Welcome Thieves

by Beaudoin, Sean

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  “Jinxes.”

  The guy laughs. “Where y’all headed?”

  “Dollywood.”

  “In that piece of shit?”

  “It’s a classic. There’s a monster under the hood.”

  Eve knuckles the other side the window, holds up a ham steak dripping with syrup.

  “Wife’s sure in a hurry.”

  “Nah, she just knows I like it with the bone in.”

  The guy nods, walks to his car. Adam dabs his underarms with the ticket, begins to sing, “We afraid to live, afraid of dyin’, afraid to love the one we love, ’cause you know they surely lying.”

  THE SUN COMES up in the fast lane, confirms that Rancho Cucamonga is indeed grim as fuck. Same with San Bernardino.

  “Trend Create it for me,” Eve says, taking in the Taco Locos and nail salons. “Sell me on this shit.”

  Adam clears his throat.

  “Four lanes became three lanes became two. Everything got flat. There were triple the advertisements for pie. Patches of fur lay redly across the double yellows, dead grackles strung like cursive from post to post. Modern living at its finest, a poetry of fake adobe, casual decay, and easy access to the highway of your dreams. Call Adam for details.”

  “Shit, you’re good,” Eve says, and then falls asleep with her head on the dash. He taps the speedometer, which continues not to work, mashes the pedal to the floor. A few hours later they ease into the lot of Uncle Benny’s hotel. It’s nowhere close to the strip, out in endless sprawl of shuttered schools and red clay yards.

  “Can I help you?” the clerk asks.

  “Probably not, but we’ll take a room anyhow.”

  The elevator rises. They unpack, have a few drinks.

  “Let’s watch porn,” Eve says.

  “Really?”

  “Quick, before I change my mind.”

  Adam dials it up, throws her on the quilt, takes her face in his hands and stares meaningfully.

  Eve yawns.

  He kisses her ankles, the aristocratic tilt of her neck, closely admires the way her pubic hair forms an elegant Helvetica V, a wily lure furrowed into tight little curls. She stops yawning, kisses him back. They are slow and considered, thighs tense, strangers on a guided tour in the south of France who slip away with half a bottle of wine and a blanket, kill the afternoon fumbling all over each other under the looming Provençal vines.

  Or maybe that’s just the plot of the movie.

  In the end it’s a good one, definitely worth $29.95.

  THE CLOCK RADIO BUZZES. Eve gets up and showers, goes to town on the free soaps and lotions. Adam sits at the tiny desk, turns over the cover of The Man with the Golden Arm, and affixes a stamp.

  Dear Gabriel,

  Here I am in Las Vegas, which some people call Lost Vegas and other people call Hell on Earth. I’m going to a wedding tomorrow. Weddings can be fun, but mostly I think if you were here, you’d wish you weren’t. When you’re eighteen I’m going to drive by in a stolen big ole truck and take you on a roadie short ride. We’ll go backpacking in Idaho and live off the land for a while and eat bugs like men camp responsibly according to established forest service regulations. Also, we’ll drink whiskey milk and meet girl backpackers a couple of buddies and go skinny-­dipping home at midnight. But don’t tell your mom that.

  Love, Uncle Adam

  “What are you writing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Eve holds out her arms, spins. She’s in a tiny black bikini, red lips, sandals. Her body is a monument to sleek engineering, to experimental hydraulics and efficient design.

  “You look ridiculously hot, but I’m pretty sure there’s no pool here.”

  “Put on your trunks. We’re hitting the beach.”

  “Sounds fun and all, but I’m pretty sure we’re in the middle of the desert.”

  “Did you happen to notice that big metal shed when we drove in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Put on your trunks.”

  THE HANGER’S MASSIVE, the kind they park blimps in. The sign says CALIFORNIA DREAMIN: AN IMMERSION. Two registers, a turnstile, eighty a ticket.

  The atrium is all glass, huge sun lamps bolted to ceiling rafters. The floor is covered with metric tons of sand. A giant machine slides back and forth along the far wall, like a printer cartridge, producing sets of waves, three-­footers at least. They break, get sucked back, roll in again. The beach is packed with families and umbrellas, floats and balls and shovels.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Adam says.

  “I know. Isn’t it awesome?”

