The Tragic Age (12 page)

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”

I guess it's supposed to be comforting. Pastures and quiet waters and soul restoration should be. But all it makes me think of is that Dorie was a little girl who died way too young.

The world is filled with Dories.

After the prayer, Mom, who's about to lose it any second, puts this special bouquet she's brought onto Dorie's grave. It's made of white daisies. Innocence.

Then it's Dad's turn. Dad steps forward and puts down a single orchid. An orchid is the symbol of perfection. The spots on an orchid represent the blood of Christ. They're also the color of the wine that Gordon will consume in vast quantities the minute we get back home. To cut him some slack, he looks like he needs it. He's pale. His eyes are like stones. Dorie was his favorite. Dorie was everyone's favorite.

Now it's my turn. I put a calla lily down close to Dorie's headstone. The blossom—the spathe—is an intense white. The flower stalk—the spadix—is a blazing yellow. Calla lilies represent purity and chastity and are often placed on the graves of young people who have suffered untimely deaths.

We all stand there as if we're trying to feel Dorie on the afternoon breeze.

According to the so-called experts, grief is an emotional response to loss. No two people deal with it alike. Grief devastates marriages and destroys families. Profound grief makes you question life itself.

Maybe. Maybe not.

But the world was a much happier place before Dorie got sick. Dad talked about starting his own construction company. Mom was into Girl Scout troops and the PTA. Dorie and I would laugh together as the two of them close-danced around the kitchen, Dad bellowing Bruce Springsteen at the top of his lungs. All was safe and right with the world. Bad things and sad things happened to other people. Only good things happened to the Kinseys.

After all. We'd won the lottery.

 

31

There are eighteen lit candles on the cake Mom brings out at dinner that night. Mom and Dad and Gretchen, who's stayed for dinner, sing “Happy Birthday” to me. It's been a pleasant time. It really has. There have been presents. Mom has given me some shirts that I won't wear.

“It's the thought that counts.”

Dad has given me a hundred-dollar bill plus a bottle of wine that I'll never drink.

“Eighteen, birthday boy! That's legal somewhere!”

Gretchen has given me a CD she's burned of what she says is all her favorite music.

“You don't have to like it.”

“I know I will,” I say. And I mean it.

But now as they all sing, the day catches up with Mom and her eyes fill. And no Springsteen anymore; Dad's idea of singing is to mumble. Even Gretchen, sensing something's off, grows quiet. I pretend to make a wish and then, smiling, blow all the candles out. “Wow, this looks awesome!” I say.

Point of reference.

The early Greeks believed that the smoke of their birthday candles carried their wishes to the gods in heaven.

The smoke from my candles rises like gray ribbons to the ceiling where it stops and gathers and, unable to ascend further, sits there like a small, dark nimbus cloud.

“Who wants cake?”

 

32

I find there are over one million search results for picking locks on the Internet.

Why am I not surprised?

There are Web sites. There are videos. There are guidebooks. There are forums and chat rooms for amateurs, students, and professionals alike. Online stores sell you everything you need, as if picking the locks to safes, doors, cars, and houses is a quaint little hobby for the terminally bored.

From Picklock Parts & Supplies, LLC, I order a SouthOrd Twenty Piece Lock Pick Set with reinforced stainless steel handles. According to the site, the MPXS20 contains fourteen rustproof, nickel-plated steel picks, a broken-key extractor, and five tension tools. Also included is a luggage-quality zippered case, a dead bolt lock and cylinder with a cutaway section, and a CD entitled
The Visual Guide to Lock Picking,
which, they proclaim, “will have you picking locks like a pro in no time!” At $48.95, this seems like a bargain.

I pay by cash through Ulti-Pay, an online company that assures me they understand that paying by credit card is
“not the right answer for every merchant and every consumer.”
The italics are theirs.

