Alright, you probably aren’t gonna believe me, but this is exactly how it went down. You’ll probably say I’m full of shit, and I wouldn’t blame you for that, but I swear on our ten years of friendship that this is what happened.
Okay, so as you remember, it was us and Luke sitting around the diner eating pancakes and hashbrowns after that mediocre concert at Firenze’s. We were the only three people there until that stocky bald guy wandered in wearing his navy-blue suit. His hands were dug deep in his pockets, clutching something. His vibrant orange cowboy boots stood out against the rest of his ensemble, clashing quite fantastically.
And for some reason he sat in the booth directly next to ours, right behind you. Out of the entire empty restaurant, he sat down next to us.
“So anyway,” I had went on, “then it shows a shot of him walking down the street, and his limp turns into a normal walk and you find out it was him the entire time.”
“So the only part of the movie I missed was the most important part?” asked Luke, irritated.
“Yep.”
“Dang. Spacey, you motherfucker…”
I know you know this part. Just bear with me.
I eyed the strange man, who had ordered just a cup of coffee and was gulping it down with ferocity. He had his legs crossed, which caused his pants to ride up a bit and tucked into his boot was the smallest little pistol I’d ever seen. I never pointed this out to you because I didn’t want you to flip out, but Luke and I saw it perfectly. This is when I felt for the first time like I was going to die.
But he didn’t do anything crazy. Not yet. He cocked his neck back to take in the last of his drink. I noticed a long scar running along his neck, from the bottom of his right ear down to his shoulder blade.
He sat the ceramic mug down on the table and strolled over to the cash register. He handed the sweet-looking blonde woman a twenty and told her to keep the change then commenced his exit. You were muttering something about the movie “Seven.”
But he stopped short at the doorway, my eyes trained on him. I guess I invited it, being turned around in my seat following his trajectory and all. He took a single step back and turned his head to the side to look at me. Then he spoke.
“Can I ask you something?” Did you ever figure out what his accent was, by the way? It was so thick! Russian? Irish? His voice was so gravelly, it was like he’d smoked ten cigarettes too many every day since he turned eighteen.
“Uh…sure,” I’d shrugged, trying not to show how uneasy he made me feel.
He asked me, “Why do you dress the way you do?”
This was not what I had been anticipating. I was wearing my faded jeans, some sneakers, and a bright red hoodie. How the hell was I supposed to respond to that? What was he expecting of me? “I, uh…I don’t know…” I bumbled.
“Ask me the same question.”
I murmured apprehensively, “Why do you dress the way you do?”
The man leaned forward, a grin sneaking its way onto his face. He whispered, “Because I’m me.” A wink.
He plopped himself down in the booth, edging up next to you, and grumbled, “Your country is fucking abysmal. Do you know why I’m in your shitty country?”
I shook my head. We all did.
“Money.”
“Oh. Uh…what do you do?” I asked.
“I save lives.”
“Oh.”
“I used to take lives, and now I save them.”
We remained silent. Quit rushing me, I know you were there. This part’s important, though.
He went on. “Back in my country, I ran away from home when I was twelve to join the army. I was a fucking machine. By the time I turned eighteen, I had risen in the ranks and was a general.”
I didn’t know what was happening.
“I went back home to brag to my father. I told him what I had accomplished while I was gone, and he asked me, ‘So do you think this means you’re worth something now?’”
I almost said “That’s harsh,” but I figured it’d be best to keep my mouth shut for the duration of his story.
“So I told my father to fuck himself and I left,” the man said. “That was the last time I ever saw my father. You seem nervous,” he said to you. “Just drink your coffee.” You did as you were told. I did as you were told. My coffee was quite cold.
“That was when I got into sports. What sport do you think I played?” he asked me.
I didn’t understand why he was singling me out. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me yet except for when he told you to drink up.
“…soccer?” I ventured.
The man grinned. “Very good,” he nodded. “I started to play professionally but that didn’t last long before I went back to the army. Do you like sports?”
“Yeah,” Luke responded. It was like your mouth was wired shut.
“Watch the Eagles play on Sunday. They’re gonna beat Atlanta thirty-one to seventeen. I know all the scores for all the games. It’s all fucking planned out. What a joke.”
I asked, “Then who’s going to win the Superbowl this year?”
The man laughed coarsely. “I’m not gonna make you rich, boy.”
