Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

There are so many reasons for Penny to be annoyed.

To feel dismissive and superior in an abrasive way that will eventually lead to being kicked to the curb, guitar case flung open in the middle of the street and forget about your deposit, gutter punk!

Instead she finds that on most nights she loves the boys unreservedly.

Like when they open mail together in the front hall after work, make fun of catalogs.

Or haggle at the farmers’ market with the old woman who looks like a candied yam.

Or huddle under the afghan, crunch spice-infused popcorn all through Houseboat with Cary Grant, then tear Inception a new ass, not only because that shit made zero sense, but Leo the Cap is totally overrated!

By summer, Penny can’t wait to come home each day and do something fun. Like make aprons out of oven mitts, or play Risk for a nickel an annexation. She comes to depend on Francis and Jack for all number and variety of familial experiences heretofore unfurnished or even subconsciously recognized as lacking, which include long, supportive talks about her boyfriendlessness and the possibility that she could meet a cute little Martha or a Susan instead, no one would judge. Not to mention regular rent extensions, which Francis is 77 percent cool about and tends to remind her of in a ridiculous cowboy accent, It’s check writin’ time, darlin’ . Penny is totally paying what she owes. Which is 2.6 months’ rent. She’s good for it. Really. She has a job doesn’t she? Of course she does. At a deli called Food 4 Thought where all the sandwiches are named after famous people. Like the Andy Warhol is an open-faced beef. The Bo Diddley is spiced ham. The Sarah Palin is mayo on white, which Penny thinks only dolts still laugh at, like shooting fish in a performance art piece about fish shooting.

But then on the morning she’s about to run down and jump in their bed, give Jack a tarot reading on the coverlet that’s so soft it feels like unborn orphan rhino skin, which is what vicuna actually is or maybe Francis was joking, she accidentally drops her deck on the floor.

Lying exposed, the Emperor of Meat.

Which means the boys are taking a trip.

Penny hates being alone, hates announcements.

Ten minutes later Jack and Francis sit her down for a big announcement.

“We’re taking a trip!”

She shuffles the deck again.

The Collector of Cups.

Which means they also intend to acquire half the remaining trinkets of the ancient world and crate them back to D.C. in order to assemble a display of sometimes cursed and other times simply overpriced artifacts that will span two rooms and every remaining empty shelf.

“Where?”

Jack unfolds a “Welcome to Istanbul” brochure. There are fabulous arrays of tiles and minarets and invigorating spa treatment packages. A gorgeous green pool stretches to the horizon line above a city Alexander the Great once conquered, or at least aggressively visited. Penny can taste danger at the tip of her tongue, which is where she’s most psychic. Pure frozen metal. Sand fleas and pipe bombs and every fifth tuk-tuk driver wearing a suicide vest. But she doesn’t have the words to warn or explain. And if she tells them how she knows what she knows, the boys might stop thinking it’s a coincidence she wins at every board game, knows every answer, maybe even mind-melded them into letting her move in to begin with.

Besides, she’s proud of how proud they are of their extemporaneousness, which in itself is a word three vowels and four syllables too long to argue with.

Penny reaches down, turns over the Curiously Aroused Brigand.

At least she won’t be alone.

“When?”

“Next week,” they say, click imaginary glasses.

PENNY HOLDS HER shit together for six and a half days.

It’s not so much the heat as the humidity.

It’s not so much the impending as the doom.

Her mood is lethal, like a hole’s been cored in her forehead, vital prefrontal bits vacuumed out and a grim sludge poured back in.

C’mon, girl, make it work!

She can’t.

It’s gonna be okay!

It’s not.

The phone’s about to ring!

No shit.

“Penelope? Phone!” Francis calls, rolling his carry on carefully over the sustainable hardwood. For some reason there’s an extension in the upstairs bathroom, mounted above the toilet. Penny slides from a knot of sofa pillows, her cellphone cut off because she never really sent in the first payment let alone all the other ones, so she’s stuck with the land line, although is fairly sure no one has the number. Not even work. Not even Mom, who might have died two years ago, and definitely not Dad, who was, basically, theoretical.

She lines the toilet seat with strips of Charmin, picks up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Penny Laid!”

“What?”

“Hey, relax. It’s Kurt.”

“I know who it is.”

“Cool. What you been up to?”

What she’s been up to is reading a lot of philosophy. Kant. Leibniz. Husserl. Jack owns many, many books, and because of the views of various morose Germans, Penny has come under the thrall of the idea that meaning is relative. Or that everything is relatively meaningless. It’s a theory supported by generations of doctrine and precept, as well as the fact that she fucked Kurt in the utility closet at work two days ago.

And then spent the night reeling in a priori mortification.

Even if it wasn’t fucked exactly. Not dictionary fucked, but definitely parts of him inside of parts of her.

“I don’t have a raincoat,” he’d said, grinning. “So let’s just play some games.”

Games?

The word had made her want to howl at the planet and all the things wrong with it, the very worst of them being how everything was so appallingly casual. She almost made it through the next shift by pretending there were no games, let alone ones that had been played, when Kurt pinched her ass in front of a regular.

If there were a tarot for Groper Never Gropes Again, she would have whipped it out and kabobed it to his chest.

Instead she botched a meatball Bebe Rebozo, toasted a Timberlake, slathered gravy on a Kate Moss, and then made the Truman Capote with corned beef instead of cold blood. Or no, wait, salmon spread. The waitresses began to complain. They already hated Penny as it was, mainly since she never wore a bra, which was number one-through-five on the list of Ten Things That Will Make a Waitress Immediately Hate You, even though she only got stares from boys who liked girls who looked like gutter punk boys, so where was the competition? Penny had tried to be friends, admired how the waitresses counted their greasy tips twice and made jokes about their endless periods and all had toddlers named Liam or Conner that they failed to hurry home to at the end of every shift.

But the haters weren’t having it.

Food 4 Thought’s manager, who everyone called Uncle, finally shook his big gray dreadlock head and told Penny he had no choice but to put her on probation, Due to an avalanche of poorly constructed sandwiches plus staff unrest . Which basically meant she was demoted to condiments for the foreseeable future.

It was total bullshit.

Or totally deserved.

One of them for sure.

“I’M NOT UP TO anything,” Penny says, releases a stream of hot pee. “Okay, Kurt?”

“Fine. What are you so grumpy for?”

“I just found weevils in my Cheerios.”

It’d actually happened a few days ago. Six of them wiggling in the milk. A portent. Evil Weevil was a rare card, delivered only one message: chaos. Penny screamed and dropped the bowl. Francis rubbed her shoulders while Jack cleaned it up.