Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

It’s not the discipline, he thinks.

Being sober? It’s the colossal boredom.

THE PHONE SITS on a table in the hallway. Jake’s mother’s ring is distinctive, all the way from Tampa, still hasn’t figured the time change. Jake gets out of bed, still dark, dream erection, picks up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Your father is out in the yard again. He won’t come in.”

Jake’s father has dementia, thinks he’s storming Normandy with Red Buttons. Which is good, because if he remembered who he used to be, his sodden bastard of a résumé, he’d shit himself more than he already does.

“Leave him alone, Mom. You know the drill.”

“Also, the counter is full of envelopes. From school. They all say IMPORTANT. In red.”

Jake owes $23,500 in student loans. He is the recipient of a degree in photography from a criminally uninteresting midwestern college. His advisor was a woman who thumbed from Vermont to sixties Alabama and took iconic pictures of marches and water hoses, of police dogs and burning courthouses. A tough act to follow. There was pretty much nothing for Jake to shoot on campus except his friends doing drugs, the shadows cast by another leafless tree, that girl with outrageous pubic hair.

Besides, now everything’s digital. It’s like he spent four years learning how to use a cotton gin.

“What you should do, Mom, is throw that mail away.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“Not important?”

“Not important.”

Luna cracks the door to her room, puts a finger to her lips. Some guy lies on the futon behind her, snoring.

“Pierre?” Jake guesses. “Adam? Jonah? Billy?”

Luna giggles, gives Jake the finger, shuts the door.

“Who’s there? Who’re you talking to?”

“Put some crackers and a glass of milk on the porch, Ma. After a while he’ll wander back in.”

IT’S NOON. Luna stands next to Jake on the loading dock. Beneath them three homeless negotiate over something inscrutable, but probably vodka. Luna takes Jake’s hand as the Truck of the Dead pulls from the lot with a chirp.

“C’mon, let’s get something to eat.”

There’s a burrito place around the corner. The register boy has straight hair and glasses. His front tooth is set in a little frame of gold. Jake and the register boy grin at one another three lunches a week. Jake has been test-driving his Spanish, as well as current events. For instance, pico de gallo means “tip of the rooster.” For instance, the 1988 Mexican general election was stolen away from Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano by the PRI, a conservative party that has been in power for nearly a hundred years.

“Well, now we have no choice,” Luna says, peels foil from a burrito the size of a toddler. “I told St. Cloud all about Tiff’s stash. He says we need proof. Or, you know, something proofish. So tomorrow at lunch we’re following the truck.”

“Follow it how?”

“I sort of have a car.”

Luna has never had a car. There has never been any mention of a car. Jake has carried her amp dozens of blocks to Mr. Teriyaki shows, never the hint of a ride.

“Since when?”

“Yesterday. I traded a first-edition Bukowski.”

Luna does books, brings home a trash bag full every day, sells them to the secondhand place on Cesar Chavez. The owner is a former sleepover. Jake does cameras. He badly wanted not to steal, and for a while didn’t, but he could feel the Warehouse Fuckers resenting him, sort of like Serpico except with better facial hair. Mostly, though, not stealing was Tiffany Marzano’s thing and Jake didn’t want people to think he was copying Tiffany Marzano.

“I’m not going.”

“Sure you are.”

“It’s isn’t right.”

Luna retrieves a pinto bean from her collar, eats it.

“Sure it is.”

Jake raises his new Nikon. He wants to take a picture of the register boy but is out of film, so he aims at Luna instead. She sucks in her cheeks, continues to look exactly like Luna.

The flash bangs and rolls back across the room, again and again.

THE CAR IS a blue Accord. There are stickers with clever sayings on the dashboard, sticky black rectangles where less clever ones have been peeled away. Luna has been excited all morning, working on the story she’ll tell later: Tiffany Marzano robs banks , Tiffany Marzano fucks sailors , Tiffany Marzano is a hit man for a Shanghai triad .

“Oh, wait,” she says. “My sunglasses.”

While Luna’s inside, Jake lets the air out of the Accord’s front tire and then walks across the lot. The hold is mostly empty. There’s a rolled up carpet, a chest of drawers, and a tall wooden packing crate. The crate is half full of pants. Dead people’s pants. Jake gets in, covers himself just as Tiffany Marzano starts the engine.

The Truck of the Dead crosses town, moves gracefully around Sevilles idling in the street, young men leaning in passenger-side windows. Tiffany Marzano makes turns with the butt of one palm, rarely touches the brake, whistles “Viva Las Vegas” in and out of lanes. She is in utter control of all speeds, angles, vectors. She is the Sugar Ray Robinson of driving.

The usual icons glide by, the orange bridge, the phallic tower, the island jail. Jake’s back begins to hurt. The denim smells wheaty with grime. Finally the truck stops and Tiffany Marzano gets out. They’re parked on the industrial side of the bay, near a performance arts school. The water is a shabby blue. Trawlers chug in circles. Windsurfers lean into the gusts.

Jake watches Tiffany Marzano buy a hot dog from a cart, eat it in two bites, pick a bench. Students stream past her, around her, laugh and yell and slap one another’s backpacks. Some wear uniforms, some wear costumes. A Tybalt and a Mercutio spar with wooden swords.

Jake climbs out, walks over.

“You were in the truck, uh?”

He nods, takes two pictures.

“Thought I saw you in the rearview. Figured maybe I should open the back door, let that crate slide out into traffic.”

“You would never. Also, Luna told St. Cloud.”

“Told him what?”

“I dunno. What you’re up to.”

“What am I up to?”

“I guess this.”

“Your girlfriend is a cunt.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Your roommate is a cunt.”

“Yeah. I’m sort of moving out.”

Tiffany Marzano smiles as a little girl runs over, white sweater and pigtails. Jake takes two pictures, brackets the aperture, takes one more. Tiffany Marzano leans over and removes the Nikon from his hand, snaps the lens clean from the body, lobs it at a pigeon that barely deigns to move. The little girl laughs. She has a mole near her lip, ringlets of black hair set against a white dress.

“What’s your name?” Jake asks.

“Summer.”

Tiffany Marzano and Summer talk for a while, hug, tell secrets. Locker doors slam. Tennis balls pong in spurts. Finally, a bell rings and Summer jumps up, runs back toward the school.

“So yeah, I took her down south for a couple weeks. Just to the beach. Matinees and fried clams. A little pink motel. Her father has custody, but I brought her back. Was always going to. Still, we roll up and asshole’s got a lawyer plus half the force waiting in the driveway.”

Jake tries to imagine Husband Marzano. Wraparounds and a goatee? College wrestler with a flattop, still lifts twice a week? Or maybe a mouse with round glasses, washes up after dinner without being asked.

“I thought you were queer.”

“So now I got lunch visitation. Also, a record.”

Another parent comes over and shakes Tiffany Marzano’s hand. There’s talk of a fundraiser, T-shirts for the soccer team. They bump knuckles and the woman goes away.