The Lookout

“I’m worried about you.” It’s snowing. She stands in front of him, slightly shivering, her eyes pleading with him. “The others are worried about you too.”
He avoids her gaze, fixating on objects around them: a despondent garbage can— a fugitive plastic bag, tossing spastically in the wind! The bag seems to be having quite painful spasms; it jerks tumultuously, contracting for one moment’s peace, then scrunching up in humility, and so on until it blusters out of sight.
He is sitting on a bench, a maroon-colored bench, its enamel wearing off, splinters curling up like chalk fingers. A color, maroon, he learned of when she once took him shopping for belts. They were wandering through a high-end clothing store, courteously transfixed by everything (she’d reach out and finger the fabrics) even though they wouldn’t have been able to afford anything. He had spotted a belt, most likely the cheapest item in the store, he had walked over it to observe it more closely but she giddily pulled him away, unaware of his interest in the belt, grasping his arm and pointing out something at the other end of the store, frivolously goading him onwards. As they were about to leave, he, on a whim, decided to go back and buy the belt, but upon returning it wasn’t there. He asked one of the salesmen where it had gone and he told him that they had moved all the belts on display back into the storage room. Could he specify the belt? Red, plain, undecorated— was it maroon colored? He paused, supposing that it must have been (was it maroon colored, maroonish, the salesmen gesticulated with his hands, tautening an invisible belt), and said—
“Are you listening to me?” Her arms dangle gawkishly. He feels ashamed that her childlike earnestness arouses him. “We’re all worried about you.” Has his fecklessness gone too far? The bag wryly whisks back into sight, and jerks upwards as if to say ‘yes.’ Distressed, he remains recumbent, unmoved. She crosses her arms, dipping her chin into her scarf.
Across the street a bank robbery is taking place. The look-out is drugged, inured, posturing with the listless aplomb of someone who has done this many times before.
“Maybe you should take a break from the bench,” she says, tentatively. “There are other means of coping. I’ll…I’ll help you, and stay with you for the first couple months, maybe even longer. I’m sure they have centers for these kind of things, places you can recuperate, like the places all the celebrities go, with the sterilized bed sheets and the—I know, I know, I’m rambling, but if you go, I’ll visit you. Every day. I’ll bring you McDonald’s, twenty chicken nuggets, the sweet and sour—” he swipes his hand in the air.
The look-out staggers dopily, bolting upright when reality sardonically peeps through. He sticks his head out, scanning the area, adamantly trying to stand still but still teetering, stupefied by his own actions, unable to recall what he was formerly doing.
She is beautiful, seemingly unaware of her own beauty, even more beautiful, still naively amazed that anyone could love her, of all people, with her siren blond hair, now naturally tousled into a knot by the wind, dangling upwards in the air by some bastard puppeteer.
He self-pities himself to the extent that when other people pity him it feels absurd, guilty. Can’t she just leave him alone! But no, now she can’t, if she leaves, leaves from standing in front of him, it will take him an eternity to fill the void where she once stood—if only she had never visited him at all! Even though he, chagrinned by himself, has been baiting her, furtively, sluggishly, tediously pining, curling himself up into fetal positions to squeeze away the anguish throbbing in his chest. The physical discomfort the bench causes him takes his mind off of her. Reminded of it, he reaches down to massage the sharp pain in his lower back.
Here comes the bag again, merrily flopping down the street towards them, somehow prescient and maliciously content with what it has foreseen. The look-out notices the bag and sneezes, tumbling onto the chipped marble steps ascending the entrance of the bank. He rocks his head in his hands nauseously.
“It doesn’t have to be like this Alec,” she implores him, her lips quavering, unintentionally seductive, frightened, “It doesn’t. It doesn’t. Maybe it could even…go back to the way things were. Community college, for a year, and then you could transfer out, go to somewhere big, become famous (remember!) Maybe things could even go back to they way they were…between you. And I. And remember Mark! Haha, oh, Mark. He’s there for you, waiting, as am I, right here, standing right here. Remember when, remember we used to take the raft out on the sound over the summer and get fucked up and just lie there in the sun for hours, just talking about nothing. ‘Dude, I’m so fucked up right now,’” she giggles, and snorts, hopping backwards abashedly and covering her nose with her hands, only to realize her hands are freezing, which makes her whelp, and squint, and (of course) trip on the curb she’s backed herself into. He makes a lurch off the bench to help her up, impulse—stops himself.
The look-out pulls out a gun, his hand raising up from where the gun is holstered between his belt and waist like a clutter of pigeons taking flight, a bulge with panic, and shoots himself in the head.