In For A Penny
by William Ollie

   Freddie Pickridge leaned over the pool table. He looked up at his opponent pacing back and forth in front of the pocket, trying to distract him.

   They had played a game of pool for five bucks. Freddie lost and said double or nothing, and the kid with the greasy hair and nose-ring gladly accepted his offer.

   That was three games ago. If Freddie didn’t win this time, he was going to have to fork over forty bucks, damn near all the money he had.

   But that was okay.

   Fortune had smiled on him, this time, and there he was, leaning over the table, looking at a straight-in shot on the eight ball.

   "You fuckin’ dork," Nose-ring said, "You got a straight-in, cherry-pickin’ shot, and you’re still gonna fuck it up."

   Freddie fingered the cue and drew back the stick.

   "Hey fuck-wad." Nose-ring lit a cigarette, blew the smoke down at the table and added, "Think you’d better wipe them glasses, your zit-juice is leakin’ all over ‘em."

   Freddie tightened his grip. Without bothering to look up, he said, "Fuck you" and then struck the cue ball forcefully.

   Nose-ring turned sideways. Arm extended, he pointed his index finger, arm straining and shaking the finger as if he could alter the shot by sheer force of will.

   The cue ball smacked the eight ball, then bounced off the side-cushion as the eight ball made a beeline straight into the corner pocket Nose-ring was pointing at.

   "Yesss!" Freddie cried out. He was only going to break even, but at least he wouldn’t have to give this creep forty bucks and walk out broke.

   Nose-ring spun around and pointed at the cue ball, which was still rolling, careening across the table, spinning and bouncing off the felt cushion, and then moving slowly toward the corner pocket at the far end of the table.

   "Yeah, baby! Yeah, baby!" Doing an almost perfect imitation of Austin Powers, he aimed his finger at the pocket, cackling with joy as he humped and pumped, grinding his crotch forward with an exaggerated motion, as if he were deep in the throes of lovemaking.

   No, Freddie thought. As Nose-ring’s laughter assaulted his ears, he cried out, "Stop, you sunovabitch!"

   The eight ball slowed, barely moving as it crawled toward the pocket, finally coming to rest, virtually hanging over the edge of the felt-covered slate.

   "Yes!" Freddie cried out, as Nose-ring gave one more savage thrust and the eight ball slid over the precipice and disappeared down the hole.

   "Yeah, baby!" Nose-ring cried out one more time, as Freddie seriously considered shutting him up by smashing the cue stick across his face.

   Nose-ring walked up to Freddie. Black leather jacket hanging loosely off his trim, muscular physique, he took Freddie’s cue stick and leaned it against the wall. He blew smoke in Freddie’s face and said, "Pay me."

   Freddie pulled the two twenties out of his wallet. He wadded them up and dropped them into Nose-ring’s outstretched hand.

   Nose-ring took a drag on his cigarette and laughed. As Freddie plucked his jacket off the side of a chair, his opponent stuffed the money in his pocket and said, "Pleasure doin’ business with ya, sonny."

   Freddie walked off muttering to himself. When he was halfway across the poolroom, someone shouted, "Hey!"

   Freddie turned and saw Nose-ring standing on top of the table. He thrust his pelvis forward and shouted, "Here ya go, dude! One more for the road!"

   "Fucking loser," Freddie muttered. The irony was not lost on him as walked out the door with a dollar and forty-eight cents in his pocket.

******

   Leaving the pool hall, Freddie zipped his jacket against the brisk autumn wind. He spotted his car sitting at the rear of the parking lot.

   Freddie patted his pockets and shook his head.

   He was broke.

   "Fuck it," he said and stepped off the curb.

   "Hey dude," someone said.

   Freddie turned, ready to tell Nose-ring to go fuck himself, but it wasn’t him. A young guy wearing a black leather jacket stepped out of the shadows, grinning as he made his way over to Freddie.

   "Freddie, right?" the guy said.

   "Yeah?" Freddie studied his face, trying to put a name to it but coming up empty.

   "Hey, it’s me, Johnny Franks. We went to Carver High together. Remember? Old man Fredrick’s English class?"

   "Oh yeah, man." They had gone to the same high school, had been in the same tenth-grade gym class. Freddie remembered him being a shy kid with shoulder-length, blonde hair. "What’d you do to your hair?"

   "Shaved it off, dude."

   A flame appeared in the shadows. Behind Johnny, another bald figure in a black leather jacket lit a cigarette. He stepped forward. "Here, dude," he said, offering one to Freddie.

   Freddie looked at the freshly shaven head, the scorpion tattooed on the side of his neck and the silver cross dangling from his right ear. "No," he stammered, "no thanks."

