D. Cartier

In the following story I tried my very best to keep to the straight truth. However, because of the nature of the story I was forced by my desire to avoid prison to change some important (potentially incriminating) details. Most names, including my own, along with specific practical details have been twisted enough to serve my aforementioned hope to remain free. 

I also added some artistic flourishes, just for fun. 

I wanted to change the name of my friend Olivia Lapin as well, however she insisted that I leave her name in here. While asserting she “deserves the credit for all of her hard fucking work.”

So, her name remains, despite credit for all of her hard work is literally how being found guilty works.

Anyway a short while ago, I was at a show opening, at an art gallery, along the historic 1st avenue south, here in Seattle. 

Holding a red solo cup, in a warmly lit room, surrounded by people I didn’t want to know better. I had been invited there by a woman I had met a few weeks before on a dating app. We had a nice time together but didn’t gel in a romantic or physical sense. We both said we could try being friends, but I hadn’t heard from her until she gave me the invite to this event. 

She was the art gallery’s event and social media manager. We had spoken for a short time when I had arrived. Very polite, but as short as we both seemed to want it to be, our disparate, yet compatible, motivations obvious. She had just needed more bodies to fill the room for Instagram photos and I hadn’t had anything better to do that night.

Well maybe I could have spent that time trying to find a new place to live. That probably would have been better.

My apartment building was being knocked down. It had been sold a few years back to a development firm, along with the rest of buildings on the block. They were finally moving forward with their plan of turning the whole area into corporate housing.

When that was announced, my roommate, who I had known for two years, basically evaporated along with their furniture and my good whisk. 

Looking back, I wouldn’t have minded the whisk so much if they hadn’t also evaporated from my life. I missed watching trash reality shows with them.

I had the month at my old place and wasn’t sure what I was going to do after that. I’d never had a strong relationship with my parents, but they might have taken me in for a little while, except that would mean hiding certain real things about myself, and my opinions around anything important.

I took down the last of the drink in my cup, my third at that point. The strawberry and lime nonsense was free, and very boozy. I looked around, found the drinks set up again, with the bartender dressed like a professional bike mechanic and moved to get my fourth.

“Hey, hold up, have this and take a look at this painting.”

I turned back around to find the source of the voice. I definitely put too much force behind the turn. I think you could describe what I did as a twirl. I had begun to feel the progress of my drunkenness

That twirl landed me in front of a woman a good half-foot shorter than me. She was looking up at me with a big smile. I assumed she noticed my drunken twirl. Her dark hair done up in a bob, with thick black plastic framed glasses that tapered to a point. She handed me one of the two red cups in her hands. 

I looked into her eyes, green, they were nice, but not really what drew me in. Her glasses were thick, but didn’t bend or magnify the image behind them. They were fake. Just glass, or a layer of plastic. I, tempted by the contents of the cup in my hand, chose to write it off as a fashion choice and drank what she had given me. 

She motioned towards the painting on the wall beside us.

“Look”

I did, I must have been standing next to this painting for a good fifteen minutes. Drinking and scrolling through my phone, but never looking over to this absolute treat of a canvas. It was small, about the size of a clip-board, abstract, bold colors slapped in great sweeps, pulling together and away from each other. The centerpiece, for me at least, of the painting was a coppery slap of paint surrounded by a cold and heavy blue. The sparkling gold and orange peak cutting through a sea like a dreadnought of a dead colonial empire. An ember of evil glory limping forward in defiance of the doom it has already suffered.

I had trouble sorting out how it made me feel. It was painful, like placing your hand on a panel of rusty metal. Degraded metal catching my skin. Sad, like watching something die. But that was turned back as… happy relief? Like the thing you are watching die deserved its fate. The hole it leaves in the world is one that can be filled with hope.

“It’s good right?” she asked.

I took a moment before I replied, having to pick myself up emotionally. 

“Yeah, good” taking another drink from my cup.

“My friend painted it. Kind of a big deal for her, sold it before the show.”

“Oh yeah” Only half listening, my eyes slowly working up a bold green slash on the painting’s right side.

“$25,000, paid in full, by that guy.” She pointed deeper into the long gallery, towards a clean-shaven man in his fifties maybe, like an unnaturally smooth fifties. He was clearly fighting against his age with money, and losing the battle. His face looked like the tight shiny skin of an unripe pimple. The too tight t-shirt and jeans, clean, black, new, and unbranded, didn’t make him less rich looking than he was. 

“I’m gunna fuck him over.” she asked, jolting me back to her.

