The results were inconclusive which assured him of my guilt and he gave me another opportunity to return what I didn’t have. Since he couldn’t prosecute me, he would nose it around that I was a thief.
He called Andre and said he had a thief working for him and that he ought to fire me.
When he questioned me, I told Andre the guy from security was mistaken and he said he believed me. Besides there was nothing to steal from his shop.
I thought that issue was over, but two months later, Andre said business was slow and he couldn’t afford me any more.
Eva told me they had been hassling her at work because of me. “Did you take something?” she asked me.
“Do you have to ask?” I said, feeling flush with guilt.
“I suppose not,” she said, “but how well do I really know you? How well does anyone know anyone?”
“I’m disappointed to hear you say that,” I said. “I think you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t embarrass you by stealing at a job you recommended me for.”
She seemed to be thinking about what I said. “Are you saying that if I hadn’t recommended you for that job, say if you had got it on your own, you would consider stealing something you were hired to protect?”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m innocent,” I shouted at her.
“I want to believe you are,” she said. “Under certain circumstances, anyone is capable of anything. I think you said that yourself.”
We were taking one of our walks at the time of this confrontation and I thought of leaving her and turning back. I felt betrayed by her attitude. Instead I was bitterly silent, waiting for an apology.
“Why are they so sure you took the opium?” she asked.
“How do I know?”
“What did the security man say when he interviewed you?”
“He said I had a fishy look about me,” I said.
She laughed. “You do have a fishy look sometimes. I suppose it was convenient to blame you. The theft happened under your watch.”
“Do you believe me or not?”
She reached for my hand, which I put behind my back. “Mel, of course I believe you. The whole episode is very fishy. Maybe the Head of Security stole the opium.”
I had thought of that, but it didn’t seem likely. “I think the guy who broke in stole it.”
“They say there’s no evidence that anyone broke in,” she said.
“I know someone broke in,” I said, “evidence or not. Maybe he didn’t get what he wanted the first time and broke in again. The whole thing’s a kind of mystery.”
This time I let her take my hand. “I told them,” she said, “you couldn’t have done it. I defended you. That’s when they started hassling me. They even suggested I might have been an accomplice. I have been working there for over three years. You see why I’m so upset.”
It felt to me something I had done had gotten her into trouble. “Sorry,” I said.
“I’ve been seriously thinking of quitting,” she said, “but it would probably look like an admission of guilt.”
“Don’t quit,” I told her.
She squeezed my hand. “I won’t,” she said. “Thank you for your support.”
I wondered when I got home if this fight with Eva, if that’s what it was, had brought us closer or further apart. Was it significant that she didn’t invite me in on our return?
I had been talking off and on with Klotzman about the charge the Head of Security had made against me. At least he appeared to believe in my innocence.
“What I don’t understand,” he said, “is that it appears you’ve been terribly wronged, yet you show virtually no passion at being mistreated. If I were in your sneakers, I would have called the Head of Security a hateful son of a bitch or worse. You may even have had some legal recourse. You just take it all with your head down.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” I said. “You know I have trouble standing up for myself.”
“Well, that’s what you’re here for, to learn to speak up for yourself. I know the feelings of guilt you talk about stand in the way, but you have to try to override them and not make excuses for yourself.”
“I did show some passion with Eva when she questioned me about the missing opium.”
“Good, but Eva’s your friend. She hasn’t informed the world that you are a thief and maybe even an addict.”
“I once at a party tasted opium and it made me sick,” I said. “I threw up afterward. If it hadn’t made me sick, I might have become a user and one thing would have led to another.”
“We’re not talking about might have,” he said. “We’re talking about what is in the real world. We all might have done things we haven’t done, but if we haven’t done them, we haven’t done them.”
I replayed his comment in my head but I refused to acknowledge the justice of it. “I lied about tasting opium,” I said, “but it might have happened. I’ve smoked marijuana on occasion.”
“Marijuana is not the same as opium,” he said.
“That’s not the way the law looks at it,” I said.
“Sometimes the law makes mistakes,” he said. “Anyway it seems to me we’re going around in circles. There is a difference between thought and deed, as you know. And the issue here is not letting someone blame you for something you didn’t do without giving him hell in return. Okay?”
“Okay,” I muttered as if the acknowledgment had been dragged out of me.
As usual, I felt worse, more of a failure, when I left Klotzman than when I came in.
I raised my fist inside my own apartment and looking in the mirror, fantasized ways of getting back at “the hateful son of a bitch.” But it was my face not the Head of Security’s that stared back helplessly from the mirror. I had no weapons at hand. The only thing I could think of was getting a car, though I hadn’t driven in almost a year, and running down the bastard when he was leaving work. I could wait for him in the car, wearing dark glasses, parked inconspicuously across the street from the exit then trail him until the opportunity presented itself. I didn’t have to kill him. Just maim the bastard, break something before slipping away. The thing was to get my hands on a nondescript car and clip him when there were no witnesses. Hard to find an empty street at that time. Be patient. Wait for the ideal moment. Then bam, take him down. Hit him in such a way as to leave no blood on the car. I could do that, I thought, talking up my courage, doubting it all the time, knowing I lacked whatever it was to follow through.
Why did I give back the gun they gave me when I left the job? It might be easier to wait in a doorway and shoot him when he went by, slipping away in the dark, dropping the weapon in the river. What river was I thinking of? If only I had conveniently forgotten about returning the gun. I wouldn’t know where to get another one. I had never owned a gun.
Possibly I could lure him some place where there was a cliff and sneak up behind and push the hateful bastard off, watching him scream as I hurried away.
I worked out in strenuous detail even more impossible plans then, tired, lay down on the couch in a guilty sweat, feeling I had in some way gotten back at him. I saw him in my dreams a broken man, smashed up bleeding profusely, begging for help that would not come.
The thought sufficed for the deed only for awhile. Reality, that uninvited guest, would at some point intrude. If only wishes could kill. For days I thought of schemes for getting him and some of the time I allowed myself to think I had. The power of the powerless lies in fantasy.
And then, walking with Eva, she told me that Warren, the Head of Security, had been let go.
It seemed so right I might have dreamed it. “What did he do?” I asked.
“No one will say,” she said. “There are rumors, but I suspect it’s all guess work.”
I was hungry for information. “What are the rumors you heard.”