“Don’t believe everything you read in the paper,” she said. As we passed the newsstand, the cover of Time, which was about a new blockbuster science fiction movie, caught my eye.
“I’ll just be a sec,” I said, and Sarah rolled on ahead without me.
I flipped through the Time, glanced at the covers of several other magazines (Oprah had managed to make the cover of her own magazine again, which I thought warranted some sort of inquiry), and quickly scanned my eye over the newly released paperback novels. By the time I decided to rejoin Sarah, she was long gone.
I walked along the front of the store, between the checkouts and the ends of the aisles, peering down each one, looking for a glimpse of her.
I spotted her down the aisle where they kept all the pastas and tomato sauces and twenty-three different kinds of Kraft Dinner. She was about three-quarters of the way down, and about halfway stood a nearly empty shopping cart, purse tucked into the spot where you can place small children. As is usually the case, Sarah had her eyes on the shelves, and not on the cart, or the purse. Fortunately, there was no one else anywhere near the cart, so she wasn’t immediately at risk of having it snatched.
I passed by the only other person in the aisle, a young blonde woman in an off-white suit looking at garbage bags, and as I approached Sarah I waited to see when she might take her eyes off the various spaghetti sauces to check that her purse was still where she’d left it in the cart.
I was doing a slow burn.
It was clear that I was completely wasting my time trying to get anyone in my household to exercise even the most basic level of common sense. I had, I knew, become something of a nag where Sarah and her purse were concerned. There had been stories on the news. That woman with the lottery ticket. That other woman, who’d lost the pictures of her sister’s wedding. There were some things you just didn’t do, and leaving your purse unattended in a busy grocery store was one of them.
It appeared, from where I was standing, that the purse wasn’t even snapped shut at the top. Wasn’t that thoughtful. A thief didn’t even have to go to the trouble of running off with her purse, he could just peek inside and help himself to what he wanted.
What was she thinking? You need your hands free when you’re shopping, she’d tell me.
You might think that a woman who spends her day sending journalists to court to write about men who’ve cut their girlfriends up into bits and distributed them like Wal-Mart flyers would be aware that there are a lot of not-nice people out there. People who might walk off with a woman’s purse while she is debating the merits of onion-and-garlic versus three-cheese pasta sauce.
It was only a matter of time before someone walked off with that purse. So I had a choice to make. Would it be a stranger, or would it be me?
Don’t do it, my conscience said. Don’t do it.
The incident over the keys, and my hiding her car, seemed largely forgotten. We were talking to each other, Sarah and I. Things had been fairly remarkable between the sheets the last week or so, and I had performed, if I may say so, spectacularly. There was peace in our time.
And yet.
I could stand by the cart, guard the purse while Sarah perused sauce. But what about next time, when I wasn’t with her? While she had her back turned for only a minute, someone would quietly loop his hand around the strap and tuck that purse inside his jacket.
I had the power to do something instructive. Something helpful.
I sidled past the cart, empty but for a package of low-fat cookies. Was Sarah about to make us all start watching our calories? I came up alongside her and said, “You almost done?”
“I thought it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a couple of extra things. You know how you walk around, you see things you need that you forgot you needed.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, sneaking a look back at the cart. “Look,” I said. “If you don’t mind, since it looks like you’re going to be in here longer than you originally planned, I’m going to go wait for you in the car.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” she said, grabbing a bottle of extra-spicy sauce. “Do we like this?”
“The kids hate it,” I said. I turned and walked away. As I went past the cart, I grabbed hold of the purse in one smooth motion, clutching it with my left hand, sweeping it under my jacket, and holding it there with my right arm. I sailed up the rest of the aisle, trying not to look too suspicious. I suspect that most purse snatchers look the part, their eyes darting back and forth, the whole furtive-glance thing. My expression was different. I looked smug. I had on one of those smiles, not where your teeth show, but where your lips are pressed together and your cheeks puff out. A self-satisfied smirk. A real son-of-a-bitch grin.
I exited past the newsstand, the automatic doors parting before me, still holding the purse tight against my body under my jacket. I didn’t want anyone to see me walking with it, not because someone might think I was stealing a purse, but because no guy wants to be seen holding a purse for any reason, even a legitimate one.
With my left hand I reached into my jacket pocket and withdrew my car keys. I pushed the button on the remote key that pops the trunk, and as I approached our Toyota, the rear lid gently yawned. I lifted it open wider, leaned over the cavity, and let the purse slip out.
It was heavy. This was the other thing about Sarah’s purse. The odd time when she does hand it to me, I can’t believe how much it weighs. Half of this, she tells me, is change. Whenever she gets change, rather than take the time to put it into the zippered pouch of her wallet, she just throws it into the bottom of her purse. It’s like the bottom of a fountain in there, only not as wet.
I wasn’t too worried about hiding her purse in the trunk. I knew that when she came out from the store, she wouldn’t have any groceries to put in there, because by then she’d have found out she had no way to pay for them. This, I told myself, was going to be absolutely beautiful.
I got in behind the wheel, slipped the key into the ignition, and turned on the radio, not really listening to what was playing. I was overwhelmed by a tingly, anticipatory feeling, not unlike the sensation I had as a child when I would hide in my sister Cindy’s bedroom closet after school, waiting for her to come upstairs. I’d crouch in there, trying not to move or breathe for fear of rattling the hangers, waiting for the door to open, so I could spring out, scream “Ahhhhh!” and relish Cindy’s look of horror and amazement. That was how I felt, sitting out there in the car, in the parking lot of Mindy’s Market, waiting for Sarah to come out, to get in the car with her own look of horror and amazement, to tell me that when she went to put her sauce in the cart, she discovered that her purse was gone.
I wasn’t sure how long to let this go on. Not very, I figured. Just long enough to make the point. She’d be angry, no doubt, but later, I had a hunch she’d thank me. She’d realize that when you’ve got a choice between having your purse snatched by your husband and someone you don’t know, there are fewer credit cards to cancel when it’s the former.
The car was parked in such a way that I could see the store in my rear-view mirror, and I kept watching for Sarah. “Come on,” I whispered.
And then suddenly there she was, striding toward the car.
“Showtime!” I said to myself.
There was no purse slung over her shoulder and, consequently, no groceries. Not looking very happy, but yet, not as unhappy as I’d expected her to look. Not running, no look of panic about her, exactly. Maybe she was on to me. Maybe she’d spotted me running off with her purse but hadn’t let on. Maybe she was looking to turn the tables on me again.
She came up the passenger side, opened the door, and got in.
“God,” she said.
I was hesitant. “What?”