Grilling burgers and flipping through old scrapbooks on my deck isn’t much of an evening, but when I mention the car, Leonard starts getting the fireflies confused with shooting stars and his mood changes quicker than a stoplight. Through the kitchen window I can see him pacing the deck like he is still in a cell in Jackson, only tonight he is wearing pressed jeans and a fresh white shirt rolled up to the elbows. He is thinking about the car and stealing again, and I know that adrenaline is confusing his logic as he weighs the pros and cons of what might be. I am tempted to go out and interrupt him, but the moon is still rising. There is time to talk about us, and the car, and an old relationship.

“The burgers are going to burn,” I shout and he walks over to the Weber, licks his finger and touches the choice sirloin, pressing gently until the red juices sizzle and smoke on the coals.

“A few more minutes,” he says.

“I’ll bring out the potato salad,” I say.

Earlier we met on my front porch with hugs and a brief kiss. A long time he said, and I closed my eyes as his thin, manicured hands, not a speck of grease under his fingernails, surrounded my shoulders. “There’s more of me to hug these days,” I said turning away.

I walk through the sliding door onto the deck with the chips and potato salad and he points his long neck beer towards me, pursing his lips and tilting his head, ready perhaps to deliver his conclusions on stealing and temptation.

“You know, Darlene, everything is tougher these days. Cars are all alarmed and tricked up. When I was a teenager I could steal one with a coat hanger and screwdriver, take it for a ride, have a little fun and no one would hardly know the difference.”

“You were just joyriding,” I say.

“Nowadays,” he says. “some cars don’t even need a key. You just push a button. Our old lost key routine is as ancient as a waiter in a tuxedo.”

“But now you’re older and wiser,” I say.

“A bit heavier and grayer.” He runs his hand through his brushed back silver hair and tilts up his beer for another drink.

“The price of a little maturity.” I give him a squeeze and then set two places on the picnic table wondering if he has been thinking about me and stealing the car or just stealing the car. I want him to be thinking about me and the car, together.

Ten years ago Leonard and I were a team. We played the lost key routine at the theme parks, Cedar Point, Six Flags, Busch Gardens, and once at Disney World in Orlando we stole three cars in a week. He’d read the vehicle I.D. through the windshield and then I’d get a key made at a local dealership.

"Our vacation will be ruined. (sob) We have to leave tomorrow. (more sobbing) We came all this way from Michigan." Leonard said I was the perfect, desperate tourist with my brown doe eyes and mournful smile and we worked the routine for about two years. When I told him I was through acting and wanted a relationship, he said he thought we had one. Traveling, stealing, and sleeping together like perpetual honeymooners isn’t a relationship I said. I was ready for a future. Next week, next month was his future, he said. I wanted next year and the year after that and he gave me a funny look and our run was over. I went back to cutting hair and giving facials in the suburbs and he went back to fixing cars, bouncing around the Detroit auto shops, stealing more cars and eventually forgetting to control his temper.

I dish out the potato salad and he comes up behind me, puts his hands on the waist I work hard to maintain, and leans over and kisses my neck. “You smell like lavender,” he says. “It’s just soap,” I say, then he puts his lips next to my ear and I shiver.

“What do you want from me?” he whispers.

“It’s up to you.” I say, slipping away.

“I really don’t want to go back to Jackson. Two years was enough.”

“You don’t have too. If you’re careful and mind your temper.”

“It’s under control.”

We sit on opposite sides of the picnic table and Leonard carefully stacks the lettuce, tomato and a slice of red onion on his burger. He puts both elbows on the table, his burger in two hands. We talk occasionally, but it’s been a year since we have seen each other and I need to see the truth. Has he been saving any money? Not much. Is he off probation? Yes. Does he have anything else going? No. Is there anyone else? No. He takes a drink of beer and I follow his eyes and tell him that maybe he needs to be putting a few dollars in the bank or someday he might be sleeping in the room over my garage.

“Would that be so bad?” he says.

“Not until I raise the rent.”

Our years of stealing together didn’t feel criminal. It was a game, the planning, the acting, the laughing and loving back at the motels. We were forty, a new decade ahead, a way to forget our ex’s and busted relationships and to start over. No one got hurt and the insurance paid everyone. When I told Leonard I wanted a change it seemed like the natural progression. Things didn’t have to change between us if we stopped stealing I said. It was for the better, for us, but I found out that he had a hard time with change.

In recent years, his relationships have been what he calls side dishes and desserts, no one like me he says, and I remind him that there is no one like me. We were good together I tell him and I’m not thinking about our desperate tourist act.

He gets up and pulls another beer out of the cooler. He twists off the top and rolls his head from side to side. A long drink, a stare at a circling red-tailed hawk and the red brick farm house in the distance. He sits down and pushes his plate aside. “Okay, I take it you’ve found a car?”

“It’s a Lincoln Navigator. Tuxedo paint, power running boards, alloy wheels, chrome upon chrome, the works.”

“That’s seventy-five grand.”

“It’s in the same place every other day. It begs.”

“It begs?”

“It says, ‘Take me.’”

“Darlene, it’s probably wired like a bank vault.”

“You just have to be careful.”

“And I’m not careful?”

