Shimmy Bang Sparkle Read online

  It was time to give her some of her own medicine. I moved my eyes up her bare arm, along the delicate edge of her collarbone, across the hollow of her throat. I wondered about that pink bra I’d seen and if it matched her underwear. I thought about her tan lines and what kind of pattern her bikini bottoms would’ve left behind. She was making me think about things that I hadn’t thought about in months; every earthquake has a warning tremor.

  “Whatever you want, gorgeous.” I ran my thumb over the back of her hand. “It’s all yours.”

  She bit her lip again, hard enough to make that pretty pink flesh flash with white.

  The saleswoman checked her watch and drummed her sparkly fingers on the glass case. “I’m really sorry, you two. I do need to close up.”

  Stella made a big thing of frowning and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She pouted at me, the way I once saw a little girl do at a state fair when she dropped her cotton candy in a pile of sheep shit. “It’s so pretty, Nick. But we just can’t. We still haven’t paid off the pickup.”

  Now we had a pickup. I could get used to this. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Stella shook her head thoughtfully, like maybe she was thinking about rent and groceries and car insurance—shit that made a diamond ring seem untenable. “We’ll think about it,” Stella said. “It’s fun to dream, though.”

  No doubt about that at all.

  But when Stella tugged on the ring with her thumb and forefinger to take it off, it didn’t cooperate. She furrowed her eyebrows and laughed nervously, wiggling it and spinning it. “That’ll teach me to get extra-large fries with my lunch.”

  The saleswoman laughed, nodding, and patted her slightly pudgy stomach. “Tell me about it, hon.”

  For a few tense seconds, I stared at the ring. She twisted it and tugged it. She rocked it back and forth. She gave it a yank, but still it didn’t budge. I took her hand in mine and gave it a shot too. But didn’t have any luck. It was totally stuck.

  “This isn’t embarrassing or anything,” said Stella softly as she gave it another try, doing the side-to-side rocking again. “I’m sure this is a first.”

  “Oh my gosh, no. Fingers often swell in the afternoon. Lemme go get you some lotion. Be right back,” the saleswoman said, and headed for the back of the store.

  Stella sighed hard and grabbed her purse from the floor, hooking it over her shoulder. “Thank you,” she called after the woman as she jingled away. “I really apologize. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

  The saleswoman tossed her hand in the air. “Totally OK. Hang on.”

  As she walked away, though, Stella transformed right before my eyes. It was subtle, but I was watching her so close that it was like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. The sweet-as-pie innocence was replaced with calm and focus. Her posture changed, the way she’d held her lips changed, even her stance changed. She shifted her hair over her shoulder and turned away from me, preventing me from seeing what she was looking for in her bag. I rolled my weight back onto my heels to get a different angle—not enough for her to notice, but enough to see what was going on. With the help of an oval tabletop mirror to my right, I saw exactly what she was up to. From the side pocket of her purse, she produced a little tube of something.

  Hand lotion.

  She didn’t call out to the saleswoman, but instead lowered her head slightly, allowing her hair to slip off her shoulder. I realized she was not only keeping her hands hidden from me, but also—thanks to her hair—away from the prying eyes of the black-domed security cameras in each corner of the shop. Suddenly, each detail seemed practiced. Strategic.

  Damn near . . . professional.

  She flipped open the top of the tube and squirted some onto her finger.

  And then she did it. If I hadn’t been watching it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Houdini would’ve wept. Copperfield would’ve proposed. Blaine would have asked her to do a Vegas show with him. Once her finger was greased up, she used the thumb of her left hand to slide the diamond off her finger. It fell noiselessly into her bag. She dropped the tube of lotion on top, and the ring disappeared into the depths of her purse. Then, from the interior side pocket of the purse, she produced . . .

  The same setting. The same cut. The same size.

  The identical engagement ring.

  Holy.

  Fucking.

  Shit.

  I was floored. But somehow, I managed to play it cool. I kept my mouth shut and my holy shiiiiiiit to myself. She didn’t know I’d seen her, and I wasn’t going to blow her cover. Only an asshole interrupts a magician in the middle of an act.

