, the king waded through the racks towards Gerritt, a box of ice cream bars nestled in a white plastic bag in one hand and wallet in the other, which he slipped in a rear pocket.
“Done. Let’s go.”
Gerritt cast Seams a disbelieving look. The words came out slow.
“I could have bought the pedals with you. Or paid you back.”
“Didn’t have enough for both. You know I used my last check on the car payment. Besides, we need the plastic bag.” Seams winked. “It’ll make us look nonsuspicious.” He strode off, leaving Gerritt to wonder about the viability of “nonsuspicious” as word.
Gerritt leaped after Seams’, stretching out to hold his sleeve. “Sean, look. I’m putting it back,” he whispered. “I’ll save up to buy a whole horde of accessories all at once from the right stores, not this Wal-Mart garbage.” Seams returned his gaze for a breath. He held out the plastic bag.
“It’s not the money, G-Man. It’s the attitude.” The distant rumble of air conditioning grew louder. Fuming, Gerritt slipped the pedals next to the ice cream and the receipt. He stole one last glance up at the globe. Whatever.
Pulling down on the bill of his cap, Seams dove into the front aisle’s swift stream, forcing Gerritt to swim to keep pace. They banked left towards the northeast doors, now the nearest exit. Shoppers flowed in and out from three automatic doors, salmon running to spawn at Sam Walton’s fountain. Deli aromas, at once bread and spice, drifted from the small Subway franchise lurking next to the hair salon, angling to bait a few fish into delaying their escape with a need, not a want. Gerritt pursed his lips and looked forward. Let’s just get it out of here.
“Do you think we’ll set off the alarm?” he said, voice tight and low.
Before them stood triplet electronic gates, stationed before automatic glass doors as if they had sprung from the earth, sentinels, three pairs of hands through which all patrons must traverse to prove themselves.
“Not electronics. We’re fine.”
Huh. So much for the guardians of virtue and inventory. Putting on his best indifferent air, Gerritt trailed Sean through the center gate, the door beyond grinding its salutation. Metal and chill met them with stiff fingers.
“Thank YOU for shopping at Wal-Mart!” An elderly gentleman with flabby skin and a bright brown eye sang out hellos and gratitude from his seat in the airlock, like a troll guarding the gates between worlds. The greeter wore a cheese-yellow smiley face button on his vest. It stared at Gerritt.
“You’re welcome, kind sir,” said Seams, beaming.
Screw you.
All about the airlock’s hard walls blended chill echoes of voices and more voices, wheels pounding rapid fire on cheap tile, carts prying loose from serpentine stacks, a constant groan from the outer doors. Gerritt hugged his jacket closer. He could smell the sun; it was close. The smiley face followed him as they crawled through the influx of shoppers.
“Gerritt! Hi, hi, hi, Sean! Gerritt!”
A female voice ripped Gerritt back from the sun. They spotted a woman in her late twenties bouncing with glee between the old greeter and a courtesy wheelchair, neck-length black hair pulled into a ponytail. His stomach beat out an “S.O.S.”
Seams never missed a beat. “Libby, my main girl. You’re looking lovely as always.”
“Thanks!” He and Libby performed one of those complicated “cool” handshakes. She tried with Gerritt, but he never had been good at those.
“Are you shopping? I’m shopping too!” She gestured at her quarter-full cart, which confirmed she had indeed been shopping. “What did you buy? I bought some cereal and eggs and some toilet cleaner and, lessee, a scented candle—two, this one’s melon scent, ha ha—and a coloring book for my little niece, she’s visiting with my sister from California, she’s so cute, and a hairbrush and, oh! some bubble gum—” Again she proffered the cart, which did, in truth, hold those items. “Do you come here much? I don’t. But the prices are so good maybe I should come more often even though it’s always so, so—”
“Wal-Mart?” Gerritt ventured.
“Yes! Kinda smells like a bathtub, huh? Ha ha! I never get to see you guys anymore, not since college. Remember rock climbing in Snow Canyon? Gerritt almost died. I’m glad I saw you, but I bet we almost missed each other because it’s so big in there—”
Gerritt’s grasp on Libby’s word trail blurred, throwing a fog about the corners of his senses. His stomach pounded more than Morse now; a crazed soldier fired M-16 shells from his gut, rhythmic bursts intent on decimating his intestinal lining. He became aware by increments of Libby rummaging through the cart to present the aforementioned melon candle for olfactory inspection. He forced a corral around his mind.
“Did you get everything you came for, Libby-girl?” Seams asked after she delighted their noses. He had put on what Gerritt termed his “Smooth Face.”
Libby looked sheepish. “I … ha ha ... I have to, uh, go back in, ha ha, after I put these in my car. I forgot to get vitamins … and pick a birthday card for my mom and there’s a movie I want back in electronics, plus this cute dog collar—” She fished through her purse for a list.
Gerritt nudged Seams. With the barest motion, he flicked his eyes first at the greeter, then the outer doors.
“—then my house was such a mess I just had to stop—”
“Let’s go,” he mouthed. Seams’ eyes tracked from the old man to the door. He shrugged and turned back to Libby.
