by Zhanna Slor
I expect some dank, dirty studio loft without a real kitchen and am happily surprised to find it otherwise. In reality, it’s a two-bedroom apartment at the outskirts of Riverwest, just past a new park that was an abandoned concrete slab of graffiti only months earlier. The apartment is astonishingly modern for Riverwest; it has brand-new hardwood floors, two large, open living rooms, and a kitchen with recently installed granite countertops and new wooden drawers and cabinets. Chris the bartender is apparently also Chris the carpenter. He’d refinished the entire place after it became an abandoned warehouse. There are even built-in bookshelves and bike hooks where we can hang our bikes; a far cry from the hobbled-together assortment of furniture at my former apartment, where every couch and armchair were a different color and material, and we had more art supplies than dishes. This place is actually nice.
For a while it is easy to imagine we are a normal couple living together. We get into a good rhythm. I meet with my potential “clients,” clean their homes, and report back to Tristan if I see anything worth taking. If there is, I set up a time to meet for our lessons at the Alterra in Bayshore Mall, because the parking lot is such a nightmare there it gives Tristan and me a good cushion of time to prepare an exit strategy. Having the actual stealing happen out of sight is a nice perk, and leaving the homes spotless alleviates some of my guilt, though I don’t really feel as bad as I thought I would. Because Tristan is right: rich people have insurance. It’s really the insurance companies we are hurting. These billion-dollar industries can afford a few hundred dollars’ loss.
The one thing I don’t know and don’t care to know is how and where Tristan sells most of the valuables he finds. It’s easy to remain ignorant; all you have to do is not ask. It takes us only a few weeks to amass four thousand dollars, which is good, because Zoya hasn’t stopped checking in and I know can’t hold her off for much longer. I also understand this scheme can’t go on forever—Milwaukee is small, and people talk. I try to change my hairdo and clothing style every time I go clean, but there’s no changing my face. Sometimes I wear huge earrings or a bandanna, other times I go in khakis and polo shirts I buy from Goodwill. Only once, when I didn’t have time to change, did I go wearing my own clothes. This was probably a mistake.
Another problem is Tristan’s ego. Correction: his restlessness. Once he’s enjoyed a couple of weeks of freedom to read and drink as much as possible, he begins to get so antsy that I become antsy too, even when there’s no reason for it. His energy is just that encompassing. Now it’s not enough for him to break and enter; he wants to do more, go bigger.
“What’s bigger than stealing from rich people?” I ask him, rolling over in bed one morning after he’s brought it up yet again. The sun is bursting inside through the slats of the window blinds, illuminating the mess that has taken the room hostage. I may attempt to be a neat person, but Tristan does not; because we have no furniture for the bedroom, besides the mattress, I suppose I can’t really blame him for leaving clothes and empty food bags on the floor, but it’s still unpleasant to look at. At first, I tried to maintain some order, but it soon became apparent that cleaning the place would be a full-time job. Now I really try to avoid the apartment as much as I can when I’m not asleep. Tristan is the opposite; after so many years of traveling and couch-surfing he is elated to spend most of his time in bed smoking cigarettes and reading Joseph Campbell or taking naps. Well, he was. Now he spends all his time inventing new schemes for us.
Tristan reaches for his pack of cigarettes and lights one. “There’s this guy I know,” he says, blowing out smoke.
“You want to steal from a guy you know?”
Tristan circles his hand in the air. “Well, knowing is relative, right?” he says. He takes another long, intense drag of his American Spirit. “He’s not a friend. He sells shit.”
“Sells what?”
Tristan makes a point of looking out the window, which is framed by an inch of snow and sleet. Down below, a couple with a stroller is walking south down Meinecke screaming incoherently at each other. “Uh, you know. Coke, acid, shrooms. Whatever.”
I sit up abruptly. “What?”
“It’s whatever. He’s so out of it he keeps his cash at home. He’s basically asking for someone to take it.”
“You want to rob a drug dealer? You are not allowed to say ‘whatever’ again during this conversation.” I get out of bed, looking for my pants. “Is that where you went the other day?” I ask, thinking of his recent disappearance. “Did you buy drugs?”
