Archive of Our Own

It was the sort of evening colored in heather blue at the edges, where a sleepy, pale violet stretched above. Thrill and satisfaction were roaming the same party, and they drank every detail at the tip of J.B.'s senses. The jingle of the shop bell, the air conditioning sweeping the sweat from his forehead, the hum of the refrigerators - full of ice cream and Gatorade and soda - matching the buzzing in his own chest. Everything flew through him like wind through a flute, and it made him feel light.

This was always how it went right after a heist. Life becomes beautiful when you're in as much control of it as it is of you.

J.B. had just swiped an ivory carving from a mansion in D.C.. It was an easy job. While scoping the place, he learned that the owner inherited a collection of life-sized marble statues and had at least one in every room of the house ⁱ.

This was very serendipitous for him. He lived in New Orleans with his grandparents for a time after his mom died. Listless and alone, he would wander through the French Quarter on the weekends and practice his pickpocketing skills. He never remembered how that little hobby started, but he knew it kept his mind busy. There were a lot of street performers in the French Quarter. A few of them would eventually become his friends. One was a living statue that J.B. learned valuable things from; they served him in all his jobs. Now, in a much more direct way, they earned him the carving.

On nights like these, there wasn’t much he could cook or really do at all. He'd be doused in both adrenaline and exhaustion by the time he made it back to the motel, and it'd be enough work to get himself in bed and concentrated on the TV. Home Shopping Network could only get so interesting.

All this is to say, at this point in his life, he considered a bag of corner-store food a perfectly acceptable dinner.

He had his go-to's in each country. In America, it was a cold, wet sandwich in a plastic box and a banana, chased with a Moon Pie or some licorice. But he’d been hangin in the U.S. too long, and the usual was getting dull. He decided to try to find something else this time.

Munchies always called to him like a deep-sea monster, but he had an aversion to leaving any sort of residue on his hands. Not good form for a master thief.

Maybe some trail mix?

Pringles. Definitely those.

They were tucked at the bottom of the shelf, and he had to crouch to get them. He was about to stand and leave when heard a couple of voices from the aisle behind him.

“They found his money in the woods dude. There’s no way he made it out alive, or he would have grabbed it.”

J.B. got a prickly feeling at the back of his neck. Looked like he’d have to poke around longer, find any excuse to linger near them. He wasn’t gonna miss whatever this was about, though he suspected he knew.

“Those woods are pretty big. Coulda survived and not found it or-”

“You’re not serious. After everything he did? He’d die before letting the bag go.”

At the time, yeah, 5k was a lot to him. He hadn’t gotten up to the wealthier clientele. He also didn’t always know when to walk away, so... the stranger was right, at least about his character.

But that case was an unusual one. An earlier heist in his career.

One of a set of twin chalices, not of much material or historic value in itself, but a newfound remnant of a historic shipwreck in Bermuda. The buyer claimed it had belonged to her family and sent him to fetch it from the display case at the Bermudian Museum of Art History. J.B. had a lot of recent practice in art galleries at that time and knew his way around that type of security.

The Bermudian Museum was relatively tiny. J.B. arrived in the evening, shortly after the lone night guard began his shift. He was dressed in a prototype of what would be a recurring disguise: the blue-clad, Canadian-born Officer Weir.

“Anything I can help you with, officer?” the guard asked, pulling at his fingers nervously. 

“Yeah, we got a call from a neighbor aboot a disturbance in this building. Seems they saw someone sneak in here about an hour ago.”

“Sneak in!” his jaw collapsed. “But w-w- there’s no one else here. They must be mistaken, officer.”

The officer wiggled his thick brown mustache and sniffled.

“Mind if I come in?”

He gave a bashful look and stepped out of the way. “Of course, of course.”

“When did you start your shift, son?”

“Uh. Um, An hour ago. Sir. Night shift.”

“I see. Welp, we got this call around then so you probably just missed the culprit. I’m gonna take a look around, you should stay with me. Tell me if anything’s missing.”

The guard scanned the hall, sweat patterning his shirt like tiny glass shards. J.B. knew it was the guard's first week on the job and that he likely didn’t know well the exhibits well enough.

He watched the man put on a confident act despite everything. He looked keenly at the display cases. They all seemed normal enough, at least one artifact in each. He spotted a podium at the far end of the room, empty except for a folded card on top. The cards served as placeholders when the items were taken in for inspection and preservation. The guard waded over to the podium slowly and made a show of considering it. Intimidation was probably what kept him from looking in J.B.’s direction as he followed behind. His own little Orpheus, how romantic.

Anyway, that’s when he decided to accost the guard and press a rag to his nose. He winced at the man’s sharp gasps, which only betrayed him quicker to the scent of chloroform.

J.B. made sure to set him down gently on a nearby bench. He pulled a large tapestry from the next room and draped it over the man like a blanket. Beside him, he placed a mini bottle of gin and a bag of cookies. They were meant to be J.B.’s, for the road, but he was feeling guilty.

He was flying back home from the job, the payout stashed in his carry-on. From the emergency exit row, he spotted someone looking at him. They were petite and young. Had red nose and a long, thick pea coat. They side-eyed him piercingly while whispering to the flight attendant. He didn’t recognize them, but an eerie feeling crawled up his collar.

The attendant looked at him the same way, but only for a flash, and then disappeared into the cockpit. The draw of the curtain rang sharply behind her.

It was then that he became aware of everyone else on the plane. Five rows behind him, peaking over an unfolded newspaper, was a woman with red glasses and shiny earrings. He recognized her now; she was a curator. Her eyes darted reflexively to the aisle across from her. There sat the night guard.

He’d been set up. Whether the mastermind behind it thought of themself as a gumshoe, or a vigilante looking to take down a serial robber, or simply a disgruntled victim out for revenge, he never knew. Before he’d even thought about puzzling it out, the story became a widespread urban legend ⁱⁱ.

“Or maybe he was injured. If I were crawling through the woods at night with broken legs, I wouldn’t be trying to find my money.”

People think he accidentally strapped himself to a training parachute, but he was never that stupid.

“He used a fake parachute, dude. You’re not thinking about this. He fell from the sky!”

Again, not true about the parachute thing. But he did fall from the sky.

It was his first time skydiving. He made sure to soak in the early moments when the wind swaddled him. It washed every nerve from him and left it in the clouds. In that moment, J.B. got what he always wanted and in the most literal form: the feeling that he could fly.

He was hungrier than he thought. Better get some ramen.

ENDNOTES