Thursday, May 1, 2003

Macho Muchacho cast an intense, almost accusing look at the sunroof controls as Mr. Pepero’s contingent of Peterbilts flashed by his sedan. He barely caught sight of them in the fading late-afternoon sunlight.

“Isn’t it strange that there are so many trucks?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

Senorita Sin shifted sullenly in her seat and let out an angry huff.

“If you can’t establish good eye contact with me, dear, then don’t ask any questions at all,” she muttered.

Macho emitted a snort–that would have to do in lieu of eye contact–and turned his divided attention back to the sunroof. Should I, he wondered, open it up? How could I do this suavely and more importantly, how could I do it in the spirit of Bonnie and Clyde?

“Oh, just open the damn thing up,” the Senorita broke into a laugh. “You’ve only spent the last five minutes thinking about it. Besides, it’s not that chilly.”

And that’s why he loved her so. Rough as she was, obsessive-compulsive as she was, the Senorita shared a connection with him that, if nothing else, allowed for an economy of words. They had sat together under the same hot, high school sun, listening to the valedictorian drone on and on about opportunities; they had tossed their caps up into the same alma mater sky, both of them secretly tossing within arm’s reach for easy retrieval; and fortune, it seemed, had even allowed them to receive their master’s degrees from the same institution.

But at the pinnacle of their success, the Spirit of Opportunity fled from them, leaving them jobless. The high school valedictorian was wrong on so many counts.

“You think we should follow them?” he asked, eyeing the shrinking truck in his rearview mirror.

“Yeah, sure,” she replied as she stretched herself toward the backseat and grabbed a handful of bullets. “It’s not like I had anything else planned for the night.”

She gave him a wry peck on the cheek as she retreated to her seat, and he reciprocated by giving her an absentminded rub on her shoulder.

They were smart and resourceful and although the economy demanded that they tighten their belts, they did so by feeding richly off of scams and petty crimes. Had they been asked about their real names right then and there, both of them would have failed to remember the day they switched; there was a tangible sense of normalcy, domesticity even, in their criminal existence. The desire for excitement, however, goaded in them a lust for something bigger. They would unearth a new opportunity and tackle it with the same verve and style characteristic of all their crimes. Macho glanced at his classical six-shooter–it wasn’t modern by any stretch of the imagination, but it was chic–as it vibrated snugly in his cup holder.

“What are you doing now, love?” he asked, this time catching the Senorita’s glance fully.

“Counting bullets,” she said, dividing them up into two distinct piles.

“Think we’ll need guns?” he queried her as he brought the car to a tight U-turn.

“Maybe,” she sniffed and sneezed in response to the cold. “Just to be safe.”

Macho decided that Bonnie and Clyde would never sacrifice style for influenza, so he reached over to the sunroof controls and shut out the chill.