Working on a short story, curious if this opening has enough force to sustain more pages of narrative. If you're one to offer criticism, please let me know.
We were just talking one night, you know, bullshitting and feeling kinda low—our eyes focused on our cigarette butts and our fingers a bit shaky. And then it came out like a question like, “why don’t we get married?” or “how about you just go and buy that dress?” that when Mac said, “why don’t we just take what we need?” I lit another smoke, quite intrigued, gut aflutter, and was ready to ask, “when?”
I’ve never been much of a thieving kind of dude; I’m usually shaky and tear-eyed in my bed long before I’m out and sleazing around for a wakeup fix. And despite the manipulation and general snaky behavior of and with regard to my poor widowed sister, I haven’t stole much from anybody. But after many months of the drab junkie-on-the-run routine, you could say I was looking for a thrill—and a larger supply.
At present, we were on a pharmaceutical settling-for-what-works, staving off withdraws by taking these orange-flavored pills that you put under your tongue—a kind of high-tech Methadone—and we smoked much pot for boredom, perspective. The past few days had been as hot as our stomachs in the mornings. We came outside only after dark, spending entire work shifts sweating in our unwashed jeans and watching the television on Mac’s couch, the fan spewing warm, rotten air, cat dander and dust behind us.
That night, as we sat on the porch outside his apartment, I looked down at the swimming pool below lit up by the halogens underwater, and the night wind blew soft with temperate relief. I leaned on the guardrail and rubbed my eyes.
“I think I’m willing to do it, but we have to do it right, I mean, we need to like research and shit,” I said. “I don’t want to get busted.”
“Of course we don’t want to get busted, but Jesus—just don’t even think like that. You’ve got to think like a criminal, like this is your job, and getting busted is like getting a speeding ticket: it’s not something you base your life worrying about, it’s just one of those things…”
“Ok, fine. But what can we learn about the Chance brothers’ mistakes? And like, how much time did they get anyway? Did they get out on bail or were they locked up until their judge visit? What’s it like in there anyway? I mean, we’d just be taken to county at first, right? And also, isn’t there some kind of leniency, like we’re only first-time offenders, so doesn’t that make any diff—“
Mac cut me off. “Dude, just stop it—you sound like a goddamned idiot. I told you: you need to ditch this idea of getting caught. It’s not gonna happen. It just ain’t.” He made one of those famously sketchy left-to-right look-arounds that people often make when they’re about to commit felonies, or, in Mac’s case, divulge sensitive information. He leaned in and hushed his voice.
“The reason they got busted is because they didn’t know when to stop. It just wasn’t in the stars for them that night.”
I asked him what happened.
Voice still lowered, the night was settling, the apartment windows surrounding us were glowing and flashing blue from the TVs, he told me:
“So, their usual technique was to find the pharmacies with the skylights on the rooftops—most of them do—and to either unscrew or pry open the clear plastic covers. Since they don’t put usually put trips in the ceilings of buildings, unless it’s like fucking Fort Knox, they would just lower themselves down and bag up what they wanted and climb back out and split. But this place had these super-duty stainless steel frames and bolts holding in the plastic and there wasn’t any way to break them without creating a huge amount of noise. They were on that rooftop for an hour fumbling with various tools and crowbars—trying to be delicate and quiet-like and still brute about it—until they finally resigned and came down.
“They stood behind the building deciding what to do. For way too long, I mean, they should’ve just left, cut their losses. Alec just wanted to say fuck it, but Mikey, the younger one, he got wise and ran back to their shitty little hatchback. He comes back with this cheap little battery powered Sawzall, you know, like a horizontal saw that jets out of a plastic handle. And by now he’s all pissed off and frustrated and probably a little dope-sick, and not thinking clear and Alec goes along with it. They’ve been at the location for like over an hour now and, being a Tuesday night, didn’t expect much attention.
“So they head over to the adjacent store to the pharmacy, just a fucking sewing shop, and Mikey motions to the front door while holding the Sawzall and Alec, the reluctant one, he puts his denim-sheathed elbow right through the glass, like a fucking pro. There wasn’t hardly any reverb throughout the little strip mall, let alone any kind of alarm—I mean how many grandmas try to steal Singer machines?—so Alec reaches through the broken frame and unlocks the door. Those silent alarms man, they probably never would have guessed. They were just getting cocky, I mean they had done this by now at least a half-dozen times—you should have seen the bags of pills Mikey used to show me, like thousands of them, in all their multi-colored varieties, the real deal: 80 mg Oxycontins, Purdue brand, of course; 2 mg Xannax bars; fucking ampules of Demerol…” Mac sighed as he trailed off.
“So, yeah, as Mikey was trying to cut through the wall into the drugstore next-door, Alex stood watch by the front window only to see, after about five minutes, three flashing cop cars fly into the parking lot, searchlights totally blinding him before he could even think about running.”
I turned around and glanced inside at the giant TV hung on the upper portion of Mac’s living room wall, then refocused my eyes so I could see my reflection in the sliding glass’ glare. The low light was flattering and I looked deep into myself, thinking of myself as the anti-hero of my own suburban mythology, my washed-out face was blurry, my weak and pudgy frame svelte and trim in the blackness...
