The were two young men sitting across from each other, talking, looking at me. It was a cold night outside, and the diner was empty except for the two of them, the waitress (Deborah, a young girl trying to earn money to feed her child at home) and the cook Frankie Fingers in the back; and of course, myself.

I had no idea what they were talking about, but every couple of minutes I could see them look over at me. I didn’t even have to look to know, they were so obvious about it. They acted just like my five-year-old brother when he saw me for the first time: talking, then peaking quickly, only to look away again. There was something up. I could feel it.

Deborah came over, “Need some coffee or something?” I casually glanced up at her, she would be pretty, except she spends a lot of time at this run-down backwater diner; her face had been drained of most of the color, and she looked exhausted; still she smiled warmly at me. “I’m okay” I waved my answer.

“Alright” She said, her thin lips pointing towards her small ears, “Check then?” I nodded in approval. “How were the pancakes?” She asked as she wrote some numbers on the check.

“Delicious. Tell Fingers he’s good at what he does.” She smiled in response.

“He hates when you call him that” She pointed her pen at me as she spoke, then tore the check off the pad and placed it on my desk. “Don’t forget you can still get coffee if you want to hang around a while” I smiled and waved her off. I would stay again, but this time because I was still trying to figure out what those kids were doing.

The one, who looked older, was dressed in a grey coat that looked likes a sports jacket. He was a jock. He had the build of a football player and the visual charisma of a quarterback. No doubt that’s who he was, from HS Local 149. Although, he normally wouldn’t be seen with that other kid; even if his other option was to be doused with gasoline and set on fire in Times Square. Heh, I can arrange that.

The smaller kid was wrapped in black, a trench coat pulled around his skinny frame; a walking cliché: the Goth Kid. His face must have had a dozen piercings between his eyes, nose, ears, and lips. Who knows what else he had pierced.

They turned towards me again, but this time they didn’t look away. I hadn’t been looking directly at them, pretending to stare out the window so I could observe them via peripheral vision. Deborah walked over to them and had asked them if they wanted anything else. She wasn’t as nice to them as she was to me; she had a calculated warmth; that tone that a person develops after working as a waiter for an extended period of time. I heard her say that they had ordered two F Breakfast Specials (the F standing for Fingers, the cook), which were 6.50 each, and I saw that there were two glasses on their table. I would say their meal came to about 17. You can always tell something about people in the way they tip.

The kids, turning back to the table, began rummaging through their pockets. The goth kid was the only one to extract money, the jock being out of funds. He dropped what looked clearly like a ten, five, and two ones; and then returned the rest of his money to his pocket. Assholes.

Finally, the two little snots got up and looked around the diner. I don’t know why they needed to, the last people to come in here in the last hour was them. I knew they would move over my way. In fact, they were bold enough to sit right at my table.

“Why’d you wait so long?” I spoke plainly and clearly. They both seemed smitten that I had spoke first. They can’t honestly think that someone like me would be passive could they?

“We-we-we” the Jock stammered. The Goth kid spoke aloud, giving his company an angry glance sideways, “We wanted to find out if we could buy-“

“No” I said plainly. “And if you had any intelligence you wouldn’t come in here thinking I was selling something.”

“But we heard-“

“I don’t care what you heard…” I started to yell, but then realized I do care “…what did you hear?”

“We heard you sell drugs” the Jock stated, calming himself after my outburst, but still being quite naïve about the whole situation.

“We wanted to know if we could buy something out of the ordinary” the Goth kid seemed to be experienced at dealing with lowlives, so he kind of had a mysterious tone, like he was doing something special with himself.

“Drugs?” I shook my head in disbelief. “Drugs?” I looked up at them in disbelief. “Someone told you I sell drugs? Me?”

“Well…yeah”

“I think you have me confused with someone else”

“I don’t think so” the Goth kid stated simply, he seemed not to believe it.

“Explain” I leaned back in the old slick vinyl booth seat and waved my hand for him to speak.

“Well…we were told that we would find a guy in this diner, who regularly sat in this booth, and had a scar across his left eye.” The mention of the word ‘scar’ made the very scar he referred to flash with pain and made me remember the time I was shot in the face.

