Welcome Thieves

by Beaudoin, Sean

  It’s true. Twin Volvos. Jack pressed the keys to the blue one into Penny’s hand before getting in the cab, stage-­whispered, Only for emergencies, chica!

  “They don’t drive.”

  Kurt winks. “You sure?”

  For a second she hates him with the strength of a thousand dying suns.

  Then it passes.

  “Fine. It’s parked around back.”

  Kurt adjusts the mirror, ejects the CD from the player, flings it into traffic.

  “Not cool.”

  “I know, but seriously, Seven and the Ragged Tiger?”

  They go a dozen blocks, pull into the empty lot with a chirp. There are crackheads and drunks. Fondlers and purse snatchers. And then just people.

  “Safeway’s probably safer,” Penny says.

  “We’re already here,” Kurt says.

  The market smells like a complaint to the lettuce distribu­tor. An old guy in a bloody apron chops at something that might be fish, slit slit slit. There’s a nudie calendar on the wall, the kind auto parts companies send out for free. July looks like Angela Davis. She gives Penny a wink, How’d you like a taste of this, honey?

  “I don’t swing that way.”

  “What?” Kurt says.

  Penny flips open her tarot deck. Little Boy Lost.

  A little boy tears around the corner, slides to a stop.

  He’s wearing thick glasses, shirtless, chest heaving.

  Penny offers him a grape.

  “That washed?” his mother asks, forces her cart between them.

  “No.”

  “Then what you giving it to him for?”

  Penny sniffs the grape, puts it back.

  “I dunno.”

  “That’s right, you don’t.”

  “Shit,” Kurt says, hefts a case of beer. “I forgot my wallet.”

  “You gettin’ paper ’cause we out of plastic,” the register girl says, rings them up.

  AT THE FAR END of the parking lot a guy leans in the Volvo’s window, broken glass at his feet.

  “The fuck?” Kurt says.

  The guy turns, a tire iron in one hand. He’s wearing orange shorts and Timberlands, beard shaved so precisely it looks drawn on with marker.

  “Oh, man, is this your ride? No wonder my key don’t work.”

  “Fight!” someone yells.

  A pack of teenagers amble over to watch, hands in pockets and backward visors. Some wear big nylon coats, frowning under the sun.

  “Not cool, Sinbad,” Kurt says.

  “Kick his ass, Lavelle,” a girl with blue lips says.

  “Let’s just go,” Penny says.

  Someone throws a bottle. Kurt puts up his fists, circles left as a cruiser speeds into the lot. The old guy in the bloody apron points from behind glass doors. A blip of siren sends the crowd in every direction. Half walk off with a mannered lope: fuck you. The rest run, flat out, into the alley.

  “There a problem?” the cop asks.

  “Negative,” Kurt says. “Locked our keys in the car. Dude here was helping out.”

  The cop in the passenger’s seat laughs.

  “Don’t you think you boys are on the wrong side of the river?”

  “No, sir,” Kurt says.

  “I’m not a boy,” Penny says.

  “You got ID, Mr. Goodwrench?”

  “You bet,” Lavelle says, reaches for his wallet.

  The cop waves it off, gets in the cruiser, guns back into traffic.

  “Hey rock star,” Lavelle says. “I owe you one.”

  Kurt reaches into the car and rolls down what’s left of the window. “More than one.”

  “No, for real. Sorry about that.”

  Penny likes Lavelle’s unhurried voice, his stance, thinks maybe he used to be a soldier. Sprayed the desert with bullets, never hit anything. Was yelled at, yelled back. Got that girl in the auto pool pregnant, got discharged, has a whole life full of actual experiences instead of just ironic jokes and opinions about movies.

  “It’s okay,” Penny says.

  “No, it isn’t,” Kurt says. “This is gonna run at least eighty bucks.”

  “It’s not even his car,” Penny says.

  “Oh no?” Lavelle says.

  “He’s not even in a band,” Penny says.

  “Who said I was in a band?” Kurt says.

  Penny cuts the deck. The Consigliere of Selma. Lavelle has a gold hoop in his left ear, just like the guy in the picture. She leans down and sweeps up a handful of safety glass. The shards are beveled, refract the asphalt a dirty pink.