We were just talking one night, you know, bullshitting and feeling kinda low—our eyes focused on our cigarette butts and our fingers a bit shaky. And then it came out like a question like, “why don’t we get married?” or “how about you just go and buy that dress?” that when Mac said, “why don’t we just take what we need?” I lit another smoke, quite intrigued, gut aflutter, and was ready to ask, “when?”
I’ve never been much of a thieving kind of dude; I’m usually shaky and tear-eyed in my bed long before I’m out and sleazing around for a wakeup fix. And despite the manipulation and general snaky behavior of and with regard to my poor widowed sister, I haven’t stole much from anybody. But after many months of the drab junkie-on-the-run routine, you could say I was looking for a thrill—and a larger supply.
At present, we were on a pharmaceutical settling-for-what-works, staving off withdraws by taking these orange-flavored pills that you put under your tongue—a kind of high-tech Methadone—and we smoked much pot for boredom, perspective. The past few days had been as hot as our stomachs in the mornings. We came outside only after dark, spending entire work shifts sweating in our unwashed jeans and watching the television on Mac’s couch, the fan spewing warm, rotten air, cat dander and dust behind us.
That night, as we sat on the porch outside his apartment, I looked down at the swimming pool below lit up by the halogens underwater, and the night wind blew soft with temperate relief. I leaned on the guardrail and rubbed my eyes.
“I think I’m willing to do it, but we have to do it right, I mean, we need to like research and shit,” I said. “I don’t want to get busted.”
“Of course we don’t want to get busted, but Jesus—just don’t even think like that. You’ve got to think like a criminal, like this is your job, and getting busted is like getting a speeding ticket: it’s not something you base your life worrying about, it’s just one of those things…”
“Ok, fine. But what can we learn about the Chance brothers’ mistakes? And like, how much time did they get anyway? Did they get out on bail or were they locked up until their judge visit? What’s it like in there anyway? I mean, we’d just be taken to county at first, right? And also, isn’t there some kind of leniency, like we’re only first-time offenders, so doesn’t that make any diff—“
Mac cut me off. “Dude, just stop it—you sound like a goddamned idiot. I told you: you need to ditch this idea of getting caught. It’s not gonna happen. It just ain’t.” He made one of those famously sketchy left-to-right look-arounds that people often make when they’re about to commit felonies, or, in Mac’s case, divulge sensitive information. He leaned in and hushed his voice.
“The reason they got busted is because they didn’t know when to stop. It just wasn’t in the stars for them that night.”
I asked him what happened.
Voice still lowered, the night was settling, the apartment windows surrounding us were glowing and flashing blue from the TVs, he told me:
“So, their usual technique was to find the pharmacies with the skylights on the rooftops—most of them do—and to either unscrew or pry open the clear plastic covers. Since they don’t put usually put trips in the ceilings of buildings, unless it’s like fucking Fort Knox, they would just lower themselves down and bag up what they wanted and climb back out and split. But this place had these super-duty stainless steel frames and bolts holding in the plastic and there wasn’t any way to break them without creating a huge amount of noise. They were on that rooftop for an hour fumbling with various tools and crowbars—trying to be delicate and quiet-like and still brute about it—until they finally resigned and came down.
“They stood behind the building deciding what to do. For way too long, I mean, they should’ve just left, cut their losses. Alec just wanted to say fuck it, but Mikey, the younger one, he got wise and ran back to their shitty little hatchback. He comes back with this cheap little battery powered Sawzall, you know, like a horizontal saw that jets out of a plastic handle. And by now he’s all pissed off and frustrated and probably a little dope-sick, and not thinking clear and Alec goes along with it. They’ve been at the location for like over an hour now and, being a Tuesday night, didn’t expect much attention.
“So they head over to the adjacent store to the pharmacy, just a fucking sewing shop, and Mikey motions to the front door while holding the Sawzall and Alec, the reluctant one, he puts his denim-sheathed elbow right through the glass, like a fucking pro. There wasn’t hardly any reverb throughout the little strip mall, let alone any kind of alarm—I mean how many grandmas try to steal Singer machines?—so Alec reaches through the broken frame and unlocks the door. Those silent alarms man, they probably never would have guessed. They were just getting cocky, I mean they had done this by now at least a half-dozen times—you should have seen the bags of pills Mikey used to show me, like thousands of them, in all their multi-colored varieties, the real deal: 80 mg Oxycontins, Purdue brand, of course; 2 mg Xannax bars; fucking ampules of Demerol…” Mac sighed as he trailed off.
“So, yeah, as Mikey was trying to cut through the wall into the drugstore next-door, Alex stood watch by the front window only to see, after about five minutes, three flashing cop cars fly into the parking lot, searchlights totally blinding him before he could even think about running.”
I turned around and glanced inside at the giant TV hung on the upper portion of Mac’s living room wall, then refocused my eyes so I could see my reflection in the sliding glass’ glare. The low light was flattering and I looked deep into myself, thinking of myself as the anti-hero of my own suburban mythology, my washed-out face was blurry, my weak and pudgy frame svelte and trim in the blackness...
