Shannon Anthony - A Glimpse of Their Guns

Shannon Anthony

A Glimpse of Their Guns

They gave the staff a glimpse of their guns, she told him, and the painting was handed over.

And they got away with it. He liked that. “Only because it’s so old-school. What’s it worth?”

With the same newspapers bookmarked, they didn’t usually tell each other what they saw on their breakfast screens. Not unless an item was particularly upsetting, or one of them thought the other was missing something.

She said money wasn’t the point, which told him he wouldn’t be impressed. “It’s an important painting -- and painter.”

“An Old Master?” He grinned. “Bet you never heard of him before this.”

“Try Old Mistress. I’ve known about her for awhile.”

“Typical.” He spit bits of cereal. “You invent -- instead of saying you know -- ” Then he saw a link to the story.

Frowning at the same buried disaster, they left his sentence hanging.

Shannon Anthony’s fiction has appeared in Brink Magazine, Sein und Werden, Foliate Oak and Menda City Review, among other publications, and she has work forthcoming in The Binnacle. She lives in Minneapolis.