  “I seriously want to take a bath in these.”

  Lavelle laughs. “You one of those sensitive arty chicks, huh? All full up on deep thoughts?”

  Penny wonders if not answering is a confirmation or denial. Voltaire once said all language was an elitist ruse. On the other hand, Voltaire was a dead French asshole and Penny was here, now, in an empty parking lot with a very large man. And Kurt.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  She points to the car.

  “Were you gonna drive it to a chop shop?”

  Lavelle shakes his head. “You been watching too many movies, slim. No such thing. Honestly? I was just hoping you had a couple twenties in the glove. My experience being, most Volvos do.”

  “Okay, we are officially exchanging thief tips with the guy who broke into our car,” Kurt says. “Just for the record.”

  “You party, rock star?”

  Kurt frowns. “Maybe.”

  Lavelle writes his number on the back of a coupon.

  “You leave a message here, I hook you up with a little weed. The dank. Just so we straight.”

  “That’s sweet,” Penny says.

  “Sweet?” Kurt says.

  “Y’all talk like an old couple, you know it?”

  “We’re just friends,” Penny says.

  “Well, this has been awesome,” Kurt says, as some of the teenagers straggle back. “Diplomacy. The uniting of cultures and whatnot.” He takes Penny’s hand, gets her into the passenger seat. “But we gotta split.”

  Lavelle hikes up his shorts. “I was you, I would, too. Assuming I would ever be you, which I wouldn’t. But still.”

  “Bye,” Penny says.

  Kurt flashes the peace sign, peels away.

  THE BACKYARD IS ten feet of cement surrounded by a rusty fence. Kurt turns over an old plastic kiddie pool, fills it with a hose, then drags out most of the sectional, a suede L that Jack calls his Burgundy Mistress.

  Penny finds a terry robe in Francis’s closet, attaches her wallet chain, pure gangster. Kurt strips to his Calvins. They pop beers, soak their feet.

  Penny hasn’t been swimming in, what, six years? She was good once, a wisp in the water, fast and light. They’d practically begged her to join the school team, try out for state’s. Or wait, that isn’t true. Penny hates swimming. She almost drowned in a lake in Kentucky that time her stepfather, really just some guy named Jim who always burned the hot dogs, grabbed her and May by the armpits and threw them in, laughed as they stroked and flailed, covered in rotted leaves and mud.

  Kurt extends his legs, rubs his feet against hers.

  “So let’s talk about the other day.”

  Penny cuts her deck. The Time Machine That’s Actually a Cardboard Box.

  “There was no other day.”

  “Will you drop the shit for second? I mean, listen, I get your thing. Alternachick against the world? Hates everything almost as much as she hates herself? That’s cool. Not too original, but whatever.”

  The phone rings.

  “That’s probably work,” Penny says.

  Kurt runs his hand past her knee, lets it rest just beneath the hem of her robe. She’s not wearing a bathing suit. Mostly because she doesn’t have one.

  “But you know what? It’s okay to let someone like you. Me, for instance. Punk’s not gonna kick you out of the club.”

  Penny gets up, yanks o
pen the glass door. There’s an office in the basement, which is damp and slightly cooler than the rest of the house. She tiptoes down the wooden steps, sits at the desk.

  I don’t think Jack would like your wet clompers on the mahogany, Francis says.

  Framed pictures of the boys line the far wall. In a convertible smiling, in the kitchen smiling, hilariously knocked over by waves. Jack nods in a reindeer sweater, expectantly under mistletoe.

  He’s right. I don’t like it at all.

  Penny puts her feet down. “Sorry.”

  To be honest, hon? I’m not super happy with the way things are going in general.

  Seriously, Francis says. How long have we been gone? A couple hours and already it’s Risky Business?

  “I know, I know.”

  And let’s be real, you’re no Rebecca De Mornay.

  “You don’t have to be mean about it.”

  Jack sighs from a selfie. Listen, hon, Rough Trade out there may talk a good game, but you better believe he only wants one thing.

  Yeah, Francis says. Did you at least buy some protection?

  “No.”

  Bad planning, Jack says.

