The story of
America’s silliest criminal mastermind
So No shit there I was, minding my own business eating a piece
of pie at the Village Inn ‘round 1:30 a.m., when he walked in. Greasy-haired, unshaven, stinking of booze and bong
water, he burst through the door with a clatter and the confidence of twelve
tequila shots.
This glorious
specimen of poor decisions paused in the doorway, taking in the restaurant’s
interior from behind the smoky lenses of bright, pink-framed, Hello Kitty
sunglasses, giving the inn’s clientele a moment to take stock of his
peculiarities: From underneath his pink frames, a dark bruise spread across his
left cheek, and the bleach-stained blue Dallas Cowboys T-shit, (at least two
sizes too large) clashed nicely with his yellow Sponge Bob flannel pants, but
what drew my attention were the red fuzzy slippers, on which balanced the
beaming face of beloved Sesame Street character, Elmo.
“I’ll have the
Grand Slam, cutie,” the young man declared, sauntering up to the front counter,
whipping of his shades with a flourish to leer unabashedly at the hostess, a
woman of perhaps 45 years, and 245 pounds.
She looked him
up and down slowly, taking in the whole glorious mess, before responding.
“Grand Slam’s
at Denny’s hun,” she said with a dead-pan that could only have been earned
through long years dealing with the late-night freaks who frequent 24-hour
diners and cheap motels. “If you take a seat over there on the left Tim will
take your order a minute.”
I could not see
the man’s face from my position, but his shoulders slumped and he let out a
dejected sigh as he shuffled over to a both against the far wall, where he
folded his arms on the tabletop and set his head atop them, moaning “Just bring
me some fucking pancakes!”
I dragged my
attention away from what I could only assume was the anti-meth campaign’s next
cautionary tale, and attempted to refocus on the task at hand.
On the table
before me, next to a half eaten piece of blue berry, lay a yellow legal pad and
a cheap Bic pen. The top half of the yellow page featured a series of
tick-tack-toe games drawn over with cat’s faces, (Not a very productive game,
even when playing with a partner, which I did not have)
Below them I’d
scrawled a single phrase “solitaire for dummies.”
Writers block
had plagued me for weeks, and nothing, from alcohol to Ritalin seemed to make
the words flow. My brain simply could not find the foothold it needed to snag a
story out of the ether.
So I sat with my bic drumming against the pad
rhythmically, piece of blueberry filling and golden brown crust hovering a
couple inches from my mouth for the better part of five minutes until I heard a
groan from across the room.
The waiter,
Tim, stood above the bedraggled young man, an apologetic look on his face.
“What?” the
young man demanded, squinting up at the waiter.
“What can I get
for you, sir,” Tim asked politely. He was a small kid in his late teens or
early twenties, and it was obvious from his nervous demeanor that he was not a
fan of confrontations.
The greasy
haired young man looked confused for a moment then annoyed.
“I already said
I wanted fucking pancakes,” he said loudly, before resting his head to the
Formica tabletop with a thud.
An older
couple, who’d been eating a few tables away from the newcomer’s, rose to their
feet as quickly as they could manage, leaving a 20 and 2 half eaten pieces of apple
on the table as they shuffled out muttering to one another about crack heads
and welfare.
Tim the waiter
looked even more uncomfortable.
“Oh, um, yes
sir…. Can I get you anything to drink while you wait? Um, coffee? Water?”
“Orange Juice,”
the young man replied without lifting his head.
“Ok, Um, good…
orange juice it is,” Tim jotted it down dutifully in his note book, attaining
more progress then I had in the writing department then I had in days. “Uh… the
pancakes come with bacon or sausage. Which would you prefer?”
The young
degenerates head shot up from the table, from across the room his good eye
gleamed a Johnny Rotten blue.
“Bacon!” he all
but shouted. “Sausage is for communists!”
His good eye
narrowed to a slit and he asked suspiciously, “Tim, are you a communist?”
“Ah, um, no
sir, republican actually,” Tim responded, but the young man had already lost
interest in the waiter.
His eye focused
on a group of eight men of varying ages sitting around a larger table in the
middle of the diner with bibles open in front of each of them.
“Hey, you guys,
innit a little late for Sunday school?” he shot in their direction rising up in
his booth to get a better look at what they were doing.
“Sometimes
midnight is the best time to read the word,” said a middle-aged man with a potbelly,
scraggly salt and pepper beard and a trucker hat. “That’s the time when some of
us need the most encouragement.”
The young man
looked solemn for a moment, then he whispered loudly enough for the whole
restaurant to hear, “Don’t worry! I’ll help you stay anonymous!”
He tried to wink his good eye, but with the other one
swollen shut it didn’t really work out.
Lowering
himself back into the booth, he once again thudded his head onto the tabletop.
“Tim, where are
my fucking pancakes?” he asked in a voice that now sounded bored.
The waiter
scuttled away and the young man giggled, his Elmo slippered feet kicking like a
child’s under the table.
“AA’s for
quitters,” he announced, then abruptly began to snore.
Part 2 of the adventures of the Elmo slippered bandit will be out next week
Authors Note:
While parts of this narrative i.e. the description of its antagonist are more or less based in true events, the story itself is a work of fiction.
