The one thing I don’t know and don’t care to know is how and where Tristan sells most of the valuables he finds. It’s easy to remain ignorant; all you have to do is not ask. It takes us only a few weeks to amass four thousand dollars, which is good, because Zoya hasn’t stopped checking in and I know can’t hold her off for much longer. I also understand this scheme can’t go on forever—Milwaukee is small, and people talk. I try to change my hairdo and clothing style every time I go clean, but there’s no changing my face. Sometimes I wear huge earrings or a bandanna, other times I go in khakis and polo shirts I buy from Goodwill. Only once, when I didn’t have time to change, did I go wearing my own clothes. This was probably a mistake.
Another problem is Tristan’s ego. Correction: his restlessness. Once he’s enjoyed a couple of weeks of freedom to read and drink as much as possible, he begins to get so antsy that I become antsy too, even when there’s no reason for it. His energy is just that encompassing. Now it’s not enough for him to break and enter; he wants to do more, go bigger.
“What’s bigger than stealing from rich people?” I ask him, rolling over in bed one morning after he’s brought it up yet again. The sun is bursting inside through the slats of the window blinds, illuminating the mess that has taken the room hostage. I may attempt to be a neat person, but Tristan does not; because we have no furniture for the bedroom, besides the mattress, I suppose I can’t really blame him for leaving clothes and empty food bags on the floor, but it’s still unpleasant to look at. At first, I tried to maintain some order, but it soon became apparent that cleaning the place would be a full-time job. Now I really try to avoid the apartment as much as I can when I’m not asleep. Tristan is the opposite; after so many years of traveling and couch-surfing he is elated to spend most of his time in bed smoking cigarettes and reading Joseph Campbell or taking naps. Well, he was. Now he spends all his time inventing new schemes for us.
Tristan reaches for his pack of cigarettes and lights one. “There’s this guy I know,” he says, blowing out smoke.
“You want to steal from a guy you know?”
Tristan circles his hand in the air. “Well, knowing is relative, right?” he says. He takes another long, intense drag of his American Spirit. “He’s not a friend. He sells shit.”
“Sells what?”
Tristan makes a point of looking out the window, which is framed by an inch of snow and sleet. Down below, a couple with a stroller is walking south down Meinecke screaming incoherently at each other. “Uh, you know. Coke, acid, shrooms. Whatever.”
I sit up abruptly. “What?”
“It’s whatever. He’s so out of it he keeps his cash at home. He’s basically asking for someone to take it.”
“You want to rob a drug dealer? You are not allowed to say ‘whatever’ again during this conversation.” I get out of bed, looking for my pants. “Is that where you went the other day?” I ask, thinking of his recent disappearance. “Did you buy drugs?”
“I know where he stashes his money,” Tristan says, ignoring me. “How many more necklaces do you think I can sell? These suburban fucks keep all the real money in safes and banks. This guy, he doesn’t trust technology. He’s one of those, uh what are they called? Doomsday preppers. He has so much cash he doesn’t know what to do with it. He wouldn’t even notice if we took some.”
“I’m not going to steal from a drug dealer, Tristan.” I say. “That’s insanely stupid.”
“Why? It’s not like he can call the cops.”
“There are worse things he could do if he catches us.” I finish getting dressed, and grab my bag so I can leave. I don’t want to entertain this idea any longer. “You can go without me if you want, but, uh, no.”
Tristan gets out of bed, following me towards the door in nothing but his tattoos and a thin pair of old boxers. He grabs a hold of my arms and looks me in the eye. “I promise you won’t have to do anything. You’ll just act like you want to buy something. I’ll go pretend to use the bathroom, but I’ll really be in the closet getting the money.”
“Why do you need me for that? You can take anyone.”
“You have a trustworthy face.”
He is right; I do have a trustworthy face. At least I did before I started hanging around with Tristan. I break eye contact and turn to look for my coat, which I find a moment later underneath a stack of boxes.
“Trust me, we do this one thing right and we’ll be set for the rest of the year,” he says, practically jumping up and down on his toes now. There’s a spark in his eyes I haven’t seen since we first started our craigslist scheme, and I know it’s careless, but I can’t help but want to say yes. I’ve never been good at saying no to people. He takes me in his arms and squeezes me tight, like precious goods.
“After this, we’ll be done. You can pay Zoya, and we can get an apartment, if you want… or you know what? We can take the money get the fuck out of here. I’m getting sick of this town. What are we waiting for?”
I have to admit I like the sound of that. I’ve been getting sick of Milwaukee, too. The weather alone is enough to send anyone packing this far into winter, and now I have no friends to go out with, no classes to attend. Really, the only thing keeping me around anymore, besides getting Zoya’s money, is my grandparents. And even though I’m not speaking with my parents at the moment, the thought of leaving them too has been an anchor wrapped around my leg. But I can’t stay here forever because of it, I know that. “I really just have to stand there and pretend to buy something?”
Tristan’s mouth spreads into a wide grin. He kisses me. Then he says, “You’ll need to actually buy something.”
“Oh. Like weed? I guess I can do that.”
“This guy doesn’t sell weed.”
I give him a knowing look. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go to a house full of drugs?”
Tristan waves his hand in the air like its nothing. “I’ll be fine,” he says, kissing me on the cheek. He goes back to the mattress and lies down, adjusting the two pillows I grabbed from my parents’ house behind his neck and starting his cigarette again.
“I don’t know, Tristan,” I say again. It’s one thing to steal from an empty house, but quite another to risk being caught, let alone by a drug dealer. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I have a bad feeling.”
He grabs his book from next to the bed and opens it. Then he looks up again, annoyed. “Didn’t we already agree on this? What else is there to talk about?”
I look at him, sitting half naked in the bed like he doesn’t have a care in the world, and I can’t help but wonder if this is the man I fell for, or if he has been hiding behind a gentler version of himself this entire time. When we’d met, he seemed so stable. He had quit everything; not just drugs but alcohol and cigarettes too. Eventually the cigarettes came back, followed by the alcohol. Had he returned to drugs, too, without my noticing? It’s not like we spend every second together. I’m not the jealous type, so I don’t generally monitor his whereabouts.
Maybe I should.
I close the door without arguing more, and head out to linger around Riverwest with my sketch pad like I normally do nowadays. But all day long the feeling of dread grows in my stomach. Not the nervous kind, like when we went to the party and stole wallets, but the kind that tells you not to do something, if you only care to listen. Tristan doesn’t believe in premonitions, or fate, so it’s no use sharing the information with him.
When I get back from Gordon Park, where I’d been sketching a dog playing fetch in the grass, Tristan is already dressed and outside, like he’d been watching for me out the window. He hands me a roll of bills and slaps my butt till I get on my bike and follow him. We bike all the way down Center Street, passing a show at Valhalla and several groups of smokers at Mad Planet. We keep biking past Holton for several blocks, then turn left on Martin Luther King Drive and head south. I’ve never gone this far into the “hood,” and the further out of Riverwest and into Harambee we go, the more my pulse drums in my ears.