Thief by Jennifer Doll

      Wagner has been stealing small things. Nothing important, of course. Nothing valuable, or that anyone would ever miss – ashtrays and bottles of ketchup from restaurants, a pen or pad from the stationary store, a candy bar from the grocery. The habit has started only recently, the first time an accident really: leaving the Five and Dime with a pack of gum in his pocket and his wallet undiminished. But now, it seems, he can’t help himself. In fact, he is doing it more and more each day. It’s a way of making sure no one gets the better of him, which has been the more common likelihood in his life before now.

     Today, Wagner walks to work with his hands deep in the pockets of his heavy wool coat. It’s cold outside, and wet, drizzling slightly, but he has no umbrella. In one hand, inside the slightly damp crevice of his pocket, he clutches a packet of bobby pins. They are a recent acquisition from the drugstore on the corner of his block. He does not know why he took them. He has no use for hair ornaments since he keeps his hair military-short and, even if it did grow long, he does not believe in such affectations for men. If he had a girlfriend, he might give her the pins, but there has been no woman in Wagner’s life for some time. So he continues to walk, clenching and unclenching his fist around the bobby pins, the inside of his hand growing sweaty along with the lining of his pocket, his hair pasting to his head from the rain.

      When Wagner arrives at work, he hangs his coat over the back of his chair but keeps the bobby pins in his hand. He decides to work like that all day, typing and sorting through files with his one free hand. This infuses Wagner’s menial bookkeeping tasks with an element of excitement, tosses a wrench of challenge into the normally dull realm of his day, and Wagner works harder than he ever has before. When his boss comes by to comment on his productivity, he notices the clenched fist.

      "Are you okay?" he asks, pointing to Wagner’s rigid hand. "Carpal tunnel?"

      Wagner shakes his head, barely tearing his eyes away from his files. "Hand cramp," he says. "Seizes up now and then. They say it’s aggravated by stress."

      The boss clucks understandingly and walks away quickly, not wanting to appear indifferent but neither desiring incrimination in any worker’s comp suit that Wagner might be thinking of filing.

      For lunch, Wagner eats a Swiss cheese and mustard sandwich; he has brought it from home, along with a stolen restaurant steak knife that he uses to cut it with. He continues to use only one hand, even for the cutting, which necessitates holding the sandwich still with his chin and slicing with his free hand. It is a game, a childish amusement; one-hand-tied-behind-my-back and look what I can do, Mom! But he nicks his chin in the process, restaurant-quality silverware being no joking matter. It is a small cut but it begins to bleed on his files and freshly typed papers.

      "Damn!" he says, dropping the bobby pins to the ground and causing the girl who works next to him to jump in her seat. She turns around cautiously, and blanches at the sight of the blood.

      "Your chin!" she says, grabbing her own as if his cut was contagious.

      Wagner grunts. This girl is a stupid one. She has been known to make ignorant comments about sports, for which he cares nothing, and music, which he adores wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, he allows her to inspect his cut, to wipe it with a cotton ball drenched in hydrogen peroxide, and to plant a bandage upon it. She has a first aid kit in her file cabinet, and Wagner feels that such preparedness does counteract certain other faults. And she is young, no more than twenty-two. She may not be able to help it.

      After she patches him up, after the time has come to go and she has gone, Wagner remains. He is the last person in the office, an event that occurs frequently. When the motion lights, convinced that the office is empty, click off, Wagner rises, tucks the bobby pins in an envelope, and sets them on her chair. He wants to write her name on the envelope so there can be no confusion, but he cannot remember it. The name of an instrument, maybe, or a flower? On the way out of the office he stops by the kitchen and grabs a few packets of coffee and a mug with his company’s logo stamped on it. He takes this booty home, squeezing one of the packets open on his walk, leaving a handful of sweet-smelling grounds in his pocket and a thin trail of brown sludge behind him.

      The next morning when Wagner gets to work, the girl is ecstatic. She has put one the pins in her hair in a way that Wagner finds unattractive, pulling her bangs tight to one side so they cut across her forehead at an odd, slick angle. However, the pin itself is pretty, fancier than a normal bobby pin. It has a tiny butterfly attached to one end. The girl prances around the office with her hair that way, walking past all of the young men to get their attention. She is sure that one of them has given her the gift. She does not think it could have been Wagner, who is well into middle age, has a stomach paunch, and wears a band-aid on his chin.

      Wagner throws himself into his work again, this time without the challenge of one-handedness. He updates excel spreadsheets, adding and subtracting until the numbers work out, making sure everything is nice and neat and organized. When it is lunchtime, he leaves the office and stops at a nearby deli. He orders a slice of pizza, plain, then rethinks it.

