The truly great‑ish
bank heist.

"I'm still a bit unclear," MN began, "why we are so intent on stealing something that will literally curse us for eternity."

Three fools sat at a table. If they were to believe Doctor Dolphin (and with his fervor, how could you not?), they were 24 hours and a possible lifetime of adversity away from generational wealth.

MN picked up a toothpick — a remnant of a full night's scheming, arguing, building, and chow mein — and placed it between his teeth. Doctor Dolphin hadn't lifted his gaze from the overhead projector.

"This should be working," he said.

"It just seems that we're focusing a little too much on the gold of it all, and not enough on the Everyone Who Touches It Dies Instantly part."

Doctor Dolphin pressed his flippers against the dust-speckled stage glass. He knew this machine, its bolts and blemishes, how to make it purr. He looked upward at the lens and gave it a knock, then shot MN a glare.

"That mumbo jumbo is fabricated to stop idiots like you from getting shot and killed trying to steal it."

MN placed both hands on his chest and leaned in, exaggerating his tilt to the point where he nearly swallowed his toothpick.

"I don't wanna git shot and kilt, Doc," he said in an offensively Southern drawl.

Doctor Dolphin turned back to the projector, held out his arm, and asked Chairy for a screwdriver. The third perpetrator beamed at his inclusion. Born from Doctor Dolphin's earliest experiment, self-heralded as "the world's most influential application of animation since Mickey Mouse", Chairy became the answer to one of life's greatest questions: What if furniture could talk? It was an obsessive line of thinking from the Doctor, that he could gain fame by granting self-expression to the common chair. And to his credit, he wasn't wrong. Public interest in the technology was abundant at its revelation. But as the weeks passed and more household objects gained the ability to walk and eat and think, attention gradually faded after one fairly astonishing revelation: Chairs just don't have much to say.

"Am I going to get shot and killed too?" Chairy asked, handing his creator a screwdriver.

Doctor Dolphin rotated his wrist, scraping steel against steel, teeth against chalkboard. Finally, a click. A hush of yellow light, coughing itself out of the projector.

"Not if we do this right," the Doctor said. "Now, let's go over the plan one more time."

Doctor Dolphin slid the first picture from a thinly stacked pile onto the projector. Through the magic of real-time light manipulation, a snapshot of a bank lobby made a home on the wall. The room was modern and decadent, interspersed by black marble pillars and velvet rope. Three cops guarded a switchback queue, two of them facing the crowd and one peering out the window.

Doctor Dolphin cleared his throat. "So —"

"Is this where I come in?" Chairy interrupted.

"No, Chairy, you come in later," Doctor Dolphin said. "This is the main entrance to Grand Central Bank. You should recognize its layout from last night's diagrams. But oh no! Look at all these potential witnesses. What are we to do?"

MN, who had at once been gripped by Doctor Dolphin's sermon, leaned forward in his chair. Chairy, who by his very nature had no chair to lean forward in, arched his back inward. Doctor Dolphin, who had genuinely been hoping for a little audience participation, feigned a cough and pointed his flipper at the corner of the photograph.

MN snapped his fingers and rolled them into an air guitar. "The vent! We're gonna gas 'em up!"

"We're going to kill them?!" Chairy yelled.

"It's laughing gas," Doctor Dolphin said.

"They're going to laugh to death?!"

"With all due respect, Chairy, you're not doing your species a favor," Doctor Dolphin said. "Nitrous Oxide. A short-term sedative, pumped in by that nitwit" — he signaled to MN, still commanding a silent air guitar — "through the bank's only air vent."

Had it been the result of a rushed development process, or rather just faulty ventilation design? Regardless, by the time the mistake was noticed, nine months had passed since Grand Central Bank broke ground. Such an error would widely go unnoticed by the general public after the bank first opened its doors, a trivia stumper merely reserved for architecture historians and bank enthusiasts, that despite the magnificence and elegance of Grand Central Bank's design, its many intricate details patterned amongst its many walls, the building's entire airflow was dependent on one puny little air vent.

"What about that other vent over there?" Chairy asked, pointing to the opposite end of the wall.

"Oh sorry, that's a smudge," Doctor Dolphin said, wiping the picture with his elbow before transposing scenes. The projection now showcased a blank wall framed between two long columns. Doctor Dolphin exchanged smirks with MN, their crow's feet parallel in wiggled enthusiasm. MN reached behind his chair for a backpack, one that contained the very thing everybody knew could destroy —

"Is this where I come in?"

Chairy's eyes darted between his co-conspirators, his mouth gaping with excitement. MN lifted his hand from the backpack and shook a stick of dynamite.

"Of course, of course," Chairy said under his breath. "Right, I remember now, yes. Keep going."

A new photo was placed on the projector, blasting a hallway onto the wall.

Doctor Dolphin laughed to himself. "Luckily for you two, I have both the capacity and the intellect to disarm the lasers, so we don't need to spend too much time here."

The next photo was of Harper's Chihuahua.

"Now I'm not certain what the exact configuration of the idol's room looks like," Doctor Dolphin said. "However, after my initial readings I'm quite confident that there are no additional guardrails preventing us from simply grabbing it and leaving."

"Besides the curse," MN said.

Doctor Dolphin frowned. "We'll have to get out quickly, which is where you come in, Chairy."

Chairy looked at Doctor Dolphin with pride. "I'll be a great getaway driver. Like what's-his-face in that movie, Baby Driver. Tell me you've seen Baby Driver."

"Right. Now, onto the logistics of the escape," Doctor Dolphin said. "At 5:00 PM —"

"Ansel Elgort," Chairy said. "That's his name."

Doctor Dolphin took a beat then continued. "At 5:00 PM, right next to Grand Central Bank, the Grand Central Philharmonic Orchestra begins their annual concert. Putrid music if you ask me, but these sheep flock to it like —"

"You know I actually went to the Philharmonic a couple years back and it wasn't too bad, all things considered," MN chimed in.

Doctor Dolphin smiled. "Oh really, I'm glad you liked it," he said. "I'll make a note of it in your obituary."

MN sunk into his chair and brought his knees to his face.

"The crowd's both a good and bad thing," Doctor Dolphin continued. "For starters, there's going to be a lot of eyeballs, so keep your faces hidden. On the upside, if we do manage a low profile, it'll be pretty hard for anyone to follow us through the chaos."

"And what happens if we get caught?" Chairy asked.

"Worst case scenario, I've fitted a jetpack under the passenger seat. We'll escape through the sunroof, and assess the situation to figure out next steps."

With that, Doctor Dolphin clicked the projector off, and blue darkness once again cast itself atop the three fools.

"Now rest up, boys. Tonight we steal that idol, and I'm not leaving anything up to luck."

Captain Walbert wasn't one to snooze. When the alarm clock beckoned, he rose.

