Five Dollar Wrench

More Or Less

My deal with Foke was simple.  He bought as much Bitcoin as I could get, and he paid in cash.  Obviously.  He took ten percent off the top because, though it was never said, he understood my 'friend's' Bitcoin was stolen.

Foke was a drug dealer.  This was money laundering.

My deal with Claire was slightly less simple.  I originally offered her half of everything I got, but I never defined that, and I never talked about money with her.  I always made sure she had money in her pocket though.  I also gave her one of the bedrooms in the house, rent free, and I made sure the kitchen was stocked.

My deal with myself was that I'd get filthy rich and figure out the rest when the future got here.  Gary was starting to grow on me, in a weird ugly-pretty kind of way.  But there's always more.  So much more.  I wanted more.

Chicago still felt like my next obvious step, but I wasn't ready.

I needed to see it though.  And I felt like I needed to see it with Claire.  I wasn't sure where our partnership was going, so I figured we could use a trip into the city as inspiration for a discussion about the future.

Claire had been to Chicago before, so I figured she'd be my tour guide.  That idea died fast.

She asked, "Where are we going?"

"I don't know."

"What do you want to see?"

"I don't know."

"Then what's the point?"

"Inspire me, bitch!"

I'm not good at the let's hang out as friends thing.  Or the friends thing, in general.

The drive into the city was ugly.  The landscape looked industrial and scarred.  If Gary Indiana was a child, Chicago's south side was its abusive father.  Everything felt hateful and cold.

Then we drove deep into the heart of Chicago, and the city became a thing of beauty. Majestic towers, a hundred years old, were dwarfed by equally yet differently wondrous structures made of steel and glass.  And there were parks.  And there were trains.  And all of this should have made me feel microscopic, as if I would disappear within it should I dare to step out of the car.  But instead, it felt like opportunity.  It felt like all of it was there for the taking.  It felt like it was waiting, for me.

We drove along Michigan Avenue, across the Chicago River, and I thought, "My God, I belong here."

Navy Pier was too touristy, so we went to Ohio Street Beach instead.  We sat with our feet in the sand and talked about how far we'd come.

"Who are you?" I asked.

She said, "Claire Jenkins."

I asked again, "Are you?" as if I wasn't sure, but really, I wanted to know if she was.

"Of course I am.  Who else would I be?"

"Who else do you wanna be?"

She looked confused.

"What are we doing here, Shay?"

I told her the story of when I was living in Wanatah, and I used to break into Linda's home to steal decorative plates, and then break in again to bring them back.  I told her about how I finally stole her Chicago plate and kept it, for three years, even when I was homeless.  I talked about the idea of the plate, as if it represented not just the city, but the possibility of...

And then I stopped.

I said, "I wanted to come into the city today, but I didn't know what I wanted to do when I got here.  Some people go places to see touristy stuff.  I'm not that way.  Before we started stealing Bitcoin, I used to break into people's houses to see the truth, unvarnished.  Every house tells a story.  Who lives there?  What's their life like?

"I thought coming to Chicago would be like that, but it's not.  I thought I was coming here to see the city, but I'm sitting here now, and I don't want to see it.  I want to be it.  I want to be here, like I belong.  I'm not sayin' I want to be like these people.  I'm not like these people.  But I want to belong here in my own way.

"We've got a good thing going in Gary.  But I want more.  And this is it."

Claire said, "So, what then?  You want to go straight?"

"Fuck no.  I want to go big."

The silence that followed told me she did not.

When she finally did speak, she said, "I want to make Claire real.  I know she's not, but she could be, and I'm not talking about the girl in the hot tub.  I'm talking about the way I feel when I'm alone.  When everything gets quiet and I feel safe.  I want that all the time.  I know Claire isn't real, but there are things about her I like.  I like her more than who I was.  I want to make her real."

"What does that mean though?"

"Shay, you're in a war against the world, and you can't win.  Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Your fight is to find guys who have too much, so you can take it.  You want to have it all, and you want to make them suffer.  I want peace.  I want enough to make a fresh start, to be free of what I was.  You want more.  I want less."

"'Nothing can bring you peace but yourself,' Claire?  That's a pretty good line.  You practice that one?"

"It's from a book.  Ralph Waldo Emerson.  It's true though."

And then Claire leaned back, until she was lying in the sand, and she spread her arms wide.  "It's so warm," she said.  "Each grain of sand is its own little thing, but each is enough.  And together, they become this.  This nice, soft, warm bed of a beach.  And the water moves in and out in waves.  And each wave is its own thing but part of a bigger thing, yet each wave is enough.  I don't know what I want to be part of yet, but I'm not looking for more.  I just want to be enough.  I know I want a garden though.  I like the feel of my hands in Earth.  It feels real."

When we finally got up to leave, she had sand in her hair and she liked it.  And I had the wind at my back, where it belonged.

I could feel it.