      "Make it two," he says to the counterman, who grunts and throws another piece on a plate directly on top of the first one. Wagner takes the plate, a flimsy paper thing that flops under the weight of his slices, and walks to the door of the deli, bypassing the cashier. She’s busy with other customers anyway. A brief pause for a sprinkle of parmesan and crushed red pepper and Wagner’s outside, heading for the reservoir where he’ll eat and toss his crusts to a mangy group of pigeons.

      A week or two goes by like this, and Wagner acquires a large supply of kitchen accouterments. He displays his loot on his kitchen table; for several days there has been no room for him to eat his dinner there. He has stacks of glasses, highball and juice-sized, the kind for red and also for white wine. Most of them even match; Wagner is particular in his choices.

      And he’s careful: he hasn’t been stopped once. He doesn’t want to be too risky, or shove anyone’s face in the facts like a rebellious teenager. Before now, he’s never broken a law, never evaded taxes or parked in a handicapped spot. He responsibly took his first sip of alcohol after his twenty-first birthday, and the closest he’s ever come to an illegal substance was the time he passed a few guys in the park who were smoking something fragrant. It’s not like they invited him to join him.

      The weekend comes and Wagner spends his Saturday wandering around, stopping in shops to pick up the occasional item, a new sponge for the kitchen sink, a tube of toothpaste, some floss. When his feet are tired and his stomach is growling, he parks himself at a corner table in a small café and puts his feet up on the chair opposite his. He slips his feet out of his tasseled loafers and wiggles his toes. Wagner’s seat is right in the window, providing him a full view of the street, where young couples walk hand in hand and boys in baggy pants hurl themselves onto skateboards that are already moving. Wagner sips a coffee and watches.

      And suddenly, there is commotion. There is a fight outside the window; one of the members of a young couple has turned on the other – there is yelling, screeching really, and crying. A shoe is thrown. The man is wearing a ski cap pulled tightly over a rather cone-shaped head, and the girl is dressed inappropriately – miniskirt, thin sweater, denim jacket – for the wintry chill that’s still in the air. Wagner stares. The girl is the girl from the office, and she limps into the café, fumbling with her purse, wiping her face with the back of her hand. It is her shoe that was thrown.

      Wagner sits still, silent as a mouse, his eyes following the girl as she stumbles to a stool at the café counter, pulls out a cell phone and begins talking, much louder than necessary in a public place. She is still crying, but her voice grows hot as she speaks and the tears seem to dry up before they roll into the neck of her sweater.

      "He doesn’t believe me," says the girl into her phone. "He thinks I’m cheating on him."

      Wagner motions to the waitress for another cup of coffee and continues to listen. The girl draws out her problem in animated detail. Names and places are given: the boyfriend is Seth and notoriously jealous, the fight had been going on all morning, since he discovered a set of butterfly bobby pins in her top drawer after spending the night at her apartment.

      "I told him it was a gift," says the girl. "And now he’s convinced it’s another guy." She sighs loudly. "What does it matter who it was?" she says. "I love him. How can I get him to trust me?"

      Wagner shakes his head. This girl is a stupid one, true, and he really has no respect for or interest in her relationship woes. But he feels partly responsible on account of the bobby pins. When she hangs up the phone, after much nodding and some crying and head shaking, he gets up and stands behind her. She doesn’t notice him, so he pats her gently on the shoulder. She jumps.

      "Oh!" she says, turning around. "You!"

      He nods. "Me."

      "The cut’s healed, I see," she says. "Not even a scar."

      "Well, it wasn’t very deep," he says, and wanting to make her feel better, "And your ministrations were quite skilled."

      "Uh huh." She reaches for her phone, then for her purse, and fails to pick up either. She laughs uncomfortably.

      "It’s always this way," says Wagner.

      "What?"

      "When you meet a work person outside of work, or a person from church at a bar, or your bartender at the gym, say. It’s awkward, a displacement of everything we’re used to."

      She nods, then smiles. "Totally. It’s weird. That’s like the most words I’ve ever heard you say at one time."

      "I’m a real talkaholic once I leave the office," he jokes. Maybe the key is to distract her, get her off the subject and make her forget her problems. Give her a laugh, that might ease his guilt over causing her breakup with her boyfriend.

      "Do you go the gym?" she asks.

      "Huh?"

      "Only cause you said, you know, your bartender goes to your gym. Do you work out?"

      Wagner sees that metaphorical conversation with this girl may be a difficulty.

      "No, not really. Well, I swim sometimes. But I was just giving an example…"

      "Oh." She orders a tea with lemon, then turns to him. "Wagner, right?"

      "Yes." He offers her his hand to shake and she takes it in her own. She squeezes too hard, leaving half-moon imprints from her long fingernails on the top of his hand.

