Not even sunup, and Barry was already pounding at the door, yelling, “Wakey wakey, eggs, and bakey!” This got Johnny Cash howling as Jenny let out a ream of curses at the mutt. I’d just fallen asleep because of the coke rush. This was my third time ingesting the drug, and therefore I was now a full-on cokehead. But Barry had been right. The nerves were gone, only impulse remaining. I squeezed toothpaste in my mouth, brushed my teeth with my tongue, stuck the gun in my sweatpants, and I was out the door.
Barry waited, pinching a cigarette between two fingers, his pupils doing a samba. He flicked the cigarette to the ground, followed by a hock of spit. Even at such an early hour, the sweat clung to his forehead, the sun brutal. His glasses fogged from condensation. He took my face in his hands.
“You ready?”
He asked, almost afraid of my answer. At least, that was how it seemed. My defiance could spread. How much power did I have with the others? Steph under Troy’s sway, Jenny a lone island, the two of us only battling for Mom’s allegiance. He didn’t have to worry since she’d always lean toward him.
“Of course I’m ready.” I gave an extra sniff to prove it.
Jenny slammed open the RV’s door, a growl coming from her Mama Cass mask.
“There’s my Jenny Henny,” Barry said, clapping his hands.
“I’m not your fucking Jenny Henny.” She pointed to her face. “You call me Mama.”
“Mama, of course, Mama,” Barry said, winking at me.
I winked back, still in awe of him. Looking back, there’d been a nagging doubt starting to fester. That my once emperor might not have clothes. But we were supposed to idolize our fathers. Who could blame me for being naïve?
“Your mother’s getting Steph up. Troy’s taking the bus over. Don’t want his car out front.”
I wanted to find out whether Heidi had asked Troy about me, but hearing it in my brain sounded stupid. If that girl wasn’t throwing darts at my face, she had forgotten about me entirely.
We waited in the pool area for Troy because Grandma Bernice might be up with her hearing aid turned on high. The sun peeking over the horizon, an orange flame mixed with purple dust. I swatted mosquitoes on my arm as one dug in.
“Where’s my hunka hunka burning love?” Troy asked upon entering, and Steph smooched him on the mask’s lips. Mom gave them an ah, young love look. I have to admit I was eager for Steph’s heart to be broken. If I couldn’t have Heidi, I didn’t want her to find happiness with Heidi’s brother, even after our heart-to-heart last night.
Barry unrolled the blueprints for the bank. We went over our assigned roles three times. Barry, taking care of the managers, Troy focused on the tellers, Mom on the security guard and the door, me on the advisers, and Jenny on the customers. He wanted us to say what we were doing seamlessly. Any blip caused us to start over again.
“This is the precision part of the plan,” he said, as Troy “yeah yeahed” in agreement, “but we leave ourselves open to chance. That’s where impulse comes in.”
The butt of the gun felt cold in my sweatpants, jammed against my ass crack. There could very well be a scenario where, after today, I not only shot a gun, but hit someone with a bullet.
“Can I get a Whoa Gimmelmans?” Barry asked, all shining teeth. Our guarantor that everything would go smoothly. Those teeth, grinding, revealing the fear within if I looked hard enough.
We all gave an absurdly soft “Whoa Gimmelmans,” since everyone in the Orthodox complex was still sleeping.
Except on our way to the RV from out of Grandma Bernice’s bedroom—which I didn’t even know faced the pool area—an old woman stood in curlers at the window, gumming her lips. What were we all doing by the pool area so early in the morning? Her antennae raised.
But I didn’t mention it to Barry, not when he seemed so gung-ho, directing his troops to the Gas-Guzzler. Mom, at his side, gently running her finger up and down his arm. He whispered in her ear, and she nodded like a robot over and over, receiving whatever information he gave. When she saw me, she smiled, trying to assure me that nothing would go wrong. I pretended not to notice her trembling lips.
Inside the Gas-Guzzler, we were quiet. Masks were donned as Steph drove, searching the radio and deciding on Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Something?” My coke high had turned into a numbness. I guessed that was good, too. Like this was our normal. The clock said just after seven a.m. We’d go in at nine sharp, time enough for the managers to settle in, but there wouldn’t be too big a crowd, only enough to add some wallets and jewelry to our bounty in case the safe turned out to be a bust like last time.
