Chapter 2

“I’m starvin’, Marvin,” Stoker said. He drove the vehicle down the road at a steady 35mph. As I looked at him I saw he wasn’t sweating or drumming his fingers on the steering wheel or any other guilty giveaways. He was probably hopped up on Chill Pills or Mellow Yellows. I, on the other hand, was perspiring and tapping my foot on the floor mat.

Stoker braked at a red light and looked over at me. His long hair was messy with hat-hair and a day’s worth of being unwashed and his scraggly mug was particularly scruffy.

“Man, you need to relax, Max,” he held out his mint-tin of pills to me.

“I need to stay focused,” I said, pushing the drugs away. “I’m still not keen on this, Stoker.”

“Alrighty, Heidi,” he shrugged. “I’ve got this whole thing planned out, though, so you don’t need to fret.”

“That’s easy for you to say. What’re you popping today, Stoker?”

“It’s one of Stoker Enterprises newest products, my man. Two parts Chill Pill, three parts Mellow Yellow, and a bunch of Pep Pills. I call it Grandma’s House.” Stoker not only took pills religiously, but he also mixed and matched in a room in our shared apartment.

“Why Grandma’s House?” I asked.

‘Well, check it out: you know when you were a kid and you went to grandma’s pad? That feeling of relaxed awareness is now in pill form, my good man.”

“Interesting,” I never touch drugs, but if I ever tried it I probably would go for a Grandma’s House. “Any side effects?” I asked.

“Not really,” he shrugged. “Diarrhea and a headache roughly three hours after the drug is done.” Stoker was a lazy guy, but when it came to drugs and side/after effects he was a professional. “It’s not a bad trade off, actually. An hour of diarrhea and headache for two hours of uncaring alertness.”

“You should be a marketer.” I said. I’m serious, this man could sell gloves to a handless guy over the phone. If, of course, the gloves had some narcotic effect.

“Nah, I don’t have the right shoe size for that, Matt.” Something had shot dead some thought-processing nerves in Stoker’s brain when he was a kid and he would have lapses and say stuff like that from time to time.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked.

Turning into the drive-thru of Crazy Joe’s Burger House, Stoker said, “We get food, go home, and relax. Things will play out, tiger, don’t you worry.”

Sitting on the old, orange couch, eating my Deluxe Loony Burger, I stared over at our heist sitting next to me. I’m still shocked that a drug dumpster like Stoker had figured out how to steal on this scale.

He’d gone back and forth from the Dooley Preschool/Nursery to Bloomers Kids Entertainment Center for weeks trying to find the, as he described it, “best grab.” Finally he found the right one and he studied habits for an entire month before coming home.

“Hiya, Maya,” he said one night, sitting down next to me on the couch. “Whatcha watchin’?”

“Old episodes of Our House,” I replied. “It’s a week-long marathon.”

“Bleh, I hate old sitcoms.”

“Sorry,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Well, Mel, how would you like to make some big bucks?”

“I have a job,” I work at Anderson Perry Office Supplies. I do special orders all day long in a cubicle.

“Nah, Pa, I mean big bucks. Gates Bucks.”

I looked over incredulously.

“Okay, okay, not Gates Bucks, but huge nonetheless.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Probably close to a million.” He grinned from ear to ear.

“How exactly can we make a million dollars, Stoker?” I asked, suspicious but interested.

So he told me his plan and showed me his journals and, I had to admit it, it might work out. Of course, as good as it was, it still needed to be fine-tuned.

Reviews

[spence]

There are several hooks pulling me along this, but i will pause to say, 'well done' for this work so far. I imagine Stoker as some gruff voiced texan type, (my stereotypical image of one anyway- as I'm english), complete with cowboy hat and a look somewhere between Jeff Daniels and Yosemite Sam. The relationship between the two is played out nicely, one easy going, conscientious and responsible, the other opportunistic, villainous and persuasive- both likable and believable.
I feel privileged to be able to offer my first impressions of this story. Reading something like this reminds me why i write- to entertain. Nice one, spence