Johnny & Mary

Jun 08, 2024

Johnny & Mary

Johnny is a character. Now, I’m not saying he’s a unique individual with witty repartee and a collection of intriguing anecdotes; I mean, he’s a character in this story. One of the main characters, actually; just look at the title. Johnny was down on his luck at the time we joined him on his journey through his fictional life. He came close to doing something regrettable when a dose of serendipity intervened.

Johnny was not the kind of person you would notice, say, walking down the street or even taking up space in the same elevator as you. He was plain. How plain was he? someone in the back just yelled. Okay, I’ll tell you, interrupting person, but you needn’t invoke a vintage late-night talk show to get the information you seek; simply submit your query in all lowercase (preferably Verdana 16) to the address below. Johnny was a slice of white bread with the crust cut off, sitting atop a small, white plate in the corner of a fully stocked surf-and-turf buffet. Would you notice that?

Johnny was in line at the bank. Nobody noticed him there except the person behind him (she had no choice in the matter), but she was thinking about the baked ziti she’d had for dinner the night before. The savory dish had bits of spicy Italian sausage baked into it and was smothered with grated Parmigiano Reggiano. It is quite possible the woman was remembering the previous night, but this story is not about some random lady waiting in line at the bank and her pasta obsession. So, back to Johnny: He had a handwritten note in one pocket of his jeans, a plastic Target bag in another, and a 9mm handgun in his jacket pocket. I’m not entirely sure why it was in a fourth pocket, but he also had a fidget spinner he had found on the ground near the Wave Swinger ride at the 2017 North Carolina State Fair—the yellow smiley face almost completely rubbed off on the center hub. Many people believe, myself included, that Johnny’s lack of remembering fine details (e.g., which pocket held which item) saved him from many years behind bars and, in all likelihood, several bullet holes in his non-bulletproof body. (Upon further review, the baked ziti was not necessarily worth citing as it holds no importance in the bigger picture of Johnny’s life experiences, not to mention Mary’s, but we’ll get to her later.)

I think it’s time to delve into Johnny’s recent past, which (of course) doesn’t exist, but I’ll invent one for those of you who require a backstory. Johnny lost his job. Specifically, Johnny was fired and escorted out of his workplace for sleeping at the controls of Train No. 6, Orange Orangutan, at the Pierce Valley Mall. His former employer, Zoooo-Rides, entertained small children with two-mile-per-hour thrill rides in colorful animal-themed trains rolling around the first level of the mall. No injuries were reported, but Johnny’s train did collide with a Calendar Days kiosk, causing damages in the tens of dollars and careening off and cracking a Silver Lighthouse glass display case, ending with an unscheduled stop inside a Victoria’s Secret, startling several middle-aged men. The children had a blast and asked their parents if they could “go again.” Zoooo-Rides had a zero-strike policy on this type of reckless behavior and demanded the immediate return of Johnny’s train keys, his engineer’s cap (with the cuddly Green Gorilla mascot on it), and the booklet of coupons for Sno-Kone Station, redeemable for one free snow cone per day. It was estimated Johnny’s train was going an unprecedented four miles an hour at the time of his sleep-induced misadventure.

Freshly sacked, Johnny looked for new work, but because he was unable to adequately describe the reason for departing from his five-year stint at Zoooo-Rides, interviewers were reluctant to call back. Money diminished rapidly, and Johnny couldn’t pay rent on his one-bedroom apartment, so he moved into a group house with three other guys and their girlfriends, who all called him Jeremy for some reason. (Johnny found it too taxing to correct them.) Johnny’s room was situated between two of the couples, and almost every night he would hear the not-too-tender sounds of intense lovemaking. In stereo.

The weeks went by, and Johnny, practically moneyless and impractically girlfriendless, became increasingly depressed. Desperate times, they say, call for desperate measures, so it was decided (by me) Johnny should obtain a firearm. This weapon was acquired using diabolical means (which I’d rather not expound upon) through nefarious individuals (whom I’d rather not identify in written form) and was the impetus for Johnny’s “plan.” He was going to rob a bank—if you haven’t already guessed.

