by Becky Blake
I took my new clothes into a bathroom near the food court to change, then sat on the bench waiting for Manu. When he reappeared, I stood up, and he smirked at my outfit. I knew I looked stupid, but that was the whole point – to look like the guiris we’d be interacting with.
I passed him my old clothes and my money to put back in our knapsack. After storing them away, he handed me Suzanne Tomkinson’s wallet, which I needed as a prop for the scam. We left the mall and walked along the boardwalk.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
Manu nodded. He wasn’t used to being seen by his marks, and I could tell he was nervous. He’d bought himself a cheap wristwatch that he said would make him look more professional and trustworthy. I understood the impulse. It was always easier for me to talk to our marks if I pretended to be someone else.
I checked my image in a shop window. With my white sneakers and new outfit, I looked vaguely nautical, like a young woman who ate dinner at her father’s sailing club on Fridays. A woman who wore comfortable shoes for sightseeing – that’s who I was today.
Near the statue of Columbus, a row of artisan stalls was swarming with tourists who hadn’t figured out yet that pan flutes and sombreros were actually souvenirs from other countries. I slowed my pace and fell back as Manu began to wander through the crowd toward the city centre, keeping to the smaller streets and scouting for a target.
Up ahead, I saw him pause behind a couple on a park bench, then disappear. The woman was eating an ice cream cone, holding it away from her body and licking at the messy drips. It wasn’t until she finished and reached to get a tissue that she noticed her bag was missing. At first she didn’t believe it. She stood up. She looked around. Then it landed on her: the full weight of her mistake. Her carelessness. Her stupidity. She’d thought that nothing bad could happen to her in a place so warm and beautiful, but she should never have let down her guard.
Yaya had called it the Everybody Laughs Scam, but as I approached the couple, I found that prospect hard to imagine. The woman was teary-eyed now, and the man had the strap of his camera bag wrapped three times around his fist.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you speak English?”
“Uh huh,” said the man. He sounded American.
“Sorry. I don’t want to interrupt. I just – I got robbed here a couple of days ago and, well, did you just get robbed?”
“Yes.” The woman was wringing her thin hands. “They took my purse.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I felt like a bad actor reading from a script. There was no way this was going to work.
Her husband was staring at me, angry and distrustful. A few minutes ago, someone invisible had taken his wife’s bag and there was never going to be an opportunity for him to punch that person in the face.
“Apparently, this neighbourhood is really bad for thieves,” I said. “They got my wallet. All my money. My credit cards, my licence. Everything. I felt so stupid.”
“Did you go to the police?” asked the woman. I could tell she was hoping there was still some way to fix things – a way to reverse her misfortune.
“I did go to the police,” I said. “But it’s hard. They don’t really speak English and I don’t think they care. They basically just told me I should come back and look in the garbage cans.”
The woman nodded at the ground and the man sighed. “Her pills were in there,” he said. “Now we have to go to a doctor, get a new prescription.”
The woman wiped away a tear that had escaped, smudging her mascara into her sunscreen. “We were just about to go to the Gaudí buildings. Take some pictures.”
I nodded. One minute you had plans for the future, the next minute you had only the present. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I actually got my wallet back.”
“How?” The woman’s eyes widened. Her hope was a fragile thing she was trusting me not to drop. I felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy and then another of guilt; two separate sharp pangs, like a knife being plunged into my guts, and then pulled back out. She didn’t deserve this – no one did.
I forced myself to stay on script. “There’s this guy who works at the reception desk at my hostel. He’s really nice – we went out dancing the other night – and anyway, when I told him my wallet had been stolen, he said he’d call this guy, some guy who knows all the thieves in the neighbourhood, and he might be able to get it back for me. Not with the money – obviously – but with everything else. And he did. Look, he got it back!” I showed them Suzanne Tomkinson’s wallet. “Anyway, I don’t know if he’d be willing to do it again, but this is pretty much the exact same spot where I got robbed.”
The man was still looking suspicious, and I felt a flush intensifying on my face, spreading toward my ears. “Don’t give them time to think,” that’s what Yaya had said.
“Anyway, I’ve got to head back to the hostel now. I just thought I’d mention it. It’s called Casa Central, if you ever want to go and try to talk to the guy at the desk.”
“Wait,” said the woman. “Are you going there now?”
“Yeah. A friend of mine’s waiting. I should really go.”
Her husband was puzzling something out. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Canada.”
“Oh!” The woman turned her whole body to face me. “Would you mind if we came with you to the hostel?”
“Linda,” her husband said, “I think we should just forget it.”
“I don’t want to forget it. Do you think we could talk to the desk clerk?”
“Yeah, if you want. I’m not sure if he’ll do it for you. And if he does, you’ll have to give him a little money. It’s not for him. But he has to pay the other guy. The guy who goes to talk to the pickpockets.”
The man shot his wife a look but she ignored it. “How much?” she asked.
“Not much. I think it was forty. For me, it was totally worth it.” I flashed them the wallet again. “My life is in here.”
I waited while they gathered up their things, then the three of us walked in the direction of the hostel. When we came around the corner Manu was standing outside smoking a cigarette. He’d stashed our knapsack somewhere.
