Hashimoto Blues

by Sarah Dupeyron

“Nothing.” I shook my head.

  “Can you fly me somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my eyebrows lifting. “You got something going with Raphael?”

  “A real good Game.” He nodded and went back to his phone conversation. It had to be something intriguing if he were volunteering himself to fly.

  The next day, we got in the plane. Max gave me coordinates to a location in upstate New York not far from Lake Ontario, and I typed them into the GPS. We took off in the early morning air, an unusual time for the two of us to be up, never mind headed out to a job.

  I landed the plane in a field, hoping I was in the right spot. I didn’t want to explain to anyone why I was there. It was a needless worry as Raphael was already waiting for us. I completely trusted him and should have known that he would have double-checked any coordinates before giving them to us. He was cautious, at least in certain respects.

  “Salut! Ça va?” Raphael approached us with a big grin. One tooth, the left incisor, was slightly crooked, adding charm to his smile. He was average height, with dark hair and large brown eyes. His angular features were delicate and feminine, almost pretty. Max teased him once that he looked like my sister. He already had sideburns, but had recently grown a goatee, probably to lend a little more masculinity to his face.

  “Ça va. Et toi?” Max grabbed him in a tight embrace. Best friends who had known each other since their teens, they were a lot alike in many ways and complete opposites in others. Whereas Max had an open, honest face, Raphael looked naughty. He always had a smirk dancing on his lips, his dark eyes hiding dirty thoughts behind them.

  “Bien, bien, bien. Ellie! How are you?” He switched to English for my benefit. He had a slight accent to his words that could make a woman’s heart melt. He told me once that Max spoke French the way he spoke English: slightly accented, but spot on. I wondered if an English accent in French was as sexy as a French accent in English.

  “It’s good to see you, Raphael.” We kissed cheeks in the French way.

  “Did Max fill you in on the details?”

  “No, he never does.” I looked over at him accusingly, but he just laughed, not denying the truth. All I knew at that point was that I needed to fly him to this location and wait to pick him up later.

  “You didn’t ask. I thought you didn’t care,” Max said with a grin, trying to pin the blame on me. He was secretive about everything.

  “Good point. As long as you come back in one piece, I don’t care,” I answered. I wasn’t being entirely honest; I was dying of curiosity.

  Their clothing was identical, black from head to toe. They each had a black ski mask, sunglasses, gloves, and long sleeves to conceal the distinctive tattoos on Raphael’s forearms. The last touch was a bandana covering their mouths. Raphael said he didn’t want anyone to even recognize their teeth or to be able to tell the color of their facial hair. Despite the hot July weather, there wasn’t an inch of skin showing.

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “An hour, two tops,” Raphael said.

  “Should we get going?” Max was eager.

  Raphael nodded, and they got in his car. I sat down with a book and waited.

  A little over an hour later, a green Jaguar roared into the field and came to a screeching stop. Max jumped out and opened the trunk. Raphael pulled in behind him in his blue Toyota Corolla. He ran to Max and jumped on his back, whooping with excitement.

  “Oh, putain! J'y crois pas! ” Raphael yelled. They laughed and gave each other a high-five, then took two canvass bags out of the trunk. They loaded them into the passenger seat of the plane.

  “What’d you do, rob a bank?” I asked, half joking.

  “We certainly did!” Max ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up again after it had been flattened by the ski mask. He gave Raphael another high five, and the two giggled like little kids.

  “Where did you get that car?” I pointed to the Jag.

  “I stole it. I thought it would be nice to have a get-away car that was fast and people would remember. Throw them off the trail. We left Raphael’s car hidden and picked it up after.”

  Max reached around behind himself and pulled his gun, a Smith & Wesson 9mm semi-automatic, from the waistband of his pants. He placed it on the floor of the cockpit then noticed me looking at it. I didn’t like having it around; it made me nervous. Reading the disapproval on my face, he picked it up and ejected the magazine.

  “See? No bullets,” he said, showing me the empty gun. He gave me a wink, put it back on the floor, and turned to finish what he was doing. Leave it to Max to rob a bank with an unloaded weapon.

