Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  “That’s not my problem,” the conductor said.

  “But…,” the kid said. “But…”

  The conductor said they’d have to get off at the next stop, 125th Street.

  The other kid spoke up then, saying, “But we want to get off at Grand Central.”

  “Look,” the conductor said, “you can either get off at One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street or go to jail.”

  To this, the first kid said, “Which one?”

  March 22, 1992

  New York

  Patrick stayed up late last night and watched a show about termites, which don’t eat wood but apparently just store it in their cheeks or whatnot. Then they bring it back to the mound, where they use it to mulch mushrooms. Can this be true? I’m so gullible sometimes.

  March 23, 1992

  New York

  According to the book I’m reading, Judy Garland was once singing “Over the Rainbow” at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles when a moth flew into her open mouth. She couldn’t spit it out in the middle of the song, so she just parked it in her cheek until she had finished. Again, can that be true?

  June 15, 1992

  New York

  Normally in the morning, Hugh drinks tea and eats a piece of fruit. Most often it’s an apple, but this morning it was a banana that had been sitting too long on the shelf. The peel was bruised almost black, and inside it was the color of pus, all slick and nasty-looking. I’d just brushed one of the cats and couldn’t help but take the hair and arrange it just so on Hugh’s seeping banana. Then I sat back and winced. It truly was disgusting. Obscene, really.

  June 21, 1992

  New York

  A few weeks back, my Interview Magazine mention came out, and this morning I received a postcard reading Dear Mr. Sedaris, You are very cute and I love what you have to say about the world. It is a crazy place, but you make it well worth it. Your admirer, Jean Snyder.

  The card is just what I needed. It’s nutty, sure, but how nice to know that some stranger is thinking of me.

  June 23, 1992

  New York

  At Coney Island we passed a sideshow booth that featured a two-headed baby represented in four mammoth paintings. In the first he was in diapers, shaking a rattle. Then there he was, taking his first, astonished steps. In the third painting the baby seemed on the verge of a decision, one head delighted, and the other one wailing. The fourth should have been the first but wasn’t for some reason. It showed the baby swaddled in a bandanna, delivered by a stork that had sunglasses on.

  I had to see this for myself, so while Hugh waited out front, I bought a ticket and went inside. There, I found the two-headed baby, not playing patty-cake or scribbling on walls with a crayon but floating in a jar of formaldehyde. Three of the four pictures I’d seen were absolute bullshit, as he couldn’t have been more than a few hours old when he died. Even in a jar, that kid has outearned me.

  June 24, 1992

  New York

  The postcard I received the other day, the one from a stranger, was false. Hugh wrote it, not Jean Snyder. She was someone he went to school with as a child in Beirut. It seems he typed the postcard, attached a used stamp, and extended the cancellation marks with a pencil. I really have to hand it to him sometimes.

  July 3, 1992

  New York

  I stopped at a discount store on Broadway this morning hoping to buy some floor-wax remover for one of my cleaning jobs. It was the kind of place that sells everything but under a different name. For instance, they have an all-purpose spray, but it’s called Fabulous instead of Fantastik. They don’t sell Ajax, they sell Apex. The store is owned by men in black turbans who asked that I check my bag on entering. I did, and when I didn’t find what I was looking for, I returned to collect it.

  “You stole something,” the security goon at the counter said.

  This same thing had just happened a few weeks ago, so I was furious. “Are you accusing me of shoplifting?”

  “You have something in your pocket,” he told me.

  “Really?” I said. “You pretty sure of that?” I emptied my pockets, front and back. “Does your store sell keys to my apartment? Do you sell half packs of cigarettes and books of matches from a restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island? Or, hey, maybe I stole my own wallet!”

  The man said, “I can accuse you of anything I want.”

  Later I felt bad for emptying my pockets. I hear people all the time shouting, “You think I stole something? Call the police.” I always wonder why they’re making such a big deal out of it. Why not just prove you haven’t stolen anything? I think.

  Both times this month I’ve proven myself innocent, but the security goons never apologized. They just said, “Hmmmm,” and on leaving, both times, I condemned their entire race: Fucking Koreans. Goddamned…whatever people who wear turbans are.

  Both times I was accused, I was dressed for cleaning apartments, wearing shabby clothing and smelling like Ajax, or Apex, I guess they’d call it. Does this mean I should wear a suit when running out for supplies and change back into my rags after returning to work? Of course, this is nothing. If I were black, I’d get this several times a day. And I’d be really angry all the time.

  July 5, 1992

  New York

  I woke up to someone crying, “Ma, Ma! Help me, Ma. Open the door. Ma. Ma. Open the door.” It went on for hours and the voice was odd-sounding, not like a child’s but more like a man’s.

  I asked Helen and she told me it’s Franny, the Italian woman who lives downstairs and will turn one hundred years old on Monday. Her daughter lives on the same floor and looks after her with the help of a hired Jamaican woman who comes at night and on weekends. When the daughter leaves town, Franny gets worse and screams for her mother, her brothers, her sisters, all dead. When Helen went down this morning, Franny told her to go fuck herself.

