And all these people understand

Is a gun in their face or the cash in their hand

I wanna take you home and start a family

But all the stars in Texas ain't got nothin' on your eyes when you say, "Let's hit 'em one more time"

- Ludo, All the Stars in Texas

"I can't stay here."

My mother throws me a stern look, and I fidget in my stiff black suit. She doesn't understand; for her, this is closure. This collective form of mourning is her way of accepting the reality of the situation and moving on. I am not my mother, however, and for me this situation is unbearable. I don't need a elegiac southern Baptist funeral to make me accept the fact that my grandmother — my Meemaw — is dead. Her chemically altered body in the casket five feet away is more than enough proof for me.

"I can't stay here," I repeat. "I have to leave."

"Sheldon Lee Cooper," my mother warns in a harsh whisper, "don't you dare. You still need to speak—"

I ignore her and rise to my feet. She latches a hand to the hem of my suit jacket, but I pull out of her grasp and walk away from the people, from the embalmed corpse that once housed my grandmother. Don't they know that modern embalming only preserves a body for a couple of days, or that sealing the coffin creates a far more gruesome fate for the forgotten pile of flesh and bones? What a ridiculous and ultimately futile process. Dead is dead, at least for the time being.

I walk until my feet begin to ache and I am on the other side of town. Although I left with no particular destination in mind, I find myself standing in front of Maggie's, my Meemaw's favorite diner. The food is sub-par and the service even worse, but I push the door open anyway. Normally the odor of stale cigarettes mingling with the heavy, greasy smell of burgers and fries would repulse me, but on this day, I find the olfactory sensation oddly comforting.

"What'll ya have?" bleats the heavyset waitress behind the counter when I take my seat.

"Just coffee, please," I say, breaking my own cardinal rule. Chemical stimulants generally do not interest me, but right now, I need something to combat the nauseated feeling in my gut. I add sugar until the waitress begins to look worried and then stir quickly with a spoon. The coffee cup looks curiously smudged along the outer rim, and I have to resist the urge to ask for a new mug.

I glance around me and take in the surroundings. The walls are yellowed with decades of cooking residue and the counters look outdated and sloppily cleaned, but somehow the place has a strange sort of charm. Perhaps I am simply nostalgic for the hours spent here as a child, enjoying food my mother never would have paid for with the one person who did not think I was an abnormality in the negative sense of the word. My grandmother accepted my differences and encouraged them with fervor; she bought me textbooks for Christmas and designed rockets with me, stayed up late with me to learn about the night sky and helped me build my first telescope. Unfortunately, She is now dead, gone forever, and I missed my chance to say goodbye.

Suddenly, for the first time since my childhood, I feel tears stinging my eyes. Her absence from my life is a gaping emotional wound for which I was unprepared. Until this moment, true sadness was a foreign concept to me, but now I can feel it coursing through my veins and breaking down walls. I blink rapidly and try to dismiss the feelings with a sip of rancid coffee.

"Rough day?" Asks a voice. I look over and see a blond woman staring at me from a few stools away.

I clear my throat. "No."

"You're a terrible liar." She scoots down to sit next to me and smiles a perfect smile, full of teeth and promises. "Come on, you can tell me."

"I don't even know you," I mumble, looking down. Her legs are long and tanned and bumping against mine; I flinch reflexively and move away.

"Maybe you're supposed to know me," she says simply. I look up at her again and she's still smiling that same bright smile. She runs a hand through her hair and I begin to wonder why she's bothering; she isn't the type of woman who usually bothers with me. In fact, most women don't bother with me, probably due to the fact that I have no interest in bothering with them.

"If you must know, my grandmother died recently, and her funeral was today," I find myself saying in an effort to shut her up. "Now, will you leave me alone?"

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," she says, and it sounds earnest. "But I'm not done with you. You and I have grand plans for this day."

"I don't know what you mean." Is this woman crazy? She doesn't look crazy; in fact, she looks exceedingly attractive and like she should be in an empty-minded fashion magazine instead of sitting next to me in this hellhole diner.

She leans close and her eyes light up. "I mean that instead of being my victim today, you get to be my accomplice."

"What? Accomplice? I don't—" She puts a finger to my lips to silence me and presses something heavy against my thigh. I look down and nearly fall off of the stool in a panic; she's placed a handgun in my lap.

