Fool's Gold
A Short Story
The fact of the matter is that Elsa is the shit.
There is no question in his mind that his life can be divided into two parts: Before Elsa and After Elsa.
He is completely possessed, completely obsessed and no fucking body should even bother trying to talk him down from this very sweet, very high, very dangerous ledge.
Lying spent, naked, and still panting he is lying face-up in the grass of the neatly-cut lawn. Elsa rises from beside him and takes three light steps and then a leap worthy of a panther. The sound of the splash as she lands in the pool cuts through the air like a shot in the dark. He stares up into the Tuscan sky above the roof of the villa and feels the night breathing and pulsing all around him. He feels more and more a part of the natural world with every slowing breath he takes. The sound of her graceful strokes as she glides through the water is as soothing as it is magnetic to him. He can’t take his ears off her. He must know where she is at all times. It’s not like he can trust her.
The sound of Elsa leaving the pool is a cascade of water raining across tiles. He sits up on one elbow watching her emerge, her body gleaming and sleek illuminated by only the moon. She walks toward him through a cloud of drifting fireflies that look like something magical has escaped and is trying to communicate by using some kind of secret blinking code. Whatever the message is, it’s lost on him. Because she has returned. To the scene of their repeated crime in the grass.
She kneels beside him, capturing his lips with her own. Then staring into his eyes as if she knows his every secret. Not even a hint of a smile.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t how the story was supposed to go. The plan was to rob the old patriarch, opening one vault in two minutes and then the second vault beneath the villa using just over another three minutes. Then lock him and his three women in the first vault, where there’s air and a jug of water. More than enough to last for the security people to find him and then let him, his chicky chicks, and his bruised ego out. That humiliation was definitely part of the plan.
But Elsa had been one of the three women in the old man’s collection, and when he forced the others into the vault at gunpoint she’d simply stood there looking as if she knew he didn’t mean she should join them. He found that he agreed. The alarm blared and the timer on his wrist vibrated, both of them disagreeing with him. He shut the door to the first vault but was acutely aware that time was running out for him to collect the five million euros in the second vault. She walked right past him, opened a panel on the wall, and punched in a code. The phone inside the panel rang and she spoke in soothing Italian to the security service. Then hung up.
The look on her face as she stood there was pure bitch goddess. Untouchable. And the really weird thing that struck him was that she wasn’t his type and wasn’t exactly as young as he usually liked them, either. The other two women looked like Russian girls in their early twenties who had fallen off of some runway and now had to do other poses for a living. But Elsa had to be 35 or so, but a fine wine 35 with taut, reckless curves and silver jade eyes that did not promise, but threatened. More storm than woman. He hadn't laid a finger on her yet she showed every sign of making him her bitch in so many ways if only he gave her the slightest chance. But it turned out that she was a business-first type of girl.
She turned off the security cameras he hadn’t found and then helped him carry the money out to the truck. When she filled her own Louis Vuitton duffel with about half a million euros from his new stash, he didn’t stop her. He stood next to the truck and she went back into the house and returned with two beers. She handed him the beer and kissed him simultaneously. He dropped the beer, paying no attention as the glass shattered into a thousand bits all around his shoes. He was no longer there, he was with her.
6 hours later, they are still here in the midst of it all, but knowing this part is soon over. As she fits herself back into the crook of his arm and joins him in looking up at the sky full of stars he knows they are both anticipating what will happen next. He has told her only what she needs to know. Sometime within the hour, they will rise, dress, trigger the alarm again and drive the few hours to his stash point. Then drive the empty truck to its underground garage where it will be swiftly picked up for shipping back to where it came from. Then transit to his hidey-hole in the French countryside by a man with a van who never asks questions or remembers anything about anybody, as a profession. He would now have to pay the guy for two, another 10,000 euros, but he had to do what he had to do. She was coming with him. This thing between them had to play out.
He already knew there were only a few ways for this shit to end and none of those involved a white picket fence, a wedding dress, or any kind of happy ending. He was a heist man who lived for the score and she was a bitch goddess betrayer. Happily never after was coming straight for them. But until that reckoning, he had Elsa, the money, and the open road. And he was going to let the dice roll on until they fucking stopped whenever they wanted to.