But Debbie was afraid of what would happen if she did.
The cashier at the crossroads convenience store rang up the total as a local high school girl bagged their purchases of several six-packs of beer, a couple of six-packs of soda, assorted bags of chips, cookies, and a mess of candy bars, cupcakes, and doughnuts Shelly had grabbed for himself.
Vera guessed that he had used restraint because of her. Otherwise, he probably would have loaded up on two or three times as much junk food. She figured that he probably had some emergency supplies stashed away in that makeup kit of his. It was certainly big enough. She didn’t even want to think about what sort of gruesome things could be inside there if that hatchet-in the-head trick was a typical example. Boy, she thought, Shelly was really strange.
“That’ll be eighteen-fifty,” the cashier said. “And we don’t accept no food stamps.”
Vera sneered at the thinly veiled racism. She thought, you wouldn’t say that to an Anglo, would you, bitch? And then her face fell as she realized that she had left her wallet in her purse, which was still back at the house.
“Shelly?” she called.
He quickly put the skin mag he was leafing through back into the rack and turned around guiltily, blushing like a little boy caught doing something wrong.
“I need some money,” Vera said, feeling awkward that she had to ask him.
Shelly quickly dug into the back pocket of his jeans, pulled out his cordura wallet and tossed it at her. Vera reached out to catch it, but it struck the side of her hand and fell to the floor. As she bent down to pick it up, a black leather high-heeled boot with ankle straps suddenly came down on top of it.
She looked up to see a hard-looking young black woman in skintight, black, studded motorcycle leathers standing over her. She wore a dark purple headband and lots of turquoise and silver jewelry. She backed Vera away with a hard glance, bent down, and picked up Shelly’s wallet.
“Excuse me,” Shelly said, moving towards her with his hands held out, “but I believe that’s my wallet.”
Before he could take more than three steps, Shelly was grabbed by the arms from either side and yanked up on his tiptoes. He gulped and smiled nervously at the two bikers who held him. Both wore leather vests and patches on them of large black widow spiders on the backs. One of the bikers was black, with a shaved head, a gold earring, a heavy chromed steel lock-up chain hung around his neck, and a neat little goatee that made him look satanic. The other one was white, sort of punky-looking, with short, spiky hair, shades, an earring, and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“Make a wish,” the black guy said, grinning at the white biker as they held Shelly by the arms.
“Uh . . . could I buy you two a beer or something?” Shelly said, badly frightened but desperately trying not to show it.
The woman started going through his wallet.
“I’ll take that now,” said Vera, reaching out for it.
The black woman smiled and arched her eyebrows as she held up a condom in a foil packet she had found inside the wallet. “Is this your rubber?” she said.
Shelly groaned with humiliation.
Vera grabbed for the wallet, but the black woman was quick to react, pulling it back out of her reach. “Didn’t your mamma teach you manners?” she said. “If you want something, you ask Nice!”
Vera set her jaw, gritting her teeth.
“Please,” Shelly said, “be cool . . .”
Through clenched teeth, Vera said, “May we please have the wallet . . . ma’am?”
“That’s good,” the black woman said. “That’s real nice.”
She slapped the wallet into Vera’s outstretched hand. Vera immediately plucked a bill out of it and tossed it down onto the counter, then she snatched up their grocery bags and stormed out of the market. The punky biker flicked his cigarette butt at Shelly as they released him to run after her.
“Hey, that was a twenty!” Shelly said as he caught up to her outside the parking lot. She hadn’t even bothered with the change. Then he quickly added, “Are they following us?”
Vera glanced back over her shoulder. “No,” she snapped furiously.
“Good,” Shelly said, with enormous relief. His heart had been racing back there.
Vera shoved the groceries into the backseat of the VW and tossed the keys to Shelly. “here, You drive. The way I feel right now, I’d probably get us into an accident.”
She got in and slammed the door.
Shelly quickly jumped into the driver’s eat and inserted the keys into the ignition. “Next time, I’ll know how to handle a situation like that,” he said, with false bravado, as he started up the car. Then, realizing how obviously phony it sounded, he lamely added, “Let’s just hope next time isn’t too soon.”
As the engine caught and chugged hesitantly to life, the bald biker came out of the market. He stopped to open the pop-top on a beer can and glanced up at them with a mean look.
“Uh-oh,” said Vera.
Shelly swallowed nervously, quickly shifted the VW into gear, and stomped down on the gas pedal, anxious to get the hell out of there. But in his hurry to drive off, he mistakenly shifted into reverse instead of first gear and the car leaped backward with a lurch. There was the awful sound of crashing metal as the VW backed into the two chopped motorcycles, knocking them both over and sending them crashing to the ground.
“Oh, shit!” Shelly exclaimed with horror as he realized what he had done.
“Oh, shit is right!” said Vera. “Let’s get out of here!”
The black biker threw his beer can to the ground in a fury and raced toward them, whipping the heavy steel chain off from around his neck. Panic-stricken, Shelly slammed
