I had nothing in my pockets or on my feet. I was penniless and didn’t know the time. I walked the streets until morning, sleeping on a park bench as the sun rises. I was woken up a few hours later by a cop, asking my name, identification. I muttered, acting mentally ill, shuffling away.
Everywhere I looked there were cops. Undercover ICE agents,
police officers armed with assault rifles, armoured ATVs parked by the roadside
with a soldier sticking out the top behind a machine gun. Security drones
hovered overhead, broadcasting feeds to AI with facial recognition systems
overseen by antiterrorist analysts beneath The Pentagon. Somebody shines a laser in my face and everything flashes absolutely green for a moment.
The streets were going to be hard for a bum like me. I walk up an alley, and find a single shoe. It was too big for me, but I took it anyway. I needed money, a phone, transport. At the moment I only had a left shoe. But I was keen to play the game. This wasn't the first time I had operated in an urban area in this capacity. When viewed at with a different angle, the city seemed bountiful, there was everything you could ever want and all you needed to do was take it. I walked past a shoe shop, stealing a single shoe. I was using my entrepreneur survival skills already. Next thing, money.
I stood across the road from a bank, smoking half a cigarette someone had left for me on the floor. Money. If I had money, I had options. Even a single dollar would multiply my current funds infinitely. Sure, you could spend time finding money on the floor, hunting for discarded coins and lost notes, maybe even some other items. You could ask people for spare money they might have, or even threaten them to give you money. But all of this was chickenshit stuff. I didn't want to grind out side quests for a few dollars here and there. I wanted a fat wad of cash. And the quickest way to get a fat wad of cash was by doing tricks. I entered the bar behind me, flicking the cigarette end at the bartender.
"Do you fuck with street magic?"
"Sure!"
"Okay, do you have a hundred-dollar bill?"
"Let me just check the cash register." Says the old timey barkeep. He has a little red waistcoat on. I look around. There's nobody else here except three men sitting nearby. They're cops, of course. I wave at them and one starts fingering the trigger of his gun, its actually slightly sensual, but I look away and back at the hundred-dollar bill.
"Okay, watch closely." I say, taking it off him. I hold the bill aloft, pull it tight twice and show the pigs sitting nearby. I then fold it up.
"May I have a beer?" The barkeep obliges, passing me a badly poured pint of Czech lager. I look around the room theatrically, tilt my head back, and place the folded triangle of the hundred-dollar bill on my tongue, before slowly retracting it into my mouth. I then down the beer in a single gulp. The barkeep starts to cheer, but I wave at him. I haven't finished yet. I open my mouth and pull out a folded triangle of paper. Except it is totally blank.
"The beer must have washed the ink away!" Shouts one of the cops. They all lean forward, turn between each other and whisper.
"Can you do it again?" They ask.
"Of course. But please, I must first use the
bathroom."
Whilst in the bathroom I vomit the beer and the hundred-dollar bill back up, plucking it out of the brown liquid and squeezing it slightly. I carefully fold the bill, place it in my pocket, then from my other pocket pull out a blank piece of paper the same dimensions as a bill. I fold it up, place it in the roof of my mouth and go back to the bar.
After twenty minutes I've made a thousand dollars. This was one of the best tricks you could pull, the art of illusion. By using some rudimentary street magic, I had cleared out most of the till and everybody's wallets, big bills only. With my pockets stuffed with cash, I follow signs, end up at a bus station. These are long distance buses, the people here are sleeping, on their phones, waiting. I join them. I do not sleep.
I do not sleep. I look. I look at everything that surrounds me and think it is beautiful and perfect and the moment I am in seems to shine. I feel my own place amongst this paradise and understand that I matter and are also perfect and beautiful and for a moment everything seems as if it is in a painting in a gilded frame on the wall of a gallery.
The bus comes. I get on, sit by a window, I keep looking out from the window. I feel a person sit next to me but never know what they look like as I never turn away from the window as we all travel South on the 95, past Quantico and the Potomac River, through Richmond and Petersburg, toward North Carolina.
I get off at Roanoke Rapids, check myself in at a Holiday Inn. I lie on my bed, the air conditioning providing white noise against the traffic. I can’t get to sleep. I go out and the night is warm, big fat insects fly around a security light. I walk through an empty car lot, past a gas station, fast food places that are closed. There didn’t seem to be anything here. The road had taken over the town, swallowing it up into empty stretches of asphalt, traffic lights hung from wires that bounced in the wind, sequencing red, yellow, green, yellow. I was eager to spend money, but there was nowhere to spend it. I’m back at the motel room, writing my notes on stationery I had stole from the White House. I fall asleep whilst watching QVC, waking up hours later with the volume somehow turned to the maximum. Somebody bangs on the wall between our rooms. I go outside and look through the window and there is nobody there.