“What? What do you mean? What are you going to do?” I asked. Drunk eyes narrowing.

She put her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small box.

“I want to tell you, but I shouldn’t. Well…maybe one bit, so I can say a sort of… pre-sorry. I’m going to press two buttons on my thing here…”

She held the small box up in front of me. The small box was a very simple gray, and covered with the lines a 3d printer leaves, with a small LCD screen at its center and three buttons in a row underneath. Honestly, it looked like a janky Tamogatchi.

“…and after that I’m going to use you as a distraction.”

She pressed the center button, and a small crab appeared on the screen with a speech bubble asking:

Are you sure?

No/Yes

“Sorry, but also thanks.” 

This, finally, filled me with the alarm I should have been feeling the whole time.

“Wait, what the fuc-”

She pressed the right button. 

A loud bang filled the room and the lights went out. I could feel the solid weight of the woman’s muscled shoulder slamming hard into my chest. Winding me and flinging me back into the tall man who had been standing near us against the wall. Making us both topple to the ground.

Scrambling around on the big man, I was gasping to find my breath again, and I was mad. 

The man shoved me off of him, before I found my breath, so I was flopped on the cold concrete floor, gasping like a fish. But wide eyed, I caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a woman in the orange light of the street lamps outside the art gallery’s large front windows. She was short, had pointed glasses, a bob hair cut, and holding a dark rectangle in her arm. 

My assailant’s silhouette was on the far side of the pane of glass and it disappeared, exiting stage right. 

I looked up to the wall I had been staring at only a few seconds earlier, and in the dim  light filtering in from the street I could see the painting was gone.

My brain was screaming for air and vengeance. I began slapping the ground with my hands and pulling. Dragging myself forward with each slap until I could breath enough strength into my limbs to lift myself up and bust out of the door.

The cold air of the spring night on First Avenue sucking into my flaring nostrils as I ran down the street in the direction I saw the silhouette leave. 

 I was heading towards Pioneer Square. My eyes darting around as I went. Checking down each road, up each staircase, and between each car. The thick trees in the street median mocking me as I went. Nothing. My growing frustration, being egged on further and further by a pain in my chest. Each breath coming strong now, but painful. 

The epicenter of my pain right where she hit me. I wondered if she had cracked or bruised my rib.

By the time I reached the Victorian glass pergola in the square, I knew she had gotten away. I kicked one of the metal pillars in frustration, and I was punished by a sharp pain in my foot.

That sobered me up.

What had I been doing? Chasing after someone who had stolen someone else’s painting? A person that I didn’t know, who could probably afford other paintings, and probably had bought it for some house I could never afford myself. 

I was going to be kicked out of my apartment, and then what? Personal, but hopefully temporary, dishonesty with my parents? Maybe sleeping on this bench? I looked over at the sleeping shape next to me.

A pile of blankets spilling over the edge of the bench, covering a sleeping bag and a layer of cardboard underneath. A faint smell of sweat and urine being carried over by the light wind. I hadn’t looked at the mass before that moment. I tried not to look at any street people since moving here. Can’t really, it’s too much, that mixture of guilt, fear, and hopelessness. But that wasn’t fair, those are just thoughts for my benefit. My humanness alone.

I looked down feeling a little ashamed, and I noticed something under the bench. Behind the curtain of blankets, were broad abstract strokes on a dark rectangle. 

The painting! 

I stood straight up. 

“Hey! It’s you isn’t it! Hey!” I shouted, pointing at the ‘sleeping’ figure.

The body in the sleeping bag sat up slowly until it was at a perfect right angle to the bench. Still completely obscured by the top of the bag, it turned in my direction. That made me lose confidence for a moment, maybe I had just pissed off some random guy who probably needed that sleep. Until the fabric was pulled down revealing the green eyes of the thief. Only now, she had short dark hair with a cowlick that made her look like a baby chicken, and she had ditched her fake glasses and jacket

“Yeah, you got me. Now shut the fuck up please.” She said with a smile over gritted teeth.

My anger returned.

“No, fuck you! You can’t just fucking body check me.” I sputtered.

“But I did, and I apologized for that. Please be quiet .” She replied, giving me the shush-ing finger.

“That doesn’t fucking count! And don’t shush me!” I yelled even louder.

My attention was caught suddenly by sirens in the distance, getting louder, moving towards us. She had heard them too, and gave me a knowing look. She pulled the sleeping bag down and scooted to the side. 