  The saleswoman tottered back toward us. The fake was on Stella’s finger, and the real ring was nowhere to be seen. “Here you go, hon,” said the woman, holding out a bottle of lotion with the lid already undone. “Smells real good too.” She squirted a glop of the pink liquid on Stella’s finger, making the whole place smell like laundry detergent.

  Stella worked some lotion around her ring finger and slipped off the fake with a big sigh. “Phew! That was a close one.”

  The saleswoman just giggled. “No worries. Happens more than you’d think,” she said, and took the keys from her skirt. Using a jewelry cloth, she cleaned the lotion off the ring until it sparkled again, set it on its spinning velvet platform, and locked up the case.

  And I thought I’d found my bliss already.

  “Thanks so much for all your help,” Stella said, and zipped up her purse.

  I felt like I was dreaming. Never in my whole life had I seen anything so goddamned smooth. She seemed sweet, she looked so sexy, and to top it all off, she was utterly badass. I needed to get my hands on her. Now.

  “My pleasure,” replied the saleswoman. She refastened her key ring to her skirt and picked up a dustpan on a stick and a broom. “And congrats on your engagement! Please do come back and see us. I’ll be here at nine tomorrow.”

  Stella beamed and grabbed my hand. “We’ll be back, won’t we . . . honey?”

  I looked her straight in the eye. I was willing to play this one out however she wanted, but the only place I had any intention of being at nine tomorrow morning was with her. In bed. “I’m sure we will.”

  Stella hit me with another wink—one more of those and I might actually pass the hell out—and got up on her tiptoes. She pressed a kiss to my cheek. Her hair was cool against my jaw, and her body felt perfect against mine. “See you at home, sweetie,” she said, then headed for the door. I was right on her heels, just a few strides behind her. Stella walked out and the electric eye dinged, but before I could get to the door, the saleswoman stopped me.

  “Oh! Sir! I think your fiancée dropped this!” I turned around to find her looking down at the ground. In the dustpan, next to a straw wrapper and a hard candy, sat Stella’s phone.

  The phone. Between the couples role-play and the first-degree larceny, I’d totally forgotten what the hell I was doing. I grabbed it from the dustpan. The cell phone’s case was all rhinestones, with a big pink star in the middle. Behind me, I heard the noise of an engine roaring to life. I turned to see her zooming away in a white Wrangler. The top was down, and she had her sunglasses on and a huge smile on her face. As she turned on her left-turn signal, I thanked the saleswoman and made a beeline for the door.

  For the first time in my life, as a dude and as a criminal, I realized that I wasn’t the one being chased. I was about to be the one doing the chasing. And all I could think was . . .

  “Push, sir! Don’t pull!” chirped the saleswoman.

  . . . Game on.

  2

  NICK

  I let her get ahead of me on Central, but I never lost sight of her. On either side of us, decrepit motels alternated with adult toy stores, ancient strip malls, and prefab-home display lots. The Mexican groceries shifted to Vietnamese ones and back again. The heat snakes and setting sun did me a favor, so even if she did see me, I’d be nothing more than a dark smudge in the afternoon traffic.r />
  As I followed her, I went through the paces of the con she’d pulled, rewinding and replaying every step in my head. One thing was for damn sure: that wasn’t the first thing she’d ever stolen. A con like that took practice, care, and a perfect sense of timing. Timing the theft to coincide with doing the inventory was strategic; a change of routine was good as a distraction, and she’d played it perfectly.

  Everything taken together told me she was an experienced thief, smart and careful. And so sexy it made me grind my goddamned teeth.

  She was, without a doubt, the very last woman I should’ve been chasing across Albuquerque. There I was, a jewel thief fresh out of jail—a moth heading right into the goddamned fireplace. But it wasn’t like I was proposing, for fuck’s sake. I had her phone, and I was going to give it back to her. I was just going to do her one favor and then get the hell away from the flames.

  Her hair whipped in the wind as she sped along with the sun setting behind us. Even the way she drove marked her as a pro. Straight as an arrow, no texting-and-driving bullshit. She stayed under the speed limit and stopped for yellow lights. Legal, all the way. She wouldn’t have hit the radar of a single upstanding citizen or New Mexico State Police officer, which meant that she hit my radar like an incoming cruise missile.