Mornings had become structured, and progressively regulated by a legion of second opinions. In college, for instance, Walbert's dentist suggested an extra morning floss to strengthen his genetically weak gums. Walbert had since complied, even though the pain that followed each threading seemed to assert the opposite. Years later, a physical therapist in Raleigh would recommend a daily 15-minute stretching routine for Walbert's back, which was permanently disfigured after a run-in with the notorious Varmint Gang. And just recently his dietician had nearly demanded Walbert increase fiber consumption, so he started eating a bowl of bran flakes every morning. Cereal wasn't too bad though.

Walbert sat in his kitchen, masticating on bran and listening to jazz. His record player sang fine after 20 years of use (abuse, if you ask his neighbors), although Walbert would admit his record collection to be a bit lacking.

He hummed to himself. Music was like family to Walbert, albeit he didn't have much of a touchstone in that regard. His parents had died before he could remember more than his mother's heartbeat, and he spent his formative years cosplaying as his grandfather's luggage. While "ticket seller" was his official title, young Walbert held many roles for Harold's Traveling Musical Quartet, which included but weren't limited to: ticket seller, popsicle server, peanut sheller, corn shucker, trash dispenser, dog trainer, tip collector, tent setter, tent packer, water distributor, and frycook. He also dabbled in clarinet on weekends.

Walbert lived a chaotic life, one pronounced by a sort of predictable unpredictability. Harold's didn't tend to stick around in one place for too long, even if reviews were, for the most part, fairly agreeable. But there was money to be made out West, and West was the one thing Harold's never ran out of. So the story goes: The quartet would arrive at a new field, put on a three-star show, then take to their caravan of stagecoaches and venture off.

The boy learned to make friends with the stars. He spent summer nights surrounded by corn stalks and winter nights under sheets of straw. He licked icing off of funnel cake and counted the spokes in ferris wheels. He danced to the bloots of the saxophone.

If there was ever a thing that could be predicted, it was the chatter — the running thread in Walbert's days, save for when his mouth covered a clarinet reed. He'd talk to customers, the quartet, and even himself. He talked so much that he became accustomed to carrying pouches of honey in his pockets to ease his tired throat.

On the other hand, his grandfather wasn't much for words. He reserved his mouth for the saxophone, and gave whatever was left to the women who entered his stagecoach at dusk. To Walbert, he would grunt. He would nod. Mostly he would just look away. To this day Walbert could only remember two real conversations between him and his grandfather, the first being when Walbert was stationed at a ticket stand somewhere near Des Moines. His grandfather had approached and asked how the tickets had been selling.

"They're selling."

They were, in fact, not selling.

Business slowed to a crawl in Walbert's teenage years, although the boy didn't seem to care much. Slow business meant more time practicing the clarinet, an endeavor that especially picked up after he heard a rumor eek its way through the stagecoach wheels: Harold's was considering adding a new musician.

Walbert had spent years talking to meager crowds for meager pay, and this was his ticket to the big leagues. So Walbert practiced hard. He meticulously studied musical theory, learning everything there was to learn about the clarinet. He learned its history. He learned why it made the sounds it made. By God, he could take the thing apart and put it back together if he so desired. Walbert believed that an increase in tangible ability could only be preceded by an equal increase in mental acuity. So he read and he read and he read and he read. And finally, when he had exhausted the supply of the Midwest's libraries, famously as great as the plains they stood upon, he played. For hours he would play, sounding out everything from "Hot Cross Buns" to Beethoven's Ninth. No doubt about it, Walbert was excellent — just as good as the four musicians that currently made up Harold's, and he sure as hell could read sheet music better than all of them.

When his grandfather called for him one fall evening, Walbert entered a chilly stagecoach with cautious optimism.

Captain Walbert hadn't touched a clarinet since.

Nowadays, the only music in Walbert's life sat on his kitchen windowsill, serenading years' worth of cereal bowl after cereal bowl. Had these musicians the soul Walbert lacked? Was he listening to true greatness? He tried to think about it logically. The notes marched out in time, the harmonies were painted in parallels. It sounded good, but maybe that was less this music and more just… music. In any case, Walbert didn't have much ability for comparison; his record collection was a bit lacking, after all.

Walbert rinsed out his bowl and put it in the dishwasher. He grabbed a jacket from the coat closet and hummed the jazz back to himself, his steps in rhythm with the singsong. One. Two. One. Two.

What is soul without structure? he thought. At that point, it's just a bunch of notes.

Captain Walbert hopped in his station wagon and headed toward the police station, assured that today would be predictably predictable.

"And what if I get thirsty — like really, really thirsty — can I leave the car then?"

Chairy would have to wait for an answer. MN and Doctor Dolphin had gotten tangled in the backseat after an ill-fated attempt to don their ski masks. Actually, Doctor Dolphin put his on easy enough, but MN's had gotten stuck at his nostrils. In trying to pull it down farther, he had lost his balance and collapsed onto Doctor Dolphin, elbowing him in the mouth. And after that happens it's sort of impossible for anyone to keep their composure. MN whisper-shouted that he was given "a baby mask for babies!"

"Well I don't think REI designs ski masks for bowling balls."

Lonely Chairy turned his head forward, but the side of Grand Central Bank wasn't as impressive a view as the front's palatial image. Indeed from this angle, the boxy black structure felt unwelcoming and conceited. Of course you could argue that these very traits were what made the alleyway an appealing parking spot for a getaway car. But to Chairy, they just made the bank feel unfinished.

It wasn't long before MN separated himself from Doctor Dolphin and successfully covered his chin. With that matter settled, the Doctor could focus on his driver's ambition.

"Under no circumstances. Zero. Zilch. Do you ever leave this car, do you understand?"

Chairy glumly extended his arm — chair-speak for both thumbs up and thumbs down — and Doctor Dolphin chose to be optimistic in his translation. He inhaled deeply and put his flipper on MN's shoulder.

"You ready to get rich?"

MN spun the canister of laughing gas on his finger in a way so effortless that it could only be possible with hours of practice. Doctor Dolphin, unamused, thumped the back of the driver's seat two times.

And just like that, Chairy was alone, staring into the abyss of the bank's forgotten walls.

Twelve feet from the getaway car, two tellers relished in a deliciously slow day. One was practicing the continuous curling and upward-extension of both her index fingers. The other flipped through a three-week-old issue of Bank Teller's Digest. With nobody else inside the bank besides three taciturn security guards, the tellers took to one another for entertainment. Well, they took to one another and a three-week-old issue of Bank Teller's Digest.

"I tell ya', these finger stretches really do work," the first said. Her accent was vaguely Canadian, although if you asked her she'd swear she was the first of her family to ever leave New Mexico. "And the thing is you have to do 'em every day, because if you only do 'em every once in a while your fingers don't actually get much stronger. And so that's what I do, I do 'em every day because if I didn't what would be the point of doing 'em at all?"

"There'd be no point, you're right."

"Exactly, there'd be no point. And I'd look like a fool is what I'd look like. You'd be sitting there thinkin' I was a whacko bendin' my fingers all the time. But since they're actually gettin' stronger, there's a purpose, right? A genuine purpose."

"Absolutely."

