Spoonbenders

“It just has to be out here,” Matty told him. They were making a bed on the garage floor out of a pair of crib mattresses—leftovers from the twins—and a couple of blankets. “And I can’t be watched.”

“So I’m going to tell Loretta that you’re sleeping out in our garage?” Frankie asked.

“I know it’s weird,” Matty said. “But I’m sure she’s seen weirder things, right?”

“You have no idea,” Frankie said. “What else do you need?” Matty hesitated, and Frankie said, “Out with it.”

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Matty said.

“Shoot.”

“How much is in there?”

“The safe?” Frankie shrugged. “Well, you’ll be able to tell me, won’t you? You’ll just—” He waggled his fingers. “—take a look.”

“Oh, right,” Matty said. “But, you know, ballpark?”

“Ballpark?” Frankie said. “It’s a big fucking park, Matty. A hundred K, easy.”

“A hundred—?” His voice squeaked.

Frankie laughed. “We’re not doing this for chicken feed. We’re going to hit them on payday, Matty. As soon as their customers fork it over, then bam.”

Matty suddenly thought: Did that mean they were stealing the victims’ money? Maybe the right thing to do was to give it back to them. But then how to figure out who was owed how much? You couldn’t do that without a ledger, something with all the names and addresses. And if they gave it all back, then maybe Frankie would get what was owed to him, but Matty would get nothing. Or rather, Mom would get nothing. And he was doing this for Mom, right?

This was all a matter of moral timing. When did the property of innocents transform into the corrupt holdings of criminals—as soon as it entered the safe? Maybe it was like the miracle of transubstantiation, but in reverse. An anti-Communion.

“Hello, Matty?” Frankie said. “You need anything else?”

“Oh. Let me think.” He examined his inventory: a Chicago-area map, spread on the floor, with big red arrows marking the way from Frankie’s house to Mitzi’s Tavern; two cans of Coke in a Styrofoam cooler; a spare pillow in a My Little Pony pillowcase.

“I’m good,” he said.

But was he?

“Almost ten o’clock,” Frankie said. “Better get crackin’. I’ll leave you to…whatever it is you do.”

Frankie closed the garage’s side door behind him. Matty reached into his back pocket for the baggie.

The door popped open. “Good luck,” Frankie said.

Matty stood very still.

Frankie started to say something else, seemed to think better of it, and closed the door again.

“Oh my God,” Matty said to himself. He waited five minutes before taking another look at the baggie. Finally he slipped out one of the three tidy joints that Malice had rolled for him (he never succeeded in rolling one himself) and flicked the Bic lighter she’d loaned him (“All part of the service,” she said).

Ready for liftoff, he thought. Ignition.

Liftoff did not occur. He sat on his baby-mattress launchpad for several minutes, inhaling and coughing, coughing and inhaling, and told himself everything would be fine if he stopped worrying. And he was right. At the same moment he noticed that he’d stopped worrying, he noticed that he was sitting beside himself.

“Hey, good-lookin’,” he said. His body giggled. The joint dangled between his fingers.

“Maybe you should put that down,” he said.

His body took one last toke, then placed the joint on the cement.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” he said. He drifted through the wall of the garage and hovered a few inches over the grass. He thought about looking in on Malice, but decided against it. That was one habit he needed to break. He couldn’t be a drug addict, a burglar, and a perv.

Flying, though, that was a pure good. He coasted over Uncle Frankie’s rooftop, and moved slowly up into the trees, then over the streets, gradually gaining altitude, until he could again make out the towers of the city, glittering in the distance. Acres of air hung below his feet, and he was only mildly disturbed by this.

He thought, Probably a good thing I’m high. (High. Heh.)

Moving took no effort at all; he was pulled along by the string of his own attention, reeled in by whatever caught his fancy. That brightly lit water tower next to I-294, painted like a rose. The jets, roaring toward O’Hare. Quick as a flash he was flying alongside the windows of a plane, inches from the face of a bored red-haired woman staring out.

Matty made wings of his arms. “I’m an astral plane,” he said. Far away, his body laughed; he could feel the echo of it.

“Focus, Matt,” he said. Where was Mitzi’s Tavern? He had no idea. And he couldn’t see the map of Chicago without zooming back to the garage, or reentering his body.

Speaking of which, where was his body?

Holy shit!

He spun in the air, panicked, lost in the night sky. Below, dots of light fenced dark rectangles of rooftops and yards. Which of those was Frankie’s house? The only time he’d gone this far from his body, he’d been sucked back into it by Malice slapping him around.