Would you like to meet Mary now? I had a feeling you would. Mary was the lowly croissant in a bakery filled with chocolate chip cannolis and multi-layered cakes and overly sweet strudels. This is not to say she wasn’t pleasant to be around—she was. Everybody liked Mary; they just didn’t put her in charge of planning parties. Speaking of parties, it was Mary’s birthday on the day she met Johnny at the bank. I’m not saying this fact is an important part of this story, but there was a shiny Mylar balloon floating over her head that afternoon. You would be boarding the wrong train if you thought Johnny chose Mary because of the lime-green balloon with the cartoon martini glass and the words B-day Girl!! (borderline inappropriate decoration for a bank); she was just the next teller available, and Johnny was the next in line.

“Hi, how can I help you?” Did I happen to mention Mary was fastidious in her professionalism? Her smile at Johnny was genuine because she liked his mussed hair and the illustration on his t-shirt, which she could see through his open jacket. The shirt Johnny picked at random from his drawer that morning was adorned with a fried egg on the front, and it so happens, Mary likes eggs—fried being a close third behind scrambled and poached. This egg thing isn’t relevant to the story, but I found it interesting that I rank my egg preparation methods in the same order. Sometimes I wonder how Mary would rate a good hard-boiled egg. Getting back on track: Johnny made his way to Mary’s station, fully intending to go through with his plan. I’ll repeat it for those of you who may have been visiting the facilities earlier: Johnny planned to rob the bank.

The bank in question was a local branch in a small town. It had no bulletproof glass in front of the tellers, no armed security guard in the corner thinking about his salami sandwich waiting for him in the employee lounge, and the one security camera monitoring the lobby was currently being blocked by a certain Mylar balloon festooned with a cartoon martini glass in a shower of confetti. The bank’s manager was out playing golf with the bank’s assistant manager and the bank’s loan manager. The alarm was inoperable because the alarm company’s technician was attending his niece’s wedding in Morgantown. (Remind me to send a card.) Johnny was unaware of any of the above serendipitous developments; he only wanted to abscond with as much cash as possible in thirty seconds or so and leave town. He was quite certain the threat of his “little friend” in his left pocket would be enough to coax the teller into stuffing ungodly amounts of cash into his bag. Or was it the right pocket?

So, Johnny’s plan had a fighting chance for success right from the start. All he needed to do was execute it exactly as he had practiced it that one time a few days ago. When Mary said, “Next in line,” Johnny was re-reading his note, making sure it was perfect—relating all necessary information in the fewest words. The note read: I am robbing you. Put all the money you have in the bag. I will shoot you if you refuse. Don’t be scared. Four sentences, each given its own line, in Johnny’s best penmanship. (Johnny had thought about adding a fifth line, merely saying Thank you, but decided to omit it.) He nodded to himself, thinking it was pretty succinct when he heard the teller announce, “Hi, how can I help you?”

It was time to start turning his life around and try to find some certainty. Johnny walked toward the voice and looked up. He noticed two things: the balloon and the smiling teller beneath it, who apparently was the birthday girl, with her forefinger raised to indicate her station was available. At the same moment, Johnny’s stomach rumbled to indicate its emptiness. Johnny had only eaten a bowl of Rice Krispies (which is mostly air) and almond milk (which is mostly water) five hours before entering the bank. The hunger pangs, along with the visuals of the balloon and the smiling teller and her forefinger, consumed more brain power than Johnny had anticipated while performing his ballet of movements choreographed to garner him a bagful of cash.

It may be interesting to note that when Johnny was four years old, or maybe five, his family went out for dinner one evening. He had no siblings, so it was just himself, his mother, and his father. He was too young to form any lasting memory of the night except for a brief snippet: Johnny’s father said something Johnny didn’t understand, and his mother told him to stop—but was laughing when she did so. Whenever his mother told Johnny to stop doing something, she never laughed. This was the brief moment that stayed with the future bank robber—how one can order another person to stop doing something while laughing. Meanwhile, during that dinner, he noticed a small girl around his age eating at the next table with her parents and older brother. I’m not saying she was Mary, but I’m not saying she wasn’t. Anyway, Johnny could see the brother teasing his sister, but both parents were oblivious to his mischief. At one point, the brother placed a tiny toy car in the girl’s mashed potatoes, and she started to cry. The mother plucked the car from the dinner plate and told the young boy to stop teasing his sister. The mother wasn’t laughing. The girl continued to cry softly, and tears fell from Johnny’s eyes as he sympathized with her. Johnny’s father made another perplexing comment, and his mother laughed again while telling him to stop.

