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Kim, Quick and Precise

Thomas M. McDade

    Kim pops into my life at the Post Office the day after the Super Bowl. I’m waiting for the window to open. I want my MasterCard payment in a hand not a box. A man behind me offers to aid a woman postal worker heading out to hang the flag. She accepts. He leaves his packages on the long counter separating enter and exit lanes. Soon after, I hear a voice boom: “How did you like that game,” asks a man wearing bib overalls. A kid might confuse him with a storybook giant. He holds a staff that reaches his chin. I can make out USA carved in it. I joke to myself that there’s a flock of sheep in the parking lot. His glasses are thick. I can’t make out the logo on his ball cap.
    “Hell of a comeback,” I respond. I caught the end of the game while nursing a mug of beer at the Frontier Bar. I’m not much of a football fan. He doesn’t agree or disagree but does mention the losing 49ers’ city.
    “I have a problem with some people in Frisco”, he shouts loud enough for me and those ahead of me to hear as well as the City by the Bay. I turn my back to him and perhaps that’s a flag a ref tosses on a gridiron but in this case one of lavender or rainbow not the official yellow. I imagine him any second dropping a miniature Confederate rag. He spews a roaring REPENT. I take another look at him.
    “That’s right, sweetie,” he says, big grin on his face, top dentures slip. But he’s soon frowning after a young woman who was leaving ducks under the counter and pops up in front of me. She gently takes me in her arms and her kiss is one for the ages. Well, at least the twenty-three spotted me so far.
    “See you later, man,” she softly says retracing her route her entry and she’s out the door, blonde pony tail hopping.
    “Tranny,” says the giant and I say “holy shit” to myself.
    The Old Glory helper returns. The giant asks if he works at the Ford dealer and he owns up. “I love my Ford 250 pickup,” announces Jumbo. No fee, fie, fo, fum, etc. about the kind of vehicle I likely piloted. I doubt he’d be any good at whispering. I’ve never owned one unless stolen car time counts.
    The kissing bandit is standing outside a Used Sporting Goods Store. She’s smiling, “Hope I didn’t embarrass you,” she says.
    “You might have saved my life.”
    “He’s a blowhard. My name’s Kim.” Her eyes are brown. Her nose is kind of pointy. Her lips are thin. I once overheard a woman at a Burger King regret her narrow lips. “Saves on hot pink,” consoled her friend.
    “I’m Tom.” She offers her hand and her grip is soft.
    “Come sit in my car, Tom. Sorry, it’s a clunker. Just keep in mind this is business not romance.” The Chevy Cavalier is deep blue. A fender is dented.
    “Shucks,” I say. No response to my attempt at humor.
    “It’s not about blackmail though.”
    “There wouldn’t be much in the brown paper bag.”
    “The cops might bring you some chow in one.”
    “What are you saying?” A lump like a softball dams my throat.
    “I saw you break into a couple of dwellings on Union Boulevard. You used a tree and the other was easier, cellar window.”
    “True.” The sun is a bare bulb in a police station interrogation.
    “I’d never turn you in because I’m a burglar and a thief. I’m usually a loner but for my next caper I need an assistant. What do you say?”
    “I’m in,” I answer, relieved and amazed at such lawless words coming from such an innocent face.
    “You’re homeless, right?”
    “For the time being, I couldn’t get anything on my credit card and my last two jobs weren’t winners. I’m just paying plastic interest. That’s why I was at the P.O. I had a floor sweeping job at a textile mill but I got fired. I misread a poster and opened a door that was supposed to stay shut for fabric testing.” I got words wrong all my life, never graduated high school. “You can stay at my place for a while. Remember no sex.”
    “By the way, what’s the crime to be?”
    “Catalytic converters, they are like gold, sometimes platinum. I’ve got the mechanic’s dolly for sliding under and a fancy drill. I have a piece of rope I’ve spliced up nicely to attach to the jewel. The hook on the end fits just right.”