  I sat back and watched them as they prepared for the next round. They started stripping, taking off all of the black clothing until they were in their birthday suits. It was an amusing sight, the two of them buck-naked in the middle of a field. Raphael had a causal attitude toward his nudity. He didn’t seem to mind at all being naked in front of me. I giggled when I got a look at the big smiling moon face tattooed on his left butt cheek. They were both laughing too much to notice me.

  Raphael started digging around in the suitcase he brought from his car, taking out a neatly folded pair of khaki pants and a nice burgundy polo shirt. The outfit looked like something someone would wear to work, business casual. It contrasted greatly with his tattoos and the big silver hoops he wore in his ears. His clothes were usually cool, unique things that no one else could get away with wearing. He was bordering on nerdy that day.

  Max took his backpack from the cockpit and pulled out a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, both of which had been shoved in without care for wrinkles. This was a big difference between the two. Max was always messy. He truly didn’t give a shit about what he looked like. He was always clean, just not orderly. I don’t think he even owned a comb, and on the rare occasions that he shaved, he used my razor. Raphael, on the other hand, was neat as a pin. He never had a hair out of place. The space between his goatee and sideburns was always cleanly shaven and scented with cologne. His clothes were impeccable and always in order.

  As they dressed, Max from the bottom up, Raphael from the top down, they talked about what happened in the bank.

  “Did you see that woman with the big tits in the corner? The look on her face was priceless!” Raphael said, imitating the woman by opening his mouth wide and repeatedly blinking, hands held out in front of his chest to show her giant melons. After pulling on his shirt, he stood there, everything hanging out down below. I was surprised to find that, like Max, he didn’t wear underwear.

  “She looked like she shit herself!” Max tucked himself into his jeans and tightened his belt. “What about the guy who kept talking? I wanted to pop him one.” They laughed again, their giddiness spilling over.

  When they finally had on their new clothes, they picked up the black disguises, stuffed them into Max’s backpack, and threw it into the cockpit. There wasn’t any room for him to sit.

  “I’m going to ride back with Raphael. He’s staying with us for a few days,” Max said, obviously happy he didn’t have to fly back. I was glad Raphael was coming home with us. He was a lot of fun.

  “Okay. Are you guys going to be alright if there’s a road block?”

  “You have all the evidence. No problem,” Max answered. He kissed me goodbye and got into Raphael’s car.

  “See you in a few hours!” he yelled as they drove out of the field.

  When I got back to our place, I figured I had a few hours until they came home. I hauled the two bags of money into the house and threw them onto the kitchen table. It would take a while to count, but they would be eager to find out how much they bagged. I arranged it in neat little stacks and started to tally what was there.

  Max and Raphael arrived about six hours later. They came barging through the door, still laughing as hard as they were in the field that morning.

  “You should’ve seen the look on that cop’s face when you kissed me,” Max said.

  “Y
ou should’ve seen the look on your face when I kissed you,” Raphael replied.

  “Wasn’t I cool about it?”

  “Fuck, yeah. I think you liked it.” Raphael wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Yeah, you’re just my type.” Max winked at him, and they cracked up.

  “You kissed him?” I couldn’t imagine why the two of them had been kissing, but I would’ve loved to see it.

  “We weren’t out of that field twenty minutes before we ran into a roadblock. You should’ve seen Raphael.” Max turned to him. “Shit, man, you should’ve been an actor.”

  They had stopped on the way and picked up beer and Chinese take-out. Max set the bag on the table and got out plates and silverware.

  “Why were you kissing?” I wanted to hear this.

  Raphael sat across from me and started to explain. “We could see a roadblock ahead. It’s a rural area so there aren’t many people waiting to get through. This cop comes over to my car, and he’s looking at the plates. He knows I’m Canadian. Max had done all of the talking in the bank; no one heard my accent. Since I was sitting in the driver’s seat, we decided it would make more sense for me to do all of the talking. The accent would be just one more detail to throw them off our trail. The cop leans down to look at us, then says, ‘Step out of the vehicle.’ He’s all serious and macho. He didn’t even say please! I ask ‘Is there something wrong, sir?’ He says, ‘I have some questions. Step out the of vehicle.’ So I get out of the car.”