  They walk down to the water, feet in the surf. Eve’s bikini is smaller than the price tag still clipped to it. Frat dudes swivel their necks, test out their baritones. Eve lays down a blanket, arranges creams and aloes and water and books and sunglasses. She puts on a cowboy hat made of straw, the kind men who pick artichokes might wear on a Saturday night in Berdoo.

  “Incoming,” Adam says, as one of the frat boys strolls over, frozen drink in a plastic tube, cheap wrap-­around shades and a complete lack of belly. His bright orange shorts have a WELCOME THIEVES logo across the hem.

  “What’s up, bro?”

  Adam can’t process the bro, let alone respond. A devastating punch wells in the coiled spring of his filmic imagination.

  “So me and my boys were wondering if y’all were just friends. Like maybe beach pals or whatever?”

  The other guys laugh their asses off, wrestle and pound sand.

  Eve rises on one elbow, points at Adam. “This here is my cousin Biebs.”

  Adam knows he’s supposed to play along, but hates this sort of meta shit. Acting like there’s a camera just out of frame. No one sure who the joke is on, but three-to-one it’s not them.

  “Cool. So you and Biebs got plans tonight? Or maybe just you?”

  “I bet there’s a killer party,” Eve says. “I bet you know just where it is.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “How about a club? A hot new club and you’re besties with the door guy?”

  “True. Also very true.”

  “You going somewhere, Biebs?” Eve asks.

  Adam walks down to the water and hikes the length of the beach, pokes around the dunes for a while. Some kids are making out. Others smoke dope hunkered in the vinyl grass. He finds a quiet spot to dig in his toes, pulls out the cover of Theodore Sturgeon’s Killdozer! and affixes a stamp.

  Dear Gabriel,

  I want to write a poetry collection, but before I get busy with the stanzas and pentameter and shit, I need a killer title. Which do you think is best?

  1. Storming the Battlements, Battling the Stormaments

  2. A Most Contemptible Contretemps

  3. Six Thieves for Seven Dollars

  4. Smarter Than You, Deader Than Them

  5. Girl Wrestler, Boy Maid

  6. The Last Half-­Bright Nebraska Dawn

  Adam started with the postcards when Gabriel was eight and his sister’s husband left her.

  “For, can you believe it, some Indian chick?”

  “You mean like Calcutta or Trail of Tears?”

  “Seriously,” Beth said. “Gabriel needs a man in his life.”

  “Try a bar. Wear something low-­cut.”

  “He’s started lighting things on fire. They caught him at school burning a desk. And eating the lining of someone’s jacket.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry.”

  “Great, thanks. That’s already made a huge difference.”

  Adam pictured himself at Gabriel’s age, the smirking turd he’d been. “I’ll email him, Beth. How about that? Or we can FaceTime. You have a computer, right?”

  “He already spends about fourteen hours a day online. Don’t you think that’s part of the problem?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Exactly, Adam. How would you?”

  He and
Beth had never been close, two years apart, different mothers, a state-­to-­state traipse all through high school as their father chased jobs that more accurately reflected his skill set, which in the end meant running a boutique hotel that offered continental breakfast, free cable, amd fabulous duvets.

  “Fine. Listen, I’ll think of something, okay?”

  The next day Adam was in a used bookstore, leafing through a stack of old pulps, like Ladies in Hades and Pickup on Sin Street. The art was lurid. Ridiculous. Also completely excellent. Almost pretechnology. An admission that we were all lonely and furtive, that at one time even grown men lacked access to the rudiments of self-­pleasure.

  He tore away the cover of She Was a Shark! and put it back on the shelf. The cashier continued to text. So he tore two more.

  “Gabriel loves them,” Beth reported. “Honestly, Adam? It’s genius. Without the actual book, there’s, like, this weird liberation. He tacks each cover to the wall above his bed. Stares for hours. Makes up his own plots to fit the titles. I had no idea he was so imaginative.”

  Adam became the scourge of East Bay indies, perfected a rip-­disguising cough. Clerks hovered, oblivious, as he liberated Jim Thompson and Stanislaw Lem, Hubert Selby and Iceberg Slim. He felt empathy for the little paperbacks, stripped and vulnerable, spines bare and raw.