   "Here ya go, Flip." The guy shook a cigarette out of the pack and handed it to Freddie’s former classmate.

   "Flip?" Freddie wondered out loud.

   "Yeah, Flip; that’s my nick. Remember?" Johnny looked behind him, then crouched and launched himself, executing a perfect back flip.

   "Oh yeah, right." Freddie laughed, remembering Flip’s long hair streaming behind him, girls clapping and cheering, the blur of motion as he did a series of back flips across the gym floor as good or better than any gymnast Freddie had ever seen.

   "This is Duke." Flip introduced his friends, "Freddie, Duke. Duke, Freddie Pickridge."

   "Hey Pic."

   Freddie liked the sound of that. He’d never been cool in high school and was still a loner, no girlfriend, no close friends, either.

   Duke offered his hand.

   Freddie grasped it awkwardly, as Duke disdained the traditional grasp by interlocking thumbs and negotiating a cool handshake Freddie had only seen others do.

   "So what’re you up to, Pic?"

   "Not much." Freddie grinned upon hearing his newly given nickname. He shrugged his shoulders and added, "Fixin’ to head on home."

   "You’re kiddin’, right?" Duke raised his hands in a questioning gesture. "Nine o’clock on a Friday night and you’re goin’ home?"

   Freddie shrugged his shoulders again.

   "Oh, I get it," Flip said. "You got pussy waitin’ on you, huh Pic?"

   "I wish." Freddie laughed, still getting a charge from hearing them call him Pic.

   "Well, what the fuck’re you goin’ home for?" Duke asked.

   "I’m broke, man."

   "Hey, we got money. Don’t we, Duke?"

   "Yeah, hell yeah we’ve got money." Duke rubbed his fingers across his stubbled chin. "Hey Pic, why don’t we roll on  down to the liquor store and get some beer? I’m buyin’. You in?"

   "Yeah, I’m in. Sounds good!" Freddie replied as Flip slapped a friendly hand on his shoulder. Beats the hell outta goin’ home and watchin’ twenty-freakin’-twenty, Freddie thought, as he dug the keys out of his pocket and led his knew friends across the parking lot.

*******

   Freddie and Duke climbed in the front seat and Flip took his place in the back.

   When Freddie started the car, Duke switched the golden-oldies rock station to progressive rock.

   Freddie pulled through the parking lot, passing by the front of the pool hall as somebody called out, "Hey nerd!"

   "What the fuck?" Duke said.

   Freddie hit the brakes as Nose-ring stepped off the curb, flipping the bird as he stood in front of the car.

   "Told ya I was gonna kick yer ass, didn’t I?" he taunted, leering at Freddie through the windshield.

   Duke jumped out and rushed to the front of the car. "Who the fuck you talkin’ to?"

   "I’m talkin’ to your fuckin’ boyfriend, bitch! Now, step off and shut the fu—"

   With lightning quick reflexes, Duke lashed out, smashing Nose-ring on the point of his chin, sending him sprawling onto the sidewalk.

   As the fallen thug struggled to get up, Duke planted a hobnail boot square in his face, blood exploding under his heel as Nose-ring landed on the sidewalk, bouncing his head off the concrete.

   Freddie sat in the driver’s seat, looking on in stunned disbelief.

   As Pennywise blared from the speaker’s, Flip shouted, "Hell yeah! Give it to him, baby!"

   Duke walked over. He knelt down, hooked a finger in the gold nose ring and ripped it out, laughing when Nose-ring cried out at the pain. He put the ring in his pocket, then, dancing around the front of the car like he was in the middle of a mosh-pit, he climbed back in the driver’s seat.

   He turned to Freddie, shouting to be heard, "Nobody fucks with my friends!"

   As Freddie pulled away, a crowd rushed out of the pool hall and gathered around Nose-ring, who was holding his shattered nose, still struggling to get to his knees.

   They pulled onto the highway, Flip and Duke moving to the beat of the heavy metal music still blaring from the radio.

   Duke turned the volume down a couple of notches. "Hey Pic, what’d you do to that guy? Why’d he wanna kick your ass?"

   "I think he was talking about kicking my ass in pool. He said he was gonna kick my ass before we started playing, and he did. That’s why I’m broke."

   "Oh shit." Flip laughed and leaned over Duke’s shoulder. "He was just rubbin’ it in."

   "Damn, Pic," Duke said, "you should’a told me. I would’a rolled his ass and got your money back, and all of his."

   "It happened so fast." Freddie shrugged his shoulders, then added, "Man, I’ve never seen anything like that. That was like something out of a movie."

   "Cool, huh?" Duke grinned.