“Get in if you don’t wanna be a snitch. There’s room.”

That took me aback for a second, the last thing I wanted to do was get into a tight foul smelling bag with this person. 

But the cops. 

If I had left right then they would have seen me walking down the street. Probably a little stumblingly, still being drunk and my ribs in as much pain as they were. Once they had picked me up, connections would have been made between me and the theft. Days until my hearing, sitting in jail and potential charges at the end of it. 

Also, thinking beyond me, I didn’t want to be a snitch.

I groaned loudly, shook my hands in frustration, and she laughed at me.

“Fine, whatever” I said in defeat.

I zipped down the side of the sleeping bag the rest of the way, stepped in, and zipped the bag up with an angry tug. Catching my finger in the process. I swore and we both laid down parallel, back to back. It was a tight fit, I was facing away from the back of the bench and was sure if I moved too much it would pitch us both forward onto the hard ground.

I was distracted from that thought by the bag’s smell being even worse on the inside. The sulfurous and ammonia-y musk burned my nostrils in a flash and then the smell’s power waned, but the sick feeling remained.

I could see the red and blue flashes through the nylon shell and flannel lining of the bag, so I tried to be as quiet as possible when I hissed “Why does it smell so fucking bad in here?”

“It adds to the camouflage.” She whispered, craning her neck to turn towards me. It came out in a startlingly matter of fact sort of way.

“Oh does it?” I asked incredulously. “Smelling awful wouldn’t attract attention? Piss Smell?!”

“It does the opposite, and exactly that, in a fun way. Piss smell would cause someone, in a city, like our lovely Seattle, to actively choose to ignore something. Killing any sense of curiosity. Also, that means I could leave this shit here for a while and no one would walk off with it.” She replied, this time with a little excitement. Like I would definitely find what she was saying very interesting.

And damn it, I did.

“Uh, yeah…that makes sense actually.” I paused. “So, how much of this did you plan?”

“What? This whole job ya mean? All the important things. Prep, in, grab, and then out. It was the grab that you helped with, thanks and sorry again. You feelin’ ok?” She ended on a down note, seemed like she really wanted to know.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine, still mad about it though.” I didn’t want to just brush over it, but I had stopped actually being mad. The initial emotion dissipated with the pain in my chest and toes.

After a few moments of silence, I could still see the flashing lights of the cop cars through the wall of the sleeping bag.

“Were stuck here…so what was the plan?” I tentatively asked. 

“You really want to know?” she was clearly stoked, and her own question was also clearly rhetorical because she jumped right in.

“Ok ok ok, first I gave the place the once over. Monday, I went in during normal busy-ness hours, talked with the staff pretended to want to buy something. All that good stuff. Whiiille, I took note of cameras, lights, doors. Nothing fancy, seemed doable. After that, I asked my friend Izz to get me the building’s plans. She’s real good at that sort of thing, apparently they got the place renovated a few years back. It was easy enough, from Izz’s perspective at least. God damn magic witch that she is.” 

She took a breath finally, I was about to ask how she even came up with the idea, but she got back to barreling forward.

“Plans, we were able to find a circuit breaker in the utility closet in back. That would be perfect for the spectacle I wanted to make of the whole thing.”

I tried to jump in there and ask why she wanted to draw attention to a crime, but no.

“I thought I could try placing the big bang on the night, but that was too big a risk. Lots of people purposefully looking at stuff, art gallery. So, I used my exterminator get up. That was whipped up by my friend Pauline, they’re also just….I would do a chef’s kiss thing, but my arms are basically stuck on my sides right now.”

I felt for a moment the sense of my own arms being trapped at their sides, and forced the thought out before it made me panic.

“The thing about that get up is, people ask who you are and almost immediately stop once you tell them. They think you’re a gross bug squisher and don’t really want to look into it further, usually. I was able to kind of round out the face, saying I was hired by the building owner, that their neighbors found mouse poop, so I had to check out their back areas. Yadda yadda, hanta virus or whatever. Was able to place the big bang inside the breaker box, and just hope that no one had to mess with it for the next 24 plus hours.” 

I was finally able to squeeze in the question.

“So you set this all up yesterday?” 

“Yeah, the prep stuff before the show, you wanna do that as close to the thing as possible. And thats why I actually dropped off this cocoon we’re in while I was on my way to the gallery. Nice pile of blankets. Bought them all at a garage sale a way back.”

I had finally gotten a pattern for how to bust into her wall of words.

“Ok, how did you make it smell like this?”

