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counter, itching my chin on my shoulder so it wouldn’t look completely obvious. The two men who’d been discussing golf were there now. They were talking to each other still, barely even paying any attention to Frank as he began ringing them up on his register.  
    I didn’t hesitate another second.  
    I reached out and grabbed a Snickers bar and placed it in my pocket. One smooth motion, the candy going from place A to place B. Simple as that.  
    I approached the counter like I would any other time, not feeling guilty at all. Because I knew that if I felt guilty, I’d look guilty, and something told me Frank had been behind that counter long enough to spot a guilty face among a hundred faces. He probably told stories about it at home, eating dinner with his wife. Telling her about the crazy customers, the asshole customers, then of course the kids who thought they were hot shit and sometimes tried lifting bags of snacks and bottles of soda. But Frank knew what they were up to, he could always tell, and my, let me tell you about this guy I caught today. Looked to be in his thirties, had on these glasses that didn’t seem to go right with his face, and he had a Snickers bar in his pocket. Can you believe that? A goddamn Snickers bar.  
    Frank said, “Find everything you need?”  
    I started nodding but stopped. After setting the two bottles of water and pretzels down on the counter, I motioned at the cigarettes behind him. “Marlboro Reds too, please.”  
    Frank turned, grabbed a pack, and placed it on the counter next to the rest of my stuff. Then he started punching numbers into the register. The electronic bell sounded again, this time a young kid, couldn’t be more than sixteen, strolling in with his cap reversed on his head and a chain hanging from his pants.  
    “Anything else?” Frank asked, his hand already extended to take my money, and I thought: Is it really this easy?  
    Then something else occurred to me.  
    “Actually, yeah,” I said. “Do you have any maps?”

 
     
     
    9

    Not even ten minutes later, back on the highway, the phone vibrated in my pocket.  
    By then I’d already smoked one of the Marlboros, was working on my second. I hadn’t smoked since Casey was born, agreeing with Jen that a new baby shouldn’t have to be exposed to secondhand smoke. I hadn’t even tried bargaining around the issue, asking if I could at least smoke outside, or when I was out on a job (which, I knew, I could have done without Jen ever finding out, but still didn’t). Now that I had a daughter my life had changed even more—I finally felt I had a purpose—and I intended to stay around as long as possible. Now, after all this time, I needed the cigarettes because otherwise I knew I’d lose it, and so far, the shakes hadn’t come back.  
    “Yeah,” I said, propping the cell phone between my ear and shoulder, so I could keep one hand on the wheel, one hand on my cigarette. My window was down just a couple inches, where I tapped the ashes. “I did it. I got you your Snickers bar.”  
    “I know, Ben. Remember, I see everything you see, I hear everything you hear. But you didn’t really follow the rules properly, now did you?”  
    I glanced at the stuff on the passenger seat: the Snickers, the bag of pretzels, the two bottles of water, the pack of cigarettes, and the folding map of California.  
    “What do you mean?”  
    A pause on Simon’s end, a kind of sigh, then: “What’s the point of lifting something if you’re going to buy other items too? You were supposed to lift the candy bar. That was all. Lift it and walk right out.”  
    “But you never said that. All you said was steal the Snickers. You never said I couldn’t buy anything else.”  
    “Ah, I see. So you want to play semantics, do you, Ben? Well, okay. Then when I say I’m going to kill your daughter and make your wife watch, does that mean I’m not going to rape your daughter too?”  
    “Jesus.” The