We met up at McCoy’s, Dee’s favorite restaurant. It was the middle of summer, and Dee wore a brown overcoat with green sweatpants, an orange beanie, and black leather boots. His nails were long, his teeth were yellow, and his eyes rarely blinked. After we placed our orders, Dee took a green brush from his pocket, combed his hair back, and began to do impressions.
“So, you think I’m funny? Funny, how?” he said in a New York accent. “Funny, like I’m a clown, like I amuse you?”
“Oh, Joe Pesci,” I snapped my finger, “from Goodfellas!”
Dee nodded. “That’s right. Hey, how the fuck am I so funny? What’s so funny about me? Tell me!” A waitress walked by, overhearing our conversation; she seemed confused and possibly even uncomfortable. “I almost had her!” Dee said to the waitress. She politely nodded, and then she ignored us. Dee thought this was hilarious. I laughed but still felt a little embarrassed.
“So, Junior,” Dee said in his normal voice, clearing his throat. He reached for his cup of coffee. “Are you thinking about going off to college or what?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure, I’m thinking about it.”
He said, “Don’t think about it. Just do it. You got the smarts for it.” I smiled. “I’m serious, Junior. Don’t let shit go to waste. Don’t go around being a bum like me.”
I didn’t like that Dee called himself a bum, but I still agreed and nodded as if given an order by one of my parents, even though Dee was only six years older than me. He was like the older brother I never had. His mom was a prostitute, and his dad was a raging alcoholic. So, Dee was at my house a lot. We didn’t do much. We just sat on the couch, watched movies, and ate Frosted Flakes. We then started to do impressions of our favorite characters for shits and giggles.
But Dee had a real knack for it. The shape of his face would change like a piece of clay, and he could alter and fine-tune the sound of his voice to the person he was mimicking perfectly. What Dee had was a true gift. He did some theater in high school. Then he started hanging out with this group of guys who got into fights, cursed, and got stoned all day. My parents didn’t like Dee coming over anymore. They said they couldn’t trust him anymore. They said I needed to be “careful.” But Dee was the same with me. He didn’t change. He still treated me like his kid brother.
Dee poured a couple of sugar packets into his cup of coffee.
“I’m gonna be gone for a while,” he said.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
He took a sip of his coffee. He savored it as if it would be his last. Finally, he said, “Hollywood.”
After a few minutes, Dee stood up to go to the restroom. “I’ll be back,” he said in a slow, deep, mechanical voice, like the Terminator. Funny enough, he was gone for some time. I almost thought Dee wasn’t coming back. When he did, his eyes were rolled up in the back of his head.
“Okay, I’ll give you another one,” Dee said, rubbing his nose. He took a gulp of his coffee, gurgled, cleared his throat, and began to speak with a British accent. “Too many foreigners at liquor stores, Vietnamese, Koreans—they don’t even speak fucking English. You tell them to empty out the register, and they don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. They make it too personal.”
I had no idea what scene this was. Dee could tell I was a bit lost. “Oh, come on, you must’ve seen this one! Nobody ever robs restaurants,” he said, in an English accent again. He was panting, almost as if he was out of breath. “Why not? In restaurants, you catch them with their pants down. They’re not expecting to get robbed—not as expected anyway.” I shrugged and went for a sip of my water. “Jesus, Junior! Come on,” Dee cried. “One of the best movies there is. I know you’ve seen this fucking movie.”
“Jay and Silent Bob? I don’t know,” I chuckled. My cheeks felt warm for some reason. Wanting to change the subject, I asked Dee if he was still working at the movie theater.
“Eh, I got laid off,” Dee shrugged. “But, come on, for real. Guess the movie. Some wetback getting paid a dollar fifty an hour really give a fuck you’re stealing from the owner?” Drops of sweat rolled from Dee’s forehead. “Customers sitting there with food in their mouths—they don’t know what’s going on. One minute they’re having a Denver omelet, next minute someone’s sticking a gun in their face.”
