RAUL CALLED at half past three. I was ready and I went out. I felt good. I was nervous, but not nervous in a bad way. I felt alive, that was all.
We met up a little after four. Raul had borrowed his cousin’s car. A nondescript car, a few years old. Something grey and Japanese. Temp plates. It was perfect.
Raul was driving. We passed the bank I was supposed to rob. From the street you could see inside through the front window. The location didn’t seem too bad, but when we went past the bank I saw something I didn’t like.
I said, “This one’s no good.”
Raul said he thought it was a good bank to rob.
I said, “The tellers are behind bulletproof glass. It won’t work.”
“Grab one of the customers,” he said.
“How about I grab your fucking grandmother? Let’s find a different one.”
We drove around and looked for something better. Then the banks were closing.
I said, “Fuck.”
Raul said he knew a bank that stayed open late. “It doesn’t close till seven,” he said.
I said alright.
The bank was in a shopping center. It was an older shopping center and I thought that was good because the bank probably didn’t have shit for security. The doors were old; the cameras were probably shitty.
I said, “This one’s good. Let’s wait till there’s no people.”
We waited. I was ready to go as soon as it was empty. I didn’t want people in the way. I was wearing a hoodie and a knit hat. Raul had brought them for me. I had a can of bear spray. The bear spray was Emily’s; she had it from when she’d been out in the woods in Washington State. I’d borrowed it without asking. I hadn’t ever robbed a bank before. I didn’t know what to expect. But I was fine with it. Just I didn’t want people in the way.
I don’t imagine that anyone goes in for robbery if they are not in some kind of desperation. Good or bad people has nothing to do with it; plenty of purely wicked motherfuckers won’t ever rob shit. With robbery it’s a matter of abasement. Are you abased? Careful then. You might rob something.
I owed some dope boys some money. I didn’t give a fuck. Fuck Black and his fucking money. He could get it how he lived. I was only ever afraid of one thing in my life, that I wouldn’t be able to get heroin. I wasn’t ever more than twelve hours from total collapse. And there was the desperation. I was compromised.
* * *
—
RAUL WENT to take a piss. He went around the side of the building and pissed and he came back. “It’s twenty to seven,” he said.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m gonna do it now. Fuck it.”
There were three people working in the bank and there was one customer. The customer was a woman. There were two tellers who were young women and a manager who was an older man, and he was fat and just looked like shit, like a 60-something-years-old baby. Suspenders. You name it. He sat at a desk in an office. One wall of the office was glass and the manager watched me and I could feel he was sure of why I was there. I had the hoodie up and I was wearing my hat real low. But he didn’t want to be sure. It was snowing outside. Maybe I was just cold. I went to the desk where they had the pens and the deposit slips. I took a deposit slip and wrote on it. I wrote the word fuck about ten times. Slowly. I was waiting for the customer to leave. She was a small woman, mid-to late 40s, a black wool coat; she had shoulder-length black hair with grey in it and was someone’s mother.
She left.
I walked up to the counter and gave the note to the teller on the left. She didn’t need to read the note. She got the money out. And the other teller was looking at me like, Aren’t you going to rob me too?
I probably should have on account of I’d made this much trouble already.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t really want to rob anyone.
I just wanted some heroin.
I wanted it to be over.
I walked fast out the door and got in the car and lay down in the backseat.
I said, “I did it. Go.”
Raul took off. Sirens were coming on but we had blended into the traffic and we’d already got away. I put the temp plate back in the window. The street was a river of light.
We split the money. He dropped me off at my car.
I said, “I need some dope.”
He said he didn’t have any.
“I’ll call you in a minute,” he said.
He called ten minutes later. “Call Black,” he said.
I bought three grams from Black and paid him the money I owed and drove home. Emily was back at home already. I showed her the heroin and the money.
I said, “I robbed a bank.”
She said, “I thought you were acting strange this morning.”
I said I’d felt funny all day.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Emily was in the other room, on the mattress on the floor beneath the window, with the blankets twisted and disheveled. We couldn’t be next to one another on account of our kicking and sweating and our throwing up into little plastic trash cans. I had to get up and do something. My legs were damp.
I stood in front of the kitchen sink for forty-five minutes, drinking water so I’d have something in my stomach apart from bile and snot, and down went the water and up came the water—part bile, part snot now—and didn’t let go of my lip and hung down to the drain. It had been more than twenty-four hours since our last shots. All our credit was used up. We needed money. We were fucked.
When she moaned—though it hurt me and I could have cried and it would have cost me nothing—the moan was beautiful, and I felt an urge to run to her when she moaned and said “fuck” like she did. Her bottom lip was perfectly shaped. The beads of sweat were perfect. Her eyes closed and her shirt off. Her pajamas stuck to her. Her scent that was all of her. The strand of hair against her cheek to the corner of her mouth. We came in seconds. When you were sick that was all it took. I had to figure out what I was going to wear.
I left the house in some grey slacks and an oxford shirt that were from the thrift store, in a baseball hat my mom had given me and some phony eyeglasses and a peacoat. I brought a little green plastic trash can with me to throw up in. I was feeling melancholy, but it was a calming melancholy. Life was fucked but I was good. This was what I knew. And fate was fate. My heart was full and life was precious.
We had had a break from the snow and you could see the dormant grass. The day was cold but it was forgiving. It was time to commit a robbery. I drove by the bank. There was a police car parked across the street but the police car was empty. I turned onto the side street that was past the bank, and I threw up in the little green trash can. I took the side street down and turned left onto North Park, made the first left, and went halfway down and parked.
No plans. No stopwatch. No ski mask. No gun. Because I didn’t like shit like this I didn’t give a fuck about doing it the proper way. Emily was sick and all it was was I had to rob the bank or go to jail and I could say I had tried. I figured the best thing would be to just go ahead and do it so I could find out what was going to happen. I got out of the car and started moving that way, stopping once to vomit on a tree lawn. When I got to the bank I took a look around for the policeman who belonged to the police car, and I saw the policeman walking half a block up and he turned to go into a bar.
Now would be fine.
The bank was busy but there were many tellers and the line moved quickly. I took an envelope out of my pocket and examined its contents. I had to puke. I unbuttoned the top button on my shirt and kind of pulled my peacoat over and threw up down my shirt. The lady behind me asked me if I was alright.
I said, “Yeah. Just a sneeze.”
I threw up again.
“I think you’re really sick.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” I said. “Man, I keep sneezing.”