Participants:
| Scene Title | Ridin' Dirty |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | There's a five-finger discount going on at Best Buy, one lonely New York night. |
| Date | November 17, 2010 |
It's a good night. It's a good night to commit some crime.
The fall of boots make an authoritative and swift clip along the pavement. This stretch of road is abandoned of pedestrians, prowling cop cars, or tanks — past curfew and not yet covered, although who knows when that's going to change. The man sweeping past storefronts doesn't seem to mind, overly, clad in jeans, a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he's scoping out the windows light he's shopping for something behind closed, locked, occasionally barred doors.
"This is like taking pie off your grandma's fuckin' windowsill," Joshua Springsteen feels moved to note over one burly shoulder, scritching shaven head with blunt fingernails. "I almost don't even know."
Bare feet lack the drama of heftier stamped leather in their feline navigation of a raised barrier at the street's center some feet parallel of Joshua's more potato-headed progress. Calvin pads along at speed, down and up again quick as outstretched arms allow him to regain balance at the expense of dignity he does not have to lose, glistening glass stepped deftly over, ancient gum and squandered cigarettes trodden on with little care for contamination. He doesn't eat with his feet.
All buttondown and jeans under the shabby drape of his (fashionably) secondhand peacoat and a mane of deliberately disordered ginger hair, he hums the Mission Impossible theme to himself in the spaces between his hefty set of bolt cutters listing too far right or left and sending him dipped down off the knee-high barrier to either side. "I've never stolen pie from your grandmother," agreed, sort of, he crouches to examine a dead bird splayed splat in teh center of his path before he hops lithely over it and continues with — an awkward glance back, like he's still slightly more interested in it than he is where they're going. "We were always too busy having sex."
"Gross," Joshua comments, reasonably neutral in his delivery, pausing to dip at the waist a bit to see through a shadowed window, then back to his stride. And when he does stop, it's under the idling glow of a Best Buy outlet, dark within the windows and the rolling metal grill that covers it, and he tilts back to send one last up and down the street. Shadows move briefly off somewhere distant, but it doesn't seem to be anyone coming near any time soon.
His palms smack together in a clap, then delivering two fingered point towards the mouth of the store, like it's just waiting for them as clear as day, despite the hours stating 7 AM through to 8 30 PM. And it being decidedly neither of those hours. "This is ours, baby. Let's do it then bank by a liquor store, one for the road styles."
"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, Shady." As in Slim, presumably, Joshua lacking the necessary pigmentation to qualify as a Fitty or even a Snoop. "Velvet slipper tits, and it's'all soft and — " Calvin gestures with his free hand, articulate enough in the elaborate working of piano fingers that the precise nature of his depiction is likely best left to the imagination.
Fortunately there are no sound effects. Just a bit lip and a bump of bony hips to drive the point home on his way to dropping down to street level J-side, monkey toes splayed wide and shoulders stiffed out in magician preparation for — nothing. Joshua merely points, where by the look of him there should already be a giant boulder rolling around inside to the tune of HUH HUH HUH caveman laughter. "Alright," he says after a beat, breath barely a fog in fifty degree weather, bolt cutters slack against his knee. Best Buy! "So — open the fuckin' door."
Without so much as a what, you think I can't?!, Joshua is on it. ON. IT. In that he kind of steps forward then weaves back as he reconsiders his game plan, before going leftwards and considers thick glass. What happens next is absurd, in that if one were to be normal, it would not work — a couple feet swept in a long stride forward that carries the momentum of slamming his palms down against the window, that should come with it an ineffectual fleshy smack. Instead, a resonant shudder and spiderwebbing cracking of glass like candied sugar, and it takes one last hit with the side of a fist to have the window caving in as cleanly as millions of shards can possibly be.
Which is about when the alarms go off.
"Primal — my favourite song!" Joshua proclaims, which hey. Could be true. He leaps two feetedly through the broken window, fairly barreling into the store with an energetic exuberance. "Come on, ginger, let's go! They're having a saaale! 100% percent off fuckin' everything."