We waited on the corner, barely anyone on the street. The sun, hot through the window, burning my face. Steph flicked to another station. “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House. Right before eight a.m., one of the managers came up to the doors with a ring of keys. He wore a top hat like he was Russian and had payot, strings of curls instead of sideburns, since it was against their beliefs to shave the corners of their head. He wasn’t too old but walked with a limp. Before he entered, he paused, and I felt the food I consumed last night rushing through my guts. Was he aware of us? His head tilted toward the RV, the sun, a laser reflecting off his eyeglasses. But he only stopped to sneeze, which he caught in a handkerchief and stuffed back in his front pocket.
No one else showed up for another ten minutes until his doppelgänger walked up to the doors and got out a ring of keys, too. After another ten minutes, two of the yarmulkes from the cubicles showed up together, seeming to be in an intense conversation. One pointed to the sky, and the other shook his head. Probably about God or something.
“Okay, that means there’s probably only two managers, since any others should have arrived already,” Barry said. Then, something caught his eye down the street. “The security guard,” he said, and we all watched the man huff and puff his way up to the door. The man was very overweight, his stomach doing circles as he hurried, everything jiggling. He caught his breath at the door, his cheeks bright red, his shirt soaked from that one-block trot.
“We hold off until nine,” Barry said calmly. “That’s our witching hour.”
At eight-thirty, the bank officially opened. The few tellers had arrived with the third adviser with a yarmulke and a few customers: an Orthodox woman with a stroller and two men, one old and the other young and bald under his yarmulke.
“We wait until the mother leaves,” Barry said. “I don’t want to deal with babies.”
Mom agreed with a light sigh, like she wanted to say something but wouldn’t. When nine o’clock arrived, the woman with the baby in the stroller still hadn’t exited the building. A heavyset Orthodox woman was the only other one who entered. She had an air about her like she was annoyed with everything. A real sourpuss.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Barry said, speaking only to Mom.
“But—”
“Judy, honey, baby, people will be filling up the streets. We’ll have to move it to tomorrow.”
“Oh,” she said, like she swallowed a bug.
“Street is clear,” Steph said, her eyes in the rearview. “Welcome to the Jungle” played softly from the radio.
“Showtime,” Barry said, donning his Jerry Garcia mask, white teeth flashing through the mouth hole.
Troy opened up the RV’s door, and we filed out. I nearly tripped over my feet but managed to maintain. Barry gave a glare that said hold your shit together. He got out and led us across the street. The sky clear, the pavement scorching. My heart doing double-time as my view spun and righted itself. Barry pulled open the door to the bank, and we raced inside.
“Everybody be cool,” he said. “Keep on truckin’.”
I didn’t know if he was talking to us, but then I saw him pointing the gun around the bank. A woman let out a scream. I wasn’t sure if it was the woman with a baby or the heavyset one.
“Give me your gun,” Mom said, a noticeable quiver in her voice as she rammed her gun into the security guard’s cheek. He blew out a gust of air and handed it over. She pocketed it without taking her gun off the guard.
“All of you, hand over the cash,” Troy said to the tellers, three of them pissing their pants. “And don’t try tripping any alarms. We don’t want to hurt anyone.” Troy gave his Elvis an accent that didn’t sound so much like Elvis.
Barry was already gone, down the hall.
“All right, out of the cubicles,” I said to the three advisers. I tried to make my voice sound more adult, but I was high in the throes of puberty. They followed in a line. “Kneel down,” I continued, watching them all obey. “Now, lie down.” Once they were on the floor, I checked all of their pockets, pilfering wallets and tossing them to Jenny. She was dealing with the heavyset woman, who had been the one to scream. The woman’s knees were knocking together, and she was in full cry mode. She blubbered and wailed.
“Quiet,” Jenny said, kicking her in the knee. The heavyset woman folded to the ground in shifts. I went to tell Jenny to be easy on her when Troy got in my face.
“The cameras,” he said, passing me the can of spray paint.
“Right.”
With one eye on the three advisers on the floor, I hauled out a chair and jumped on top. By the time I sprayed all three cameras, Mom had blockaded the front door with the security guard’s folding chair, Jenny was getting the wallet from an old guy waiting in line, Troy was yelling at a teller who couldn’t think straight to open the cash register, and Barry came out of the hallway pushing the two managers.