She pulls another gun out from nowhere and spins around. "All right, boys and girls, down on the floor! Nice and easy!" She brandishes her weapon and points it around the diner at various targets. "Don't make this hard for us. Any sudden movements and we'll blow your fuckin' heads off!"

The entire diner goes still. Children are wailing and people are talking in hushed whispers. They don't seem to know whether or not they should take the threat seriously.

The woman aims upward and takes out a fluorescent light, causing everyone in the diner to flinch. "What the hell are you waiting for?" she yells. It seems to do the trick; people fall to the floor almost instantly. She turns her angry gaze on me. "Come on, get up. You're gonna keep an eye on the folks up here while I go around and collect the dough."

I remember the gun in my lap with a start. "What?" I ask, completely paralyzed and dumb with fear. I can almost feel it radiating from my amygdala and coursing through my heightened limbic system.

"Take the damn gun and point it at those people," she whispers harshly, gesturing toward the group of waitresses and cooks on the floor. "Do it, or your day's gonna get much worse!"

Shakily, I curl my fingers around the cool metal and aim it at the group of folks nearest to me. I recognize some of them as people with whom I attended grade school, people who taunted me as a child and never looked at me with anything but derision. Do they recognize me? Am I confirming their suspicions that I would someday crack?

I glance out of the corner of my eye at the woman, who is busy robbing customers. She works quickly and without fuss; she has done this before. I should never have opened my fool mouth!

I consider wounding her. I'm a decent shot and I could detain her until the authorities arrive; it seems painless and simple. But I quickly find myself rejecting the idea. If she is as good with her weapon as I suspect, she would probably manage to fire a round in me from the floor, and I have no interest in taking any injuries. Personal preservation always trumps moral duty.

Thankfully, no one complicates the situation by trying to be a hero; the people in this town are too complacent and unaccustomed to wrongdoing to do anything but meekly hand over their cash and cower on the floor. After the woman finishes taking money from everyone and empties the cash register, she grabs my arm roughly and begins backing toward the door.

"Thanks," she says with a smile and a wink. Then she backpedals out of the restaurant and begins walking quickly across the gravel parking lot. She hasn't let go of my arm.

"Why the hell did you involve me in this?" I ask angrily. Ignoring me, she leads me to a car and opens the passenger side door. A gun pressed to my side is encouragement enough for me to get in.

"The proprietors will most certainly take down your license plate number," I say when she slides in next to me and starts the car. "Do you really think you can get away with this?"

"I've gotten away with this many, many times, so I'd say yes." She peels out of the parking lot and stops behind an abandoned building. "And as for the license plates, I'm about to replace them. I always put on my old plates when I rob places."

I have to give her credit for being thorough. She has the plates replaced and hidden in under five minutes, and I find myself wondering how many times she's done this, and even why. I don't generally care for the why in regards to other people, but I've also never been involuntarily hired by a criminal. There are certain things I feel I must know.

"What if I turn you in?" I ask when she climbs back into the car.

"Feel free," she says with a flourish of her hand. "I'll be out of town in an hour and my hair color will be different by tomorrow morning. I only rob diners and the occasional gas station in tiny nobody towns; I have no pattern, and I never steal enough from one place to be considered a real threat. The cops lose interest after a few days and I keep my freedom. It's the perfect crime and there's no way that you can screw it up."

"Oh, madam, I think you underestimate me," I say. She thinks she's smarter than me; no one is smarter than me. In a sudden moment of courage, I cock the gun I'm still holding and point it across the car. "You should have disarmed me when we left the diner. I'm perfectly capable of—"

Within three seconds, she's karate-chopped my carotid artery and reclaimed her gun. I cough and sputter and glare at her.

"I hope I made your day a bit more exciting, sweetheart," she says, sugary sweet. "Now, where would you like me to take you?"

"The police station?"

She rolls her eyes. "Cute. No, I mean, your place."

I tell her the street but not the house, and she takes off. I shift uncomfortably and try not to look at her. "So, what drives a woman such as yourself to commit felonies?"

"What drives a guy like you to drink coffee at a shitty redneck diner?"

"None of your business."

"I can make it my business." The threat sounds honest, but she sighs and loses some steam. "I'm in this line of work because I need the money and crime's about the only thing I've ever been any good at." I flinch at her dangling preposition but let her continue. "My mom has cancer and can't afford the medical bills. I send most of the money home."

