Welcome Thieves by Beaudoin Sean

Author:Beaudoin, Sean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2016-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

Tiffany Marzano’s Got a Record

The warehouse takes up an entire city block. St. Cloud is the manager. He used to be infantry but got kicked out for asking and telling. Now he’s an artist, wears a snake around his neck. Sometimes you can see the bulge of a mouse beneath the coils. He waits on the dock while Jake and Tiffany Marzano back another load of donations in.

Workers circle, push and shove, make claims on the haul. Everyone at the warehouse is allowed to steal one thing. But it can only be one thing, and you have to be consistent or St. Cloud decides you’re greedy and it’s a pink slip. A skinny blond does furs. The dock guys handle stereos. There’s someone for comic books, screen prints, silverware. A guy in a trucker cap prices Italian shoes, ships them to New York in bulk.

St. Cloud does toasters.

Jake hops out of the truck and presents him with a vintage top loader, chrome and Bakelite, looks like it fell off Sputnik in 1962. St. Cloud mounts the toasters in galleries with names like Char-­O and Count Van Der Slice. When one doesn’t measure up it goes on the scrap pile. All around the warehouse are different piles: sweaters, coffee makers, Les Baxter albums, sofa cushions, boom boxes, reading glasses.

No one steals reading glasses. It’s a wide-­open niche.

THEY HEAD OUT on another run. The truck smells of Tiffany Marzano, so Jake smells of Tiffany Marzano. Even with the windows down. There’s a sleeping bag in the hold. Cans of chili roll with every turn. When Jake asks Tiffany Marzano if she’s living in back, the truck veers into a motel courtyard, lurches to a stop.

“Why, you gonna tell?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Jake is. He would never.

“Listen, I did eleven months behind a misunderstanding,” she says, all shoulders and brown skin, a shark’s tooth around her neck on a tight leather strap. On weekends Tiffany Marzano plays three sets as El Vez, the butchest Presley this side of Tucson. “Now I’m on a registry. No one will rent me a room.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?”

“Does it matter?”

Probably not. Jake needs the job not the drama, been clean almost eleven months.

“It’s cool. Let’s roll.”

Tiffany Marzano rams it into gear. Time is money. They get paid by the load. The Truck of the Dead grinds up hills, down hills, spews resignation and exhaust into every last corner of San Francisco.

It’s 1992, the middle of a health crisis.

A citywide emergency.

Or maybe the CIA gave everyone AIDS on purpose.

Either way, it’s also Friday, and Jake needs to cash his check at the deli on Valencia. If he doesn’t get there before five, Luz, the owner, runs out of cash. She’s a tiny Salvadoran with a flowered smock and faded blue angels on her neck. She’ll smile at Jake, but not at Tiffany Marzano.

“Tiff is alright,” Jake whispers. “Give her a chance.”

Luz rolls her eyes, tosses in two mios for every dios, recounts the money.

WAREHOUSE FUCKING is rampant.

There’s a group of men, a couple women, like a club.

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