White Goods

by Jon Fain

This time they didn’t need Leah back in the office to get information. As they were swapping out the old kitchen stuff for the new, the fool customer dropped how he and his family were headed to the Cape the next day. Luis caught J.J.’s eye over the center island.

The two of them moved, removed, and installed what used to be called white goods according to J.J.’s grandfather. The appliances, like a fridge or washer or dryer, which were now almost always stainless steel.

As in steal. Jack Joseph the Third, aka J.J., was starting at the bottom at Appliance Nook, which pissed him off. Now that he’d bailed after his freshman year of community college, and with his Dad, aka Junior, passed, there should have been nothing stopping his grandfather, aka Original Recipe, from putting him where he belonged: The Nook’s heir apparent.

But here he was sweating out his pits and pocketing two-dollar tips instead of being back at a desk in the AC near Leah, with her firm body and flirty voice. Leah used that come-and-get-it banter over the phone to get a sniff of people’s routines.

This time, Luis asked to use the bathroom and took a quick look-see while J.J. did sports talk with the fool, as the family hound tried to snout-fuck his crotch. 

The next night, J.J. picked up Luis in the sketchy neighborhood where the older man lived. Luis usually drove but said his daughter needed the car that night.

“Bebé Jefe,” said Luis, slipping into the front seat.

J.J. didn’t like being called that all the time by Luis, who had been at the store longer and thought he outranked him. It wasn’t his fault his family owned The Nook, and Luis’s legacy was a pockmarked Accord. First thing he would do when his grandfather passed on and the store passed to him was shit-can Luis, because who needs a thief driving your company truck?

In the meantime, he was useful. He’d scanned the house where they were headed to know that there was no alarm system, and that while the door out to the deck would be doubly fortified with a stick in the track of the slider, the old basement window under the deck would work.

Jewelry was usually what they got. Once some gold coins. And while nobody used cash anymore, it seemed like everyone had a stash. A few hundred once in the man-of-the-house’s sock drawer, close to a thousand the next time, in a handbag jammed behind the drainpipe in the master bathroom.

This time, once upstairs, they split up, Luis pointing J.J. to the master, while he went to check out some kid rooms. Neither of them was above stealing some spoiled brat’s lunch money.

J.J. went to the big closet first. He was impressed by all the neatly hung his-and-her clothes across from each other. Tons of fucking shoes. Down the way on the woman’s side was a patch of stuff in plastic bags. He ripped the first bag open, to the jacket inside. He rubbed the soft fur.

J.J. was pretty sure it was white fox. Maybe ermine, whatever that was. We have to determine if it’s ermine, which made him laugh out loud.

He took it out, and then because why the hell not, put it on, and went back into the bedroom and looked in the full-length mirror. Instead of going to Luis’s guy who handled stuff they couldn’t just pocket, he thought of Leah in it, imagining her naked underneath, was standing there thinking lewd thoughts when he suddenly got company in the reflection.

“Inherit this, pendejo!”

Luis brought down some rock-hard family heirloom on the back of J.J.’s head.

He came to, spread-eagled on the floor.

“Look at this fool,” said one of the cops responding to the anonymous 911 call, to the other.

It would take a bit longer for J.J. to gather he was still wearing the white fur. That his pants and underwear were pulled down to his knees. And that his lips were painted with something called “vermillion sunset,” a special favorite of the lady-of-the-house.   

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