Spring 2012
harder it is to access them, the more stairs to climb. There’s an odd calm here. Elsewhere the city honks and screams and fumbles in on itself. As soon as you leave the tower, you’re met with the drone of motorcycles and the street vendors, selling anything from water to DVD’s and contraband books to the masses stuck in there are just the trees and their falling blossoms that form yellow carpets on the road. There are no stoplights, just roads that snake into one another and would seem to go on forever were if not for the guarded checkpoints and electric gates that separate one group of scared citizens from another. We drive up this steep road and pass a church on our right. We then turn left onto a checkpoint. Nico stays quiet for the most part, and we listen to a shitty burned CD. The checkpoint’s a breeze; Nico’s been here to do yard work before, and the guard remembers him. He rails off the name of the wrong quinta and we make up pretend phone numbers. He lets us through. We park across the street and bust open the door with its ancient single lock. I let Nico do the bulk of the work, and he swings the bat with rigor into the wood around the I realize he’s can get things done, even if he’ll mumble his way through everything. There’s a foyer inside with a wall piano, and there’s dry cleaning lying by the stairs to what I can see is the dining room. I follow another set of stairs, presuming it leads to the bedroom. Nico goes off to scope out the house, count the rooms, do a survey of what we can take from where. I head to the main bedroom, eager. The room has to glass panels that slide open into a garden. I realize we didn’t have to the front door; it would have to the wall and break the glass. The room is small but the bed is large, and sure enough there’s a monster DVD and a with money inside, I’m hoping. The trick about these things is time, and the problem is we don’t have very much, so I dump open the drawers on the bed and search the closets for the money missing in the desk. Electronics, jewelry, cash. That’s what we’re taking. The lady, whoever she is, has two drawers for her underwear. She also has a jewelry chest, and I can’t believe the size of the rings. They’re massive bolts of gold for her I these pearl chains to wrap more than once around your neck, and all her earrings are long and dangly. There’s a delicate chain of white gold. It’s thin but there are many strains. I’m bagging it all and picturing her. There’s a bottle of lube in her underwear drawer. I like to think her in her forties, with a little bounce to her sides, in all that lingerie.
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