  “Can you beat that!” Helen said. “The language on that one. A hundred years old with a mouth like that.”

  July 23, 1992

  New York

  I worked with Patrick, who told me that last week Richie was arrested and then released on a $100,000 bail his father paid by putting up his taxi medallion. According to Richie’s story, he was coming out of a bar when two men tried to rob him. They started fighting, and after the first guy ran off, Richie hit the second in the face with a beer bottle—hit him so hard, in fact, that the bottle broke. The police pulled up to find Richie standing over the bleeding, unconscious body, and it got worse when the guy, who is now expected to be blind in one eye, fell into a coma. I would never attempt to rob Richie. First off, he’s huge. He’s strong and he isn’t afraid of anything. You can tell that just by looking at him.

  August 15, 1992

  New York

  I went to France with a passport so new it was still warm and five books about serial killers: Robert Berdella, Billy Lee Chadd, Henry Lee Lucas, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy. The worst of them smiled when their mug shots were taken, though it has to be said they were all pretty bad. Interesting was how many were disappointments to their mothers, who were hoping for daughters rather than sons. One of the five (I can’t recall which, as they all ran together) was sent to school in a skirt and bonnet. That sounds so old-fashioned, a bonnet.

  While in Normandy we drove through the countryside, sometimes with a mission and sometimes aimlessly. The villages looked like I thought they would—tidy yards, stone houses, window boxes spilling over with flowers. Hugh’s house is in La Bagotière, a hamlet. Maybe twenty-five or thirty people live there, nobody fancy. The Gs across the road raise sheep, horses, chickens, and rabbits. They’re in their mid-sixties and live with Madame G.’s mother and Mr. G.’s sister Brigitte, who has Down syndrome and spends her days at an outdoor table laying down dominoes. She wears very thick glasses and though she doesn’t talk much, she’ll hold out her hand if you hold out yours first. The teenage boy next door is mentally retarded, as is Sandrine, two doors up. That’s a lot for a haml
et this size, one in every ten people.

  Hugh’s house is stone and he guesses it’s maybe three hundred years old. As of now there’s no running water or electricity. I spent my week helping him empty it out and clean it. Plumbers and electricians came by and I didn’t understand a single word any of them said. We stayed a half a mile away in a house owned by Hugh’s friend Genevieve, a pharmacist, and her husband, Momo, who holds some sort of elected office.

  When the week was over, we went to Paris. There are any number of stores there that time seems to have forgotten. At one of them I bought five rubber noses. That’s one for every serial killer I read about while I was in France.

  August 20, 1992

  New York

  Today I did a cleaning job for a forty-two-year-old named Tommy who was short and slight and answered the door in his robe. He wore socks as well, and the toes of them were pulled forward and flopped around when he walked. At the start of the day he sent me to the storage place to buy twenty-five boxes. These were added to the thirty he already had, most of which were half full of things he had failed to unpack during the three years he’d lived in his apartment. One particular box contained a $2 bill, a place mat illustrating various sources of vitamin C, a book titled How to Be Funny, several manila envelopes, and dozens of lists and scraps of paper with messages such as “I am denying myself food in order to grow as a person” and “Hunger is a state of mind” written on them.

  In the afternoon he sent me to his new apartment, where I measured the windows and then went to the hardware store to buy child guards for them. “Do you have kids?” I asked.

  He said no but was worried he might have friends over, and that some of them might fall out the windows.

  “Do you have a lot of blind friends?” I asked.

  Tommy has fifty identical stainless-steel plates, and three times a day he broils himself a steak. In his freezer were two hundred portions of fish, each labeled with the date and what kind it was: 1/18 cod, 2/29 red snapper, etc. I asked and he explained that he had gone through a seafood phase before turning to steak. In his closet were dozens of pairs of suspenders, many of them neon-colored, along with bow ties and hats. He is an only child. His father died “from drinking,” and his mother lives in Massachusetts. He asked me to return tomorrow and help him some more but, either fortunately or unfortunately, I’m already scheduled to work with Bart.

  September 4, 1992

  New York

  Walking down 8th Avenue, I fell in behind two muscled gym queens. When a car alarm went off, one of them turned to the other, saying, “That’s the Puerto Rican national anthem.”

  “Really?” the other guy said. “That’s actually their anthem?”

  September 5, 1992

  New York

  Yesterday the man Richie hit with a bottle died; this according to Patrick, whom I worked with today. Richie was out walking one of Herman’s dogs when the cops stopped and asked him what it was like to be a murderer. In response, Richie punched one of the policemen in the face and knocked him out. That got him arrested again. The guy can’t stay out of trouble for the life of him. He’s sweet when he’s sober, as sweet as they come, but he’s already killed two people. The first murder occurred when he was a teenager. Now he’s, what, thirty?

