Bound to the Tracks of the Train (part 2/5) | Community | Jeff/Britta
Bound to the Tracks of the Train
Jeff/Britta
~26,400 words total
Jeff struggles with life post-grad. Britta feels suffocated by Greendale. Just because they're good-looking doesn't make them villains. Until it does.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V
“Are you ready yet?” Jeff calls from the living room.
“Almost,” Britta lies. She stands in her bedroom in front of the full-length mirror in her underwear, dress in hand. Her hair lays curled on her shoulders and she’s wearing more makeup than she ever has in quite a long time. But somehow it feels right; it’s a mask but she’s not hiding behind it.
There’s a grocery bag on the kitchen table next to her clutch purse. Inside of it are three bottles of vodka and five hundred slips of paper with a single name written on them. In Britta’s purse are a wrench and two pocket knives. The purse is black, it matches the dress in her hands.
She takes a deep breath and steps into the dress. It’s tight and low and it’s the kind of dress women in movies wear when they’re about to kill a man. Britta feels powerful.
“Come zip me up!” she calls.
The mirror faces the door and she watches as he rounds into the room, grumbling about taking forever. But he stops in the doorway and Britta can’t fight the smirk on her face. “Well?” she prompts, gathering her hair to one side.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Britta,” he says lowly. “You can’t wear this.”
“Says who?”
“Says the janitor because he’s not going to want to spend his night wiping up the drool of every guy at Greendale. And I don’t want to have to watch them watching you.”
“Fuck you.”
He lays a hand on her hip and begins to tug the zipper up with the other. His fingers ghost along the skin of her back and her arms break out into goosebumps. “I certainly hope you will.” He brushes his lips against the base of her spine and she lets her hair back down.
“I have to put my shoes on,” she says as his mouth begins to work over her neck. “We have to go.”
He pulls away. “Sure, now you want to leave,” he mutters.
Britta’s nervous in the car on the way to Greendale, but she tries her hardest not to show it. She crosses her legs and holds onto her purse so she doesn’t fidget. She and Jeff don’t say anything. It’s been a while since she’s been in the front seat of his car; they so rarely leave the apartment.
There’s a banner hanging on the outside of the cafeteria: Transfer Dance 2013! Britta has an awful flashback to when the banner read 2010, to the dress she wore and later burned and the gentle pats on her arm from Shirley and Abed and Troy.
“You okay?” Jeff asks as he parks the car.
“Fine,” she lies.
“Okay.” He reaches over and squeezes her hand before getting out of the car.
They start at the back and make their way up the parking lot: Britta opens her purse and takes out the knives, hands one to Jeff and keeps one for herself. She takes off her heels and leaves them on the hood of the Lexus.
Jeff does the driver sides and Britta does the passenger sides. They work quietly and in unison, the sound of the tires deflating echoing as it mixes with the muffled music and laughter from the closed windows of the cafeteria.
Annie’s car is parked next to Shirley’s van and Britta hesitates. “We have to skip them.”
“I know,” Jeff says. “But then they’ll figure out it’s one of us.”
“So we skip the whole row,” Britta suggests. “It’s only a handful, and I can’t slash their tires.”
Jeff nods and they move to the next row and continue. Every once in a while the cafeteria door opens and someone will come outside to talk on the phone or smoke a cigarette. But no one tries to leave early, which had been a concern while planning.
When they make it back to the Lexus, Britta estimates they’ve done at least a hundred cars. She slips her shoes back on and stashes the knives in the glove compartment. “Here, move the car into the row we didn’t do.”
She waits outside while he parks a few spaces down from Annie and although it’s only May, the air is hot and stuffy and humid. It’s perfect weather for tonight, though; Britta couldn’t have planned it better if she tried.
He joins her and they creep around to the side of the building where the door to the boiler room is propped open with a bucket, just like Britta knew it would be. Her methodic surveying of the campus last year as they planned to infiltrate it has left her with a vast knowledge of what happens where and when.
Inside, Britta takes the wrench and a folded piece of paper out of her purse. “Okay, this is what we’re looking for.”
The thing about dating Troy Barnes is that he leaves everything he owns everywhere. It’s as if for each step he takes, three things fall out of his pockets. So after they broke up and Britta found enough of his stuff lying around her apartment to make a Troy Barnes museum, she put it all in a box and meant to bring it to him, but she was wary about the appropriate time window and then it seemed better to just forget about it and not mention the fact that they had ever dated at all.
Which led her to discover his discarded Air Conditioner Repair Manual: the complete guide to the Greendale Community College heating and cooling system. And how to dismantle it.
Jeff takes the paper from her and studies it for a minute. There’s a complicated diagram and Britta hopes Jeff understands it because she’s pretty lost.
He looks up and points to a control panel. “Here?”
Britta shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“You’re the one who used to sleep with the Air Conditioning Messiah or whatever.”
“Yeah, because nothing says foreplay quite like discussing the air conditioner at our school.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised. I can’t imagine Troy didn’t bore the shit out of you in bed.”
“Hey, my sex life with Troy is none of your business.”
“Actually, it is. How does it go? Everyone you’ve slept with I’ve slept with, too?”
“Really? Are you still not over your whole jealousy thing? Troy and I broke up months ago.”
“What jealousy thing? I was never jealous of Troy.”
“Please! It was almost painfully obvious. Like, I was a little embarrassed for you.”
“Shut up!” Jeff smashes the wrench into the control panel. The glass shatters everywhere and the entire system makes a high-pitched hissing noise before shutting down completely.
The silence echoes as they stand frozen for a minute. “Oh-kay,” Britta says quietly. “I guess that works, too.”
Jeff scrubs a hand through his beard. “We should, uh, we should get going.” He places a possessive hand on the small of her back and she rolls her eyes but doesn’t shrug it off.
The boiler room leads to the kitchen, and they creep through and wait at the door to make sure no one’s there. Britta pushes the door open a crack, and the coast is clear, so they sneak in. Four large jugs of punch sit on the counter and she puts the plastic grocery bag down next to them.
“All right, Winger, let’s get pouring.”
They dump some of the punch into the sink and fill the empty spaces with vodka. When the bottles are empty, Britta pushes them to the bottom of the garbage can, rearranging empty chip bags and paper towels to hide them from sight. She washes her hands and when she turns around, Jeff holds out a jug of punch.
“You gotta take a swig.”
“What?” Britta wrinkles her nose. “No way, that stuff is all vodka.”
“Duh doy. You drink straight vodka all the time.”
“Not with fruit punch, though. That’s gross.”
“One swig. I’ll do one, too.”
She eyes him warily and then takes the jug from him and downs a gulp. “Ugh. Okay, your turn.”
