Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  a German woman writing her PhD on the role of the diary in contemporary American fiction. She too is on a deadline and asks that I call her Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, trying several times per night until I reach her.

  a gay choral group asking for mementos they might auction off at their upcoming fund-raiser, Life Is a Cabaret.

  March 13, 2002

  Paris

  Hugh and Manuela are wood-graining the study of a well-known actor. Yesterday they asked him what color carpet he’d chosen, and he answered, “Tête-de-nègre.” This translates to “nigger’s head,” and he repeated it several times. There was a black man installing baseboards in the next room, and when Hugh suggested he maybe keep it down, the actor said, “It’s not racist—it’s a color. Ask anyone.”

  March 21, 2002

  Paris

  Again I reported to the polyarthritis center in the 19th. I’d signed up for volunteer work, hoping it might improve my French, but yesterday afternoon I said nothing more complicated than hello and good-bye. The promised new shelves still hadn’t arrived. Papers couldn’t be sorted, so instead of filing, I cleaned and carried out trash. I mopped the floor and washed the windows and after a while I started feeling like a foreign maid, the type people smile at as they say, “Let me just get out of your way.” I didn’t necessarily mind. It just wasn’t what I’d expected.

  March 30, 2002

  New York

  On Wednesday, Milton Berle, Billy Wilder, and Dudley Moore died. The papers have been running nice, long obituaries, the fondest for Billy Wilder. I read his notice in yesterday’s Times while on the way to Amy’s. I read Milton Berle’s in the Tribune while waiting in the Delta check-in line. On yesterday’s flight, I was surprised by the number of families flying first class, parents with children. The couple in front of me had two adolescents who complained about the wait. “This is like the line for coach or something,” the girl said. “Just like in Barcelona.”

  April 6, 2002

  Raleigh

  At the Austin airport, the magazines Swank, Busty, Stud, Playboy, and High Society are grouped under the heading “Sophisticates.” The New Yorker, on the other hand, is placed under “General Interest.” A few hours later, at the Dallas airport, I saw a sign reading PATRIOTIC T-SHIRTS 50% OFF. That pretty much represents the national mood. Tax time is here and people are realizing that pride costs money.

  I was on the second leg of my trip to Raleigh, standing in the bathroom, when I noticed how old I looked. The lights were fairly harsh, and I studied myself as I simultaneously peed all over the floor. It looked to be a good sixteen ounces, and when the plane pitched, a small lake flowed toward the door. It was panic time, and after trying to mop it up with toilet tissue, I switched to paper towels. They couldn’t be flushed, so I had to throw them in the trash bin, which was already full. So there I was, a pee-soaked paper towel in each hand, looking really, really old.

  April 18, 2002

  Houston, Texas

  The Lancaster is described as an “older, luxury hotel located in the heart of the thriving theater district.” I arrived yesterday afternoon and was greeted by a bellman, who reached for my suitcase. “Oh, I’ve got it,” I said. “Really, it’s no problem at all.”

  He was a black man in his sixties with gray hair and a bushy beard. “Are you sure?” he asked. “There’s no obligation.”

  At the desk I checked in. The manager and concierge introduced themselves, then handed the key to the bellman, who said he needed to take me to the room. “I have to show you a few things,” he said, “otherwise you might not be able to figure them out.” He pointed out the first-floor restaurant, which was marked by a large sign reading RESTAURANT. “There’s the restaurant,” he said, “and one flight up we’ve got what we call the mezzanine.” By this time he’d wrangled away my suitcase, which he rolled into the elevator. “You’re on nine,” he said. “So we’ll just push this button right here.”

  I imagined that my room was protected by some incredibly technical security system, but it was just the standard lock and key. The bellman opened the door and pointed to the armoire. “Now that’s your TV, in there,” he said, “and it operates by remote. You’ve got an alarm clock, a fax machine, and a bathroom.” Had I lived my entire life in a dark forest, his little speech might have been helpful. “My bathroom? For me? To use? What’s a TV?”

  As it was, his little tour amounted to a shakedown. You can’t not tip a bellman, so I gave him $5, feeling all the while that I’d been taken advantage of.

