Long ago, during the first decade of their marriage, they’d had to snatch pleasure between jobs and child care and the sleep they were always short of. In the several decades afterward, sex was peaceful and considerate. Even ten years ago they were still warm with each other. But the best years were long ago, in college — parietal rules still in force then; immoral behavior still punished by expulsion. In college their problem was finding a site for immoral behavior. They had a few favorite places. The top floor of the university art museum, a storage space for paintings and sculptures waiting to be repaired, where they kept company with dark Annunciations and cracked nudes. The boathouse down by the river — they lay under overturned canoes. In early fall and late spring they visited the ocean, just a bus ride from school, its beach deserted by the end of the afternoon.
She liked to recall a particular October day. The water, too cold for more than a dip, rippled in shades of pewter and slate. They watched it for a while. Then he fell asleep. She grew chilly, and the one beach towel they’d brought lay on his chest. Carefully she slid it off, pausing to admire the auburn hair that curled there; then she wrapped her own body in the towel. “Dolly,” he said, opening one morning-glory eye. “You thief. That towel is mine.”
“Not anymore,” and she was on her feet and running. It took him a few groggy minutes to get up and run, too. They ran across the length of the beach, half-naked boy chasing girl in bikini. Her long brown hair, thick then, flew behind her: the striped towel waved from her hand. She was headed toward a wall of low rocks that led from the road to the sea. He’d catch her when she started scrambling over them. Wisely she didn’t try to run farther. Instead she turned abruptly and faced him, and he thudded against her as if shot by a cannon. She dropped the towel. They stood in a panting embrace. It wasn’t foreplay, really: it was simple hugging, love throbbing from one heart to the other. When at last this exchange satisfied both, their thumbs entered each other’s waistbands; in seconds the lovers were lying on the sand beside their apparel. Who cared if anybody walked by.
Soon afterward they married. They raised two calm daughters, now settled with their own families in Ohio. “Those investments certainly panned out,” Henry would say with a smile, speaking of their progeny. The pleased grandparents visited their successful investments twice a year. They traveled elsewhere once in a while, bought new books at the bookshop, made charitable donations. As they aged they went on doing what everybody in their cohort did — paid the condominium fee, shopped for groceries, went to a movie and modest restaurant once a week. They joined a bird-watching group. They tended their ailments. But they’d become too weary for travel, and their tastes in reading had narrowed — thrillers, now, and old novels: all available free at the public library. They canceled their subscription to the symphony; they had an excellent stereo system at home, and the series cost so much. Tuesdays were free at the museum, so they dropped that membership, too. They dropped the New York Review of Books. Staying au courant could break their fragile budget. The pensions, the annuities, the long-term health insurance: all were sufficient. And yet — again like their cohort — they felt pinched.
“MERCHANDISE — I’LL TRY IT FIRST,” Dorothy said. “I’m an experienced shopper.”
At a convenience store she waited until she was the only customer. Then she slipped a quart of milk into her reusable shopping bag and pushed the little cart to the cash box behind which stood a melancholy Mexican woman — no, indigenous: she had an Aztec face; she was ready to be plundered. Dorothy turned her cart around and wheeled it to the refrigerated items and shoved the milk back into its case and removed it again and this time placed it in the cart. She pushed the cart to the woman and paid for everything that was in it.
She tried sneaking milk from the Russians, too. Again her nerve failed. A stout orange-haired woman stood behind a counter dishing takeout chicken and kasha, and her twin served up week-old salads. The whole place smelled of fish. Dorothy thought helplessly of the suffering of these people, generation after generation. At the cash register stood a younger sister of the other two. Dorothy took the quart of milk from her shopping bag and laid it on the counter with the rest of her groceries.
At the 7-Eleven the cashier looked slightly feebleminded. There was no way Dorothy would prey on him.
Each time she told Henry she’d stolen the milk.
His own effort had been a failure. At a men’s store he’d put two pairs of socks into his jacket pocket and walked out. But when he got to the subway station, the socks were gone. Somebody had picked his pocket, he claimed.
“The socks probably fell …,” she began.
A mighty scowl. “We’ve got to work as a team,” Henry said. “One the distraction, the other the sleight-of-hand artist.”
She was silent.
“Do want to run your own operation, Dolly?” he said, and chucked her under the chin. “Is that what you want?”
She wanted him — as he once was — but she didn’t say that.
DEPARTMENT STORES BECAME their theater of operations. They learned on the job. Some merchandise could be delicately edged off a counter by Dorothy while Henry and the salesperson discussed the similar items lying there for inspection. In this way they acquired a pair of suede gloves, an infant jumpsuit, a pen, a small picture frame, a jar of imported chutney. At the fine jewelry department she charmed a pair of men’s cuff links into the right sleeve of her coat. Then, reviving the “tell me all about yourself ” smile of her middle years, she rested her left elbow on the glass case and invited the jeweler to tell her all about semiprecious stones. Meanwhile she thrust her right hand into the coat’s pocket and left it there until first one link and then the other dropped from the sleeve into her curled palm.
What to do with the booty? Well, they ate the chutney. The picture frame became a wedding gift. They gave the infantwear and the pen and the gloves to Goodwill. Poor people would put them to use, not guessing their market value, appreciating only their utility. Redistribution — that’s what she and Henry were engaged in, Dorothy told herself. And although she worried about the immediate future of the duped salespeople, she wasted no pity on the big stores themselves, which could swallow their losses. Just to even things out, she sent generous gifts to the grandchildren from those very stores. But her sympathy centered on the agitated Henry. His spirits soared immediately after a snatch but plummeted a few days later. “We are not sufficiently exercising our talents,” he grumbled one day. “We should start thinking about banks.”
“Maybe stagecoaches,” she said lightly. “What shall we do with these beautiful cuff links?”
He shrugged. “Goodwill.”
“Somebody will spot their value and fence them. You should wear them, Henry. To a party.”