“I know where he stashes his money,” Tristan says, ignoring me. “How many more necklaces do you think I can sell? These suburban fucks keep all the real money in safes and banks. This guy, he doesn’t trust technology. He’s one of those, uh what are they called? Doomsday preppers. He has so much cash he doesn’t know what to do with it. He wouldn’t even notice if we took some.”
“I’m not going to steal from a drug dealer, Tristan.” I say. “That’s insanely stupid.”
“Why? It’s not like he can call the cops.”
“There are worse things he could do if he catches us.” I finish getting dressed, and grab my bag so I can leave. I don’t want to entertain this idea any longer. “You can go without me if you want, but, uh, no.”
Tristan gets out of bed, following me towards the door in nothing but his tattoos and a thin pair of old boxers. He grabs a hold of my arms and looks me in the eye. “I promise you won’t have to do anything. You’ll just act like you want to buy something. I’ll go pretend to use the bathroom, but I’ll really be in the closet getting the money.”
“Why do you need me for that? You can take anyone.”
“You have a trustworthy face.”
He is right; I do have a trustworthy face. At least I did before I started hanging around with Tristan. I break eye contact and turn to look for my coat, which I find a moment later underneath a stack of boxes.
“Trust me, we do this one thing right and we’ll be set for the rest of the year,” he says, practically jumping up and down on his toes now. There’s a spark in his eyes I haven’t seen since we first started our craigslist scheme, and I know it’s careless, but I can’t help but want to say yes. I’ve never been good at saying no to people. He takes me in his arms and squeezes me tight, like precious goods.
“After this, we’ll be done. You can pay Zoya, and we can get an apartment, if you want…or you know what? We can take the money get the fuck out of here. I’m getting sick of this town. What are we waiting for?”
I have to admit I like the sound of that. I’ve been getting sick of Milwaukee, too. The weather alone is enough to send anyone packing this far into winter, and now I have no friends to go out with, no classes to attend. Really, the only thing keeping me around anymore, besides getting Zoya’s money, is my grandparents. And even though I’m not speaking with my parents at the moment, the thought of leaving them too has been an anchor wrapped around my leg. But I can’t stay here forever because of it, I know that. “I really just have to stand there and pretend to buy something?”
Tristan’s mouth spreads into a wide grin. He kisses me. Then he says, “You’ll need to actually buy something.”
“Oh. Like weed? I guess I can do that.”
“This guy doesn’t sell weed.”
I give him a knowing look. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go to a house full of drugs?”
Tristan waves his hand in the air like its nothing. “I’ll be fine,” he says, kissing me on the cheek. He goes back to the mattress and lies down, adjusting the two pillows I grabbed from my parents’ house behind his neck and starting his cigarette again.
“I don’t know, Tristan,” I say again. It’s one thing to steal from an empty house, but quite another to risk being caught, let alone by a drug dealer. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I have a bad feeling.”
He grabs his book from next to the bed and opens it. Then he looks up again, annoyed. “Di
dn’t we already agree on this? What else is there to talk about?”
I look at him, sitting half naked in the bed like he doesn’t have a care in the world, and I can’t help but wonder if this is the man I fell for, or if he has been hiding behind a gentler version of himself this entire time. When we’d met, he seemed so stable. He had quit everything; not just drugs but alcohol and cigarettes too. Eventually the cigarettes came back, followed by the alcohol. Had he returned to drugs, too, without my noticing? It’s not like we spend every second together. I’m not the jealous type, so I don’t generally monitor his whereabouts.
Maybe I should.
I close the door without arguing more, and head out to linger around Riverwest with my sketch pad like I normally do nowadays. But all day long the feeling of dread grows in my stomach. Not the nervous kind, like when we went to the party and stole wallets, but the kind that tells you not to do something, if you only care to listen. Tristan doesn’t believe in premonitions, or fate, so it’s no use sharing the information with him.