      "I’m Viola."

      So it was an instrument. "Yes, it’s a beautiful name. Do you like music?"

      "I love it. My boyfriend is a drummer in a band, besides his real job, of course. Have you heard of Gargantua?"

      Wagner shakes his head.

      The girl shakes her own, but for a different reason. "I just don’t understand it. He’s so jealous, it’s crazy! I would never cheat, but…"

      "He suspects something?"

      "Yeah, on account of this little teensy gift someone left me at work. I think it was one of the copy-room guys, that cute little Puerto Rican, you know, Javier? He’s always kind of had this crush on me…"

      "He gave you a gift?" Wagner can’t tell her the truth. He doesn’t think he could stand the look on her face.

      "These adorable pins for my hair. So my boyfriend, Seth, he finds them and goes ballistic, like, where did you get these? I told him they were a present, I didn’t think he’d care. If someone wants to give me something nice, what’s it to him? He certainly hasn’t given me anything lately. Anyway, he freaked out again when we got here. He said there was some creep in the window staring at me and he just couldn’t take it."

      Wagner feels a double pang of guilt. "Maybe Seth isn’t a very nice guy?"

      The girl looks petulant, purses her lips which are covered by a gooey, grapey substance. "He’s really sweet. But when he’s jealous, he just gets nuts."

      Wagner does not like this girl, really he doesn’t. But he can see that she is attractive, and when her hair is not pulled tight across her forehead and instead curls loosely over the tops of her shoulders, she is very attractive. She wears too much makeup, caked on thick like she’s a chorus girl or a clown, but her eyes are set wide and surrounded by heavy lashes, her figure is trim, her expression sweet.

      "Viola," he says. "You could do better."

      That’s when she turns on him. "What do you know? Go home to your wife…if you even have one." Her lips turn down in a sneer, the angles of her face come out and all of a sudden she looks hard, and mean. He wonders if this girl is not as stupid as he has thought, if she knows more than she lets on, the truth even. It’s almost a relief, this potential understanding – a rope of salvation extended as he sinks into solitude like a quicksand it was better not to fight.

      "I’m sorry," he says, covering her hand with his.

      She softens, smiles slightly. "I better go find him." And she jumps off her stool, is out of the restaurant faster than he can say "Good luck." He can hear her voice calling down the streets, a siren in search of the missing.

      Wagner pays for Viola’s tea, which she didn’t drink, and looks down at the speckled floor of the café. There is her purse, with its long leather strap and cavernous body. He’s seen her with it at work, cramming it full of things at night, taking them out again in the morning. He grabs it without thinking and puts it over his own shoulder. It is smooth and brown, and he can’t stop running his hands over its soft body. It seems to give off a warmth of its own, an almost human heat, and it smells salty, like sweat or the ocean.

      "Anything else for you?" asks the woman behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron and giving Wagner a sharp look.

      He shakes his head and leaves, carrying Viola’s bag over his shoulder but underneath his wool coat. When he gets home he sets it in the middle of his kitchen table, surrounded by his pirated goods from the past few weeks. He leaves it there all night and into the next morning, glancing at it occasionally, stroking its soft sides with the backs of his hands.

      On Sunday Wagner goes to church. The minister, a man who Wagner finds eloquent (but not distractingly so) and pious (but not off-puttingly so), gives a homily on being neighborly. This means being a good citizen, a good Samaritan, an actively good person in general. "In these often horrifying times," says the minister, "It is the small acts of kindness that do the most good."

      Wagner thinks of the girl’s purse back at home. He must give it back, he knows. It’s the neighborly thing to do. But instead, when he returns to his apartment, he grabs the bag roughly, turns it upside down, and empties its contents on his table. Items flood forth – a hairbrush clotted with a wad of her hair, tampons, both wrapped and unwrapped, lipsticks, loose change, matches. Wagner picks up a pack of Marlboro Lights and tucks it into his shirt pocket, he sprays a tiny atomizer and releases the scent of lilies into the room. He cannot give it back, not yet.

      That night, he sleeps with the purse on his pillow, burying his face in its skin. He sleeps through the night deeply and soundly and, when he wakes, cannot recall his dreams, only the pleasant blankness of rest. He gets up, showers, and dresses for work, leaving the purse tucked into the covers of his bed. "Bye," he says without thinking when he leaves his apartment, carefully locking the door behind him.

      His walk to work is cheerful. He cannot help but notice singing birds, budding trees, the onset of spring after a prolonged and dreary winter. He enters the office with his hands empty in his coat pockets and a smile on his face, gives a hello to the receptionist, and parks himself at his desk. He is humming when Viola comes over.

      "Wagner," she says, breaking him from his reverie.

