Jake studied the stolen tubular cylinder key. These ingenious locks were difficult to pick—the pins were arranged in a circle, rather than straight like a pin tumbler, and the key depressed seven pins simultaneously, allowing the cylinder to turn. To pick this, Jake needed to find the shear line of each pin, but the problem was that the cylinder relocked after each small turn. So Jake would have to pick the lock eight separate times to turn the cylinder the full unlocking diameter. He could buy a keyhole saw with a cylindrical bit, and drill out the lock, but that still took time, especially with the alarm engaged.
Without a key, he’d have to shut off the electricity somehow, or maybe rip off the alarm casing and disarm it with a gorilla method.
It was late, and Jake was in bed. He hadn’t been able to reach Dormer yet, but he’d try again tomorrow. He thought about ways to take the entire safe, but it was too complicated. A safe like that could weigh five hundred pounds. Moving it would draw too much attention. He needed to get in quietly, take what he could, then leave. That was all. He didn’t want to bring anyone in, but until he learned more about that safe, he had no choice.
He hid the key in his shoe, and read his philosophy book. The section on Heraclitus was short, and contained a list of fragments. Jake puzzled over them. “We never step into the same river twice. We are and we are not.” What was the appeal for Rachel? She liked the contradictions of it. She liked the movement of opposites.
Closing his eyes, the book resting on his chest, he drifted. He thought about his father being called “Chinky” by his co-workers, and knew his brother’s feelings for their father were complicated, a hint of pity edging his words. Yet Jake’s hatred was so clean and simple. It was founded on violence, on the memory of being punched in the face by a man three times his size and strength. He thought his brother was a sap. And it had gotten worse once their mother had left. Within a week, when their father realized that she had in fact left him, he began drinking more, demanding to know from the boys where she had gone. Once he had thrown them down the steps of the basement, Jake managing to grab onto the bannister to stop his fall, but his brother tumbling down onto the concrete, twisting his knee. Eugene rocked back and forth, cursing and sucking air through his teeth. Jake moved near the furnace. Their father was destroying the kitchen, shattering glass and plates, resting, then throwing pots and pans across the floor. The sounds reverberated through the house, and Jake hunched his shoulders at each crash. Their father yelled in Korean to his missing wife.
Jake remembered hearing his brother trying not to cry, whispering to himself, Goddammit. Goddammit. Jake hadn’t quite grasped yet that his mother was actually gone. How could that be? He pictured her smiling, but then he saw her bloody teeth. He remembered the way she clapped with her fingers. He wished he had learned Kung-Fu to show off to her.
Their father was running back and forth between the kitchen and the bedroom.
Eugene kept whispering, I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take this anymore.
Later that night, when things upstairs had quieted, Jake helped his brother up the steps, and used the screwdriver to pick the lock. Eugene limped towards the refrigerator and opened the freezer. He took out the ice trays.
Jake smelled smoke and burnt chemicals. He searched the house and found their father passed out on the bathroom floor, puddles of vomit near the toilet; he turned away, sickened. The bathtub was filled with his mother’s clothes and pictures, smoldering in a half-burnt pile. The window was open, but the chemical odor stung Jake’s throat. He turned back towards his father, whose cheek was pressed into the linoleum, saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Venom burned inside Jake as he watched his father twitch, a tremor in his stubbled cheek. He hoped his father would die right there, just stop breathing. He wondered what would happen if he shut the window, relit the clothes, and then closed the door tightly.
He tried to close the window, but he wasn’t strong enough. It was stuck high in the frame. He then tried to light the pile of clothes, but everything was wet. His father must have doused it before it flared too high. He threw the matches down angrily. He turned to his father.
He unzipped his pants, his neck prickling with fear, and leaned back. He began pissing on his father’s shirt, the sound of the hissing strange without the accompanying splashing in the toilet. His father’s shirt was soaked in one spot, so Jake moved and spread his piss around.
What the hell are you doing? whispered his brother.
Jake finished, shook himself, then zipped up. He said to Eugene, I’m pissing on him.
Eugene hopped back, his eyes frightened. Are you nuts?
Jake saw the ice bag in his brother’s hand. He said, I’m not nuts. He is nuts.
Their father began coughing, and Jake leapt out of the bathroom, almost knocking his brother over. They waited and watched, but their father just rolled against the bathtub.
You can’t do that, Eugene whispered.
I hope he dies. I hope he dies right there.
Eugene shook his head and limped to their bedroom. Jake continued staring at his father. He knew one day he would be stronger than his father, so he wouldn’t have to wait until his father was passed out to piss on him.
Eugene called him from the bedroom, Leave him alone or he might wake up.
Jake closed the door tightly, trapping in the smell of piss and vomit and burnt clothes.