“—you should meet my new puppy Jangles, he’s a ‘mini-me’ of my Bosco, poor old Bosco—”
A shrug. Gerritt’s heart, so hot before, turned to ice. He had never much cared for Seams’ shrugs; he dispensed them like others dispensed dirty looks. The worst had been during the poster incident. Gerritt had liked that girl.
“Whoever took it deserves a kick in the head” the girl had said to Gerritt.
Gerritt bit his lip and looked over the lawn surrounding the dorms. “Maybe a friend took it as a prank, you know, to be funny, bold.” He tried to remember where he and Seams had stashed it three days earlier. Probably under his bed.
“Oh, it’s bold. The note demands dates with me and my roommate for its ‘safe return.’ Not a chance.” Her face grew darker than the approaching thundercloud.
“It’s all in fun. I’m sure they’re cool guys.”
Her face left no misunderstanding her opinion of those “cool guys.” When he mentioned her reaction later that evening, Seams shrugged. And that was that.
“—so do you want to come over now for a visit?” Gerritt’s brain snapped back. Libby was looking back and forth at them, eyes hopeful. “You can follow me, or if one of you has errands, I can give the other one a ride and meet up later.”
Gerritt gave Seams a questioning look. The package’s plastic corners needled his side, sweat spreading from his armpit to the cloth round about. How good they would look in his car, how refreshing to be bold. Yes, refreshing. The stomach went silent for the first time.
Gerritt slapped Seams on the back. “Can’t, gotta go. It’s been great.” He made for the exit labeled “Entrance” above the door, Seams loping to draw alongside as the door ground open, a bewildered-looking Libby receding in their wake. Wind rushing past their faces as they crossed the driving lane, now cooling under the store’s shadow, to the vehicle stalls beyond. The long light of evening had just made its appearance, ornamental trees and lampposts pushing their shadows over parking medians towards the valley wall miles past the city. Seams looked at the plastic bag, now in Gerritt’s hand, and smiled like a proud papa. It was official.
“Wait!”
Libby ran out the door, hair bouncing to the beat of her cart. Before they could speak, she gave both a swift, tight hug before disappearing at a left angle into the parking lot to deposit her merchandise before she returned inside to track down items forgotten.
Gerritt harbored no desire to dawdle. He pressed them at a near run towards Seams’ Mustang, no pretense now, empty vehicles blurring on either side, a dash through time. That pickup truck—Mr. Valencia’s empty chalkboard tray. That car—house parties and sandwiches. That mini-van—a poster in a dorm room.
They dashed up to the black and silver beast, crouched for the spring, parked apart from all other vehicles the way Seams liked it. They flopped into black leather seats, warm from the sun despite the window shades. Seams thumped the steering wheel with his fists.
“Yes! Bro!”
“Here”. Gerritt tossed Seams the racing pedals, who removed it from the bag to admire it. Gerritt watched his friend for a moment, then another. No heat now, no ice. A sadness seeped through him.
“Sean, you’re stuck.”
Seams didn’t look up. After a moment: “What’d you say?&rdquo
;
“I said … I’m running back inside to the restroom.”
“Hurry up, bro. Your improved ride awaits.” He turned the package over to read the descriptions on the reverse.
Gerritt slipped out, closing the door with a quiet snick. He began to run, fast at first before slowing to a pressed jog, passing the mini-van, passing the sedan and the truck, his time machine in reverse. He slowed again as he crossed the lane to the outer doors, the nearest opening to induct him. Gerritt turned, looked back at the distant Mustang, parked apart to protect it from door dings. A silhouette sat in the driver’s seat. There should be two silhouettes there.
Accepting the door’s offer, he plunged through the airlock and into the store. Resuming his jog, he skirted the front of the checkout stands, eyes touching on every mom, every couple, every cart. He passed the restrooms without a glance. Turning into the building, Gerritt raced though the greeting card aisle. Empty. He pressed through more aisles, passing racks office supply racks, candy, and blankets, dodging here and there the forlorn cart or shopper. The Saturday crush had begun to draw down.
“I hope…” he muttered. Then: “Movies.”
He dived deeper into the coil of arteries, a maze, half walking, half running up the aisle he and Seams had escaped, now rather empty. The manager and rent-a-cop were gone. He passed the auto accessories, also bare, darting left at sporting goods, down the rear thoroughfare, no longer looking left or right. Muffled beats and chords from ahead played on his mind, thumping, pinging, coalescing as the aisles slipped past.
Computers, stereos, music, movies … There. There she stood, back turned, dropping a movie into a cart already holding vitamins and a cute dog collar and a birthday card for her mother. Gerritt laid a light hand on her shoulder, calling her by name.
“Gerritt! Where’s Sean?” Libby had blue eyes. He had forgotten that.
Gerritt lifted his chin. “He’s gone. Other places to go.” His stomach punched out one last message. “So Libby-girl, how about that ride?” A classic 80’s rock song sang soft from a stereo the next aisle over, but he didn’t care to make it out.