  But not enough to stop.

  At first he had no clue what to write. How are your classes? Or Playing any sports at school? But that got boring almost immediately. Plus, Adam remembered how much he hated being asked that sort of thing. In the end, he just let the pen decide. Gabriel never responded, instinctively knowing that wasn’t part of the deal.

  Killdozer! catches a raindrop. And then two. The ink starts to run. Adam looks up, figures it has to be condensation from one of the fans, but lifeguards blow their whistles and yell as ominous clouds gather, begin to roll in. Of course they’re CGI, projected on a screen, but it’s amazingly convincing. Everyone out! Now! Some people are confused, but most play along, gather their kids, slap five. A chain-­link fence is rolled in front of the water, which begins to seethe and churn. In the distance lightning crackles, lances down from ceiling to breaker. Waves crash against the shore, spend themselves in purple foam, scalded bubbles rising from fake clams.

  Children laugh and clap, delighted.

  A rubber whale breaches. More applause. Dolphins frolic, their oddly human laughter echoing through the sound system. What’s probably the Titanic heads toward what’s probably an iceberg.

  Fuck it.

  Adam lopes past the guards, in one motion scales the links, tosses himself over.

  “Hey! Hey, you!”

  He ankles through the chop. The water is cold. Or maybe that’s another effect. There are a volley of whistles, a flickering alarm. Adam is tossed around, abraded by foam rocks, comes up spuming for breath. People angle their phones, shoot video. A set of waves pounds by like freezers tumbling from a truck on the highway.

  He has no choice but to dive beneath or take the full brunt.

  The first twenty seconds are the worst, panicwise. And then things slow down. Adam watches schools of tiny fish linger and dart in unison. They must be real. Or maybe holo­grams? Tiny chips shoved into rubber fins? There’s a manta ray far below, and possibly a tiger shark circling above, which fits nicely with the cheap high from oxygen depletion.

  Adam gets seriously Zen, figures the ocean will decide what the ocean will decide.

  Even if it’s run by a shelf of Pentium IIIs.

  “GET UP,” EVE SAYS for the third time, presses her thumb into Adam’s forehead. “We need to get fitted.”

  He’s waterlogged and groggy. The elevator dings. There’s the gentle lilt of Spanish from maids in the hall. Across his shoulders are bruises shaped like squid, or possibly the grip of unamused lifeguards.

  “Wait, why again?”

  “Oh, I dunno,” Eve says, her voice knitting together the spine of their first real fight. “Because you can’t go to the wedding in a towel?”

  IT’S RAINING HARD. Almost no one else is out on the road. The Taurus slides instead of rolls, shudders deeply at each red light.

  “Sorry,” Eve says.

  “About what?”

  “Talking to that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “At the beach.”

  “What beach?”

  She puts her hand over his, locks fingers.

  They pass a Welcome Thieves billboard featuring a kid in tight white briefs. A centurion offers him a grape from the tip of his spear, while a woman behind them lashes two blind stallions with a garden hose.

  The store is cramped, windows fogged. Big-­haired girls paw through racks of prom dresses while their mothers wait. Eve comes out of the changing room in a hideous flesh-­colored gown, holding her breath.

  “How do I look?”

  Adam stands on a wooden box while a tiny man with a gray Afro and a mouthful of pins adjusts his cuffs. The prom girls stop nattering and stare. The cashier stares. The stock boys rub their hairless cheeks and do a credible job of pretending not to stare.

  “Well?”

  Eve is flushed, hair swept back, delicate arms and shoulders lending architecture to the dress. She’s in heels, lips red, nails pink. A woman. A queen. The reason Pericles sacked Delphi, that all of Thrace burned.

  “Gorgeous,” Adam says.

  “Really?”

  She curtsies, spins the hem, absolutely owns that rag.

  “I can’t believe you’re my date. Shit, I can’t believe I’m yours.”

  Eve bites her lip, slides behind a curtain. One of the prom girls bursts into tears. The rest take turns comforting her, peek at Adam through the racks.

  “Boy, I sure figured you wrong,” the tailor says, looking up over his glasses.

  “Huh?”

  “Had you down for a wise-­ass comment. Woulda bet the house you messed that up. And then bam, my man comes through. Tell you the truth, that’s the first time I been surprised since O.J.”