“Hello, sir,” Mary said. “How are you today?” Her kind-eyed question almost gave Johnny pause, but he stayed true to his mission and slid his note across the counter. The smiling teller and the bobbing balloon were throwing off his rhythm. He snatched the note back before Mary could manage to unfold it.

“Hi, uh…” Now Johnny hesitated. He looked up at the balloon and back down to Mary’s cheery face. “Happy, uh… birthday.” Johnny had never previously expressed this annual sentiment to another human being other than his parents. He briefly remembered saying the phrase to his father while giving him a desiccated turtle shell he had found near the creek on their property. A hawk had kindly exterminated the turtle and consumed its innards months earlier. Johnny’s father mumbled something and put the thing on a shelf in the living room. Less than a year later, on the day his father left, Johnny noticed the turtle shell was still on the shelf.

“Thank you, sir,” Mary said. “What can I do for you today?” Johnny hesitated, thinking about the mechanics of the robbery and the steps required and the order in which to implement them and the balloon swaying above the teller who had a silver ring on her forefinger and a capital M pendant on a chain around her neck and his stomach making vulgar noises (can other people hear that?) and someone’s phone was ringing and now he had to pee and which pocket was his frikkin’ gun?! Should he ask her how old she is? Johnny wondered if it was an appropriate question for a B-day girl. Personally, I think asking a woman’s age is an excellent icebreaker, but I wasn’t there at the time to offer my suggestion.

“Umm,” Johnny muttered. He decided not to talk anymore and to let the note communicate his “business.” He slid the crumpled paper back across the counter and pulled the plastic Target bag from his rear pocket and pushed it across as well. Mary’s smile evaporated as she saw the bag. She unfolded the document, which looked like it was torn out of a small spiral notebook, and started reading the four-sentence manifesto and the directions therein. Her face morphed into a confused scowl. Mary read the words again. She looked up at Johnny and saw him pointing a fidget spinner at her.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Johnny, having zero contingency plans for this type of response to his note, stood and stared at Mary, unable to convey to her the seriousness of the situation. How is she not utterly dumbstruck with fear? Isn’t this a bank teller’s worst nightmare? Does she even know how to read? Those were all Johnny’s thoughts, not mine.

“My son had one of those,” the baked ziti lady said, now at the adjacent teller, nodding at Johnny’s fidget spinner. “He didn’t put it down for weeks. Even at dinner.” She pronounced it dinnah.

“Umm,” Johnny uttered again. I will give five points to someone who can guess what Johnny noticed next. Too easy—everyone gets five points. Johnny noticed the plastic toy with the rubbed-out smiley face in his hand instead of the 9mm handgun that he was supposed to be holding.

“I don’t get it,” Mary said, a little flustered, which is unusual for Mary. She looked at the bag, then flipped the note over, half-expecting to see some sort of weird surprise message from a fellow employee. After re-reading the “business” side of the note, Mary looked around, glancing at her coworkers, trying to determine the source of this ill-conceived bit of mischief—on her birthday no less.

“Even in the bathroom, for Chrissakes,” baked ziti said. “What could you be doing with that thing in the bathroom?!?” Johnny’s attention was diverted for a moment as he looked at the once-trendy gadget, and he wondered about its former owner—probably a little girl with pigtails out for an evening at the fair with her parents. She must have dropped it unknowingly, looking at the riders above her, swinging in centrifugal arcs, screaming in delight as the summer sky turned purple. Ah, who am I kidding? Johnny saw her drop it, and he scooped it up before she had a chance to notice.

“What’s this about, sir?” Mary asked Johnny, holding up the sad, deflated Target bag with the big, red bullseye emblazoned on it. Her stern look gave him a chill down his spine, and he briefly thought expressing a second happy birthday greeting might smooth things over.

“Mary, you have a call. Line four,” someone somewhere shouted. Mary put the Target bag down and answered the phone, pressing the line four button with her ringed forefinger on the hand which still clutched Johnny’s note.

“Excuse me one sec, sir,” Mary said to Johnny. “This is Mary,” she spoke into the phone. “Yes.” Mary listened. “Yes.” Mary listened. “Mm-hm.” Mary looked over at Johnny and narrowed her eyes. “She’s going to need a VOD for that.” Mary listened. “You’re welcome. Oh, and thank Henry for the card. It’s lovely.” Mary hung up the phone and turned her attention back to Johnny. “I’m sorry about that, sir. Now, where were we?”

