The greatest heist

 

They say your brain stops working right once you decide to go straight.

And like an idiot, I had to prove them right by walking into the same bank I once robbed.

Maybe fate dragged my feet back to that place once I had a legitimate pay check from a legitimate bank to cash.

Maybe I was just too weary from a week’s worth of working and didn’t want to go to my own bank since I was scheduled to go down the shore with the boys for the weekend and my bank was too far across town.

Then, waiting my turn on line, I noticed the cashier staring at me.

How I could have forgotten a woman that hot, I don’t know.

But I remembered her and how I had reacted my first time seeing her in the middle of the robbery when I handed her the note telling her to hand over the bank’s money or else.

My second visit was worse than the first, something popping up between my legs I couldn’t hide.

She noticed that, too, especially when I got to the front of the line.

She kept staring at me over the shoulder of the customer she was supposed to be helping.

I’m not an attractive man.

At least not to most women.

My face is too angular and my bones poke through my flesh making me look more like the scare crow from the Wizard of Oz than any action hero.

So I assumed the worst about her looks and figured she’d already pushed the button calling for security.

In my head alarm bells rang telling me to run.

But the first rule in a criminal act is not to panic, no matter what goes wrong.

What if the look she gave me didn’t mean anything at all? Rushing out of the bank would point the guilty finger at me better than any eye witness could.

No, I thought, I’ll just pretend to be what I really was this time, a legitimate customer with legitimate business to conduct.

After all, she might not have known me.

It had been more than a month since I robbed this bank.

She couldn’t have THAT clear a memory of me.

So when my turn came, I moved up to the counter as if I had every right to be there.

She asked me how I was.

I said find and asked the same of her.

She said she had no date tonight and wondered if I was interested.

I nearly fell over.

I was back at the corner store as a kid staring at all the flavors of ice cream I could have, dripping with sweat and lust.

Someone behind me coughed.

I stared at her, wondering why a woman as beautiful as she was had no date.

When I asked, she smiled and said most men get intimidated but she was sure that a man like me would not.

I told her I’m not in the business I used to be in.

She grinned and wrote her number on the back of my bank receipt and told me to call her in an hour when she gets off.

Okay, so I admit I floated towards the door as if I had made the greatest heist of my life, and panicked when she called after me saying:

“You forgot your money.”