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There’s a saying about bad habits. Or maybe it’s just habits. Habits die hard. Bad habits die doubly hard, I guess. 

Although maybe I shouldn’t be considering it a habit—it is what I did for a living. And is it really bad now? I don’t think so. 

I stole a painting. That’s what I’m trying to say. Just the one. Because I could. Because I wanted to. 

“Santa Fe Mountains in October” by some Pearson guy. I’ve already forgotten his first name. Maybe I should’ve taken the placard too. 

It was the New Mexico Museum of Art - nice place. Harry’s favorite, as it happens. I don’t know how she would’ve gone through the museum, what she would’ve paid attention to. We’d probably still be inside, to be honest. I have no doubt that she could spend hours and hours and hours inside an art museum. 

Isn’t that funny? That Harry and I have never been to a museum together? I mean, not to actually go to the museum. We’ve been in plenty museums and galleries before, after hours, illegally, taking stuff. And she’d make a comment here or there about a piece of art—not even the stuff we were taking, though that she’d always give a lecture on on the way there or after the job. Why it was important, how much it could really be worth, why it had to be transported the way it did. But she never tried to fence anything herself. I don’t know why. She could’ve moved to that part of the whole process and made just as much money—maybe more—and would never had to have left her home. She could’ve been like Francis, living amongst her own art, working with Pete and me to get what we stole to wherever it would fetch the highest price. 

But she didn’t. She wanted in on the action. She wanted to take the art, wanted to be there as we broke in, wanted to run down the clock as she carefully stored each work of art for transport while the rest of us stood lookout, terrified that we were always seconds away from being caught. 

I think she liked the risk too, is what I’m saying. I think she liked it just as much as me, or she would’ve made a living doing a million other things. 

I don’t know what happened to take her from the woman I knew, the woman who’s eyes would light up any time we were taking on a job that had new complications we had to solve to the woman who refused to venture into a world with no one in it.

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