Tell Me Everything

Will the old woman realize I put something in her tea? She rests in the lounge, I work in the kitchen. She sits in her old leather chesterfield recliner. Quiet… listening? I’ve prepared tea for her many times. The lounge lies two doors down the hall, maybe ten feet separates the two of us. Art surrounds her: vases, sculptures, but just one painting, a lakeside view of mostly shades of purple, but punctuated by bright stabs of yellow representing fireflies. It’s the painting that hides her safe.

She’s likely already opened a magazine, or, less likely, a romance novel. With the doors open in between, she can surely hear me. She can hear the kettle steaming, the clink of ceramic and sterling silver. How closely has she followed this auditory ritual over the past four months? Would she notice any extra pause? Can she hear me pull out the plastic capsule holding a white powder?

I’ve planned this moment for a long time, memorizing my movements, my sounds, even the rate of my heart, which is pounding even now. If my hand slips, if I pause too long at any step, if I become self-conscious of my movements, the old woman may grow suspicious. The most fraught moments are still to come. Soon enough I’ll pick up the tea tray, take the lonely walk down the hall, force my eyes from straying to that lovely purple painting hiding the riches I seek. 

Fortunately she’s used to my reticence, my shifting gaze. She’s said as much: “Anna, why must you insist on losing focus? Put your fear away please.” Her audacity is what I like best about her, that and her art.

But it’s that artist’s eye for details I fear the most. Even if I act perfectly normal, control my breathing, answer her questions as awkwardly as I normally do, will she detect some change in my manner? 

She often asks me an intentionally banal question at tea time: “Anna, would you tell me about the movies they’re playing these days? What’s this I hear about an Extraterrestrial? Dreadful!” Will she see into my soul in a way she hasn’t up to this point? But then again, what does she really know about me? Anna isn’t even my real name, after all.

I’ve held many jobs in my life: call-center worker, fast-food cashier, grocery cashier and, most recently before my turn as housekeeper to an old lady, custodial staff. But if you watched me closely, you’d notice how fine my casual clothes are, how my car is rarely more than a few years old, and how I never skimp on physician or dentist appointments. It’s because my real job was rarely these menial tasks. I’ve been a burglar since I was a teenager.

I scoop up the tea tray, with its single cup painted with fig leaves and olives, all greens and browns. I add a plate with little rosemary biscuits: four of them, so Miss Jessica Krask can eat three and leave one. 

Miss Krask… Dr. Krask, she’s a DFA. After months in her employ, why do I still struggle with that appellation? Luckily I’ve never made that mistake to her face. 

Dr. Krask isn’t talkative when I enter with her tea and biscuits. She is leafing through an art magazine, an Apollo featuring a watercolor of a vast green canyon on the cover. She only briefly raises her eyes as I lay down the tea. And she doesn’t look deep into the cup as she blows ripples across the light yellow surface. I stand silently nearby, anticipating further requests.

My forehead feels hot, but I dare not move my hand to check. My fingers urge to twitch, but I stay them. My foolish eyes long to dart toward the painting, so obvious a hiding place, like burying treasure by a lonely oak tree. 

Images from the old days swim in my head, the thrill of entering a stranger’s house, stuffing valuables in a cloth bag. I’d forgotten what this stress, and this exhilaration, felt like.

The most important part of picking a target is a recessed entryway. The better hidden the front door, the more vulnerable the house. Learning to crack a lock is simple practice.

After breaking in, be fast but precise. Go straight to the master bedroom. Treat that bedroom with the proper thoroughness. Start in a far corner and search in a circle. Don’t disturb anything you don’t have to, much easier to be systematic if you’re not making a mess. Concentrate on cash and jewelry, but small electronics work too: a digital watch or Sony Walkman are well worth it. Time shouldn’t be much of a factor if you’ve cased the place properly, but don’t dawdle. Assuming your bag isn’t full from the master bedroom, hit other rooms with potential on the way out. But try to keep yourself to one medium-sized bag, easier to dump if you have to.

“Art Deco has some potential, I think. Not as silly a movement as I first thought,” Dr. Krask coos, not looking up from her magazine.

I nod. Art Deco… that’s the furniture style with the funny use of shapes right? I lean forward slightly to view the pictures Dr. Krask is looking at, seeing a silvery room filled with chandeliers and loveseats whose curves seem to blend seamlessly into each other. I’m ready to comment on how I quite like the look, and how the 1980s have brought with them many intriguing designs. But then, she hasn’t asked me a question, so I hold my tongue.