  Max added, “Then he pointed at me and said, ‘You, too’, so I get out, too.”

  “We’re both just standing there at the side of the road, waiting for him to do something. He looks us over, real careful like he’s sizing us up. Then, he says ‘Where are you headed?’”

  Max finished setting the table, sat, and continued the story. “Get this, Raphael looks at him, totally deadpan and says ‘My lover and I are down here for the day to go antiquing.’”

  “I had to say something to explain why we were two men traveling together. I expected some kind of reaction, but the guy was like a robot. Nothing.”

  “He looks at Raphael and goes, ‘Open the trunk.’”

  We started to dish out the food. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until the scent of chicken fried rice, crab Rangoon, and vegetables in garlic sauce wafted through the air. My mouth watered in anticipation.

  “I opened the trunk, and he starts rummaging around in there. I’m not too worried because there’s only a suitcase with my toothbrush and stuff and a bag of dirty laundry. Nothing suspicious. You had everything. By the way, do you mind if I do my laundry while I’m here? I’m at the end of my laundry cycle and almost out of clothes.”

  “Of course you can do laundry. No problem,” I answered.

  Max continued recounting the tale. “The cop was looking at us like he knew, though. I think he was about to call it in, maybe look a little deeper into what we were doing. Then, Raphael casually put his arm around my waist and kissed me. It looked so natural!”

  “On the lips?” I asked, wanting details.

  “Oh, yeah. I gave him a good one. I wanted to be convincing.”

  “Convincing? You were brilliant! It wasn’t overly done or flamboyant or anything. Ellie, you should have seen him. He was so subtle, but so good, I don’t even know how to describe it, like someone else had taken over for a few minutes.”

  “You weren’t bad either. The way you put your hand on my back, nice touch.” They giggled at the memory.

  “I don’t get it. Why did you kiss and pretend to be gay?” I laughed, not understanding how that would help the situation any. “Aren’t there gay bank robbers?”

  “I don’t know if there are gay bank robbers. Sure, why not? But like I said before, I told him we were gay just to explain why two men were traveling together. If I said we were going fishing, he might ask where our equipment was. Saying we were gay, he sure wasn’t going to ask to see my rod. As for the kiss, it was a distraction. He didn’t like the look of us, but after that his suspicion vanished.” Raphael snapped his fingers. “It was replaced by something not so nice, but all he could think about was us doing each other and not us doing something else, like robbing the bank.”

  I glanced at Max, a teasing look in my eye. “How did you like kissing someone hairy?”

  “Not as bad as I thought.”

  We all laughed again, then I prompted them to go on. “So, then what happened?”

  Max said, “He told us to go ahead, so we go back to get in the car. As he’s walking away, the asshole says, really low but loud enough so we can hear, ‘Fucking faggot frogs.’”

  “Yeah, Max gives him this look like he’s going to kill him. So I said, ‘Come on, mon cher,’ and I get in the car. I keep thinking Max, just keep your mouth shut.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  Raphael shook his head and looked at me with amusement playing on his charming features. “He got back in the car, turned to me and said, ‘Better a faggot frog than a stinking pig, eh?’”

  “I really wanted to say it to his face,” Max said, “but I’m not that dumb.”

  “Well, we fucking got away with it anyway. We drove to Vermont, and here we are!” Raphael spread his arms to indicate our house. He looked at me. “Thank you for your part in it. And thank you for your hospitality.”

  “You’re welcome. I love having you come over.”

  “Hey, how much did we get anyway?” Max asked, knowing that I counted it.

  “$103,087.”

  “You’re shitting me!” Raphael grinned. “I didn’t expect that much.”

  “How did you manage to pull that off?” I was dying of curiosity. Bank robberies usually turned sour quickly, and on the rare occasions the guy got away with it, the average take was only about $5,000.

