Marcus Sakey - The Amateurs

As the car headlights had splashed across her, she’d known what was coming. Not specifically, of course, but she’d been able to feel the weight of potential. And with it a chance, a slim and slippery chance to make things right. To change the future that was bar reling toward them. A chance that depended on her being clever enough, quickly enough.

If only she had thought faster. All of this would be different.

“Hello?” Ian pulled keys from his front pocket. “I’m going home.”

From the couch, Mitch said, “Why?”

“There’s nothing more we can do now, right? We just have to wait until tomorrow, talk with Alex. So I’m going to go take a shower and try to sleep.”

“Is that smart?” Jenn looked at Mitch.

“What are you asking him for?” Ian tossed his keys from hand to hand.

“It’s fine,” Mitch said. “It doesn’t matter if he waits here or there.” He looked at Ian. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“Like what?”

“You know what.” The way Mitch said it, that carefully measured tone, made her think he was talking about some specific thing.

Ian made a sound that was part sigh, part frustration. “I told you I was sorry.”

Mitch nodded. “OK.”

Jenn rubbed at her eyes, ran her hands through her hair, pulling it into an unbound ponytail and then dropping it to fall on her back. “All right.” She pushed off the counter she’d been leaning against. “So we get together tomorrow morning.”

“You hear from Alex, you’ll let me know?”

“Of course.”

The three of them walked to the front door. Though there was comfort in hiding here, it was still strange having them in her apartment. Ten years of unsuccessful dating had made her want a sanctuary that was all hers. It was just an apartment, but she’d painted every wall and picked out every piece of furniture, from the thin-legged hall table to the plush rug beneath the bed.

“You need a lift?” Ian asked.

“I’m going to stay in case Alex calls,” Mitch said. “If that’s OK, I mean.” He looked at her questioningly.

“Sure,” she said, realizing she was glad of it.

“All right. See you tomorrow.” Ian started down the steps. Jenn watched him go, Mitch beside her, the two of them standing like the hosts of a dinner party waving farewell to the last guests. When Ian was out of sight, she said, “What was all that about?”

“What?”

“You telling him not to do anything stupid.”

“Oh.” Mitch looked pained for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess you should know. He was high.”

“High? When? Tonight?”

“Yeah. Cocaine. That’s why he was so twitchy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He shook his head. “He told me he did it sometimes. I think that’s what his bathroom breaks are about. But I never thought he’d do it tonight. I about killed him.”

“High. Jesus.” She closed the door. They looked at each other for an awkward moment. “We aren’t very good at this, are we?”

“At being criminals? No. But cut us some slack. It’s our first time.”

Their eyes met and held for a second, and then she started laughing, and he joined in. He had a good laugh, one of those that came deep and unself-conscious. His fed hers, and they kept at it longer than the joke deserved. It felt good. Pushed away the weight of what they had done, reminded her that no matter what, she was alive. That, in fact, she felt more than she could remember feeling in the last ten years. Like her father always said, any day above-ground counted as a good one. She said, “Vodka?”

“Oh God yes.”

She led the way to the kitchen, flipped on the overheads, then pulled Smirnoff from the freezer, the bottle frosted white. Took down two glasses, dropped an ice cube in each, and poured generous doubles. “Cheers.” The first swallow was sharp and cold and real, a pure physical sensation.

The air-conditioning was on, and she was chilly in the dress, her flesh tight with goose bumps. Shopping for it had been fun. Playing the part in advance, life coming into focus, seeming to matter. Earlier in the afternoon, when she’d gotten dolled up, she’d stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom and liked what she saw. Not a woman in her thirties with a shit job and no plans. A heartbreaker femme fatale in a dress cut too low for a bra, gearing up for a robbery. She’d stood and stared, and then hiked the edge of the skirt up, hooked her thumbs in the waist of her panties and pulled them off. The feeling of air at the hinge of her thighs had been electric. Hundred-proof life.

“I like your place,” Mitch said.

“Thanks.” She took another sip of vodka. “Me too.”

He nodded, looked around. She could see him struggling for something to say. “Been here long?”

“About five years. Before I moved here I’d been living with Brian-you never met him, did you?-and before that with some girlfriends. When things fell apart with Bry, I decided, enough; time to have my own space. Do things my way. You know?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t like living alone?”

“It’s OK.” He paused, shrugged. “Lonely sometimes.”

“I know. But there’s a good kind of loneliness too. Where you realize that maybe you are alone, but that it’s better than being someone you’re not.” Thinking back to Brian’s old apartment, the smell of cigarettes, him on the couch on weekend afternoons, goofy-haired, watching football. Something sweet in it at first. But somewhere along the line she’d realized that their present was their future, that Brian, nice as he was, would never change, never be anything else. That he didn’t want to. If he had his choice, it would be fifty more years of football Saturdays and Sunday-morning sex, of workday weeks and frozen pizza. Dropping dead within days of each other, shortly after a visit from the grandkids. It wasn’t long after that she started picking fights.

For no reason but to have something to say, she said, “You know one of my favorite things? Some days I’ll come home, pour a drink, and climb into bed with a couple of magazines. Not real magazines, Newsweek or anything. I mean junk. Celebrity baby magazines. And I’ll lay there in bed and drink and catch up on what crazy thing Britney Spears has done lately.”

He laughed. “Really?”

“Yeah. I don’t take it seriously. I mean, I like to check out the clothes and stuff, but that’s sort of an excuse. I know it’s silly, looking at the lives of these people I’ll never meet, don’t even want to. I just kind of get a kick out of being a voyeur.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” He took a swallow. “I actually know what you mean. Sometimes when I’m on break at the hotel, I’ll go up to the second floor of the lobby, where there’s this big balcony. Lean over and watch people.”

“Watch them what?”

“Just… watch them. Twice-divorced sales executives hitting on each other in the lounge. Tourists with cameras asking directions to Navy Pier. Couples that have been together so long they don’t talk, don’t seem to need to. If you watch long enough, you start to see that everybody looks like they’re missing something. Like we all lost something and we’re all looking for it.”

“True love?”

He laughed. “I read a poem once, had a line that went something like, ‘the heart asks more than life can give.’ I think it’s that, really. We all want everything. But we’d settle for a sense that things matter. That there’s more to it than just getting up in the morning and making it through a day.”

“Do you see anybody who has that?”

“Not very many.”

“But some.”

“Yeah. Some.”

Their eyes met and then slid apart. Without warning, an image hit, the blast of light spitting from Mitch’s hand, the way it seemed like it was the light that hit the man on the ground, that punched him in the heart and brought a dark circle to blossom on his shirt.