Life was new. Not good. Just new.
Chapter Seven
How Do You Wipe This Thing Clean?
Bea lay on her side on the asphalt of the parking lot, half raised on one arm, waiting for someone to come by. It was dark, but only just barely, and the van was close by if she needed it. She was also close enough to the van that it blocked her view of the BuyMart security camera—and its view of her, which was key.
Her arm was getting a bit tired of holding her up, and still no one had been by. Just her luck to choose a lull in shopper traffic.
To pass the time, she sank more deeply into her role. She had taken a real fall once—well, truth be told, more than once, but she didn’t like to admit it—and she summoned back that feeling. The sense of being physically rattled and mentally disoriented. The way everything that came before the fall is suddenly gone.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
A man’s voice. She levered herself up a bit more and looked feebly over her shoulder.
He was a man in his late thirties with a shopping bag in each arm and a young blonde girl on either side of him holding the belt loops of his jeans for parking lot safety.
“He took my purse,” Bea said. “He knocked me over and then before I even knew what was happening I saw him running off with my purse.”
She tossed her head in the general direction of the bushes between parking lot and street.
The man jogged to her, his little girls running to keep up.
“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“Yes, I’m all right. I’m not injured. It just surprised me and I hadn’t quite managed to get back on my feet yet.”
He set his bags on the tarmac and reached his arm out to her, and she took hold of it, and he helped her to her feet.
“I can call the police,” he said, fishing one of those maddening devices out of his shirt pocket. “I have a cell phone.”
Of course you have a cell phone, she thought. With the exception of me, who doesn’t these days?
“Oh, I don’t even know if that will help.” She brushed off the seat of her slacks as she spoke. “You know they’ll never find him. I didn’t get a look at him at all. There’s not one thing I can tell them to help them solve the crime. And I’m not injured. I’ll have to get a new driver’s license is all. And I’ll have to cancel that credit card. And . . . Oh. Uh-oh. I just thought. I’m almost out of gas, and I was going to use my card to fill up my tank so I can go home. I live all the way up in Santa Maria and I’m almost out of gas.”
The man pointed at a gas station sign that rose up between the BuyMart parking lot and the ocean.
“We’ll meet you right over there, okay? And we’ll use my card and we’ll fill you up.”
“That’s awfully kind of you. Are you sure you can afford it?”
“Of course I can. Don’t even worry about it. You have to get home. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sure. Thank you. A little shaken up is all.”
“You can drive over there?”
“Absolutely. I’ll see you there in just a few minutes.”
“You don’t have to wash my windshield,” she told him. “That seems like too much to ask.”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
He had parked his SUV close, right at the other side of the pump, so he could keep an eye on his two blonde girls in the backseat. He looked over every few seconds. Meanwhile the pump ran without him, filling her tank.
“I hope you don’t mind, though,” he said. “I did call the police. While I was driving over. They’ll meet us back at the spot where it happened. I just thought it was important. You know? What if he does this to somebody else? And maybe somebody gets hurt next time? Besides, maybe you don’t need to’ve seen him. They have security cameras.”
“Unfortunately my van was blocking the spot where it happened. I’ll bet anything he did that on purpose.”
“But maybe one of the other cameras picked it up.”
Oh, Bea thought. Right. Maybe so. Maybe one of the other, farther-off cameras had a view of the scene. That could be a problem.
She looked into his eyes, and he looked back. He seemed curious, as if unsure what he would find there, or what he was looking for. Then he smiled in a way that looked reassuring. Bea felt bad because he was being so kind. But, she reminded herself, it’s not like he would suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and know he’d been scammed. He felt good about what he was doing. He was helping an old woman mugging victim—he thought—and that was a good thing for him. And he could afford the gas. He’d said so himself.
Still, Bea made a decision while looking into those eyes. Just in that split second. She would have to think of a different scheme. No more helpless old woman pretending to be hurt, because that only brought out the best in people. And who wants to take someone for money while they’re showing you their better nature?
No, she would just have to take people who deserved taking. She didn’t figure they would be hard to find.
“I guess I see your point about the police,” she said. “But one thing I insist on. You’ve done enough. You and your girls go home now. I can wait in the parking lot in my van with the doors locked. I’ll be fine. I refuse to impose on you for one more thing.”
“I guess that would be okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” she said.
He topped off her tank and replaced the pump nozzle, and waved. She thanked him, and waved in return. And he drove away. And she drove away.
And Bea kept driving until she got all the way to Santa Barbara.
Bea woke in the morning, struggled out of her easy chair, and pulled back the curtains. She was parked on the street at the Santa Barbara waterfront. On her right, waves washed up onto a white sandy beach. Between her van and the ocean ran a strip of narrow park with a bike lane. Now and then joggers or roller skaters breezed by, usually in pairs.
Bea had stopped here because it was a close walk to the pier, and she knew from ancient prior experience that there were public restrooms.
She climbed down from the van and onto the street. As she made her way to the sidewalk, she had to step over a storm drain at the curb.
That was the moment a big idea was born.
Bea stalled there for a minute or two, standing right over the storm drain. Waiting. Waiting for a person to come by with one of those absurdly expensive phones. She couldn’t imagine it would take long.
It’s interesting, she thought. The same brain that couldn’t grasp the concept of outstanding checks just had a clever idea. She didn’t think it out expressly, in words, but the pattern—the fact that her brain grasped what it wanted and dropped what it didn’t want—was hard to miss.
While she waited, she noticed how different everything felt. The sun was strong on her shoulders and scalp, and the breeze seemed to blow right through her and leave her feeling clean. She did not feel at the mercy of the world. She did not feel afraid. Or small. Or out of options. She tried to remember if she had ever felt this way before, but nothing came to mind.
Two young mothers came jogging down the bike lane together, pushing strollers. The taller of the two was staring at one of those infernal devices. Not looking where she was going at all.