Leonard reaches into the cooler for some ice, pours me another Jack Daniel’s and again gets up and starts pacing.

“You’re making me nervous,” I say.

“Thinking of Jackson makes me nervous.”

“Relax,” I say. And then I tell him the setup.

I’m a licensed cosmetologist with a chair in the Clip and Curl in a strip mall about ten miles down the highway. From my position next to the window, I look right out into the parking lot. We’re next to Lucky’s Chinese Buffet and on the corner is the Qwik Stop and every other day about 5 p.m. this Navigator parks in front of our shop, not more than thirty feet from me. A short blonde with an attitude, maybe forty, gets out, flips her gum in the gutter and goes into the Qwik Stop to buy a pack of cigarettes. Five minutes later she’s out, lights up, blows a puff of smoke, steps up on the chrome running board and into the car and peels out of the lot.

“How do you know she’s got an attitude?” Leonard says.

“You’re missing the point.”

“How do you know she’s got an attitude?” he says, again.

“I can tell.”

Leonard leans back on the deck railing, arms folded across his chest.

“She came into the shop,” I say. “A broken nail, a complete crisis you wouldn’t believe. Her boots $300. Her purse a $150 knockoff. Her necklace real gold but ghetto looking.”

“If she’s got attitude, there’s a pistol in her knockoff.”

“You don’t have to break into her car. She likes making a statement.”

“Making a statement?”

I pick up my Jack Daniel’s, swish the ice cubes around and look Leonard firmly in eyes. “She leaves the motor running.”

“Leaves the motor running.” Leonard shakes his head in judgment.

“Maybe for the air conditioning,” I say and my face flushes from the Jack Daniel’s.

“How do you know she doesn’t lock it… and leave the motor running?”

“She doesn’t. When she comes out of the Qwik Stop she’s lighting up. She never pulls out her keys and if I’m wrong, but I’m not, you just walk away.”

A little after five o’clock she arrives and parks the Navigator outside the shop. Leonard is around the corner, out of sight of the security cameras. I text that she just went into the Qwik Stop. With his back to the cameras he walks up to the car, opens the door, and as he gets in I can almost feel the chill blast of the air conditioning. In fifteen seconds he disappears into rush hour traffic.

When the blonde comes back she stops, lights her cigarette, slips her lighter in her purse and then stares. Spinning around once, twice, she catches me looking at her through the window and then she’s into Lucky’s and out and into our shop screaming, “Call 911, call 911!” Our manager takes her outside to wait for the cops.

Flashing lights and squealing tires, such a drama. A young cop comes into the shop and wants to know if I’ve seen anything. “Hard to miss,” I say. “She’s here almost every day. Leaves the motor running.” He makes a note and leaves.

She lights another cigarette as the cop points to where the car was and then out at the main road. She throws her hands up pointing at the security camera and finally one of the cops helps her into their car. As soon as they run my name through their computer and see fraud and bad checks, they’ll be back. They will ask if I have a boyfriend and I will say, “No, I’m too old for love.”

I watch the six o’clock news waiting for Leonard’s call. Then it’s Vanna White turning the letters, paparazzi’s chasing Kardashians and two hours of American Idol. The news comes on again. I know he has to check the car for GPS signals and search the seats for a dropped cell phone, but that shouldn’t take hours. If the car is clean, it’s only a fifty mile drive down to Temperance near the Ohio line. He is to put it in storage and call me. I’ll pick him up and then we’ll celebrate with a drink and maybe a little dessert. Letterman is doing his monologue when he calls.

“I was in an accident.”

“An accident? Are you alright?”

“A few bruises.”

“Where’s the car?”

“A guy in a little Japanese car cut me off.”

“Cut you off?” I didn’t need to hear anymore. Road rage had encountered road rage.

“Right in front of me before a light.”

I could guess. Leonard shoves his arm out the window and flips the guy off, forgetting that he is driving a stolen, chrome billboard. When the guy slams on his brakes, Leonard doesn’t swerve, he doesn’t brake; he just hits the guy as if he stuck out his chin and said, “Go ahead, I dare you.”

“And the Navigator?”

“I ran away. The hood popped, the air bag went off and hit me like a heavyweight. I barely made it out of there.”

It’s late September and I’m still at my position in the Clip and Curl, and Leonard is changing oil at one of those drive-thru places with the checkered flags. We didn’t see each other over the rest of the summer, just texts, and I sense he is embarrassed about losing his temper and blowing the deal.

He texts, “You were clear. The keys were in the car. It was just a joyride.”

“With your record?” I say.

“It was my risk,” he says.

“I took a risk,” I text. “On us.”

Now it’s too cold to barbecue, I’m making a pot roast and waiting for his headlights to come up the driveway. Will he have grease under his fingernails or will he have skipped happy hour for a shower and a clean shirt? When I texted him about the truck, he didn’t hesitate. Let’s get together tonight, he said.

It’s a metallic blue Ford F150 SuperCrewCab with Black Rhino wheels and I’m sure it’s a back-to-school present. Every afternoon a teenage boy wearing a football jersey parks in front of the shop and goes into the Qwik Stop to buy the biggest drink they sell. He’s got attitude and he leaves the motor running.