The Failure by James Greer Page B

Guy.
    -What?
    -Were they out of hot pink?
    -You didn’t say what color. These were on clearance.
    -Do you know why they were on clearance? Because they’re incredibly garish and ugly. Which is kind of beside the point, because I’m not criticizing your fashion sense, Billy, I’m criticizing your common sense.
    -The security camera is black-and-white.
    -Even if you know that to be true, and I don’t see how, unless you believe everything you see on TV, that’s not the point. The point is, we are now readily identifiable. We are the baby-blue bandits. All of the eyewitnesses to this crime will now remember one very specific detail: the color of our ski masks.
    -Can I make a point?
    -I think you’ve already made enough points for one lifetime.
    -Here’s my thinking, for what it’s worth: yes, they’ll remember our ski masks. But that’s all they’ll remember. Because the masks are so memorable, they’ll fail to take note of any other salient characteristics, like height, skin tone, girth …
    -Girth?
    -I could stand to lose a little weight. Around the middle. Look, we ditch the ski masks first chance we get, and there’s nothing to tie us to the job. Everyone’s out looking for the … what you said, the baby-blue bandits, and we’re no longer any kind of blue.
    -Are you just turning a negative into a positive, or did you actually think of this beforehand?
    -Little bit of both, actually. I don’t favor analysis as much as you do.
    -Right. Okay. You ready?
    -I’m nervous as hell, frankly.
    -Me too. Let’s go.

29. THE LAST TIME GUY’S MOM AND DAD ATE AT THE PINE CLUB, THE NIGHT BEFORE THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO, ALBEIT A COUPLE OF THOUSAND MILES AWAY

    S hould have seen the look on his face. I’m telling you.
    -I’m sure it was something.
    -You bet it was something. I told that fucker …
    -Language …
    -Oh, fuck the fucking language. I’m celebrating. You know how much commission I get off this deal?
    -You’re always celebrating, dear. There are other people in this restaurant. It’s a public place.
    -Yeah, whatever, okay. But you should have seen it.
    -I’m sure it was something.
    -You’re sure it was … Do you even listen to me when I’m talking?
    -I’m sorry.
    -This is a big day for me. Wouldn’t hurt you to pay some goddamn attention when I’m talking.
    -I said I was sorry.
    Guy’s mom drifted back into her reverie. The usual one: where she’d made a different choice, thirty-five years ago, and was now in Buenos Aires running a small, secondhand, English-language bookstore. There weren’t many customers, but enough, and her Spanish had acquired sufficient polish that she was able to order food at the local markets without embarrassment, and in any case was well-known enough to the vendors that before she even arrived at their stall they’d have laid out exactly the sort of thing she imagined they imagined she’d want. She’d go back to her small apartment above the bookstore and cook dinner for herself, fresh vegetables and fish, nothing fancy, and watch the sun set on her balcony, the heat shimmering on the periphery of her vision as she paged idly through a recent best seller about a man having a heart attack in a steak restaurant in Dayton, Ohio …
    -Robert? she asked, seeing the odd expression on his face, just after he dropped his steak knife with a soundless clatter in the suddenly silent restaurant.
    This is strange, she thought. This is both part of and apart from my fantasy.
    Her husband clutched at his chest and mouthed with great effort some words. Were the words meant for her?
    -For. Fuck. Sake. The words popped one by one like little balloons in the air. Experiments have been done on this, she thought. I remember reading. If you take the words out of the ambient noise they lose all meaning. Then if you add back the noise, the words make sense.
    The noise came back. The rush of concerned voices from the surrounding booths felt to Laura like a physical blow, like the