  We got past the toughest stretch of the War Zone, and she took a left on a side street by an abandoned A&W; the road was like every other one in town, with a bleached-out street sign and tumbleweeds in the gutters. I stayed a good fifty yards back and watched her take a right into the parking lot of a nondescript strip mall. To keep my cover, I took a left into the gas station across the street. I came to a stop next to an old tire pump with an OUT OF ORDER sign stuck to it with what might have been grape bubblegum, making greasy, sticky purple blotches on each corner. As I put my feet on the pavement and cut my engine, she got out of her Jeep with her purse over her shoulder and walked with hips swaying and curls bouncing into Big Ed’s Super Pawn. From the window flashed a sign saying WE BUY GOLD! WE BUY JEWELRY! Though I was across the street, I was close enough to see her talking to someone at the counter, until she went farther into the store and disappeared.

  I pulled off my helmet and waited. Two La-Z-Boys flanked the pawnshop’s window. In between was the usual array of pawnshop goods. Lamps. Medical equipment. A dress form. A stuffed deer head. Outside was a carved wooden bear, with a sign that said COME ON IN looped around his neck.

  Within minutes, she came out of Big Ed’s. She wasn’t leaving with the same swagger she’d gone in with, and she definitely wasn’t acting like she had a purse full of cash. Instead, she pushed a wheelchair in front of her. On its seat was stacked all manner of incomprehensibly random shit. It was like she’d ransacked a garage sale in a retirement community. There was a big-brimmed Stetson, a huge cuckoo clock, a cane, a very obviously used toaster, dented on the sides. And a super weird lamp.

  I rubbed my jaw. I’d been involved in a lot of bizarre criminal stuff in my day. I’d seen the good, the bad, and the very badly planned. Never in my life had I seen someone pawn a diamond in exchange for assorted random shit.

  Behind her followed a guy who had to be the security guard, a thick-necked brute whose clothes didn’t fit him right anywhere. He pushed something along in front of him, something oversize, square, and mechanical, with an electrical cord tagging along behind it. He humped the thing over the threshold, and the door swung shut just in time to catch the electrical plug in the jamb and send him whipping around like he was on the wrong end of a set of nunchucks. As he lunged for the door, he stumbled on the cord and collided with the carved bear. A direct hit to the nuts. I growled to myself as he doubled over in the universal man-sign of Gonna need a minute here!

  “Be careful!” Stella barked over her shoulder, totally unaware that the bastard had just nutted himself. “You break it, you replace it, buddy!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” he said, staggering like he was dazed . . . or like getting a shellacking from a woman who looked like her was all he’d ever dreamed of for his entire life.

  I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. He was probably twice her weight and a foot taller. He was packing heat in a barely hidden ankle holster, and his balls would probably be aching for days. But she was on a mission, and nothing was going to get in her way.

  What mission involved a wheelchair, a toaster, a hat, a cane, that machine, and that huge lamp . . . I had no idea at all. But I was damn sure going to find out, so I put my helmet back on and got ready to throw her into gear.

  Together, she and the guard got all the shit loaded into the back seat. The guard hoisted up his pants and closed her door for her. She put her sunglasses on her head and smiled at him. She said something and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. She peeled out of the parking lot with her hair whipping behind her, while the guard watched her zoom away with his hands over his heart.

  And I took off after her.

  Again.

  3

  STELLA

  My hands were still shaking. At the stoplight next to Big Ed’s Super Pawn, I wedged my knees under the wheel, grabbed a little box of Nerds from my glove box, dumped the whole thing into my mouth, and tried to calm down. My heart was still banging against my breastbone, and I rubbed my hands on my thighs to dry my sweaty palms. I would never get used to the roller coaster of taking something that didn’t belong to me—the rush and the fear, the excitement and the thrill, the guilt and the justifications. The moment when I shouldn’t be doing this turned into I can do this and then I just did. As I waited for the light to change, I focused on the way the sweet globules crackled between my molars. I counted slowly back from five, took a deep breath that got caught in my throat . . . and dumped another box of Nerds into my mouth.