She paused, the silence was heavy. 

“I uhhh…well, my friend Pauline has a cat and I…well…”

“Fuck this, I gotta get out of here”

She sniggered to herself, but through that noise we could tell the cops had moved on. The lights were gone, and the sirens were silent. 

We unzipped and I stretched out of the bag into the cold fresh air of the night. She did a hop off the bench, reached under it pulling out the painting and a large bike bag. The sort that’s just one large compartment, rolled at the top.

I was taking a deep breath, glad to be out of that tube of smells and that my chest had stopped hurting, when the thief asked me.

“By the way, the fuck is your name? I kinda spilled my guts there, I just love talking about work. And I try not to, you can guess why, but the post job thrill kinda got me there.”

I turned around and said “Ha, right, I’m Jamie”

She had slipped the painting into the bag and put it on her back.

“Nice, I’m Olivia Lapin. Gentleman thief, extra-ordinare.”

She reached out her right hand for a hand shake, while cartoonish-ly twiddled a phantom mustache with the other.

I laughed and shook her hand.

I looked around me, the square, the brick pavers, public art, the street lights glowing, were all quiet. Only the rustling trees seemed to give any sound. It was late and whatever hub-bub had calmed here, and must have concentrated back at the gallery. Still it felt like sticking around was a bad idea.

“I should probably go.” I said motioning away.

Olivia thought for a moment “Hey walk with me back to my place. I don’t usually get a chance to talk about my work and I’ve already made you kind of a liability.”

This invitation confused me, so I’ll admit here that this is what my reply was “Oh I’m sorry, I’m not trying to…”

“Not trying to what?” She seemed to also be confused.

“I’m…you’re cute and all, I’m just not-“

“Oh god, no no no, I’m not trying to fuck. I just get all keyed up and I get the vibe you and I could be friends.”

I was shot through with a feeling of deep embarrassment, and then followed by a warm toasty feeling. Having someone tell me bluntly how they thought we could be friends, a feeling I honestly felt in that moment too, was sweet enough to easily turn my mood to the positive.

I replied, “wow, yeah uh, me too. Yeah, I can hang for a bit longer.”

We smiled at each other, she led our way south away from downtown, and we talked.

Olivia asked me questions about me and my life, and I asked Olivia about her and hers.

I don’t think I can go into too many details about myself here. I already told you I’m going to lie about that sort of thing if I give you any specific details and it would feel weird to lie and say I’m from Dayton, Ohio and am a maker of fine wood cabinetry.

I will also withhold the information that Olivia shared with me about herself. Not because I won’t ever share it, Olivia is really gung-ho that I do, but I will assure you, the reader, in the same way I assured her. That I will share this information when it is most entertaining to do so.

I was so engrossed in our conversation I hadn’t noticed the progress we had made. Once I became aware of our surroundings again, I realized we were deep in SODO. The semi-industrial area of Seattle that hugs the east side of the port. A mix of warehouses, storage yards, and a surprising amount of places to get decent food.

She had stopped us behind an old cube shaped building. Two stories tall, with a few blacked out windows I could see from our side, wood panel siding with lead paint chipping off in great flakes, with faded illegible lettering. 

Olivia pulled up to a rusty keypad, clicked in a code, and opened the flat grafittied door in front of us and motioned me to follow. I stepped through the door as she flipped a switch. Fluorescent bulbs buzzed to life.

The large room took up the whole of the bottom floor. Stacked high with boxes. They were made of a myriad of different materials, cardboard, pine, heavy plastic. Some looked like they had been there a while, covered in dust, and few looked like they had just been brought in. The room smelled like clay and dampness.

“Where the hell are we?” I asked while trying to read the label on the box to my right. It looked like it was written in, Greek?

“I live upstairs. I sort of, take care of this place in exchange for the space.” She replied, heading deeper into the room.

I gave up on identifying what I was looking at and followed her.

“What is all of this stuff?”

“I don’t know, I don’t ask. Its part of the deal”

“The deal with who?”

“The guy who I watch the place for.”

“What if its like drugs or something?”

Olivia laughed “Its not, or not that kind, he doesn’t do that. He does other things.”

“Like what?”

We finally reached the middle of the room, where we stopped at a rusty ladder at its very center.

Olivia hopped on the first rung, backpack swinging behind her.

“I don’t know specifically, but he also doesn’t know what I do specifically so…” She shrugged and began to climb.

She reached the top, pushed open the trap door in the ceiling and disappeared into the darkness above. 

