Cecil’s driveway is hardened dirt and they pad along through the dark, careful not to trip in the sloped hollows of evaporated puddles. She is relieved the ground is dry; they won’t leave obvious footprints. Several dead cars lie scattered around: a wood-paneled station wagon, a rusted-out Chev Suburban, a large beige van missing the side door. She follows the shape of Liam’s back and tries not to imagine shapes and figures in vehicles and trees.
It’s dark, but the sky is clear and luminescent. She wears a bulky dark-blue jacket with her hair tucked into a ball cap. A glimpse of her orange hair would be all it takes to be recognized. Liam wears his regular track jacket, grey and black swatches with silver reflective lining, and it makes a synthetic swish-shish as they walk. She wants to swat him. “Sure, you’re the one who looks like you’re up to something,” he says. “I’d rather be recognized and say I was minding my own business. You’d have to explain why you’re dressed like a ninja.”
They borrow Liam’s mother’s car and park it out of sight in a nearby field. They tuck small flashlights into their pockets. They walk as fast as they can with the intention of switching to a casual pace if headlights appear. But no vehicles pass.
Imogene starts towards the front door. “No,” Liam says. “This way.” He leads her behind the house. The back door hovers about two feet off the ground with just a metal lip at the bottom, no step. Nan once said it was one of those tax things, if your house is unfinished, you can claim something. Liam shines his flashlight under the metal lip. There are about two dozen beige patio bricks laid out on the ground, like stepping stones. He lifts up the fourth one in the fourth row.
“Four by four,” he says.
“Yes, fine, shut up.”
The key lies on the flattened rectangle of dirt, its eye points towards the top-right corner.
“Don’t forget to put it back the same way.”
“Yes, yes.”
Liam fiddles the key in the lock and pushes the door open. They stand listening in the doorway. A refrigerator hums. Stillness. The porch is narrow, a scratchy-looking burlap doormat, a few nails for hooks on the wall. Liam shines his flashlight around. “Careful,” Imogene says. “Don’t shine it at the windows.” The porch leads into the kitchen. There is an ancient Formica table in 70s avocado green with four mismatched vinyl chairs: orange, mustard yellow, brown. Three empty beer bottles on the table. A large ashtray acts as a centerpiece. Imogene moves closer.
“Don’t bother,” Liam says. “Anything out in the open is too obvious.”
The state of the house is not what she imagined. She expected pungent odors, years of neglect, filth, obvious debauchery. She expected fruit flies and mouse shit and a thick layer of slime. But overall, Cecil’s home is neat and sparse. The walls are mostly bare. Cheap wood paneling, dusty shelves, and faded furniture. The faint smell of cigarettes and Lysol.
Liam jerks his thumb down the hallway. Bedroom. She shines her flashlight down and sees three closed doors.
“We’ll check his mattress first.” He walks to the last door on the left and pushes it open with one finger. Cecil’s bedroom is as unassuming as the rest of the house. A bed covered in a quilt with patches of blue and purple, a cheap plywood dresser, a framed picture of a boat. Liam lifts the lower end of the mattress. A scattering of bills in the centre of the bed, some flattened, some in wads. “He must just shove money in here,” he says. They stare at the haphazard collection.
“What do you think, a few hundred?”
“Maybe.”
He lowers the mattress and gets down to the floor. He shines his flashlight under the bed. “Dust bunnies and a rifle. He’s ready for the bad guys.” He shoves his arm under, stretching. He looks up at Imogene and smirks. He hauls out a shoe box. “This might be something.”
“Remember where it was,” she says. She imagines Cecil spying the trail in the dust, the marks of their fingers, his furious hands on the rifle.
“He’s not going to notice we were even here. And if he does, it won’t be for a while.”