Just then, in the corner of her eye, the finger-stretching teller noticed a tall man with a black gig bag shuffling past the bank. His face drooped down like it was melting, and he had disorganized layers of sheet music trapped under his armpit.

"Look at that, there's the first one o' the bunch. We'll see the whole lot o'em coming soon, these musicians. Oh these musicians, I'll tell ya', every single year with these musicians. They act like they're the kings of the city, these musicians, like everybody wants their signature and everybody wants to go to their show. Well I'll tell ya" — her fingers were now flexing at a brisk pace — "I don't know anybody who's ever asked for their signature and I don't know anybody who's ever went to their show."

"I went back when I was ten or so."

"Mhm, mhm. I can see it. You go once and then you don't go again. That's what these musicians ought to know, that they can't draw a repeat crowd. What kind of musician can't draw a repeat crowd but thinks we want their signature. They just don't get it. Some people just don't get it."

"You just don't get it!" Doctor Dolphin yelled. "It had to be today. The orchestra is only playing today."

The Doctor pounded back and forth, trying to kickstart his brain via kinetic energy. MN attempted some kickstarting of his own: He thrust his wrist into the canister a couple times, as if that would expel some hidden source of gas.

"I got it!" Doctor Dolphin said. "We can still salvage this."

"Okay so what, you're sick or something?" MN asked.

"Quite the contrary," the Doctor said. "My brain is firing on all cylinders."

With a wink, Doctor Dolphin prostrated himself in the dirt beside the Walgreens, and bulleted his arm into a bush. When he retracted it, he held a leaf attached to a small twig. Doctor Dolphin snapped the twig off, hunched within kissing distance of the leaf, and speared its center with the twig, puncturing a small hole. The Doctor tossed the twig aside and crawled to a less cluttered area of dirt.

"And that's, like, for sure," MN said. "That you're feeling better."

"You graduated high school right?"

MN took a pause so pregnant it was practically in labor. Had the intense August heat gotten to his acquaintance? I mean, just look at him. Doctor Dolphin was behaving like a toddler, forging a fortress of twigs in the dirt. MN squatted down and put his hand on Doctor Dolphin's dorsal fin.

"Maybe we just head back to the car."

"What happens when you heat up liquid?"

"It… it gets… hot?"

"Okay," Doctor Dolphin said. "But what happens when it gets really hot?"

MN furled his brow, and summoned his eyes to the back of his brain. Doctor Dolphin feigned another cough and slowly rotated his head toward the empty canister at MN's hip. MN lifted up the canister and touched it to his noggin. Soon his eyes went wide. He looked at the NyQuil, then back at the canister, then back at the NyQuil, then back at the canister, and he couldn't help but start to chuckle. Doctor Dolphin gave MN a second wink and continued messing around in his playground. MN didn't stop chuckling though. No, his nefarious little laugh grew, and Doctor Dolphin, placing the leaf on top of his tower, couldn't stop himself from joining in on the fun. They both cackled, their guffaws exponentially increasing in volume to the point that most gelotologists would consider their efforts a bellow. And right then and there, for the first time all day outside that Walgreens, the two robbers noticed they were enjoying each other's company.

"You're getting it now!" Doctor Dolphin said.

"Yes!" MN answered. "We're gonna scald the shit out of those sec —"

"NO!" Doctor Dolphin yelled. "We're going" — he took a breath — "to make gas."

"Are you sure we can turn NyQuil into gas?"

"Any liquid can evaporate," Doctor Dolphin said. "You just need to find its boiling point. NyQuil's might be higher than water, but that doesn't mean it's unreachable. Especially with the right heat source."

Originally intended as a last ditch effort to foil the bank's hallway of lasers, the magnifying glass in Doctor Dolphin's backpack now found renewed meaning in his plan. The porpoise positioned the glass above the leaf and began his hunt for the perfect angle. He didn't rush. Brief, gentle movements were key. Slight adjustments. Inconspicuous maneuvers.

An explosion.

At least that's what it seemed like. All within a half of a second (give or take a few hundredths), a focused beam of light rocketed from the glass and concentrated itself through the hole of the leaf. Down the tower of twigs it glided, its force multiplying as it cascaded down each floor. The NyQuil-filled plastic bags stood no chance.

Doctor Dolphin restarted a chuckle. "Now give me that canister."

Back within Grand Central Bank's walls, the two tellers surveyed a growing stream of musicians parading toward the concert hall.

"I wonder why they only do this show once a year," said the first teller, her fingers still dancing.

"Ten minutes ago you were complaining that they even did the one."

"Okay, sure, ya' got me. But I don't know, just think about it. This is their job, right? They're getting paid to do this, right? Well you would think that they would maybe wanna garner a little bit more income by playing more shows, right? Why spend all that time gettin' good at music just to play one show a year?"

"Maybe they like the attention that comes with exclusivity."

"Oh for sure, for sure. Those attention hogs, makin' today all about them. I'll tell ya what, it sounds to me like they care about that stupid attention more than the music, with them playing only one show a year and all. And that's another thing about attention. I saw one of the, uh… what's that big clarinet called again?"

"I believe that's an oboe."

"Right! The oboe. I saw the oboe player, the oboe-ist, at the YMCA a couple months ago. And get this, you might be wondering how I knew she was the oboe-ist, well get this. She was carryin' around her stupid oboe. At the Y! You're telling me that these people are bringin' their oboes to the Y and care more about the music than the attention? I don't buy it. And another thing I'll tell ya" — the teller sniffed the air — "does it smell like grape to you?"

"It smells vaguely grapey."

"Well that's another thing. The smell of this oboe-ist I cannot even begin to describe to you. I think she was doing a workout, given she was at the Y, right? You could tell she was sweaty, but not sweaty enough to emit this kinda odor. I mean, this lady was assaulting me from a nasal standpoint, and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. But here's the thing, her stupid oboe case was blockin' the stupid door! So now I have to step over the oboe case, and if you were holdin' an oboe case and someone decided to step over it what would you do? No seriously, what would you do? You would turn around! So this lady is turnin' around on me, and I'm midstep over her frickin' oboe case, and she's like, 'Oh sorry let me move that.' And I'm like, 'Thanks lady, but I'm already gettin' a second helpin' of my leg day just to get over this frickin' thing. Oh and by the way, you stink!' Can you believe these musicians, I swear to God I wonder if they ever even heard of deodorant."

The second teller was unconscious. By the time the first teller had noticed, only one guard was still standing. And soon he, after a few wobbles, crumpled to the ground.

In terms of 'fight or flight', there had never been an easier decision for the only responsive person at Grand Central Bank. But in a horrifying development, she found her legs stuck in place — frozen stiff but growing noticeably flaccid. Her eyelids begged to shut. How good sleep sounded in this moment, strangulated in grape aroma. Finally, her legs gave, and the two tellers were reunited on the cold marble floor. The perfect bed.