"Wait — Yehoshua I — "
Too late. The glass is history, shattered and fragmented into inwardly-blown oblivion, with Joshua already crunching away across it when Calvin slings the bolt cutters after him. They don't go very far. But the better trained mechanism of his voice sure carries nicely in the crisp and cold!
"I'm not wearing any shoes you cunt!" Pause for dramatic effect. "Joshua!" Pause. "Josh!"
He's not coming back. Calvin looks at his watch, and then the stars, of which there are few. "Police response time to burglaries averages six minutes!" A resilient, clinging patch of glass falls gaptoothed from the storefront and shatters gracelessly to the ground below as he stands a bit vacantly out on the sidewalk, palm-frond mane awash in orange light. "…Just saying!"
There's a clatter within the dark store. Something falls. Something else does too, a larger crash that comes with the distant tinkle of more glass.
The rattling of metal is heralded by the burly young man's silhouette passing by somewhere within seeing distance. He has a plastic yellow shopping cart, which may or may not be filled yet. "Like they don't got better shit to do right now!" echoes back towards Calvin. "If you're going to be a fucking pussy then stand guard while daddy takes care'a business— woah." Whatever woah was meant to be, it doesn't get detailed.
Another crash.
"What's the point've having stores if they're never open?" asked disappointed-like of the street to the tune of crashes and low exclamations of betesticled wonder from inside, Calvin scratches his chin at the dark line of storefronts that goes on and on until he notices a stationary mail drop box and meanders over thataway. He draws something out've his pocket as he goes — a miniature glass bottle that probably once contained alcohol and now contains a dirty slosh of siphoned petrol instead. Pre-wicked and everything!
The tick of his lighter to the tune of, "Hullo my name is Jimmy Pop and I'm a dumb white guy," is inevitable in a necessary kind of way. The fact that he lights off the clothy wick, uses the wick to light a joint, and lobs the lot of it in underhanded through the "open" cavern of the gawping window with an altogether not nearly enthusiastic enough, "Woo~," is premature. Also slightly petty.
"Okay!"
Okay? This from inside, somewhat oblivious as to molotov cocktails, pettiness, sabotage!, etc. A shopping cart is going much faster than its wheels are designed to handle, pinwheeling in protest although doing nothing, really, to hinder its careening for the window with the muscles behind it and the momentum built up. Several thousand dollars worth of boxes inside, some (empty) DVD cases casually tipped in there, a battery-powered drill — you know, useful things — rattle within yellow cage.
All of which is promptly derailed by fwoomf, and a curse word that only barely makes it outside. There is a louder clatter, albeit one barely audible after fiery explosion and the wailing sirens, and then three, two, one—
The window over bursts in much the same fashion as its twin did.
With a shove of shopping cart muscled on over the edge of the window, Joshua emerges, victorious and kind of confused. "Dude?" is a valid question, a hand going out in open palmed gesticulation. A sound system lounges innocently in cart, along with a laptop, aforementioned drill, some boxed iPods, anything that looked relevant and grabbable.
Fwoomf and Calvin has all but disappeared, elbow, knees and toes scrunched into a scarecrow crouch opposite the mailbox's shelter when heat and glass and sparks belch out over and around.
Presently, once blazing projectiles have trailed to more of a fiery trickle, the unmistakeable crest of him peeks up over the top with wide blue eyes washed a very feline shade of yellow by the sudden shock of fire. And lo, there is Joshua, wholly intact with the goods.
"Like a fuckin' champ," observed with all due enthusuasm, he trips not (entirely) ungracefully up onto the balls of his feet and by way of explanation sways an arm out along the street's length. "There were girls watching," he explains then, eyeliner smudged black 'round the earnestness in his assistance, "I just magnified the manliness of your getaway by a factor of at least a million."
That the women are a pair of beat cops reaching for their sidearms as they run CLAP CLAP CLAP down the sidewalk at speed is just. One of those things.
Lllladies— oh.
