He drew a deep breath, then continued his rant while Doug sat in the passenger seat staring at him. “They expect us to eat that shit up. They expect us to say, ‘Wow, money doesn’t buy happiness. Boy, I’m sure glad I don’t have any money. Otherwise, I’d just overdose on all the drugs I could buy. Yessiree, it’s much better if the rich people keep all the money, ’cause if I had any of it I’d just spend all day jamming heroin into my arm.’”

“Wow, dude,” Doug said, taken aback by Mitch’s sudden ferocity.

“Money buys happiness for everyone else. You fucking bet it does. It gives you mental peace, man. You know why? Because if you got money, you stop worrying. And not worrying all the time is happy enough for me.”

“You worry?” Doug asked. He sounded innocent, like a little boy, and Mitch felt a twinge of regret that he had cut short their celebration of the successful drug deal with an outburst of bitterness. But he hated seeing his friend act… brainwashed.

“Of course,” Mitch said. “Don’t you?”

“No,” Doug said softly. “I just figure everything will work out in the end.”

Mitch gritted his teeth. “I worry all the fucking time,” he said. “I worry about bills, about the rent, about not being able to ever afford anything. I can’t go anywhere or do anything. Shit, even any of that stuff you see people doing during the commercials in football games: mountain-biking, traveling, going to the beach, concerts, vacations. It’s like there’s this great big fucking world out there full of all this great shit, and man, we’re never gonna be a part of it. We can’t even have a little taste, you know? So, yes, I worry.”

They pulled onto the interstate, and as Mitch brought the car up to highway speed, he wondered if Doug’s silence was disagreement or contemplation.

“It’s like we’re all in this big beehive, man,” he continued, “and we’re just these worker bees. And all we’re ever gonna do is bring honey to the queen.”

“Hmm,” said Doug, which didn’t really clear up for Mitch whether Doug agreed with him or not. He didn’t feel he had made his point well. Honey for the queen. That was pretty damned poetic and Doug didn’t appreciate it. He knew Doug wasn’t as angry as he was but Mitch felt he ought to be. He’d just been laid off, for chrissake. It was like the dude never got mad

In reality, Mitch knew that the reason he wanted Doug along for the armored car robbery was because it was going to be a part of his life, and he knew that if something important to him was not also a part of Doug’s life, they would start drifting apart. Lately, Mitch had been getting an increasing sense of their eventual separation’s inevitability.

There was a long stretch of silence as they focused on the road, the lights of the city fading behind them, and Mitch tried to think of the perfect sales pitch to get Doug to commit. He knew he was terrible at sales. The truth always burst out of him at inconvenient moments. It was one of the reasons his attempt at working in the corporate world at Accu-mart had ended so badly, and he had the sense to know that any further forays into corporate life would end the same way.

They crested a hill and Pittsburgh became just a muted glow in the rearview mirror. The gentle thumping of the concrete road cast a hypnotic spell in the car, like white noise. Mitch’s voice was softer when he spoke again. He had decided on the positive approach.

“I’m looking forward to robbing this damned armored car,” he said. “I’m actually looking forward to it, like we’re going on vacation or something. You know why?”

“Why?”

“’Cause ever since I was in school, everyone has been trying to teach me a lesson, you know? Accu-mart, the army-always someone telling me to sit up straight, quit smoking pot, do this, do that. Stop getting in trouble for stupid shit.”

Doug nodded.

“Well, I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not going to spend any more time getting in trouble for stupid shit. No more. You understand? No fucking more. I don’t want to be the guy who is always getting in trouble for stupid shit. Next time I get in trouble, it’ll be for something serious.”

“Hmm,” said Doug.

“THIS IS IT. This is the place,” said Kevin, pulling into a driveway that was little more than frozen mud. At the far end of the driveway, by a garage that looked like it was a day from total collapse, was the car they had come to buy, a 1980 Chevy Impala which had been listed in the paper for $300.

They had been excited after reading about the Impala, because in a big old car like that, there was plenty of room to work on the engine. Kevin was always ranting about how cars nowadays crammed everything in so tight, all the computerized gizmos and gadgets, so that you practically had to remove the engine block to check the oil. But not on these old babies. You could crawl under the hood and sleep in there after your wife threw you out, he said, a comment which made Mitch and Doug look at each other in concern.

“I just meant there’s a lot of room in there,” he explained, noticing their reaction.

The plan was to check the car out, maybe do some work on it, and get it running-all without registering it. The Impala, with its eight-cylinder engine and bulletproof appearance, was the perfect getaway car. They would slap the Nevada plate on, drive it to the bank, then drive with the money to a preselected spot in the woods where they had parked Kevin’s truck. Then they would push the car into the ravine (the preselected spot required a ravine) and speed off, rich men.

It was important, therefore, to give the guy who sold them the Impala fake names, in case the cops ever found it in the ravine and traced it back to the last registered owner. They had practiced their fake names so there would be no slipups. Doug had even suggested wearing fake mustaches and wigs, but after consideration, that suggestion had been discarded because none of them knew enough about applying a fake mustache to be able to guarantee that it would work. The possibility of a mustache falling off while they were talking to the guy who was selling them the car was too great. Anyway, the town where they were buying the Impala was fifteen miles from Wilton and over twenty from Westlake, where the robbery was going to occur, so they figured they’d just take their chances.

Before going to look at the car, they had also reiterated the final part of the plan, the aftermath: Absolutely, positively, no spending any of the money for at least six months. The money was to be buried in three packages, one for each of them, in the exact same spot where they had parked the Ferrari on their most humiliating night of crime, a location chosen because it was neutral ground that they all knew well and also because burying money there would be a symbol of their new status as successful criminals, as opposed to bungling ones. It would be like giving the finger to the LoJack company and their fine product.

“Dude, this car stinks,” said Doug, who was sitting in the backseat. Kevin had driven Linda’s car because all three of them had decided to go and look at the Impala, and Mitch and Doug were sick of being crammed in the pickup. Linda’s car had a backseat, and to Doug, it smelled like something really bad had happened in it quite recently. “Do you think Ellie, like, had an accident back here?”

“She’s nearly eight, douchebag,” Kevin snapped. “She doesn’t have accidents anymore.”

“It reeks back here,” said Doug.

“Whatever.”

“Remember our names,” said Mitch, becoming the embattled paratroop commander again. They were bitching about smells while he was trying to get into character as “Rick.” Rick, his Chevy Impala-buying alter ego, was a devoted employee of a major discount retailer, and Mitch was eager to try out this new fake personality on the man who was selling the car. He was disappointed that neither Doug nor Kevin had bothered to fabricate any details to go with their fake names, and he wasn’t even sure if Doug remembered his. They didn’t seem to think the fake identities were important, but screwing up something like that would be as bad as a fake mustache falling off while you were shaking hands. They were acting like amateurs.