“Which one of you has the keys to open the safe?” he asked, and with shaking hands, they both raised their ring of keys. One muttered under his breath, “May God punish you,” which Barry answered by slapping the man across the face. A dab of blood appeared on the man’s lip. “You,” Barry said, picking up the other one. “Lead me to the safe.”
“Okay, okay,” the other man muttered. He was very skinny, his legs like sticks. They disappeared through a door with a key code.
A knock rapped against the front door. Everyone hushed. The glass door cloudy. A vision of a blurry person outside. I didn’t see any red lights or hear police sirens.
“Garcia?” Mom asked, but Barry had already gone. “What should we do?”
“Stay there,” Troy said to the tellers. He pointed the gun at each of them. “Do you like your faces? Keep quiet, and I won’t ruin yours.” I could hear an audible gulp coming from each of them.
Jenny was now dealing with the woman with the baby in a stroller. The baby, miraculously sleeping. The woman handed over her purse.
Troy leaped to the door, saying, “I got this, I got this.” He clapped his hands by the security guard’s face. “Get up, get up.” The overweight guard took his time. “Faster tubby, faster.”
When the security guard finally rose, he was sweating so much he had full moon pit stains under his arms.
“You tell whoever it is to come back later,” Troy said to the security guard, whose chins all bounced as he nodded. Troy jammed the gun in the guard’s squishy back. They moved the chair, and the guard opened the door and poked his head out.
“Repairs,” Troy whispered in the guard’s ear.
“We’re closed for repairs right now,” the security guard said.
“But there’s no sign.” The voice, shrill enough to make my goosebumps rise.
“I apologize for that, ma’am.”
“What is this bobbemyseh?” the voice squawked.
Holy shit, could it be…?
“I need to cash my social security check,” the voice squawked again.
If it wasn’t Grandma Bernice, then she had someone else running around Boca Raton who had stolen her exact voice.
“Grandma Bernice,” I said out loud and then swallowed the word. Had anyone heard? One of the adviser’s eyebrows rose, but Mom and Troy were too preoccupied.
“Tell her thank you and to come back later,” Troy whispered in the guard’s ear.
“Thank you, and come back later,” the guard blubbered.
“Now shut the door,” Troy whispered.
The guard shut the door. I could see the outline of Grandma Bernice, crossing her arms and refusing to leave. She held up her hand to knock again and then seemed to think twice and turned away. Surely, she had noticed our RV. We needed to get walkie-talkies for the future, so Steph could contact us for emergencies. Finally, Grandma Bernice left.
“Hendrix,” Mom said, her tone flat and unbothered. “Check on Garcia.”
I thrust my gun at the three advisers one last time—the one Mom thought was fake—then skipped through the door left open by Barry. Down a long hallway that smelled of cleaning fluids, I entered a vault. Barry had his gun pressed against the manager’s ear as the manager turned a combination lock.
“How’s it going here?” I asked.
Jerry Garcia regarded me and turned his attention back to the manager. “This slow poke needs to hurry up.”
“I have arthritis,” the manager said.
“We all got something,” Barry replied and pressed the gun harder against the guy’s ear. The lock finally clicked, and the vault opened. Barry had a shoulder bag he tossed my way and indicated to grab the loot. There were freakin’ shelves of stacked cash! I saw hundred-dollar bills filed in about thirty separate stacks. All of it went in the shoulder bag. “Now, the valuables,” Barry ordered the manager.
“They are all in separate lock boxes,” he said, very deliberately, like we were slow. “We don’t keep those keys on our ring.”
The wheels turned in Barry’s skull. Would he order the manager to get them no matter what? That would take a ridiculous amount of time.
“Forget it,” I said, hoping to bring him back down to reality. The manager curled into himself, anticipating an attack. He held up his hands in defeat.
“Yeah, yeah,” Barry said. “Forget it. Any certificates, too. Someone else’s stocks or bonds are no good to us.”
“Right,” the manager said, like he was trying to suture the wound of this robbery.
Barry swatted him with the gun. “Don’t tell me what’s right and what’s not. That’s for me to decide. In fact, let’s put everyone in the vault.”