   "I’ll say."

   Duke reached under his jacket and pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket. He fired it up, took in a lungful and handed the joint to Freddie.

   Freddie took a hit, coughed a couple of times and then took another hit. He held it in until the ever-expanding smoke burst from his lungs.

   "Good shit, huh?" Duke grinned as Freddie, still coughing, nodded and passed the joint back to Flip.

   "You still in for the beer?" Duke asked.

   "Hell yeah I’m in." Freddie looked up at the full moon decorating the night sky.

   "In for a penny," Flip called out.

   "In for a pound?" Duke grinned at his young friend, then told Freddie, "Turn here, follow this road up to twenty-third, then hang a right."

   They drove through town, passing the reefer back and forth, Freddie feeling his scalp crawling around like an army of ants marching across his head. Goosebumps the size of tennis balls crept up his arms. He had never been this high before, and wondered if there had been something more than marijuana rolled up in the joint.

   Freddie took a right, speakers pounding out a driving bass line as they passed a row of old abandoned warehouses.

   Following Dukes lead, he took another right and then pulled up under a busted streetlight in front of a dimly lit liquor store.

   "C’mon," Duke said and they followed him into the store.

   Flip went to the beer cooler at the rear off the store.

   "How’s it going?" Freddie made conversation with the black store clerk while they waited for Flip.

   "Okay, I guess," he replied, casting a suspicious eye toward Duke.

   Flip set a twelve pack on the counter.

   "That it?" the clerk asked. He punched the register keys and the cash drawer opened.

   "Give us a fifth of Jack," Duke said.

   The man turned and plucked a fifth of whiskey from the bottles lining the shelf behind him. When he turned back around, Duke pulled a pistol from beneath his jacket and blew a hole in his chest.

   Freddie saw flame shoot out of the barrel, heard a deafening roar of gunfire, and a horrified scream. He looked on in horror as the clerk’s body slammed against the whiskey bottles. A pink mist exploded as the bullet hit, and blood spurted through his fingers as he grabbed his chest.

   "Wh, Wha, What?" Freddie stammered.

   Flip jumped over the counter. He shoved the clerk out of the way and emptied out the register.

   "Wh, Wh, Why’d you—"

   "Get a grip, Pic," Duke said, as he walked behind the counter, put the pistol to the gasping man’s head and fired, splattering brain matter and bloody chunks of skull on the whisky bottles.

   As the clerk crumpled to the floor, Duke twirled the pistol like a gunfighter, then stuck it back in his waistband and closed the jacket around it. He looked at Freddie stuttering and stammering on the other side of the counter and said, "Some movie, huh Pic."

   Flip grabbed a bottle of whisky and the twelve-pack and followed Duke around the counter.

   "C’mon," Duke said, "let’s go crack a few beers and figure out what we’re gonna do next."

   "Oh, hell no," Freddie said. "I’m dropping you two off somewhere. I’m not getting involved in this shit."

   Duke pulled the gun out. He stuck it under Freddie’s chin. "You aren’t gonna drop us off. You are gonna get us the fuck outta here. He slowly cocked the firing pin and added, "Now, are you in or out?"

   "In, definitely in."

   "Damn right you are." Duke slid the gun into his waistband as he and Freddie followed Flip out the front door.

   Just as Freddie put his right hand in his pocket to get his car keys, a patrol car screeched to a halt in front of the liquor store. Two policemen jumped out of the car and yelled, "Freeze!"

   Flip dropped the booze and hauled ass down the block.

   Duke brought the gun up blazing, cutting one cop down in a firestorm of bullets.

   The other one returned fire, striking Duke in the arm, leg and throat, sending him crashing to the sidewalk.

   The cop charged forward. Gun pointed directly at Freddie, he tossed a set of handcuffs on the sidewalk.

   "Put ‘em on," he said as another squad car pulled up.

   "I, I didn’t do anything."

   "You just killed a cop." The officer pointed his gun at Freddie’s head. "I oughta end this right here."

   Freddie winced. He looked down and saw the gaping hole in Duke’s neck; his vacant eyes staring up at the sky as blood pooled on the sidewalk.

   "You don’t understand," he pleaded, desperately trying to explain. "I wasn’t even with these guys."

   "Nice try, kid. I saw you leave the store with ‘em. You ain’t talkin’ your way outta this one."

   "But I was just drivin’!" Freddie cried out, tears streaming down his face.

   "Sure, kid, sure."

   As the policemen gathered around their fallen comrade, Freddie knew the cop was right; nobody would ever believe him. There was no way out of this mess.

   He fought back the tears and thought, in for a penny, in for a pound.

©2003 William Ollie