“It doesn’t matter,” Frank said, about as serious about it all as I’d been. He picked at his container of Chinese food and glanced at one of his screens as we waited and watched a house. “You can’t dump that many thieves in one small place and not have an effect. Look what happened. They stole land, then they stole people to work on the land. It was all baked in from the beginning, from before the beginning. Maybe it’s not in our blood,” he said. “Maybe it’s deeper than that. It’s in our culture, our identity. We wouldn’t be Americans without it. Everybody steals. We have to steal.”

“I can stop any time I want,” I said.

“Spoken like a true addict,” Frank said and handed me a fortune cookie.

—

I couldn’t go to meetings any more during the week, and I didn’t feel like it on the weekends, but once in a while I’d go, just to have someone else to talk to, someplace else to go. It depressed the shit out me, a reminder of a life I had, one that was getting further and further away. I didn’t mention any of this at the meetings. Everyone thought I was doing great, steady work, structured days, sticking with the program. What could be better? “It has to help with the loss,” someone said, “keeping your mind on work and all that.” They’d obviously never lost someone, not like I had, not that close. They didn’t know what they were talking about. “It helps,” I said. “I’ve got a lot of support at work, everywhere, really.” Every time I left a meeting I told myself I’d never go back. And then I went back. I could get addicted to my own misery, I suppose; plenty of people do. Other times I told myself that all I had to do was endure. Another month, another week; I could do whatever had to be done. All I had to do was the work.

I got a paystub every two weeks. I got the stub, but not the pay. They handed me an envelope with some cash in it, a lot less than the amount on the stub, barely enough to live on, not enough to cover my costs. This was a message from Froehmer. I couldn’t listen to it much longer. I had to go talk to him. But I couldn’t, not until the cops came. If I could handle them, Froehmer would get me out of the shit patrol at the warehouse. He’d never said it, Mobley had never said it, but I knew that was the deal. I never wanted the cops to come, but I couldn’t wait much longer for them not to. That’s the place I’d gotten myself.