Luke asked him, “Why’d you go back to the army?”
“I missed the killing.”
This hung in the air. I gulped. I felt my stomach drop as the thought of him yanking out his gun and robbing the place crept into my head.
“And then I moved here to start my new job.”
There was a long pause after this sentence. You drank more of your coffee. I finished mine. He wanted me to ask what he did for a living. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but the man had a gun, so I did.
“What do you do?”
“Do you believe everything your government tells you?” he asked, ignoring my question.
I didn’t answer. Well, I guess a shrug is considered an answer.
“Do you think Saddam Hussein is dead?”
Luke and I nodded. You were petrified.
He scoffed. “I played cards with him five months ago. I talked to his wife on the phone three days ago.” He took out his cell phone and went to the recent calls. He scrolled down, flicking his thumb on the touch screen, then turned it to show me. He pointed to an outgoing call directed toward someone simply in his phone as “ST.”
“That’s Saddam’s wife,” he said casually. As if this wasn’t out of the ordinary. As if he wasn’t creepy and scary as all hell.
“I’ve met and shook the hand of every United States president in the last twenty years. I’ve met and shook the hand of every powerful dictator in the last twenty years. Any powerful political figure you can think of, I have met and shook their fucking hand.”
I tried to say “Oh,” but no sound came out of my mouth.
“You wanna know what I do?” I didn’t respond, but he continued regardless. He pointed out the window at a black SUV in the parking lot. “Those guys follow me everywhere I go. They make sure I’m safe.”
Then he pointed across the parking lot at a shoddy-looking truck with faded green paint and jacked-up tires. “That,” he said, “is the shitty truck that I drive around everywhere.
“I won’t just tell you what I do. I’ll show you.” He rose out of the seat, smiling. “If you three have any balls at all, then you’ll come with me. If you don’t come with me, then I’d be out of here within ten minutes if I were you.”
That was it. He was gonna shoot up the joint.
“Have you paid for your food yet?”
“No,” I answered.
He walked over to the cash register and pointed at our table. He handed the woman two twenty-dollar bills and told her to keep the change. He shot us one last glance before exiting the restaurant.
“Let’s get the fuck out of this restaurant before the whole place goes up in flames,” Luke sputtered without hesitation.
But I was more foolish than Luke. I had less to lose, in my mind. And so I said, “I’m gonna go, guys.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” you asked me, your voice intense but hushed.
In all honesty, if I had still been dating Laura, I probably wouldn’t have entertained the idea of following this madman out to his truck. But now that I was broken up with and not giving a shit about anything, I wanted to take the risk. I wanted the adventure. I wanted to see if maybe I’d die that night.
I’m not saying I wasn’t stupid.
I stood up and started toward the door. “Are you coming with me?” I asked you two.
“No. Nathan. No way.” You were very adamant.
“Alright,” I said, sighing. “But know this: assuming I don’t get raped and murdered tonight, the next time I see you I am not going to tell you what this guy does for a living.”
“That’s gonna eat me up inside for the rest of my life,” Luke frowned.
“I know it is.”
“Shit.” He sighed deeply and conceded, “Fine, I’ll go. Shit.” He got up from the booth and followed me to the door. You sat there, begging us not to do it. Not to follow the psychotic man with a gun who you didn’t actually know had a gun. But we didn’t listen to your pleas because I was feeling lost and uncaring and so we went to the door.
“Please don’t go with him.” We turned. It was the woman at the register.
“Why?” I asked her.
The woman said, “He comes in here every weekend, looking shady, sitting there drinking his coffee then leaving. There’s just something not right about that guy.”
If only a kindergarten teacher had been around at that moment to shout “Stranger danger!” at me.
At that point I walked over to you and said, “If I don’t text you by noon tomorrow, go to my house and tell my mom that Luke and I left with a strange man and are probably dead.”
And then we left. And now I’ll tell you what happened next.
Outside, the man was leaning against his truck, taking a drag from a cigarette. He looked very pleased with us.
“So you two have balls, eh? Your friend doesn’t?”
“I guess not.” I hoped my voice hadn’t wavered.
The guy laughed. “Follow me in your car.” He stomped out his cigarette and hopped up into his too-high truck. I don’t know why he felt he needed to compensate for anything, considering the fact he used to kill people. You’d think that’d counteract any emasculation he felt. He started up his engine and stared at us.
