Narrative: Tandy B Who: Tandy B What: Making money, passing time. Warnings: Vague references to stuff. PG-13.
The notebook had been a Bible, essentially. In the informal context because ftr, Tandy was not super into church in any and all forms. 'a book regarded as authoritative in a particular sphere' and the notebook was. It was also analog, because the other version of him was super into being off grid. Tandy got it. He was even grateful in a weirdly specific way. No social media presence to curate and carefully shut down, no online footprint to trip him up and catch him off-guard. No phone contract inconveniently tying him to an $80 plan per month with no foreseeable line of credit. No bank account, which meant cash and whatever paranoia drove Tandy in this universe it was emblematic in the secreting of packets, brown paper envelopes carefully folded up and tucked places out of view.
But the Bible explained a lot of this stuff. Instead of parables and allegories, it got to the point. Which Tandy appreciated because as loquacious as he was, survival was a pretty binary concept and he wasn't in the mood to waste a lot of time on figuring it out. She had a routine. Which seemed to obviate the point of going off grid but w/e there was a routine. It felt weird learning about a person from reading what equated to their diary. Like learning what clothes someone picked out by starting with their underwear. It was Tandy but it wasn't and the guy had trouble with invasion of privacy as a general concept.
Here was what Tandy learned from reading other-Tandy's words: she loved her mom. Which would most likely to a rational mind to be extinct. Love was engendered by people who made you feel safe and Tandy's mom was, in both universes, categorically the definition of 'unsafe'. He didn't need to check the account at the liquor store one town over to know that the account would be there and also, her line of credit with the local dealer would be equally maxed out. But Tandy checked on her mom routinely and with a sense of obligation-guilt-self-disgust that filtered out in prosaic marking off time and routine. Which was pretty universal. The capacity to love someone that didn't or couldn't love you. He kind of missed his mom? In a weird, young way he couldn't quantify or qualify, it was a feeling that sat behind his ribs and soaked up nuance, in a regular beat of 'I miss my mom'. Which was without credence because Tandy hadn't relied on his mom for much in the way of sustenance (emotional & physical) in years but the sensation of nostalgia was linked to a time when she was more than her demons.
He got that. He got that the girl who he'd replaced's mom was not his mom. But when he looked from the same spot Tandy had marked off in her notebook, at the windows of the double-wide, stood outside with his arms wrapped around his midsection to preserve bodyheat and observed what had to be this-world's dealer dropping by, his teeth clacked and his skin crawled and she looked exactly like his mom, sunk by the same anchors of loss, absence and denial.
And the same motivators applied. He didn't want Tandy's mom to lose her home. He didn't want Tandy's mom to bottom out with the local dealer and he didn't want Tandy's mom to die from her own puke. Which meant somehow finding a way to sustain her existence without alerting her to the non-existent presence of her daughter. So it was important that Tandy had outlined the specifics of how to break into the trailer when her mom was passed out. Where she stashed the money she expected her mom to find. And where she stashed the cash her mom did not.
So. Cash-flow. Tandy figured he could pick up her routine, or his routine. Hers was a list of names and phone numbers, crossed through carefully and replaced. His relied on being the other side of a computer, with voice-altering software and an electronic method of transferring money and he had his phone and that was it so his own set-up was uncomfortable and absent established paid-for networks on Facebook and Insta to support the illusion. It was the same but it was different and he discovered this on introduction, when he dialed the latest of the penciled phone numbers and held his breath to get through the call. He introduced himself as her cousin, 'Andy' and once he was past suspicion, it became just another routine.
Tandy was cool with the concept of being attractive. He was tall. He was blond. He didn't work out but he didn't look like a basement-dweller and it was a sanguine that the scam resided on that kind of made it work. The truth of the matter was it was way easier to break into someone's home if they opened the door and let you in. It was way more efficient to lift as much as conceivably possible with a crew than it was to run a solo game. And Tandy - other Tandy - had left a spot wide-open. Bait.
Granted, he was bait conducive to certain marks. Men, older. A little predatory. A little sloppy. Women, as above. He didn't work a red lip and a slutty top which appeared to be the working criteria of his other-self, but sitting in a club and waiting to be approached was much the same way. The rule was, 'let them come to you'. It was in pencil, double underlined. Blue light washed him and turned all the drinks wine-dark in glasses and the person who approached was much the same. The bait didn't have to go all the way. That was an important point of distinction. Tandy wouldn't. He would have balked at bait if bait was equivalent to all the way. There were a variety of kisses: curaco-flavored, bitter-orange and incredulity on an edge of cigarette smoke, expert and sharp with gin, or enthusiastic, sticky with rum and coke.
He kissed. He didn't fuck, but he fooled around. He waited until the added chemical dropped the mark, in that weird, fogged state of being half-hard from the mechanics of getting palmed through his jeans and his automatic body response - and simultaneously aware that this was in fact, a thing of mechanics. Of facts and calculation and of getting them mellow (or hard, tbh) before watching them fade out into chemical sleep. Sometimes he took seconds to snap out of it. Sometimes minutes. And then he helped out with cleaning them out.
It was Tandy's routine, the one in the notebook. But the thing Tandy - this Tandy, him, got. Was that they were replaceable. Not interchangeable exactly, but remarkably easy to swap lives and not be all that noticeable a difference a life. It was cash-flow and it was practical support. It would pay for a deposit on a place, and for art-supplies, for wifi and wheels, if he could stash enough away. And it would pay to keep the metaphorical wolves away from his metaphorical / hypothetical mom's door.
He filled out the notebook most nights. It transited from Bible to record, but Tandy thought perhaps that was the point. Transubstantiation, the changeability of a constant that couldn't remain in permanent stasis.