Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  December 5, 1985

  Chicago

  I ran up the stairs to the L platform this afternoon and reached it just as the train I wanted closed its doors and took off.

  “Sorry, but it just left,” said a guy who stood not far away, leaning against the railing. “You just missed it.”

  I nodded, huffing for breath.

  “So, can you help me out?” the guy asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I did you a favor, now you do one for me,” he said.

  “What favor did you do?” I asked.

  “Told you about the train,” he said.

  That’s like me telling someone who’s standing in the rain that it’s raining. I mean, what kind of a favor is that? I told the guy to leave me alone. Then I sat on the bench, and he stood over me, cursing, until the next train arrived.

  December 8, 1985

  Chicago

  Here is the recipe for Kim’s spinach soup:

  One 10-ounce package of frozen spinach

  2 cups water

  2 cloves garlic, mashed

  1/5 box of spaghetti

  Olive oil

  Parmesan cheese

  Add water, spinach, and garlic in pot. Cook until spinach is thawed. Add olive oil—enough to cover surface of water. Break the spaghetti up and cook it separately. When it’s finished, add it to the olive oil, water, spinach, and garlic combination and top it with grated Parmesan cheese.

  December 26, 1985

  Raleigh

  For Christmas I got:

  a radio/tape player ghetto blaster

  a wristwatch

  a rubber flashlight

  a hat and neck warmer

  socks

  underwear

  a blank tape

  a file

  two rubber stamps

  a lighter that looks like Godzilla

  a blue checkered scarf

  Back in the World, stories by Tobias Wolff

  oil paints

  razors

  1986

  January 13, 1986

  Chicago

  I am trying my best not to spend much money. With nothing coming in, I have to clamp down, so at Walgreens I bought a bar of Fiesta brand soap, which is horrible but costs only 20 cents. I used it last night and still smell like one of those deodorizing pucks they put in the urinals at gas stations.

  March 2, 1986

  Chicago

  Tiffany spent the past five days back in Raleigh with an ice pack against the side of her face. She says that a man, a stranger, insulted her on the street in New York. She insulted him back, and he smacked her.

  “That’s her story, if you want to believe it,” Mom said when she called to tell me about it.

  Anything could have happened to Tiffany. She has such an adventurous life.

  March 3, 1986

  Chicago

  Folding clothes at the Laundromat last night, I could feel someone at my back, close but not quite touching. It was a black woman eating an apple. She was maybe twenty-three years old, and as I continued with what I was doing, she talked to me. “What days do we eat meat?” she asked.

  I thought it was a riddle at first. I mean, who’s the “we” here? I told her we eat meat whenever we want to, or can afford to.

  “Can we eat meat three times a day?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “If we feel up to it.”

  “Where is there a Catholic church?” she asked.

  I told her I didn’t know, and she said, “You a lie.”

  Then she went into the bathroom and stayed there until I left. This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers.

  March 10, 1986

  Chicago

  This afternoon I was hit over the head by a hammer. I was on my hands and knees, picking up bits of plaster, and shoved aside the ladder I’d left it resting on top of. When it fell, it felt just the way I always imagined it would. I was stunned. Now there’s a bleeding lump the size of a small egg on the top of my head. It’s what a cartoon character would have, only it’s me.

  March 14, 1986

  Chicago

  At the supermarket a man in his sixties was talking to the maintenance worker about the adult bookstore a few doors down. “So you’re in there, after paying three or four bucks for tokens and another fifty cents just for walking in the door. Your movie starts and then some guy sticks his dick through a hole in the wall. And what do I want with that, right? It’s disgusting, and the tokens are good for only three or four minutes before the screen turns black. Hell, for a few more bucks I could buy the whole stinking movie. Do you see what I’m talking about? I wouldn’t go into the place, but I got a lot of friends there.”

  March 18, 1986

  Chicago

  I voted this morning at an elementary school. The children seemed excited to have so many adults around, one of whom, an older gay man in a leather vest, wore a pin that read DIGNITY.