His swig is much larger than hers, and she hopes he’s somehow learned to hold his vodka better because the night isn’t even close to being over.
“Okay, next step,” he says, screwing the lid back on the punch jug.
Dean Pelton, for all his twists and turns, is still somewhat predictable, because the Transfer Queen ballot box is sitting on a chair in the corner, as if the kitchen is the staging area for the entire dance. It’s a shoebox covered in construction paper and glitter with a slit in the top. Jeff lifts the lid and scoops out all the paper scraps, shoving them in Britta’s purse. Then he replaces them with the papers from the grocery bag and closes the box.
“Let’s go,” Britta says from her post by the door. They sneak back through the boiler room and outside, where Britta shakes the stolen ballots out of her purse and into the dumpster. Her heart starts racing as they approach the front doors and her steps become smaller and slower because her knees start to weaken. She shouldn’t have let Jeff talk her into what was basically a double shot of vodka.
Jeff must be able to sense it because she reaches for the door handle when he grabs her wrist and pulls her back.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“It’s okay. It’s not going to be like last time. Not at all.”
She exhales and leans into him a little. “I know.”
He twists to press a kiss to her mouth and then holds his arm out. “Ready?”
“Ready.” She hooks her arm through his and they walk inside, where what looks like all of Greendale is gathered, dancing and laughing.
The study group stands around a table in the corner and Annie spots them first. “Oh! Jeff and Britta!” she calls, waving.
Annie throws her arms around Britta when she and Jeff make it to the table. “I can’t believe you guys are here!”
“Yeah, well, we figured we’d stop by,” Jeff says as he hugs Shirley.
Annie lets go of Britta and Britta turns around to find herself face-to-face with Troy. His eyes widen as he sees her dress and she can feel Jeff’s gaze, heavy behind her.
“Hey, Troy,” she says, reaching out to hug him. His arms come around her, dipping a little too low on her waist. Over his shoulder, Abed shoots her a look and she shakes her head slightly.
“You look nice,” Troy chokes out thickly.
“Thank you,” she says as she pulls away. He’s staring at her chest and Jeff is staring at Troy and Abed is staring at Jeff.
“Hi, pumpkin!” Shirley says loudly and pointedly, gathering Britta in her arms. “Come dance with me!”
Britta allows herself to be pulled onto the dance floor, Annie following behind. The three guys stand awkwardly to the side.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?” Annie asks at the same time Shirley says, “Britta, what are you doing?”
“We wanted to surprise you,” Britta says with a shrug. “And I’m not doing anything, Shirley.”
“I saw the way Jeff was looking at Troy,” Shirley says lowly. “Don’t play with those boys’ hearts.”
Britta rolls her eyes. “You’re exaggerating. Besides, me and Jeff aren’t even together. And I don’t even have feelings for Troy anymore.”
The air is starting to feel thick; the room is packed and the windows only open a crack. Britta can see sweat bead on Shirley’s upper lip and along Annie’s hairline. She tosses her hair over one shoulder to give her neck some relief.
“We’re worried about you, Britta,” Shirley says. Her voice is kind, concerned. “Why don’t you come back to school? You can enroll in summer classes and we’ll help you any way you can.”
Annie nods enthusiastically and Britta gives them a sad smile. “I appreciate it, guys, I do but it’s not going to work that way.”
“But why?” Annie asks. She wipes her brow and exhales a little. The temperature climbs.
Britta opens her mouth to respond with the truth: she doesn’t know, she’ll never know, they’ll never know. But she feels someone standing behind her and somehow she knows it’s Jeff.
“Can I cut in?” he asks, all charm and politeness.
The three of them haven’t even been dancing, just sort of parked on the dance floor, but Shirley gives him a resigned nod and leads Annie back to Troy and Abed.
“Starting to get pretty warm in here,” he says with a smirk.
“How long before Dean Pelton sends Troy to go check it out?”
“Ten, twenty minutes.” He tugs on her hand. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
“But we’ll miss the crowning of the queen,” Britta says, confused.
They make their way to the back of the cafeteria, his hand still gripping hers. Troy and Annie are watching intently. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll hear the uproar when they call Leonard’s name.”
The hallways are dim and quiet and Britta’s heels echo. “Shirley accused me of playing with yours and Troy’s heart,” Britta says. “I wanted to tell her you don’t even have one.”
“Funny,” he says. “But trust me, kitten, it wasn’t his heart you were playing with.”
Britta stops short when she realizes they’re in the library. “What are we doing here?”
He pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the door to the study room. “See, there’s something called parallelism. Or, as Abed would say, a callback.”
“Where did you even get that key?”
“I know a guy,” he says slyly. He shrugs off his jacket, folds it, and places it on the table. “I got you a pillow this time, though.”
“You want to have sex on the table?”
He clucks his tongue. “Britta. I have thought of nothing except having sex with you since before we left the house.” He pulls her in close and kisses her, walking them back against the table. He lifts her up and sets her on top, settling between her legs.
Her fingers work quickly on his shirt buttons and she remembers the first time this happened. And at the first Transfer Dance, how she thought maybe they’d be able to sneak away and fool around. She’d been so stupid before but now the whole school will be drunk on vodka and those girls lined up hoping to be Transfer Queen will be disappointed and everyone’s makeup will melt and hair will frizz and they won’t even be able to get home without calling AAA.
And she did that. Jeff was right, because she kind of does feel like she won somehow. She won’t be burning this dress later, she thinks as Jeff unzips her.
They had sex in the study room only once after paintball. It was on the couch in the back of the room, one Friday afternoon after the rest of the group went home for the weekend. Usually, the seven of them had lunch together on Fridays but it was starting to snow and the forecast predicted six inches by dark so they all left. And Jeff looked at Britta and they lingered and her shirt was pushed up to her collarbone and her pants dangled from one ankle. They drew the blinds and closed the doors and never made any mention of the table.
Because it’s significant, somehow, isn’t it? Britta asks herself as she lays back, her head on Jeff’s jacket, him climbing over her, fishing a condom out of his pocket. The table is where they first convinced themselves that they could sleep together and it be only tension relieving, instead of this mess of tangles and wires and the idea that no matter what, it’s always going to be the two of them. They’re too entwined now, and she loves him in a way that’s not the same as it used to be. She’s not in love with him but he slides inside her and her hips rise to greet him and he is her constant, the one person who will look at her and see all the awful things she keeps inside and will shrug and not care because he has them, too. It’s a resigned love and she knows she will never love anyone else in this way again because there is no one else like him. It’s not a love she wants to shout from the rooftops but to keep quietly to herself, to let it sit in the cupboard, there in case she ever needs it.