“Hey, that’s him.” I waved. “He doesn’t speak much English. ¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?” I kissed him on both cheeks, taking a second’s comfort from the familiar smell of his sun-warmed skin.“Estos turistas son víctimas de un robo.” I turned back to the couple. “I’m just telling him that you were robbed.”
Manu scowled.
“Sorry. I know you told me not to tell anybody. But I felt really bad for them. You know, super mal. Ella necesita sus medicinas. Her pills. ¿Entiendes?”
He looked backward through the glass doors and up the stairs to the hostel reception, then returned his gaze to the couple. “¿Qué perdieron?”
“A purse,” I said. I was glad he’d remembered to ask that. When we’d been practising, we’d both kept forgetting to ask what had been stolen.
“Yes,” said the woman, speaking slowly, “it was my purse.” Her earnestness and desperation were too intense. I had to look away for a moment.
“It was blue,” she said. “About this big. With a zippy part on the front.”
“Azul,” I told him. “Con un bolsillo.”
He nodded. “Los veo en media hora. Que me esperen en la terraza. Nada de policías. Que no entren al hostal.” He looked at his wristwatch.
“He says he needs half an hour. You should wait on the terrace of the restaurant around the corner. He says don’t go into the hostel. He’ll get in trouble. And no police.” I turned back to Manu. “You’ll bring it to them, right? ¿Vas a traerla?”
He nodded. “Dame el dinero. Cuarenta.”
“Okay. You just have to give him the forty euros.”
“Now?” asked the man. He looked like his head was going to blow up.
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“Yes, he needs to give it to the guy.”
“And what happens if they can’t find it? Do we get our money back?”
“Mmm … I’m not sure. ¿Qué pasa si no la encuentras?” I asked Manu.
“Nada,” he said, shaking his head.
“You just have to keep your fingers crossed,” I told the couple.
The man expelled a snort of disgust and opened his wallet. He took out two twenty-euro bills, folded them together, then passed them to Manu with a menacing look. Manu walked into the building, and I took the couple around the corner and pointed out the restaurant terrace. “I really hope it works out for you.”
“Thank you,” said the woman. “Thank you so much.”
I walked back to the hostel and up to the second floor where Manu was waiting on the landing. My legs were trembling. I couldn’t believe it had actually worked. We looked at each other for several seconds. Then Manu furrowed his brow like the woman’s husband had done and passed me the twenty-euro bills with a grunt. We both cracked up. I’d never seen Manu laugh before and he looked pretty funny, his shoulders bouncing up and down as he held a finger to his lips. We were both trying to be quiet, our eyes glistening with the effort. A moment later, my laughter rolled over and there were tears underneath. I turned away and placed my hands on the wall, pulling in long deep breaths of humid hallway air. The purse woman was lucky. Most of us didn’t get a chance to recover the things we’d lost.
Manu touched my shoulder, and I wiped my eyes and turned. The smile on his face disappeared when he saw my expression. I waved away his concern. “It’s nothing.” I handed him the forty euros, and he grabbed our knapsack from behind a plant in the corner to put the money away. The blue purse was hidden behind the plant as well.
“How much was in her wallet?” I asked.
“Thirty-five.”
“Not bad.”
We sat down on the stairs to wait. “I don’t think I can do that again,” I said.
A leftover giggle escaped from Manu, and we almost started up again.
I regained my composure. “Are you really going to give it back to her?” That final step suddenly seemed too dangerous. The couple would have had time to process our interaction. The woman’s husband was big, and we had nothing else to gain.
“Yeah, I think so,” Manu said. “She’s going to be so happy.”
He was right. She’d be overwhelmed with relief and feel incredibly lucky for a long time to come.
“Everybody laughs,” I said.
8
Down at the beach the next morning, I took off my leggings and washed myself in sections under the open-air shower: first my hair and my face, then under my shirt and under my skirt. My fingernails seemed to have stopped growing and so had the hair on my legs. In a way, this made sense. Most days it felt like Manu and I were stuck in a tight loop of the present, each moment erasing the previous one. It was only at night that I could really be sure time was passing. That’s when I sifted through my growing stack of ID cards and counted the money accumulating in my bread bag – almost three hundred euros now. It was probably enough to rent a small room for myself – and for Manu if he wanted to join me – but each morning down at the beach, I thought, We’ll just do this for one more day. I didn’t want everything to change again.
Overnight, I’d stored my new clothes in their plastic bag to keep them clean. I went behind the tall sculpture of stacked rusty cubes so I could have some privacy to change. When I was finished, I shoved my other clothes into the bag, then circled the sculpture, peeking into its windows and trying to figure out how it had been made. There was a little placard on one corner of the base that read: L’Estel Ferit (The Wounded Star). The artist was a woman. Rebecca Horn.
