The Heist

Mara didn’t tell me the truth about who she was until the night of our wedding, after we had said our vows. I didn’t believe her. Not at first.

“A cat burglar?”

I grinned at the back of her head, her long blonde hair still holding a slight curl as the ribbons of it cascaded over the sleek white gown and its many buttons, which I was in the process of unbuttoning. I assumed she had waited until after we were married to reveal this hidden fantasy to me, somehow ashamed of what I imagined was a relatively common interest. The concept of roleplay had always intrigued me and intimidated me in equal part, but I would have tried anything with her at least once.

She nodded, biting her lip as she glanced at me over her shoulder, waiting to see my reaction to this news.

“And who am I in this scenario?” I asked, still smiling, attempting to convey how eager I was to play along.

“My darling, devoted husband, of course,” Mara said, turning to face me and tilting her head in apparent confusion, the thin straps of her dress still clinging to her shoulders. Her bright blue eyes were wide and slightly glassy, likely an effect of the numerous champagne toasts at the reception.

Is this part of the game? I wondered.

“You can’t be serious,” I said, my smile turning questioning before beginning to fade.

“Deadly,” she said, shrugging off the straps of her gown, the garment hugging the curves of her body as it fell to the ground in a pool around her bare feet. She stepped out of it and stood before me, gazing up at me from over a foot below me. Her petite figure had always enchanted me, how she moved with an almost ethereal grace despite the lack of length in her legs, usually present in the models known for conveying a similar elegance in their movements. She told me once that she had been a gymnast when she was younger. She had even proven it at my request, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk in the park—the location of our second date—and handing me her ice cream cone before running to the nearby grass, where she proceeded to kick off her heels and do a backflip in front of me on the spot, while wearing a dress. I tried to picture her using the same ability to contort her body through vents and over lasers like a jewel thief in a heist movie. The image was laughable.

“You’re laughing,” Mara said, her brow furrowing, her soft pink lips forming a childish pout.

I couldn’t help it. It was impossible for me to take her claim seriously. Not without proof.

“When’s your next heist?” I asked, attempting to stifle another chuckle.

She frowned at me before turning and walking to the bathroom, examining her reflection in the mirror of the vanity. I smiled in appreciation of the lacy white lingerie she was wearing, longing to return to where I imagined the night had been heading before she had interrupted it with this absurd revelation, which I still refused to believe. She worked as an elementary school teacher, for god’s sake. Although, I had never actually seen proof of that, either.

“Funny you should ask,” she said as she began to remove her jewelry, “It’s tonight.”

I chuckled again, earning a glare from her in the mirror. I watched as she placed the rather large diamond earrings I hadn’t bought for her on the countertop next to the sink, and my smile faded.

“What exactly are you stealing?” I asked, the confidence in the joking tone of my voice beginning to falter.

Mara shrugged as she leaned closer to the mirror, clasping a fake eyelash between her thumb and forefinger and slowly pulling it from her eyelid.

“I thought you didn’t believe me.”

“I never said that,” I said, still unconvinced this wasn’t some elaborate attempt at roleplay. I decided to go along with it. “But why did you wait until now to tell me about this?”

When she turned to face me again, she was holding her left hand to the side of her face. Grinning, she wiggled her fingers at me, including the one wearing the simple gold wedding band I had bought for her, and the four-carat diamond engagement ring she had acquired herself—a family heirloom from her grandmother, she had told me.

“We’re married now, sweetie,” she said. “You’re with me for better or worse. And now you can’t be forced to testify against me in court.”

My jaw dropped. I knew she couldn’t be serious, but I never imagined she was this good of an actress. The gentle, kind-hearted fourth grade teacher who I had met at a bookstore, of all places, felt very different from the Mara standing before me now.

“You would never do that, would you?” she asked, fluttering her eyelashes at me as she had done many times before, albeit without the intentionality that seemed apparent in this moment, or so I thought.

“N-no, of course not,” I stuttered, suddenly afraid to disappoint my new bride.

