Once their relationship turned physical, some opening between them, some space that let her know she was Kit and he was Manny and that she had existed before and would exist beyond, sealed shut. She was a grafted limb, the broken part of her fused to the broken part of him. His wishes became hers, her desires to fulfill his. There was nothing she could not endure, nothing but losing him.
She renewed her wish that being lovers, or whatever they were, would bring him closer to her, but it seemed to drive him into a kind of episodic madness. He would swing from one extreme to the other, one moment burying his nose in her pits to drink the smell of her and the next locking her in the bathroom all night after he had drawn her a bath and she hadn’t thanked him. After sex he would call her a Jezebel, sulk, and get drunk. He was always quitting her, shutting her out and vowing that it would be just business from there on out. Each time it stung more than the last, even though he always came around. Since it was her body he couldn’t leave, she was glad to offer it up to him, as long as he would keep coming back to her. She learned the mechanics of his moods, when to lay low, when to be bold or pull away to draw him near. She got by on a reservoir of good times together, like swimming the warm, muddy waters of the Brazos, or eating breakfast for dinner and sneaking into a double feature, or best of all, when they were working.
They ran all the regular cons, picked pockets and purses, shoplifted and swindled, but nothing worked him up like the thrill of an armed robbery. The formula had worked every time: always off the interstate, at the end of the day so the till was full, far enough from a police station that they would have plenty of time to get out before the law came. As long as they stuck to the plan, they would never get caught. “Taxes are for suckers,” Manny said one time when Kit asked him what it was like to have a job. Working for wages, giving the government a cut of your earnings, clocking in and out. He said all that was akin to slavery. Kit didn’t like when he ranted. It made him seem smaller, the way he thought about normal things like working for a living. She would have rather heard him say the truth, that he knew it was bad to steal but he did it for fun. Kit’s truth was that she stole to make Manny happy.
The price for the good times was always the same. When a job was done the cocksure invincibility of the robbery left him rabid for her. With Manny, it was wild and angry, competitive. She was a gladiator, clashing and lunging and fighting to stay in the game just a little longer. Kit’s strength was no match for Manny’s, but she was slippery and able to distract and evade his grasp. They fought and strangled each other, punching, and fucking and heaving desperately until they collapsed and he slept like an infant while she roamed the room, shaking the fight from her bones.
Kit was slow to mature, and it plagued her to look so much younger than she felt. Manny said it was poor nutrition that kept her scrawny, that she’d never have a figure. But by the time she was eighteen, Kit had finally grown into her limbs and filled out the seat of her jeans. She kept her hair waist-length and loved to feel it swish behind her. Around this time, she noticed men noticing her. She felt their eyes shadow her as she walked. She’d scowl, or spit on the ground at their feet, but sometimes, if the man was handsome, or seemed like he would be kind, in a small, quiet place she let herself enjoy the attention.
Manny bloodied a lot of noses over Kit, but increasingly, he took out his jealousy on her. One night they were smoking outside a bar and a young man with aviators on his head and rings on every finger grabbed her between the ass cheeks. Manny tackled the guy into a pile of garbage bags. The guy still had a lit cigarette in his mouth, and Manny took it and put it out in the guy’s ear, then kicked him in the spleen.
That night he was on top of her, his face all crumpled.
“Why do you have to egg them on?” he said, veins snaking across his forehead. “You think you can do better than me?”
She was so stunned and confused, she didn’t try to fight back when he held her neck down with the butt of his hand so hard she lost consciousness. He dunked her in a cold bath, and when she came to and looked in the mirror, the whites of her eyes bloomed red where the vessels had burst.
The next morning, he rolled toward her and tickled her nose with his fingertips like nothing had happened. She couldn’t look him in the eyes. She missed the Manny she had first loved, strong and aloof and dripping with charm. These days, she never knew which Manny she would get. One minute he was cold and callous, the next, manic and deranged, or paranoid, brooding, possessive. Other days he was lusty and didn’t want to leave the bed. It was easier to blame herself, for the way she looked and for letting Manny have sex with her. He had tried to stop, she reasoned, but she’d kept it going. She had wanted to keep him so bad she’d made a deal with the devil and lost.
One day in April when she was nineteen, after a couple of profitable runs outside Austin, Kit was sitting cross-legged on the floor watching TV when Manny brought home a newspaper. He slapped it into her lap and sat down next to her. He pointed to an article below the crease. police link texaco robberies. The article said they’d noticed a pattern in three robberies in the Austin County area and were coordinating with police in neighboring counties to see if there were any more instances that would fit.
He pulled her face to his and kissed her, hard, like he was drinking her in. “We have a trademark,” he said, a grin forming on his face. “They said we have style. People are starting to talk, calling us the Texaco Twosome. Here,” he said, opening the paper to where the story continued and laying it out on the floor in front of her. “Get this. ‘Police have identified several features common to all the robberies. There are two accomplices, one manning the getaway vehicle, the other holding the cashier at gunpoint while collecting the money. The ringleader is described as a tall, fit man in his thirties. Witnesses have remarked on his cool demeanor and charming persona.’ One woman is quoted here as saying, ‘I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell he was a looker. Something about his eyes. You never did see something so blue.’” He slapped his thigh. “Ha! You hear that? We’re famous! They love us.”
She didn’t see the upside of this turn of events. With the police now coordinating and sending word to the press, they’d surely be caught and thrown in jail. They’d go to separate prisons and she worried she might never see him again. She crumpled the paper and tossed it aside.