I bet you’re wondering why Mary was so skeptical about Johnny’s threatening note, besides the fact he was brandishing a non-lethal fidget spinner. Mary grew up in… let’s say, a rural location in a state beginning with the word West. Her older brother, Sol (short for Solomon), had a habit of pranking poor Mary. One time, when she was five years old, or maybe four, Sol told Mary there was a demon cat in the tool shed out back, and if she petted it she would be granted mystical powers. Mary believed her brother and went to the shed dressed in her princess costume, complete with a sequined gown, glittering tiara, and plastic scepter. Upon opening the shed door, Mary discovered a rabid possum, which she mistook for the promised magical demon cat. Instead of petting it, Mary whacked it on its little, pointy snout with the scepter, causing the animal to lunge at her, sending Mary running and screaming for her mother. Mary’s father had to shoot the poor creature upon returning home from work. Solomon was never punished for the cruel joke but was, indeed, rewarded for finding the dangerous possum by helping his father bury it. Mary remembers this prank from time to time, and it wasn’t until she was twenty-two that she realized the hissing animal was not a cat, magical or otherwise.

Later in life, Mary went to a community college and earned an associate’s degree in general studies. Her goal was to become a teacher of some sort and go to a four-year institution for her bachelor’s degree, but Mary never went back to school. She met a guy named Ransom, who explained to her that hiking the Appalachian Trail would be the only education she would ever need. So the new couple headed down to Springer Mountain, Georgia, to become northbounders and learn about life (and a variety of biting insects). Mary lasted six days and trekked back with another female escapee, and they caught a bus back home.

A few months later, Mary met a man who she thought was normal. At least he looked normal and didn’t have a tattoo of the Appalachian Trail traveling up his right calf. This man (I’ll call him Chad because he looked like a Chad, even though his name was Fletcher) seemed to care for Mary, but all he ever thought about was himself. Things went okay for a while with the new guy, but one day Chad/Fletcher stole Mary’s 1990 Mitsubishi pickup truck for reasons unknown. Mary never saw her truck again or the Paul Simon cassette residing in the player at the time of its abduction. There goes rhymin’ Simon, Mary thought. Mary had given Chad/Fletcher a spare key and told him he could use the truck as long as he put gas in it. The police were no help; they argued that Mary gave permission for his use of the vehicle and suggested she call them again in thirty days.

Johnny just looked at Mary. It seemed her pleasant disposition had faded somewhat since he handed her the note. That’s a good thing, right? He wanted her to take this exchange with the weighty intensity it deserved. But he also wanted her to be nonchalant about it, not drawing any attention to the illegal transaction. “Is there something I can help you with?” Mary said with an edge you could slice tomatoes with. “Sir.” Always the professional, she included the respectful term even though she practically stabbed Johnny with it. Mary stuffed Johnny’s note in her skirt pocket and pushed the Target bag back across the counter. Empty.

“I…” It seemed the first-time bank robber was at a loss for words, the note’s threatening voice now being muffled between two layers of rayon/polyester blend. Johnny looked up at the green balloon again and wondered how Mary was going to celebrate her birthday that evening after work. Does she even drink martinis? he thought. There’s a nice Mexican restaurant two blocks down, he thought. They have decent margaritas; I don’t know about the martinis, he thought.

“Sir? I have other customers waiting.” Johnny looked at Mary’s nametag—Mary, it read. He had never known a Mary before. His aunt was named Mary, but he had never met her; she lived in Peru with her artist husband.

The baked ziti lady was finished with her banking affairs, and she sidled over to Johnny. “Put that thing away, dear; it looks childish,” she suggested in a low maternal tone to Johnny, touching his crooked arm. “Time to grow up, honey.” Johnny obediently hid the fidget spinner in an empty pocket. He glanced around the bank as if he had been caught holding some sort of pornographic device. The woman patted him on the shoulder twice and left him there with Mary’s blistering glare. Johnny looked at Mary, slid the bag off the counter, and put it in another pocket—the pocket with the gun. Oh, there it is! I knew he would find it eventually. Mary sat impatiently on her side of the counter with her hands firmly clasped together. She counted the walls. Johnny searched for the note but could not locate it—she must have hidden it, or possibly she ate it, to protect him by eliminating the evidence. He needed some time to re-evaluate the situation and form a new plan.