After, he kisses the sweat from her forehead and pulls her close. The room is dark save for the emergency lights and she makes a decision.
“You were right, you know.”
“About what?”
“There is something. That happened.”
“Oh?”
She stares up at the ceiling, the table beneath her slick with her sweat, and it was always going to happen here, of all places.
“It was my birthday and I had a party at one of those restaurants with arcade games and pizza and where people are dressed up in animal costumes and they dance and sing songs. And almost every kid from my class was there, even this boy I had the biggest crush on, and he said I looked pretty in my dress. It was the best party but as we were getting ready to leave, I realized I left my sweater in the back room where everyone hung their coats. So I went back and there was this man in there and he was one of the characters, he was a dinosaur. And he...”
His hand clenches into a fist at her side and she feels him inhale to say something but she shakes her head.
“I went straight to the manager’s office and I told him everything. My dad came in because he was looking for me and the manager told him what I said and neither of them believed me. They thought I was making it up because I was upset the party was over. But it happened.”
“How old were you?” Jeff asks, his voice hoarse.
“Eleven.”
“But your Halloween costume-”
“It’s something I do every few years to try and convince myself that he hasn’t won. Because in seventh grade, we learned about dinosaurs in science class and I actually threw up all over my desk. It wasn’t pretty.”
“I,” he starts.
“No,” she interrupts. “I didn’t tell you so you could pity me. This is just something you need to know. It’s leveling the playing field. We’re even now. Restoring the balance, remember?”
“I remember.” His fingers curl around her hip and she sinks into him a little, into the table, feels her bones and her muscles because she’s still there, she survived it all.
“And that’s the thing that made me a bad person,” she says. “Because after that I was different.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” he asks. “How one thing that happened so long ago can have such an effect?”
She nods and closes her eyes. There’s a loud eruption of noise coming from the cafeteria and a grin breaks over her face. “Looks like Leonard just won Transfer Queen.”
The high of their Transfer Dance victory lasts a while. And Britta is relieved when Jeff doesn’t treat her any differently now that he finally knows everything about her. She had been very careful, after Thanksgiving, to jump right back into the banter and the teasing and to fight off the urge she had to cry or hug him every time she saw him. But Jeff is still Jeff, although maybe a bit more tender: she wakes in the middle of the night to find him rearranging the blankets over her, he brings her cups of green tea while she watches the six o’clock news, he sometimes kisses her like she’s made of glass.
But after two weeks it all starts getting old and gloating over tweets and Facebook statuses of people trapped at Greendale because their tires had been slashed only keeps them occupied for so long. Britta starts feeling restless and trapped inside the apartment. She takes up knitting again and makes scarves and socks and mittens, even as May turns into June and the windows are wide open to let the smell of summer inside.
“I hope you don’t expect me to wear this anytime soon,” Jeff says, lifting the finished half of the scarf she’s working on. “Because it’s hot enough in here as it is.”
She slaps his hand away. “Don’t! And I’ll just put them away for winter. It’s something to do.”
“I am pretty bored,” he agrees. He places a hand on her thigh and it starts inching its way upward but she shifts her legs.
“Not right now. We have to talk about something.”
He gives her a hard look. “What?”
“Jeff, I don’t have any money. I can pay July’s rent but that’s it. And you’re paying rent on a place you haven’t been to in at least three weeks. So I was thinking...”
“You want me to move in with you?”
She squirms, uncomfortable, and keeps her eyes on the knitting needles. “I mean, you’ve been here since April. And you eat all my food and use up my hot water anyway.”
“I think you’re overestimating the amount of money I have.”
“You don’t have a fancy lawyer savings account?”
“What do you think I’ve been living on for the last four years? Well’s almost dried up, kitten.”
She puts her knitting project on the coffee table and turns so she’s sitting with her back against the arm of the couch. “Okay. So we need to get off our asses and get jobs. That should be easier for you, FYI, because you actually have a college degree.”
“Yeah, in education. The only thing I can do with that is, like, be a teacher.”
Britta can’t help but laugh. “Don’t even think about it. Those poor children.”
He rolls his eyes. “Hilarious.”
“Maybe I could go to the Greasy Fork and beg for my old job back,” she says thoughtfully. “Or I could sell one of my eggs to a gay couple.”
“You’re kidding me, right? Is that even safe?”
She shrugs. “You get like ten grand for one egg. What the hell am I going to do with them?”
He holds up his hand in a stopping motion. “Don’t put all your eggs in someone else’s basket just yet, Fertile Myrtle.”
“Do you have any suggestions then?”
He’s quiet for a minute and Britta stares at him expectantly. Then he looks up and his face is perfectly blank. “We steal it.”
She isn’t sure if he’s joking or not so she doesn’t answer.
“We rob a bank, get like, half a mil, and we’re fine until we figure something else out.”
“We’re just going to rob a bank? Just like that?”
“You’re telling me you’ve never stolen anything before?”
She looks at him incredulously. “Well, yeah, but taking jeans from a Deb is a lot different than robbing a bank.”
“No, listen.” He places a hand on her arm. “You and me, we can do this. The Greendale County Credit Union. There’s little to no security there and do you know who works there as a teller?”
Inhaling, Britta shakes her head.
“Misti. Or Valerie. Or whatever her name is. The stripper that Andre cheated on Shirley with. It could be like, retribution for that time I got her out of going to jail and she slept with Andre.”
“Be quiet for like thirty seconds,” Britta says. “I need to think about what you’re saying.”
He shuts up and she closes her eyes and imagines it. In Britta’s favorite episode of The Powerpuff Girls, a villain named Femme Fatale robs banks but only steals Susan B. Anthony coins because she doesn’t want to acknowledge currency with men’s faces on it. In the end, the girls learn a lesson about gender equality, but Britta was pretty much in awe of how cool the entire idea behind Femme Fatale was. And, okay, it turns out Femme Fatale didn’t actually know who Susan B. Anthony was-and Britta, contrary to popular belief, knows a lot about Susan B. Anthony-but still: a blonde, female supervillain who basically wanted to take down the patriarchy? Sign Britta up.
Okay, so there’s not exactly a patriarchy to dismantle at the Greendale Credit Union. So it’s not exactly the same situation. But say she and Jeff rob a bank. Say they dress up in black clothes and ski masks and fill bags with money, bundled up neatly with those little bands. Say they’re able to pay the rent and maybe get an air conditioner for the window and eat dinner somewhere that isn’t the sketchy Chinese place up the street. Say this is the next step in all of it, after pulling what were essentially pranks at a school dance. Say this is what bad people do.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Let’s do it.”