  “There’s nothing to plan for.”

  Why, because you can’t get preggo? Haven’t you had your first period yet?

  “Hey,” Penny says.

  You are awfully skinny. I recommend raw fish. Maybe a bowl of Triscuits and some niacin.

  “That’s none of your business!”

  Don’t get all exercised. We’re just trying to —

  Kurt calls down the stairs.

  “Trying to what?”

  “Wrong number,” Penny says.

  “You coming back up?”

  “In a minute.”

  BY EIGHT THE kiddie pool has a dozen beer bottles swaying at the bottom. The new Descendents album cranks through the stereo, six components in an oak rack.

  Penny finds Kurt in the kitchen.

  “I didn’t say it was okay to have a party.”

  “You didn’t say it wasn’t. Or wait, maybe you weren’t around to ask.”

  He turns to talk to the waitress who always wears the red shirt that shows off the red bra. Most of Food 4 Thought stands around drinking beer. Cooks and busboys talk shit, take turns shoving each other into counters and against the stove. Two register girls make out on the patio. White smoke blows from the grill, a dishwasher with purple hair adding stuff to the flames: a glove, some magazines, The Collected Bizet.

  Penny finds Uncle in the hall, admiring a set of figurines depicting the all stars of Czarist Russia.

  “We really should have a Rasputin sandwich,” he says.

  In the living room there’s the three-­tiered sound of broken glass.

  Uncle snaps his suspenders. “I’m guessing that’s a mirror?”

  They go to look. On the floor are fragments of red and black.

  Was it the tea set? Francis asks, from a picture of Francis sipping tea.

  “Yeah,” Penny says.

  “Yeah, what?” Uncle says.

  The world is now a less civilized place, Jack says.

  Penny collects most of a saucer, holds the delicate shards in her palm.

  “Maybe I can glue it back together?”

  “I doubt it,” Uncle says.

  Listen to Pollyanna.

  Penny yanks Francis off the wall, slaps him face down. “You’re dead or blown up anyway. What difference does it make?”

  What do you mean? Jack says. We’re having cocktails. We’re having dinner on a ship floating down the Bosphorus.

  “Nope. You’re never coming back.”

  So not true, sweetie. Who told you that?

  “Only every card in the deck.”

  Francis says something, his voice too muffled to understand.

  Uncle isn’t there at all.

  AT MIDNIGHT AN SUV pulls into the driveway.

  Penny opens the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your boy says y’all got a rager going.”

  Kurt shrugs. “You got that weed?”

  Lavelle lights a joint, inspects the stereo rack. The Descendents cut out. Wu-­Tang cuts in. Half of Food 4 Thought grab their jackets, hit the street.

  “Lame,” Kurt says.

  “Don’t fear the natives,” Lavelle says.

  Penny cuts the tarot, pulls the Vaginocracy.

  “Can’t have a party without women,” Lavelle says, picks up the phone.

  Within an hour sixty people dance in a sweaty mass in the living room. Others stagger around in groups, yelling. Three guys take turns throwing the same girl into the pool. One of them fishes her out and then they do it again.

  Penny sinks next to Lavelle on the couch. They clink beers.

  “This really y’all’s house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t take it the wrong way, but you don’t strike me as the lady entrepreneur type. Your Martha Stewarts and such.”

  “I’m one of those trust fund punks you read so much about.”

  He laughs. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You really think I look like Sinbad?”

  Penny pictures the guy on stage, goatee, sweatpants, never once funny.

  “Who?”

  Lavelle seems pleased by her answer. They both watch Kurt dance in the corner with an incredibly tall woman. He’s all sweat, shirt half off. The woman wears a sarong, bangles, a headdress. She looks like Sudanese royalty.

  “Now, I like your boy and all, but there’s no way in god’s green kingdom he can handle that.”

  The woman sways, imperceptibly, as Kurt bungles around her.

  “Sinbad to the rescue,” Lavelle says, and then dances his way in.