Mary was nineteen when she found her brother Solomon’s body. She had parked her bike next to Sol’s 1990 Mitsubishi pickup truck and went upstairs. She entered the unlocked door of his apartment with some food from their mother when she saw his lower legs on the floor in the kitchen. There was a half-eaten peach in the sink. Solomon had taken his life using a red and white Target bag and some duct tape, details not forthcoming. Okay, one small detail—his nose pushed out the center of the bullseye as he suffocated. Mary dropped the roast chicken and green beans on the already-stained beige carpeting. She stood motionless as she thought about a dead deer she had seen in the woods behind her friend’s house, flies swarmed around its decomposing head. Deer have to die sometime, she thought, staring at the Target bag; they don’t all get hit by cars. Mary cried for days nonstop, then for weeks sporadically. Solomon didn’t win any awards for Best Performance as a Brother in a Fictionalized Story, but he was the only brother she had.

Johnny exhaled through his pursed lips, forming mini Dizzy Gillespie cheeks. He briefly thought about removing his gun from the newly identified gun pocket and showing it to Mary so she would take him seriously and not as some kind of practical joker. But he was defeated, and he knew it. “I’m sorry,” he said, seemingly to no one in particular since he was looking at the tiled floor surrounding his dusty shoes. Mary sighed and looked at the digital clock on the wall behind Johnny’s head. Johnny retrieved the fidget spinner from his pocket and placed it on the counter, not even bothering to slide it toward Mary. “Happy birthday, Mary,” he mumbled and left the building. There was a park across the street, and Johnny sat on a wooden bench to contemplate yet another failure. He tossed the Target bag in a nearby trash receptacle, leaving only one item remaining in his pockets out of the four that were in his possession when he entered the bank.

Mary sighed again and thought she might need two margaritas at the Mexican place down the street. Birthdays spent alone are nothing new to Mary. Last year, it was a movie and an hour of karaoke—not singing, just watching drunken strangers and sipping a white zinfandel. The previous year, she rented a room at the beach and sat in the sand until the Milky Way revealed itself in the night sky. That year was the fifth anniversary of Sol’s death. Mary placed a wedge-shaped sign on the counter. The sign read: CLOSED Next Teller Please. She picked up Johnny’s fidget spinner and slid it into her pocket alongside his unsuccessful note. She then took her cash drawer and water bottle to the back office to finish her day.

An hour later, after a slice of yellow cake with chocolate frosting and a round of birthday wishes from her coworkers, Mary left the bank, her festive balloon following above and behind on a length of yellow ribbon. Her goals for the night: go home, take a nap, and head over to the Mexican cantina for mahi-mahi tacos and a margarita or two. She passed through the park and noticed Johnny still situated on the bench. She stopped and smiled weakly at him; it was all she could muster, but only because of his tousled hair and fried egg t-shirt. Mary’s hand was on the fidget spinner in her skirt pocket, and Johnny’s was on his gun in his jacket pocket.

“Hey,” Johnny said softly, contradicting the potentially violent power in the thing he held with a loose grip like someone asleep in front of the television limply holding the remote. Mary barely heard him over a single-engine biplane’s melancholy drone overhead.

“Hi,” Mary said. “You look tired; you should go home and get some sleep.” Johnny nodded, like a bobblehead at the end of its kinetic energy cycle. She started walking again, thinking their brief exchange was sufficient banter for two strangers who would probably never meet again. For some reason, Mary thought about a small blue toy car sitting in a puddle of gravy on a pillow of mashed potatoes. Mary hates birthdays, but she hates anniversaries even more. It was only a fifteen-minute walk to her apartment, but Mary stopped twice to buy herself some gifts: a wireless speaker she wanted for her kitchen, freshly cut flowers, and a vase. She also bought Sol some flowers.

Mary got home and put everything on her dining room table, including the fidget spinner and Johnny’s handwritten note. She looked at the two objects left by her last customer and slowly shook her head—not in a life-is-funny sort of way but in a life-can-be-strange sort of way. Mary combed her hair. She decided to forgo the nap because she was looking forward to the cold, citrusy tequila on her tongue. An hour and a half later, she entered the restaurant alone after a brief visit to the cemetery. She was seated at a booth that had a colorful painting of a saguaro cactus on the wall. Mary smiled at her server and ordered her first drink of the evening.

I think I’ll join her. She looks like she could use a friend.