“You got it already?” Bruno asks, turning to see Mr. Magoo walking back to the climbing gear. Bruno also catches sight of the worker who is eyeing Mr. Magoo.  He should sneeze loudly — their signal — as he watches her watching the wrong guy, but there's time and instead Bruno takes his box cutter from his sleeve and gently works its razor around the lining of a medium, black and yellow jacket to free the magnetic tag. 'Tumors' Magoo calls them. He drops the tag to the carpet and then covers it with the medium jacket before finally sneezing to warn Magoo.  Magoo has been examining a large piton and just as the worker approaches him from behind he hangs it back with the others. 

"Can I help you?" Bruno hears, but then he can't hear the rest. He watches. Her long black hair reminds him of his Ex. He could dwell on this for a moment because he sees Magoo's body stay loose and easy but he doesn't. He focuses on the worker's posture and he stays focused on it until it gets loose and easy, too. His partner has said the right thing and the worker comes out of the climbing department smiling as she walks past Bruno, who is already busy, puzzling over the jackets again. 

"Do you have any mediums in black and yellow? All I'm finding are extra-larges," Bruno says too sweetly, to the folds of the black hair over the green vest. 

"No, just what's out," she says, her eyes catching, then throwing away, the scar beneath his eye. 

Bruno smiles sadly as he looks down at the jacket he’s wearing: "I really like this one but it's just too big." 

"They're great — my boyfriend lives in his," she says, eyeing the shell on the floor, which lays folded lengthwise. 

"Oh, I’ll hang it all back on the rack," he says as his stomach tightens, following her line of sight, "I worked in a clothing store once — it's a hassle, isn't it?" 

"Yeah … well, let me know if you have any other questions," she says before, oddly, nodding once to him as she walks away. Her eyes are trying to be somewhere else — behind her — Bruno thinks. He stares at the back of her head, willing her to not turn around, and in his peripheral vision he catches the shape of Magoo looking around quickly and, safely, putting something up his sleeve. 

With most other objects Bruno would be doing the same. Up the sleeve and then later, behind the kayaks or bicycles, from sleeve to pants. But the jacket is too bulky for the sleeve move and he has to get it in now while no one's around, underneath the oversized jacket that will hide his movements. He turns to see where the workers are — as if looking for a mirror — and then, all in one easy movement, he picks up the jacket and wedges it under the tight inner layer that he's wearing.  It bulges a little beneath the red jacket he has on but he smoothes it all out, acting like he’s testing the pit zips as he walks toward the dressing rooms. 

He doesn’t go in, but gauges himself in the mirror, zipping and unzipping the decoy jacket, testing the snow skirt and pockets until he's sure that the stolen jacket isn’t showing. He takes the decoy jacket off and holds it up, all the while seeing how the jacket beneath rides on him. With his stomach sucked in it's barely noticeable under the loose flannel. 

Bruno is done. He returns to the rack and cleans up, hiding the empty hanger by doubling it up with the one for the decoy jacket. He nudges the tumor deeper beneath the coat rack legs and then he walks through the store to the exit. He sees the worker again and goes out of his way to walk by her. 

"I'm going to look around town — see if I can find a medium," he says loudly to her and she wishes him good luck though she stares at his face, and then, it seems, at his torso, before she turns around. She must know. Suddenly he must ditch the jacket, go back and tear it out and warn Magoo and flee from the store, running as hard as he can. There is a big worker by the door now who hadn't been there earlier and his vest is somehow different from the others. Must be security. Must be on to him. Must get out of here. But from this panic he feels something swell and then burst and snap in him again to fill his veins and harden, and at the same time he feels that denser part that can stand anything, beat anyone. She doesn't know, he thinks from this new energy: he's just some poser to her. He is way too sly and she is way to slow. 

He walks to the wood rack of Powerbars and takes two, knowing that buying trinkets will make him better look the part he's played. At the cashier, about to take out his wallet, he catches Mr. Magoo out of the corner of his eye. Magoo looks a little shaky, a little nervous — plus he's walking weird, as if he's got an extra knee along with the five pounds of gear he stashed in his pants. Bruno notices that the big man is watching Magoo and he's about to sneeze a warning when the cashier asks him if that's all he's getting. He nods, annoyed, and is about to sneeze again — and then he does sneeze, but for real this time and so hard he has a brief, soaring image of himself as a Russian doll, a smaller self condensing beneath himself. 

Mr. Magoo nods at the big man by the door and begins to exit but from the side a manager with a nametag approaches him and takes hold of his sleeve, asking loudly if he'd like to remain in the store for a moment. Magoo is all eyes, all tension. He jerks his sleeve away and bangs the door open, spinning sideways through it as both the manager and big man lunge after him. Now they can arrest him Bruno thinks, looking back towards the cashier. But the cashier has gone, too — all of them heading out the open door to help the big man who has caught Magoo by the shirt again and is trying to bring him down. 

A stiff Pacific breeze comes through the entrance and Bruno feels it fresh on his face — he can even smell Magoo's fear in its folds — and he notices his muscles revving up, a bitterness in the back of his mouth, his body loose and his hands suddenly balled up so they are all knuckles and scabs, the weight in his stomach heavier but clearly expanding, in slow pulses, from inside to out. 

Bruno moves from the register and heads for Mr. Magoo, but when he steps outside he is overwhelmed by this pulsing — by this build-up of energy as it travels to his face and his feet and his fists and then ricochets inward so that this time, too, it is first the ion lead, and then the lightning strike as he catches Magoo’s wild pupils in his own. 

Their eyes are still trapped together when Magoo's shirt pulls open and the pitons and the hammer and the can of pepper spray bounce pinging off the concrete, just before the big man slams him to the ground.  Magoo's eyes seem wet and torn open while Bruno's gloss over with the hardness that is rising inside him. 

He veers right and launches himself off the curb and onto the wide, black asphalt of the parking lot, casting away from those eyes and the three men who are holding Magoo down, the sounds from his partner's throat fading. 

Bruno can do nothing, say nothing. He is crystalline and taking off, fists balled now not to hit but only to clench these Powerbars. For two or three beats the pulsing inside of him comes in sync with his step but then accelerates to surpass him, increasing its tempo until it is so fast he seems to hum inside, shifting in pitch and weight to become, finally, a roaring. 

He might still be in their sight, only halfway across the parking lot, but he releases the jacket from beneath his layers, flicking it open behind him, its folds expanding and contracting in one deep breath as he draws it over his arms and back, its black and yellow fabric erasing the four men left in his wake. 

He need only get to the car and that key hidden behind the license plate. Then the other stores. He'll find another partner, and if not, he'll solo aid. Maybe something easy at first. He is roaring inside, a hardwired bad-ass, stoked and rolling and raging as he tears open the Powerbar and takes a bite, walking from the mayhem with long, flowing steps as he begins, in the same sweet rhythm, to chew. 

Sean Toren is a writer living in Minneapolis with, to roughly quote Zorba the Greek, “ … wife, child, house — everything. The full catastrophe." He has recently completed his first novel, "G,” and can be reached at sean_toren@yahoo.com.