This teller was fading fast, but she was awake. With her last remaining grains of strength, she trudged her limp noodle of an arm upward, and in a moment of effort that tomorrow's newspapers could only describe as 'superhuman', earned after hundreds of days of practice and commitment and contortion, the teller uncurled her index finger, her highest phalanx arching to a 45-degree angle, then a 90-degree angle, then a 125-degree angle, and by the time her eyes had shut for good, a 160-degree angle, so that as her arm joined the rest of her body, now sound asleep on the floor of Grand Central Bank, the tip of her finger braved upward one final time, pressing what, unlike the bank's lone air vent, had not been forgotten about during the building's development: a big red button wired under each teller's desk.

The walls of Grand Central Bank did stare back. Chairy was sure of it. It was why he couldn't look away — if he did, the walls would win.

You think you can break me, Chairy thought. But I have literally never lost a staring contest in my life.

Four minutes had passed since MN and Doctor Dolphin had left for the bank. Surely they would be back soon. Surely they would be back, period. But then again, those guards were armed, and to Chairy's knowledge MN and Doctor Dolphin weren't actually carrying weapons, at least in the traditional sense. Maybe something did go wrong, in which case Chairy would just be stuck fighting a losing battle against a faceless adversary until the end of time.

But that was exactly what the wall wanted Chairy to think. That he should quit. No, Chairy was stronger than that. So he continued to stare, his focus more keen than ever. One minute passed. Another.

"Go on, give in," Chairy said aloud.

"I'll first crack and crumble," the wall responded.

"Do it."

"You've already lost."

"Nope."

"Yep."

"Nope."

"Yep."

It was at that point Chairy realized two things. First, he was talking to a wall. Second, he needed to get out of this alley before he went clinically insane. Now what did Doctor Dolphin say about the parking spot?

The two robbers opened the front doors just as the gas dissipated. They needed to be deft; Doctor Dolphin had calculated that to maximize their chances of escape, they'd have to leave the bank within five minutes of this moment. Using the security guards' bodies on the floor as a sort of corporal compass, MN identified the wall that matched the photo from that morning's walkthrough. The robbers nodded to each other and went their separate ways. Doctor Dolphin somersaulted behind a pillar to hide from outside observers. MN strode to the wall, knelt down, and rummaged through his backpack for the dynamite.

Containing a lone kilogram of charge, its explosion would be equally as contained as it was mighty — just enough to demolish the wall without phasing the herd of musicians outside. MN struck a light and joined Doctor Dolphin behind a shield of marble.

What a thing an explosion is. A harbinger of destruction, a creator of light. Flashes of red, orange, and yellow coruscated over the bank's recently-conscious furniture. When the hue of the room cooled, its floorplan had been permanently updated.

"I like a more open concept, don't you?" MN asked.

Doctor Dolphin was too focused to respond. Before him now stood the world's deadliest light show — a jungle of lasers he was determined to deforest. The Doctor took out a laptop from his backpack and cracked his knuckles.

This would be the biggest test of his technical excellence to date, but he wasn't scared. He was Doctor Dolphin, dammit, the smartest mammal to ever swim the Earth. His brain was pegged to be dissected following his death. His friends had refused his every challenge to play 20 questions. And when his MIT professors had once huddled in the break room to discuss their star pupil, they agreed that while his demands to graduate with an honor higher than summa cum laude were maniacal, they weren't incredibly unfounded. In that same meeting, his thesis director would twice refer to him as a "bottlenosed MacGyver."

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for those that encountered Doctor Dolphin. Admissions of praise, while genuinely honest, came with anxious undertones. Were he to use his intellect for wrongdoing (like, for instance, robbing a bank), his success would be preordained. It struck fear into everyone who met the Doctor: This was someone who could do anything. And if he was capable of re-engineering the very laws of science, he could surely dismantle the security system that protected Grand Central Bank.

It's true, this was his moment.

Breakthrough. With the lasers defused, MN and Doctor Dolphin could make a run for the Chihuahua. And boy, did they run. There was joy in each bound, as if they had graduated from breaking the law to breaking the rules. They were kids. They were free. But true freedom was still 60 seconds away, when MN and Doctor Dolphin would be strapped in seatbelts driving off toward a sunset of wealth. 60 seconds. They could taste it.

Until they saw the wall. It might've well been a mountain, that wall. A concrete stop sign, unopenable, unforgiving, and unaccounted for.

MN placed his hands in his pockets and his weight against his new opponent. "Well this shit wasn't in the PowerPoint."

In 1954, French company Henri SELMER Paris debuted their new line of Selmer Mark VI saxophones. These instruments would be lauded in their artistry. "The perfection of the saxophone," one musician would write (although the French translation is a bit iffy). Then again, great music transcends language, and what an experience it was to listen to a Selmer Mark VI.

In 1965, Zeus Binker purchased a Selmer Mark VI at a music shop in Brussels. Had he ever played saxophone before? Records say no. In fact, all we know about Binker's life prior to 1965 was his less than stellar work in commercial cleaning. It didn't matter now. The world would soon learn Binker's name. Well, his first name. Zeus dropped the surname when he performed, which he did many times following his saxophone purchase and subsequent discovery of musical genius. Zeus' fame rose quickly, first across Europe and then the world. In one of their earliest issues, Rolling Stone Magazine said of his saxophoning: "It cannot be known whether Zeus plays the saxophone or the saxophone plays Zeus. Regardless, Zeus played us. And our hearts thank Zeus."

In 1970, Zeus was in Tallahassee to promote his second album, Getting Down to Brass Sax. Following a sold out show, the sweat-stained musician made his way backstage for his post-sax routine: a Coca-Cola and a doobie. He nearly tripped on the fan standing in the theater's crossover. It was a young man — he couldn't have been older than nine — seeking Zeus' autograph. "I'll do ya one better, kid," Zeus said. He reached into his pocket and took out a soldier's knife. In big, sharp font the musician carved his name Z-E-U-S into the saxophone and gave it to the kid. "Don't drop that on your way out," he said. And with that Zeus disappeared into the mildew of the Florida night.

In 2004, Billy Harrison was sitting on his bed in the Chicago suburbs. He wore a suit. Everyone was wearing a suit. But Billy was alone, waiting for someone to tell him that the adults were done talking and that it was okay for him to come out and that he was going to see his uncle again. He knew he wouldn't. Billy's dad eventually walked into the room carrying a heavy black box. He explained how his brother — Billy's uncle — really wanted Billy to have what was in this box, and that it was very important that Billy take good care of it. Billy gave a short affirmative grunt. That was enough for his dad, who unlocked the case to reveal a golden instrument nearly as tall as its new owner.