I’ve gotten used to staying silent. That’s one half of why I never had close friends growing up. The other half is contempt, contempt I didn’t recognize ‘til much later. It’s gotten better with age, but as a teenager I thought everyone looked down on everyone else. I didn’t realize how much scorn filled my heart ‘til I got my first boyfriend.

His name was Roger. He had greased hair and a leather jacket, muscular arms and a burgeoning gut. He was about ten years older than me. He owned a motorcycle and regularly stopped by the McDonalds where I worked, asking for something sweet each time he ordered. One day, he asked me out. It turned out he was a burglar, though not a good one, which I could tell the very first day he took me on a job. 

I never hid my disdain when I asked him questions: “Shouldn’t you pick easier targets?” “Why trash the place?” “Why not dress inconspicuously?” He’d laugh and say that the job was easy, no need to think about this stuff, that he’d never get caught. He wound up getting twenty years, and I’d have gotten in big trouble too if I’d been eighteen. Fortunately I could trust my parents not to care.

But all those nights hanging at biker bars, and then serving as his lookout, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I would do things differently. I started jotting these thoughts down in my childhood diary, and soon it overflowed with notes and ideas: what sort of houses to hit, what to steal, how to sell it and where to go for information. Before I’d ever robbed anyone, I’d gone to the County Clerk’s Office to look over house plans. I’d never been a good student, but I became a scholar of burglary.

Dr. Krask, as was her habit, took her first sip of tea ten minutes after I delivered it. Would she taste the difference? Sodium Amytal is known for being tasteless. Were it a more powerful drug, you likely would have heard more about it. Back in the 60s it was all the rage as a potential “truth serum.” The CIA experimented with it, but they could never get a subject to trust them well enough. It should work perfectly for my purposes though. I just need Dr. Krask calm, serene… trusting.

And surely she trusts me. Over the past four months we’ve spent most days together, alone. But why does she trust me? Why did she take in a woman she barely knew as her housekeeper? She has a reputation as an eccentric, mostly retired, only visiting her studio once a month. Most of the time she appears so wise, so distrustful. But I made an impression at just the right time. 

I heard she’d visit the gallery that week. That’s where I’d been working on the custodial staff. I’d given them a fake name and fake social security number. I could recite my counterfeit history with confidence and they were used to hiring migrants under the table anyway.

Every now and then the staff would talk about Dr. Krask like she was some kind of alien. She would teleport in, ruffle everyone’s feathers, cut a check for the gallery’s expenses, and then disappear. Most had given up trying to butter up the old broad: “She can see flattery coming a mile away,” the gallery manager had said. When I heard that, I knew I had to try to engage her.

I asked her about a piece of her art in the gallery. A quick question, but one that proved I had a thoughtful mind: “Why no red in the sunset?”

“A bold assumption about an abstract work. Why do you think it’s a sunset?”

“I just thought… the horizontal strokes… maybe I’m foolish.”

“But yes, it is a sunset. There’s no red because there’s always red in a sunset.” And we smiled at each other. 

It felt like flirting, which I’d never really done before. I’d never gone in for a social con either, and this one was a long shot. I’d heard she was looking to take on a housekeeper. And I’d watched her interact with others, mock them subtly, scoff at their cliches. It struck me that a custodian bold enough to ask her about art might appeal to her sense of irony. It did.

“Do you know the Gong Fu Cha method of brewing tea?”

“Yes,” I lied. A trip to the library that evening clears this up.

“If you have any intention of moving up in the world, send me your resume,” and she handed me a business card, dyed light pink. Faking a real resume proved much more difficult, but I managed.

Dr. Krask sips her tea and takes tiny bites from a biscuit. Then she asks me to sit and join her: “Make yourself a cup if you’d like, otherwise pick some reading material.” I select a copy of Pride and Prejudice off the shelf, which I’d been reading off and on whenever Dr. Krask ordered me to hang out with her. 

I force myself to stare at the pages, scanning over the words I’m not really reading. In the back of my mind I count the seconds, every two minutes I turn the page.

“I’m feeling so tired. I think I’ll turn in early tonight,” Dr. Krask says and yawns. “Or maybe just lie here. I may ask you to fetch me a blanket.” I note she’s three-quarters through her cup. Surely that would be enough, but I’d give her another few minutes for the Sodium Amytal to take effect. 