  PENNY WAKES CURLED into a ball, shivers, the air conditioner on high. She tries to remember why she’s in a closet. At some point there was an argument. Something broke. She climbed up and away from it, remembered the space just off the attic full of used modems and never-­sent birthday presents, back massagers and socket sets, slid behind a pile of old coats and let the weight of the beer drape over her like one of those heavy aprons they give you when they’re about to X-­ray every last tooth in your head.

  Next to her are Kurt’s socks.

  Grey with green stripes.

  Penny tries to rewind the videotape, nothing but static and muffled voices.

  Pulls a card, the Prefrontal Blank.

  Jack’s bathrobe sweeps the staircase clean behind her. Most of the furniture in the living room is on its side, plants knocked over, cans and bottles leaning against themselves. The stereo’s gone, maybe some other stuff. Not too bad. The broken wine rack sucks though, Merlot seeping into the carpet.

  “Kurt?”

  Her voice echoes from room to room, the house empty.

  Penny, alone.

  She sits on the floor in the front hallway, in a rectangle of sun, mail tucked beneath her legs. Catalogs, letters. An architecture magazine. A missing-­child postcard. Have You Seen Rusty Wells? The postcard lists Rusty Wells’s height and weight, which seems dumb since it’s probably the same for every missing child ever: four feet, sixty pounds.

  Your boyfriend’s kind of a tool, Rusty Wells says.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Oh, okay. Keep telling yourself that.

  “What do you know?”

  Not much. I’m dead. Under the wheelbarrow in that field behind the old church.

  “That sucks.”

  Tell me about it.

  “Should I call the hotline or whatever?”

  Nah, they won’t believe you. Psychic punk chick? Yeah, right. Hey, let’s send a diver after one of her hunches, maybe dredge the lake for the source of her bullshit. Anyway, I’m not in a hurry. The pastor’s daughter finds me in a few weeks while she’s tripping on mushrooms.

  “Wait, how old are you again?”

  Can’t you read? Nine. Although six when I got kidnapped.

  “Wa
s it a family member?”

  Landscapers. Some shitbag filling out the crew for a day, dude with a taste for chubby white boys. Just my luck, huh?

  “Do they catch him?”

  Nah, he’s a ghost. Long gone. It’s my fault anyway. If I’d laid off of the potato chips and gone outside and burned a calorie once in a while, Luiz the Molester would have grabbed up some other kid.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry.”

  Don’t worry about it. I’m the one should be sorry for what I said about your boyfriend. Honestly? I hope it works out with you guys.

  “Not much chance of that,” Penny says. “He took off.”

  No, he didn’t.

  Kurt pushes open the door with an armload of groceries, goes into the kitchen, slices English muffins, heats a pan for eggs.

  “You want coffee?”

  Penny tries to remember how to speak. Mostly, you just have to find the first word.

  Well, don’t leave him hanging, Rusty Wells says.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  On the far wall, Jack raises a glass for a toast.

  Francis, who in that picture was on the wagon, raises a banana.

  It’s weird how the house feels empty and bruised, but in a way somehow also clean. Scrubbed of greed and acquisition. Spartan-­punk. Like what it secretly wanted to be all along.

  Penny cuts the deck, turns over Three Little Capitalist Pigs.

  They’re naked and dirty, wearing barrels instead tuxes.

  Smoking blunts instead of cigars.

  It was time for a change.

  Even the morose Germans believed in the liberating quality of having all your shit jacked.

  They call it renewal-­shtang.

  Or something.

  “This shit is so sunny-­side up it’s ridiculous,” Kurt says, bringing her breakfast over on a tray.

  All Dreams Are Night Dreams

  An Aqua-­Aerial Ballet

  Orchestral music thunders beneath a plastic dome lined with cherubs and frescoes. Doves fly from perch to perch, groggy with chlorine. The audience boos as I swing through the rafters, high above a stage full of clowns and nymphs and polypropylene dragons.

  On cue, bassoon.

  And then free fall.

  I’m jerked to a halt inches above the pool’s surface. The harness digs in. Piper grips my wrists. The hydraulics fire and we are reeled upward again, a dozen actors on steel wire spinning clockwise around us. Piper plays the lead, the Woman in Peril. I play Grimwald, peril incarnate. Water beads down our length, mists the cheap seats. She smiles, but I can see she no longer loves me.