They fuck on the couch to celebrate this new plan and Britta straddles him, looks down on him for a change, feels more in control of her life than she has in a long time. She’ll be okay, they both will, because with money comes options and with options comes power. His fingers dig bruises into her hipbones and she relishes in it, admires them in the bathroom mirror the next morning.
A year ago Britta and Jeff did good, heroic things, like rescue a man kidnapped by an evil wanna-be dictator. Britta wonders if Greendale actually is an asylum, deluding her into thinking she was whole and healthy and meant for better things. She remembers Shirley’s wedding, when she was so scared her life was going to end up being Leave it to Beaver and she would have to pin her hair and wear an apron and learn how to work a carpet steamer. Raise a couple kids and have dinner hot on the table at six-thirty sharp. It was a stupid, drunken, waking nightmare but the next morning as she nursed her hangover with a bloody Mary and five aspirin, she had that bachelor’s degree to fall back on. If she could earn her own way, she wouldn’t have to depend on a man for anything.
Or, if she could steal her own way, she wouldn’t have to either.
She and Jeff spend their days plotting; there’s no use going into this half-assed. Britta opens up a checking account at the credit union so she can get a scope of the place. They map every route, discuss how far they have to drive to throw off any trail before they loop back around and come home. They figure out parking spots, where to park Britta’s car, where to park the getaway Lexus. They talk clothes and hair and shoes and bags. They watch bank heist movies and analyze the realism behind them.
Britta goes out for groceries one day and stops at the mall on her way home. She buys a wig, bright purple and curly, and pays with cash.
“What’s this?” Jeff asks as he paws through the bags.
“I thought, uh, I would wear it. You know. As like, a disguise.”
“A disguise that makes you look exactly like you but from five years ago?”
She shrugs, fighting her embarrassment, and pulls her hair back before fitting the wig over her head. “It’s different. No pink streaks and thankfully I outgrew that awful nose ring.”
He looks at her appraisingly. “Anyone see you buy this?”
“One salesgirl. A teenager and she barely looked at my face. No security cameras. Didn’t use a card.”
“Okay,” he says. He pulls an apple out of one of the bags and takes a bite. “One more thing. Think we should get guns? Not to use them, but for show?”
His voice is all forced nonchalance and she’s pretty sure he’s only eating the apple for something to do, to distract her-and maybe himself-from his discomfort. So Britta rescues him: “What about those prop guns? The ones you and Annie used with the Dean?”
He exhales and swallows a mouthful of apple. “Good idea. I know where they’re kept. I can grab them tomorrow. I don’t think there are many drama classes going on in the summer. Other than that... I think, I think we’re ready. Do you feel ready?”
She smiles. “I feel ready.”
So they circle a date on the calendar and it’s early July and when they wake up that morning Britta’s hands are shaking but she makes coffee and Jeff scrambles eggs and they eat in silence. After breakfast they fuck against the kitchen counter, all nervous energy, and Jeff whispers in her ear over and over that it’ll be okay. She believes him because she has no other choice and she doesn’t think about what will happen if they get caught.
They both dress in all black because that’s how people do it in the movies and it’s stupid, really; Britta feels like kind of an idiot in the wig and black jeans and long-sleeved black t-shirt. They’re both wearing black sneakers, Britta’s scuffed more than Jeff’s, ski masks inside the duffel bag in the backseat. They take Britta’s car because it’s a lot older than Jeff’s: it doesn’t have an alarm or working power locks, a perfect target for thieves. She drives with both hands gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turn white. Jeff keeps a hand on her thigh and she feels it steadying her, rooting her into the seat.
She parks the car around the corner and down an alley from the bank and calls the police, reports her car stolen, and they move. It’s an out-of-body experience, an adrenaline rush, a dream. The prop guns look so real and Misti/Valerie keeps her composure but Britta can see the sweat beading along her forehead and her upper lip. She’s the only teller there, holding down the fort while everyone else goes out for lunch. Jeff sticks a prop gun in her face and she piles it all in, thousands of dollars, an entire duffel bag full of hundreds and fifties and even twenties and tens. Britta thinks her heart is going to explode out of her chest it’s beating so fast and surely she must be having a heart attack as Misti/Valerie zips the duffel bag closed and slides it over the counter.
“Now leave,” she says firmly.
Jeff says something then but Britta can’t hear because there’s a buzzing in her ears, white noise, and maybe it’s something like counting to one hundred before calling the police and then he’s grabbing her hand and as soon as their backs are turned to the bank he pulls both their masks off and slips the guns in the front pocket of the bag. They slink down the street, to the municipal parking lot where they parked the Lexus last night, and Jeff drives home.
“I panicked,” she says quietly when they’re halfway there.
“No, you did great,” he assures.
“How did you stay so calm?”
“I... don’t know,” he says slowly, like he isn’t sure of the answer.
She turns to the window and watches Greendale pass by. She can hear the sirens already, wailing as they hurry toward the bank, to interrogate Misti/Valerie, to check for security cameras that aren’t there, to look for clues they’ll never find. Britta says a mental thank you for the shittiness of Greendale as a county and the fact that their banks don’t even have the necessary precautions against thieves. She’s sure they will now, though. The wig is in her lap and she brushes stray hairs back into place with her fingers. “I’ll do better next time,” she says.
They get home and spread it out over the kitchen table, all $545,350. It’s more money than Britta’s ever had her entire life probably combined and she tries to think of it in terms of months of rent, of leather jackets, of Radiohead tickets, of cars, of houses. She thinks of all the things she can buy and it’s overwhelming, all this money, all these options.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” she says. “We hide like, three hundred grand. Stash it in the mattress, in the floorboards, in cereal boxes, anywhere. And we forget about it. Take the rest, pay the bills, and live off of it. Carefully.”
She knows exactly how quickly they can burn through this money, and she knows that they can’t.
The next morning Britta wakes up alone and she panics for a few stupid seconds-what if he left with the money, decided he doesn’t need her anymore, went to find what else is out there besides her?-before she hears water running in the bathroom. It’s been months since Jeff has woken up before her; long gone are the days he would roll out of bed at the crack of dawn, ready for a run. He still does sit-ups and push-ups sometimes, to keep himself in shape, but most days he doesn’t leave the couch.
The water turns off and the bathroom door creaks open. “Jeff?” she calls.
“Close your eyes! I have a surprise for you!”
She scoffs but complies and she hears his footsteps on the floor. The bed sinks and he’s next to her. He takes her hands and places them somewhere on his body, smooth, soft skin, and her eyes fly open because it’s his face, free from the awful mountain-man beard.
“Oh!” She kisses him everywhere she can reach, skin that’s been hidden from her for months and months and his jaw and his chin and it doesn’t scratch against her anymore.
“Something significant,” she laughs into his mouth and he’s laughing, too, lighter and freer than she’s seen him in so long and suddenly she is happy.
