This place is ridiculous I thought as I scanned the shop. My eyes drifting from one drunken tourist to the next. How did I get here? Fourteen years of training and dedication to be discarded to a job that could be handled by an electronic door opener. This trashy souvenir shop acted as a front and a safe house. Originally opened in the early sixties. A result of the relationship between Russia and Cuba. Much like the Cuban missile crisis itself it wasn’t nearly as exciting as it sounded. Although aware that if I would have stayed in the Navy I would have jumped at the chance to be stationed in Key West, but after my last assignment didn’t go as expected, this became more of a punishment than a beachside vacation.
I had begged to just be let go, but it had been decided my training in hand to hand combat would best served as a glorified cashier. Great, wonderful, fucking excellent.
“Excuse me ma’am” I heard from the doorway.
It was Jake, a slender fit man of about twenty-seven that I had trained a few years back. His shit eating smile said it all.
“How’s the new gig?”
“Great Jake, just wonderful. Exactly where I aspired to be when I last saw you in the desert.”
“To be fair, you did say the only thing you missed was ice cream, and now look at you. More ice cream then you could ever eat… to bad you have to sell it to sunburned family’s and drunks” He said chuckling as he played with the bracelets on the counter.
“Thanks Jake, you always did have a way of irritating me while somehow making me feel better. What brings you into town?”
“Just here to bother you, and wait for a new assignment but I don’t see why I can’t do both”
“You always were quite the multitasker” I say as a group of sun burned drunks open the door. There were five of them late twenties, clearly to drunk for 3pm on a Wednesday. Two women, three men all of them holding slushees I was sure were have full of grain alcohol. Rowdy but harmless.
“What brings you in today” I say.
One of the girls pipes up. “Honestly we’re just here for the AC.”
“Actually we’re looking for coconut bras” says one of the men. He can barely get the words out of his mouth before the entire crew erupts in drunken laughter.
“Well… they are one size fits all” I say gritting my teeth.
“Excuse me” a child coming from the back of the store speaks up. I hadn’t noticed him enter. “The bathrooms out of toilet paper.”
Of course it is I thought to myself
“Hey before you handle that situation, can you buzz me in?” Jake asks amused by my current predicament.
“So you’ve had enough of the comedy of my circumstance huh?” I say as I hit the button under the counter unlocking the door leading up stairs.
“It was nice seeing you, good luck with the toilet paper” he says with a grin as he walks through the door.
I go to the storage room, dreading the only fight I get into these days, wrestling with the industrial toilet paper dispenser in the restroom while grumbling under my breathe.
“As if this could even begin to wipe the shit off of this thing I call a life”
I walk into the back and open the restroom door expecting to see piss all over the floor. Maybe shit sprayed on the wall behind the toilet, but what I find is a man nicely dressed in a black suite and tie. Sitting on the toilet fully clothed his head hung low, arms resting on his knees. I hadn’t seen him enter either.
“Do you know who I am” he says.
“No but you look lost. And confused on the basic use of a toilet? I quip back smiling. He did look vaguely familiar but unassuming. He was a young man with a stocky build. The suit fit him well but was obviously well taken care of hand me down. My hands beginning to tingle with the thought of pulling a weapon for the first time in months.
“You knew my father and you know the men responsible for his death. He said his eyes focused on the ground.
“You’ve worked along side them year after year as they sell your souls off to the highest bidder. Commercialized chaos. Following their orders against your own oaths. People like you and my father haunt yourselves with the ghosts of men while the company profits off of everyone’s blood but their own.”
His words sounded rehearsed but his delivery sounded like a song I had heard before.
“My father and many like him took his own life to pay for his mistakes.” He said looking up at me.
Finally I knew who he was. The son of my first handler. A retired Marine we called Gunny. He was hilarious and cold and I owed him a lot. I knew of his family but only in the way you can know someone through photos on a phone. Last time I saw him he was probably ten. Gunny was showing him and his science fair project off to me after I reported in on assignment. Gunny’s son look down as he continued to speak.
“Mistakes that the company profited off of at the expense of your lives and the ones you left in your wake. I’m asking for help. I’m asking for you todo what my father couldn’t do. Make it right for all of those left behind.”
Suddenly the bathroom door opens a large drunken man wearing a coconut bra stumbles in. Displacing us as he grabs ahold of the toilet and violently pukes. His body goes limp as he slumps to the floor. Gunny’s son stunned looks at me.
Smiling I say “ I’ll do it, whatever it takes.