In 2017, Billy Harrison was sitting in a theater lobby, nervously waiting for his name to be called. This was the most important performance of his life. Do a good job, and he'd be allowed entry into Juilliard — his ticket to the big leagues. He drummed his saxophone case and kicked out his legs. He made awkward conversation with a fellow saxophonist a few chairs down. He contemplated locating a water fountain and taking a sip. He didn't. After what felt like years, a middle-aged woman in a polka dot blouse called Billy to his feet. On that big stage in that big room in front of those big people, Billy felt small. He stood there silently, waiting for the three specks in row 29 to shout out to him. They asked what he was going to play. Billy responded that he was going to play the saxophone. The three snickered for a moment, then again asked the song Billy was going to play. A wad of spit plummeted down Billy's throat. "Umm, the titular track from Getting Down to Brass Sax, 'Getting Down to Brass Sax.'" The Julliard man responded that they knew what titular meant, and he was free to start whenever. Ridden by nerves, Billy did what he always did when he was anxious. He took three long breaths and rubbed his index finger along the ridges of the saxophone's incisions. Z-E-U-S. How four letters could contain an entire lexicon. Billy looked out at row 29, and he played.

In 2026, Billy was set to make his debut performance as first chair saxophone at the Grand Central Philharmonic Orchestra's annual show. This was the most important performance of his life. Of course he overslept. Luckily, Billy only lived five minutes from the theater — that is, if you knew where you were going. See, the traditional route through Main Street and down Granite Road worked well enough, but added about 10 minutes to one's travel time. Billy didn't have 10 minutes. He didn't even have five. So bowtie in hand and jacket tucked over his shoulder, Billy ran out of his apartment and down the street. What Google Maps won't tell you is that there's a walkable alley along Grand Central Bank that cuts around the intersection of Main and Granite and saves about half a mile of distance. Billy looked at his watch. He had to be backstage in four minutes. By most cartographer's estimates, Billy was screwed. But Billy knew these streets, and knew that if he took his shortcut, he was gonna make it. Yes, he was sure he was gonna make it.

Then came the Toyota RAV4.

Chairy considered his options. If he was caught, he'd surely be arrested, and the increased attention would devastate his friends' heist. Still, if you run someone over, you sorta have a civic duty to see if they're okay. So Chairy opened the door.

The body lay motionless under the truck, tattooed with skid marks. Chairy gave the torso a kick. Nothing. He placed his arm on the boy's neck. Roadkill.

"Well this sucks," Chairy said.

About five yards ahead of the car (or whatever distance a saxophone case is typically launched after its owner is flattened by J.D. Power's fourth most reliable car brand) sat a beaten down black box. When Chairy rattled the metal inside, he couldn't ascertain what he was holding. He wouldn't get any more time to figure it out.

"Come on," a voice said. "We're gonna be late!"

Chairy didn't see the arm that grabbed him, but he sure did feel it. By the time Chairy turned around he was in the midst of a stampede — a menagerie of flautists and clarinetists and violinists and every other -ist you can imagine, marching forward with effervescent jubilee toward the concert hall. Chairy had no choice but to give in to the current, and before he knew it he was backstage in the hubbub of preshow jitters. At this point it occurred to Chairy that maybe he should open up the box he'd accidentally robbed.

Z-E-U-S.

Huh, Chairy thought. This guy must've been Greek.

Another hand, this one ushering Chairy and his new instrument to their seat. The second chair saxophone, upon notice that at the first chair saxophone's chair sat a chair and a saxophone, gave Chairy a haunted look: What are you doing here. But it was too late. The ostentatious conductor had begun peacocking toward center stage, trailed by hoo-rahs from the music-starved audience. Thousands of fans had waited a whole year for this, and it was time for the Grand Central Philharmonic Orchestra to deliver. A baton raised. The woodwinds began. And they were off.

Chairy couldn't play. Of course he couldn't play, he didn't know how. Frankly, if he had known that two minutes after the show's commencing notes there would be the first of the night's many solos — performed by the first chair saxophone of all people — Chairy probably would've made a bolt for it. But Chairy couldn't read music. So he sat and mimed. For 119 seconds he faked his saxophoning, blending into consonance. Tension. Release. Decades of practice sounding off together in harmony.

And then it was time for Chairy alone to play.

He didn't recognize it at first. Honestly, he hadn't thought about it since his early days of sentience. But when each musician separated themselves from their instrument, the orchestra dying down and the venue drawing to complete quietude, Chairy realized that, once again, after nearly a dozen years of life, the entire world was fully concentrated on what he had to say.

Captain Walbert wasn't one to snooze. When he was on duty, he was alert. Granted, after 20 years of rising up GCPD's ranks, most of his duties were constrained to his desk. So Walbert sat, vigilantly filing his paperwork and enjoying the quiet day. When the evening shift began, Walbert stayed late to get ahead on tomorrow's assignments.

"Oh, Captain, I didn't realize you were still here," a woman said. It was Nicole Clark, the office administrator. "I'm making a coffee run. You want anything?"

"A hot tea, please," Walbert said. "With extra honey."

Back to the paper at hand, where Walbert formally closed the case on a two-week old trespassing incident. God's work.

When the alarm bells rang, Walbert stayed seated. A customary tradition since his promotion, leaving the gruntwork to the grunts, the ones who'd dreamed of firing a gun with purpose. This was their domain now. Walbert was happy with his dead trees. Then came plucky Lieutenant Forrest, bubbling his way between the desks so he could whisper out the good word.

"Bank robbery."

Walbert glanced up from his file. "In Grand Central?"

"At Grand Central," Forrest said. "Two guys knocked down a wall with the smallest piece of dynamite in history! Johnson just pulled the footage, wanna see?"

To most policemen, Lieutenant Forrest included, Grand Central Bank was your average run-of-the-mill cash dispensary. Walk in, empty your pockets, walk out. And sure, if you keep that much cash in that small a surface area, you're basically asking to be robbed. So the GCPD prepared and practiced a tight response: send in a unit and apprehend the subjects before they got away. To most policemen, that would be enough. To most policemen, an attempted robbery of Grand Central Bank would be a footnote in a long day, a gambit at the dinner table to avoid a subpar plate of shrimp and grits: "Guess what happened at work?"

"Show me," Walbert said.

The robbers had almost evaded the camera. But if you looked hard enough in the footage's periphery, you could make out two people turning a wall into rubble.

"I mean, you don't usually see bank robbers going all kaboom on a local bank like this," Forrest laughed, swishing a corn nut into his gullet. "You usually gotta go to a movie theatre to see that sorta thing."

The captain of the GCPD wasn't like most policemen; he was privy to more information. Walbert rewound the tape. The wall that got taken out, it wasn't the same wall that guarded the cash vault. If it was, the camera would be pointing at it. This wall was hiding from the lens. From Walbert. But why blow up a wall the bank didn't even bother to properly film?

"They're going for Harper's Chihuahua."

Forrest massaged a corn nut between his index finger and thumb. "Harper's Chihuahua? Like from that old TV show, what was it called?"

"They're going for Harper's Chihuahua," Walbert said again.

"Relics of the Past."

"They're going for Harper's Chihuahua."

"That thing is here? In Grand Central?"

"Forrest, pull up a car. We're going to Grand Central Bank. And send for three more cars to follow."

Forrest hadn't even buckled in before Walbert took off toward the darkening sky. Always a fan of a good night drive, the lieutenant briefly jutted his head out the window, the breeze colliding against his nostrils affirmingly. How fun this was.

