“We have to go to General Mart. I couldn’t believe their price on romaine. I don’t care if we can afford it, I’m just not going to pay that kind of price. It’s an outrage.”
“But what about the other stuff?”
“They didn’t have the fabric softener I like, and by then I didn’t even check the steaks. I knew we’d have to go someplace else, so I just put back the sauce and decided to hell with it. So let’s go.”
Okay, I thought. So she hadn’t even needed her wallet, which meant she didn’t have to go into her purse, which meant she hadn’t even noticed that it was missing. It’s really terrible when you’ve got a surprise all worked out and the victim won’t cooperate.
As I backed out of the spot and turned left out of the lot, heading for General Mart, I pondered how long I wanted to let this play out. When she got to the checkout line at General? I didn’t know that I could wait that long for the payoff. I wanted Sarah to learn her lesson now. The point would get made, I’d get my sense of satisfaction, and Sarah could start getting indignant right away, instead of later.
We were coming up on a light when I said, ever so casually, “Uh, where’s your purse?”
And Sarah’s whole body stiffened for a second, the way mine used to when I’d be on the subway and, for a moment, think I’d misplaced my wallet, and my stomach would do cartwheels. But I could reach around at those moments and feel my back pocket and be reassured that my wallet was in its proper place. Sarah was going to have no such option.
But then she laughed. A short chortle.
“I almost forgot,” she said. “I didn’t bring it.”
The light turned yellow and I slowed. As it turned red, I said, “What do you mean, you didn’t bring it?”
“Well, it’s so heavy, I’ve started using this.” She leaned back in the seat, opened up her jacket, and pointed to the black leather pouch she had strapped to her waist.
“What the hell is that?”
“You won’t believe this, but I finally decided to listen to you. I think it was that story about the woman who lost her winning lottery ticket in her purse that did it for me. Not that I’ve got a winning ticket. But this forced me to pare down all that useless crap I always carry around, and my shoulder even feels better not carrying all that weight, plus I don’t have to keep my eye out for my purse all the time. Sometimes you’re not the big stupid idiot everyone says you are.”
11
“WHAT’S WRONG, ZACK?” SARAH ASKED. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You sure? You seem a bit off.”
I wasn’t sure at all. In fact, I thought there was an excellent chance that I would be sick all over the dashboard at any moment. “No, I’m just fine.”
“I don’t know where they get off, charging that much for romaine. Do they think that people don’t shop around, that we don’t know that if we go down the street a ways we can get it for less? Maybe it’s a convenience thing. They figure people don’t mind paying more for something if it means they don’t have to bother to go someplace else. But if you’re getting several things, and you can save money on all of them, it just makes sense to go someplace else. Anyway, General has a pretty good butcher’s counter, so we can get steaks there every bit as good as Mindy’s.” There was a long pause. “Are you not talking to me, or what?”
“Yeah, I’m talking to you.”
“Tell me again what you got done on your book today.”
“Oh, some last-minute editing stuff. Finishing the last chapter. I’ll probably send it to Tom by the end of next week.”
“Are you happy with it?” Sarah asked.
“Yeah, sure, I guess. I don’t know. Probably not.” I glanced over at Sarah in time to see her shake her head and smile.
“You’re always like this when you finish a book,” she said. “You read through it and think it’s the worst thing anybody’s ever written.”
“Even I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“You know what I mean. You’re your own worst critic. Is that what’s got you? Letdown?”
“I never said I was down.”
“You just seem a bit off, that’s all I’m saying.”
I didn’t say anything. I had a lot on my mind. Jail, for example. As we drove to General Mart, I found myself looking in the rear-view mirror more than I usually do. I figured someone would be after me. Someone should be after me.
I had, after all, stolen something. But I was not, I told myself, a purse snatcher. Not technically. A purse snatcher was someone who ripped handbags from the clutches of their owners, usually little old ladies who didn’t have the strength to hang on to them and who got knocked down in the process, suffering a broken hip. I had broken no little old hips.
I drove for a while without saying anything, then: “You’re sure you didn’t bring your purse?”
“Huh?”
“Your purse. You’re sure you didn’t bring it along, out of habit, even though you’re wearing that thing on your waist?”
“A fanny pack.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s called a fanny pack.”
I glanced down at her lap. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. It doesn’t hang over your fanny. It hangs over your, well, it hangs over your front. Maybe they thought ‘crotch pack’ didn’t have as nice a ring to it.”
“They also call them waist bags, but that sounds like something somebody with a colostomy wears,” Sarah said. “Do you not like my fanny pack?”
“It’s fine. I like it. I just don’t understand why you decided to stop carrying a purse. You have a lot of stuff. You can’t get everything you need into a little bag like that. You need a purse.” I seemed to be running out of breath. “You should really be carrying a purse.”
“Let me ask you a serious question,” Sarah said.
“Yeah?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“No, all I’m saying is, this is a bit of a shock. You live with someone for almost twenty years, you see her carrying a purse every day, which is, like, a hundred thousand days or something, and then, one day, without warning, she decides to go around with a fanny pack. I just, I don’t know, I would have liked a little warning is all.”
Sarah looked at me and said nothing. There was a long pause, and then she said, “You know you just drove past General Mart.”
I glanced around, saw the market over my shoulder, and said, “Shit.” There was one of those concrete medians down the center of the street, which meant I had to go up a full block and make a left before I could turn around.
“I still say there’s something wrong with you,” Sarah said. And then, like a bulb going off: “That reminds me. All this talk about purses.”
“What.”
“In the store, after you left, there was this woman, she started going absolutely nuts.”
“What woman?” But I had a feeling I already knew. A blonde lady, looking at garbage bags, who liked low-fat cookies.
“She was just up the aisle from me.”
“What did she look like?”
If Sarah thought this question was unusual, she didn’t let on. “I don’t know, mid-twenties, thin, blonde hair. Wearing a white suit. She looked kind of familiar to me, actually.”
“You know her?” This was hopeful. With a name, I could get this purse returned right away.
“No, I just felt I’d seen her someplace before. So she goes, ‘Where’s my purse?’ You know, screaming that her purse is missing, and she looks totally frantic, which I guess I would be too if someone grabbed my purse.”
“What do you mean, grabbed it? Did she see someone take her purse?”
“I don’t know. You just assume, I guess. She called down to me, standing by her cart, asks if I’ve seen her purse, like I’m keeping track of her stuff, and I guess I shrugged no, and then she ran to the front of the store, and that was the last I saw of her.” Sarah took a breath, made a funny expression with her mouth, like she wanted to say something but didn’t know how.