Always the Optimist

Liam, thanks for reading. Straight to your points. (And if you're browsing reviews before reading, please go ahead and read the story first, lots of SPOILERS below.) 

Not exactly sure which direction you're going with the narrator being too rough or not rough enough when you say "wave the red flag". I can say his language got significantly less inflamatory during the editing process.

The physical size thing, or any description, always feels wedged in when dealing with first person. It's kind of immaterial anyway, isn't it? He's big enough to beat up drunks who aren't expecting a fight and he likes beating the crap out of people. 

Not familiar with "last exit from Brooklyn", but I take your point. There's nothing really original about this little crew anyway, aside, maybe, from moving constantly and hanging on to the IDs of the people they rip off for later use. They're small time who figured out a pretty good way not to get caught, but they're definitely from the Elmore Leonard school of not-that-bright crooks. 

Holding off on the sex . . . see above. The narrator is the brightest of the bunch (or he at least sees himself that way) but that doesn't exactly make him smart or all that disciplined. 

I get you, and wanting more is always a good thing to hear. Ultimately, a lot got cut for length and I thought it was clear, but here's the short version: John wanted to rob the cartel but needed somebody to take the fall for it. In order to pull it off, he needed both Christy and Donny on his side, otherwise the odds wouldn't be in his favor. Donny and Christy were both needed to get into the back room with the drugs, so they'd be implicated in ripping off the cartel if either one of those guys was left alive. As it is now, though, there are a whole bunch of witnesses who can give a very clear description of the guy who came in, shot up the place, threatened to kill everybody, and then shut them in a room. Donny and Christy don't even enter the conversation about the robbery AS LONG as the two cartel guys are dead. Anybody the cartel asks is going to have the same story. 

As for why John would want them alive . . . well, long term, there's no reason. They were useful to turn the tide on the narrator (we can call him "Doug", I didn't really mean to leave him nameless, just worked out that way) and Christy can help back-up John's story when the cartel comes sniffing around, but that's it. In that, anyway, "Doug" might not be too far off in what he thinks is going to happen to the two of them. 

As for how well "Doug" takes getting so thoroughly beaten, well, that's up for you to decide. He's not the most reliable of narrators, so is he really okay with it, is he scared of the cartel, does he think he couldn't really pull off his revenge scheme, or does it just sound like way too much work and he's justifying walking away? 

Hope this clears up anything that wasn't clear enough in the story. Thanks for reading!

Thanks, Wonder Woman. 

Well, so far two people are looking for some physical description of "Doug". Like I said, it always feels like that sort of thing is being crammed in with a crowbar in a first person narration, but maybe I can find somwhere it fits more or less gracefully. Ditto for the age. I figured "Doug" at old enough that picking up 16 year old Christy is super-creepy, so 23 or 24 when they first hook up, late twenties at the time of the story. Old enough that this whole rob-and-run thing is starting to get old, hence his fantasy of "someplace like Brazil, but where they speak English." 

Also two points against sex during the robbery. I think maybe the disconnect is that "Doug" sees himself as such a careful, well-planned guy, then he goes and does something reckless and stupid in the middle of their big heist. It's supposed to tell you something about "Doug" and maybe make you a little nervous. (Remember when Bruce Willis started making breakfast in Pulp Fiction? I'd love to generate that sense of pushing one's luck.) "Doug" isn't nearly as cautious or diciplined as he likes to think he is (which feeds into how he completely missed Christy and Donny planning to turn on him, and how much raw hate Donny has for him, and Donny most likely being gay) but unfortunately it looks like it plays as just jarring. As for Christy, for her it's basically break-up sex. She's as turned on at the idea she's about to royally screw the guy over as her standard blood fetish. No doubt there's some ugly stuff in her history. 

Again, appreciate the notes and thank you for the upvote!

Thanks for the review Hector. 

I agree that Donny isn't really developed as a character . . . at all, and I struggled with that a little in a way that didn't have anything to do with the word count. Doug is the one telling this story, and he treats Donny as a loyal but particularly stupid dog. Since he doesn't really think of him at all outside of heaping abuse on him (and Donny doesn't stand up for himself until Doug has been neutralized) there really isn't any place for natural development. When he finally speaks for himself at the end, (it was intentional that he had no actual dialogue until then) I was hoping that it would shed light on all of the off-hand abuse he's suffered throughout the story. Perhaps even hint to the reader that the idea to turn on Doug originally came from Donny. The man is a big pile of anger and resentment that Doug just doesn't recognize. The tears came from finally busting down that dam of frustration. 

John letting him go (or not) plays on a pet peeve of mine. I hate it in stories where otherwise intelligent characters go around killing people who, from their perspective, don't absolutely need to die. Murder isn't a small thing for anyone who isn't a lunatic, and cleaning up a murder is a raging pain in the ass. Donny and Christy turning on Doug makes sense, but I don't see either of them on-board for just straight-up murdering him. John killed the two cartel guys, but for his plan to work they both needed to be dead. Doug being dead isn't a solution, it's a complication. Having Doug on the run gives the cartel a focal point without John needing to manipulate the crime scene, clean up Doug's blood, get rid of his car and his body, etc all within a couple of hours. As it is now, John can just report the robbery and murder to both the cops and the cartel almost exactly as it happened with a closet-full of witnesses there to back up his story, and every bit of evidence will support him. I'm swimming against the grain a little, since fictional criminals often think that spending hours with a bucket of bleach cleaning up blood and brains and shit and transporting and disposing of a dead body is preferable to just NOT killing somebody. 