"A real genuine heist," Forrest said. "We catch these guys, it's our ticket to the big leagues, if you don't mind my bluntness."

The commute to Grand Central Bank was short, fifteen minutes if you didn't speed, and featured only a few stoplights. Add in the desolate road and the drive was actually pretty peaceful. Walbert was even tempted to refrain from siren usage. The location of Harper's Chihuahua was supposed to be a secret, and Walbert would almost certainly be advertising its home address to the entire world. It is, as they say, tough to keep a low profile when your car's being tailed by a caravan of horns, guns, and badges.

Forrest was never one to keep a low profile, at least to those in his spit radius. "Don't you ever wonder how some folks decide this is their best chance at being rich?" he asked. "I mean, the rest of us get jobs like normal people. But what do we know, I guess."

"Some people are just born without a moral compass."

"Yeah, but that's the thing, is I don't think so. Everyone's born as what? A baby. The same sack of bones, meat, and fat, not in that order I will add. But somewhere along the way, some of those babies decide to rob banks and everyone else doesn't."

"And your point being?"

"I don't know if I have a point, I'm just saying don't you think it's a bit interesting that it happens."

During the last mile of their drive, traffic started to pick up. A lamentable symptom of rush hour. The sirens barely helped — it turns out that hundreds of cars lined up so tightly that they can taste each others' metal don't have many lanes to meander off into, and Walbert was no Moses. So Walbert stayed stuck, breathing in the miracle of the traffic, an amalgam of Chevrolets, Hyundais, Hondas, and Volkswagen. A veritable army, he thought, his eyes glancing at the bank. Should they just get out and run? Grand Central Bank couldn't be more than 300 yards away, and every second in the world's slowest conga line meant more time for his adversaries to escape. But if they left the car, and the robbers were already on wheels, they were doomed. If only Walbert could —

"Jeez, I can't believe this concert thing is still going after all these years," Forrest said, his eyes glaring over at the bank's neighbor. "You ever go?"

"No."

"You ever think about going?"

Walbert gripped down on the steering wheel. Hard.

Forrest paid no attention to his boss. "Yeah, I went a year or two back. I really liked it, I've been meaning to —"

White noise. It was all just white noise, layered atop a cacophony of police horns and honking cars and dispatch radio and corn nut crunching and bran chewing and jazz, of old carnies and clarinet blasts and guitar plucks and audience claps, of chatter and chatter and chatter and chatter and Walbert's throat got dry just thinking about the chatter and the singing and dancing and music and laughing and cheering and MUSIC, of the wheels of the stagecoach, creaking, grinding over rubble, heading West toward something new, something better. Walbert was heading East now. Traffic had finally let up, and the two cops made their way toward a sky illuminated by uplights.

"You really got to think about going one of these years. There's just something really nice about experiencing someone else's passion firsthand, you know?"

Walbert kept driving.

"Like this is what they were born to do, and we get to witness it."

They were almost at the bank now.

"Like we were born to be cops, and we're great at it. I'll tell ya, they're equally as good at music as we are at shooting bad guys." Forrest said. He cupped his hands behind his headrest and extended his pelvis closer to the dashboard — as good a stretch as you could ask for at 65 miles per hour. "So why don't you think you've ever made it out?"

Walbert screeched the car to a halt. Ten feet away, a vacuous retiree (a late arriver to the orchestra, if you were a betting man) tiptoed through a red light, her head craned away from the 2,000-pound death machine that nearly turned her into a newspaper headline. Walbert slumped down in his seat and cocked his head toward Forrest.

"Those musicians are just like these robbers. They have no soul."

The television had made it lustrous. But here, standing mere feet away from Harper's Chihuahua, the first thing Doctor Dolphin noticed was the idol's lack of shine. It was old. Worn down by years of solitude, its face had cracked, its tail had wilted, and its rubies had been browned by dust. Still, jewels were jewels, and jewels were the currency on which Doctor Dolphin would build his empire. He couldn't get his grubby flippers on that Chihuahua faster.

MN, who just 20 seconds ago had sustained three distinct yet equally painful concussions, somehow found the energy to be sardonic. "Feeling unlucky yet?"

If Doctor Dolphin had time to be irritated at his partner's comment, he would've at least mustered an eye roll. But the mastermind behind Grand Central's greatest heist to date was already burrowing back into the wall, moments away from a perfect crime, a lifetime of hedonism, and most importantly, a running car.

SCHWOP.

Flip Taylor wrung out a dollop of matte wax into his hair and proceeded to model some new smiles at the mirror. It was a play to boost his image, this smile work, and Flip believed that he was close to breaking through on the perfect grin. He curdled his lips together, and let his teeth peek through the underbrush ingrained atop his upper lip. When his PA entered the fitting room, Flip retreated back to his traditional look — he wouldn't dare let someone witness an unfinished product.

"You called, Mr. Taylor?" the PA asked.

"Yes, I did," Flip answered, searching for a roll of dental floss. "Brief me on this new segment, would you?"

"Sure, we have him slotted for the first interview. A chair," the PA said. "He played saxophone at the concert tonight."

"I thought we left musical chairs in grade school." Flip had resorted to using his finger to pick at some lunch lodged under his permanent retainer.

"Yes Mr. Taylor," the PA said. "But here's the thing. This chair isn't a musician. He's never touched an instrument in his life. He played the entire show by accident."

Flip removed the finger from his mouth. "By accident?"

"He wasn't supposed to be there."

"He wasn't?"

"He wasn't."

"But he was."

"He was."

"And he plays saxophone?"

"Our reports say he killed it, sir."

"Hmmm," Flip said. "Now that might be a story worth telling."

Early Evening with Flip Taylor had never seen more viewers. The show peaked at 12.5 million, an astounding feat considering that at the episode's opening credits, it was only being broadcast across a possible 60,000 televisions within a 50-mile radius of Grand Central. When the viewers started to pour in, NGC's producers demanded more coverage. Additional channels. News tickers. Hell, make the anchors on Channel 7 beg their audience to flip to Flip. It was an event that Nielsen could only compare to the finale of Seinfeld: "Move over, late night. America wants Early Evening."

Chairy's fame spread like the plague, a contagion that elbowed its way toward the country's borders, infecting the hearts of music-lovers and furniture-haters alike. Remember that chair that came to life all those years ago? Well guess what: He's a prodigy. A virtuoso. And a goddamn fantastic saxophone player. Opinions zagged faster than a flip can flop — the same people that had judged Chairy as boring now deemed him enchanting. And the same advertisers who once balked at Doctor Dolphin's cold sponsorship emails suddenly found the urge to respond: "Still available?"

All of a sudden, people wanted to talk to Chairy. Be with Chairy. Give their paychecks to Chairy. I mean, you couldn't burn money faster than they were offering it up. "I'll put you on a T-shirt." There was $10,000. "You'd look great on a lunchbox." Another $20,000. "Your face was made for this mug." For some reason that one came with equity in the company.