PART III
Jeff/Britta
~26,400 words total
Jeff struggles with life post-grad. Britta feels suffocated by Greendale. Just because they're good-looking doesn't make them villains. Until it does.
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V
“Are you ready yet?” Jeff calls from the living room.
“Almost,” Britta lies. She stands in her bedroom in front of the full-length mirror in her underwear, dress in hand. Her hair lays curled on her shoulders and she’s wearing more makeup than she ever has in quite a long time. But somehow it feels right; it’s a mask but she’s not hiding behind it.
There’s a grocery bag on the kitchen table next to her clutch purse. Inside of it are three bottles of vodka and five hundred slips of paper with a single name written on them. In Britta’s purse are a wrench and two pocket knives. The purse is black, it matches the dress in her hands.
She takes a deep breath and steps into the dress. It’s tight and low and it’s the kind of dress women in movies wear when they’re about to kill a man. Britta feels powerful.
“Come zip me up!” she calls.
The mirror faces the door and she watches as he rounds into the room, grumbling about taking forever. But he stops in the doorway and Britta can’t fight the smirk on her face. “Well?” she prompts, gathering her hair to one side.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Britta,” he says lowly. “You can’t wear this.”
“Says who?”
“Says the janitor because he’s not going to want to spend his night wiping up the drool of every guy at Greendale. And I don’t want to have to watch them watching you.”
“Fuck you.”
He lays a hand on her hip and begins to tug the zipper up with the other. His fingers ghost along the skin of her back and her arms break out into goosebumps. “I certainly hope you will.” He brushes his lips against the base of her spine and she lets her hair back down.
“I have to put my shoes on,” she says as his mouth begins to work over her neck. “We have to go.”
He pulls away. “Sure, now you want to leave,” he mutters.
Britta’s nervous in the car on the way to Greendale, but she tries her hardest not to show it. She crosses her legs and holds onto her purse so she doesn’t fidget. She and Jeff don’t say anything. It’s been a while since she’s been in the front seat of his car; they so rarely leave the apartment.
There’s a banner hanging on the outside of the cafeteria: Transfer Dance 2013! Britta has an awful flashback to when the banner read 2010, to the dress she wore and later burned and the gentle pats on her arm from Shirley and Abed and Troy.
“You okay?” Jeff asks as he parks the car.
“Fine,” she lies.
“Okay.” He reaches over and squeezes her hand before getting out of the car.
They start at the back and make their way up the parking lot: Britta opens her purse and takes out the knives, hands one to Jeff and keeps one for herself. She takes off her heels and leaves them on the hood of the Lexus.
Jeff does the driver sides and Britta does the passenger sides. They work quietly and in unison, the sound of the tires deflating echoing as it mixes with the muffled music and laughter from the closed windows of the cafeteria.
Annie’s car is parked next to Shirley’s van and Britta hesitates. “We have to skip them.”
“I know,” Jeff says. “But then they’ll figure out it’s one of us.”
“So we skip the whole row,” Britta suggests. “It’s only a handful, and I can’t slash their tires.”
Jeff nods and they move to the next row and continue. Every once in a while the cafeteria door opens and someone will come outside to talk on the phone or smoke a cigarette. But no one tries to leave early, which had been a concern while planning.
When they make it back to the Lexus, Britta estimates they’ve done at least a hundred cars. She slips her shoes back on and stashes the knives in the glove compartment. “Here, move the car into the row we didn’t do.”
She waits outside while he parks a few spaces down from Annie and although it’s only May, the air is hot and stuffy and humid. It’s perfect weather for tonight, though; Britta couldn’t have planned it better if she tried.
He joins her and they creep around to the side of the building where the door to the boiler room is propped open with a bucket, just like Britta knew it would be. Her methodic surveying of the campus last year as they planned to infiltrate it has left her with a vast knowledge of what happens where and when.
Inside, Britta takes the wrench and a folded piece of paper out of her purse. “Okay, this is what we’re looking for.”
The thing about dating Troy Barnes is that he leaves everything he owns everywhere. It’s as if for each step he takes, three things fall out of his pockets. So after they broke up and Britta found enough of his stuff lying around her apartment to make a Troy Barnes museum, she put it all in a box and meant to bring it to him, but she was wary about the appropriate time window and then it seemed better to just forget about it and not mention the fact that they had ever dated at all.
Which led her to discover his discarded Air Conditioner Repair Manual: the complete guide to the Greendale Community College heating and cooling system. And how to dismantle it.
Jeff takes the paper from her and studies it for a minute. There’s a complicated diagram and Britta hopes Jeff understands it because she’s pretty lost.
He looks up and points to a control panel. “Here?”
Britta shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“You’re the one who used to sleep with the Air Conditioning Messiah or whatever.”
“Yeah, because nothing says foreplay quite like discussing the air conditioner at our school.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised. I can’t imagine Troy didn’t bore the shit out of you in bed.”
“Hey, my sex life with Troy is none of your business.”
“Actually, it is. How does it go? Everyone you’ve slept with I’ve slept with, too?”
“Really? Are you still not over your whole jealousy thing? Troy and I broke up months ago.”
“What jealousy thing? I was never jealous of Troy.”
“Please! It was almost painfully obvious. Like, I was a little embarrassed for you.”
“Shut up!” Jeff smashes the wrench into the control panel. The glass shatters everywhere and the entire system makes a high-pitched hissing noise before shutting down completely.
The silence echoes as they stand frozen for a minute. “Oh-kay,” Britta says quietly. “I guess that works, too.”
Jeff scrubs a hand through his beard. “We should, uh, we should get going.” He places a possessive hand on the small of her back and she rolls her eyes but doesn’t shrug it off.
The boiler room leads to the kitchen, and they creep through and wait at the door to make sure no one’s there. Britta pushes the door open a crack, and the coast is clear, so they sneak in. Four large jugs of punch sit on the counter and she puts the plastic grocery bag down next to them.
“All right, Winger, let’s get pouring.”
They dump some of the punch into the sink and fill the empty spaces with vodka. When the bottles are empty, Britta pushes them to the bottom of the garbage can, rearranging empty chip bags and paper towels to hide them from sight. She washes her hands and when she turns around, Jeff holds out a jug of punch.
“You gotta take a swig.”
“What?” Britta wrinkles her nose. “No way, that stuff is all vodka.”
“Duh doy. You drink straight vodka all the time.”
“Not with fruit punch, though. That’s gross.”
“One swig. I’ll do one, too.”
She eyes him warily and then takes the jug from him and downs a gulp. “Ugh. Okay, your turn.”
His swig is much larger than hers, and she hopes he’s somehow learned to hold his vodka better because the night isn’t even close to being over.
