“Excuse me,” Bea called.
They stopped.
“Excuse me. May I ask a favor of you? My van is broken down and I need to call the repair shop. My usual man. You know. He’ll come out and give me a tow.”
The woman just stood there for a few seconds. Both women just stood.
“It’ll only take a second. It’s a local call.”
The woman with the phone looked down at it. Stared at it almost longingly. As if that were her child in her hand, and the passenger in the stroller only an afterthought. As if it pained her to think of parting with it for a few seconds.
Then she walked closer and held the phone out to Bea.
Bea had no idea how to use such a contraption, of course. But it hardly mattered. She looked down at it, then turned away, shading her eyes, as if to find a direction that would produce less glare on the screen. She slipped the phone into the inside pocket of her jacket. Then she reached down suddenly as if trying to catch a falling object.
“Oh no!” she cried, turning back. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to drop it.”
She held up her hands to show how empty they were.
“Did it break?” the woman asked, running back to Bea now, her voice shrieky.
“Well, I don’t know. I can’t even see it. It went down there.”
Bea pointed. Down. She and the woman stood a moment, staring into the seemingly endless dark abyss of the storm drain.
“That was a seven-hundred-dollar iPhone 6!” the woman squeaked. “That was almost brand new!”
Bea thanked the woman, silently, in the privacy of her head, for being someone she didn’t mind taking.
“I’m so sorry. I feel just awful. I’d pay you for it if I could. But I don’t have that kind of money. I don’t know what to do.”
Bea watched the woman’s face in the intervening silence. It was reddening. To an alarming degree. And still nothing was being said. And yes, Bea was afraid. Of course she was. Who wouldn’t be? But the fear made her feel exhilarated. It made her feel alive.
All her life Bea had felt fear, especially fear of the lack that seemed to hide around every corner, and all her life she’d been ruled by it. But now she had a new secret weapon: nothing to lose. And that was a freedom the likes of which Bea had never known.
A few seconds later the woman’s friend came, took her by the shoulder, and led her back to the bike path, while they shared clipped words together.
“But she—”
“There’s nothing you can do, Bev. It was an accident.”
“But it was my brand-new—”
“She doesn’t have money. She can’t pay you for it. Come on. Let’s just go.”
The aggrieved woman looked over her shoulder once at Bea. As if there might be some remote chance of having her losses restored. Then she turned away.
Bea waited and watched until they were gone.
She began the slow, longish walk to the pier and its public restrooms.
“Excuse me,” she said to the attendant of a parking lot as she passed by. “Is there a pawnshop in this town?”
“There are a couple,” he called back. “How well do you know the city?”
It was ironic, when Bea thought about it. Based on what she’d seen in the BuyMart display case, the phone in her pocket could probably have located a pawnshop for her. If only Bea knew how to use it, or even cared enough to learn.
“It was a present from my granddaughter,” Bea told the man behind the counter. “It’s really important that I not hurt her feelings. She can’t know I’m selling it. But I’ll never use it. So I just need you to tell me how to make sure she won’t find out. She’d be crushed.”
Bea honestly didn’t know if these gadgets stored identifying information. But she knew she’d had a log of numbers and a call history on her home phone, and that it would be best if the new owner of this device received no calls intended for the jogger.
“Oh, that’s easy. Assuming it’s not locked, or if you have the password, we can erase everything in one go,” the man said. He had big muttonchop sideburns, which Bea thought had gone out of style years ago, and wore a denim vest over a short-sleeved T-shirt. “Just go to ‘Settings’ . . .”
“I have no idea how to go to ‘Settings.’ I never got the hang of the thing at all.”
“Here. Want me to?”
“Please.”
She handed it to him, and took her own emotional temperature. She couldn’t help it. It was such a daring thing to do. She knew she should be afraid. But, oddly . . . not so much. She was just a little old lady, after all. Who would suspect her? And the phone had not been reported stolen. It would never be reported stolen.
Bea felt . . . well, it was a hard thing to admit, even inwardly, but she felt proud of herself for figuring out how to steal a phone in such a way that no one would ever report it stolen.
“You sure you want everything deleted?”
“Yes, everything.”
“Okay.”
While she waited, Bea looked around. She saw a saxophone in a glass display case. Two rifles hanging on the wall behind the counter. Several amplifiers on the floor, the kind musicians use. An electric guitar.
She thought about her lamps and kitchen utensils at home and wondered if the people who pawned these items had felt the same panicky sense of loss—the kind that almost feels like an erasure of one’s identity—and whether any of them would see their precious belongings again.
“Okay,” the man said. “Done.”
“That was fast. What will you give me for it? Maybe I should have asked that first.”
“Depends on whether you want to pawn it or sell it outright.”
“Oh, sell it outright. I’ll never want it back.”
“Did you bring the power cord to recharge it?”
“No, I didn’t think of it. Is that a problem?”
“I could offer more if you had it. But this is a nice new model. I can go seventy-five.”
“I’ll take it.”
He counted the cash into her hand.
She walked out into the street and blinked in the bright sunlight. The air was temperate and warm, the breeze cool. She had a full tank of gas. She had enough money in her pocket for another tank of gas when that one was gone. She could even stop for a hamburger if she wanted, at that fast-food grill she could see from here.
But she wouldn’t stay in Santa Barbara long. She decided that almost instantly. Because she didn’t need to. She would cruise on up the coast. Sitting in one place is for people who can’t afford gas money.
When she returned to her van, she found Phyllis sunning on the dashboard.
We’re both getting used to things, Bea thought.
Imagine thinking this new life would be boring, with endless hours to kill and nothing to do. The world was full of places she’d never seen, and people and cell phones to get her there.
“Where to next?” she asked the cat.
Then she started the engine. Phyllis half jumped, half fell into the litter box below, then scrambled under the passenger seat to hide.
It should have been an omen to Bea. A warning not to get too confident. But in that moment she was too busy feeling good for a change.