  April 19, 2002

  Los Angeles

  While packing to leave Houston I felt a mounting anxiety about the bellman, whom I’d grown to hate. He’d be waiting downstairs, and while finishing my exercises, I imagined the many things I’d say when he inevitably tried to wrestle away my bag. “Sir, no,” I’d say. “I said no.” If he took it anyway, I’d simply leave him without a tip and say, “Look, I told you not to help.”

  Fifteen minutes before checkout I carried the typewriter down to the lobby. They’d gotten me a Selectric rather than a Wheelwriter, and it weighed a ton. “Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” the man at the front desk said. “We would have sent Larry to fetch it.”

  The bellman, who I guess was named Larry, swooped in to scold me. “Now, that’s not right,” he said. “Mr. Sedaris, whenever you’re ready, I’ll go get that suitcase. Goodness, carrying that heavy typewriter all by yourself.”

  I said I wouldn’t be needing any help, and he skulked off to bide his time. A car was coming at eleven, and as I waited out front, he moved in to brag about his city. “Houston’s a beautiful place, but best of all is our people,” he said. “The friendliest folks on earth.” He said he’d once gone to New York and tried to engage a stranger in conversation. “The guy said, ‘Look, I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you, so just buzz off.’” Larry shook his head. “That ain’t no way to be ’cause, see, I’m from Texas. I like to see a smile.”

  The car pulled up and he pried my suitcase out of my hands. “Really,” I insisted, “I can do it myself.” The driver opened the door to the backseat, and Larry ran around and opened the opposite one, saying, “This is the side a person should get in on.” I wish I could say I’d given him nothing, but of course I caved in, hating him all the while.

  April 20, 2002

  Escondido, California

  According to my complimentary postcard, the Rancho Bernardo Inn boasts an eighteen-hole championship golf course, two award-winning restaurants, twelve tennis courts, a full-service spa, and a fitness center. “Lovely outdoor pool and courtyard areas are accentuated by the numerous antique fountains imported from Italy and Spain. Rancho Bernardo Inn guests enjoy the warmth, taste, and style of a fine country home.” My room is very pleasant and features a private deck overlooking one of the many wishing wells mentioned whenever someone is giving you directions. “Turn left at the wishing well,” the concierge says, or “Walk past the wishing well.”

  I looked into my wishing well yesterday afternoon, expecting sparkling coins, and found a Bic pen floating beside a golf tee.

  April 22, 2002

  Eugene, Oregon

  Yesterday’s highlight was washing my clothes. There’s a combination Laundromat, tanning booth, and espresso bar over near the university, and while walking to it I passed a large antiques mall, empty in the way such places usually are. I went in, and an elderly saleswoman followed behind as I wandered from room to room, pretending to admire the beer steins and World’s Fair mementos. My favorite object was a lamp with a base made of stacked books. They’re common enough, but usually the books are classics: leather-bound editions of Plato and Mark Twain. Here they amounted to American Drug Index, Bugles and a Tiger, Management Policy and Strategy, and Slimnastics. I copied the titles as the saleswoman walked back to the register and told her associate, “Well, at least he’s writing something down. That’s always a good sign.”

  April 26, 2002

&n
bsp; Portland

  I went into the bathroom after my walk with Lisa yesterday afternoon, and when I came out there was a hostage situation on TV. “I’ve always been straight with you,” a man said. “Take me, not her.” The killer pointed a gun at a woman’s neck. “Back off or she’s dead!” he shouted. “I’m serious.”

  Lisa had made it for all of ten minutes before turning on the television in our hotel room. It was five o’clock in the afternoon and she was lying in bed in her pajamas. “I love Portland,” she said when I asked what she was doing. “Have you seen this show?”

  Having watched so many similar programs in her lifetime, Lisa is able to divine the future. The killer’s wife tries to talk him down and confesses that she’s pregnant. “That’s true, all right,” Lisa said. “But it’s not his baby.” Moments later I learned that she was right. The real father was the killer’s brother.