“Good,” she said, grinning again as she walked back to the vanity and picked up a cotton pad, which she used to carefully remove the layers of makeup that coated her face—foundation, blush, bronzer, eyeliner, shadow, lip liner, lipstick. She had described to me the intensive process of painting it on this morning while we were eating the overpriced steak dinner we, and two-thirds of our guests, had selected.

Once her face was bare, she pulled her hair into a high, tight bun and walked past me, to the closet in the hallway of the expensive hotel suite my parents had gifted to us for the night. From it, she removed a short black dress and brunette wig. My mouth remained open as she slipped the dress over her head and zipped it up her back in one fluid motion. Placing the wig over her scalp, she walked back to the mirror and adjusted it, tugging at the ends of the shoulder-length bob to get it to sit right.

“What do you think?” she asked with a flirtatious wink.

I was speechless. How far was she willing to take this game? Was it a game?

Without waiting for a response, she returned to the vanity and began pulling out different kinds of makeup from a small black pouch I had never noticed her use before. I watched in awe as she artfully applied new layers of makeup to her face to complete the disguise—a foundation one shade darker than her natural skin tone, heavy eyeliner ending in flared wings, mocha-colored eyeshadow that shimmered when she moved in the light, lipstick in a dark maroon. When she was finished, she truly looked like a different person.

“So, are you coming with me?” Mara asked as she turned to face me once again, jutting her hip to the side and holding the tube of lipstick in her hand in an almost sensual manner, between her index and middle fingers, as if it were a cigarette.

“Can I?” I asked, suddenly fascinated by the idea of participating in this game—whether it was real or pretend.

She nodded once and walked back to the closet, from which she removed a charcoal gray suit and short blonde wig clearly meant for a man. When had she placed these items in the closet? How long had she been planning this?

After a moment’s hesitation, I accepted the suit and wig from her and began to change clothes. She watched me dress with a gleam in her eye that spoke not of the lust which I had felt when I was unbuttoning her gown but of a mischievous—almost devilish—intent. As I stood in front of the mirror and buttoned the suit jacket, she came up behind me and stood on tiptoe to place the wig on top of my head. It fit snugly, covering my close-cropped light brown hair with ease.

My reflection gazed at me from the mirror, conveying our collective disappointment in his expression. I looked like myself with a bad dye job. I supposed it would suffice, though. At least upon first glance, no one would recognize me.

“So, where are we going?” I asked Mara as she donned a pair of black stilettos that must have been at least four inches tall. Even in these heels, the top of her head barely grazed my shoulders.

“Downstairs,” she said, as if this should have been obvious.

“Downstairs as in…the hotel?”

“Why do you think I chose this venue for our wedding?”

I stared at her, uncomprehending.

“Because you…liked it?”

She chuckled, playfully batting me on the shoulder as if I had made a joke.

“Well, yes, I liked it, but this hotel also happens to be hosting an exhibition of rare jewelry.”

My jaw dropped again.

“You chose our venue based on what you could steal from it on the night of our wedding?”

I wasn’t sure at what point I began to truly believe this was real, but in this moment, it felt too ridiculous to be anything but.

“Not just that,” she said with a huff, clearly unimpressed by my questioning of her motives. “But I thought it would be a fun way to end the night. And get an extra wedding present for myself.”

I continued to gape at her, baffled both by her brazen disregard for the sanctity of our wedding venue and by her confidence in her ability to steal a rare piece of jewelry from it. Regardless, I felt I was too far in to do anything but go along with the plan. And, admittedly, my curiosity was piqued. I wanted to see her in action.

“Okay,” I said, unable to think of anything appropriate to say in the moment.

Mara clapped her hands together once and gave me an impish grin before turning and strutting down the hallway, grabbing a black leather tote bag from the closet on her way to the front door of the suite.