When I get back from Gordon Park, where I’d been sketching a dog playing fetch in the grass, Tristan is already dressed and outside, like he’d been watching for me out the window. He hands me a roll of bills and slaps my butt till I get on my bike and follow him. We bike all the way down Center Street, passing a show at Valhalla and several groups of smokers at Mad Planet. We keep biking past Holton for several blocks, then turn left on Martin Luther King Drive and head south. I’ve never gone this far into the “hood,” and the further out of Riverwest and into Harambee we go, the more my pulse drums in my ears.
The feeling of dread intensifies when we get to the house on MLK drive. The duplex, a green and brown Polish flat like much of Riverwest, looks at first like any other house around. Until you get closer and notice the windows are boarded up, the front porch is caving in, and there are three German Shepherds barking at us from the backyard. The only thing separating us from them is a thin dilapidated fence. Outside on the steps several Latino teenagers in baggy clothes are smoking cigarettes and drinking forties. One of them nods to Tristan in greeting.
“Tristan,” I say, gripping my bike handles tight. There is no part of me that wants to get off my bike and go into that house. “I don’t like this. It’s a bad plan. A really bad plan.”
“Anastasia, don’t be racist,” he says. He hops off his bike and motions for me to do the same. I stare at him and don’t move, other than to take off my hat. He ruffles my hair. “I’m just kidding. You gotta relax.”
“Oh, yes, please tell me how I need to relax. That totally always works.”
Tristan places his arms on both my shoulders and blinks. “No matter what happens, I’m going to protect you,” he says, serious for the first time since he came up with this horrible idea. “You don’t need to worry about that. Just take a breath.”
I take a breath. Then I take two more. Then I force my legs to move and release the bike. We lock them to a nearby pole with a “no parking” sign attached to the top, which is a little loose in the cement and could likely be taken out if someone has the energy or wherewithal to do it. I can only hope no one does have the energy, because I will need to get out of here way faster than my nervous legs would be able to take me. And we are now at least a mile from Riverwest, if not more.
“It’ll be over in no time,” Tristan says into my ear. He even kisses my neck softly, right where he knows I like it. “Just do what we said.”
I nod, but my breath comes in short and choppy, and my body is filled with panic in a way it hasn’t ever been before this night. I squeeze his hand tight, like he’s a life jacket and I’m lost in the ocean. The dogs start barking more incessantly the closer we get to the door, and one of them is tall enough to reach its snout over the fence and snarl at me.
I push my body into Tristan’s, even though trying to hide is useless. Soon there is someone at the door. A thin, tattooed man with half his head shaved and the other half black and down to his ear. He is wearing a leather coat and baggy black jeans, and I can’t make out if he’s a punk or in a gang or both. “Hey,” he tells Tristan, then opens the door wide to let us in, but not wide enough that I don’t have to squeeze past him and smell his peculiar mix of sweat, cigarettes, and cologne.
There are more dogs inside, a boxer and a lab, sitting on one of the couches. They don’t look up when they see us. I have to bite my lip to hold in my shock. I’ve seen punk houses plenty of times, but I’ve never seen a drug house, and they may as well be different planets of disarray. From where I stand, I can count three or four dirty mattresses without any sheets scattered about the bedrooms, and even more couches and armchairs that look like they’ve been snatched out of the junkyard then repeatedly beaten with sticks. There are empty pizza cartons filled with cigarettes and circular pieces of cardboard with old cheese stuck on, an array of empty soda bottles and cans that would make a recycling aficionado burn with delight, except that they are also filled with old cigarette butts. It probably goes without saying that the smell is enough to knock me out.
“This your girlfriend?” asks an olive-skinned, very tattooed pot-bellied man who Tristan introduces as Santiago. He coughs, clearing his voice of its phlegm, without covering his mouth, and doesn’t get up from where he sits between the dogs. “Shitttt. Nice job,” he tells Tristan with an approving nod to my chest, his voice thick with an accent and possibly a massive amount of marijuana or pain killers. His eyes are red and half-closed like he could fall asleep at any moment.
“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Tristan responds, trying to brush it off.
Santiago stands up and reaches for my hand, then kisses it. “How may I be of service, miss lady?”
