One Night Out Stealing (20 page)

Sonny still standing there; caught in this confusion of
song-pouring
memory, and sight too of that door, wide-open slab
entrance
it could be a cave opening; churn of pictures in his head, none of it marrying: snow coming down and a man’s deep bass voice ringing out in his triumph of himself over God even as he seemingly sung to Him, but clashing with the stringed orchestral sounds issuing from the shadow cave-like opening that Jube was nearing, as though everything was slowed down even as things seemed opposite, inside his mind, a picture of piano being played, by her, her inside, unsuspecting, she was in the picture, as was her daughter, the one with the funny shortened nickname of Ants, she with the wiring all over her teeth how they do these rich kids, yet untouched of self-confidence for that.

Messaging. That he, this man caught confused here, and that man moving forward on his cautious creeping furtive toes, two dudes transported emselves a furious six hours’ drive down the main state highway, two dudes come from a structureless social pit, from mess of meaning, ruin of lives, bereft of values, from a dark she could not possibly know. Let alone that it was upon her.

Sonny turned looked down the long steep of panting climb; it could have been some dark-tiled passage they’d ascended, into some kind of unknown and yet it was a known (if only I could tell myself what it is). Wondering if he should bound down the steps, get the hell out of here while he could. Back the other way at Jube, to see him stopped there and glaring at Sonny and mouthing obscenities at what the fuck did Sonny think he was fucking doing. While behind
Jube, coming out that door opening, stringed sounds so unrelated to him and Sonny. Sounds.

Head cocked just to one side, hands and half raised arms like a Mother Mary statue (from that school I used to walk past, and the everyday surprise of seeing Her there, enclosed in this little concrete surround, in blue-painted gown, woman, Woman in stone forever). Like that she looked. Except she had an apron, a tartan one, and her surround was the broad reverberating of strings, orchestrated strings.

And Jube moving swiftly across the brown-tiled kitchen floor. The woman still with eyes closed in her world of ordered sound, still with her arms bent at elbow in supplicated Virgin Mary posture. Then not a sound as Jube took her, with an arm around her throat and other hand clamping over her mouth. Turning her to Sonny, so he saw her eyes, how utterly surprised they were (lady, I’m sorry), the terror in them; Jube walking her back so he was against a timber-lined wall that had a painting part obscured by Jube’s balaclavaed head. His mouth was moving but Sonny couldn’t hear, not at first, till he realised Jube was wanting the music turned down. Or off. Sonny fixed on the woman, her changing of eye reaction: from utter surprise to terror then closing in a kind of despair, but opening again to a narrowing that looked like determination. All this in the space of a few seconds. A witness, Sonny was, to a process of social conditioning, he was certain.

He moved to the divide between kitchen and dining room, feeling so mixed up; as if in an instant he was thrust back to the worst of confounded childhood. Of not knowing anything. Of being this thing, caught between a nowhere and another nowhere. So he moved thinking only shit! (Shit, shit,
shit!
)
Like a kid deeply upset without understanding at what.

Into the living room, going automatically to where they’d last time removed the stereo system. Replaced. Looked different. But a volume knob is a volume knob. Turned it down, not too much, figuring they might need some cover sound. Head spinning. Going back to the kitchen, eyes seeing nothing, not with clarity.

Lady lady, don’t you be getting clever now and thinking you’ll scream, ya hear? Jube talking in Mrs Harland’s ear, his voice slightly muffled from the balaclava, and hissing through the gaps of
punched- and kicked-out teeth. Hand still across her mouth. His eyes roaming as he spoke as if indifferent. As if he wasn’t doing what he was doing, and worse: as if he didn’t give two damns.

Her eyes registered Sonny’s arrival. He stopped a few feet from her. Could smell her. Familiar too. Of the perfume he took in of her bedroom last time. But not able to hold her eyes because he thought he saw pleading in them.

You the only one here? Jube asked her.

Her head moved she was.

Money, honey, hahaha, Jube even able to chuckle. We came for the money. Now, I’m gonna take my hand away and if you scream, then – he was shaking his head, he looked shocking with his head completely covered, as Sonny knew he too would look – then, lady, you are gonna get hurt. She shook her head. Her eyes said she knew better than that.