We darted over to my car and strapped in. Fuck, I thought, sticking my key in the ignition. The man backed out of his spot, and I followed suite. We rolled out of the parking lot, the SUV trailing behind me, its headlights off.
This is when I felt for the second time like I was going to die.
Not far away from the diner we pulled up to a wrought-iron gate on the side of the road. The truck pulled in, us close behind, and before the SUV made its way inside, the gate slammed shut.
“Looks like we’re stuck,” I murmured.
“Fuck.”
We parked in front of a warehouse a little ways away from the gate. I don’t think I need to describe it to you, because it looked just as ominous and terrifying as you’re imagining it already. The three of us got out of our vehicles and the man lead us inside.
“Glad you boys decided to join me,” he said as we approached, our footsteps dragging sluggishly in the gravel. I felt like we hadn’t really had a choice in this matter.
The man turned his back to us and stepped with great deliberation to the door that was dimly lit by a flickering light hanging above. Moths circled it like some kind of living halo.
“Come on in.”
We followed him inside after exchanging worried glances with each other. I could tell that Luke wanted to high-tail it right then, but we wouldn’t have been able to get past that gate.
The place looked a lot classier inside than it did out. It looked exactly how they design futuristic company buildings in movies: all white everything.
Shiny white walls, shiny white floors, shiny white doors. He brought us into a small, well-lit office that was situated around a steel desk with a glass top. On it rested three things: a clock, a pen, and a piece of paper with a bunch of printed foreign writing that I couldn’t even begin to figure out. It had at least three different languages on it, algorithms, and I think a blueprint of some sort.
“This is my office,” he said, sitting down in the chair behind the desk. Taking a load off. We heard a click, him opening a drawer, and suddenly there was a revolver in his hand, the barrel looking me in the eye.
I muttered something nonsensical as the man tightened his grip around the handle of the gun, his thumb resting on the hammer. I think this is when I began to sweat. Luke’s eyes looked like an owl’s. The man’s bald head shone in the bright light.
“Are you nervous?” the man asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I lied.
“Good.” The man’s mouth curved into a tight-lipped grin and he asked, “What’s your name, boy?”
“With all due respect, I don’t think I should tell you my name.”
The smile grew wider. “You’re smart. That’s why I like you, Nathan.”
I felt my body grow cold. I pictured my parents. My heart skipped a beat. I pictured my first love. This is when I felt for the third time like I was going to die.
He clicked the cylinder release and it popped out. I could see his eyes through the holes. He spun the cylinder like they do in old western films and said, “I never keep my guns loaded.” He swung the cylinder back into place and returned the gun to its home, tucked safely away in the desk drawer. “You’re not much of a talker, Luke,” he muttered absentmindedly as he rose.
“Follow me,” he commanded.
We got up and did as we were told. Luke mouthed the words “What the fuck?” to me.
“Look,” I whispered harshly, “just go along with this. Don’t let him know you’re freaked out. That’s what he wants. Just be cool.”
This was easier said than done, I realize. We were corralled into a darker room lined with bookshelves and a large, antique wooden desk. The man sauntered over to this desk and unlocked one of the drawers, removing a pistol from it.
“This is where I keep my shitty American guns,” he explained, and I imagined the desk was full of various pistols and rifles and whatever else this guy had.
Before I could even realize what was happening, the man had cocked the pistol, aimed it at my face, and pulled the trigger. All we heard was a soft click before he put his arm down. “Like I said, I don’t keep any of my guns loaded.” He then put the gun in the waistline of his pants, the butt of it still visible.
My heart was racing and I felt like I was blinking more than usual. Does that happen when adrenaline kicks in? Do you blink more frequently?
“Shit,” Luke gasped, already failing at maintaining his cool. “Shit. Shit.”
“Are you okay, Luke?” the man asked.
“Yeah, I—yeah.” He licked his lips anxiously.
Extending the pistol toward me, the man asked, “Would you like to hold it?”
I refused his offer. “I don’t think I should get my fingerprints on it.”
The man chuckled at this. “I like you, Nathan. Can you do me a favor?”
“Uh…” I wasn’t quite over the fact that I had just had a gun fired at me. Kind of.
“Can you go to that bookshelf and get the Bible for me?”
I slowly craned my neck around to look at the shelf he was pointing at. I could see the thick, brown spine, its gold text taunting me. It was saying, “You’ll be dead soon. Repent.”
