DREAM OF JEANNIE

6 DAYS AFTER

Jeannie’s got the shits and I’m sick of living off candy bars and Ramen noodles from the machine in the lobby.

Brett hasn’t come back and the more we wait, the more we imagine he’s not. I got it all constructed in my head—the set-up, the lost briefcase, type of crooked cops this town spits out.

Jeannie thinks I’m crazy, that I watch too many of those 80s neo-noir movies.

But those things don’t really happen, she says. We’re just a couple of junkies in over our heads. Wait it out. Twix and Cup’o’noodles for a few more days.

Then we’ll find a car that’ll run and follow that road until corn fields replace cobblestone, until rainbows rise up and usher us out of this nonsense.

Breaks me a little but I just laugh at her through the door, light up a Marlboro, take the final few sips of the Tanqueray bottle that’s been swimming through Jeannie’s dirty clothes.

2 DAYS AFTER

Brett’s been badgering me left and right.

“We can’t hole up forever.”

“We’re not. But what choice do we have?”

The briefcase was supposed to be flowing with cash. Hard, clean, beautiful cash. Instead, it’s filled with the shit that’ll get us ten to fifteen. Or get us killed.

But Brett’s persuasive. Must have been that mock trial nonsense he did in high school. Your honor and we object, while I hung out under the bleachers, smoking weed and chasing cheerleaders.

Jeannie? Hell, don’t know how she ended up in this mess. She was the type of girl that’d go far. Most likely to succeed. Still remember the photo in the yearbook. She and Scott Goldman with those fake glasses, touching their chin like they were professors.

“I’m the one who knows how to move it,” Brett says. And it’s true, he does.

Don’t mean it’s a good idea.

Jeannie’s the tie-breaker.

“I’m sick of old pizza and this candy shit.”

2 DAYS BEFORE

“So you know the guy who knows some guys who’s got lots of cash stashed away. That about right?”

It’s a bad idea before it’s even decided.

Brett’s filled with them. Selling dime bags in high school. Tossing rocks from the bridge at the highway. Needle’s even better than smoking ‘em, he whispers, and Jeannie and I both go along because we ain’t got nothing holding us back.

But now, it’s about planning, and Brett ain’t the type. I’m half-toasted and twenty minutes from a full-on crisp. Jeannie’s the good girl in the posse. She’s the type people look at from afar and wonder what’s a wholesome blonde doing with two dudes like that.

But she’s nodding alongside him.

“Rainbows, right? Picket fence?” She pokes me under the ribs.

I’m nodding out but I stick up my thumb. Wheels up.

2 YEARS BEFORE

Jeannie and I are sitting atop my Fairlane, staring out at the gorge, wondering how a couple of kids like us will ever make it in a world as fucked-up as this.

Her mom’s two-weeks under the ground by now. My pops, I could only wish.

“Two. A boy and a girl.”

“How about two boys?”

“Aw, you’re no fun.”

“Girl ain’t gonna play no baseball. What I’m gonna do, help her paint on her makeup?”

“Jesus, Tom. It’s the 90s. You ever hear of women’s lib and all that jazz.”

She’s got her hand resting on mine and it feels like heaven. The sun’s out and it’s burning a blaze ‘cross the back of my neck. Only thing I should be thinking is how’d I ever get a girl like Jeannie.

Instead, it’s when I’m gonna lose her.

“We got eight months to find out, huh?”

Tick tock.

SIXTY-THREE DAYS AFTER

Out here in the middle of nowhere. Kansas. Cornfields and cross-legged birds. Soft hills and sweet rolls.

Some days I wonder if Brett ever made that score. If he did, would he have come back? Would it have mattered?

Nights like this, tented up in the woods, I dream of Jeannie. That motel room. Still find blond hairs on my coat.

But still haven’t seen a rainbow. Not yet.