As with most women I meet these days, there is a thread of tragedy, a ribbon of calamity, and a few strings of artistic inclination with Carrie. All sealed up in a satin blanket of sex appeal. I think that somewhere in a cosmic corner of decisions, these elements, combined, make the irresistible woman. More often than not, you will find these exact elements in a girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark past. This past she'll hint at occasionally in a car and then look far off over the oncoming traffic and highways as though it was as close as the gear shifter. That’s usually when I shift into 5th and accelerate.
You can usually distill the closest approximation of what happened to them by releasing little lies about yourself.
"...when I went in to take my interview...” it, that is the event, happened to me in a way that is hard to retell.
She was rearranging a few hundred CD's and tapes that sat on her kitchen counter.
All stolen―she would go into a music store and then rip off five or ten, all the quality CDs they had―and walk out calmly. My job in this was to walk in after her and look seventeen shades of sketchy. I find that I can do this in whatever clothes I am wearing. Actually, I don’t do anything really except walk in and look around calmly. I don't know why I have this effect on store employees. I’ve only stolen food in my life, only when I needed it.
While the scan of employee eyes would watch my every action, Carrie would steal CDs, tapes, store displays, employee price guns, name tags, money from the register, and things that belonged to other customers. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were able to actually put the entire store on wheels and have a truck pull it away. The workers would be standing outside of a vacant lot explaining to police that they don’t know what happened.
"Yes, officer, there was a shady character looming about, walking around as though he was engaged in some shoplifting. When we looked up at him leaving we were suddenly all outside and naked, with our credit card numbers used fraudulently in seven states.”
Carrie could do this. She could rip you off entirely and have you convinced later that you had actually done it yourself.
I speak from experience. She told me at one point that I had given my car to "sanctioned infidels so they could cut into our radio network and cripple satellites statewide.”
I know it sounds ridiculous but after a few days I did notice that all our television stations were dead. That or the power went out in our apartment, I don’t remember.
One of the two.
"You were standing right there, Will," she was telling me one night, "and you looked me right in the eyes and told me 'Carrie, I want you to have it. I don't even care about that book anymore.' But I, in your defense, said 'Will, but you love Bukowski.' Since our power had gone out, I thought we could trade in it to the bookstore and get at least fifty dollars. It is a first edition of Crucifix in a Death Hand. I remember you telling me this because you were wearing your criminal clothes."
I looked down at what I was wearing. A black banana republic shirt and brown pants. I'm a criminal in every attire.
"Fine,” I said, “at least the power is back.” The television at the center of her desk was playing a rerun of The Charlie Brown Halloween Movie. I always get sentimental about that one. Something about the great pumpkin makes me feel like a cartoon myself.
“ Well, not entirely back, the power that is," she began to say something but it melded into the Peanuts theme and I lost it in the scaling piano notes. I swear that song could bring me back from the grave, I thought.
I'd reach out my hand from within a coffin, grab someone, and call them a blockhead. Of course all they would hear is that sound the teachers make when they talk in Charlie Brown. That's how the dead sound, like a trombone.
"You see, we don’t have enough money to cover the electric bill."
Carrie always paced when she talked, so you got different pieces of the truth depending on what room she was in. She always told the truth from the bathroom. I came to associate the sound of running bath water with honesty.
Carrie's truth was quantitative, like displacement.
"It was very strange. I went to the hardware store to get a gas-powered generator. I mean, gas is cheaper than electricity."
"No,” I interrupted, “it is not. Gas is very expensive."
"If you pay for it, silly! I'm talking about stealing gas. Siphoning it out of cars. You can also drive off with a full tank of gas in someone's car. They never catch you."
"What you're talking about is illegal in like five ways. You're not only talking about grand theft auto, but grand theft unleaded. They put you away for that, Carrie," I lectured.
"N0. You will see,” she was talking and spilling water over the edge of the bath, "you don’t use your own car, you use someone else’s. Someone who looks like a criminal. They never suspect me anyways."
"Okay, Carrie, so back to the generator please, I cant keep up with your criminal genius without an encyclopedia.”
"So I went in to steal a generator, or rather, use the price gun and price it at twelve dollars. But when I went in there was no one there. The entire store was empty."
"Jesus,” I replied, looking at the rainbow patterns of water gathering on the tile floor. "Did you case the entire the entire place?"
"No, even better―I waited until someone came from the back and bought it for twelve dollars."
"If no one was there, why didn’t you just steal it?"
"Where's the technique in that? Jesus, Will. I'm a theft artist, not a kleptomaniac.”
More water fell on the tile, spiraling out in color circles.
"So I get the generator back here, but it's too noisy to run inside, so I stole like fifty extension cables. I put it out in the field behind the complex and ran the cable in here to power the surge strip."
"And the gas?” I say.
"I drove to the Chevron in this guy's car and filled up, brought it back here, and siphoned it out. I've been doing it for a few days now. Really there is no overhead on this. It's entirely free. Genius in that respect."
"It must be terrible to be whatever guy it is that you convince to let you do these things."
A brief pause as she looks at me very factually and says, “Every five minutes another sucker is born…”
These guys were her pawn force. Or at least that's what she called them. I'd never be one. After all, she didn’t have me the way she had them. They were orphans with a return policy. Return them after awhile and someone else will pick them up.
Cigarettes were running low. "I’m gonna get some smokes, babe. You got the keys?”
In the car I thought, “God, who are these people she rips off? They never find out until later, of course. It looked like a series of sparks was trailing behind me in the rearview mirror. Sharp orange flares were following my every move. Someone pulled to turn and go around me. My car jerked savagely to the left, the wheel wouldn’t respond. The shower of sparks started flying against the window as I was forced towards the direction of oncoming traffic.
When your car is about to crash, several things go through your mind. The last thing you think of is what some driving instructor told you about dangerous skids.
"You turn into the skid!”
“You turn away from the skid!”
They sound so similar I can never remember,
“If you remember nothing turn something from the skid!"
That is what I should have been thinking. Unfortunately all I could think about was the girl who sat next to me. The brown hair that seemed to shine as brightly as the state-funded fluorescent lamps that lit up driving school. I remembered how she slowly crashed the car into the same orange cone twice, once to knock it down, and then another time to try to prop it back up.
This flash of orange cones ran through my head as the car sailed down an embankment and slowed into a field of blue bonnets. Blue flower patterns ran like mosaics through the windshield and the fractal like patterns so beautiful that I forgot to hit the brakes.
William Terry is a twenty five year old writer from Austin Texas where he is a student at Austin Community College . His work has been published by The Panhandler in Houston , The Vivid Literary Journal in Pennsylvania , and the Armageddon Buffet E-zine. He maintains a website for aspiring writers at www.philosopherdown.com . His writing centers on humorous exaggerated interactions between men and women. His philosophy to writing centers on embellishing personal experience.
Archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/short/80-wt-0909-displacement
