Outside the Drive
There was weight around the waist of black jeans, denim around a flat midsection, the heavy tug and pull of a loaded pistol -- RUGER MK III, he knew that. Fuck. It was as recognizable as anything. Its heft in his hand tipped this way and that as he considered the piece, stainless steel, 6.875" fluted bull barrel, nice wood grip, fiber optic front sight -- but he slipped it away fast. The tinkle and flirt of the mall's overwrought lighting made everything too conspicuous. That was the point. Conspicuous consumption in the name of capitalism or whatever. He looked sideways into the perfect pane of a shop's window and saw himself there, slimmer, younger, dashing. -- The last word came to him before he considered it, and the man growled at his reflection, a lift and curl of pretty upper lip under the sensitive kid's mop of hair.
He saw the way his shoulders, the ones that were not his own, bowled forward. He took in the slight, well-hidden bulge of a knife under the dusty cheek of a full on leather jacket, worn to a calf's softness with age; though the collar remained stiff from the salt of sweat.
This was stupid.
He knew from the strange gatherings of people, from the way they floated around him like New Yorkers did a tourist, through his no doubt dark and brooding gaze, that this was some bullshit. But there wouldn't be a way out, because that would be too easy. Fine. He'd take advantage of the break. Youth oiled joints and some old creaks went silent under his boot heels.
He wondered what he could do with the gun as he idled outside the shop with the steering wheels. The man-turned-boy skimmed fingers through that dashing hair and felt an outside twinge for something he no longer did.