I put the package in my basket and walk into the cookies and crackers, where there’s only one other person. Tyana sees me do it. She taps twice on the stroller handle. That’s the signal for Muley to make a little distraction, keep people occupied. I finger the taped end of the X-acto blade, knowing I’ll have maybe three seconds to slash and stash. But then two more people come over, so my chance is gone. I look down at the package. Thirteen dollars. That’s about all I have on me and I know T don’t have any. If I have to pay for this, there won’t be anything else decent, so I think about where I could hide it, like in between the Oreos and the Chips Ahoy, for somebody else to find. But for the moment I keep it in the basket, thinking there might be another opportunity and thinking about what might have happened to Muley. Tyana comes and gets me. The baby is crying and kicking up a fuss in the stroller, and anybody within fifty feet is looking at us, instead of where we wanted them to look. “Where’s that asshole?” I say. “Him and Sasha over by the milks scamming on each other.” I think about going over and catching them in the act, and running the point of the X-acto along one of his stripes. I guess poor people can’t be trusted either. “Can’t you make little T be quiet?” “She’s hungry. Why you think she’s crying?” Six months ago it was just me and Muley. I worked at the Jiffy Lube until they caught me taking a ratchet and a couple of sockets that I needed to work on my car. I would have brought them back, but the manager, a big ass guy who always wore too tight pants, he fired me. I heard he hired his cousin to take my place. Back then we ganked for fun—mostly low-end chains, where the employees didn’t care. We stayed away from the mom-and-pops, mostly because they watched us like hawks, but a little because we didn’t want to hit people working for themselves. Food didn’t matter, even if it meant mac and cheese five nights in a row. Now, sometimes, it’s all I think about, getting
48 | JOE PONEPINTO