To hide a birthmark, you need an opaque concealer that has a higher level of pigment and a heavier consistency than average makeup. The one on the bottom shelf of the local CVS is called Killer Cover Total Blockout. The label tells me that this revolutionary waterproof, smudgeproof, perspiration- and heat-resistant formula covers the most difficult flaws that traditional concealers can't touch and that its highly pigmented formula stays put until removed. Killer Cover includes five colors to be used alone or blended to achieve a perfect match and can be used to cover up depigmentations, spider veins, bruises, tattoos, and yes, port-wine hemangiomas.

Wow.

It's like putting Silly Putty on your skin, thick, sticky, and heavy. When I'm done, the face that stares back at me out of the mirror is almost unrecognizable to me. Ephraim would be jealous. It's like I have a new secret identity.

Normal Man.

I get on the bus and go downtown. I go into a nondescript store called Mailboxes and More. Mailboxes and More is an establishment that prints, copies, ships, binds, sells packing materials and holiday cards, and yes, rents mailboxes. The clerk, a stoned-looking college kid, tells me I need an ID to rent a mailbox. I tell him I left it at home. He shrugs and tells me to bring it next time. Using cash, I rent the mailbox under the name of John Montebello.

I admit to myself I'm having a good time.

I wait ten days.

Donning my mask of Killer Cover Total Blockout, I go downtown to Mailboxes and More again. I go in and open my rented mailbox. It is stuffed with junk mail. In the middle of the junk mail is an easy-to-miss delivery slip. I toss the junk mail and give the slip to the same bored clerk. The clerk takes it, goes into the back, and after what seems like half an hour, comes out and hands me a box shipped UPS ground service. He asks to see an ID. Darn, I tell him, I left it at home again. He shrugs and tells me to bring it next time. I sign for it. John Montebello.

“You should do something about the junk mail,” I say.

“Like what?” he says.

The voice on
The Visual Guide to Lock Picking
starts off by telling me that you never know where and when you may need to pick a lock. You might be locked out of your house or car or—
“you may be captured by insurgents in a foreign country.”

Just another thing to look forward to.

The illustrations are large, simple, and in color.

The Visual Guide
tells and shows that the locks on most dead bolts, doorknobs, and cars are pin tumbler locks. These are locks that are made up of a cylinder, inside of which is a rotating plug. Drilled into the cylinder shaft and plug are four or five holes. In the holes, two pins fit on top of each other. The pin on top is spring-loaded, and called the driving pin. The pin below is the key pin. The teeth of a key, says the voice, when put into the cylinder, pushes all the key pins into their individual, proper alignment. When the pins are aligned, the plug is free to rotate and the lock will open.

After reversing and replaying the close-up illustrated sequence of the key driving into the cylinder—a sequence that seems decidedly sexual but then, at the age of eighteen, most things do—I decide that this is an overly complicated way of saying I should use the tension wrench to put pressure on the plug while I use the picks to pop the pins into alignment, one by one.

It sounds easy. A monkey could do it.

I can't.

I put too much tension on the tension wrench. I put too little. Using the pick, I pop a key pin out. When I move the pick, the driving pin pops the key pin back. I'm almost to the third pin when the pick slips and I put a good half inch of it into my left index finger.

I return the SouthOrd Twenty Piece Lock Pick Set minus cylinder and video via FedEx. I go back online and order the all stainless steel SouthOrd EZ Snap Lock Pick Gun, which, Picklock Parts & Supplies, LLC, tells me, allows you to open locks with minimal instruction. The EZ pick, Picklock Parts & Supplies, LLC, informs me, is “a great tool for law enforcement, first responders, property managers, storage unit owners,” and
“those who need to open pin tumbler locks in quick succession.”
At $49.99, it, too, sounds like a bargain.

I pay by cash through Ulti-Pay. I wait five days, put on my mask and, as Normal Man, go down to Mailboxes and More. I collect my EZ pick. The clerk and I are on a first-name basis. “Ey, dude”—“Sapp'nin', bro.” The ID is never mentioned.

Unlike the lock picks, which have a certain sense of practical beauty to them, the EZ pick has the aesthetics of a skinny-nosed squirt gun. Taking my practice lock, I use a tension wrench to put a slight pressure on the cylinder, insert the EZ pick, and pull the trigger twice. It makes a grating sound. The plug rotates. The lock opens.

