simple. You pay for the mattress, the guy drives to the other store, I return it, we split the profit.”
Will had questions. “Where does the profit come from?”
“Because you switch the tags,” Dorian said. “Are you listening? Remember that mattress I had before I got the futon? Like, right before?” When Dorian bought the mattress at Cody’s on Montauk Highway in Floyd Harbor, he had switched the price code with that of a smaller down-market mattress half the price. He was giving himself a discount. That wasn’t unusual. But then someone gave Dorian the futon, so he returned the mattress, but to a different Cody’s because the friend with the van was going there, and that other Cody’s accepted the returned mattress because of Cody’s unique return policy. Any product exclusive to Cody’s collection could be returned for a full refund at any Cody’s without a receipt, if it was still in its original package.
It was the full refund Dorian wasn’t expecting. He’d paid a lot less for the mattress than the bundle of cash he got back for it. He and the driver tried again that next Saturday. He returned that mattress to the next-nearest Cody’s, in Bellport. Full refund. On Sunday, he tried two more mattresses, which meant switching two tags. That part went fine. Then they had lunch at the pizzeria two stores down, and then tried returning the mattresses to the same Cody’s afterward, thinking it would save on gas.
The woman working customer service punched in the mattress code. “Is that what these things cost?” she said when the price appeared. She reentered the code, getting the same result. She was the employee who had rung up Dorian earlier. Something was almost clicking for her. Dorian was lucky she didn’t feel the urge to look further into the discrepancy.
“So, I can’t do phase one on this again,” Dorian said. “The risk is too high.”
“And you want me to take the risk?” Will said. “No way.”
“Switching tags is your game, Will. This is easy for you.”
“On socks and shirts. Deodorant. A few dollars. You almost got caught flipping mattresses.”
Besides the difference in scale, Will had restricted his game to the super drugstore on William Floyd Parkway, and only when Carla Brown was working. He would switch tags, she would ring him up. Their scheme was tight.
The Caprice Classic looked white or yellow in the dawn. Where would Will go if this car ran? Where would he drive if it were his? He’d never been anywhere. An old white-and-blue bumper sticker attached to the dashboard asked: WHERE’S DA HARBOR?
“What are you thinking?” Carla said.
“I’m not really thinking anything.”
“I watched you sleep last time,” Carla said.
“You watched me sleep?”
“You didn’t look like you were sleeping. You looked like you were thinking with your eyes closed.”
“I was probably thinking about you.”
She smiled. “Sweet. But what else do you think about?”
“Why can’t we go inside your house?”
“The house is off limits. That’s all. Ask me something else.”
“Tell me about when you were in rehab.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Madonna Heights is all girls. There was this one thing at night in the summer. Some guys from around would sneak through the woods behind the grounds and just, like, hang around by the fence. They would try to look in the windows from there and—I don’t know—see what they could see. Their cigarettes glowed in the dark at lights out. They would just sit there, you know, as if the counselors were just gonna let us out and have sex with them all. I don’t know.” She stopped picking at the hole in the car seat. “What’s the worst thing you ever did for money?”
“I work in a bowling alley.”
“I’m being serious,” she said.
“So am I. Why? What about you?” Will said. “What did you do?”
“I fucked once.”
“Oh, yeah?” Will said.
She kept a straight face. Will looked away.
“It wasn’t like it seems,” she said. “I knew him. I went to school with him.”
“Oh.” Will looked down the street through the windshield. There was a tiny crack like a spider’s thread.
“We were going to hook up one time but . . . Well, we didn’t that time. And then this time, yes.”
She was pale, and from that angle her cheeks were sunk in. Did she offer herself to the guy, or did he ask?
“You went to your father’s house for a few days?”
“I told you that on the phone.”
“I know, so what did you do?”
“I’m not saying anything, Will. I’m just telling you something that happened once, like one time. I’m not, like, telling you anything recent.”
“I didn’t say you were telling me anything. Just something that happened one time.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be telling you this at all.”
“No, it’s okay. Tell me everything.”
Something inside her rattled when she breathed in. “That was, I don’t know, the lowest point.” She blinked and there were tears. She put her hand over her mouth to hide the broken tooth. “God, what’s wrong with me?”
Will put his arms around her and held her hands. “It’s okay,” he said into the top of her head. Carla’s body was stiff, her arms tight to her sides. Will wanted to go. He wanted to walk home and forget about her, but he couldn’t just get up and leave her, either. Soon she turned herself over, burying her head into Will’s lap. He stroked her hair. He ran his fingers through her curls until she fell asleep. Shadows in the woods softened. Birds chirped. Light bent around the crack in the windshield. He left her in the car and walked home.
“It’s like I see these people at the bowling alley, and they get excited about bowling. I mean, what else do they do? They go home and think about the next time they’re going bowling. They dream about bowling a perfect game. Probably. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s just a feeling I have with people sometimes. You know, not just them but everybody. Like people who work a job and—and they do their job, and then maybe they’ll get a better job. Or they dream about making manager someday. Or even people like the guy at Handy Pantry looking for handouts, waiting for something—I don’t know what for. I look at them—all these people—and they’re all the same. They get into these things in their lives, and that’s who they are. I just don’t want to be like that. You know what I’m talking about?”
Dorian was kicking Will’s ass in Backstreet Fight. “Did we order food yet?” He had been out raving for two days and still wore a pacifier
