Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

“Why, you gonna tell?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Jake is. He would never.

“Listen, I did eleven months behind a misunderstanding,” she says, all shoulders and brown skin, a shark’s tooth around her neck on a tight leather strap. On weekends Tiffany Marzano plays three sets as El Vez, the butchest Presley this side of Tucson. “Now I’m on a registry. No one will rent me a room.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?”

“Does it matter?”

Probably not. Jake needs the job not the drama, been clean almost eleven months.

“It’s cool. Let’s roll.”

Tiffany Marzano rams it into gear. Time is money. They get paid by the load. The Truck of the Dead grinds up hills, down hills, spews resignation and exhaust into every last corner of San Francisco.

It’s 1992, the middle of a health crisis.

A citywide emergency.

Or maybe the CIA gave everyone AIDS on purpose.

Either way, it’s also Friday, and Jake needs to cash his check at the deli on Valencia. If he doesn’t get there before five, Luz, the owner, runs out of cash. She’s a tiny Salvadoran with a flowered smock and faded blue angels on her neck. She’ll smile at Jake, but not at Tiffany Marzano.

“Tiff is alright,” Jake whispers. “Give her a chance.”

Luz rolls her eyes, tosses in two mios for every dios , recounts the money.

WAREHOUSE FUCKING is rampant.

There’s a group of men, a couple women, like a club. A press gang. Going at it in utility closets and dimly lit storage rooms. Behind vast piles of donations, pyramids of broken microwaves and mismatched shoes, curls of ejaculate across dusty cement that might as well be raw plutonium.

Jake does not fuck.

It’s been over a year.

Just the thought of being touched, by anyone or anything, fills him with an elastic dread. Even a shower seems too intimate. He tends to scrub over the sink with a wet cloth, keep his shirt on, eyes shut.

Sex and death are the same thing, all the neon stickers say so.

Being high is also death, but at least comes in euphoric increments.

Since Jake has nothing to show for his twenties but a handful of nods, some insipid lyrics, and endocarditis, he figures it’s probably best not to judge. Even though the Warehouse Fuckers circled him at first, made insinuations, played with his hair.

Jake told Luna, the dispatcher, who said, “Try being less hot.”

Jake told St. Cloud, the manager, who said, “Gotta learn to deal, girlfriend.”

Jake told Tiffany Marzano, who threw a Warehouse Fucker off the loading dock and then stomped on another’s lunch.

Flat banana, flat banana, flat hummus wrap.

The orbiting stopped.

PROCEEDS FROM THE sale of donations go to charities with a variety of acronyms and intentions. Some deliver vegan meals, run triple-blind trials, or give away rubbers wrapped like gold doubloons. Another trains Dobermans for the sickly to pet bedside.

At least that’s what the pamphlet says.

Jake takes a picture of the mole above Tiffany Marzano’s lip as Luna’s voice cuts through the radio.

“Home base. Over. Jake? You there?”

Luna is also Jake’s roommate.

“I know you’re listening. Grab the handset already.”

Jake rarely grabs the handset.

“You’re late. The client has complained twice. St. Cloud is righteously pissed. Kindly move ass. Over.”

“We need a direction,” Tiffany Marzano says.

Jake’s map is marked with red stars, like crime scenes. Longitude and latitude might as well be Mandarin and Cantonese. Before he was hired, St. Cloud quizzed him with an atlas. Jake guessed six times, got five right. He also had to fill out a questionnaire. Are you familiar with local topography? Do you have an opinion on sexual orientation? Also, what’s it like being a vampire? Jake realizes he may have hallucinated the last one. He’s been tested sixteen times, clean sixteen times, still positive the virus is secretly eating into his brain, occluding his thoughts. Who’s to say that he isn’t already dead, discovered cold and blue on a hardwood floor, just another tedious overdose waiting to rise at dusk?

Tiffany Marzano snaps her fingers. “Right or left?”

The truth is they’re lost. Cars behind them lay on the horn. Jake shuts his eyes, prays to whatever god will have him and a few who won’t.

A stack of boxes suddenly appears.

“Over there. The driveway.”

Tiffany Marzano double-clutches, backs in. A client stands in front of his garage, next to an array of Dead Boyfriend items, stuff he can’t wait to get rid of, never wants to let go.

“Our condolences,” Jake says, and begins to triage. Junk first, wedged into the crush zone by the stove. Valuables last, up front and wrapped with packing foam. There’s a brand new Nikon in a leather case. A bag of socks. A sconce and an ottoman. A vintage bowling shirt that has KEVIN sewn over the breast pocket.

The client looks like he’s about to cry. Jake would give the client a hug, except then the client might notice Jake’s complete lack of body heat or pulse. Also, all the way home Tiffany Marzano would make Jake recite Tiffany Marzano’s List of All the Things Caring Will Get You.

“Where do I sign?” the client asks.

“No papers,” Tiffany Marzano says, although there are. Practically a novella’s worth. But names trigger reminiscences. Reminiscences become Kleenex. Kleenex is the difference between completing three or six hauls.

Tiffany Marzano is an instrument of change, not a grief counselor.

Almost no one asks for the papers twice.

ACROSS THE KITCHEN walls are photographs by Jake, tacked into plaster, chronological. One a day for a year, all of Tiffany Marzano. Always in profile, always behind the wheel. Framed by stoplights and street corners, buildings and people, the time-lapse orange that is San Francisco trivial in the face of her stare.

“Welcome home, sweetie,” Luna says, sprawled on the couch, blond and pale and 80 percent ass. It’s a popular look. A series of sleepover dates wait in towels outside the bathroom on Saturday mornings. There aren’t many repeaters. Luna likes to dangle them at arm’s length, feel their scales, toss them back. She prefers an ongoing scientific sample. Once there was a guy named Jordan for almost a month and then she had to delete the data and start over again.

“So did you ask her?”

Every day at noon Tiffany Marzano takes the truck. For exactly one hour. Doesn’t say where or why. For weeks Luna has been bothering Jake about it. She plays in a band called Mr. Teriyaki. Their landlord’s name is also Mr. Teriyaki. He owns a company that makes rubber vaginas. The different models all have names. Perky Pam. Moan Jett. Deep Erin. They come in a velvet pouch. In exchange for rent, every four months Luna drives a load to St. Louis. This time she wants to pocket the U-Haul cash, use the Truck of the Dead instead.

“I’m not asking anyone anything.”

Luna frowns. “I think Tiff’s got a stash out in the avenues. I bet she’s hoarding dining room sets and vintage toasters.”

“No way.”

Everyone knows Tiffany Marzano doesn’t steal, which makes them nervous. The fear of investigation lingers over the warehouse like scorched hair, visions of men from corporate busting through the doors with tracking numbers and donation printouts, dock guys who turned so many stereos into so much powder taken away in cuffs.

“Yeah, but if we tell St. Cloud, he’ll suspend her and then I’ll be back in a week and no one will even notice the truck was gone.”

“What if she gets fired?”

“Nah,” Luna says.

Jake picks up the remote, which is broken. He finds an Eveready in a drawer filled with dimes and birthday candles. The 49ers blink from the screen. There’s an interception. One of the linebackers punches the goalpost like a boxer. The crowd cheers, slaps five. Jake longs to be so high that the entire stadium laughs as he floats past, hovers six feet above their cowlicks and bald spots and dry umbrellas.