I inched over to the bookcase and wrapped my sweaty fingers around the book, but it would only pull an inch or so away from the shelf before it stopped and a small click emitted from somewhere behind it. Everything in that fucking place clicked and I was getting sick and tired of the sound.
This next thing happened, and I shit you not.
The goddamn bookshelf rotated. Yes, like in an episode of Scooby-Doo. Behind it was hiding a long, narrow room lined with weapons that looked like they belonged in a sci-fi movie. I wouldn’t be able to name a single one of them.
“…what?” I mumbled.
The man snuck past me and bee-lined for one of the closer weapons, which looked like three guns glued together to form some kind of murderous Transformer. The man cackled and said, “Your government made only three of these and they fucking gave one of them to me.”
Who the hell is this guy? I thought. I might’ve accidentally said it aloud. I prayed that I hadn’t.
He lifted the gun off its rack on the wall and pointed it square in my direction. I stopped breathing. My body began to shake as he swept his finger along the sleek metal, stopping on the trigger.
“Beautiful, no?”
“Fuck this,” I exhaled. I pivoted on my heel and marched back out into the gun-drenched library with full intention to go back to my car. Much to my annoyance, my progress was impeded by Luke jumping in front of me.
“You need to calm down, man,” he said to me, his teeth chattering as if we were in the Arctic.
“Fuck you!” I yelled hoarsely at him. “Me calm down? How many fucking guns have you had pointed at your face tonight? Because I’ve had three, by my count.” I said, “I’m fucking done, man.”
“What happened to not losing our cool?”
“Fuck my cool and fuck this guy.”
“You really should calm down, Nathan,” the man said, emerging from the secret room. Assuming this was enough of a resolution, he said, “I want to show you boys my passion.”
That did not sound good to me.
“Come on,” Luke mouthed.
I couldn’t just leave him behind. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to go on. We had already come this far.
The man led us through numerous hallways and down two flights of stairs, ending our journey in a vast, pitch-black room.
“Is this a hangar?” Luke asked.
“This is where I hang things, yes,” the man laughed. “Let me turn on the lights.”
I listened to his boots smack abrasively against the floor as he made his way over to the light switch.
“Does he hang bodies here?” Luke wondered out loud. “Is he about to lynch us?”
“Shut up,” I hissed. And then I heard it. Two quiet, almost silent, clicks.
Like two bullets being loaded into a gun.
“He just put bullets in the gun,” I whispered.
“What?”
“He just loaded the gun,” I repeated.
“No he didn’t. Shut up.”
“I heard him. Didn’t you hear him?”
“No. Shut the fuck up. He didn’t load it.”
“Yes he did. The gun has bullets in it now.”
“Shut up, Nathan!”
The lights burst on and the man began his trek back over to where we were standing like deer in headlights. “What were you two whispering about?” he grinned as he grew nearer. I kept my eyes focused on the gun at his waist. The man’s hand hovered over it, ready to draw.
“You loaded the gun,” I said bluntly.
He didn’t deny it. In fact, he laughed. “That’s why I like you, Nathan.”
Behind him was, as he then explained in great detail, a 1946 Chevrolet Deco Art Truck. Whatever that was. He had spent the better part of a decade restoring the vehicle, and that was his “passion” he’d been so excited to show off to us. He walked around the thing, showing off all the wonderful aspects of it, giddy as a schoolgirl. Except, you know, about a thousand times more menacing.
The entire time, Luke and I kept tossing each other looks of “When is this guy going to kill us?”
“Now,” the man said, drawing his lecture to a close, “let me show you what it is I do.”
And so the moment finally came.
But like I told you at the diner, I’m not gonna fucking tell you what it is. Did you really expect me to? I risked my life to find out what this guy did while you went home and slept in your bed! I earned the knowledge. You didn’t.
As we were leaving the warehouse afterward, Luke pointed out, “You never told us your name.”
The man’s face lit up with that same smile he’d been sporting all night. “I told Nathan here who I was back at the diner,” he said.
We both looked at each other, clueless. Then we looked back at the man, who was receding back into the warehouse.
The last words he said to us were, “I’m me.” A wink.
The light above clicked off and the door was slammed shut, leaving us alone in the darkness to gather our thoughts and go home. I waited until we had cleared the gate before texting you that we were okay.
By the way, we watched that Eagles game later that week. They won, thirty-one to seventeen.
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