Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

I SKIP BREAKFAST, tell Jonelle I’ve got the morning shift.

“But you don’t open until noon.”

Her stomach pushes out of pajama tops, beautiful and exhausted, sweaty and pissed, all thigh and frown. I explain how two taps are busted, which is true, and that I gotta get there early to flush the lines, which isn’t, Manny on his stool at the end of the bar like, “Assholes wanna drink that perfumy shit, they can do it out of bottles.”

I wait at the bus stop until I’m sure Jonelle’s not peeking behind the curtain and then practically jog over to Seventy-Seventh, wanting to get it over with. The building’s in the middle of a block of pitted brick and layered tags, Wade’s apartment on the top floor. No elevator. Stairs dark and long and falling apart. I knock and there are like six locks, flip, flip, flip, a bar and a latch and a bolt and a guy, tall and cut, closing it all behind me.

“Um, Butterfly?”

He points. “Yeah, but the man don’t like that name no more.”

There are empty rooms. A TV, a table, half a rug. A chew toy chewed to shit. Wade sits at a desk in back, folding up powder, glossy little triangles piled next to a cell phone that rings, rings.

“Hey, Dillard,” he says, and it’s amazing, the difference. The kid with the suitcase and sweater got left behind. Now Wade’s bigger than the desk, all shoulders and arms. The scar has changed, too, like borders redrawn after long negotiations, the graft and his face having come to terms on the subject of just how pink, just how awful. “Word is you’re hitched.”

“Have been a while now.”

“Little wife, little house?”

“I guess.”

“Your sister crashing with you?”

Cher’s not really my sister. She’s adopted. Or more like her mom left her on our couch with half a box of Pampers and never came back. My friends were always like, Yo, Dilly, you ever watch your sister take a shower? or Yo, Dilly, you guys play special games down in the basement? Mainly because Cher grew up tall and quick, with green assassin’s eyes, with long red hair and long pale legs, long and smooth and freckled everything. I was always, Dudes, we’re practically related, and they were always, Practically is an invitation, and I was like, But still and shit and they were like, You gotta expand your horizons, player, even nuns do anal now.

“Yeah, she is.”

Wade laughs. “Do I love your game or what? Quiet Dilly. Goes along, gets along. Meanwhile it’s Hef’s place over there, Dilly pouring cognac, spinning Al Green.”

The phone vibrates. He answers, says one word, hangs up.

“Tell you what, do me a solid and tell Cher to come by sometime.”

“What for?”

“I wanna talk.”

“Here?”

Butterfly puts his cowboy boots up on the desk, powder blue and tooled.

“Yeah, Dillard. Here.”

I DON’T EVEN KNOW why Cher’s home, a couple weeks ago just rolled in all, “Wait, for real? Your wife’s name is Jonelle ?”

“Well, yeah.”

“She black?”

“She’s from Connecticut.”

“So?”

“Her parents are hippies. Her brother’s name is like, Track. Or Twig.”

“You don’t remember?”

“It’s a brain lock.”

“A mental block?”

“Trunk, maybe? Trapper? We don’t see them much. Or really at all.”

“How come?”

“It’s like a compound they live on. Gardens and a teepee. Compost piles.”

“So where’d you and Jo-Jo meet?”

“She comes in, asks for this tropical drink.”

“You still at Manny’s?”

“Yeah.”

“You make good tips?”

I look around the house like, Bet your ass I do , but it was the hippies who fronted the down payment.

Cher yanks my belt loop. “Guess what I really wanna know.”

“Where to find a cheap place to stay?”

“No, dumbass. You miss your sister or what?”

I did. Just hanging out. Laughing at shit wasn’t even funny. Wrestling on the plaid couch. The way she’d toss back her hair and roll the dice, slide the top hat on over to Ventnor Avenue.

“Yeah, not so much.”

“At first I figured it was Jehovahs again,” Jonelle says, easing down the stairs. “This voice I keep hearing but don’t recognize.”

They do the fake shake, the air kiss, compliment each other’s shoes, laugh about being half-sisters now, all Wow, your stomach’s big , and Wow, you’re older than I thought , clasping hands and deciding, Hey, maybe we should hit the mall together sometime, shop for cute onesies and a manicure .

Then Jonelle pulls me aside, hair pulled back, one dangling streak of pink.

“No effing way she’s staying with us.”

“But we’re family.”

“Not even.”

“Still.”

Jonelle points to Mom’s room, which would be the baby’s but isn’t. “You got any cousins we could move in, too?”

Actually I did — a rocker in Seattle running out of things to rhyme heroin with, and then one who deals blackjack up in Reno, would surf the couch faster than I could offer, ride it for life.

“No.”

“Liar,” Cher says from the other room.

I kiss Jonelle’s shoulder, roll the waist of her sweatpants up and down, whisper It’s cool , and I got this , palm the baby who kicks kicks kicks like he can barely wait.

She puts her mouth to my ear, “Who in fuck you think you’re playing?”

And then heads to Parenting Now class.

The door slams, signal for Mom to come out of her room. She asks if anyone wants soup like Cher’s been gone maybe half an hour. I point Mom in the right direction, get her tray ready, slippers ready, Bible near the pillow. All around the bed are candles and rosaries, pictures of men in uniforms and hats, unsmiling like there’s something real important they have to do, if only it wasn’t just out of frame.

Later, everyone’s asleep and it’s just me and Cher flipping channels, sszzt, sszzt, sszzt. There’s car chases and pointy lawyers and shows where most people can’t sing but some can and then everyone votes for the one that can’t anyway. I find an old Archie Bunker, the episode where he’s mad at Edith.

“She’s got some ass on her,” Cher says, wearing shorts and socks and a T-shirt that says NO MEANS MAYBE in sparkly letters.

“Who, Jonelle?”

“No, Sally Struthers.”

“What can I say? I like my shit thick.”

Cher throws a pillow. Nails me in the face.

“Nailed you in the face.”

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Nope.”

“Like, what happened to college?”

“It wasn’t college, okay Dilly? Why does everyone keep saying college?”

“What was it then?”

She sticks her nose in the air, arches her back. “Modeling school. Where you go to learn how to stand. And turn. And sniff.”

“Sniff what?”

“Drugs. Skinny drugs. Pounds-off drugs.”

“For real?”

“Not me, just some other girls.”

“Did Terrence know?”

Cher laughs. Terrence being the one who spotted her on Ocean Beach. Gave her his card, which even Mom figured for horseshit, yeah right, he’s scouting for talent. Two days later my boys boost a Nissan, pick me up. We pass a bottle all the way into the city, ready to kick Terrence’s ass, bang bang bang on the door, and then fall into a lobby so white and clean, frozen air and brushed steel, like the set for a movie about futuristic haircuts. Terrence comes out, little mustache, deep swish. Harmless. Hands around flutes of champagne and crackers, introduces us to the same assistant twice. We leave the car with one tire up on the sidewalk, take the BART home. A month later photos arrive, glossy 8x10s that Mom shows to everyone not slinging dope or ass for half a mile, and even some of those. Terrence circulates his own, agencies and schools, gets Cher a full ride down in L.A., room and board and even study materials covered.