Jube’s hand came cautiously away, hovered a little ways off, so Sonny had to move to his right to get her face. Of no lipstick, nor make-up, as fresh and natural as the vase of flowers on the bench behind her. Green eyes, confirming the photograph, the home-made video. Sonny feeling an aching for her, but of sympathy and guilt, not longing. Looking at her mouth as it opened, as though wanting not to upset Jube, so careful. I – I – I’m sorry, her mouth broke into an apologetic quick smile, and Sonny thinking please don’t be sorry for my sake, since Jube was behind her, face too damned close to her ear for Sonny’s liking. As if Jube was gonna do something typical of him, like feel her up. Sonny thinking he’d grab that glass vase and break it over Jube’s head he got dirty about this. His eyes kept flicking from the contrast of faces, of the woman’s clear skin and proud cheekbones, her beauty, and Jube’s blue eyes with their scar-tissue marks and eyebrows both cut in two by scars, looking out from the slot in the bali. Reminding Sonny how he must look himself.

I’m sorry, I lost my voice. Pause. I hope you’ll understand in the, uh, circ – Get on with it, lady. The money.

Well, it’s like this – I said get on with it. I am trying. Then try harder. We don’t want your life story. Eyes grinning across at Sonny.

Her breasts came up in a heave of sigh. (She must be sucking in courage, fortitude from herself.) Sonny unable to cancel out the picture he got in his mind of this woman naked; her breasts, not large not small, not perfect neither. Her. This person. (I’ve seen her
naked?) But she was talking again, and the image went.

We were burgled. Sometime ago. Burgled? Jube came in all false mocking innocence, eyes smiling over at Sonny. Ya hear that, pal? she was burgled. Grinning behind the navy face covering. (That’s funny?) Oh now that’s a shame, lady, burgled. And what, you gonna say they cleaned you out you’re now broke? Bankrupt? Eyes laughing away to Sonny again, and Sonny hoping his cold return’d tell Jube he wasn’t funny.

Look, I – I’m trying to tell you there is no money in the house. Well there is, I have a couple of hundred in my purse. After the burglary we – You stopped leaving money around the joint, right, lady? Yes. Yes, she says. Ya hear her, man? Yes she says. So what we gonna do about this, lady? I – She stopped herself. Side to side head moving showing her frustration, not to mention the fear that’d be running through her.

Ya hear her, mate, she says – Man, I ain’t deaf. So let’s get the hell out. Out? Yeah, out. Out where? Come on, man, you know – No fucking way, bud. She’s lying. You’re lying, aren’t ya? You just don’t – I do not lie. She said it to Sonny since Jube was behind her, said it in a queenly manner, of pride and outrage that she should be so insulted. Man, she’s not lying, I can tell, Sonny trying to end it. Ya hear my mate there, lady? He doesn’t want to stay around. Again Sonny saw her breasts heave up; came out on the air she expelled. I should think that is wise. Stopped there. Oh? Jube wanting more. Oh? when she didn’t offer more. Oh, yet again when still she remained silent. Hahaha, she’s packing a sad now. Jube as if this wasn’t really happening or it was but it wasn’t real, wasn’t for real. Just tv. A bit out of a movie. And this wasn’t her house, it was all of theirs. And she wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t really being
terrorised,
it was just part of the act. How Sonny saw Jube’s perception of this. Going back in his mind the past few weeks of Jube in his physical healing, hearing snatches of Jube in kind of confession, of personal aspect, of his childhood, how he could never figure if he loved his mother or hated her, but since he hated his father, hahaha, that’d do for both of the buggers, HAHAHA! That laugh of Jube’s echoing in Sonny’s mind. And the calm way he said, Well we’ll all go take a look-see, shall we? telling Sonny he was right: that Jube was living this no different to a little fantasy, a dream sequence, an act straight from a tv screen.

Though it occurred to Sonny as he followed the two that his
own role had a distant dreamlike quality to it, and that he was half in this moving moment and half somewhere in his peculiar head. (I might even be crazy.)

The study. That’s where Jube was leading them, or she was in front and Jube directed her from behind, That-away, lady, straight ahead, hahaha. Turning a look over his shoulder, eyes wrinkled in smug smile.