"That's more noble than I was expecting," I say. "Assuming it's true."

"Why would I lie?" A police car, all flashing lights and raucous noises, careens toward us. The woman dutifully pulls over and the car flies past. "I have nothing to prove to you, or to anyone. I'm just getting by like everybody else."

I snort. "Yes, just like everyone else." She drives on and we sit in silence for a moment. "Don't you have any other skills, besides armed robbery?"

She pulls off on a dead-end road and I feel my stomach drop. She's staring at me with a look that is half-irritation, half-amusement. "Why do you keep asking me so many damn questions? What do you care?"

"I don't care," I say. "I'm just... curious, I suppose. Human behavior generally baffles me, but you in particular are an interesting case."

"Because I'm pretty and I rob diners for a quick buck? There's nothing interesting about that. Plenty of women have stumbled upon the discovery that good looks can get you anywhere; for me, it's just a bonus. I could do this without 'em."

"Yes, but you could be..." I consider. "You could, at the very least, be an actress? A waitress?"

"A stripper?" She raises an eyebrow. "Was that your next suggestion?"

"What? No! Of course not."

"Well, anyway, been there, done that. People that say it's empowering are full of shit. No amount of money in the world is worth that."

I carefully block any images of that particular profession from my mind. "All I am saying is that there are other, more legal, ways of gaining funds—"

"Shit!" She interrupts me and points at the rear-view mirror. A police car has pulled up a handful of feet behind us, lights ablaze.

Although I know I have no reason to be worried, a pang of fear echoes through my stomach. "The local law enforcement seems to be more proficient than you anticipated."

"Shut up!" She's thinking hard, and I can almost hear her mind racing. Abruptly, she looks over at me and grabs my shoulder. "I have an idea. If it doesn't work, then, well... at least you can tell people you got lucky. Probably for the first time," she adds with a smirk.

"What are you—" But within seconds she's leaped over into my lap and is kissing me, her hands wrapped around my neck. I feel myself freeze up out of pure shock and the realization that I am being forced to exchange bodily fluids with this strange, strange woman. She presses herself against me and I yelp in surprise; she leans back and grimaces.

"What is your deal?" she asks, exasperated. "Just go with it. Trust me."

She kisses me again and I close my eyes and try not to think about the bacteria. Her lips are soft and her skin smells like cheap lotion and expensive perfume and why haven't I pulled away? This plan is absolutely ridiculous, no one would ever believe that a woman like this would engage in amorous activities with someone such as myself, but her pulse has quickened and when I open my eyes, she's staring into me like she can see everything I'm thinking. A little shiver runs down my spine and for the second time today I find myself feeling something unfamiliar.

There's a tap on the window, and we both look over in surprise. The officer also looks surprised, but thankfully I do not recognize him. I hesitantly reach out and roll down the window.

"Hello, officer," the woman says sheepishly. "Uh... is there a problem?"

"I'm sorry to, uh, interrupt," the officer says, his cheeks flushing, "I thought that your car matched the physical description of one I'm looking for, but... I was wrong. Wrong license plates. So I came up to make sure everything was all right."

"Just fine," I hear myself say. "Are we in trouble?"

"No, no," he says, waving his hands. "Just... you know, find a room? I don't want to write you a ticket."

"I understand," I say. "We'll be moving along."

"Thanks." With that, he turns and leaves.

The woman claps her hands on my chest twice and then climbs off of me. "Brilliant! I knew it'd work!" Smiling, she starts the car. "And you aren't as bad of a kisser as I expected."

I can't think of anything to say to that, so I sit in silence until we reach my street. She stops the car and I go to unbuckle my seat belt. "I'll walk from here."

"Hey." She leans over and plants a kiss on my cheek. "Thanks for your... help. Hope you don't feel violated or anything. Do you, uh, want some money?"

"I prefer to earn my funds, thank you." I scramble out of the car. "I hope that you will consider an alternative career path."

"Not likely," she says with a wink. "By the way, the name's Penny."

"Sheldon."

She makes a face. "Do your parents hate you?"

"You share your name with a coin that is worth next to nothing. Do you parents hate you?"

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever. Have a nice life, Sheldon."

As she drives away, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief, along with something else I find myself unable to qualify.

Yes, the plot of this fic loosely springs from the song quoted at the beginning... which, by the way, LISTEN TO IT.

Tell me what you think!