  THEY’RE LATE. EVE gives him a kiss, hustles away while he finds a parking spot. Adam sits alone in the back row. The church feels more like a casino. He keeps expecting triple cherries to hit, someone’s uncle about to shake twelve grand loose from a pew. The priest drones on for a while. Mostly about how it’s better if you’re good to each other. How it really is preferable if you don’t have sex with your wife’s best friend, or spend the house fund on meth. Then it’s Latin, Latin, Latin.

  Eve stands on the podium, chin up, flanked by lesser women drowning in frills and lace.

  It’s impossible not to be proud.

  Also, continuously buzzed.

  BParse69: Yr mother’s name is Janet, right? Lives on Peach Tree Lane?

  BParse69: Whoze this cute chick in all the pics? Can u txt me her #?

  BParse69: Bunch of hard pipe-­hitters I know jus cleaned out yr place.

  After the ceremony, Eve boards a van with the wedding party. Adam follows with some rowdy Welcome Thieves employees. There’s talk about the bride (saddled), Uncle Benny (asshole), gowns (dreadful), stock options (plummeting), and attendance (mandatory). They cross town, the reception in a parking lot next to a WT distribution center. A huge pinstriped awning sits in the middle of the tarmac, AstroTurf laid out in squares. On the far stage the band struggles through a Billy Joel cover, power cutting in and out. Every thirty seconds the rain produces a series of electronic squalls that warn of undue voltage and massive equipment death.

  “Unbelievable,” the man next to Adam says, dabbing at his suit. “Winters is such a cheap fuck.”

  There’s a grumbling assent. Guests hold papers over their heads, newsprint running under cuffs. Wives and dates stumble in heels while a priest tries to protect the elderly with a broken umbrella. They finally make it under the awning but it’s only dry in the center. Guests push together like encounter therapy, bartenders and caterers stuck on the fringe, miserable, wiping droplets of water from each other�
�s chins.

  Adam finds himself in the receiving line. The groom has mirrored Oakleys and sideburns, flecks of powder dusting his left nostril. He shakes Adam’s hand, says it’s awesome to see him again.

  “That’s cool. Except we’ve never met.”

  “Who you here with again?”

  “Eve.”

  The groom shakes his head.

  “Oh, dude. Oh, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You fucker.”

  “Yeah.”

  He’s passed off to Eve’s sister. It’s pretty clear why they don’t get along. She’s got the bones of a big girl, impossibly thin, looks like a car fire, flushed, pink, ravenous. Like she could never get drunk enough, but you wouldn’t know, because you’d already be blacked out behind the fridge. She pulls Adam into a hug, which gives him a view of the tattoo between her shoulder blades, Bettie Page firing a machine gun made from a decomposed leg.

  An artist. He’d put money on performances that involve food.

  “Come find me later,” she whispers. “Let’s dance.”

  “Definitely,” Adam says, hits the bar, orders a G&T that’s 70 percent rainwater.

  “Listen, thanks for coming,” Benny Winters says, grabs his shoulder exactly where the lifeguard did. Uncle Benny has silver eyebrows and Gatsby hair, smells like cologne made from orphans’ tears.

  “Glad to be here.”

  “Who are you again?”

  “Only the guy who’s gonna marry your other niece.”

  Uncle Benny nods, half smiles. His indifference is maddening, lips pursed like Adam isn’t even worth the refutation. Or congratulations.

  “So I guess once I’m family I’ll start at Welcome Thieves.”

  “I see.”

  “Yeah, I’ll work my way into your confidence over a meteoric decade’s rise, all the while secretly engineering a board insurrection that leaves you penniless.”

  Uncle Benny cocks his head, shrugs.

  “Under my stewardship, the company will morph into providing immersive wilderness experiences in Wyoming. You’re probably not hip to the whole Paleo thing, but it’ll be like printing twenties in the basement.”

  “Sure,” Uncle Benny says.

  “The thing is, I’m not gonna do all that for the cash. Or even Eve. Basically, you and your sweatshop thongs have made the world a tackier, more imbecilic place. Someone has to blow the whistle. Even if just for karma’s sake. Which, honestly, I don’t even believe in. But that just proves my point.”