“Okay, next step,” he says, screwing the lid back on the punch jug.
Dean Pelton, for all his twists and turns, is still somewhat predictable, because the Transfer Queen ballot box is sitting on a chair in the corner, as if the kitchen is the staging area for the entire dance. It’s a shoebox covered in construction paper and glitter with a slit in the top. Jeff lifts the lid and scoops out all the paper scraps, shoving them in Britta’s purse. Then he replaces them with the papers from the grocery bag and closes the box.
“Let’s go,” Britta says from her post by the door. They sneak back through the boiler room and outside, where Britta shakes the stolen ballots out of her purse and into the dumpster. Her heart starts racing as they approach the front doors and her steps become smaller and slower because her knees start to weaken. She shouldn’t have let Jeff talk her into what was basically a double shot of vodka.
Jeff must be able to sense it because she reaches for the door handle when he grabs her wrist and pulls her back.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“It’s okay. It’s not going to be like last time. Not at all.”
She exhales and leans into him a little. “I know.”
He twists to press a kiss to her mouth and then holds his arm out. “Ready?”
“Ready.” She hooks her arm through his and they walk inside, where what looks like all of Greendale is gathered, dancing and laughing.
The study group stands around a table in the corner and Annie spots them first. “Oh! Jeff and Britta!” she calls, waving.
Annie throws her arms around Britta when she and Jeff make it to the table. “I can’t believe you guys are here!”
“Yeah, well, we figured we’d stop by,” Jeff says as he hugs Shirley.
Annie lets go of Britta and Britta turns around to find herself face-to-face with Troy. His eyes widen as he sees her dress and she can feel Jeff’s gaze, heavy behind her.
“Hey, Troy,” she says, reaching out to hug him. His arms come around her, dipping a little too low on her waist. Over his shoulder, Abed shoots her a look and she shakes her head slightly.
“You look nice,” Troy chokes out thickly.
“Thank you,” she says as she pulls away. He’s staring at her chest and Jeff is staring at Troy and Abed is staring at Jeff.
“Hi, pumpkin!” Shirley says loudly and pointedly, gathering Britta in her arms. “Come dance with me!”
Britta allows herself to be pulled onto the dance floor, Annie following behind. The three guys stand awkwardly to the side.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?” Annie asks at the same time Shirley says, “Britta, what are you doing?”
“We wanted to surprise you,” Britta says with a shrug. “And I’m not doing anything, Shirley.”
“I saw the way Jeff was looking at Troy,” Shirley says lowly. “Don’t play with those boys’ hearts.”
Britta rolls her eyes. “You’re exaggerating. Besides, me and Jeff aren’t even together. And I don’t even have feelings for Troy anymore.”
The air is starting to feel thick; the room is packed and the windows only open a crack. Britta can see sweat bead on Shirley’s upper lip and along Annie’s hairline. She tosses her hair over one shoulder to give her neck some relief.
“We’re worried about you, Britta,” Shirley says. Her voice is kind, concerned. “Why don’t you come back to school? You can enroll in summer classes and we’ll help you any way you can.”
Annie nods enthusiastically and Britta gives them a sad smile. “I appreciate it, guys, I do but it’s not going to work that way.”
“But why?” Annie asks. She wipes her brow and exhales a little. The temperature climbs.
Britta opens her mouth to respond with the truth: she doesn’t know, she’ll never know, they’ll never know. But she feels someone standing behind her and somehow she knows it’s Jeff.
“Can I cut in?” he asks, all charm and politeness.
The three of them haven’t even been dancing, just sort of parked on the dance floor, but Shirley gives him a resigned nod and leads Annie back to Troy and Abed.
“Starting to get pretty warm in here,” he says with a smirk.
“How long before Dean Pelton sends Troy to go check it out?”
“Ten, twenty minutes.” He tugs on her hand. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
“But we’ll miss the crowning of the queen,” Britta says, confused.
They make their way to the back of the cafeteria, his hand still gripping hers. Troy and Annie are watching intently. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll hear the uproar when they call Leonard’s name.”
The hallways are dim and quiet and Britta’s heels echo. “Shirley accused me of playing with yours and Troy’s heart,” Britta says. “I wanted to tell her you don’t even have one.”
“Funny,” he says. “But trust me, kitten, it wasn’t his heart you were playing with.”
Britta stops short when she realizes they’re in the library. “What are we doing here?”
He pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the door to the study room. “See, there’s something called parallelism. Or, as Abed would say, a callback.”
“Where did you even get that key?”
“I know a guy,” he says slyly. He shrugs off his jacket, folds it, and places it on the table. “I got you a pillow this time, though.”
“You want to have sex on the table?”
He clucks his tongue. “Britta. I have thought of nothing except having sex with you since before we left the house.” He pulls her in close and kisses her, walking them back against the table. He lifts her up and sets her on top, settling between her legs.
Her fingers work quickly on his shirt buttons and she remembers the first time this happened. And at the first Transfer Dance, how she thought maybe they’d be able to sneak away and fool around. She’d been so stupid before but now the whole school will be drunk on vodka and those girls lined up hoping to be Transfer Queen will be disappointed and everyone’s makeup will melt and hair will frizz and they won’t even be able to get home without calling AAA.
And she did that. Jeff was right, because she kind of does feel like she won somehow. She won’t be burning this dress later, she thinks as Jeff unzips her.
They had sex in the study room only once after paintball. It was on the couch in the back of the room, one Friday afternoon after the rest of the group went home for the weekend. Usually, the seven of them had lunch together on Fridays but it was starting to snow and the forecast predicted six inches by dark so they all left. And Jeff looked at Britta and they lingered and her shirt was pushed up to her collarbone and her pants dangled from one ankle. They drew the blinds and closed the doors and never made any mention of the table.
Because it’s significant, somehow, isn’t it? Britta asks herself as she lays back, her head on Jeff’s jacket, him climbing over her, fishing a condom out of his pocket. The table is where they first convinced themselves that they could sleep together and it be only tension relieving, instead of this mess of tangles and wires and the idea that no matter what, it’s always going to be the two of them. They’re too entwined now, and she loves him in a way that’s not the same as it used to be. She’s not in love with him but he slides inside her and her hips rise to greet him and he is her constant, the one person who will look at her and see all the awful things she keeps inside and will shrug and not care because he has them, too. It’s a resigned love and she knows she will never love anyone else in this way again because there is no one else like him. It’s not a love she wants to shout from the rooftops but to keep quietly to herself, to let it sit in the cupboard, there in case she ever needs it.
After, he kisses the sweat from her forehead and pulls her close. The room is dark save for the emergency lights and she makes a decision.
