“You are welcome to all of it, gentlemen,” Blaine had said, hands up, suddenly giddy. The savoir-faire with which he delivered these words seemed to calm the gunmen a little. It took the tension down a couple of notches. The biggest one pulled most of the green out of Blaine’s wallet, but twelve bucks floated to the floor, and Blaine took a small satisfaction in stepping on the money. It was sort of a stupid thing to do, but Blaine felt possessed of a kind of Mel Gibson movie-house invulnerability. His left foot was on the ten, his right on the two singles, and he felt splendidly frozen in time, as if he were in a white tie and tails doing a kind of lithe Fred Astaire—as if he suddenly knew what life wanted of him.

While the bandits fled the shop, Fat Hat ducked into the back room and emerged with a twelve-gauge. Blaine’s happy spell was broken. “Hey, there! Wait a minute! Those hoods will come back in here and shoot us both,” he said.

“Why you smiling? Why you smiling?” Hat said. “Taking sixteen Rolexes. Got alla my cold, hard cash. Got all your gold, man!”

The Asian darted out into the parking lot, squatted, and leveled the gun from left to right. His movements resembled some ridiculous, partly forgotten foreign army-training maneuver—an action long ago imprinted in an Alzheimer’s-demented brain. The bandits were peeling rubber, fishtailing away in an old diesel-powered Oldsmobile Toronado. One of them leaned out the window and blasted a couple of shots back, causing Fat Hat to drop prone and hug the asphalt. Blaine saw the blue-and-orange muzzle flame a second before he heard the shots. He watched the car swing out onto the freeway until the only sign of it was the lingering, thick white smoke of the tail exhaust. And very soon that was gone. The entire incident had lasted no more than a minute or two.

Fat Hat ran back inside and dialed 911. Then he turned on Blaine. “Them get away. Too fast for me. Getaway driver an’ shit. Piss on this whole damn country, anyhow. I’m packing up and could go back to Mauritius! No gun in your face alla time! Why you smiling? Stop that smiling, vexing me! Damn you, man. Why you smiling?”

“I’m smiling because…I’m alive.” Blaine picked up his last twelve dollars. “And because I’ve got enough money to buy lunch.”