I swallow the lump in my throat and try not to scream, which is what I feel like doing when his skin touches mine. Instead I reach into my pocket and hand over a rolled-up wad of bills that I know amounts to a hundred dollars. So that he doesn’t notice my hand is shaking I shove it quickly into his grasp and clear my throat. “Two eight balls and a quarter of mushrooms,” I say. “Thank you,” I add afterward.
“Polite lady, I like it.” The man nods approvingly, pocketing the cash and nodding at a third man, a tall and skinny one in plaid who is sitting on a different couch with yet another dog. He gets up and heads into a back room.
“She’s Russian,” Tristan says, out of nowhere. I look at him, surprised, then back at Santiago, whose eyebrows are raised, then down at the floor. I just want this to be over. But Santiago asks me to sit down on the fraying corduroy couch next to him and I have no choice but to go.
“Russian, eh?” he asks me, reaching across the couch to cut up some lines of a white powder already lying on a silver platter among the old soda cans and bongs. “Any wise guys in your blood? Those fuckers are brutal.”
I lick my lips, take another big breath. “Not that I know of,” I say. “I do have an uncle who looks like Al Capone. People are always giving him better seats at places.”
“Ha!” Santiago says, almost smiling. He slaps his knee. “Fucking A. Other day I see a program about those spies back in the day, what you call them?”
“The KGB?”
He points at me and smiles. “Yeah, those fucking guys.” Then he shakes his head and repeats what he said before. “Brutal.” For a moment I think the guy isn’t half bad. But then he snorts a line of the powder up his nose with a rolled-up bill, and when he’s done, points at Tristan. “On the house, dude.”
“Oh, no, I’m good,” Tristan says.
“Come on,” Santiago says. “It ain’t fun to party alone. Get the fuck over here.”
“Nah,” Tristan repeats.
Santiago now eyes us both suspiciously, and Tristan starts doing the thing where he gets anxious and hops a little on his feet, until I give him a look to stop it.
“You must have a magic pussy to turn this guy straight,” Santiago says, with a mean laugh. He gives me the rolled-up dollar bill and implies th
at I take the line instead. I look at Tristan again. He’s standing perfectly still, not five feet away, but it may as well be an ocean.
I’ve had coke before, but I didn’t like it. It’s also hard to tell what this powder is. It could be heroin for all I know. If I believed in God, I would have prayed to him right then and there: not only that the coke wasn’t laced with something, but that if He let me out of this mess alive I’d never do drugs again. I would mean it, too. In my previous life I would refuse to put anything up my nose unless I knew where it came from and had seen others do it first. But there’s Tristan’s sobriety to uphold, so I take the bill and snort the next line like I have often done with Adderall. But this isn’t Adderall. Immediately, my entire body feels like I’ve injected coffee and happy pills straight into my brain.
“Pretty good stash, huh?” Santiago asks me. Then he waves Tristan over again. “Get the fuck over here, man, you’re making me nervous. Let’s have a good time already.”
Tristan ignores my pleading eyes and sits down on the floor. He snorts a line of the powder, then reaches over and drags a finger across some loose powder and rubs it on his gums.
“That’s a good boy,” the guy laughs, patting him on the back. “None of this sobriety shit in my house.”
Tristan stands up, shaking his head like he just swallowed something spicy. Still avoiding my eyes, he asks, “Dude, can I use your shitter?”
The guy turns to him with an appalled expression. “What do I look like, a preschool teacher?” he asks, shaking his head. “You gonna raise your hand to talk, amigo?”
Tristan lets out a small, tight laugh, then disappears into the hallway without looking at me. I try not to think about where he is going or what he is doing. If I do, I might pass out from worry. Plus, now that Tristan is gone, I have bigger concerns. Santiago moves closer to me on the couch, and keeps shoving the dollar bill in my hands. “I won’t bite,” he promises.
I have no choice but to take another sniff. Tristan is gone, and I can’t let this guy go looking for him because then we would be in even worse trouble than my being a little high. Even my skin is buzzing. In my mind, I am praying to a God I do not believe in to get us out in one piece. But my mind and body have separated.