Most of the high-end stores on the Mile use iPads since the Apple Store opened up. The clerks would carry them around with them to ring customers up without them needing to come to the counter. They think it makes them look cool.
By Christmas season, Chip and me had it laid out perfect. We had some advantages right off the bat. One, Christmas season made all the bug-in-their-asshole rich fucks on the Mile go into full frenzy mode. Stores were packed right up until they closed the doors. All nations represented, Chip said.
Two, nobody pays attention to white kids if they dress well. We blend in. We looked like some customer’s kids, or maybe a pair of truants with Dad’s Amex. The store clerks watched us, but only when we actually handled merchandise and then only until they saw we were just bored rich kids killing time.
We played up the kids part, goofing on bling-bling watches in the Rolex store on Michigan, pointing and whispering at weirdos, giggling some more. We had it nailed. If you asked anyone, they would have guessed us at thirteen to fifteen.
Chip was down to one iPad in his backpack. We were gawping at a row of diamond-crusted Oysters, real lowdown gangsta shit. Some of those fuckers cost seventy-five, eighty grand.
Chip had his arm around me, his expression bored and typical. The sleeves of his Italian leather jacket were hiked up to show the Patek Phillipe on his skinny wrist. It was his dad’s Wednesday watch, and today was Thursday so no way would his dad even miss it. He toyed with my hair. I bit my finger like girls do and like I never do, but had practiced doing in front of a mirror, and not just for this.
This Rolex clerk was sharper than most and kept staring at us. I stared back, real sexy. I licked my finger like a cock. He flushed and averted his eyes, found another customer and went over to her.
That’s when Chip made the switch. The iPad we left in place of the Rolex one was a little older, an iPad 2, but they were both white. Chip had set it up so when the clerk swiped a card he’d see that little blinking folder with a question mark.
By that time we would be long gone, sitting in a cab pulling all those sweet high-dollar card numbers and PINs off the iPad and coding up one of the blank ATM cards. Maybe we would stop the cab by the bank and leave it standing while Chip went in and pulled out whatever the max was. Three, four hundred easy. Maybe more.
Thing is, when you got it bad as we got it there is just never enough money. You get used to it, like everything.
That, and Christmas season only lasts so long. What we got lasts a lifetime.