1
It was a heist within a heist. The Robber looked to steal her precious jewel, but instead she stole his heart with her black gaze when she opened her eyes to see him clasping the necklace at her throat. With a snap the nightlight came on behind, a dim luminescence that cast his shadow across her face in some shade of indigo, and the color of her eyes became unknowable. Blue-black of night obscured her eyes in that moment, gazing at the thief in her room at such close quarters with his hands on that snapped necklace, the bulging diamond.
2
A heist within a heist. The Robber had planned his moves to perfection, set down meticulous timetables, and even laid out a scale model of the scene of the crime constructed in cardboard and balsa wood. At the tiny home’s heart, a doll was her – the target, his goal. He used a white baton as pointer to point out the points of ingress and egress, the avenues of advance and the key shade-covered zones along the passageways. Passageways. He even repeated the word passageways again because he loved how it sounded. He was giving this detailed pre-briefing to himself alone.
3
A heist enclosing a heist. He dressed carefully to pull off the job. He’d decided on skintight black elasticated one-piece, black climbing shoes with separate toes for a simian agility, and fine black satin-lycra gloves with special fingertip pads for extra sensitivity. He donned all these garments with great care in order to pull off this high-stakes job. He flexed himself and found movements perfectly supple in skintight elasticated lycra smooth with extra padding at the crotch, and then he tugged on the skimask in fine black satiny fabric that he’d chosen to conceal himself with, but would soon discard.
4
A heist and a heist. Robbie clambered up thick waterpipes snaking over the outer wall to reach the balcony, climbing hand over hand like a deft chimp. The girth of the drainage tube was a reassurance of times past, when houses were built solidly and fittings would not sag under pressure but stay fixed in place. He was not a cat burglar or a gymnast but a man with a determination to reach that little doll in the innermost sanctum of the place. This gave him strength to haul himself over the balustrade where he panted long with joyful exhaustion.
5
A heist outside, a heist inside. Penetration is not an act to be taken lightly. One doesn’t simply smash the glass pane only to grab the handle and rough-haul the window open, pushing in like a lumpen lout of intrusive matter. There should be a finesse to it, a caressing of the home’s skin, a yielding of its perimeter to persuasion and mastery. Robbie took the diamond cutter from where it dangled at his toolbelt. He traced a perfect circle once, twice, three times. He took the sucker and kissed it to the circle of glass. Puck! – it slid out.
6
It was a heist with another heist at its heart. Tippy-toe, tippy-toe, ballet-footed, delicate as a mantis, the Robber stepped into his victim’s boudoir. He centimetered along the wall till his eyes caught sight of this doll made flesh. Gabrielle slept in a light nightdress feathered with plumage of ostriches and birds-of-paradise, the silken mass of her on top of the bedding stretched out in the night’s humidity. No sound was to be heard. At this precise moment, 3.53 am, the moon rose over the neighboring houses and shone in through the broken circle in the windowpane. Exactly as planned.
7
It was a complex heist with heist enfolded. Thus far, all had been rehearsed. The moves, the panting, moonrise, the tiptoeing caution – all set out in the Robber’s masterplan, outlined with great precision and with no allowance for contingencies. This exact execution of the detailed scheme made Robbie tumescent with excitement, and he had to pause a while for the erection within his elasticated lycra leggings to subside again. This threw off his microengineered plan’s detailed timings. Perhaps in retrospect he’d overthought the whole business and neglected the basic drive of that simple instinct, that animal will to control things.
8
A heist, a heist. The jewelled prize was in reach, gently rising and falling on Gabrielle’s breast beside all the feathers and silk, then seen in the shaft of moonlight that entered through the cut circle of glass. Flustered by unsynchronized improvisation which followed his post-erection moment, Robbie now had a perfect absence of mind. He forgot he was a robber, forgot he was here to steal the necklace, forgot everything, forgot himself. He watched the steady rise and fall of the diamond in the sparkle of the moon and the luster of soft pulsing skin that cushioned its hardness.
9
Heist within heist for all time. Now the universe itself seemed to enwrap its many dimensions so they would all fit snug into the jewel worn on that bosom. And the same moment all of time past and time future burst from its gleaming and flourished all the myriad possible destinies through the room. The Robber stood in a vertigo of collapsing and expanding cosmic pulsations that choked his breathing and caused him to scent the disappearing aroma of the first and last rose petals ever to be cast upon the waves of time. His mind grew large and endarkened.
10
It is the heist within the heist. Aeons pass like heartbeats, or the other way round. The nightbulb flickers on with footfall pressure of simian toes on the soft cream wool carpeting. His hand grasps the necklace and snaps it. Blue-black gaze in indigo shadow, obscuring intent. The hand rests there on feathers of bird-of-paradise and his soul gurgles into her dark regard with a splash. His strong clasp on the jewel – long-desired object on the neck of a doll at the center of his small schemed world – now loosens.
And he is stolen by what she sees in him.
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Don’t be like a thief in the night - drop your loot into the tip cup, guv !
Is it hot in here? Damn. This was evocative AF on so many levels.
Sleek, stylish, sexy