Maurice actually had a pretty normal life; typical, though non-traumatic childhood, normal enough job. He liked Bruce Willis movies a lot, didn't care much for Stallone movies. Had a few women in his life, but never really fell in love. Something interesting happened to him once when he was forty-two.
He was buying a fifth of Old Crow at a store near his apartment around 9:30 Wednesday night and this guy came into the store, half-assed 18-year-old thief, had a gun and a squeaky voice. Shot in the air a couple times, yelled for The Money. Guy behind the counter grew up watching a lot of John Wayne movies, one may imagine, did something pretty slick: the kid gave him a bag, said to fill it with money, so he took the bag, opened the register, put some money in it, but there wasn't much in the register. Kid could see that, and told him to Give Me The Rest, Motherfucker, so he went for the rest of it only instead grabbed a pistol from under the counter and put it in the bag, kept his hand there. When he brought the bag back up, he shot right through the bag and hit the kid dead in the chest. Spun around once and fell down. Maurice was standing back a little ways, trying not to draw attention. The kid's gun slid across the floor towards his foot.
Maurice thought about where he should drink the whiskey later that night. Then the gun hit his foot and he stopped thinking about much of anything. He dropped the bottle and picked up the gun, shot the clerk through the nose. Then he got excited and shot him a bunch more times, didn't notice when the chamber emptied out. Sat there on his knees like a gargoyle on the counter clicking the hammer over and over, pointing the barrel at the clerk. Realized after a while that he was hungry. Wiped the drool from his lip and grabbed a bag of chips from the stand, and a new bottle of Old Crow. Dropped the kid's gun on the floor, then got an idea and picked it back up, wiped the handle with his shirt and put it in the kid's hand, closed the little girlish fingers around it.
While he was walking home he saw a cop car driving the opposite direction, back towards the store. Thought to himself how happy he was to avoid the endless paperwork and questionings and God knows what else would have happened if he'd just stayed there, become a witness rather than a participant. He remembered the Young Urban Professional movement from the 1980s, all the crap he heard about being Upwardly Mobile and taking Positive Action and all that baloney.
He went home and opened the bag of chips and realized that he'd unfortunately grabbed, in his daze, a bag of potato chips instead of corn chips. He walked down his street in the other direction to another liquor store. He grabbed a bag of corn chips and, as long as he was there, a can of bean dip. On the walk back he stopped in a video store and rented a couple of New Releases. He took the chips and dip home and ate them and drank from a bottle of free drink for about an hour. He put in one of the tapes.
Then he fell asleep on the couch, missed most of the movie. In the morning he got up and went to work, doing things nobody cared about and anybody else could have done, and wondered what the rest of the movie was about.
Back.