  “I’ve been planning it carefully for the past year. First, I picked a bank that was far enough from any of us. You know, I don’t want to shit where I eat. Then, I dated the bank manager about seven, eight months ago. She was this homely little fat chick. It wasn’t hard to get her to say yes.” It wasn’t hard for Raphael to get any woman to say yes. “We went out a few times, and I fucked her in her office. I got to scope out the place.”

  “Was it good?” Max asked.

  “The fuck? Yeah, $100 grand good.” Raphael laughed and continued his story. “I picked up all kinds of things from her: timing, security, cameras, all of that. I knew to get the real money, we’d have to get in the vault. It only opens at a certain time in the morning and again in the evening. It’s on a timer. That’s why we had to go so early. It worked out, though. No problem!” He said ‘no problem’ now, but it was obvious he had put in a lot of time and effort to make sure that it went off smoothly. Besides, that morning in the bank was probably a little more nerve wracking than he let on.

  “Well done!” I said and raised my beer bottle in a toast. We clinked them together and laughed at our good fortune.

  “I think we need to celebrate properly,” Raphael said and took out a bottle of aspirin. My first thought was he was trying to prevent a hangover before it got started. Then he dumped the bottle out onto the table, and I saw the three little yellow pills mixed in. Ecstasy. A wild night was ahead of us.

  Raphael pushed one pill to me, one to Max, and took the last one for himself. I got up and dumped my beer out in the sink, then filled a pitcher with water. Mixing alcohol with E is a bad idea. I poured us each a glass, making a mental note to be sure we had enough to drink throughout the night.

  “Cheers!” Raphael said, then popped it into his mouth and swallowed it with an enormous swig, downing half the glass of water. We followed suit and sat back, waiting for it to take effect.

  It hit me slowly at first, like a rolling wave as it washed over me, tingling and humming in the background. I stood, no longer able to sit still, and turned the stereo on. We needed music.

  Max and Raphael were still sitting at the table, talking. I wandered around, moving t
o the beat of the music, touching everything, feeling the texture of the rug, the chair, the coffee table, the tactile effect coming on stronger and stronger. I stopped and took a deep breath, letting it out with a smile. The X was in full force, and I felt like I was on the brink of an orgasm.

  “Ellie, you okay in there?” Max called out from the kitchen.

  “I’m great!” I yelled back. I was dancing by myself.

  Raphael got up from the table and danced his way up to me. He was also feeling it. Max followed him in, although I could tell it hadn’t done anything to him yet.

  “You guys always feel it before I do,” he said and plopped down on the couch. It wasn’t long, though, before he was up and dancing with us.

  During the night, an adventurous feeling started to kick in, and I drifted from the living room to the formal dining room. We never ate in there. It was a fancy, for-special-occasions room mostly kept closed off. At that moment, with the only light filtering through from the other room, it felt like a magical realm.

  “Hey, guys, come in here,” I called out as I crawled under the dining room table. “It’s a cave of chairs.”

  “Is that like the Bat Cave?” Max asked as he ducked under the table. He grabbed me and pulled me to the floor in his arms, wrestling me to the ground. I shrieked with laughter and squirmed in his grip.

  “Only if I get to play with Batman’s tools,” I replied between gasps for air. I reached down and grabbed his crotch, giving an unexpected squeeze. He looked surprised and backed up quickly, banging his head on the table.

  “Ow!” He rubbed the spot and started laughing again. “Raphael, get in here! Help me get Ellie!”

  Seeing Raphael enter the “cave,” I grabbed his arm and pulled him on top of us. We squirmed around in the tight space, laughing like Banshees until we were spent and lay sprawled on the floor.

  Still giggling like kids at a pajama party, the three of us huddled in a little pile. We were sitting as close together as three people could, all in contact with one another, as if we needed to touch, our limbs entwined like the Celtic animal interlace designs of Raphael’s tattoos. Tracing the inked patterns with my finger, I studied the looping knots and distorted figures of birds and dragons, fascinated by the intricacies drawn into the flesh of his forearm.