A Shot In The Dark by A. Jay Adler

The skinny dude under a wool cap entered the Chevalier Wine Cellar at 8:55 p.m. and stopped at the first cash register, in view of the front, Second Avenue window. You got any miniatures of Yago Sangria, he asked Bob.

His friend with the wispy stashe and goatee who followed kept walking along the Sixty-Seventh Street window side, scanning the bottles in the racks.

I stood watching from the entrance to the rear storeroom. I lowered my gaze to sip from the glass of Bonnes-Mares left over from that afternoon’s tasting. The staff always got the treat of any remainder and it was just before closing. I looked up to see wool-cap pointing a gun at Bob. Stache-and-goatee pointed another at Rick, standing near the second register. Wool-cap told them, Empty the drawers. Bag the cash. Stashe-and-goatee told me to stay where I was. When they finished, wool-cap pointed Rick and Bob, who was the night manager, back to the small glass office in the rear, near me. After they entered, he motioned me over too. Stash-and-goatee covered him and kept an eye on the front.

Once I was in the office, wool-cap put the barrel to my skull. He ordered us to our knees. I was a little buzzed, and my heart was pounding a drum hard and fast in my chest. I was twenty-three. I wanted to live. I’d barely done anything, been anyone. But I was powerless, I could see right away, to save my life. Nothing to do but wait. So my heart stopped hammering in an instant. In an instant, I breathed calm and easy, waiting.

When the cops arrived, Bob did most of the talking. He and Rick, both older than I, were actors. I wasn’t anything. I only had the job, after so many others I couldn’t keep or stand, because Selene helped me get it. She and Hervé were regular customers. Bob, who was very handsome, once gave a regular customer he liked, who admired it, his prized lighter. You loved that lighter, Rick said. It isn’t generosity if the gift doesn’t mean something to you, explained Bob. After I told Rick, who was very smart, what was going on in my life, he said, Oh, the tangled web we weave.

The detective asked what kind of guns they had, but we weren’t gun guys. How big was the barrel, he asked. Bob held his hands far apart. Oh, about that that wide. The three of us snickered. The detective smiled. Yeah, I know.

Walking west on Sixty-Seventh, I wondered that I was still alive. I was living in my first apartment on my own, stocking shelves in a liquor store. It was all I could make of myself. I couldn’t make any sense of myself. When Selene’s door opened to me, high above Third Avenue, she appeared in her negligee a vision, her pale arms, reaching out of the darkness, the start of her comfort, the quick cool penetration of her tongue like a bullet in my mouth. Later I took a taxi home before Hervé got back, passed the doorman on my way out, sped across Central Park at four in the morning staring out the window, wondering, so this is what it is to be alive.