10

this might be a good time to revisit what I would call the Asshole Issue.

Maybe you've already reached a conclusion. Let's say you've voted in the yes column. Zack Walker is an asshole. No doubt about it. Made up your mind during The Backpack Incident, haven't looked back. If that's how you feel now, I don't see you changing your mind anytime soon.

But maybe you've been less quick to judge. Maybe you're on the fence. You understand how a man's concern for his family could lead him to behave a bit irrationally at times. You've been there. Well, we're coming to the part that will reinforce your convictions, one way or the other.

A day or so after my safety lecture, Sarah and I had gone over to Mindy's Market to pick up a few items. Despite my rant, I was trying to be less fanatical in my approach to family safety, and part of that included being more relaxed generally about things. So when Sarah arrived home and said she wanted to go and pick up some groceries, I offered to come along. I'd been in my office, making pencil notations on some pages I'd just printed out, and met her at the front door after she changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater. We each grabbed light jackets because, even though we were well into spring, there was a cool wind blowing in from the north.

There was lots to talk about. At least lots for Sarah to talk about. It had been a busy day at The Metropolitan.

“So I tell Leanne, you know Leanne?”

I said yes.

“I want her to go down to the waterfront, where there's a press conference being called by Alderman Winsted, about all this garbage that's piling up by the yacht club, but it's raining out, and she says she can't go because the ground's going to be soft and mushy, and she's wearing this new Donna Karan thing, and these nice shoes, because she thought she was going up to cover the Wang trial—”

“The which?”

“Wang. The guy who cut up his girlfriend and dropped her body parts all over five counties.”

“Okay.”

I was struggling to release a cart, which was jammed into the next one.

“Except the Wang thing has been put off a day, and Walters called in sick—”

“Again?”

“I know, this is like the fourth time in two months, and it's always his first day back after a couple off, and he always calls from Ottawa, where he's boffing this chick from the Citizen, and the way I figure it, he just wants a long weekend, right? And then the M.E. wants to know why some fucking moron copy editor rewrote Owen's story about the guy who was charged with possessing all this kiddie porn, and his defense is artistic freedom, and I say, maybe it's because Owen wouldn't know an interesting opening sentence if it came along and bit him on his nose, and he says that may be true, but maybe next time, the copy editor could rewrite it in such a way that she doesn't switch the names of the accused and the defense lawyer. Anyway, what happened with you today?”

“Nothing.” I had the cart free now and we were trolling past a display of fresh fruit.

“Did you hear from the kids today?” Sarah asked.

Paul had phoned on his cell around noon to ask whether I could check in his room and see whether he'd left a science assignment on top of his dresser. I was on the cordless. “Okay, I'm in your room now, looking at the top of your dresser, and I see no science assignment,” I said.

He paused at the other end of the line. “Pull back my covers and see if it's in my bed.”

I tried that. “No luck,” I said. “But I have found a Penthouse.”

“Never mind.”

I hadn't heard anything from Angie, although before leaving in the morning she informed me that I owed her $127. Had I borrowed $127 from her, I asked, because if I had, my memory had been wiped clean of the incident. She sighed and reminded me that we had agreed to reimburse her for half of the cost of her new pants and top, an arrangement about which I knew nothing.

“I told her that,” Sarah said.

“Well then, you owe her $127.”

Sarah said we needed romaine, maybe a couple of steaks, and we were totally out of fabric softener. I expressed concern about how often we were using the barbecue, which, by the way, I still had to get fixed.

“There was a story, in your paper, about how when meat cooks over hot coals, it turns into pure cancer.”

“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?”

“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.”