  One of the people I voted for this morning was named Lee Botts. Her campaign slogan is HER BOTTOM LINE IS CLEAN WATER. Someone tampered with the sign she had in front of the school, and now it reads LEE BOTTS. HER BOTTOM IS CLEAN.

  March 21, 1986

  Chicago

  On the L I sat next to a black woman studying a textbook. “How’s your math?” she asked as I settled in.

  I thought she’d said mouth, so I said, “Excuse me?”

  She pointed to her book. “Algebra. I could use some help with these problems.”

  Math is my worst subject, so I apologized, then watched as she wrote and scribbled in her margins.

  May 6, 1986

  Chicago

  I found this excellent bit of advice in The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette: “If you start to shake hands with someone who has lost an arm, shake his other hand. If he has lost both arms, shake the tip of his artificial hand (be quick and unembarrassed about it).”

  May 7, 1986

  Chicago

  I went to the airport today to meet Mom and Aunt Joyce, who had a short layover on their way home from Santa Fe. I’m broke but didn’t want to say anything about it, didn’t want to be too obvious, but then of course I did say something. We had a coffee, and afterward Aunt Joyce pressed $20 into my hand. Mom slipped me two $20s and a $10. Then she gave me a check, and I left the airport cursing and muttering to myself, because I was angry and embarrassed to be twenty-nine and hinting around for money. I make myself sick.

  May 10, 1986

  Chicago

  Man on the bus with a gray beard and a cheap suit: “I’ll kick your fucking ass, bitch.” He said this to every woman who walked down the aisle. “I’ll kick your fucking ass!”

  June 1, 1986

  Chicago

  I went to an Indian restaurant last night with Rick, Jeannie, and a humorless couple they know from Maine who just moved to Chicago. The husband was fine, actually, but his wife, Liza—what a pain. Before moving into their apartment on Addison and Western, they lived in a tepee. She and her husband are macrobiotic. We all met at my apartment, and after I rolled a joint and some of us started smoking, impatient Liza said, “I’m sorry, but can we talk on the way to the restaurant?”

  Later I asked why she’s so unhappy living here, and she said, “It’s too involved to get into with you.”

  It was fun to make her angry and disgusted and watch her roll her eyes.

  The Indian restaurant we went to was cheap. It only cost $3 to eat, and I laughed when Liza ordered the potato cutlet.

  “Is something funny?” she asked.

  “It’s just the word cutlet used for a potato,” I said.

  While we ate, Indian prom couples paraded up and down the street. They were kids, and they looked great, so sophisticated. We’d just finished when a woman wandered in and approached our table for money. She wore a scarf on her head, pulled down low enough to cover her eyebrows. “Are youse people familiar with this neighborhood?” she asked. “’Cau
se I’m scared stiff.”

  This stretch of Devon Avenue, in the thick of an Indian neighborhood, is the last place to be frightened. “I been to the fire station and all over,” she said. “I was outside looking at youse people and crying my eyes out.”

  She rubbed the back of her hands and tugged at her scarf. “See, I got a baby at home and it hasn’t eaten all day. I got to get some formula. The guys at the fire station gave me a couple bucks, but let me tell you, I’m scared. The baby has one diaper left and, see, I’m a waitress. I worked four days but don’t get my check ’til Tuesday and I got to get some formula. I been right outside this window, crying my eyes out.”

  The woman was around my age, and while Rick reached for his wallet, she pulled what she said was a birth certificate from her pocket and flashed it for a second. “See, I got a baby. I’m not lying.”

  I wondered what she’d do if I offered to buy the birth certificate for $20. Not that I would have, it was just an idea, and such a cruel one it made me blush.