As for Doug's capitulation, that's more a question of how reliable a narrator Doug actually is (as I mentioned elsewhere). I'm not sure how to make this more clear, but is he really that laid back, or is he convincing himself that it's not worth the effort? I could've easily ended the story on "revenge" and still used the optimist line, but I liked the idea that Doug isn't really that big of a badass. Instead of getting himself into something where the odds are really against him, he talks himself into believing it's not that big of a deal, that the people who betrayed him are doomed without him anyways, and that he can always get more money. He's working really hard to find the silver lining so he can justify NOT going on some revenge rampage that likely ends with him dead. 

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the whole shebang. Thanks again for your imput. Hopefully I'll find a way to address your points while retaining the stuff I mentioned. 

Casey, 

Thanks for the comments! Sorry for the long delay in responding. 

I can definitely see stripping out the "optimist" line at the start. It's a little cutesy tie-in from the beginning to the end to the title. The story probably needs two references to it, but no more. 

Thanks, Grant. 

Some of the previous (well, most of the previous) comments had some trouble with the mid-heist sex. It makes perfect sense to me for both characters, but maybe it doesn't fit in the narrative all that well. Doug does it because he's really not that bright and, to him, the hard part's over and it's been all he could handle just to wait the couple of weeks it took to plan the job. That hungry look in Chrissy's eyes is all he needed. For Chrissy, it's a turn-on to fuck him just moments before stabbing him in the back. To use a classic example that this story in no way lives up to, Chrissy's a Carmen Sternwood, though not quite as psychotic. 

Lore, 

Thanks for the comments!

To resond to your thoughts, the knife thing is both kind of fun (in a cringeworthy way) and also absolutely necessary. She needs to get into that well-guarded back-room with a weapon, so there really are no other options. As far as logistics, it's totally possible and has been done. I have some prison-guard friends, and it's truly astounding what female prisoners can fit in their lady-parts with the right motivation. They've tried to smuggle everything from drugs and phones to knives and guns. Of course, a Bowie knife or machete or something isn't all that realistic, but a switchblade or utility knife or short stiletto is totally possible without that much restriction in movement. (From my conversations with people who know, I now know far more than I ever needed to about the logistics of keeping foreign objects secured up there). 

As far as getting the knife out, the cartel guy doesn't exactly have his guard up while a stripper dances for him, so I can see plenty of ways she could distract him long enough to get that knife at the ready without him knowing what she's up to. 

I think John's plan makes sense, but it didn't work for him to take the time to lay it all out for Doug with all the specifics. John was looking to rip-off the cartel, but needed a viable fall-guy. If the place gets robbed and the cartel guy and his bodyguard are the only two killed, that means a targeted attack on the cartel. John has a description of the guy and his car, with lots of people around to back-up his story. It was the cartel's security that failed, after all. And even if the cartel decides somebody was involved on the inside, their wrath would come down on the owner of the place, not really on John. And if anybody was implicated, it would be Chrissy, who has no actual connection to John since he isn't the one who hired her. The bottom line is that wherever suspicion falls, it won't be on John. I think there's enough in the text to infer this, but maybe I'm wrong. And, as you said, ultimately it doesn't matter, since it's possible John's idea might just be as bad as Doug's. 

Thanks again. 

Thanks so much. I considered stretching that out with specifics, but I kind of liked the idea of that being just the single line with no further explanation, like it's a perfectly reasonable place to hide a knife. 

Adam, 

Thanks for the comments! 

I agree, there's really nothing original about the story. Especially in short crime fiction, originality is hard to come by so the quality must be in the execution. 

Thanks for being on-board with no "Doug" physical description. In first person narratives, a physical description of the narrator is the exception, rather than the rule. You never know what the narrator looks like in Fight Club and you never know what Walter Huff looks like in Double Indemnity. And when it is included, it's usually some wedged-in scene where the guy (or girl) describes themselves in a mirror. Unless it's super-vital, there's no real reason for it to be there, in my view. 

I'm also glad you didn't mind the lack of character development. That was something that really did bother me, especially with Donny. The guy doesn't even have dialogue, Doug just tells us what he said. As I considered it, though, it really seemed to work. I'm usually a huge "show, don't tell" guy, but in this case, Doug just telling us a lot of stuff just made sense, and really made it a lot more fun to write since I could stay locked-in to Doug's mind without breaking out to give the other characters a chance to develop themselves. Doug doesn't give a shit about Donny's (or Christy's) development. 

I get you about the sex mid-heist. Thanks for the suggestions, but they don't really work with the characters as they exist in my head. Doug didn't plan on having sex during the heist, but that come-hither look from Christy changes his mind. To him, the hard part is over, so why not? As for Christy, she's probably more turned on by the idea of betraying Doug than she is about Doug beating somebody up. I've said it before, but she's definitely at least adjacent to Carmen Sternwood in terms of fucked up and hyper-sexual. 

And to your final point, yes, thank you. With this genre and all of these, as you said, "characters out for revenge and unable to let any slight go unpunished" there's GOT to be some guys out there who are perfectly willing to let things go. Not all criminals are Parker. Not all criminals are badasses, though they may see themselves that way. Some guys, when faced with bad odds, just find a way to deal with the fact they got screwed while still sparing their own egos. It would've been easy to end this story with a big revenge thing, I even could've worked in the "optimist" angle. But I think the single most distinctive thing about the story is that he doesn't. He starts down that path, and then justifies walking away in a way that keeps his perception of himself intact, like it's beneath him and both of his betrayers are screwed anyway. 

Cmangano, 

In my experience, the worst thing you can do with lots of action is to rush it. In fact, writing action tends to be counter-intuitive, if you slow down and take your time, it increases the reader pace as they work through the intracacies, which makes it read faster. 

And yes, the sheathed knife, lots of comment on that, obviously. As I mentioned in a previous response, through many conversations with prison guard friends, it absolutely happens on a regular basis. In fact, I now know entirely too much about the logistics of keeping foreign bodies secured up inside lady parts. 

Thanks for the comments.