“What?” me and the manager said at the same time.
“So they don’t come after us. So we have a head start.”
From out of his waistband, he removed some cords. I hadn’t seen him bring them, probably because they would have scared us. But he was right. This did give us a better shot at escaping.
“Hendrix, start bringing people here,” he told me.
As he was tying the manager up, I ran back out to the main room. I did a quick glance to make sure nothing had gotten out of hand since I left. The tellers had laid on the ground. Troy pacing in front of them, a full bag slung over his arm. Jenny’s bag filled up as well.
“Garcia wants them locked in the vault,” I said to Troy, who pondered it for a second.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “All right, let’s go.”
He clapped for the three tellers to get up and poked them in the back, directing them down the hallway. Without him or Barry there in the main room, I felt vulnerable, like things could go sideways easily.
“I have to use the bathroom,” the heavyset lady said out loud.
“So, go in your pants,” the older man in line said.
“I absolutely will not,” the heavyset lady declared.
“Shut it,” Jenny said, whapping her with the bag of purses and wallets.
“Ohhh,” the lady said. “Ohhhh, ohhh, ohhh, my head.”
“Lady, shut it!” Jenny yelled, causing the baby in the stroller to wake with a cough. The baby gurgled for one long second before letting out a deafening scream.
“Jesus, Jen—Mama,” I quickly corrected.
“My baby,” the baby’s mother whined. She had tears in her eyes as well, her hands clasped together. “Don’t hurt my baby.”
“We’re not hurting your baby,” I told her.
“Don’t hurt my baby,” she wailed again.
“No one’s hurting your baby,” Jenny yelled at her, too.
“Let me quiet him down,” the mother said.
I looked to Mom for answers, who shrugged. Then she made a snap decision and picked up the baby from the stroller. The mother gasped as Mom rocked the baby in her arms while still holding the gun.
“Yes, sweetheart,” Mom cooed. “It’s okay, you’re okay.”
She started singing “Piece of My Heart.” She used to sing this to me when I couldn’t sleep. Barry would too. Janis Joplin with the mask singing her most known song. The baby still cried but softer. “We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Mom told the mother.
“Well, you have,” the heavyset woman said.
“Quiet,” the older man told her.
Troy returned with Barry, who made the three advisers get up. In a single file, they were pushed down the hallway.
“Let’s get the rest,” Troy said. “Up, up.”
He picked up the two men in line and nodded for Mom to do the same to the two women. Mom gently placed the baby back down in the stroller.
“I’m sorry,” Mom whispered. The woman didn’t respond. She clasped her hands around the stroller and pushed it down the hallway.
“You too,” I said to the guard, since he was the last one.
The vault was stuffed with people once we got to it. Barry had tied up the tellers and was working on the final adviser.
“Oh no, I’m claustrophobic,” the heavyset woman yelled. “Oh no, oh no.” She waved her arms around like she was directing a plane.
“Be quiet,” Barry muttered.
“Oh no, oh no, no, no, no, no.”
Her face had turned red, and she was squirming around so as not to be crammed in the vault. The baby started crying again.
“Look what you did!” Jenny yelled in the heavyset woman’s ear. She bit the woman’s hand.
“Owww,” the heavyset woman wailed, flailing around and nursing her hand.
“Mama,” I said, moving Jenny aside. “Go in the corner.”
Jenny stuck her tongue out through the Mama Cass mask.
That was when I saw a very tiny gun being raised. It took me a moment to decipher who held it, since the person was not wearing a mask. It came from out of a sock, held in aquivering hand.
“No, no, no,” the older man in line said, who had seen it too.
“What’s going on?” Barry asked, swiveling around.
“Bear-bear!” Mom screamed.
The gun fired, a loud blast that caused me to cover my ears. The security guard flung back from the recoil, his face pinched and tomato red. Troy was upon him instantly, wrenching the smoking gun from his hand. They wrestled on the ground until Troy freed the tiny gun and proceeded to punch the man in the face with it. My eyes followed the path of its trajectory, Barry on the floor with blood leaking out of him. Mom ran over, scooping him up.
“My ass,” Barry cried, poking his ass in the air where the bullet lodged in good.
“We have to go,” Troy demanded, throwing the security guard into the vault.
