At
the promo price of $2.79/gallon, I buy more milk than I expected and so need
one more bag. Once I am at the cash register, I transfer my stuff from the
shopping cart to the counter, and handing over my credit card to the cashier,
with her permission, I step out to grab a third bag from my car trunk. I am
back in a jiffy making my way around a blond, slightly wobbly woman in a pastel
(lavender was it?) pantsuit in the doorway, which, annoyingly, a few stacks of
baskets that stand sentry at the entrance and a fruit stand on one side of the
passageway itself have narrowed. I make a mental note of telling the cashier to
widen the passageway by moving the baskets elsewhere. Something about the
youngish looking middle-aged woman at the doorway, too, dressed to impress in
her vintage clothing, makes an impression on my mind. For some reason, she
doesn’t come across as a real shopper as she seems only to be studying the
$1.99/pound cherries on the fruit stand.
Once I reach the register, I realize that my double-flapped,
leather, checkbook-sized wallet I had held in my hand after handing over my
credit card to the cashier is missing. Frantically, I look for it in the
vicinity, run back to the trunk, check there and return dejected. Next, feeling
stupid for not putting away my wallet in my pocket book, and thinking will I
ever learn? I roll the cart out of the store, rest it against a lamp-post on
the sidewalk, return to the car, and check the trunk again. Just then, my mind
darts back to the wobbly woman at the doorway. Brushing past her, I might have
dropped my wallet in the passageway and she might have picked it up. I leap
toward the sidewalk. A few yards away weighed down to one side by a tote bag
there she is, waddling away. “Miss,” I cry.
The woman stops and turns around as if a police
command has been issued. Held up at above head level something black in an open
position dangles from her left hand. Voila, it is my wallet! Lowering her hand
and extending it and heading toward me, in a flustered voice, she says, “Uh, I
was just about to figure out whom to return it to.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” I say and rush toward her and
as I take the open wallet back, I notice my paper money gone. I have no qualms
about instantly accusing the woman of stealing it. She protests, which is when,
I notice a walking stick in her hand. Is she disabled? I wonder. Normally, a
fighter in the face of perceived injustice, I also pick my battles. This was
definitely a battle to be overlooked.
Looking ghostly (suddenly, she looks bleached head to
toe; do I l strike her as a monster?), she drags, “You have your cards . .
..”
Feeling guilty for calling, possibly, a disabled
person a thief, yet not letting go completely yet, I persist, “You did take my
cash, didn’t you? . . . Twenty three dollars.”
She protests again but I halt when
she says, “I was at the store to find out if they take EBT cards.”
My heart sinks. Having seen at many stores, “EBT
accepted here” I figure EBT is some kind of a welfare card. Still, like a woman
possessed, I ask, “You took my money, didn’t you? . . . But, I guess you need
that money.” Cheeky words, while still kind, substitute for any other possible
action against her. I am a Scorpio and thus known for my stings. By now, I am
by my car. I don’t care for the money anymore but I still wish the woman had
admitted her guilt. Under the circumstances, stealing seems excusable but not
lying. I am owed at least honesty from her. Being robbed, and then to be lied
about it, feels like injury and insult in one punch.
All I hear is, “Do I look like someone who would do
that?”
I yell back, “None of us look like who we really are.”
Before I get into my car, I stick my head into the
store and ask, “What’s an EBT card?” The cashier tries explaining and says,
“Yes,”
when I interject “It’s something the government gives out, right?”
Though it was ultimately my fault, I still feel lousy
losing the money and calculate the number of gallons of milk I could have
bought or any number of other things with it. Charity too enters my mind. The
poetic justice in someone truly needy receiving manna from heaven does not
escape me either. However, for all this
noble sentiment, this would be the last time I hold my wallet in my hand once
its business being there is over.
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