Chairy became so inundated that he was basically forced to hire an agent just to separate the wheat from the chaff. But that agent saw gold, and Chairy's schedule only compressed. Photoshoots, handshakes, scripted speeches, and practice — oh, the practice! How Chairy hated the practice. Wasn't the point that he was already good? And sure he liked playing saxophone fine enough, but as his audiences grew larger and stranger, and his calendar became tighter and tighter and somehow tighter again, and his home became a space for focus groups to debate the merits of two plastic tchotchkes against each other ("We actually think the whole piece works better if he's holding the saxophone instead of playing it"), the music began to feel hollow. And practice only exemplified that: This is your life now, forever. Despite Chairy's cries for mercy, his agent said he'd be damned if he let his star start slumping.

"Anyone can get lucky. Only a few can be truly great."

When Henri SELMER Paris called, Chairy's agent joked that he could retire by June. But why slow down now? Chairy was the face of the saxophone! His albums played in elevators and department stores and infomercials. His cheery visage was splattered onto billboards around the globe, endorsing everything from vacuums to probiotics. Newspaper stories about him were printed across 35 languages, the first issue proudly framed above Chairy's bed (in big bold lettering: YOU'RE GOING TO WANT TO SIT DOWN FOR THIS.)

At one point Chairy's agent came to him with an idea they apparently couldn't turn down. "It's from the boys at HSP," he said. "A campaign. Musicians can come from anywhere" — he angled his spray tan at the sun — "even the armless."

Chairy pondered the thought. This all was happening too fast. Did he really want to be a voice for the overlooked? A beacon of light in this cruel, dark world?

"I can tell you're apprehensive, kid," his agent said. "I myself don't like the wording. We spent over an hour trying to come up with a play on words for armchair, armless, arm-bidextrous, whatever, we couldn't make it work." The agent pulled Chairy in for a hug so tight it nearly brought both participants to tears. "But people care about you right now. You matter. And that won't last forever unless we make it."

"I guess I wouldn't mind mattering a little bit longer," Chairy said.

"Man, I love you like a brother." The two embraced.

Things exploded. The money. The celebrity. The fandom. Chairy was excess with excess, overcome by a surplus of life afforded only to those that knew how to make other people scream and bend and twist and vomit. With each saxophone lick, he tantalized the world. More, it cried. More.

Chairy had more more than he knew what to do with. When he sought advice, his agent turned to him and said the only way to get less more is to do more more. "Stop trying to do more with less, kid," he said.

"Really?"

"Yeah." The agent had turned away by now. "More or less."

So that's what Chairy did. After all, his bank account didn't seem to mind. And what was to gain in mattering if he couldn't reap its material benefits?

Nothing, Chairy thought. There is nowhere I'd rather be than right here, right now.

MN's body was reduced to mush, taken and beaten and grinded into a vessel for muscle memory. Open the door. Jump in the front seat. Is Doctor Dolphin in the car? The idol is glowing. Buckle in. Check the rearview mirror. Ignition. Why is Chairy gone? The idol is glowing. Put the car into drive. Soften the force on the brake pedal. No seriously, where is Chairy? The idol is glowing.

For the first time since they stepped foot inside the bank's walls, fear crept up MN's vertebrae. "I'm not even joking dude, I think this is a bad idea," he said.

There were five of them, police cars, steel bumpers and headlights and sirens and ammunition speeding toward the criminals. Speeding toward ME, Doctor Dolphin thought. How did they know? How did they get here so fast?

"Drive!" he yelled.

MN floored it. He pounded cement into the pedal, giving the car permission to do what any car does best: go forward. And as the second set of tires ba-donked over the dead saxophonist's body (God rest his soul), MN looked down at his partner's lap and realized that he was neither blind nor schizophrenic — that idol was goddamn glowing.

And then they were on Granite Road. All of them, a game of cops and robbers, driving through red lights and turning corners at acute angles. Sidewalks blitzed. Building foundations ripped apart. Windows shattered — including most of the Toyota's own glass. This was the cursèd evil that tormented the streets of Grand Central, destroying the life's work of city planners and designers and builders, turning soul to dust, soil to dirt, these six cars, these merchants of death and axle grease.

MN tried to shake them with a hard right. But these were pros, at least at making hard rights, so MN had to try a different angle: the elusive hard left. That one proved more fruitful. MN watched two of the cars collide into each other and erupt into flames — fireworks, cheering a job well done. With renewed confidence, MN kept driving.

"You know, I'm starting to think this whole bad luck thing might be a little exaggerated," he said.

That was the invitation. The plea for cruel irony. And those twists of fate, those laughing imps, those forces of justice and chaos and everything in-between took control and they did the thing, spurring MN up in contentment for being as good a getaway man as what's-his-face in Baby Driver.

But in his cockiness, MN didn't realize he was five feet away from direct impact with the Grand Central Apiary.

And the bees — the bees! — boy, were the bees pissed. Those suicide bombers let MN and Doctor Dolphin have it, diving through broken windows and stinging relentlessly. Still, the Toyota galloped forward at a steady pace, its walls muting the robbers' screams and its once intact windshield crashing into a seemingly infinite amount of bees. MN caught a stinger in the eye. Doctor Dolphin would later say they were aiming for his throat. And by the time they escaped the typhoon of bees, MN and Doctor Dolphin could barely exhale a sigh of relief. But at least that hell was over.

Until the hydroplaning. That majestic beast of a Toyota suddenly proved to be unmanageable, reverting to a primitive form. MN's heart thumped, and his one good eye grasped sight at the horrors ahead: Their car was flying toward a ravine. MN gripped the wheel, his tail constricted around Doctor Dolphin's tender neck — the Doctor winced in pain as many bee stingers dug deeper — and shot the car sharply back up the ravine's gradient. The car sprung into the air above the main road, landing with a thud and driving onward, while six police cars — had they summoned more? — continued their chase.

"Faster!" Doctor Dolphin yelled.

"This can't get much worse," MN said.

Little did he know that a mile away, on the corner of Maple and Charity, two 18-wheelers had crashed into each other in a freak accident, causing one to turn over entirely on its side while the other blew a massive hole in its trailer. The two truck drivers, bruised by hours of road, let out plaintive grunts.

"Goddamn, well it looks like my truck has capsized," the first said. "And look at this, all the toxic acid's spillin' everywhere."

"You think you got it bad? I'm supposed to be at the apiary in ten minutes, meanwhile my truck's leakin' bees by the thousand!"

MN and Doctor Dolphin would never speak of what happened next.

No, their memory would flash-forward ten minutes, past the epochs of unproductive driving, the endless chasing, the going in circles, flying through every damn hazard imaginable, at one point driving through a genuine housefire, at another point being struck by a rogue bullet from a nearby riflery range, and the worst offense, driving through the Grand Central Orchestra's final stanza. But still the Toyota chugged onward, filled with bodies and dreams and instruments and promised fortune, MN barely conscious, Doctor Dolphin gripping to sanity, and why were there so many bees! Still they had to keep going — these cops were as ruthless as they were determined.

