Sunday, March 13, 2005 wreck their plans saturday
I'm sitting on someone else's couch, and someone else's little dog is curled up on my shoulder, like I am Pegleg Pete, and she is my trusty, snoring parrot. Avast.
It's nice.
I worked long days at the beauty parlor yesterday and the day before, and each of those evenings I had certain partying obligations to fulfill. Obligation is an ugly word. Partying oppourtunities. It's been one of those, "Whatever, I'll sleep when I'm dead." weekends, but now that the whirl of gaiety has subsided a little, I find that I'm not really tired.
Based on what a dozen different people told me on the phone yesterday, today's the day that everyone in Baltimore finally runs out of town in the night, dragging the sack of stolen diamonds and their boss's wife along with them. Clearly, yesterday, all of these future fugitives were replaying their plans for the big heist in their heads over and over, to make sure that everything went off without a hitch, when they realized that for the last four-to-six weeks, while they'd been pouring over the blueprints at midnight, trying to figure out whether it made more sense to cut a hole in the wall or crawl through the heating duct before navigating the lasers, their hair had been growing. It had been growing these nights, and even the nights where they called the bosses house and hung up, and called again, from a different payphone each time (getting harder to find payphones than it used to be, they noticed, then laughed to themselves about how it was still possible, in times so fraught with aching love and bitter greed, to be so casual, as if they were someone ordinary).
It would never do, the conspirators of Baltimore realized, to allow themselves to look like unmade beds on the big night. They loved the boss's wife with all their hearts, and wanted to grow old with her, but they knew that, once the heist was over and they were living under assumed names in San Pedro, this night, this shining night, if they lived through it, was going to be their whole lives, really. Everything after, even the tightness in the chest they would catch every time they saw a policeman, and even the emerald stickpins and advanced video game systems they planned to buy once they fenced the ice, would be shadows and mist compared to the way the details on the day of the heist would remain true and actual forevermore.
They couldn't have split ends that night, or a rogue cowlick. The idea of that image of them burned into the boss's wife's lovely eyes forever haunted them. Even though there was so much to do, too much to do, they knew they had to take action.
They called me. I'm the go-to girl when it comes to this kind of thing, and anyone with any sense in this town knows it.
Do you see? This is why, when people called on Saturday and asked for a haircut appointment on a day that had been booked down to the last fifteen minutes by Friday afternoon, they became nearly hysterical with rage and pain.
It is also why, when I offered them appointments for later in the week or the following Saturday, they bellowed "I AM GOING OUT OF TOWN! I NEED A HAIRCUT TODAY!" into the phone.
Here's another thing: my employers and I were their only hope, because the heist hadn't happened yet, and they only had eleven dollars. posted by Frenz | 3/13/2005 12:30:00 PM
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