    I tell her where my duffle bag is stashed. We pick it up. Her one bedroom apartment is on Raphael Street. It’s sparsely furnished. My surveying eyes register a small TV, a goldfish bowl on a coffee table, and tan shag rug before Kim tells me I’ll be sleeping on the green plaid couch. I drop my bag against a pillow with a sheet and blanket on top. I’m a little embarrassed about my luggage that I bought at an Army Navy Store but no remarks from Kim. It contains all I own. The bedroom door is ajar enough for me to see a David Bowie poster. She gives me a fluffy blue towel, a bar of hotel sized soap and flowered pajama bottoms. There is no shower. The medicine cabinet is padlocked: magic drugs or depilatories? I nearly fall asleep in the tub. I only half wish for her to slip in the door naked. Jumbo’s “tranny” echoes in my head.
    Breakfast is corn flakes, juice and a banana. The coffee is Maxwell Instant. She wears a heavy bathrobe that is tightly belted. She bends down over the table once but I get no peek. From my glances at her jean jacket outside the P.O. she’s not overly blessed. The radio is tuned to a Classic Rock Station. A half hour of The Four Seasons is playing, “Can’t Take My Eyes off You” at the moment to fit my gawking. She keeps beat with an index finger. She finally speaks. “Hey partner.”
    “That’s me.” “Go to the Laundromat and get your laundry done. We’ll start working tonight. It will last three weeks and you’ll get out of town for a spell. You’ll be well paid. Remember we’re both criminals. Keeping a low-profile is the name of the game.” She half smiles like someone might at a mother at the market whose kid threw a plum at you and missed. I grin and asked if she ever done time.
    “For me to know and for you to find out,” she says. That was something I’d expect from a child at a playground to say. I want to bring up the P.O. scene but with her back to me, she takes off her bathrobe, puts it under her arm and walks slowly to her bedroom. Only half her ass is visible. I get clean clothes out of my bag, dress and spend a three quarters of an hour at a Laundromat down the street. There’s a week’s worth of newspapers. I check the police blotters. No sign of my burglaries or any others. That night she tells me to nap with my clothes on because we’ll be heading out at one a.m. She gives me a black hoodie like the one she’s wearing. My jeans are dark enough. I’m on my stomach when she wakes me. She squeezes high on my thigh. We head out in her hurting Chevy. It does some bucking as if it’s unhappy with short sleep. “You’re going to be a hermit until you leave,” she tells me. “No need for you to be seen.”
    The first victim is a black LTD. I lug our felony gear. She lies down on a mechanic’s dolly and spreads her legs enough to get the saw that looks like a piece of sci-fi weaponry between them. I push her under the car my hands cupped on her feet. At her whistle, faithful dog me retrieves her. I hear the converter hit the ground. She is that quick and precise. I take the rope and ease out the prize. One might think she’s cradling a baby. I put the equipment in the sad Chevy trunk. She makes her infant comfy.
    It takes three tries to start the wreck. There will be no Steve McQueen movie getaway. Yikes, that was San Francisco! She holds up her hand for a hi-five. I try to tangle my finger in hers. “Too intimate, my dear,” she weakly warns.
    There are times she has to park a distance away from the target. That dolly is no tot’s skateboard and I’m deathly afraid of dropping and breaking the saw. Once on a rainy night there was mud as thick as syrup. I felt like a swamp denizen, every molecule of me soiled. Kim said it was like a beauty treatment at a health spa. “Lucky mud,” I said. She slipped her hand under my hoodie onto the back of my neck. I thought she was going to pull me forward to kiss but not so. She put her palm to my mouth and I licked it. “For shame,” she said and laughed.
    Our closest call was a low flying helicopter. I hurt my knees joining Kim under the Land Rover. I heard her mumble, “Please Jesus.” I couldn’t see him as an accomplice. She squeezed my hand like it was a relic from Lourdes. Luckily, the chopper noise dwindled and we didn’t encounter any flashing lights making out getaway.
    Between excursions, I heed her instructions. I watch game shows and soap operas. The reception is snowy. There is a bookcase with a ragged Encyclopedia. I flip through A-Z in no time just looking at pictures. I bookmark a page about a painter named Sargent and his painting called “Madam X.” In profile she reminds me of Kim. I was going to rip out the page; after all I’m a thief but a guest too. There is a Playboy Magazine and that’s a damned good sign, vintage, Kim Novak on the cover. Did she keep it because of the name match?