I walked over to where Manu was lying on his stomach and sat down beside him on our blanket. He had poured some water onto the sand and was making an elaborate sketch with his knife in the damp area. He often did this, and today it was a futuristic city: domed buildings, spaceships, other planets. He seemed to have a real talent for drawing, and I considered again whether we might be able to earn some money by making art instead of stealing. I had wondered the same thing a couple days earlier when we’d seen three hippie guys creating a sand sculpture further down the beach: a faithful rendition of The Last Supper they’d been working on for days. Tourists had been throwing the occasional coin into a straw basket beside them, and I’d asked Manu if he thought we might be able to do something similar. He’d watched the basket closely for a few minutes before shaking his head. He didn’t think we’d make enough. Lately his mother had been asking him to send more money. No matter how much he gave her, it never seemed to be enough. Last night, he’d been so stressed after talking to her that I’d let him keep all the money from the Everybody Laughs scam, and had even given him an extra hundred euros to send. He hadn’t wanted to take it, but I’d insisted. I would have given Manu all my money if he’d asked.
When the sun was higher than the breakwall, it was time for us to go to work. Manu’s futuristic city formed almost a complete ring around us. I stood up and jumped over his artwork, then reached back and lifted our blanket out of the circle by one corner. Manu started to smooth down the sand with long sweeps of his blade.
“Wait.” I grabbed his shoulder. “Why are you erasing it?”
He looked up at me. “Why not?”
I didn’t have a good answer. If we left his drawing behind, it’d just be blown away, kicked through by joggers or trampled by children; there was no way to save it. “I guess I just like it.”
Manu shrugged as if liking something didn’t matter. He finished flattening the sand, then flicked his knife closed and stood up.
I picked up our knapsack, and we followed the boardwalk to Port Olímpic, then brushed the sand from our feet and put on our shoes. As we veered north toward the metro, Manu began to walk further ahead of me, and by the time we reached the entrance it was as if we were strangers. Inside the station, we stood separately on the crowded platform, waiting for the train.
I had a bit of a cold and had been sniffling all morning. When I sneezed, a nearby woman smiled at me and for a second I felt like I was just one of the other regular passengers. I wondered if that would ever be true again – if I’d ever be taking transit to go to work the way she was, using the metro to draw a line from where I lived to where I made my money. I looked away from her and down the track.
When the train arrived, I tried to focus, but nothing was going our way. The first car we stepped onto already had thieves on it: a Roma family with an adorable child who was trying to sit on a passenger’s lap. The next car we chose had pickpockets on it as well: an accordion player who was working with a partner, serenading people to distract them.
By the time we got off that car and switched trains, the work crowd was thinning. This made things harder for Manu. There was less camouflage, and within a few more stops it would be too risky. I kept looking around for a promising mark, but for the first time, no one seemed to deserve my attention. The woman with the blue purse from the day before had been so hopeful that her lost item would be found. I wondered if all the people we’d robbed had felt the same. Maybe for some that hope never really went away, and they’d catch themselves, a month or a year from now, still dreaming that their lost possessions had been found.
Manu was at the edge of my vision, his proximity a sign that he was getting anxious. I didn’t want to just choose someone at random, but Manu needed the money, and it would be a long time before he’d agree to take any of mine again. I approached a man standing beside a large suitcase and struck up a conversation. He was on his way to the airport – he’d had a good trip.
“There’s a really nice park up here you should visit next time.” I pointed to a patch of green on my map. “It has a labyrinth. Not too many people know about it.” This piqued the man’s interest; he se
emed like an off-the-beaten-path type of guy. For Manu’s sake, I hoped he was also the type of guy who paid for things with wads of cash. As it turned out, he wasn’t.
“Ten euros,” Manu said when we met up at the ornate old fountain at the top of La Rambla.
“Shit.” I bent down and took a drink. “Should we try again?” I didn’t want to, but it felt like a safe question. On unlucky days, Manu always said it was better to stop. Frustration could make you do stupid things, and stupid things could get you caught.
“No, let’s go see Atlas,” he said.
For a couple of slow blocks, we manoeuvred around kiosk lines and tour group clusters. I tried to guess the languages of the people we passed: French, German, Italian, Japanese.
When we got near Atlas’s spot, we sat down on the ground to watch him. As usual, he was frozen in place, the weight of the world balanced on his gold spray-painted back. He had a pretty good crowd around him, better than the giant tree woman on his left, not quite as good as the acrobats on his right.
We tried to catch his eye, but for some reason he was ignoring us, even when we threw a coin into his hat and he was supposed to heft the weight of the world up high over his head. We’d been hoping he might buy us lunch at the Black Sheep, the way he’d done a couple of times when he was having a good day. He’d never tell us how much he made, just say things like, “A hundred thousand tourists walk by me every day. You do the math.” Then he’d peel off some money from a thick wad of bills, throw it onto the table with the flourish of a toreador. There was always a little bit of gold under his fingernails.
Manu searched one more time through the almost empty wallet we’d stolen. He took out a metro ticket and some coins. When he was done, he handed me the wallet, and I flipped through the cards inside, selecting a gym membership for my collection. I studied the photo of the man who’d belonged to the wallet. He might be at an airport restaurant now, trying to pay his bill. I pictured him standing up and kicking his metal chair, the scraping sound of it clattering across the floor like the keys I’d thrown at Peter. For some reason, I couldn’t imagine what he would do next. There was just a blank, as if he’d disappeared into his shock and anger, and never emerged.