We made our way downstairs, to the lobby of the hotel. It was quiet, given the late hour, but there was still staff at the front desk and a number of drunken guests—some from our reception—staggering toward the elevators. Mara grabbed my hand and led me across the lobby, giggling and stumbling in her heels, blending in with the crowd around us. The woman at the front desk barely spared a glance in our direction as we walked further into the expansive first floor of the hotel, through a hallway lined by a number of doors and stairways leading to restaurants and convenience stores. Despite the luxury of the hotel—a venue we had only been able to afford due to an inheritance Mara had recently received, money which I now questioned the true origin of—the flooring beneath my feet was worn, and the blue-and-green pattern of the abrasive-looking material fell within the category of generic hotel or motel carpet I was accustomed to seeing at the places we could usually afford to stay. I stared at the wavy, winding pattern of it as I followed Mara, who alternated between taking quick, determined steps and wobbling drunkenly on her feet, depending on if there were other people around us.

When we finally approached what I assumed was our intended destination—given the security guard standing next to a closed door leading to a room lined with windows, through which I could see a series of glass cases—Mara stopped and stood on tiptoe to whisper into my ear.

“Distract the guard for me.”

I blinked at her, attempting to process the words she had just spoken.

“How?” I asked at my normal volume, earning a shushing from her. She leaned closer to my ear again, whispering her plan to me.

Sweat began to bead on my upper lip as I approached the guard without Mara, who stopped to stare at a painting on the wall opposite the display room, tilting her head at it in seeming contemplation of the splotches of color on the canvas. The guard frowned at me as I stopped in front of him, his brow creasing.

“I thought you should know, some guests are trying to break into the store back there,” I said, following Mara’s instructions to the letter, pointing in the direction we had just come from.

The guard stared at me, suspicion evident in the narrowing of his eyes, but turned and walked down the hallway a moment later, muttering an aggrieved thanks under his breath.

Once he had walked out of my sightline, Mara reappeared at my side as if summoned by the sudden vacancy there. Offering me a sly smile, she stretched a hand toward the door and twisted the knob. I expected it to be locked, but it swung open without resistance.

“How did you know it would be open?” I asked.

“Surveillance,” she answered with a shrug, as if this would mean anything to me. “The guard with the shift before that guy didn’t lock it last night. And this one didn’t check to make sure it was locked.”

I scanned through my memories of the previous night, trying to figure out when she would have had time to conduct this so-called surveillance, but my attempts were fruitless.

“Are you coming?” she asked as she walked through the door, only briefly hesitating to double-check that the hallway around us was still empty.

I nodded reluctantly, following her through the doorway. The room was dim, lit only by the light from the hallway filtering through the panel of windows to my right. Mara seemed to know exactly where she was going, leading us to a glass case at the center of the room. Inside it was a ring unlike any I had seen in person. The fiery red ruby at the center of the gold band was massive, dwarfing the halo of tiny diamonds around it.

Mara grinned at me before removing a tool from her bag that looked surprisingly similar to ones I had seen in old heist movies. I watched in fascination as she stuck the black suction cup onto the case and drew a circle in the glass around it with the blade attached to it, the motion swift and clean. Removing a second tool from her bag, she tapped the metal sphere on the end of it against the glass while gripping the suction cup with her free hand. The sharp rap caused the glass circle to dislodge, leaving a gap in the case. She reached through the hole and removed the ring from its cushion, her eyes lighting with glee, like those of a child receiving a new and highly anticipated toy.

“The security here is terrible,” she said as she slid the ring onto her finger, holding her hand out in front of her a moment later to admire it.

Satisfied, she nodded and began walking out of the room, leaving me gaping at her back. I followed her after a few seconds, head down, feeling somehow chastened by the display I had just witnessed, and by her brazenness in wearing the ring as we made our way back to our hotel room, taking an alternate route to avoid running into the security guard.

For the next two weeks, during the entirety of our honeymoon in Hawaii, Mara wore the ring on the ring finger of her left hand in place of her wedding band. Whenever she caught me staring at it, she would smile at me, seeming to revel in the secret we now shared. And each time, the same thought ran through my mind.

Who did I marry?