Because it was Wal-Mart, the plan seemed like justice, like a Robin Hood saga about taking what was rightfully ours. It was summer, and we were living like bohemians. Every day drunk and lazy with poets lying on cool grass, the whole scene that made it the summer of passion like absinthe and opium and Dylan Thomas teaching us how to treat the night. We were free in that way people can be when they forget where they come from and where they mean to go. We danced and slept naked. I fell for the counter guy at Avo's, Markus Noah, who said my poetry was sexy so I spent my days painting him a gift, blue flames around words that said If you were a pure bolt of fire cutting the skies I would touch you risking my life not because I'm brave or strong but because I'm fascinated by what the outcome would be. It was Nikki Giovanni scrawled on a piece of paper from the library. After so many watercolor failures I tore them all to pieces, glued them into a new flame, and gave them to Markus Noah with the blue eyes and the dark dreads who played the guitar when he wasn't making sandwiches. That night, when Michelle left her job at Woody's pizza by spelling I QUIT on the salad bar with baby carrots, she devised the plan. She went to Wal-Mart, filled a cart with food enough for a feast, covered it with a bulk package of paper towels, and walked out all calm and collected. At Ian and Erika's we started up the hibachi and the pot, drank Wal-Mart beer and grilled free steaks for everyone. In the middle of the night, Markus Noah showed with his guitar and a girl who looked nothing like me so I sat a little drained from holding all that infatuation at bay and I passed the bowl and the Denis Johnson poems and took a walk down the gravel road that looked like it could be water at the end but was really just the dark coming at me in waves.