Twenty-One

Lucy Finster was up before her husband.

Billy liked to sleep in on Sunday. Well, truth be told, Billy would sleep in every day of the week if he could get away with it, but he didn't have an airport shift today, and Lucy was due at the hospital. She was among those who got the cafeteria prepped for the midday crowd. It wasn't as busy on the weekend. There were still plenty of nurses and support staff and doctors around, although the specialists usually weren't to be found on Saturday or Sunday unless there was a real emergency. The admin people were nowhere to be seen, either. But there were usually more visitors on the weekend, people coming to see their sick friends and relatives, and the gift shop did well selling cards and flowers and little pink teddy bears wearing shirts with get well soon! written on them.

Lucy didn't deal much with the public. She was in the back, making tasteless sandwiches by the hundreds, preparing huge vats of thin, bland soups, filling plastic cups with green cubes of Jell-O, pouring gravy from a can over reheated slices of meat loaf. Lucy sometimes thought that if you came to the hospital in perfect health to visit a relative, and then had lunch here, you'd be begging to see a doctor.

How she hated this job. And the pay was shit, too.

Billy didn't like his work any better, but at least lately it had afforded him the opportunity to make some money on the side. Billy's job unloading baggage from planes at one of the state's smaller regional airports had put him in a position to help out what Lucy liked to think of charitably as international businesspeople, although thugs was more apt, which had become abundantly clear after one of them had nearly ripped off Billy's nipple.

She hadn't had a face-to-face with them. Billy didn't want her around when they made their pickups, but Lucy had peeked through the curtains and seen the skanky-looking woman and heavyset guy showing up at the garage to retrieve the shit Billy'd taken off the plane.

Billy was picking up a few hundred here and there, sometimes even as much as a thousand. Cash. And it had been coming in on a pretty steady basis for a couple of months now.

And what did he do with it?

Blew it all for himself, that's what.

Bought premium beers to guzzle down with his sicko friend Stuart, who, get this, wanted to show her a video the other day of a guy losing his finger in a hedge trimmer. Billy had loaded up on new tools he supposedly needed to restore that old Camaro. It wasn't fancy tools Billy needed to get that car running. What he needed was expertise. A thousand years from now, after the polar ice caps had melted and much of the world was sitting underwater, that fucking car would still be up on blocks waiting to be fixed.

Every time she needed some extra cash, she had to ask for it. What happened to the notion that whatever funds each of them brought into the house were to be shared? Their paychecks went directly into their joint account, but the cash Billy made on the side? That was all his.

Lucy was more steamed than the limp, overcooked broccoli she was dumping into a large metal serving dish.

She'd brought the subject up more than once, the unfairness of it all, and Billy always had the same answer. He was taking all the risks with the airport thing, so he was the one who should reap the rewards. Made it sound like he was doing her a favor, that he was keeping her "hands clean."

"Want to make some extra money?" he said one day. "You're in a hospital. Get your hands on some morphine or something."

Like they should become a true husband-and-wife criminal enterprise.

At first she thought she'd simply help herself to some of the money. Find where he stashed it, peel off a few twenties and fifties. She'd hunted through every drawer in the house, atop closet shelves, even in his stash of old porn mags under the couch in the basement that he didn't think she knew about. She even searched the freezer, taking out a Tupperware of frozen spaghetti sauce and running it under hot water to see if maybe the cash had been wrapped in a baggie and secreted in the center of the frozen clump. (She'd seen that in a movie once.) No luck.

That left the garage. And that locker.

Billy'd been right about what she'd done, in part. She'd taken his ring of keys when he'd nodded off on the couch. They were sitting right there on the coffee table next to the Cheetos. She knew which key it was. He'd had seven of his high-end beers and was down for the count, so she had time to hit Home Depot and have a copy made before he woke up. Having her own key meant she could get into the locker whenever she wanted, like when she was off work and Billy was at the airport.

Which she did the very next day.

And it was a good thing she hadn't added it to her own key ring, which Billy checked when he found her in the garage. She'd kept the key tucked away in her underwear drawer.

She used the key on the oversized lock that kept the two locker doors together and opened it wide. This was not, she learned after a thorough search of every shelf, where Billy was keeping his cash, assuming of course that he had any of it left. It was, however, where he stashed even more porn, plus a few DVD players still in their original boxes. Some brand-new laptops. Half a dozen burner phones. That was an eye-opener. Billy was also selling stuff that had fallen off a truck somewhere.