Technology!

 

33

Bad locks, like good fences, make great neighbors.

We establish a routine. Ephraim, who proves to be not just gifted at breaking and entering but truly excited by it, goes online and hacks into the local newspaper's database. He finds a house that has put its paper delivery on hold. Taking the name from the database, he hacks into airline Web sites and does a preprogrammed search through their passenger lists to see if the name comes up. If and when it does, Twom and I do a quick surveillance to make sure the exterior of the house is up to our standards and that no house sitter is staying there while the owners are gone. We get the name of the owner's security company off the sign they always seem to put in the flower bed. Ephraim hacks into the security company's database and comes out with security codes and passwords.

We take Deliza's Mercedes. The car is her mother's but she pretty much has full-time access to it, and it says something about the neighborhoods we operate in that it doesn't stand out on the street. Anything less, a clunker or pickup or an old van, for instance, would. We decide that if anyone should ever ask, we're looking for the Montebello house. We heard there was a party. But they don't. Late at night there are hardly even any cars passing on the street.

We keep to the shadows at first but soon realize it's not necessary. We realize that people who live behind walls and gates don't want to know what's going on outside. They have no need for or interest in one another. No one, unless it's the maid, is going next door to borrow a cup of sugar.

We go over the wall. Or up the walk. Or around to the back. I use the EZ pick to open the front door. Or the side door. Or the back door. Ephraim turns off the security alarm. If the security firm calls, we give them the password.

Each house is different.

Different floors, different layouts, different furniture. Different dishware. Big rooms. Small rooms. Different artwork on different-colored walls. Children's scribbles. Museum pieces. Different foods in the refrigerator. Different liquor in the cupboard.

In each house, we all do pretty much the same thing. If there's a computer, Ephraim is on it, eating anything unhealthy and playing several online games at once. If there's no computer, he watches television. As there are seven hundred and forty televisions per thousand people in the United States and as the average American watches over thirty hours of television a week, five to six hours a day, most of them with the sound on, there's always a television. Often in every room.

In each house, Twom and Deliza go to town. On beds, on floors, on couches, in chairs, in baths and showers with the water running. They are tireless. Their gasps and groans and mewings fill the air. In one home, I enter a room and find them lying naked and inverted on a Persian rug. Twom's face is between Deliza's legs. Her dark hair spills over his thighs. They are oblivious to everything but themselves, and embarrassed and feeling as if I'm intruding on something that's not my business, I quickly retreat.

As for me, I find that I am fascinated by the people who live in these houses. In knowing about them. In discovering what they only reveal to one another. I look at their books to see what they read. I go through their mail. I am more than a mere thief, I am a voyeur into their lives. I go through their drawers and closets to study what clothes they wear. I am captivated by their photos. They smile. They stick out their tongues and make funny faces. They gape in surprise, hair tousled, as they're getting out of bed. They wear wedding gowns and morning suits. They giggle by picnic tables, float ducks in bathtubs. They are on water skis and camping trips. They stand in front of Broadway marquees and pose in front of the pyramids. They stick their heads through Coney Island cutouts that make them look like musclemen and bathing beauties. They hold newborn babies that become toddlers that become teenagers. They hug filmy-eyed geriatrics.

I realize I am looking at the best parts of their lives. I am looking at the highlights. These are the respite moments that have made them happy. These are the jewels on a bridge of sighs. Other than prescription drugs and dirty dishes, there are usually few clues as to what might make any of them despair. Perhaps that's why I can finally do what I have come to do. I lie back on one of their beds. I close my eyes. I gratefully and dreamlessly sleep.

At the end of the night we all end up in the same place. It is Ephraim who begins this ritual, settling back in the living room, searching for the horror movies he likes on television. Twom and Deliza come into the room, hesitate a moment, then join him on the couch. Light flickers off their rapt faces. I watch from the door. They could be a family of cavemen or a pack of wolves, staring intently into the fire as the screams on the wind grow loud then fade to deathly silence, only to rise and shriek again. They huddle close, more for safety than warmth.