  June 7, 1986

  Chicago

  Finally, Amy has moved from Raleigh to Chicago. After she sat shell-shocked on the couch for a week, looking out the window at the horrible neighborhood I’m now living in, I took her to apply for cocktail-waitressing jobs. One of the places we went to this afternoon was called the Bar Association. We walked in to find the manager sitting at a table and eating a slice of white chocolate cake. “Here,” he said, holding out his fork, “try a bite.”

  We just stood there.

  “Aw, don’t be like that,” he said. “I don’t have AIDS or nothing.”

  We each took a forkful and told him it was good, which seemed to make him happy.

  On our way back to the apartment, Amy bought a lottery ticket at Sun Drugs. She asked the woman behind the counter how these things work, and when the woman explained that hundreds of thousands of people play each week, Amy was disappointed. She thought only a handful of people bought tickets and that her odds of winning were one in ten.

  June 29, 1986

  Chicago

  Now that Amy has a job, it’s time for her to find a place of her own. This afternoon we answered an ad we’d seen in the Reader. Someone named Jerry was looking for a roommate, and we arrived to find a full-grown man with long oily hair. His teeth were amber pegs, like dried corn kernels. “After you called I was going to clean up, but I watched TV instead,” he admitted.

  Jerry had collages of wrestling stars hanging on his bedroom walls. He told us he’d made them himself, and then he showed us one of Elvis Presley he was working on. He drank from a coffee mug with the word ME on it, and when not holding it he scratched his elbow a lot.

  It seems that Jerry’s last roommate drove the gas bill up by using the oven all the time. “She was always baking potatoes,” he told us. “All hours of the day. One night she put two or three in the oven and then fell asleep. I got up the next morning and those potatoes was baked, roasted, broasted, I don’t know what all, but they was burnt and black.”

  Amy and I laughed, not about the fire hazard but about someone eating nothing but baked potatoes.

  Jerry took it seriously, though. The only time he laughed was when talking about a murder that had recently taken place in the neighborhood. “So it turned out that whoever it was, ha-ha, stuffed the body, ha-ha, into a Dumpster.”

  He gave us a tour. The kitchen table had what looked like molasses spilled on it. In the living room was a suit of armor and a great many books about Vietnam. He has a statue of Buddha and a baseball cap with THE GENERAL written on it. The T-shirt he was wearing read THE FIGHTING SAMOANS.

  One thing we noticed was that Jerry was remarkably calm. He spoke very slowly and usually with his eyes on the TV. There were overflowing ashtrays everywhere. Jerry told us that he works with computers and is very successful, so successful he’s looking for a roommate to pay half of his $250 per month rent.

  We told him we were going to see a few more places but would keep him in mind.

  On our way home Amy told me about a girl in her Second City class named Sue, which she spells S-I-O-U-X. Amy was laughing about it at work with a cocktail waitress named Kim, until she discovered the girl had changed the spelling to K-H-Y-M-E.

  “Well, sure,” Amy said, cornered. “Khyme makes sense, but Sioux?”

  July 7, 1986

  Chicago

  Amy and I were downtown, and when it started to pour we ran beneath the awning of an art-supply shop. A woman the age of a grandmother trotted up shortly after we did. She was small, and as she bent to tie her sneakers, we noticed how tiny her feet were.

  “What’s your shoe size?” Amy asked.

  “I’m a one and a half,” the woman said. She wasn’t bothered by the question but seemed pleased that we had noticed. “I was a war baby,” she said. “There were shortages all around.” She winked. “That’s what I always tell folks. I have to buy all my shoes in the children’s department.”

  We watched as she tied a plastic bonnet over her hair and headed out into the rain.

  July 10, 1986

  Chicago

  This evening I saw a Doberman pinscher with its mouth taped shut. It was a makeshift muzzle, and I bet it really hurts when it gets ripped off. An hour later, Mom called to tell me that Melina, her and Dad’s Great Dane, had been stung by bees and taken to an emergency vet. If anything were to happen to that dog, I don’t know what my parents would do.