I hopped on the ladder, and popped through the opening myself.

Olivia had turned on the light before I had joined her and was already at the dining table, carefully pulling out the painting from her back pack.

The warm light coming down from the industrial lights above highlighted her in front of a large plate window. It took up the majority of the far wall giving me a view of the twinkling lights of the port stretching over Harbor Island towards West Seattle. Scattered with the lights of people’s windows and lives.

The large room’s hardware came from the 1940’s. The dark-wood trim, brass fittings, and push button light switches.

The kitchenette was added later, maybe a decade or two later, a stove, counters, fridge and sink. All rounded, and analog. The fridge door had one of those big handles that make a really nice “chunka” sound when you close it.

The furniture. Good lord, Eames and Le Corbusier chairs, Knoll couch, Noguchi coffee table, Saarinen dining set. It was like a museum exhibit called, “Oh, hey you’ll like this Jamie”. Come to think of it, they may have come from a museum for all I know.

There is a lamp by the couch, and I swear it looks just like one thought lost in a fire that took out a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the 1970’s.

Its picture is in a lot of those big coffee table books. 

I would have asked about it then, had I not been also blinded by the absolute state of the place.

Piles of abandoned clothes and dishes were strewn about. Stacks of detail filled documents, clearly sensitive schematics, and scrawled on sticky notes that covered almost every available table, counter, or just flat surface that wasn’t occupied by previously mentioned clutter.

Olivia’s work was in a territorial war with the mundane chores of life, and winning hard. 

Doing crime or doing the laundry. Olivia had consistently been picking the more interesting option.

I reflexively went first to the pile of dishes in the sink. A musty moldering miasma bellowed off of them as I approached. They were just screaming at me, pleading to be washed and dried. I started fantasizing about getting them so clean they literally make that squeaking noise when you rub them with your finger.

“How did it get like this?” I asked Olivia, as the itch in my head grew stronger.

“How did what? The dishes, oh, they just get like that sometimes. I don’t really know sometimes, its not like I cook or anything.” Olivia replied, flapping her arms around dismissively.

“Really? You’ve got the space, the stuff to do it.” I yanked a Le Creuset skillet out of the mountain soaking in the sink, luckily it wasn’t load bearing or we may have both been killed in the ensuing avalanche.

She shrugged, “Yeah, but its not like I have time, or know what the hell I’m doing.”

“Wait, did you buy this stuff or…”

“I stole a few things when I moved in, little things you need for living. But the furniture came from my aunt…I don’t think she paid for it either but hey, she got them years ago.”

“She know the state of this place? Your Aunt.”

“Well…yeah…she does…”Olivia looked around the room a little embarrassed “…every time she’s come by she gives me shit about it. But I don’t really have the time, or whatever.”

I thought of something, an idea, a bad idea, but that night was weird enough that anything might be possible.

“Remember how I mentioned my building was being knocked down?” I said tentatively, staring at the pan in my hands and then at the pile of dishes. “Could I maybe…move in here?”

“What?!” Olivia started laughing again.

I was devastated. I wanted to throw up, die, and explode. It didn’t really matter the order, I just knew all three were necessary to purge the embarrassment I felt. 

God, why the fuck did I say that? It was so weird! Olivia was going to think I’m creepy and a sad sack. 

She slapped me hard on the back “That’s a really good idea. I have like two spare rooms. You can take whichever one you want. I’ll just move out whatever shit is in there.”

I smiled a big ol’ smile, this had been the best day I’d had since moving to Seattle a few years before.

“What’s the rent like? I could maybe do dishes and cook or something?” I had thought something along those lines before asking, but now saying it out loud, I felt a little silly. That put a little gray in my good mood.

“I don’t pay rent, it’s sort of a work deal, like I said. I’m not going to take any of your money, I don’t take money from real people. I do like the idea of having someone who can do the cooking and cleaning. Sounds like a deal to me.” She said, with a nonchalance bumped with a positive tone.

I gave her an appreciative smile, and still a little embarrassed, jumped into doing the dishes.  Luckily I was able to find an old sponge, a completely new bottle of dish-soap, and some long yellow rubber gloves in the cupboard beneath the sink.

Olivia took that moment to go back to the painting on her kitchen table. She attached some wire by stapling it to the back of the frame, and she hung it on the wall. She took a step back and admired her prize.

I had watched her do this as I scrubbed a stubborn clump of top ramen out of a colander. I got curious again.