    Her bedroom is padlocked like the medicine cabinet but it is a red and bigger one. The next time she flashes I see a tattoo on the back of her left thigh. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Jumbled letters in a newspaper puzzle. I count any flesh view as a perk.
    We have the same breakfast as the first one every morning. I leave the laundry bag daily in the hall outside her apartment at 11:45. I open the door at noon. Someone snatches the dirty laundry and delivers it still warm from a dryer. A fast food lunch sits at its side. Two double cheeseburgers from Burger King. Kim whips up meatballs and spaghetti, mac and cheese, hot dogs and beans and beef stew for our suppers. They are all smothered in silence.
    I try to guess what she does all day. She wears loose fitting dresses that reach well below her knees, low heeled shoes and a navy blue corduroy jacket. She looks great. Maybe she’s a salesperson at a jewelry store that we’d soon knock off. Maybe she just walks the streets picking out the cars to rob. The vehicles are all just the right distance from the ground for our labors. Sometimes it’s just the tire size or the way they are parked that makes them choice.
    Accuracy is her middle name. We carry a scissor jack but I never had to run back to the car for it. Once after a catnap I opened the grub door a minute early and caught a blur of grey skirt and a maroon handbag. Another partner? I slid my hand under one of he couch cushions and felt the edge of a magazine. It was a Road Atlas. No coins. I studied every state trying to figure out where I’d go when Kim was over. She told me twice to think about life after catalytic converters but never offered to help. I couldn’t make up my mind so I held the covers open and flipped it. The page that faced me like an “Uncle Sam Wants You” war poster was Connecticut. A city marked with what looked like a piece of tobacco or lint was Hamden, a town 5 miles from New Haven and Yale University and rich kids who needed fleecing.
    When the night arrives that would end out partnership, Kim says, “This one’s for fun.” She has me pack my duffle bag. “I’ll drive you to the bus station in Richmond after we finish,” she says. “I’ll give you your cut there.” I wonder if I’d be left high and dry somehow. We park around the block from an apartment house. The unlucky vehicle is a Ford 250. It’s well hidden by a box truck and a van. “Yup, it’s Goliath’s,” she says and pecks my cheek. I’d been hoping the fun would be romance in the truck bed to test its suspension. I chuckle to myself but some slipped out. “What’s that all about” she asks.
    “Just thinking what goes around comes around.” I can’t help but fear the giant’s staff will soon crack out skulls. We did our usual labor but we don’t take the converter to the Cavalier trunk. Kim has a gizmo like the cops use to open cars with the keys locked inside. She gives me the pleasure of placing the catalytic on the driver’s seat. She quickly kisses my lips. On the way to the bus station I notice that the Chevy is running smoothly. I ask Kim. It’s been completely overhauled. “Keep that hoodie and let it remind you of me, and our successes, okay?”
    “You bet.” As if I’d ever forget her. She finds a parking spot close to the Greyhound Depot and quickly hops out to open the trunk. After removing my bag she fishes out a manila envelope. “There’s $2,500 in there,” she says. “Spend it wisely and here’s $100 pin money.” She takes me in her arms and hugs me like a lineman might a quarterback before slamming him to the ground. She hustles back into the car and beeps the horn twice as she drives away. I wait just a half-hour for my bus. There are five other passengers in the Greyhound. It dawns on me that I’ve got to get in touch with MasterCard soon for a change of address. Hell, I only owe $200. I’ll pay it off. I’d stuck the envelope in my bag that’s on the window side seat; my arm hooking the wide strap. Maybe there is a letter under the rubber band that loops the money or just newspaper cut to the size of currency like a double-cross in a movie. I stuff my hands into my hoodie that is evidence itself. I doze and wonder the size of a bus’s catalytic converter. How much could Kim get for one? I try to capture its sound, its music. I rerun the P.O. incident. Maybe the monster said “tranny” as in transmission to the fellow who worked at the Ford dealer. Either way I have no regrets. I wouldn’t trade my Kim time for all the smarts and honesty in the world. At a rest stop, A very tall and broad figure on the way to the restroom gives me a card. It reads “Jesus Saves” not “REPENT” like I thought it might. I recall Kim’s six lettered tattoo, SAPPHO. I’ll have to do some research at the library.

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