She had to know they deserved it.
— Sabotage
My deal with Foke was simple. He bought as much Bitcoin as I could get him, and he paid in cash. He took ten percent off the top because, though it was never said, he understood my Bitcoin was stolen.
Foke was a drug dealer. We were money laundering. That's how it's done.
My deal with Claire, however, was complicated.
Claire and I were partners, but she worked for me. I originally offered her half of everything after expenses, but I never defined what expenses were, and we never talked about money. I made sure she had cash in her pocket, and I gave her one of the bedrooms in the house, rent free. I also made sure the kitchen was always stocked. The liquor cabinet too.
My deal with myself was a promise that I'd take care of myself and figure out the rest when the future arrived. Northwest Indiana was starting to grow on me, in a weird ugly-pretty way, but I knew I could have more. And do more. And be more.
I wanted more.
Chicago felt like the 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, but we'd been together since January. It was already August.
I was hoping a trip into the city would lead to a discussion about the future. I had ideas. I had plans. Would she be part of them?
When we met, she said she'd been to Chicago. I figured she'd be my tour guide, but that idea died fast.
She asked, "Where are we going?"
"Chicago."
"Right, but what do you want to see?"
"It."
"I don't know what that means."
"I don't either."
"Then what's the point?"
"Entertain me, bitch!"
I'm not good at hanging out as friends. Or the friends thing, in general. But we didn't have any plans that day, so... we went to see what there was to see.
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 parent. Hostile and unrepentant. Hardened, yet broken.
But as we drove into the heart of it, everything changed. Chicago became a thing of beauty that made me gasp. I thought, "Oh my God, it's a mirage."
Majestic brick buildings, some over a hundred years old, were dwarfed by equally yet differently amazing structures made of steel and glass. And there were parks, and trains, and people everywhere. The sheer size of it all should have made me feel small. But it didn't. It felt like I'd found a place to be huge.
Chicago was there for the taking. And it was waiting for me.
I was practically giddy as I asked Claire, "Where do we start?"
She said, "The Loop is the heart of downtown. It's basically the middle of the city, so..."
"Yeah, yeah! Let's start there!"
I couldn't wait to get out of the car and wander.
Reckless Records was our first stop. It's a used record shop on Wabash. I picked up an old Beastie Boys CD. The one with Sabotage. It's from before my time, but come on, it's a classic. I'd been wanting it ever since I saw it in a mark's apartment. I could have just stolen his, but, y'know. Rules are rules. Usually. Shut up.
We picked up some smarty-pants music for Claire to play when she was with a mark. Jazz. Miles Davis. Coltrane. Brubeck. She insisted it had to be stuff from the 1950s & '60s.
"Why the fuck would that matter?"
"For the marks," she said. "It sounds like I know what I'm talking about if I mention an era."
After that, we headed across the river, and walked along the Magnificent Mile, because I wanted to grab a late lunch at Gino's East. I'm not convinced Chicago deep dish pizza is actually pizza. It's more like a pizza meatloaf with crust, but, goddamn, it's fantastic.
Then, Claire dragged me to an indie bookstore called After-Words. I thought the place smelled old. She rolled her eyes and said it smelled wise as she thumbed through a book on Buddhism. Peace Is Every Step. Apparently, one of the marks was into it.
Navy Pier was too touristy, so we went to Ohio Street Beach next, and we sat in the sand and talked about how far we'd come.
As we watched little waves rolling in along Lake Michigan, she ran her fingers through the sand, and she smiled.
I asked, "Who are you?"
She said, "Claire Jenkins."
"Are you?"
I asked as if I wasn't sure, but really, I wanted to know if she was.
"Of course I am," she said. "Who else would I be?"
"Who do you wanna be?"
She looked confused. "What are we doing here, Shay?"
"We're talking about where we started, and what's next."
I told her the story of when I was living in Tonawa, and how I used to break into Linda's home to steal decorative plates, just so I could break in again to bring them back. I told her why I kept the Chicago plate, and how I kept it for three years, even when I was homeless. I told her how that plate symbolized a goal, as if getting to Chicago would prove I'd accomplished something.