In instant reaction, Joshua yanks on handle bar, and the cart rocks on its wheels as he shoves, wings it to nose down the other end of the street. The concept of throwing up his hands in surrender— caught me— apparently absent in his scheme of how this night is supposed to go. "Haul butt, 'less you got any more magic tricks!" he suggests, helpfully, but only after he's well on his way towards running. A DVD case that was meant to house Stomp The Yard 2: Homecoming flies out of plastic yellow cage as he shoves cart ahead of him with a loud rattle of metal and the electronics inside, apparently unwilling to give up the booty.
Shoved hard enough to sail a foot and a half off the curb. And foot wide ring shaped patterns in the road crack and ripple in the asphalt beneath each loping pound of boot to ground.
"Fresh out, I'm afraid."
Fan of footwear a la natural as he is, Calvin has no delusions regarding his ability to outrun the fuzz on an empty street with a black and white unit wailing on its way. But he is squirrel monkey fleet of foot enough to propel himself one-two-step off the curb to fire hydrant and further up still into the chockablock full shopping cart before Joshua can muscle his way up to full speed.
Balanced more precariously than he'd like atop boombox and speakers and Stomp The Yard 3: What The Fuck Is This Movie Even About and whatever else, he hunkers into a crouch that does a little to cut down wind resistance and a lot to balance everything out enough to lessen the odds of an impromptu barrel roll in the spans of time the cart is airborne. Like now. "AAAAAAH!"
Additional weight in the basket could slow them, but momentum builds it enough that it gets to the point where Joshua is fairly wrenched along behind it as he powers their way down the street with the cops on their tail and probably demanding back up their radios, if it's not already summoned. "Corner comin' up, lean into the centripetal force or die trying!" Million dollar word right there, maybe he even used it correctly, but either way— both men disappear around a corner with the cart briefly tipping onto two rickety wheels before slamming back down into stability.
"Yippee ki-yay, mother fuck— "
Bweeeyoop, goes a siren, a flash of red and blue light coming up street perpendicular. The cart juddering along at high speed and rattling Calvin's teeth inside his skull. "Okay I'm gonna distract them! Go on without me! Don't lose the drill!" And then— and then Joshua's letting go of the cart.
Brain more rattled than a yahtzee cup at the mercy of Michael J. Fox, it's all Calvin can do to stay hunkered mostly upright when all four wheels slam back down for the second time and his tongue nearly snips in two between his pearly whites. His knuckles bleach bloodless in their clawed hook through the shopping cart grate, peacoat flagging when he hooks a buggy-eyed look back over his shoulder just in time to see Joshua shoving off.
"The what?" is a valid question, gingy brows knit in the half a second before the unsteered cart clips to an abrupt halt against a raised curb and all of its contents get a practical lesson in the physics of momentum.
Sky, streetlamps, street.
Calvin snaps back to consciousness a beat later, flat on his back and bleeding from — pat, pat patpatpat — nowhere. No bones split out've his skin when he hobbles up to his feet either, right hand pushing past unskinned CDs and iPods with vacant purpose to recollect the drill.
And on second thought, also a couple of iPods before he scampers down an adjacent alley without looking back.
Blam-blam-blam.
Gunfire, not puncturing Joshua's body but making a spiderwebby mess of a police car's windshield, following by the scream of brakes before anything can crash. But rather than ginger being pursued by muscle monkey, no boot-thudding foot falls carry after lighter slaps of bare soles on pavement as Calvin makes his getaway. That Joshua never does is made clear in a lack of things.
A lack of foot steps, a lack of random swearing and cowboy hollers of victory, a lack of picking up sound system to rest on one burly shoulder and disappear into the night.
Calvin does eventually look back, to his credit. It's just. Four blocks and a few minutes later, raggedy breath clouded faint in the obscene quiet of the neighborhood after hours. No more gorilla.
This will be hard to explain.
He could go back.
After some quick calculation, mainly involving a red and blue wash of light 'round a neighboring corner, he decides to dip into another alleyway instead. So it goes.