It’s a plan. It’s a sure, fuckin’ thing, it’s rigged, we’re set, were gonna go in that back sliding door, they spoke softly, back in the bushes, eyeing the dark house. Over the roof the stars pierced the dark. The tingle of dope smoke slept on their tongues; in the pit of their stomachs—along with the vacuum of fear—lay a deep munching hunger that belied all their sorrows and seemed to be a hunger for much more than just nutritional substance. I could eat God, the hunger said. I could eat the universe. From that point on, stepping forth across the lawn to that back door, it stood there before them fully formed—as a scheme—because, sure as sure was sure, as Jimmy said, they’d have to tie the old coot up and maybe stuff an old sock in his mouth to keep him from making noise—not that there could be a soul for miles who could hear it, more for the general morale, the style of the thing. There were prescripts behind even the sloppiest break-in job, and Jimmy and Janet had them down pat, although most of what they’d done in the past by way of stealing stuff had been knee-jerk, spur-of -the-moment rip-offs of close friends: for example, once in the dead of winter they’d found themselves at a church camp along the lake, a collection of boarded cabins huddling around a main log lodge with a tarp-covered pool and a tennis court. That heist included a booty of old Holy Bibles and Pilgrim Hymnals, which fueled their campfire—tossed in one by one—for thirty minutes. Burning books was good fun. It was a joyous thing. The way the pages curled into the flames, the thin, brittle paper, the word reduced to carbon. A twenty-gallon can of peaches in a storage room took fifteen minutes to open with a hand opener, only to reveal them rotting and gooey in sugar syrup. Hefting it down the trail, they poured the goop all over the tennis court, watching it harden and steam in the crystalline air.

Surprise was the basic element of a break-in (you surprise them; they surprise you). Jimmy looked forward to scaring the coot, to seeing fear glaze his eyes, to getting right up to his old puckered mouth—breath wheezing in and out—and frightening him out of the depths of his sleep. What does an old fuck dream about, anyway? he was thinking as he walked across the yard, upon which the moonlight threw a thin veneer of frosty light on the grass blades. Janet was right beside him but might as well have been in England, for all he knew, because he was going into one of his singular trances, a fugue state driving him to that door, which he’d jimmy with a little flick of his screwdriver; the wooden security bar might be in place in the groove, but he knew a hard yank back on most of these doors would jolt it right out of the runners. If that didn’t work, he’d resort to a blast with his boot heel, noise be damned. Old men must dream in old-think, dreams slow and soggy and worthless, the hardness gone out of their bodies. His old man had been that way, sagging under the weight of years and booze. The idea would be to scare the piss out of this one, to watch him firm up in fright, and to get a good laugh out of it before the sock went into his mouth.