Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

“Hey rock star,” Lavelle says. “I owe you one.”

Kurt reaches into the car and rolls down what’s left of the window. “More than one.”

“No, for real. Sorry about that.”

Penny likes Lavelle’s unhurried voice, his stance, thinks maybe he used to be a soldier. Sprayed the desert with bullets, never hit anything. Was yelled at, yelled back. Got that girl in the auto pool pregnant, got discharged, has a whole life full of actual experiences instead of just ironic jokes and opinions about movies.

“It’s okay,” Penny says.

“No, it isn’t,” Kurt says. “This is gonna run at least eighty bucks.”

“It’s not even his car,” Penny says.

“Oh no?” Lavelle says.

“He’s not even in a band,” Penny says.

“Who said I was in a band?” Kurt says.

Penny cuts the deck. The Consigliere of Selma. Lavelle has a gold hoop in his left ear, just like the guy in the picture. She leans down and sweeps up a handful of safety glass. The shards are beveled, refract the asphalt a dirty pink.

“I seriously want to take a bath in these.”

Lavelle laughs. “You one of those sensitive arty chicks, huh? All full up on deep thoughts?”

Penny wonders if not answering is a confirmation or denial. Voltaire once said all language was an elitist ruse. On the other hand, Voltaire was a dead French asshole and Penny was here, now, in an empty parking lot with a very large man. And Kurt.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

She points to the car.

“Were you gonna drive it to a chop shop?”

Lavelle shakes his head. “You been watching too many movies, slim. No such thing. Honestly? I was just hoping you had a couple twenties in the glove. My experience being, most Volvos do.”

“Okay, we are officially exchanging thief tips with the guy who broke into our car,” Kurt says. “Just for the record.”

“You party, rock star?”

Kurt frowns. “Maybe.”

Lavelle writes his number on the back of a coupon.

“You leave a message here, I hook you up with a little weed. The dank. Just so we straight.”

“That’s sweet,” Penny says.

“Sweet?” Kurt says.

“Y’all talk like an old couple, you know it?”

“We’re just friends,” Penny says.

“Well, this has been awesome,” Kurt says, as some of the teenagers straggle back. “Diplomacy. The uniting of cultures and whatnot.” He takes Penny’s hand, gets her into the passenger seat. “But we gotta split.”

Lavelle hikes up his shorts. “I was you, I would, too. Assuming I would ever be you, which I wouldn’t. But still.”

“Bye,” Penny says.

Kurt flashes the peace sign, peels away.

THE BACKYARD IS ten feet of cement surrounded by a rusty fence. Kurt turns over an old plastic kiddie pool, fills it with a hose, then drags out most of the sectional, a suede L that Jack calls his Burgundy Mistress.

Penny finds a terry robe in Francis’s closet, attaches her wallet chain, pure gangster. Kurt strips to his Calvins. They pop beers, soak their feet.

Penny hasn’t been swimming in, what, six years? She was good once, a wisp in the water, fast and light. They’d practically begged her to join the school team, try out for state’s. Or wait, that isn’t true. Penny hates swimming. She almost drowned in a lake in Kentucky that time her stepfather, really just some guy named Jim who always burned the hot dogs, grabbed her and May by the armpits and threw them in, laughed as they stroked and flailed, covered in rotted leaves and mud.

Kurt extends his legs, rubs his feet against hers.

“So let’s talk about the other day.”

Penny cuts her deck. The Time Machine That’s Actually a Cardboard Box.

“There was no other day.”

“Will you drop the shit for second? I mean, listen, I get your thing. Alternachick against the world? Hates everything almost as much as she hates herself? That’s cool. Not too original, but whatever.”

The phone rings.

“That’s probably work,” Penny says.

Kurt runs his hand past her knee, lets it rest just beneath the hem of her robe. She’s not wearing a bathing suit. Mostly because she doesn’t have one.

“But you know what? It’s okay to let someone like you. Me, for instance. Punk’s not gonna kick you out of the club.”

Penny gets up, yanks open the glass door. There’s an office in the basement, which is damp and slightly cooler than the rest of the house. She tiptoes down the wooden steps, sits at the desk.

I don’t think Jack would like your wet clompers on the mahogany, Francis says.

Framed pictures of the boys line the far wall. In a convertible smiling, in the kitchen smiling, hilariously knocked over by waves. Jack nods in a reindeer sweater, expectantly under mistletoe.

He’s right. I don’t like it at all.

Penny puts her feet down. “Sorry.”

To be honest, hon? I’m not super happy with the way things are going in general.

Seriously, Francis says. How long have we been gone? A couple hours and already it’s Risky Business?

“I know, I know.”

And let’s be real, you’re no Rebecca De Mornay.

“You don’t have to be mean about it.”

Jack sighs from a selfie. Listen, hon, Rough Trade out there may talk a good game, but you better believe he only wants one thing.

Yeah, Francis says. Did you at least buy some protection?

“No.”

Bad planning, Jack says.

“There’s nothing to plan for.”

Why, because you can’t get preggo? Haven’t you had your first period yet?

“Hey,” Penny says.

You are awfully skinny. I recommend raw fish. Maybe a bowl of Triscuits and some niacin.

“That’s none of your business!”

Don’t get all exercised. We’re just trying to —

Kurt calls down the stairs.

“Trying to what?”

“Wrong number,” Penny says.

“You coming back up?”

“In a minute.”

BY EIGHT THE kiddie pool has a dozen beer bottles swaying at the bottom. The new Descendents album cranks through the stereo, six components in an oak rack.

Penny finds Kurt in the kitchen.

“I didn’t say it was okay to have a party.”

“You didn’t say it wasn’t. Or wait, maybe you weren’t around to ask.”

He turns to talk to the waitress who always wears the red shirt that shows off the red bra. Most of Food 4 Thought stands around drinking beer. Cooks and busboys talk shit, take turns shoving each other into counters and against the stove. Two register girls make out on the patio. White smoke blows from the grill, a dishwasher with purple hair adding stuff to the flames: a glove, some magazines, The Collected Bizet .

Penny finds Uncle in the hall, admiring a set of figurines depicting the all stars of Czarist Russia.

“We really should have a Rasputin sandwich,” he says.

In the living room there’s the three-tiered sound of broken glass.

Uncle snaps his suspenders. “I’m guessing that’s a mirror?”

They go to look. On the floor are fragments of red and black.

Was it the tea set? Francis asks, from a picture of Francis sipping tea.

“Yeah,” Penny says.

“Yeah, what?” Uncle says.

The world is now a less civilized place, Jack says.

Penny collects most of a saucer, holds the delicate shards in her palm.

“Maybe I can glue it back together?”

“I doubt it,” Uncle says.

Listen to Pollyanna .

Penny yanks Francis off the wall, slaps him face down. “You’re dead or blown up anyway. What difference does it make?”

What do you mean? Jack says. We’re having cocktails. We’re having dinner on a ship floating down the Bosphorus.