And then I stopped, because I remembered I was sitting right in the heart of the windy city skyline. I'd accomplished more than I ever set out to do. I should've felt triumphant. Instead, I felt a yearning.
I said, "Claire, we've got a good thing going in Indiana, but I want more. And this is it."
"So, what then?" she asked. "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 isn't, but she could be. I've already made lots of changes to be more like her. I like myself more when I'm being her, 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 there's nothing but peace and quiet. And I'm talking about the way I feel when someone looks at me because they're interested in what I have to say. Claire is smart, and she's elegant. I know she isn't real, but I want to make her real."
"What does that mean though?"
"It means I want to stop pretending and start building something real. I want to start building a life."
"That's why we're doing this, Claire."
"It's why I'm doing it. But I think you're doing it for the fight."
"What fight?"
"Shay, you're at war against the world, and you can't win. You think that by finding guys who have too much, you can take it and you'll be happy. But no matter how much you get, you'll need more because there's always more. That's why the fight never ends for you, but for me it does. I promised myself I'm only doing this for a year, so I can have enough to make a fresh start. So I can be free of what I was and live a happy, boring, peaceful life. War doesn't bring peace. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."
"Wow."
"What?"
"That's a hell of a line, Claire. 'Nothing can bring you peace but yourself?' Did you get that from the Buddha book?"
"No, it's a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. It's true though."
And then Claire leaned back, until she was lying down, and she spread her arms wide, running her fingers through the sand. "It's so warm," she said. "Each grain of sand is its own little thing, but together, they become this. This nice, soft, warm bed of a beach. And the water moves in and out in waves. Each wave is its own thing while being part of a bigger thing. I don't know what I want to be part of, when I'm done doing this, but I need it to be real. I'm just playing a role in your scheme. I do my part. It's fun, but it's just an act, and it's just for now. After this, I want to build a life that's real."
"Who decides what's real though?"
"Consequences decide what's real, Shay. Look at this sand. In Florida, I bet the sand gets churned the most in summer, during the hurricane season, when storms slam the shore. But this beach gets tossed and turned more in winter, because that's when the storms come here. Mother Nature brings consequences, kinda like you do, but Mother Nature can bring peace too. And that's where you and me are different. You love being the storm. You live for the war. I can bring destruction too, but when this is over? I want peace."
"So, no consequences for you, eh?"
"Time will tell," she said. "Fate comes for us all in the end."
"I thought you don't believe in fate."
"You don't believe in fate," she said, as she closed her eyes. Maybe she was hiding them. Maybe she was afraid they'd show me she was weak. Despite her tough talk, I knew she was a softie at heart. I'd known for a while. And I did think it was weakness at first, but it might be a strength in its own way. It's what made her a survivor despite everything she'd been through.
If she believed in fate, it was news to me. For any guy who met her, she was fate. She enjoyed bringing down guys as much as I did. But she had to know they deserved it. I just had to do it. I fucking needed to do it.
I needed the rush.
In a world that tells you you're nothing, there's a rush that comes with taking everything. And Claire was right. Despite how much I'd gotten, there was so much more to take.
She was right about something else, too. I enjoyed being the storm. Summer, winter, spring and fall. There's power in fury. That's my strength.
Claire doesn't have that fury, but I didn't need it from her. Her softness is what reeled in the marks. There's power in that, and she wields it. Her softness is a strength.
War and peace. They're two sides of a coin. Just like us.
I watched as Claire ran her fingers across the sand again, but she wasn't stirring it up. She was smoothing it out. And she smiled. I smiled too, for different reasons.
When we 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.
Editor's Note:
Sabotage is from the album Ill Communication, by the Beastie Boys. In 2021, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Sabotage at #245 in their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, by Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh, is a guide for using mindfulness to manage anger, sorrow, and grief.
To the best of our knowledge, never before have Sabotage and Peace Is Every Step been listed together.