  July 18, 1986

  Chicago

  I saw a bird swoop down this morning and pick up a wad of chewing gum. Later, on the corner of Magnolia and Leland, I saw a drug deal taking place. The seller looked me in the eye as I passed. Later still, I saw a man rifle through a woman’s purse on Kenmore. He looked me in the eye as well.

  It’s Friday, and horribly hot, so after cashing my paycheck I went to McDonald’s and bought an orange soda, which cost 70 cents. Sitting down, I noticed a woman from my bank approaching the counter. Alice Devlin, her name is, and I learned a long time ago to never stand in her line, as she always gives me grief. At McDonald’s she ordered a sundae. When it was handed to her, she carefully wiped her plastic spoon with a napkin. She went over it time and time again, as if she’d picked it up off the street. Only when she was satisfied did she hand over her money and accept her change.

  July 20, 1986

  Chicago

  I went to breakfast on the corner of Leland and Broadway, and my waitress had her initials tattooed on her wrist. When my food came, a couple approached and stood on the other side of the window. The man pointed to himself. Then he pointed to the woman beside him and put his hands into a prayer position, begging for my toast and eggs.

  September 6, 1986

  Chicago

  While working I listened to a radio program called Good Health, broadcast live from the Plutonia Health and Fasting Center and hosted by a woman named Eileen Fulton, who answers questions and makes comments regarding the way people feel. It is Dr. Fulton’s opinion that her listeners need to clean the “toxivity” out of their systems. She says, “You take a bath once a week, right? You take your clothes to the Laundromat when they get dirty, so it only makes sense for you to clean out your insides!”

  A pregnant woman called to say she gets constipated. Dr. Fulton set up an appointment immediately, saying that backed-up poisons can ruin an unborn baby. “You need to evacuate and eliminate,” she said.

  An obese woman called to say that her heels hurt—they throb. Dr. Fulton said, “I know you. I bet you get out of bed at night and go down for a snack from the refrigerator. Am I right?”

  The woman confessed, adding that sometimes, when there are no sweets in the house, she’ll fix herself a glass of sugar water.

  Dr. Fulton calls this suicide. She set up an appointment for Monday at seven forty-five and said she’ll cure the sweet tooth with Dr. Fulton’s Meal in a Glass.

  The Plutonia Health and Fasting Center broadcasts on Saturday mornings.

 
September 7, 1986

  Chicago

  Today I listened to Daddy-O. Sometimes he calls his show The Sunday Jazz Clambake, but today it was Daddy-O on the Patio. He has little nicknames he’s given the musicians: Sassy, of course, for Sarah Vaughan. Today after playing “A Cottage for Sale,” he said, “Mr. B. is doing fine.

  “Who? Why, Billy Eckstine!”

  Daddy-O calls the radio station “Dad’s pad.” I imagine it looks like a den and has in it many pictures of him shaking hands with famous jazz musicians. I’d love to have a den one day. That’s why I don’t want to live in a loft—it’s one big room. I suppose you could carve a “den space” out of it, but it’s not the same thing.

  September 12, 1986

  Chicago

  Again today I worked for Walt, refinishing the woodwork and painting in his basement. He listens to an oldies station and complains that it plays too much Motown. “Even back when they weren’t oldies, it seems like they played too much Motown,” he said. Walt sings along to all the songs. Today, when the game came on, he switched stations and listened as the Bears went against someone or other. I know nothing about football, so he explained certain things—why, for instance, a certain player shouldn’t get paid this week and the definition of sudden-death overtime.

  Walt is remarried and has a one-year-old daughter. His wife came down in a pink dress, carrying the sweet-looking child in a matching outfit. Walt calls his wife “baby.” He told her, “If they ask why we didn’t go to the church picnic, tell them it’s because we didn’t go. Jeez, baby, who would schedule a picnic during a Bears game? Nobody will be there and we need to get this framing done or else we’ll be living on one floor for the rest of our lives.”