Air Heads Bites, Tropical Skittles, and a Pocket Pistol

Mandy Monroe walked down the same street every day at 4:15 p.m. She kept such a strict walking habit for two reasons:

1. To purchase her all-time favorite candy in the world, Air Heads Bites, and
2. It’s good exercise

Mandy was on such a walk when a blue van passed her by on the main road to her left. The speed limit was only 25 MPH since they were in a school zone. Mandy turned to inspect the nascent vehicle and she caught a decent view of the passenger’s profile; he had one arm hanging out the window and his other hand was busy pouring the remnants of a bag of skittles into his mouth. His face took on a squirrel-like appearance as he partitioned the candy into equal parts in each of his cheeks. Mandy surmised when he wasn’t pouching candy his face took on a slimmer perhaps intriguing appearance. The driver of the van, who Mandy couldn’t see due to the geometry of her view point, blew through the stop sign at the end of the street. As they took the corner a pale arm jutted out the window and with it flew a small piece of trash.

Mandy maintained her pace of 3 MPH despite her distaste for such maleficence. When she reached the stop sign she bent down to inspect what had been flung by the Sciuridae passenger. The wrapper crinkled in her hand as she flipped it over and read, Skittles with a much smaller printed Tropical, hovering above the “t-t-l-e-s.” She scoffed to herself as she shoved the wrapper in her pocket. That’s not even a good flavor, she thought as she crossed the street to Victory’s Convenience.

She made her way across the parking lot and jumped over the curb that led to the front door of the shop. It was sunny for March, and Winter had been long; Mandy stopped and turned her face to the fading sun percolating its last bursts of warmth for her behind the deciduous trees across the street. Once she felt warm enough she continued on the path to Victory’s. On her way she noticed the blue van, squirrel boy littered from moments prior, was parked in the only handicap spot in the empty lot. The glaring sun took vengeance on the winter months and hurled its photons onto the van’s windows. Mandy scoffed as she pushed her way through the front door.

When the bell rang above her head Simon said, “Howdy” from behind the counter and Mandy gave her usual smile. She b-lined to the candy aisle for her Air Heads Bites. The only correct candy choice as far as she was concerned.

“A woman on a mission,” Simon bellowed from the register. Mandy smiled into one of the eagle-eye mirrors. A few months back she helped Simon screw in a bunch of mirrors throughout the store cause he wanted a clear view of adolescent shop lifters. The Bites were on the bottom shelf and Mandy had a ritual of picking out the second to last bag in the row. She was selecting that penultimate Air Head when the front door slammed the attached bell into the front-facing window. Mandy, already crouching to collect her candy, instinctively cowered in the middle of the aisle with her hands over her ears as glass pelted the LVT 3 aisles away. A man’s voice boomed over the music pushing its way through the tinny speakers hung in each corner of the store (Surround Sound as Simon said) distorting the otherwise mellowing effects of B.B. King.

Mandy knew Simon could see her upright fetal position when the man bellowed his orders:

“We’ll keep this simple. Open the cash register and move out of the way.” Mandy figured he must have been the driver of the van for two reasons:

1. The young man (who was not only passenger to the man speaking, but also presumably partners in crime) with squirrel tendencies didn’t seem to possess such a baritone vocal register, and
2. Squirrel boy was standing in the candy aisle           

     Squirely stared at Mandy like a deer in headlights, or more aptly—a squirrel in headlights.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed as if they had some long-term knowledge of each other and she was supposed to be some other place at this precise moment, and her crouching in the candy aisle of Simon’s was an assault on the many years of trust they built.

Mandy’s heartbeat had taken refuge in her head. It felt as though the only connection she had to planet earth were the Air Head Bites she clutched. So she went with what she knew:

“Air Heads Bites.”

“I see that,” he took a step forward.

Mandy worked to prevent the gap between them from shrinking by sliding her feet left and right in a shimmy, but between the mix of adrenaline and her heart’s relocation the end result was a sharp fall on her hip and a deafening crinkle of her Bites as she braced her fall.

Baritone man at the counter broke his focus from Simon to the squirrel dude in the candy aisle with Mandy:

“James! Is there someone else here?”

“What? No! What the hell are you using my name for, DAN?”

“Goddammit, kid just shut up and keep watch of the door.”

“I AM! Jeez.” 