“You were right, you know.”
“About what?”
“There is something. That happened.”
“Oh?”
She stares up at the ceiling, the table beneath her slick with her sweat, and it was always going to happen here, of all places.
“It was my birthday and I had a party at one of those restaurants with arcade games and pizza and where people are dressed up in animal costumes and they dance and sing songs. And almost every kid from my class was there, even this boy I had the biggest crush on, and he said I looked pretty in my dress. It was the best party but as we were getting ready to leave, I realized I left my sweater in the back room where everyone hung their coats. So I went back and there was this man in there and he was one of the characters, he was a dinosaur. And he...”
His hand clenches into a fist at her side and she feels him inhale to say something but she shakes her head.
“I went straight to the manager’s office and I told him everything. My dad came in because he was looking for me and the manager told him what I said and neither of them believed me. They thought I was making it up because I was upset the party was over. But it happened.”
“How old were you?” Jeff asks, his voice hoarse.
“Eleven.”
“But your Halloween costume-”
“It’s something I do every few years to try and convince myself that he hasn’t won. Because in seventh grade, we learned about dinosaurs in science class and I actually threw up all over my desk. It wasn’t pretty.”
“I,” he starts.
“No,” she interrupts. “I didn’t tell you so you could pity me. This is just something you need to know. It’s leveling the playing field. We’re even now. Restoring the balance, remember?”
“I remember.” His fingers curl around her hip and she sinks into him a little, into the table, feels her bones and her muscles because she’s still there, she survived it all.
“And that’s the thing that made me a bad person,” she says. “Because after that I was different.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” he asks. “How one thing that happened so long ago can have such an effect?”
She nods and closes her eyes. There’s a loud eruption of noise coming from the cafeteria and a grin breaks over her face. “Looks like Leonard just won Transfer Queen.”
The high of their Transfer Dance victory lasts a while. And Britta is relieved when Jeff doesn’t treat her any differently now that he finally knows everything about her. She had been very careful, after Thanksgiving, to jump right back into the banter and the teasing and to fight off the urge she had to cry or hug him every time she saw him. But Jeff is still Jeff, although maybe a bit more tender: she wakes in the middle of the night to find him rearranging the blankets over her, he brings her cups of green tea while she watches the six o’clock news, he sometimes kisses her like she’s made of glass.
But after two weeks it all starts getting old and gloating over tweets and Facebook statuses of people trapped at Greendale because their tires had been slashed only keeps them occupied for so long. Britta starts feeling restless and trapped inside the apartment. She takes up knitting again and makes scarves and socks and mittens, even as May turns into June and the windows are wide open to let the smell of summer inside.
“I hope you don’t expect me to wear this anytime soon,” Jeff says, lifting the finished half of the scarf she’s working on. “Because it’s hot enough in here as it is.”
She slaps his hand away. “Don’t! And I’ll just put them away for winter. It’s something to do.”
“I am pretty bored,” he agrees. He places a hand on her thigh and it starts inching its way upward but she shifts her legs.
“Not right now. We have to talk about something.”
He gives her a hard look. “What?”
“Jeff, I don’t have any money. I can pay July’s rent but that’s it. And you’re paying rent on a place you haven’t been to in at least three weeks. So I was thinking...”
“You want me to move in with you?”
She squirms, uncomfortable, and keeps her eyes on the knitting needles. “I mean, you’ve been here since April. And you eat all my food and use up my hot water anyway.”
“I think you’re overestimating the amount of money I have.”
“You don’t have a fancy lawyer savings account?”
“What do you think I’ve been living on for the last four years? Well’s almost dried up, kitten.”
She puts her knitting project on the coffee table and turns so she’s sitting with her back against the arm of the couch. “Okay. So we need to get off our asses and get jobs. That should be easier for you, FYI, because you actually have a college degree.”
“Yeah, in education. The only thing I can do with that is, like, be a teacher.”
Britta can’t help but laugh. “Don’t even think about it. Those poor children.”
He rolls his eyes. “Hilarious.”
“Maybe I could go to the Greasy Fork and beg for my old job back,” she says thoughtfully. “Or I could sell one of my eggs to a gay couple.”
“You’re kidding me, right? Is that even safe?”
She shrugs. “You get like ten grand for one egg. What the hell am I going to do with them?”
He holds up his hand in a stopping motion. “Don’t put all your eggs in someone else’s basket just yet, Fertile Myrtle.”
“Do you have any suggestions then?”
He’s quiet for a minute and Britta stares at him expectantly. Then he looks up and his face is perfectly blank. “We steal it.”
She isn’t sure if he’s joking or not so she doesn’t answer.
“We rob a bank, get like, half a mil, and we’re fine until we figure something else out.”
“We’re just going to rob a bank? Just like that?”
“You’re telling me you’ve never stolen anything before?”
She looks at him incredulously. “Well, yeah, but taking jeans from a Deb is a lot different than robbing a bank.”
“No, listen.” He places a hand on her arm. “You and me, we can do this. The Greendale County Credit Union. There’s little to no security there and do you know who works there as a teller?”
Inhaling, Britta shakes her head.
“Misti. Or Valerie. Or whatever her name is. The stripper that Andre cheated on Shirley with. It could be like, retribution for that time I got her out of going to jail and she slept with Andre.”
“Be quiet for like thirty seconds,” Britta says. “I need to think about what you’re saying.”
He shuts up and she closes her eyes and imagines it. In Britta’s favorite episode of The Powerpuff Girls, a villain named Femme Fatale robs banks but only steals Susan B. Anthony coins because she doesn’t want to acknowledge currency with men’s faces on it. In the end, the girls learn a lesson about gender equality, but Britta was pretty much in awe of how cool the entire idea behind Femme Fatale was. And, okay, it turns out Femme Fatale didn’t actually know who Susan B. Anthony was-and Britta, contrary to popular belief, knows a lot about Susan B. Anthony-but still: a blonde, female supervillain who basically wanted to take down the patriarchy? Sign Britta up.
Okay, so there’s not exactly a patriarchy to dismantle at the Greendale Credit Union. So it’s not exactly the same situation. But say she and Jeff rob a bank. Say they dress up in black clothes and ski masks and fill bags with money, bundled up neatly with those little bands. Say they’re able to pay the rent and maybe get an air conditioner for the window and eat dinner somewhere that isn’t the sketchy Chinese place up the street. Say this is the next step in all of it, after pulling what were essentially pranks at a school dance. Say this is what bad people do.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Let’s do it.”
They fuck on the couch to celebrate this new plan and Britta straddles him, looks down on him for a change, feels more in control of her life than she has in a long time. She’ll be okay, they both will, because with money comes options and with options comes power. His fingers dig bruises into her hipbones and she relishes in it, admires them in the bathroom mirror the next morning.