Only one thing could possibly make MN apply the brake.

Onward to freedom. Onward to a new life. Onward to being able to consistently shop at Whole Foods. MN sent for more speed. His steed begrudgingly complied, shifting into a gear heretofore thought impossible by its manufacturers. The speedometer limped to the right, fighting against 8,000 tons of friction.

But as it attempted to outrun God, the car's tailwind grew into a maelstrom, bringing a nearby newsstand to life. Papers and pages and paragraphs flew into the sky — one caught a current of fate and flew East, fluttering its wings effortlessly before settling on the windshield of a speeding Toyota making a sharp U-turn.

The driver's one good eye was rendered helpless. There was no road now. Only YOU'RE GOING TO WANT TO SIT DOWN FOR THIS.

MN couldn't contain the car any further. It sputtered and spattered and heed and hawed and yanked and pulled and flapped and flanked and then it crashed. And the robbers were motionless.

What's worse: The police never lost sight of their mission. As their cars encircled the Toyota, Doctor Dolphin saw one last option. Hope. Freedom. An open sunroof.

Captain Walbert wasn't one to snooze. When scum littered his streets, he took the necessary action to remove it. The captain exited his vehicle and walked toward the dispersing dust, his steps in a militant rhythm. One. Two. One. Two. He drew his pistol and pointed it at the frame of a once great vehicle, now rendered a charred lemon.

"Where's the idol," he demanded.

A bevy of foot soldiers, Lieutenant Forrest included, followed their leader, shielding themselves behind a wall of cars and pointing their weapons forward. Walbert continued his march.

"Show me the idol."

MN and Doctor Dolphin, smeared in smoky shoulders and burnt ribs, glanced helplessly at each other. Where was Harper's Chihuahua? They had it just 30 seconds ago. And now…

"It… it must have been lost in the explosion," the Doctor said.

The Grand Central Police Department commenced in a contained panic. Nervous eyes. Mouths ajar. Beads of sweat. Walbert's pistol took another step forward.

"Then I believe you two are in a whole lot of trouble."

Another step. One. And another. Two. Walbert moved with gravity, his eyes locked onto Doctor Dolphin's, then MN's, then again to Doctor Dolphin's. He reached toward his hip for a pair of handcuffs — the final step in a technically excellent arrest. Control. Power. One. Two.

"Is this what you're looking for?" a voice asked.

It was unbelievable. Unimaginable. But when Walbert, accompanied by nearly half of the city's police force, turned his head, he witnessed a miracle the likes of which a provincial mind would declare illogical, a religious mind blasphemous, and a jaded police captain's mind illegal: Chairy, a knight in wooden armor, gripping a saxophone in one hand and Harper's Chihuahua in the other.

Whispers rung through the crowd. "Is that the chair?" "I think that's the guy." "I just saw him on Flip Taylor."

Chairy ran past the squadron, a unit too stupefied to shoot, and stood in front of the crowd. He placed the artifact down at his feet and gripped the saxophone tightly, rubbing its incisions.

Z-E-U-S.

Chairy didn't know it, but this saxophone had spent the last 60 years lecturing global audiences on the anatomy of improv. On how each note — each moment — carried meaning, and how regardless of whether or not each composition was performed as it had been written, there was joy in just listening. Now, caught in the middle of bedlam and order, of criminals and cops, and of Chairy and Walbert, it would be called upon one more time.

"What the hell is he doing?" Walbert asked.

"I believe he's gonna play," Forrest said.

That snapped Walbert out of it. To hell he's gonna play. The captain took a few quick steps forward, his gun still active, his handcuffs still gripped, his mind still bent on incarceration.

And then, another voice.

"C'mon Captain, it was all in the papers. He's supposed to be legendary!"

And another.

"Yeah, I want to hear this music myself!"

And another.

"Give him a chance!"

And then an eruption. A chorus of chants and pleas, begging Walbert to slow down his pursuits, begging Walbert to think of the magic in front of him, begging Walbert to only just open his ears for one second. But Walbert kept walking forward, now just ten steps away from the villains — from the evil that had corrupted his day, his paperwork, and his structure. How could his own men be against him? Against the law? This was their job, the one they had prepared and practiced dozens of times: apprehend the subject before they got away. Did that mean nothing now? Were they just going to abandon their responsibilities? For this… chair? This music? This blithering jumble of notes and sounds and horns and honks and bloots and bleeps and chaos and hope and —

"Have a soul, Walbert!" Forrest screamed.

The captain froze.

He stared at the saxophone. At the frame of the Toyota. At the instruments literally scattered around its rubble. Music was like family to Walbert, albeit he didn't have much of a touchstone in that regard.

His eyes met Chairy's now. Family can be a little complicated, can't it? Perhaps one song would be okay.

This was two performers, a cop and a chair, setting aside the hours that had come before them and living instead in the minute at hand. This was two men, one practiced and the other out of it, playing in harmony. This was a moment that by all accounts should have been apostrophized by gunshots and mugshots, yet somehow managed to fight and fight and fight until it had earned its right to exist.

This… was true greatness.

After the concert, Chairy removed his lips from the saxophone and smiled at his new friend. "Maybe, after all this, we can just learn to forgive each other," he said.

Walbert looked down at his muse. This chair — no, this genius — had taught him so much in so little time. Could he truly find it in his heart to let the sins of the past be washed away in a loving chorus of togetherness?

"No, you're still getting arrested."

"What!" Chairy said. "But I didn't even rob the bank!"

"You killed a musician, fled the scene, and assumed their identity."

"Oh, I mean sure, when you put it like that."

Given the absolute insanity that led to what tomorrow's paper would declare as "yesterday's second greatest concert", it was a shockingly standard night of arrests. Walbert stayed late to make sure everything got done right, and Chairy, MN, and Doctor Dolphin were imprisoned by midnight.

Flash forward a few months, and our three fools ended up doing okay.

Chairy would go on to start Grand Central Penitentiary's inaugural symphony, spending most of his afternoons as the first chair saxophone, although he's recently also started dabbling in percussion. By all accounts, he's happy with his newfound troupe of misfits.

Speaking of, Doctor Dolphin and MN both took up the violin. And despite Doctor Dolphin quitting after a few practices (turns out his brain isn't as smart as everyone thought), MN is still going at it, getting a little bit better every day.

As for Harper's Chihuahua, the idol was placed in a new vault — a securer vault — to grow rampant with dust until the end of time.

And Walbert, well, after a long night of paperwork and arrests, he went home, sat at his kitchen table, and bookended the day with another use of his record player. This time, the music made a little bit more sense to him. The notes marched out in time. The harmonies were painted in parallels. And each note mattered, even if just for an eighth of a moment.

The captain walked over to his closet and rummaged through a pile of half-used clothes and winter blankets. Then he found it: a dusty old clarinet box.

Maybe it's time to give this thing another go, Walbert thought.

What a lucky day after all.