My eyes turn involuntarily to that lakeside painting, that painting with too much purple and bright yellow blobs for fireflies that hides a safe behind. She’d only opened that safe once during my employment, to fetch a pearl necklace from her jewelry box. I’d seen how much cash was back there. She might not notice any money was missing for months… if she ever did. Was it really even stealing in such a case? I just had to get her to give up the combination.

You might think it risky of me to try this scheme without knowing it’ll work. But I have tested it already, on my boyfriend. It may sound like I’ve had a lot of boyfriends at this point, but he’s only my 2nd I’ve ever had. His name is Jim, and he runs a pawn shop.

Go ahead and judge me, I won’t even blame you. Jim is fifteen years older than me, and a grizzled trader of stolen goods. But I fell in love with the way he looked at me.

He looked at me with lust, you see, but not just for my form. He looked like he wanted to crack my head open and spill out all the secrets I held. I’d been yearning so long for a man with any kind of spark, any sort of dynamic mind, that Jim proved captivating. 

He’d been my buyer, off-and-on, for years. He knew me better than anyone. When I told him that I’d wormed my way into the employ of a wealthy artist, his face lit up like the neon lettering outside his shop. And when I told him my plan, he didn’t interject with his own ideas, not ‘til I was finished.

“Sounds like you’ve got things all worked out,” he said with his gap-toothed smile.

“Yes, but I’d like to test the drug first.”

“You know I’m up for anything babe.”

And he was. He didn’t even want to ramp up the dose slowly, just took a full 200 mg in a can of coca-cola. Soon enough he was lying on the couch, staring up at the stucco ceiling in his apartment, giggling through answers to every question I asked him. He told me about how he left home as a teenager, about how in his twenties he’d tried every drug under the sun and was lucky it didn’t kill him. He told me he was already thinking about helping with my plan, bringing his van by Dr. Krask’s mansion, loading it up with art, furniture, and everything else that would fit. I explained to him very calmly that I only planned to grab a few key valuables, and that if he showed up at her door I’d murder him. 

“I don’t think you’d murder me,” he turned and looked at me serenely. “But I’ll do as you ask babe.”

Dr. Krask’s eyes flutter closed and she leans back in her big leather chair. She looks so peaceful. Over these four months, I’ve barely seen her like this. It’s time for a probing question, simple, honest: “Dr. Krask: What are you painting next?”

“Something clashing I think. I’d like to work with violet and orange.”

“Why violet and orange?”

“They don’t fit together. Like you and me. Dynamism requires complexity but… conflict as well.”

“We’re in conflict?”

“You’re poor. I’m rich.”

“Is that conflict?”

“Of course,” she shifts to her side, curls her legs up like a puppy.

“How did you get rich?”

“I was confident, and I painted bold strokes. Someone bought what I was selling. Then everyone bought what I was selling.”

“Why did you keep the wealth?”

“Because most charities are nonsense. And most beggars would waste it.”

“But would you miss it if you lost it?”

“Not most of it. I like to live comfortably.”

It was time. I’ll ask about the art first, leave the safe combination until last.

“Which art in the house is the most valuable?”

“The sculpture… which sculpture? I’ve had estimates made. I’ve sold the occasional piece. I hate those buzzards who run auctions, but I like how they circle. Perfect circles…”

“You keep sculptures somewhere? Small ones that you’ve made that you wouldn’t even notice were gone?”

“Oh… the ones I keep hidden away I don’t like so much, but if I have to bring one out as a surprise I could. I could sell those ones.”

“Where? In the basement? In a cabinet?”

“Where? Outside… There’s someone pulling up into the drive. Can you hear it?” Her eyes are still closed, and she still looks so serene, but her words send a shock down my spine.

I rush to the window, hoping she’s imagining things. In the dim porch light I see what I’d hoped not to, a white van with block lettering in stark black on the side: “CONFIDENCE PAWN.” Jim’s van. He’s here to help. Here to take his share, to load up his van with art and valuables. 

Stupid. Stupid! If anyone sees that van they’ll be able to track any theft back to him! And if we loot the place, or hurt the doctor, our liability would explode. If he’d just let me make off with some cash, and a few art pieces she wouldn’t miss… I could just disappear, and she’d be too embarrassed to even bother with the police. But Jim surely wants to fill that van!

Why did I trust him? Why do I trust anyone?