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Bristo Camino,California
Friday,2:47 P.M.

          DENNIS ROONEY

younger brother, Kevin, wedged in the middle; and a guy named Mars filling the shotgun seat. Dennis had known Mars for only four days.
     Later, in the coming hours when Dennis would frantically reconsider his actions, he would decide that it hadn’t been the saw-toothed heat that had put him in the mood to do crime: It was fear. Fear that something special was waiting for him that he would never find, and that this special thing would disappear around some curve in his life, and with it his one shot at being more than nothing.
     Dennis decided that they should rob the minimart.
     “Hey, I know. Let’s rob that fuckin’ minimart, the one on the other side of Bristo where the road goes up toward Santa Clarita.”
     “I thought we were going to the movie.”
     That being Kevin, wearing his chickenshit face: eyebrows crawling over the top of his head, darting eyeballs, and quivering punkass lips. In the movie of Dennis’s life, he saw himself as the brooding outsider all the cheerleaders wanted to fuck; his brother was the geekass cripple holding him back.
     “This is a better idea, chickenshit. We’ll go to the movie after.”
     “You just got back from the Farm, Dennis, Jesus. You want to go back?”
     Dennis flicked his cigarette out the window, ignoring the blow-back of sparks and ash as he considered himself in the Nissan’s side-view. By his own estimation, he had moody deep-set eyes the color of thunderstorms, dramatic cheekbones, and sensuous lips. Looking at himself, which he did, often, he knew that it was only a matter of time before his destiny arrived, before the special thing waiting for him presented itself and he could bag the minimum -  wage jobs and life in a shithole apartment with his chickenshit brother.
     Dennis adjusted the .32-caliber automatic wedged in his pants, then glanced past Kevin to Mars.
     “What do you think, dude?”
     Mars was a big guy, heavy across the shoulders and ass. He had a tattoo on the back of his shaved head that said BURN IT. Dennis had met him at the construction site where he and Kevin were pulling day work for a cement contractor. He didn’t know Mars’s last name. He had not asked.

     “Dude? Whattaya think?”
     “I think let’s go see.”
     That was all it took.

The minimart was on Flanders Road, a rural boulevard that linked several expensive housing tracts. Four pump islands framed a bunkerlike market that sold toiletries, soft drinks, booze, and convenience items. Dennis pulled up behind the building so they couldn’t be seen from inside, the Nissan bucking as he downshifted. The transmission was a piece of shit.
     “Look at this, man. The fuckin’ place is dead. It’s perfect.”
     “C’mon, Dennis, this is stupid. We’ll get caught.”
     “I’m just gonna see, is all. Don’t give yourself a piss enema.”
     The parking lot was empty except for a black Beemer at the pumps and two bicycles by the front door. Dennis’s heart was pound-ing, his underarms clammy even in the awful dry heat that sapped his spit. He would never admit it, but he was nervous. Fresh off the Farm, he didn’t want to go back, but he didn’t see how they could get caught, or what could go wrong. It was like being swept along by a mindless urge. Resistance was futile.
     Cold air rolled over him as Dennis pushed inside. Two kids were at the magazine rack by the door. A fat Chinaman was hunkered be-hind the counter, so low that all Dennis could see was his head poking up like a frog playing submarine in a mud puddle.
     The minimart was two aisles and a cold case packed with beer, yogurt, and Cokes. Dennis had a flash of uncertainty, and thought about telling Mars and Kevin that a whole pile of Chinamen were behind the counter so he could get out of having to rob the place, but he didn’t. He went to the cold case, then along the rear wall to make sure no one was in the aisles, his heart pounding because he knew he was going to do it. He
was going to rob this fucking place. As he was walking back to the truck, the Beemer pulled away. He went to the passenger window. To Mars.
     “There’s nothing but two kids and a Chinaman in there, the Chinaman behind the counter, a fat guy.”
     Kevin said, “They’re Korean.”