“Bear-bear,” Mom said, bathing him all over in kisses.
“Fuck, he shot me in the ass,” Barry said, trying to get up off the floor and falling back down. “This fucker shot me in the…”
Barry lunged into the vault on top of the guard, screeching at the guy. He punched him hard over and over until the guard was a bloody pulp, and I couldn’t even look that way anymore. The heavyset woman started carrying on louder than before, so I cocked my gun, almost wanting to put a bullet in her brain. The baby still cried, and everything seemed like it was unraveling.
“No, no, no,” Mom said, swatting my gun away. It skittered across the floor. Did she know it was real?
“Garcia, c’mon,” Troy yelled, dancing over the people in the vault and yanking Barry off the guard. The guard’s shirt was painted red, him moaning like he was dying. I ran across the room and grabbed my gun, poking it at the last two people to get in the vault. They complied, both of them eyeing the beaten guard.
“Guy avek,” the heavyset woman said, waving us away. “Kayn ayin hara,” she said over and over. “You’re evil in God’s eye. God watches. He sees you. He sees you all.”
I got close to her, had to stand on my tiptoes to do so.
“You’re lucky you didn’t eat this bullet,” I said.
“A curse,” she belted out. “A curse upon you all, you nonbelievers.”
Barry limped by her and put his bloody hand in her face, pushing her over. She fell hard. I could hear her tailbone hit against the ground. She cursed at us in Yiddish as we slammed the vault door, hurried out of the room.
“Bear-bear, are you…?” Mom asked.
“I’m okay, I’m—it smarts, but let’s get out of here.”
We emerged from the bank like a band of wounded warriors, a trail of blood left in our wake. The street, still blissfully empty as we hurried to the RV. Steph opened the door in shock as we leaped inside, the shock radiating on her face even through the Debbie Gibson mask.
“What happened, what happened?” she asked.
“Drive, you drive,” Barry ordered.
She blinked in response.
“Stephie, get behind that fucking wheel!”
The force of his yells blew her back into her seat. Pedal on the gas as we flew out of there. We sat back, all of us panting, Barry wrenching off the mask and wincing from the pain.
“What’s that blood?” Steph asked, radiating pure fear as we turned off the street and headed toward the highway.
“Hospital,” Mom said, her mask still on, not wanting to show any of us how scared she was.
“No hospitals!” Barry ordered.
“Barry,” she said, sopping up the blood with her blouse.
I blinked and saw the security guard in my vision. At least what was left of him after Barry’s assault. I shook it away.
“A hospital equals prison,” Barry said. “You can’t just walk in with a gunshot wound. They’ll want to know what happened.”
“We’ll make up a story,” Mom said, but it was too soft to resonate.
“My grandpa,” Troy said, taking off Elvis. “He was in World War Two. He could remove a bullet.”
I thought of Troy’s grandpa, who seemed firmly fixated to his recliner, likely already drunk this early in the morning.
“You heard the man, Stephie,” Barry said.
Troy went up to the shotgun seat to direct Steph, who was lightly sobbing.
“What’s with the glum faces?” Barry asked. “We scored big. This is nothing. A graze.”
Mom was petting his hair, tears leaking through Janis Joplin’s eyes.
“I thought…”
“Judy, stop.”
“…I lost you, Bear-Bear.”
“Now, now,” he said, taking her in his arms, squeezing her tightly. She began heaving, trying to catch her breath, overwhelmed. He tucked her closer, comforting but also so none of us would see her collapse as they lay together in a puddle of his blood.
“Sssshh, sssshh,” he repeated over and over, his eyes firmly on me. I had to stay strong, couldn’t falter like the rest of the Gimmelmans, sans Jenny, who seemed perfectly content pulling on the dog’s ears.
“Count the cash,” he said to me, kicking at the bag. In a hushed voice, he added, “To keep everyone’s spirits up.”
I nodded, fully understanding. Got the bag in my lap and began to count. When we arrived at Troy’s place, I had gotten up to fifty thousand dollars, and there were still some stacks left, plus the tellers’ and customers’ haul. Could be double that, almost a hundred grand. I shouted it out to Barry so we could revel in our bounty, but he had passed out by then as Mom’s screams earthquaked the RV.