“What’s the plan with the painting? What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“Its really nice. You said you liked it too right? If you’re going to live here you should have a say in what goes up in this room” She replied, looking back at me only for a moment, otherwise engrossed in the painting.

“Yeah, but aren’t you going to like…sell it or something.” I asked, this time putting a little stink on it. Her answers left me even more curious.

“Oh shit that’s right, I didn’t tell you that part! I was paid.”

“What? Paid by who?”

“The artist, Maggie Sandoval, I told you about her. Before I rammed into ya.”

Olivia sat hard into one of the Saarinen tulip chairs and leaned forward with a v shaped goblin smile. She had locked in again to talk about work.

“She got a hold of me a week ago, we met and she told me her end of things…” 

I was locked in with her then, peeling off the rubber gloves and joined her in a chair of my own.

She continued, “Maggie had, a few days earlier, sold the painting. She needed the money so hadn’t worried about how the transaction happened through a third party, some agent or whatever. But part of the deal was that the actual buyer was going to get a preview before the show, when he had the time.”

Olivia got up, stepped to the refrigerator, and put her hand on the handle. “Want something to drink?”

I stared at her, “No, please continue the story.”

She shrugged and took out a can of sprite from the fridge, and sat back down.

“Cool, right, buyer. He showed up, and lo and behold, it was Stan Beck, this private equity real-estate guy. The guy I pointed out to you at the show, the one who just had a chemical peel and doesn’t know how to wear a shirt.”

I nodded, remembering him.

“He’s a real piece of shit. But in a run of the mill, he makes money out of money, and making everything slightly worse over and over again. Takes affordable housing tax credits to make cardboard boxes that cost more to rent than what they knocked down to build them. That sort of thing.”

I thought about it, and I wondered if he was a part of the company that was going to ‘redevelop’ my building, but it didn’t really matter.

“This pissed Maggie off, she kept a straight face at the meet and greet, answered his stupid questions, and felt sick once he had left. She wanted out, but needed to pay rent, buy paint, or food, or whatever, life stuff. She then had an idea to contact me.”

I asked Olivia, how did Maggie the Artist even know to contact you, much less how. 

It’s apparently, word of mouth, a little technology, and spy-crafty/code-wordy meetups. Sorry if that’s vague, but as previously alluded to, I don’t want to be arrested.

Olivia continued, “Maggie originally just wanted me to break into his house, and just take it back. I had the thought that she could think bigger than that. Maybe out of the box. I proposed that I steal it, but at the show itself. In front of everyone, she thought that was a bad idea, I mean why?”

She leaned towards me and asked.

“Do you know why the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world?”

“Was it stolen?” I asked back.

She nodded back to me “Exactly. Its something that adds to the story or something. I figured I could do something similar for her. Maybe the spectacle of a… relatively safe, explosion and a disappearance might radiate over her other paintings. Would say it was kinda cheap but I’m not cheap. Took about $5000 of the money she was paid by the guy. Enough for me and to spread among the friends that helped me do it. And she said I could keep the painting.”

I was left a little bothered by something that she was leaving out of the story.

“Why the hell did you have to lay into me? Like body me to the ground like that.” I asked.

“Right, sorry again about that. But remember the guy I shoved you into?” she replied.

“Yeah.”

“He was a factor I couldn’t really take into account before the job. He was a guard, and he just would not leave where he was posted up by the painting. Security guys usually do a little walk around every now and then. This guy refused to, like he thought he was holding up the wall or something. A load bearing narc. I needed him to no longer be a factor. He would be within grabbing distance when I snag the painting. And then you showed up, and I thought, and I’m sorry for this too but I was right…”

I glared a little at her.

“I figured I could take a drunk dude down, and that you would be a nice bonus on my escape. Didn’t think you would chase me. You didn’t look like the type.”

I glared a little longer, and then started to laugh. 

“Fuck, well yeah I guess you have a point.”

I didn’t feel like defending against the ‘type’ comment, honestly she had a point there too, I was just in a bad enough mood that evening. I was really up for anything that came, including, apparently, a revenge fueled chase.

That’s basically it.

The story about how I met my friend Olivia. 

I moved in the next day, bringing my little life things and abandoning my cheap furniture on the sidewalk. Wasn’t that much of it and I wasn’t sure how I would get it into Olivia’s place anyway. I haven’t seen any other way in or out of the place besides the ladder, I’ve asked Olivia and she only laughed and refused to tell me anything. 

She also laughed when, as I was carrying in a box, I knocked over and cracked her Fabergé Egg.