I checked back in to my evolving crisis to find that T was sharing a story about a difficult domestic situation he had with one of his kids. Or was it getting fired from his job for drinking a six-pack in his car over lunch? I heard so many tales of woe, it was hard to keep them straight. Why did I have to get the chatty assailant? I actually started to try to comfort T with empathetic comments. "Tough break, man." "That sucks, T." But then T would change yet again. He'd mention his car accident, and threaten me for seeing it. He would suddenly reference the gun, even show the bandanna to me. That's when I really started to get scared; T was unpredictable. His moods were starting to swing so wildly, I couldn't relate to him at all. Our relationship had been complicated from the start, and it was clear we had no real future together. I was really ready to move on, but T just wouldn't let go.
I decided to get serious about the Run plan. The next intersection was about a half block away. Finally, a workable idea came to me: At the intersection, I would dart through traffic! It was perfect; the cars (and their hapless drivers) would provide cover for my daring escape.
I would explode into street, blending seamlessly into the flow of traffic. I would slide over the first car's hood, Starsky & Hutch-style. T would unsheath his weapon and drop to his good knee to take aim. He would briefly glimpse his target as the car in front of me moved. T's eyes would narrow as he started to squeeze the trigger, but no! He cannot see me now! I would drop and roll to the next lane; now I'm ducking beside an El Camino, running low to the ground with it as it moves through the intersection. I would be like a panther. T would be helplessly confused. Where had I gone? I would hear his anguished cry, "Where are yoooouuuuu!" as I sped away on foot, hiding behind a double-length bus, a 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood and a stretch limo who all seemed to be tailgating the vehicle in front of them.
Well, I can tell you that plan looked a lot better on paper than it really was. One critical element of the plan was that there would actually be some traffic to dart through. Without the traffic, I might as well have skipped into an empty street, done the Walk Like An Egyptian dance and begged T to shoot me. As we approached the intersection, I was looking for my traffic. There was none. Not a single car was to be found. I was distraught.
We stopped at the intersection. I looked up and down both streets. Nothing. I was baffled. There was a serious accident three blocks down the street. Where were the police? Where was anybody? Of all nights for T and me to be on that corner, we picked the only one with no traffic for me to dart through. What now?
As we stood there, I started to think about my plan again. Darting through traffic wasn’t going to be an option. My thoughts turned again to T's cranky knee, and his profound intoxication. His moods were swinging wildly, still. I would have had to time any attack carefully, seizing my opportunity when he wasn't alert or aggressive. I studied him carefully. His face showed the emotional stress of the crash and subsequent Implied Death March; his eyes revealed his struggle to maintain coherent thought. I'm sure mine did as well.
I figured I had one last chance to make the Run plan a success story, and then it was going to be time to come to terms with my Kick plan. That last chance was a 24-hour grocery up ahead. My main concern was that it was on the other side of the street, which once again focused all of my thought on the gun. T had mentioned it four or five times by now, and showed the bandanna to me twice. But I had never actually seen the gun. There was at least some doubt in my mind that T had a gun, and there was quite a bit of doubt that T could pull it out and shoot it accurately before I could make my way into the store. I was consumed with one thought: Could I get across the street and into the store before T could shoot me?
Now, I'm pretty quick on my feet; I was maybe 80% sure I could get across before he fired. But what if I was wrong, and running across to the store deprived me of what may have been a safer opportunity to escape down the road? Eighty percent was worse odds than Russian Roullette. We were getting closer to the store with every step. I knew this was a life or death decision I was about to make.
Suddenly, I remembered that this particular grocery store had a security guard at all times. Well... at least some times. I knew that I had seen uniformed officers there before. What if I were to make my dash across the street in search of a police officer, only to find there wasn't one on duty at this time of night? If T wasn't able to shoot me as I crossed, what would he do? Would he simply continue down the road? Would he wait for me outside the store? What if he followed me to the store?
Public endangerment be damned, I figured the store was my best chance at escape. I imagined myself tearing through the aisles, toppling displays and leaving an impassable sea of sundries in my wake. Naturally, for both ethical and safety reasons, I wouldn't just be able to run amok through the store without screaming to the other late-nite shoppers why I was there, or that they too could be in peril. "He's chasing me!" I would scream as I burst through the doors and into the produce section. I would fling cantaloupes and seedless grapes to the floor to impede T as I cry out to the other shoppers, "He has something wrapped in a red bandanna that he says is a gun and he thinks I saw his crash, but I didn't, and I wasn't going to gawk at it, I was only going to buy coffee!" T would be in hot pursuit, screaming "I'm not going back to prison for you or anybody!" T’s gunshots would miss me, hitting watermelons and bottles of ketchup instead. It would be spectacularly messy. We would run through every aisle in the store; the voice over the intercom would call our race like we were coming down the home stretch at Hollywood Park: "Cleanup in produce...cleanup in aisle two...rotisserie chicken cleanup in deli...the Express Lane is open if you have less than 10 items or are fleeing in terror..."
And hey! What do you know? We were a full 50 feet past the store now! I got completely sucked into the Grocery Store Destruction Fantasy; I totally blew whatever chance I may have had to play Supermarket Scramble. It began to dawn on me that the largest obstacle I was going to face that night wasn’t T or his mysterious gun; it was my inability to think clearly or act decisively.
I started to consider that the Run option may not present itself. Clearly, time was slipping away on the Wait And See Plan; we were now about 10 blocks from T's apartment, which I was now thinking of as my own personal Ground Zero. That's where T would be most likely to take action. T needed me to get him home, but once there, I was conceivably the last link that could tie him to the accident. I was T's ticket home, and T's ticket back to prison, in that order, and we both knew it all too well. I was determined to force the issue before we ever made it to Ground Zero. There was no point in denying what my primal being was now screaming in my ear: There was going to have to be a Showdown.
How hard do you have to kick someone to break their leg? What happens at the laundromat? Tune in HERE for the mildly anticipated conclusion to "T".