     “What?”
     “The sign says ‘Kim.’ Kim is a Korean name.”
     That was Kevin, always with something to say like that. Dennis wanted to reach across Mars and grab Kevin by the fucking neck. He pulled up his T-shirt to flash the butt of his pistol.
     “Who gives a shit, Kevin? That Chinaman is gonna shit his pants when he sees this. I won’t even have to take it out, goddamnit. Thirty seconds, we’ll be down the road. He’ll have to wipe himself before he calls the cops.”
     Kevin squirmed with a case of the chicken-shits, his nerves making his eyes dance around like beans in hot grease.
     “Dennis, please. What are we going to get here, a couple of hundred bucks? Jesus, let’s go to the movie.”
     Dennis told himself that he might have driven away if Kevin wasn’t such a whiner, but, no, Kevin had to put on the goddamned pussy face, putting Dennis on the spot.
     Mars was watching. Dennis felt himself flush, and wondered if Mars was judging him. Mars was a boulder of a guy; dense and quiet, watchful with the patience of a rock. Dennis had noticed that about Mars on the job site; Mars considered people. He would watch a conversation, say, like when two of the Mexicans hammered a third to throw in with them on buying some tamales. Mars would watch, not really part of it but above it, as if he could see all the way back to when they were born, see them wetting the bed when they were five or jerking off when they thought they were alone. Then he would make a vacant smile like he knew everything they might do now or in the future, even about the god-damned tamales. It was creepy, sometimes, that expression on his face, but Mars thought that Dennis had good ideas and usually went along. First time they met, four days ago, Dennis felt that his destiny was finally at hand. Here was Mars, charged with some dangerous electrical potential that crackled under his skin, and he did whatever Dennis told him.
     “Mars, we’re gonna do this. We’re robbing this fuckin’ store.”
     Mars climbed out of the truck, so cool that even heat like this couldn’t melt him.
     “Let’s do it.”

     Kevin didn’t move. The two kids pedaled away.
     “No one’s here, Kevin! All you have to do is stand by the door and watch. This fat fuck will cough right up with the cash. They’re in-sured, so they just hand over the cash. They get fired if they don’t.”
     Dennis grabbed his brother’s T-shirt. The Lemonheads, for chrissake. His fucking brother was a lemonhead. Mars was already halfway to the door.
     “Get out of the truck, you turd. You’re making us look bad.”
     Kevin wilted and slid out like a fuckin’ baby.

     JUNIOR KIM, JR.
     KIM’S MINIMART

Junior Kim, Jr., knew a cheese dip when he saw one.
     Junior, a second-generation Korean-American, had put in six-teen years behind a minimart counter in the Newton area of Los Angeles. Down in Shootin’ Newton (as the LAPD called it), Junior had been beaten, mugged, stabbed, shot at, clubbed, and robbed forty-three times. Enough was enough. After sixteen years of that, Junior, his wife, their six children, and all four grandparents had bailed on the multi-cultural melting pot of greater LA, and moved north to the far less dangerous demographic of bedroom suburbia.
     Junior was not naïve. A minimart, by its nature, draws cheese dips like bad meat draws flies. Even here in Bristo Camino, you had your shoplifters (mostly teenagers, but often men in business suits), your paperhangers (mostly women), your hookers passing counterfeit currency (driven up from LA by their pimps), and your drunks (mostly belligerent white men sprouting gin blossoms). Lightweight stuff com-pared to LA, but Junior believed in being prepared. After sixteen years of hard-won inner-city lessons, Junior kept “a little something” under the counter for anyone who got out of hand.
     When three cheese dips walked in that Friday afternoon, Junior leaned forward so that his chest touched the counter and his hands were hidden.

     “May I help you?”
     A skinny kid in a Lemonheads T-shirt stayed by the door. An older kid in a faded black wife-beater and a large man with a shaved head walked toward him, the older kid raising his shirt to show the ugly black grip of a pistol. “Two packs of Marlboros for my friend here and all the cash you got in that box, you gook motherfucker.”
     Junior Kim could read a cheese dip a mile away.
     His face impassive, Junior fished under the counter for his 9mm Glock. He found it just as the cheese dip launched himself over the counter. Junior lurched to his feet, bringing up the Glock as the black-shirted dip crashed into him. Junior hadn’t expected this asshole to jump over the counter, and hadn’t been able to thumb off the safety.
     The larger man shouted, “He’s got a gun!”
     Everything happened so quickly that Junior wasn’t sure whose hands were where. The black shirt forgot about his own gun and tried to twist away Junior’s. The big guy reached across the counter, also grabbing for the gun. Junior was more scared now than any of the other times he had pulled his weapon. If he couldn’t release the safety before this kid pulled his own gun, or wrestled away Junior’s, Junior knew that he would be fucked. Junior Kim was in a fight for his life.
     Then the safety slipped free, and Junior Kim, Jr., knew that he had won.
     He said, “I gotcha, you dips.”
     The Glock went off, a heavy 9mm explosion that made the cheese dip’s eyes bulge with a terrible surprise.
     Junior smiled, victorious.
     “Fuck you.”
     Then Junior felt the most incredible pain in his chest. It filled him as if he were having a heart attack. He stumbled back into the Slurpee machine as the blood spilled out of his chest and spread across his shirt. Then he slid to the floor.
     The last thing Junior heard was the cheese dip by the door, shouting, “Dennis! Hurry up! Somebody’s outside!”

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