After I moved out of the
upper flat that we shared, Lee stayed for a few months, then
moved back in with her
parents. She was finishing up her
psychology degree, and I was working as a
tech support monkey. She had established some contact with family she had in
Ohio and was making frequent trips one state down. She met a
guy and
fell in love with him, and some
subtle things started to get weird with
Lee. She started
collecting Barbie dolls, and was struggling harder with her
bulimia. She bought a few
healthy diet books and cookbooks, and began to work out almost
obsessively. She would not eat any
processed sugar whatsoever. She told me at one point that she would have her boyfriend eat a large bowl of
Frankenberry cereal and describe to her in detail what it tasted like, since she refused to eat it. One night she and I went out to a
crappy meat market bar and we were sitting at the bar next to a
little black purse. We came and went, dancing, flirting, always coming back to the bar. The purse was still there. I put it behind the bar and told the
bartender that someone had left it on the seat, he
acknowledged very briefly (he probably thought it was mine) and walked away. We stayed there for at least 3 hours, and when we left, we did something evil. We took the little black purse.
We inspected the
contents: makeup, driver's license, mastercard, about six dollars in singles. We were completely
energized and half drunk in the parking lot and discussed what we should do. Where could we go? What if we
got caught? I told her my sister had done it before - if we wanted to do it, we should go to a big 24 hour
Walmart type store and use it now, before she had time to cancel it. We justified our theft with the idea that
she wouldn't have to pay for it - she'd just report it stolen and
MasterCard would wipe her slate clean. She might even get the charge wiped off at the bar. Giddy, we drove to the local Walmart ripoff and bought stuff. Makeup, a blender, a
Barbie doll, household general crap that we both wanted,
but wouldn't have paid for if we had to do it honestly.
We took our
loot up to the register and watched the woman as she checked us out. We hadn't thought about what we would do if the
credit card had already been cancelled. The total rang up - about 300 dollars. I slid the card through the reader and held my breath. The clerk started making
small talk. Lee looked like a
deer caught in headlights. I chattered nervously. The seconds ticked by and the fluorescents winked down from above. The buzz I had from the bar was
fading fast. We were never going to get away with this. Why was it taking so long? We were going to have to just leave all this stuff and
book it out of the store. We would probably be on video cameras, and be stopped by
security.
The reader beeped. The
receipt started printing. I signed the girl's name and blood rushed into my face. Lee looked
ashen. We walked out of the store without bending our knees, high heels clicking as we
stalked into the parking lot. We were pumped with adrenaline and I had a low feeling in my gut, I wanted
to leave all that stuff there and just go home and take a shit. We drove back to Lee's parents' house and took Lee's stuff inside. The
shock had worn off and we realized that we had just
Gotten-Away-With-It. Lee had expensive multipacks of her favorite
condoms, it would have cost her 40 dollars. Free. Makeup. Free.
Crock Pot. Free. Barbie. Free.
I didn't want to do anything but go to sleep. The whole experience seemed
surreal, but Lee was focused - she was very carefully opening the
Barbie's box and sliding her out of the
little display. She smoothed its hair and dress, and then turned the doll, still attached to its
cardboard backdrop, upside down and began peering up its dress. I asked her what she was doing.
"I have to check and see if they wear panties."
As if this was the most normal thing in the world. She went on to explain to me that she
checked all of her Barbies for underpants. Sometimes they were molded on to the doll's body, and the particularly expensive ones would have their own little
white cotton undies. I found it funny that a doll wearing a
silk dress would wear
cotton briefs underneath it. This last
exchange of the night minimized our theft. Reduced our evil. The next day, I
gathered up my loot and I went home. I cut up the
credit card and license into bits, wrapped them up with her makeup in a couple of papertowels and stuffed it into a sandwich bag. Then I cleaned out my
refrigerator and emptied the food garbage into its own garbage bag. I put this stuff in with the food garbage, thinking that my
extra cautious disposal of this evidence would never be traced back to our
shopping spree. It never was, but
karma is good for making sure we both got back what we sowed in other ways.
Lee Stories