The Robbery

by Susan Cameron

When I turned sixteen, I landed a part-time after-school job with a loan company. I did the usual office grunt work (which perfectly suited my limited capabilities), and I felt so happy. I loved going to the office. I enjoyed practicing my new typing skills and actually getting paid for it. I had fun answering the phone in my most professional, grown-up voice: “Beneficial Finance. May I help you?” I got along with the boss and enjoyed the joking and office camaraderie of my half-dozen co-workers. At sixteen, I liked my job, I liked school, I liked my boyfriend – in other words, I believed I had the world by the ass.

One beautiful spring afternoon, I bounced happily into work as usual, did some typing and filing, made some phone calls, then took over the front desk so Claudia, the receptionist, could take a break. A man walked in and told me he wanted to take out a loan. I smiled my cordial, professional smile. “Of course, sir. Please have a seat. Have you ever had a loan with us before? Yes? Your name, sir? Robert W. Jackson? Fine, I’ll get your file. A loan officer will be with you in just a moment.”

I searched the files but couldn’t find his old paperwork. Damn! I must have misunderstood his name. I walked back to him. “Excuse me, sir, did you say your name was…” My voice died in my throat as I stared at the blue steel revolver pointed at my heart. I looked up.

He smiled his own cordial, professional smile. “Have a seat,” he said. I sat down and froze in the classic holdup victim position, hands open and raised, staring at his gun, at his face. He stood up and roared, “This is a holdup! Do as I say and nobody gets hurt!” Two more men with sawed-off shotguns ran through the door.

Not again! I’d looked down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun just a month before, when two other robbers burst in. I was talking on the phone and didn’t even know they were there until the gun was in my face. “Put down the phone,” the man had said. I did, and the robbery was over in a flash. And here we were again.

“Everybody down on the floor! NOW! Except you,” he said softly to me. (Except me? Why not me?) “Who has the keys to the safe? Get off the floor and give me the money!”

I heard Mr. Bond’s voice behind me. “No problem, man, no problem. We don’t have a safe, we write checks, but just stay cool and I’ll give you what we’ve got, including what’s in my wallet.” I heard him get off the floor, heard some fumbling, saw him hand money to the thief. The manager backed away out of my peripheral vision, and I heard him lower himself to the floor again.

The thief pocketed the money. “Everybody take off your shoes!” he yelled. Then, quietly, he said, “Except you.” (Why not me? Why me?) I heard the others moving on the floor behind me, shuffling noises, muffled sobbing; stillness. Then the gunman spoke to me again. “Now, I want you to take off your blouse.”

I looked at his face, in his eyes. I heard someone gasp; I heard Claudia start crying. Then I heard myself speak – not with my professional, grown-up work voice, but with my real voice, the clear soprano voice of a sixteen-year-old virgin who had decided that today was a good day to die.

I said, “No sir, I won’t do it. But I’ll take off my shoes like everybody else, though. And I’ll get on the floor, too.”

I looked away from him. I removed the first shoe, then the second. I heard him say, “All right, then.” I lay down on the industrial-grade carpeting and shut my eyes.

I heard the men leave. I heard Claudia break down completely, heard a man saying, “Jesus Christ, oh, Jesus Christ.” I felt my breath come in; I felt my breath go out. I opened my eyes and shakily got off the floor.

Pandemonium. Police. I felt calm. I gave precise, highly detailed descriptions to the cops: facial features, three different shades of brown skin, heights, weights, clothing. Mr. Bond, giddy and incredulous: “It’s like you took their fucking pictures! Kid’s got a fucking computer for a brain!” Nods of agreement from my co-workers. “Why didn’t you take off your shirt, though? The only good part of the robbery, and you had to fuck it up!” Hysterical laughter all around. “We never even had a robbery until you started working here! Are these guys all buddies of yours?” The laughter got even more hysterical, especially mine.

I crawled under the desk in the fetal position and laughed until the tears ran down my face. So this was how life was going to be from now on. It didn’t matter. I wanted to live anyway.

“I quit!” I screamed, laughing. “Seventeen! I want to be seventeen some day!”

Joyce and Tim went down to the liquor store and bought vodka and orange juice, and when they got back I crawled out from under the desk and pounded down the very first screwdriver of my life. I wasn’t drunk when my grandfather came to take me home, but I felt much better.

* * * *

I recounted the robbery story to my mother a few days later. She was out of the hospital again, taking her meds, working at a downtown Detroit dive bar slinging shot-and-a-beers. Upscale establishments would not have hired a middle-aged ex-mental patient to tend bar, but she was still reasonably pretty and most definitely white, which made her an anomaly and a major draw. I told her the story, and gave her a detailed description of the man with the gun.

Her eyes grew wide, and she gasped, “Jimmy! That son of a bitch! Am I ever going to give him a piece of my mind!”

“Who’s Jimmy, Mom?”

“The man who robbed you. He’s a customer who comes into the bar.”

I smiled. “Oh, come on, Mom. What are the odds somebody who comes into your bar just happened to rob us?”

“I know it was him. He just got out of prison. It was definitely Jimmy. I told him where you worked.”

It took a moment to sink in. “Uh…what?”

“I told him where you worked. When I passed your picture around the other day, I told him where you worked.”

“You…what? Did what? Passed my…what? What?”

“Your picture, from school, the one where you look so cute. I brag about you all the time, my smart, pretty daughter. Guess I shouldn’t have told him what a cute figure you have.”

“You passed my picture around the bar? You told them where I work?” It felt like somebody had tossed a hand grenade inside my head. “Mom. Do not pass my picture around the bar. Do not talk about me. Do not tell anybody anything about me. Do you understand me?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I won’t do that any more.” Her lip trembled, and her hand shook as she lit another cigarette and drew the smoke deep into her lungs. She looked at the cigarette, cocked her wrist, the way the glamorous movie stars once did it, and slowly exhaled. We sat and watched the smoke curl around the silent room.

copyright 1993, Susan Cameron