  “They’re going to shoot him the moment he turns that gun over,” Lisa predicted. I was thinking, No way, the guy’s too good-looking to die. But the moment he handed in his weapon, a bullet came through the car window and caught him in the neck.

  “That always happens,” Lisa said. I thought she might treat the commercials the same way, saying, “Those stains are going to come right out,” but the ads are too predictable, so she ignores them.

  Earlier yesterday morning, after the plane had been sitting on the Minneapolis runway for forty-five minutes, the pilot announced it would take three and a half hours to fly to Portland. For the first time since beginning the tour, I honestly didn’t think I could live that long. What made the flight unbearable was my excitement over seeing Lisa. We landed at two thirty and I found her by the baggage claim, sitting patiently with her rolling suitcase.

  In the afternoon we took a walk through downtown. “Can I ask you something?” Lisa said. “How often do you and Hugh have sex?” A man on the curb stopped to watch the passing traffic, and I waited until we were safely across the street to tell her, wondering if this was what other middle-aged brothers and sisters talked about. I answered her, of course, as it would never have occurred to me not to. We talked about it again later that night while lying in bed.

  April 27, 2002

  Seattle

  I normally try to keep my hotel rooms just so, but within minutes of arriving Lisa had the lamps blazing and the television on. Things were piled on the coffee table and she was sitting on the sofa watching a made-for-TV movie while looking over a sheet of algebra problems. She’s taking a math class at Forsyth Tech and currently holds a 102.7 average. When asked how it could be over 100, she tapped her pencil against her forehead and said, “Extra credit.”

  Lisa’s able to do anything while watching TV. Yesterday morning while I packed to leave, she caught the last half hour of Matlock. “Isn’t it true,” Andy Griffith asked the defendant, “isn’t it true that you bought the briefcase and planted it on Coach Williams?”

  “Don’t you just love him?” Lisa asked.

  May 1, 2002

  San Francisco

  Ronnie, Rakoff, and I spent the afternoon wandering around before his reading at Books Inc. on Market Street. We went for coffee and then walked over to the Castro Theater to use the bathroom. The doors weren’t open yet, but the guy at the box office was nice and said we could go inside. Ronnie had worked at the Castro in the late seventies and was showing us around when we were approached by an usher who asked if we needed any help. The man was maybe in his fifties and wore a suit and tie. Around his neck was a strand of fat fake pearls. His ear was pierced and his gentleness suggested a slight learning disability. We used the bathrooms and he caught up with us in the lobby on our way out.

  “It’s so bootiful, isn’t it?” he said. “I just love this place. It’s like a big ol’ home to me.” Ronnie asked about his accent and we learned that he was from Asheboro, North Carolina. “But I went to NC State and I love Broughton High School. Sanderson too. I got both their yearbooks.” He held up two fingers. “There was this Broughton girl, Barbara Mooney—I’ll never forget it—and when she didn’t make head cheerleader she said, ‘Then I’ll just transfer to another school,’ and so she went to Sanderson and they made her the head. I’ll never forget it. She worked at a dress shop.”

  The Asheboro accent is lazier than that of Raleigh. “I’ll just transfer to another schoo-ul.” This man seemed familiar with every movie theater in the state of North Carolina and reported their closings and renovations as if he were filling us in on old friends. “The Piedmont in Hendersonville is gone, but they did a bootiful job fixing up the Carolina in Waynesboro. And do you remember the State Theater in Charlotte? I hate that town but used to work there when old Jeanette Tucker was in charge. Then she got married and, I’ll never forget, she told me, ‘My husband got transferred and there’s no way I’m moving to old hicky Hickory.’ I’ll never forget it. But she did move there, yes, she did, Jeanette Tucker.”

  We talked about this man for the rest of the day. Rakoff had turned on his mental tape recorder and every few minutes he’d stop and say, “She worked at a dress shop,” or “I moved here in 1988 and I was scared to death.” We wondered where the usher lived and if his parents were still alive. It must have been horrible living as a homosexual in Asheboro and we tried to imagine his wonder at moving to a city that allowed him to wear pearls.

