“How do you act?” she’d asked him. “When you do it?”
“Look,” he said, “the truth is, shopkeepers, tellers—chicks especially, I hate to tell you, baby—they ain’t expecting them to be fake. They’re thinking about the transaction, about getting their cut or doing their job, and fake money looks like real money, and fake checks look like real checks, so why would they think any different? Why would they suspect anything unless you gave them a reason to?” As he spoke an excitement and urgency grew in his voice, as if he were teaching a young boy the fundamentals of a ball game. “You gotta remember: you’re the one who’ll give it away, not the paper. I don’t go in when I’m nervous. Only when I’m feeling cool. Today, normally, I would have junked it. But you were waiting in the car and I had the trip planned and that was that. You’re shaky, you’re sweating, you look funny, you don’t do it. This should be the most obvious thing, but people are stupid.”
“What if they stop you?” B. asked.
“You know how many steps it is to an exit. There were eighteen steps today. Twelve if I ran. I don’t walk in without knowing how many it takes to get out. And usually I got heat.”
The mention of the gun did not faze her. “Does it make you feel better?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Just in general, do you like the way it makes you feel?” She felt adrenaline rising in her chest.
He paused to consider. “Maybe. Maybe it’s like you feel a little smarter than you did before. Like now you’re the boss. But it isn’t like I do it for kicks, if that’s what you mean. Anyone who does it for kicks is a fool.”
“Not for kicks, no,” she agreed.
His eyes were full of her. He pulled her in. “Let’s forget about that dirty stuff. I don’t think I’ve said a proper hello. Gotta give a pretty lady her due.” He put his fingers in her mouth to suck, and she knew she could not ask any more about the checks.
The morning she had called Daughtry about the checks, she’d seen a blue crocus during a walk. (She had not known what else to do but keep up the walks in the nice hill neighborhoods.) The blue of the flower with purple tones as if risen out of an underground pool, the miniature cups like perfect pagoda towers. Proof of the beauty of living and the grace of a higher hand, of hope unfolding. And yet it did not enter her. No part of the crocus came inside her, touched her in any way. Her head spinning on and on as if she would die. And she had thought suddenly, inexplicably, of the checks. She’d thought: the walks had not helped and the crocus had not helped but the checks would help.
And she had called Daughtry.