“I don’t know—oh, is it—?” I said before accidentally dropping my spoon. I reached over to grab it. Then I saw a Glock G17 on the table, between Dee’s plate of eggs and his cup of coffee.
“Bro, what the f—-?” I whispered, checking over my shoulder. “Dee, what the hell, man?”
Dee flung his gun in the air and kept doing his impersonations like the lunatic he was. Bobbing his head like a prizefighter, Dee said, “You got the idea of taking their wallets. Now, that was a good idea, made more from the wallets than we did from—”
“Dee, man, this isn’t fucking funny anymore! Put that shit away!” I never talked to Dee like this before, but I didn’t know what else to say. Looking into Dee’s eyes, I could tell he wasn’t the same person. I remember when I used to walk home after school, an older kid around the block didn’t like me. He would always make fun of how I looked and talked. He liked my Superman backpack, though. One day, he just yanked it off my shoulders and kicked me to the ground. When Dee found out, he said he only needed a “description” of the kid. I told him what he looked like—he had a potbelly and a jawline like Jay Leno—and Dee said, “Don’t worry about it.” A few hours later, Dee came home with my backpack. His knuckles were red and covered in blood.
I asked, “How’d you find it—?”
“Cousin, cousin,” Dee said, “I told you. Don’t worry about it.”
That Dee I remembered was long gone. Sitting across from me, I couldn’t tell you who he was. He said, “Okay, okay. I’ll stop.” He reached for another sip of his coffee. “Just tryna get into character,” Dee said. “Jesus. Look, it’s not even lo—”
“Oh my God! He has a gun!” someone screamed. And just like that, everything got really loud, just like in the movies. From one moment to the next, I was tackled and pinned to the ground by a former Marine sitting behind me. I had a thick pair of knees pressed into my back. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. Maybe this was why nobody ever robbed restaurants, I later thought. I looked over to Dee, hoping he would help me. But by this point, he was already gone.
When I got to the police station, it felt like being in detention or the principal’s office, only a hundred times worse. I didn’t feel like a badass like Joe Pesci or Robert DeNiro. I only kept thinking that my life was over, my life was over, my life was over. I started to cry. I cried like a baby. When my dad came to pick me up from the police station, he asked where Dee was. And I thought about the gangster movies I saw. I remembered how important it was to “never rat on your friends,” especially your family. But, the truth is, I didn’t know where Dee was. I thought I would see him again in a couple of days or possibly even a few weeks. But months went by. Then years. And nothing.
Dee was gone “for a while,” just like he said he was.
About twenty years later, I was in Los Angeles on vacation with my wife and two young daughters. Our hotel was on the same street as the Hollywood Walk of Fame. My girls were in the backseat, taking pictures of the strip and people in cosplay with their phones.
When we got to the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, I saw a man who looked an awful lot like Dee standing on the corner. I rolled down my window, and once I heard his voice, I knew it was him. He wore bright clothes that didn’t look like they belonged to him and had a salt-and-pepper beard that went down to his stomach. It looked like he was trying to entertain a small crowd of tourists. Maybe he was doing his impressions. He caught my glance, and I could tell he didn’t recognize me. Dee probably didn’t recognize anyone anymore. But he kept looking at me.
When Dee finally figured out who I was, his hard eyes softened. He walked away from the tourists and moved in my direction. But when the red light finally turned green, I drove past him. When I met my wife, I was a sophomore in college. We were enrolled in the same theater arts class. I was taking the class as an elective; she was taking it as part of her major. She said she loved doing impressions and slipping into “another role” that didn’t resemble her reality. And it was only then, thirty years after my adolescence, that I finally figured out why Dee loved doing impressions so much. Through the rear-view mirror, I saw Dee. He stood still with his hands in his pocket. He then looked down and raised one of his forearms to his face to wipe something off. Maybe sweat from the warm weather. But I didn’t care. I kept driving, leaving the past behind me once and for all.
-- Ernesto Reyes is a writer and teacher from Central California. His stories have appeared in San Joaquin Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Better than Starbucks, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. He lives with his beloved family and rambunctious Pomeranian in a small town on the rural outskirts of Fresno.