Nat was the one who carried the gun. It seemed to come more naturally to him, even though the gun didn’t look like it was his. It was the kind that you had to load bullets into—the old-fashioned kind—with a mother-of-pearl handle. It almost looked like a woman’s, small enough to fit in a bag. Jin woke up staring into its barrel, listening to a voice he thought he’d imagined: You’re coming with me. Before he knew what was happening, someone was dragging him out of bed, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, where Mae had been tied to a chair. They used duct tape on their wrists, ankles, and shoulders. A strip to cover their mouths. They left them like this for over an hour while they ransacked the house.
Jin thought they’d leave as soon as they’d taken what they could carry, but Mae knew they wouldn’t. The liquor cabinet in the living room had a squeaky hinge. She heard them open and close it, open and close it again. The more they drank, the clumsier their footsteps became, the louder their voices. Dell kept insisting there was a safe somewhere. Big houses like theirs always had a safe. Look behind the paintings, he shouted. Take down those mirrors. When they’d looked long enough, he walked into the kitchen and ripped the tape off Jin’s mouth. Where is it? he screamed. Where is it? The more Jin claimed not to have one, the angrier Dell became. That’s when Mae thought something about him didn’t look right. It wasn’t that he was drunk. It was that being drunk wasn’t enough. By the time Nat joined them, Mae was rocking back and forth in her chair, trying to get one of them to pull the tape from her mouth, which he did. Little lady, he said—that’s what Nat kept calling her—Little lady, you’ve got one chance to tell us where that safe is, or your husband here loses an eye.
She told them there wasn’t a safe, but they had jewelry, silverware, and some gold coins in the house. There were furs and computers too. Dell said he didn’t want their stuff—pawnshops were too risky—he wanted cash. Jin suggested taking them to an ATM. They could get all the cash they needed. Dell seemed to like this idea; Nat, less so. He looked at the gun, tossing it from one palm to the other as if he was thinking, and then smash. He hit Jin in the face with it, right above the eye. He seemed to know exactly where to hit to draw the most blood. Then he turned the gun over to Dell, told him to use it if he had any trouble.
Jin didn’t want to be split up. He didn’t want to leave Mae in the house with that man. Gun or no gun, Nat seemed like the more dangerous of the two, but he had no choice. He drove Dell to an ATM downtown, the one on the corner next to the clock tower. It was almost midnight when they arrived, and the streets were empty. He tried to take out a thousand dollars, but the machine wouldn’t let him. Then he tried five hundred, and the machine spit out a stack of twenties. Dell told him to do it again, get another five hundred, but the message said he’d reached his daily withdrawal limit. They drove to another ATM down the block, next to the dry cleaners, but got the same message. Five-fucking-hundred? Dell kept shouting. That’s all I get? Five-fucking-hundred?
Jin assumed they’d go back to the house after this, but Dell made him drive two towns over, to Westbury. He seemed to know the streets well, telling him to turn here, turn there, until they came to a corner next to some old row houses. A skinny teenager with a ring through his nose leaned into Dell’s open window and sold him a handful of small envelopes and a marble-sized ball of something white. Then they had an argument about rigs. The kid said he wasn’t in the business of selling rigs, there was a twenty-four-hour pharmacy the next town over, but Dell refused to go there. He said he needed one right away. They kept yelling about it, haggling back and forth over the price. Fifty dollars. Ten dollars. Forty, then twenty. Eventually, they settled on thirty. The kid ran into the first row house and came back a few minutes later with a single syringe in a plastic bag. It’s clean, right? Dell asked. You’re sure it’s clean? But the kid had already taken his money and run off in the dark.
In a parking lot next to an empty dollar store, Dell searched the glove compartment and removed a small flashlight and the leather folder with the paperwork for the car. He tore open one of the envelopes and carefully emptied it onto the folder. The contents looked like little shards of glass, crystalline and white. Jin had never seen anyone do drugs before; he tried not to stare as Dell crushed the shards with the end of the flashlight, turning them into a fine powder. He wondered if Dell was going to inject himself with the needle he’d bought, but he snorted the powder up his nose instead, using one of the rolled-up twenties like a straw. Afterwards, Dell became animated, almost cheerful. He fiddled with the radio all the way back to Marlboro, stopping to comment on the songs he liked and stabbing his finger at the dashboard when he didn’t.