Games

“Is it time?” asked the man.

“Look at your watch, answered the woman. “Where’s your watch?” 

“I seem to have misplaced it.”

“Misplaced it?  Your precious watch, your pride and joy, which was your father’s and grandfather’s before you.  I don’t recall ever seeing you without it.”

“Well it’s a day of firsts,” reflected the man, “I’m just as shocked to see you without your long, wild tangle of hair”.

“I guess it is a day of firsts.  And lasts! How many jobs together does this make?”

“52, once Centipede gets here with our final payday.  Who would have thought after that first job?”

“Where the getaway car stalled out,” recalled the woman. “If it hadn’t been right near that couple with the flat tire which you got out so gallantly to fix.  And the cops -- I don’t know how they didn’t recognize our car --  but they couldn’t imagine a couple of robbers stopping to fix someone’s flat tire and rode right on.

“Yes, they couldn’t have realized that we were intending to “borrow” the car from that nice couple.  Or that they wouldn’t be needing it much longer.”

“They died happy, and in love, except perhaps for those last minutes,” sighed the woman.

“Yes, they must have known, and yet they didn’t resist.  It astonished me.  I mean, the point of listening to someone with a gun is you hope in the end they won’t shoot.  if you know they are going to shoot you, shouldn’t you resist?”

“I guess there is always that uncertainty.  Maybe something will happen.  Maybe the cops are waiting in the woods, or there’ll be an earthquake, or the Martians will land. But yes given the probabilities, odd they didn’t try anything.  Did you give them any hope to keep them docile?”

“I was gonna.  But I didn’t and I saw that look of acquiescence? Or trust?  Or...disbelief? In their eyes, even when I was menacing them with the gun and leaving little doubt as to our intentions.  And even when they had a little bit of a chance before the wood swallowed them up, they just meekly cooperated.  I couldn’t understand it.  It isn’t rational, when your life's on the line, to hope against hope.  I started giving them ultimatums like walk faster, or straighter, or closer together, or I’m gonna make this very painful for you.  And I did it just to see how far I could push them even though they had nothing left to lose.  I was hoping for even the slightest resistance.  If they had suddenly run, I think i may have let them go -- it may have given me hope for humanity.  But they didn’t.  It made me question the essence of humanity.  Do most humans just follow along?  Were they really in love, or just plodding along in some well-worn comfortable path before we took them into the woods? And it depressed me profoundly that maybe this is most people most of the time.  Even braver people, who might have understood the urgency of a gun: put them in most situations and they just swim along according to some preconceived narrative.

“Deep,” chuckled the woman.  “Most people don’t think like us.  They think we’re kinda weird.  You do realize that, don’t you?”

“I know.  But why?  It makes them so vulnerable.  I just can’t understand it.  In the end, I shot them more out of disgust, than fear they would witness against us.  One shot.  Game over.”

“Well at least they had a nice car.  The nicest ride we had until that red Porsche you found for us in Greensboro,” said the woman.

“Yes, when I wanted to rob the bank and you wanted to hit the jewelry store”.

“We could have just split up.”

“We could have, but it was always much more fun together.”

“Yes,” said the woman, “but was the incremental fun worth the tantrum you threw when you threatened to drive us into the lake if I didn’t agree to do the bank?”

“I was having a crisis of faith.  You and I had previously always behaved so...precisely, so professionally.  And here we were arguing like little kids.  Bank, jewelry store.  Surely there must have been a process to decide logically and we couldn’t find one.  It put me on the brink. And I decided, if even we can’t solve simple problems like this, what’s the point in living.  So I put my foot to the metal to see if rationality would prevail.

“And by rationality, you mean my rationality, since you knew I’d rather live and rob the bank. But you also knew I knew you were rational and would suppose you wanted to live, so would stop.”

“Yes, maybe,” conceded the man.

“And I was dead set on the jewelry store.  So I just let my mind wander knowing you were gonna stop.  And then I remembered I wanted to see Porgy and Bess, which was playing at the opera house the next day.  And as you kept accelerating, the world slowed down, and I think I played the whole opera in my head as we sped down the road.  And then I no longer cared bank or jewelry store as long as I could get you to take me to Porgy and Bess.  So we ended up with bank and opera, instead of lake, but was that a rational decision-making process?

“I suppose perhaps not.  Perhaps life needn’t be as rational as I have supposed.”

“Jessica,” said the man suddenly, “I don’t want this to end, let’s go back!”

“Back?  Back where? We have to meet Centipede and get our cash,” said Jessica nonchalantly.

“Back to our partnership.  It’s a setup.  I was gonna sell you out.  I even gave Centipede my watch as a pledge I’d show up here to hand you over.  But I’ve been wrong. I want to see if we can behave like...humans.  Are you listening? Centipede is not a fence, he’s police.”

“She knows,” said Centipede, actually Detective Young, emerging from the shadows. 

“Centipede!”

“But what she didn’t know -- neither of you knew -- was I made the same deal with both of you.”

“You made a deal too?” asked the man of Jessica.

“Of course, you idiot!  I thought you might even thank me for not throwing you into one of your existential tantrums about why i couldn’t help but act...human!  My mistake was believing this guy when he told me the deal was for me only.”

“Sorry,” said Detective Young, in his best sorry not-sorry voice.

“Tell me one thing”, asked the man of Jessica as Detective Young’s underlings cuffed them, “did you pledge your hair as part of the bargain?”

“Pledge my hair?  Of course not.  I just wanted a new look.”

“It’s more practical in prison,” added Detective Young helpfully.