The bell on the push bar of the door clanged as someone came in, and in a storewide reaction to the jangle, the new customer took all the eyes off Roy. The cashier looked over to the door. The sneering pockmarked guy with the knit cap who was keeping the cashier company looked over, too. The only other shopper, a guy in workman’s coveralls, with a can of WD-40 in his hand, glanced up from the row of air fresheners shaped like Christmas trees. The waitress who was always there, running the half dozen diner tables, turned to see who had come in and what it might mean for her.

Roy didn’t look. He just enjoyed a moment of everyone’s attention being elsewhere.

He was in here all the time and had never shoplifted so much as a candy bar, but they always watched him as if they were sure that their staring at him was the only reason he hadn’t. When he had money, he filled his gas tank here, and he sank quarters into the laundromat attached to the store, and he ate in the diner whenever he could. They made really good tuna salad. He always told the waitress so. Sometimes he bought scratch tickets, and whenever he won anything, he went straight to their aisles and spent that money here, too. But it didn’t get him anywhere with the staff.

He turned his back to the room and studied the tickets. He was going to get one, he’d decided.

Someone came up and stood beside him. Roy stepped to the left to let them see the rack of lottery choices. In his peripheral vision, he could see it was a woman, almost as tall as him. He edged a little farther away to give her more space.

But she turned to face him and leaned in. “If I screamed that you tried to kill me, do you think you could make it to the door before they tackled you?”

That she’d spoken to him at all startled him out of truly taking in what she’d said. For the most part. Some of the words had gotten straight through. Scream. Kill. Tackle. And you. A yammering terror collapsed his throat, and his heart was floundering in arcs as if it had gotten loose in his chest.

“What?” He looked at her and felt the breath and bones go out of him before he’d consciously connected this woman with a solid memory. It was bad. There was only one thing that bad. Oh, God.

Her voice was low and shaking. Her whole body was shaking.

“I said, do you think you can get past them? How many hero types are between you and the door if I scream?”