Zhanna Slor - At the End of the World, Turn Left

“ Hey, sistreechka ,” it says. “ I don’t appreciate the ‘cold shoulder,’ as they say in America. We are running out of time .”

The following email is less nice. I will spare you the colorful language. The basic summary of it is that if my dad doesn’t take the DNA test and acknowledge her as a daughter for her Israeli immigration application, Zoya would sue him for eighteen years of child support. I don’t know if that’s legal—or an option—here in the US, but my first reaction is only that it doesn’t sound like her to write something like this. I should have expected it, but I’m still in total shock. This isn’t what we agreed to. Even if she didn’t have a chance of winning, it would destroy his marriage, and possibly his whole life. I scroll down the end of the page, my heart in my throat.

“ We can avoid all this if you just have him sign the attached letter acknowledging he’s my father. Of course, if he sends me $5,000 for moving expenses, I can be convinced to let it go. Or you can send it; I really don’t care. But I will not be ignored any more. If I don’t get either the signed letter or the money within one month of this email, I will tell everybody what your family has done to me. Including your mother. And a lawyer. Then we can let the court decide how much money I am owed .”

This message, so different in tone than her previous correspondence to me, sends a shiver through my spine. Tristan was right. Zoya had been conning me. Was that whole mix-up with the DNA test a lie? Our friendship? Was that too a lie? I reach into my new pack of cigarettes and light one, hoping it will soothe my spirits, which had been so high before, in the cloud of seclusion I’d created. That’s all gone now. Where had Tristan gone with our money? What does Zoya intend to do? I can’t let her destroy my parents’ lives. Not when the whole thing is my fault. I’d been duped, not my dad. I would need to get her the money somehow, I realize. And that much money in so little time? I couldn’t exactly go the legal route. I would need to use my overactive brain to get us out of this mess without any more people being hurt. I sit there and smoke and think for what feels like a very long time. I consider all the ads I saw on Craigslist, and everything Tristan has told me about his past, and an idea starts to form in my mind. With a sigh, I click on the email and open a new message to reply.

“ Zoya. Leave my parents alone. I will get you the money. ”

I know from the calendar in the Shorewood mansion that whoever lives there will return in a matter of days, and I have no other leads of places to sleep, so after the first home I “clean,” a nice condo in Bayside, I tell Tristan we need to find a better solution. This is when I discover Tristan already has an apartment. Turns out the place he told me about when we first met, where he was staying with friends, was really only one friend, a bartender named Chris who was leaving town for the entire month of January. Tristan said we could have been staying there the entire time, but that it was more fun to see what I came up with. I found this revelation bothersome, but chose to ignore it, because I was so relieved.

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.”