“Yeah,” Zeke replied. “That’s cool.”

So we stepped out of my car, our backpacks slung over our shoulders, and we normally, so normally it doesn’t even need to be mentioned, walked over to the entrance of the insurance company.

“Should we use one of yours?” Zeke asked me. He looked really nervous, kind of sweating in the heat. The sun hadn’t even fully set. We were very exposed. But no one cared. We were invisible.

“Yeah, we can use one of mine,” I told him, and I carefully unzipped my backpack. I pulled out a sheet of paper, but another one was stuck to it and came with it, and then I awkwardly tried to get the stray piece of paper to fit back in the backpack but it wasn’t going in. Finally, I gave up, crumpled up the piece of paper, awkwardly shoved it into my pocket, and then took the clean sheet and . . . well, okay. Right at that moment I realized that we had no tape. No way to hang up our art.

“How do I hang it up?” I asked, pressing the picture against the glass like it would just stick somehow.

“Oh, shit,” Zeke whispered, his eyes huge. “Oh, fuck. We gotta abort this mission, I think.”

“Let’s go back to the car,” I said, “and figure this out.”

We both kind of duck-walked very suspiciously back to my car, and I fumbled for my keys to unlock the doors, and we dove into the front seats.

“That was not good,” he admitted.

“We need, like, tape. Nails. Pushpins. Staples. A staple gun,” I told him.

“Where can we get that stuff?” he asked.

“At the Wal-Mart?” I offered. “They have everything, pretty much.”

“Okay, let’s go there,” he said, visibly deflating.

“Should we just try again another time?” I asked.

“No,” he said, so petulant. “We have to do it tonight.”

“Okay. Then let’s go get some supplies.” Why, I wondered, was true art so hard to make? Why did it never turn out quite the way that you envisioned it? Why were Zeke and I doomed to live the life of an artist? But we’d fix it, I decided. We’d go to Wal-Mart. Nothing would stop us.

We instantly separated inside the store, and I bought the staple gun and staples, while Zeke went into another line and bought duct tape and pushpins, which we thought was what criminal masterminds would do. I felt a little giddy, looking over at Zeke, a few cashiers over, and we both smiled, so happy to be closer to our goal. We met up near the entrance, and I noticed the bulletin board that had missing-child posters and various official notices.

I reached into my pocket and produced the crumpled-up copy from earlier in the evening. Zeke look alarmed, instinctively reached out for the paper, but I pulled back. “Right now?” he asked, and I nodded.