  The light changed, but there was cross traffic stuck in the intersection, and my lane stayed frozen. I reached across the passenger seat and buckled in the Elvis lamp. The air filled with the noise of frustrated horns, but I was grateful to have another moment to myself. I let my head fall against the headrest and let the Nerds dissolve in my mouth as I looked up into the desert sky, pink and yellow with the sunset.

  For me, stealing wasn’t about the rush or the thrill. Instead, it was a way to put things right. Stealing jewels was how I punched above my weight and fought back against a world that could be cruel, unkind, and unfair. It was how I bucked the system, with a smile on my face. Stealing gems made me Wonder Woman in jeans and Chuck Taylors.

  But even Wonder Woman got jumpy. Hands still trembling, I dug through my purse to find my phone. My purse was like a black hole. As usual, I came up with an apple I hadn’t seen in six weeks, a bunch of smooshed packs of gum that I didn’t remember buying, a fistful of lipsticks, a bottle of Advil, and a huge wad of faded receipts. No phone, though. Of course not.

  As I pawed blindly through my bag, I kept my eye on the stoplight. In my side mirror, I caught sight of the handlebar of a motorcycle two cars behind me. The guy was way off toward the center line, and I could just see the edge of a big, manly knee straddling the bike. For a brief and ridiculous instant, the thought of him made my heart bounce up and down like one of those rubber balls attached to a paddle.

  It was silliness. The last thing I’d ever needed—or wanted—was a man by my side. Men, and especially a man who looked like that, all hunky and inked and oh-so-very . . .

  Stella!

  Men were a liability when it came to the fine art of jewel theft. They attracted attention, they took risks, they got greedy. And I couldn’t have some banana-studmuffin biker with bedroom eyes getting close to my racket. Too dangerous. Too cocky. Cock-y.

  Oh, for God’s sake.

  Pushing away the thoughts of Nick the Hunk, I made my way through the rush hour traffic and signaled to take a left on Habanero Drive. I passed my apartment and pulled into Mr. Bozeman’s driveway, next to his ancient truck with three flat tires and a thick layer of desert dust. I put my Jeep in park and got out, holding the Elvis lam
p like we were about to start dancing. I set him down on the gravel drive and wrestled the wheelchair out of my Jeep. Unfolding it, I put the Elvis lamp on the seat. On top of the shade I put Mr. Bozeman’s old Stetson. I got his beloved toaster and his even-more-beloved cuckoo clock. The oxygen compressor was going to require a special trip. In the meantime, though, God knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I wheeled all the rest of Mr. Bozeman’s things toward his front door.

  “Stella? Is that you?” His voice was creaky and barely audible above the shell chimes that hung from his front porch. Right on cue, a snout pushed into the drapes, and some paws got tangled up in the fabric too. The snout tried to find an opening but couldn’t. In retaliation, there was the obligatory drapes death-shake, which made them fly apart enough to create a gap. A small brown face then appeared between the sheers. Her eyes barely cleared the windowsill, and one of her ears had gotten flipped inside out. Her name was Priscilla; she was a miniature dachshund and the cutest little banana on the planet.

  She didn’t have the best vision, so at first she wore her default I-hate-the-mailman-really-a-lot face. When she realized it was me, she hurled herself off the sill, gave a few excited barks, and smashed her muzzle through the hole in the screen on the front door, the one she’d created by trying to love the world senseless every chance she got.

  “Hi, hi, hi!” I said as I opened the screen, holding it ajar with my hip. I maneuvered the wheelchair inside, and Priscilla danced in circles on two feet with her paws extended, one tutu shy of YouTube superstardom.

  Mr. Bozeman was on his couch, as always. He was thin and frail and sat under a tattered afghan on his ancient green-and-brown plaid sofa. Columbo was on television. Peter Falk was acting strategically confused as he scratched his forehead and mouthed soundless words behind the mute icon on the screen.

  When Mr. Bozeman saw the lamp, he dropped the remote onto the afghan. “Stella! How did you . . . Stella!”