What Lucy didn't find was any money. Maybe Billy was hiding it in his locker at the airport.

But she did find what he was holding for his associates. Not that anyone would have known at first glance what it was. Jammed in between two shelves was a small, wheeled dark blue carry-on bag, the kind a traveler could stow in the overhead compartment of an airplane.

She cleared a spot on the workbench and hauled it out for a closer examination. But when she went to open the bag, she found that the two zipper ends had been linked together with a small lock.

"Shit," she said to herself. "Shit shit shit."

Not that the case was impregnable. A good sharp box cutter from Billy's toolkit would open it up. She could saw her way through the canvas. But then it would be obvious the case had been broken into. And, while the lock was small—not much bigger than her thumb—it still needed a key.

The Internet, Lucy thought, has a solution to everything.

She opened a browser on her phone and typed "how to break into a carry-on bag." And within seconds, there was a two-minute YouTube video.

"Fuck me," Lucy said as she watched. "How could it be that easy?"

With the tip of a pen she found on the workbench, she separated the teeth on the zipper just to the left of the locked ends. The zipper parted as easily as walking through a bead curtain. She widened the opening, forcing the joined zippers to one end, and opened the case.

Candyland.

That was certainly what it looked like. Dozens and dozens of containers, all packed neatly, each one about the size of a box of Junior Mints. The packaging was fun and colorful. Under the word flizzies, a cartoon girl was pictured against a wall of round pink candies, popping one into her mouth. A slender, clear acetate window showed the delicious pink treats within.

Lucy understood what this shit was—that it was definitely not candy—and knew full well the power these little pills had to make pain go away. Lucy ran into people all the time who were suffering. She worked in a fucking hospital.

It could be so easy.

She wouldn't be dumb enough to swipe several boxes of Flizzies. That would be noticed, for sure. But if she were to take a few pills—sorry, candies—from, say, twenty of these packages, who'd notice? It was like taking home a few seashells from the beach.

So that's what she did.

She gathered close to two hundred pills, put them into a Glad freezer bag, put all the boxes back into the case just as she had found them, then followed the YouTube video's instructions on how to reclose the carry-on bag, reengaging the zipper teeth even as the two zipper ends remained locked together. No one would ever be the wiser.

You'd think, she thought, drug smugglers would be a little more careful. What were they teaching criminals these days, anyway? She blamed the schools.

Lucy knew pretty much everyone at the hospital, and had an idea of the right people to discreetly approach. The truth was, the ones who were really hurting were the overworked staff. They'd all been through so much these last few years, what with the pandemic and all. Everybody was burned out, and many had never snapped back when COVID started to fade away. She did some quick online research and decided twenty bucks a pill was fair. If she could sell them all, that would be a cool four grand right there.

So fuck you, Billy, and the Camaro you rode in on.

She sold out in a couple of weeks. Had a few who came back for more, like that orderly Digby. Short, stocky dude, with short black hair, a kind of walking-talking fire hydrant with a fox tattoo on his shoulder. Always licking his lips. Reminded her of Heath Ledger when he played Joker in that Batman movie.

When Billy discovered her in the garage, she'd been hoping to restock, see if there was a bag in the locker that hadn't been picked up. But when he found her it was game over. If more stuff went missing, he was going to know for sure it was her. Good thing that loose cupboard door gave her an excuse to be looking for a screwdriver.

Did Billy believe her? Lucy hoped so. It made sense to lay it on Stuart. He knew what Billy was doing. He knew where the shit was. Billy wasn't cutting him in, so Stuart had a reason. Lucy was sorry she hadn't saved a few Flizzies. She could have found a way to plant them on Stuart, someplace where Billy would find them.

The lunch rush was over, and Lucy was hosing down the huge serving dishes that, moments earlier, had held Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes, when Digby sidled up to her and whispered, "Is the store open?"

She whispered to him, "Store's closed."

Digby said, "When should I come back?"

"Never," she said, setting the tray in the sink. "We've got one of those supply chain problems. Already had a going-out-of-business sale."

"I didn't get the flyer," Digby said.

"Can't do it anymore. It's over. Done. Too much heat." Sounding like some girl in a movie.

"Not what I want to hear," he said, moving in close enough that his nose was nearly touching hers. She could feel his hot, fetid breath on her face. "I'm not interested in any supply chain bullshit. Your store needs to reopen."

And he reached down between her legs and gave her a quick, hard squeeze before flashing a smile and finding his way out, Lucy quivering like the green leftover Jell-O she'd pitched earlier.