Passing into the fantastic scope of living area, but didn’t look the same as last time. Not anywhere the same. Not with her in front, being pushed along by the denim-clad figure behind her. (In her own house.) Thisaway, Lady Muck. Still with that chuckle. And with an old familiar swagger straight from a prison exercise yard, straight from a study (comic) on crims, their mannerisms, how they each tell a different story and how every crim comes to the same body-language conclusion. (Of being this. Being that. But none of which they are. Can never be. Ya are what ya are …) Which was why, Sonny thinking, he was going along with this kind of
kidnapping
thing, hostage taking of a woman in her own home: (Cos ya are what ya are. No madda how hard ya try to be otherwise.) Resigned to it. This life. This way of living. Even as he followed the two he had this sense of deep resignation to life being just another dreadful situation, and what did it matter what the details were? Cells’re the same, they’re all the fuckin same, only have a different name of prison on the inmates’ lips; only have a locational
difference
, like this is crime and only the play-out of it is different. As so will the sentence.

Piano. Wow. Really took Sonny when everything else was barely registering. Only Jube and the poor controlled woman in her own home. She who was in a man’s mind sat at that instrument, with her daughter beside, talking, introducing themselves, then playing. And mirroring on its upraised lid not a bad day outside too.

Well here we are. Would ya mind pulling them curtains across, my good man? Jube breezy. Too breezy. Sonny stepping around both them, Oops, sorry, for brushing against the hip of Mrs Harland, and wincing with embarrassment at Jube laughing at that. Oh yeah, man: Oops, sorry. Oops, he’s sorry, Lady Muck. His laugh cut short at her telling him, Do you mind not calling me that. This situation is awful enough without you adding insulting terms.

Ohh! HAHAHAHAHA! Did ya hear her, mate? Did you
hear
her? At the same time the room went into a gloom when Sonny
pulled the curtains across. Ooooo, it’s gone very dark in here … HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Jube’s laughter seemed to echo in the small confines. Sonny trying to find the switch for the desk lamp. Found it. On. World a tiny and different place.

Let there be light, Jube in a flat voice, like the change of light had got to him too, turned this moment into something else. Cranked it up a bit, or down. And Mrs Harland’s face a different smooth-skinned hue: soft yellowish from flower bursts in the
curtains,
and bits of hair over her forehead doubled up by throwing shadow. White blouse in the natural light more brushed with the same yellow; so the breast outline and cleavage shadow more marked. Sonny swallowing. And hearing Jube’s breathing changed. And since nothing was being spoken … Looking at Jube’s eyes, now harder to read; and his tall, denimed figure looking more ominous when before he looked like what he was – a galoot. She kept brushing at the strands of hair on her forehead, and they kept falling back to where they were. Books and leather smell and woman scent and booze stench and body sweat, and three’s different breathing.

Hers a quickened intake and expel, from a face of self-control that was more than admirable in the circumstances of Sonny’s observing. Jube’s in contrast a kind of panting sniffing, through his nose, maybe from the beating he took, maybe from all the beatings he’d taken (maybe from the beating life in gen gave the man?):
uh-ihh-
uh-ihh-uh-ihh. It might even be sexual, probably was. But the man was no rapist. Close, but not the real thing.

Jube let out a long sigh and asked, So where’s the key to the drawers? I have no idea. But you’re wasting your time if you think my husband still keeps cash in there. Her tone showing sign of frustration. I see, Jube rubbing his wool-garmented chin. So you figured it was us last time? Yes. I did. Jube started pacing. Or so Sonny believed. Till he brought to a halt before Sonny. Man, she’s got our number for the first hit. I know that, J – I know that, man. Sonny feeling ridiculous having a team conference but a few feet from the lady of the house. And she says there ain’t no bread, just the couple of hundred of her own. Man, I ain’t
deaf,
Sonny’s own frustration mounting. Then Jube turned to the woman, What about jewels? She shook her head. He let out another sigh, but this one was different: it had anger in it. Jube stepped over to the desk, turned and sat himself on it. So.

So, he said again. We got but a lousy two hundred. We know she
ain’t into jewellery cos she wasn’t the last time we were here. So. His breathing quickened. So we have the wife of a rich lawyer – Excuse me, but he is not rich. No? No.

Jube’s arms went out, Ya call this poor then? I didn’t say that, I said he is not rich. No? He’s not rich with a house like this? No, he is not rich. He’s not rich with having six grand in his desk, another grand stuck under a fucking pillow, in
Ant’s
room? Her face tightened at that reference. And her eyes went cold and unafraid. He’s not rich having enough Persian rugs to fly to the fucking moon on? So how much does he make a week? I have no idea. Lady … how much does he make in a week? He doesn’t get paid by the week. A month then? Nor by the month.