The candy aisle was in the back-right corner of the store and Mr. Baritone should have caught a glimpse of Mandy when he turned to face James. Mandy determined he was either:

1. Too distracted by Simon’s cash register to notice Mandy huddling for her life in aisle 4 AKA the candy aisle, or
2. He needed glasses. 

Simon was prideful and more importantly never a fan of the simple solution. He was only a couple years older than Mandy and the two grew a sort of cactus friendship over the years. The kind where it didn’t matter how much time passed since they last saw each other or how much stuff they knew about each other. None of that mattered. They both shared a simple truth—they’d always be there when the other needed them. This unthirsting friendship is best portrayed by their first encounter.

When Mandy first moved to town Simon’s was the first place she stopped in (she called Victory’s Simon’s because no one named Victory worked there and Simon seemed to always be on shift). Prior to their meeting she had been driving for 6 hours straight when she ran out of gas a mile down the road (it was a cross-country move). She trudged into Simon’s with a rat’s nest for hair and a face as red as a tomato from the exercise and the sun. Simon was balancing the books in the back when Mandy made her grand entrance. The air conditioning in the shop startled her senses, and she leaned one arm against a nearby freezer to collect herself. When Simon locked his office door behind him the radio switched from the end of some mellow tune to the beginning of The Beatles “Something.” Something about the song and the disheveled woman standing, or more accurately, leaning in front of him made him chuckle. Mandy, naturally, took offense to this:

“Something funny?” she asked as she brushed the spindling wisps of her hair away from her eyes.

“Only the joke in my head, ma’am.”

Ma’am? Mandy cringed at the disyllabic-monosyllabic hybrid of a word. Was she already a ma’am at 25? Simon caught on to her lacking affection and pivoted,

“What can I help you with this beautiful afternoon, miss?” Mandy brushed off the previous ma’am as an early symptom of heat stroke and filled him in on her troubles.

“Well I can certainly fill up a can of gas for you, and if it suits you I can drive you back to your vehicle so you don’t have to make the mile hike back up that hill.” Simon gestured beyond the parking lot to the inclining pavement. It was high noon so the sun hung directly overhead—didn’t leave a single shadow in its wake. Mandy wasn’t in the habit of taking a stranger up on his offer to drive her anywhere, even if it was only a mile down the road, but she couldn’t remember the last time she was that exhausted and downtrodden; so she said yes to the dislocated southern (fingers crossed) gentlemen.

When they made it back to the shop, both in one piece, she properly introduced herself;

“I’m Mandy by the way,” she offered her hand with a sun-squinting smile.

“Simon,” he tipped his cattleman hat and shifted slightly forward to meet her handshake.

It’s been two years since that day and not a day passed where the two didn’t greet each other in the shop. Now Simon’s cattleman rested idly on the freshly polished linoleum. It felt like a whole 60 seconds had passed since the gun shot roared through Victory’s, but in truth only eight came and went. Mandy felt whatever air was floating around in her lungs slip out of her and all the vital processes necessary for human survival halted throughout her body. No blood was pumped, no oxygen respirated, no liver detoxification. Nothing supportive of life occurred within the multi-organ system of Mandy. Just like nothing supportive of life occurred within the multi-organ system of Simon.

Mandy’s eyes were frozen on the rows of candy when James brought his index finger to his lips as a shhhh escaped his breath. He sat on his heels to level with her and when he reached his hand to her shoulder part of his jacket lifted revealing the shine of a pocket pistol. Mandy took inventory of James and resolved the following: he only had 15 pounds on her, his hand rested soothingly on her shoulder, he had a pocket pistol within snatching distance, and he enjoyed Skittles of the Tropical variety. Knowing this, Mandy determined the necessary sequence of steps to avenge her friend:

1. Start breathing and resuscitate general life functions
2. Locate Mr. Baritone via an eagle-eye mirror
3. Hand Squirrel guy (AKA James) a packet of Tropical Skittles
4. As he reaches for the skittles swipe the pistol under his jacket and launch a jab to his throat
5. Aim and fire

The smoking gun was hot against Mandy’s palm. James sat trembling in the candy aisle, Mr. Baritone rested parallel to Simon, and Mandy gave James two options:

1. Stay and fight
2. Take his skittles, walk out that door, and throw away his candy wrapper in a waste bin when he’s done.

She dug out the previously discarded wrapper from her pocket and floated it down to James. The bell rang and Mandy stood alone in the candy aisle of Victory’s Convenience.