  September 27, 1992

  New York

  I went to Walker’s with Marge and two friends of hers, a guy named Dan who’s fluent in sign language and a woman named Pat who just got her master’s in dance history. We got to talking and I learned that her dad was a radio celebrity at WABC from the early 1940s until the mid-1970s. The family lived in New Canaan, Connecticut, and every Christmas morning his show was broadcast live from their living room. Pat received cards and letters from listeners and rode to Manhattan in a chauffeured car to watch her father emcee Circus of the Stars. Once, her dad came home from work in a helicopter, and she remembers the young trees bowing in the wind generated by the blades. Pat was, at the time, “horsey,” meaning devoted to horses. She went on to say that her father was an alcoholic and was married six times, her mom being wife number five. The drinking didn’t bother me, but the umpteen marriages and the thought of all those stepsisters definitely tarnished the beautiful picture I had formed in my mind.

  September 29, 1992

  New York

  Patrick’s truck broke down, so he’s applying for welfare. He told me that over the phone today, and then he added that Richie’s murder charge had been dropped. After we hung up, Hugh’s friend Leslie called. She’s a buyer for Barneys and leaves tomorrow for Milan and Paris. One person talks about welfare and the next about the terrible Donna Karan collection.

  October 9, 1992

  New York

  While cleaning this morning, I listened to a radio call-in show hosted by a woman who helps people find things. Not missing objects but merchandise and services. The first person to phone in was looking for denim boots. She said she’s been searching everywhere and wanted some phone numbers so she can call around before coming into the city. “I have a few pairs already, but let me tell you, once they start to fray, there’s not a thing in the world you can do but buy another pair! I’ve got regular denim boots and stonewashed and they’re both on their way out. I swear, if I can find another place that sells them, I’ll buy a hundred pairs.”

  October 13, 1992

  New York

  Hugh is in Boca Raton, Florida, for a job, staying at a Days Inn. I call and ask for his room and am connected with a Vietnamese woman. We exchange a few words, and I phone the front desk again and say that I enjoyed talking to someone from Southeast Asia but that now I am ready to speak to Hugh Hamrick. They then connect me to the room of Lisa Gold, who is doing the job in Boca Raton with Hugh. I call back and tell the operator that it was great talking to Lisa. Though she lives only ten blocks away from me in New York, we rarely see one another, so I appreciated the opportunity to catch up. Now, though, I wouldn’t mind talking to Hugh Hamrick in room 412. Jesus.

  October 15, 1992

  New York

  The new Pakistani cashier at the Grand Union is named Dollop.

  October 27, 1992

  New York

  In Saugerties, we had a waitress who was for Bush. “I’m voting for him because my generation does things like that,” she said. “My ex-husband is a shithead and a bastard with a big government pension and he’ll vote this way or that. But me, my best years were when Republicans were in office. You know what I’m saying?”

  October 31, 1992

  New York

  We went with Ken and Taro to see the Halloween parade. My favorite costume was a very thin, dirty Santa carrying a plastic bag of discarded cans. He was accompanied by a filthy Ronald McDonald.

  November 25, 1992

  New York

  Helen went off this morning on the Korean grocers on the corner of Spring and Thompson. “One day they charge me forty cents for an apple and the next day it’s fifty cents. For an apple, the bastards! The girl behind the counter asked if I was going to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving and I said, ‘What’s it to you?’

  “She says, ‘My mother’s not going to make one.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, well, your mother’s a lazy bastard.’”

  December 3, 1992

  New York

  I got a call a few weeks back from a fellow named Don who had read my SantaLand story in the New York Press. He taught a high school equivalency program in the basement of the Fulton projects and asked if I might visit his class. “The kids are bound to love your writing, but reading it in front of the actual author will likely make them nervous,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll tell them you’re a graduate student who’s come to observe my teaching style. Then, when they’re finished, maybe near the end of the session, I’ll reveal your true identity.”

  He gave me the address, so this afternoon I showed up and was introduced as James from Columbia University. Copies of the SantaLand story were distributed to the students. Then Don
said, “Eddie, would you like to start?”

  Eddie, a twenty-two-year-old with razor-nicked eyebrows and letters tattooed on his knuckles, began. “‘I was at a cuff…a cuff…at a…I was at a cuff…’”

  “Sound it out,” Don said. “Come on, Eddie, you can do this.”

  I had felt uncomfortable around these students. Loud and powerfully built, they had spent their break threatening one another and yelling out the windows at passing girls. They were all so volatile and mean-looking, but faced with the page, they were powerless, like children. Once someone had finished his paragraph, he’d put his head down on the tabletop or walk away to see what was happening outside. Then someone else would be called on. “‘Snowball just…leads elves on, elves and Santas.’”

  How odd it was to have my experiences recounted in these voices. What were you doing while I was wandering the maze or having nickels thrown at me? I’d wonder, looking at someone in a hooded Gang Starr sweatshirt. And what was I doing when you got that teardrop tattooed on your cheek?

  It took well over an hour to complete the reading. Don congratulated the group on a job well done, then folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “So, if you could meet the person who wrote this, what would you ask?”

  The guy next to Eddie put up his hand. “I’d ax, Yo, is you a faggot or what?”

  December 15, 1992