  May 3, 2002

  New York

  The dumbest words ever spoken in New York are “I think I’ll wear my new shoes.” I left the hotel yesterday at ten, and when I returned seven hours later, it looked as if I’d jumped into a wood chipper. My socks were stained with blood and I had just enough time to change and iron a shirt before I went to the BEA party, where I spent three and a half hours on my feet. Now they’re red and swollen, resembling strip steaks.

  May 22, 2002

  Barcelona, Spain

  We went for dinner at a tapas restaurant halfway between here and the city center. The food kept coming and went from the sublime to the ridiculous: octopus and beets followed by goose-liver ice cream and wild strawberries topped with rosemary foam. I sat across from Heidi and next to a young woman named Amanda, a New Yorker traveling with the Cirque du Soleil. At the age of seventeen she had a play produced off-Broadway. She’s sold a few stories to the New York Times Magazine and seems like the kind of person who could do anything well and effortlessly. On top of that, she looks all of fourteen years old. Amanda’s brother runs a private yoga studio in SoHo. “Oh, my God,” Heidi said. “Your brother is Eddie? The Eddie?”

  It was a real New York conversation. The subject turned to celebrities, and then restaurants. Heidi used to work at the MercBar, where the rule was “No suits after ten p.m.” When the time came, the staff had to push out all the Wall Street guys who weren’t considered cool enough. One night there was an altercation, and the bouncer had his nose bitten off. “They found it in the gutter and were able to sew it back on, thank God,” Heidi said.

  June 2, 2002

  Dublin, Ireland

  While on the bus, waiting to board our flight, we saw our plane defecate onto the tarmac. They were emptying the sewage hold and accidentally opened the valve before the hose was in place. “Look,” someone said. The man was Irish and sounded like the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms commercial. “Look, over there.”

  We turned to watch human feces and used toilet paper drop from the plane and onto the runway. Moments later we watched as the luggage handlers set our bags into the flowing river of waste. “Mother of God,” the Irishman said. A maintenance worker shouted something to our bus driver, who moved us to the other side of the plane, effectively blocking our view.

  If this was the worst that had happened I might have laughed it off. “So there’s some shit on my suitcase, who cares.” Sadly, however, there was more. After boarding, we waited on the runway for an hour, arriving in Dublin at just after ten. It took another hour to get our luggage, which finally arrived soaking wet with Irish rain. On a positive note, the
rain helped rinse away some of the shit so, again, I shouldn’t complain.

  June 5, 2002

  Ballycotton, Ireland

  It was my idea to go to Cork, which, according to our guidebook, is the second-largest city in Ireland. I’m not sure what part of town we wound up in, but it was full of teenage mothers leaving fast-food restaurants. At Hillbilly’s Fried Chicken a lot of the moms had nose rings. They looked to be around sixteen, all of them chubby and most of them accompanied by their mothers. It was the same story at Wimpy’s and Supermac’s, where three generations stood on the sidewalks sharing sacks of fried food. In this particular part of town, all the shops were practical, offering outfits for 22 euros, handbags for 6, electric woks for 9.99. We had lunch at a sandwich shop, walked around for a little while, and then drove on to Midleton, home of the Jameson Distillery. I’d just wanted to visit the gift shop and was disappointed when Hugh bought tickets for a tour, which began with a fifteen-minute filmstrip titled “Water of Life, River of Time.” The narrator described Ireland as being “bejeweled by beauty” and then outlined the distilling process, first learned by perfume manufacturers in the Orient.

  He covered the tragedy of Prohibition and put down Scotch whisky at every opportunity. Unlike Irish whiskey, Scotch is distilled only twice. It’s de-crudded long before it reaches the still, but they made it sound as if the average Scotch bottle includes a few used Band-Aids and at least one cigarette butt.

  Following the filmstrip we were given a tour by a young woman in her twenties. There were maybe thirty of us—Danes, English people, three motorcycling Germans in leather pants, dragging rolling suitcases. The woman took us through each step of the process, then led us to the bar, where our ticket stubs were exchanged for glasses of whiskey.