I will steal you all the way away

It started out as a fluke, me lying in bed sleepless when the power went out. The silence of it got under my skin, got me thinking about things I’d been avoiding thinking about. Meanwhile the ceiling fan took its final gasping turn.

I got up to rummage through a drawer for a flashlight. It felt good grasping in secret, grasping in the dark. I decided burglary was probably for me. I thought hard about what she had that I wanted while I clicked the flashlight off and on several times, found and put on an old ski mask from the Halloweens of my youth, dug around my sock drawer looking for those wool gloves I thought I still had. The only thing I could come up with was my last name, which she had held on to more out of convenience than out of a desire for some vestigial connection. I decided if that’s all there was to steal, then I would steal it. All good capers seem impossible at the beginning.

I drove over there with the headlights off, found the spare key where we used to hide it together, let myself in with a soft click and the sound of wood rubbing against wood. Unfortunately she wasn’t home, which made the whole thing seem less dangerous and a little bit embarrassing. I had wanted her to watch from a chair in the darkened living room, puffing absently on a cigarette and waiting for me to notice until she clicked on the lamp and said so this is how it’s going to be.

Instead I went into her office that used to be our office and looked around. Where would she keep a last name? Probably somewhere on her skin, or under it. But that wouldn’t work at all. I went to the fridge and sat in front of it, door open, and drank most of her beer. It was one of those Mexican brands you find a lot out here, the kind the middle class drank as if they were slumming it. A couple hours went by like that. When I left, it was getting light out, I was stumbly drunk, and I had my pockets full of her business cards, every one I could find in the house. You couldn’t call it victory by any measure. But hey, it was something.