I shook the memory away and looked up at him. “So I’m the guy then?” I glanced around the room again. They seemed more nervous than earlier, and I could see Deborah was looking over in alarm. I waved at her to signal I was ok; I must have visibly cringed from the memory.

“Ye..yeah” the Goth kid mumbled. He was nervous.

“Who told you this?”

“Some guy” the Jock whispered.

“Well that narrows it down to about half the population of the ENTIRE WORLD.” I practically yelled at him. “Would you be more specific before I get upset?”

“H-H-H-“ the Jock was doing nothing but stammering at this point. I would not have been surprised if he called out for his mother.

“He was wearing a black coat and he had a wide hat on. We couldn’t see what he looked like. But he was talking to our regular dealer when the two of us showed up at the same time. He told us to find you, and when we found you to give you a slip of paper, and you would sell us the stuff.”

“A slip of paper?”

“Oh yea” the Jock said, suddenly coming out of his stupor. “Here” he withdrew a small piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me “We would like to purchase some-“ I snatched the paper out of his hand and growled at him; scaring him was the most effective way of closing his mouth.

I looked at the paper. It was blank on both sides, a regular piece of lined leaf paper, about a four-inch square; and I had no idea what it meant. “Are you sure this is it?”

“Yeah. We thought it should have a note attached but he just said to cut a four inch square out of the bottom right of a piece of leaf paper and give it to you. He said you would know what it means.”

“Well, that about does it for me. I’m leaving”

“But you didn’t give us any-“ the Goth kid protested.

“Were you listening to me at all?” I regarded him coldly as I stood up. “Oh, and by the way” I reached into the pocket of my coat after I drew it on. “Tip your waitress. Don’t be a goddamned dick. They work harder for the money than you will understand…until you drop out of school and start doing the same thing. Karma kids…karma.” With that I placed fifty-nine dollars on the table and tapped it with my index finger (that would be about a fifty dollar tip).

I turned and tilted my head towards Deborah on my way out the door, who was looking curiously from me to the boys at the table. As I left I heard the familiar jingle of the doorway, which once again brought me back to the memory of the scar.

It was in that same diner a year before. That was the first day I had met my little brother, and the last day I ever saw him. I’m just about twenty-five at this point; my parents were divorced, my mother saw fit to legally rape my father of half his life and leave me to him. She left when I was fifteen and got hitched to some superstar who wound up shooting himself in the face in his living room after strangling her to death with a phone cord in the kitchen.

Serves her right.

Anyway, my father remarried when I was twenty, but that was the year after I left home and traveled to the east coast. I was born in California in a little town right outside of Los Angeles. Now I live here in New Jersey.

My father tracked me to here a year ago, brought my baby brother with him. It was a strange meeting though, my father kept telling me that there was something wrong with his new wife, that she was sick; had cancer or something. Turns out she was just a serious hypochondriac.

But that day, we were sitting in this diner, curiously enough Deborah was our waiter then as well, although she was pregnant at the time, and still worked during the evening shift, I knew someone was going to die.

I guess that’s why I wasn’t surprised when some men came into the diner about halfway through our meal, shot my father about fourteen times, and snatched Danny, my brother, before I even thought to move.

I guess it was my choices up to that point that made me numb to gunfire. Some people believe in destiny, I think they’re full of it.

I came to when the bell rang again. I knew those punks would come walking after me. I was only a little ways up the street and I heard their footsteps coming after me. Something was wrong though, the crunch of fresh snow and the footfalls sounded rather heavy. It wasn’t those kids following me.

I was passing by a row of cars so I glanced in the reflection of the windshield of the first one. Dammit! I missed it. Try again. Okay, got it that time. I saw two men in trench coats, wearing sunglasses, and it looked like they might have had something in their ears. What is it with walking clichés tonight?

Unafraid, I decided to just turn and face them, throw them for a loop when instead of trying to escape I faced them head on. I spun on my heels and looked the first one dead in his stereotypical sunglasses. The two men split and walked right around me. I spun about a little to see that they hadn’t even regarded me, then I looked back up the street. I could see the to kids walking in the opposite direction. Silly me, I thought, always thinking people are out to get me.