Our goal is to
make our little corner
of the world a better place.
— Frustration
I returned from Tonawka still reeling.
Claire could tell something was wrong when I didn't send any form of a grocery text after doing a job. No grapes. No bagels. No Maxi-Pads despite the fact the situation warranted it. I didn't tell her about the dead mark. Or Boogie. Or my trip to Tonawka. I didn't even check in when I got home, so she came to the basement to find me.
"You alright?" she asked.
"Yeah. I had a close call, but I got what I needed. Now, I need a drink."
"I could use one too. And a talk."
"Oh?"
"Don't freak out, but... I've been thinking about Elliott."
"You've been thinking about ELLIOTT?"
"I've been thinking about how some of these guys aren't bad. I feel good when we bring down somebody rotten, but what about the guys who aren't? I'm glad Elliott turned out to be a bagel. He was nice. It's good that nothing bad happened to him."
"What are you saying, Claire? You don't want to do this anymore? You want to go back to working the streets?"
"Come on! I didn't say that!"
"Then what are you saying?"
"I'm saying, we don't talk about whether or not a guy deserves it. And we never talk about the progress we're making. When we started, you said a million dollars each. How close are we to getting there?"
Actually, it was one year or one million dollars, and as the months passed, I regretted saying it. That was a fuck up.
"I think we're at a hundred thousand each," I lied, "but that's before expenses."
"That's all?!? What expenses?"
"Expenses, like, I bought a fucking house for this. And because of what we're doing here, I had to buy it in cash. I also bought a top-of-the-line hot tub. That fucker was expensive. And we had to put a lot into the house, because it needed to look like the kind of place an elegant woman like Claire Jenkins would live. And by the way, it's not like you're paying rent. I keep cash in your pocket, right? And we're living large. So, we're ahead, but we've got expenses."
I didn't like where this conversation was going. She was a fucking prostitute when I found her. I put her in a nice house. A house with a backstory I never burdened her with. I put her in nice clothes and fed her well. She went from being a goddamn street walker to living like a queen.
"I'm just asking what our end game is," Claire said. "What's our goal?"
"Our goal is to make our little corner of the world a better place, by having us go from rags to riches, while making marks go from riches to rags."
That was just the frustration talking. There was a lot I hadn't been telling Claire, because it was none of her goddamn business.
I hadn't even told her I had a deal with Foke to swap Bitcoin for cash. She didn't ask where the money came from, so I didn't tell her. But I was feeling pretty pissed about how I was putting myself in danger while she went out to bars and splashed in a hot tub. The balance of duties in our partnership was not even close to being even. And she complained!?
I thought about putting her ass back on the streets, but she'd have been hard to replace.
"I've been thinking about our end game too," I lied. "I've been thinking about ramping up, to make more money, faster, so we can afford to get out."
"You're saying there's a new plan?"
"I'm saying I'm working on a new plan."