A year ago Britta and Jeff did good, heroic things, like rescue a man kidnapped by an evil wanna-be dictator. Britta wonders if Greendale actually is an asylum, deluding her into thinking she was whole and healthy and meant for better things. She remembers Shirley’s wedding, when she was so scared her life was going to end up being Leave it to Beaver and she would have to pin her hair and wear an apron and learn how to work a carpet steamer. Raise a couple kids and have dinner hot on the table at six-thirty sharp. It was a stupid, drunken, waking nightmare but the next morning as she nursed her hangover with a bloody Mary and five aspirin, she had that bachelor’s degree to fall back on. If she could earn her own way, she wouldn’t have to depend on a man for anything.
Or, if she could steal her own way, she wouldn’t have to either.
She and Jeff spend their days plotting; there’s no use going into this half-assed. Britta opens up a checking account at the credit union so she can get a scope of the place. They map every route, discuss how far they have to drive to throw off any trail before they loop back around and come home. They figure out parking spots, where to park Britta’s car, where to park the getaway Lexus. They talk clothes and hair and shoes and bags. They watch bank heist movies and analyze the realism behind them.
Britta goes out for groceries one day and stops at the mall on her way home. She buys a wig, bright purple and curly, and pays with cash.
“What’s this?” Jeff asks as he paws through the bags.
“I thought, uh, I would wear it. You know. As like, a disguise.”
“A disguise that makes you look exactly like you but from five years ago?”
She shrugs, fighting her embarrassment, and pulls her hair back before fitting the wig over her head. “It’s different. No pink streaks and thankfully I outgrew that awful nose ring.”
He looks at her appraisingly. “Anyone see you buy this?”
“One salesgirl. A teenager and she barely looked at my face. No security cameras. Didn’t use a card.”
“Okay,” he says. He pulls an apple out of one of the bags and takes a bite. “One more thing. Think we should get guns? Not to use them, but for show?”
His voice is all forced nonchalance and she’s pretty sure he’s only eating the apple for something to do, to distract her-and maybe himself-from his discomfort. So Britta rescues him: “What about those prop guns? The ones you and Annie used with the Dean?”
He exhales and swallows a mouthful of apple. “Good idea. I know where they’re kept. I can grab them tomorrow. I don’t think there are many drama classes going on in the summer. Other than that... I think, I think we’re ready. Do you feel ready?”
She smiles. “I feel ready.”
So they circle a date on the calendar and it’s early July and when they wake up that morning Britta’s hands are shaking but she makes coffee and Jeff scrambles eggs and they eat in silence. After breakfast they fuck against the kitchen counter, all nervous energy, and Jeff whispers in her ear over and over that it’ll be okay. She believes him because she has no other choice and she doesn’t think about what will happen if they get caught.
They both dress in all black because that’s how people do it in the movies and it’s stupid, really; Britta feels like kind of an idiot in the wig and black jeans and long-sleeved black t-shirt. They’re both wearing black sneakers, Britta’s scuffed more than Jeff’s, ski masks inside the duffel bag in the backseat. They take Britta’s car because it’s a lot older than Jeff’s: it doesn’t have an alarm or working power locks, a perfect target for thieves. She drives with both hands gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turn white. Jeff keeps a hand on her thigh and she feels it steadying her, rooting her into the seat.
She parks the car around the corner and down an alley from the bank and calls the police, reports her car stolen, and they move. It’s an out-of-body experience, an adrenaline rush, a dream. The prop guns look so real and Misti/Valerie keeps her composure but Britta can see the sweat beading along her forehead and her upper lip. She’s the only teller there, holding down the fort while everyone else goes out for lunch. Jeff sticks a prop gun in her face and she piles it all in, thousands of dollars, an entire duffel bag full of hundreds and fifties and even twenties and tens. Britta thinks her heart is going to explode out of her chest it’s beating so fast and surely she must be having a heart attack as Misti/Valerie zips the duffel bag closed and slides it over the counter.
“Now leave,” she says firmly.
Jeff says something then but Britta can’t hear because there’s a buzzing in her ears, white noise, and maybe it’s something like counting to one hundred before calling the police and then he’s grabbing her hand and as soon as their backs are turned to the bank he pulls both their masks off and slips the guns in the front pocket of the bag. They slink down the street, to the municipal parking lot where they parked the Lexus last night, and Jeff drives home.
“I panicked,” she says quietly when they’re halfway there.
“No, you did great,” he assures.
“How did you stay so calm?”
“I... don’t know,” he says slowly, like he isn’t sure of the answer.
She turns to the window and watches Greendale pass by. She can hear the sirens already, wailing as they hurry toward the bank, to interrogate Misti/Valerie, to check for security cameras that aren’t there, to look for clues they’ll never find. Britta says a mental thank you for the shittiness of Greendale as a county and the fact that their banks don’t even have the necessary precautions against thieves. She’s sure they will now, though. The wig is in her lap and she brushes stray hairs back into place with her fingers. “I’ll do better next time,” she says.
They get home and spread it out over the kitchen table, all $545,350. It’s more money than Britta’s ever had her entire life probably combined and she tries to think of it in terms of months of rent, of leather jackets, of Radiohead tickets, of cars, of houses. She thinks of all the things she can buy and it’s overwhelming, all this money, all these options.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” she says. “We hide like, three hundred grand. Stash it in the mattress, in the floorboards, in cereal boxes, anywhere. And we forget about it. Take the rest, pay the bills, and live off of it. Carefully.”
She knows exactly how quickly they can burn through this money, and she knows that they can’t.
The next morning Britta wakes up alone and she panics for a few stupid seconds-what if he left with the money, decided he doesn’t need her anymore, went to find what else is out there besides her?-before she hears water running in the bathroom. It’s been months since Jeff has woken up before her; long gone are the days he would roll out of bed at the crack of dawn, ready for a run. He still does sit-ups and push-ups sometimes, to keep himself in shape, but most days he doesn’t leave the couch.
The water turns off and the bathroom door creaks open. “Jeff?” she calls.
“Close your eyes! I have a surprise for you!”
She scoffs but complies and she hears his footsteps on the floor. The bed sinks and he’s next to her. He takes her hands and places them somewhere on his body, smooth, soft skin, and her eyes fly open because it’s his face, free from the awful mountain-man beard.
“Oh!” She kisses him everywhere she can reach, skin that’s been hidden from her for months and months and his jaw and his chin and it doesn’t scratch against her anymore.
“Something significant,” she laughs into his mouth and he’s laughing, too, lighter and freer than she’s seen him in so long and suddenly she is happy.
PART III