He opens the box. Four sandwich baggies of weed. A collection of greasy-looking brown vials, some full, some empty. “He won’t miss a bitta hash oil,” Liam says. He shoves one baggie and two vials into his pocket. He closes the shoebox and pushes it back under the bed. He bounces to his feet, eyes flashing. “Let’s see how much cash he has around and decide what to take. I’m checking the dresser.”
Imogene looks around the room. The picture of the boat hangs slightly askew. It’s lower than eye level. She slides the frame aside. Behind it is a little shelf in the wall, like a medicine cabinet behind a mirror. It holds an assortment of zip-loc bags and pill containers. The labels are made out in Cecil’s name. Percocet. Diazepam. Familiar names, even if she doesn’t know what they do. Their labels fill her with a cold quease.
She moves the zip-loc bags gingerly, trying not to change their shape. One holds several tin-foil lumps. Hash, probably. One contains money—tens and five-dollar bills. She pulls it out carefully. Underneath the bag, something small and metal rests on the shelf.
Liam shifts through Cec’s top drawer. “Ugh, this guy’s underwear could crack in two. Five bucks for a pack of tighty-whities, b’y. Make an investment.”
Imogene peers closely at the metal object. A silver chain and pendant. She pulls it out carefully. She tells herself to remember how it lay on the shelf, pendant first, the chain on top. The pendant is heart-shaped with a word engraved. She holds it in front of her flashlight. In italics: Maggie.
“Holy shit,” Liam says. “This guy has a lot of nudie mags. And this sock has money in it.” He sits on the bed, working the contents out of a long, grey wool sock. She keeps her breathing straight and regular. She lays the pendant back in its spot, coiling the chain on top of it. Her ears feel hot and glowing like cooking elements on the stove.
“So, there’s about two hundred in this sock,” Liam says. “Four something in the bed. Let’s take around two hundred. He won’t notice. We might even be able to come back some other time. Any cash in there?”
“No,” she says. “Just this.”
She tosses him the hash. While Liam fishes out a few lumps, she slips the zip-loc bag of bills into her coat pocket. As she replaces the bag of hash, her fingers touch the locket. She clasps it and thrusts it into the front right pocket of her jeans.
They put everything back and leave. Liam locks the back door and carefully replaces the key. They run down the driveway, their feet now sure of themselves in the dark. At the edge of the pavement, they pause and strain their ears for approaching cars and movement in the night. They take long, urgent strides, legs never stretching enough with each step, each pace striving to outdo the former, distance, more distance needed between here and there.
Back in the car, Liam empties his pockets and counts it out. Two and a half vials of oil, three grams of hash, two hundred and five dollars. “He might notice,” he says. “But there’s a good chance he won’t right away. And if he does, he’ll probably blame his friends or whoever he lets come over. It’s not like he can call the cops. I figure we feel it out and maybe in a few months, if he’s gone again, we can get a little more.”
Imogene nods. He pulls her close. She tucks her arms around his waist and keeps her elbow close to her coat pocket so the plastic bag won’t rustle. The heart pendant nudges into her upper thigh.
When she is home and in her bedroom, she removes the bag and spreads the bills on her bed. Only the few bills on top and bottom are tens and fives. The rest are mostly fifties and hundreds. As she counts them into matching piles, her stomach wads itself tighter and tighter, like a drowning man’s fist on a line.
She finishes counting and makes it to the bathroom in three leaping strides, somehow landing soft enough to not wake Nan. Her mouth dangles open, but nothing comes out. Her empty stomach convulses. She squeezes her eyes shut against the number but it remains like a neon sign on the back of her eyelids. $2,160.
She shuts the toilet lid softly and tiptoes back to bed. She stares at the bag on her bedspread. $2,160, still there when she blinks. The number blares in bright white letters underlined with a ragged silver streak, shaped like the reflective lining on Liam’s jacket collar, zipped to his chin as he steered down the dirt road, headlights off. The streak illuminated briefly in the oncoming headlights of a passing truck, the briefest lightning flash in the night, disappearing just as they turned onto the pavement.