      He looks at her. Her eyes are stained red from crying, and there are blue circles that resemble bruises beneath them. Her clothes, again, seem wrong for the weather – she’s wearing a bulky sweater and a scarf under an opened ski jacket. On her arm hangs a brown paper department store bag with a clutter of things inside of it.

      "Did you happen to see my purse at the café?" she asks. "I think I left it there."

      It’s his chance to come clean, even to look like a hero, but Wagner shakes his head no. Her expression becomes even more downcast.

      "I am such a loser," she says. "In one weekend, my boyfriend breaks up with me and I lose my purse. I guess I should cancel my credit cards."

      Wagner nods. "That’s a good idea. Then they won’t hold you accountable for any charges."

      She shrugs and returns to her desk, and Wagner gets to work on the stack of papers in front of him. The day passes slowly, as Wagner is eager to return to his apartment and Viola’s purse. There’s a nervousness, an excitement when he finally opens the door to his room, and a sudden happiness when he sees it, still heavy and brown, still in his bed.

      That night, as he places his cheek on the bag and drifts off to sleep, he feels the jab of something stiff and metal. He reaches his hand inside and, deep within a zipped compartment of the purse, are the butterfly bobby pins. They’re loose, with a few wisps of hair still tucked into them. He sets them on his dresser and attempts to sleep but tosses and turns all night long.

      By the next morning, a decision is made. He will tell her he found the bag – not on that day at the café, but several days later, in an alley. It will have all of its contents intact, except the Marlboros, which he has already smoked. Most importantly, it will contain the bobby pins. He will give it back, they will laugh over the lost and the found, and she will smile. Perhaps they will go for coffee afterward.

      But Viola is not in the office that day, or the next. When the week goes by without a sight of her, Wagner starts to worry. Suppose something happened, he thinks. Suppose that boyfriend beat her, or she was hit by a bus – and with no identification! Wagner finally goes to his boss to inquire about Viola, asking about some important documents he’d given her to finish up on, and the boss informs him that Viola is no longer an employee.

      "Can’t tell you too much about it," says the boss. "She just waltzed in here on Monday afternoon and quit. Didn’t give a reason, just quit."

      That night Wagner stares at the picture on Viola’s driver’s license. He memorizes her height, weight and eye color as well as the expression around her lips, her half smile for the photographer at the DMV. His eyes move down to her address, which is several blocks away, in a neighborhood less nice than Wagner’s own. He pulls on his coat, grabs the purse, and slides out the door, not bothering to lock it behind him or turn out the lights. The TV drones on in his absence, babbling about tax reform and the price of gasoline.

      The walk to her apartment is chilly – the sense of spring from earlier in the week has been eradicated by a vicious northwesterly wind – and Wagner pulls his coat tight around him to keep out the cold. When he gets to there, he buzzes and she answers right away.

      "Come on up," she says, a hint of curiosity in her tone, and he starts walking.

      Before he can knock on the door, she opens it a crack, takes a look at him, and then lets him in. She’s barefoot, wearing a short, silky robe with pink flowers on it. There’s makeup on her face but her hair is mussed, like she hasn’t bothered to brush it all day.

      "Hi," she says, perching on one foot like a pelican. "Funny seeing you here."

      "Yes, it’s always awkward…" He stands there stupidly, her purse tucked under his arm, and then thrusts it toward her.

      "Oh look at that!" She bursts out laughing. "Where did you find it?"

      "Viola, what’s going on?" asks a male voice from the other room. "Who’s here?"

      "It’s just a guy from work," she says.

      Seth is in the room in seconds, offering his hand to be shaken, his glare and physique to be taken in and impressed with. "What’s up, man?" he says.

      Viola tosses the bag into a corner of her apartment without looking inside of it and throws her arms around Seth. "Sethie, this is Wagner from my old job. Wagner, Seth and I are engaged." She is luminous, glowing. Seth looks smug and a bit malevolent.

      "I just brought the purse back," says Wagner. "I found it in the alley when I was throwing out my trash."

      "The alley?" says Seth, wrinkling his forehead in a way that Wagner feels must be difficult for one so musclebound. "Why would someone leave it in the alley?"

      Wagner shrugs. "Kids," he says, in a way that is neither question nor explanation.

      "Thank you," says Viola, looking Wagner in the eye. "It was really nice of you to go out of your way…"

      "You could have left it there," interrupts Seth. "I bought her a new one."

      "It’s true," says Viola, "Isn’t he sweet?" On the left finger of her left hand, which is still wrapped around Sethie, Wagner can see a shining ring, topped with a two-months’ salary kind of diamond. He can see he has made a mistake.

      "Very sweet," says Wagner. "Okay, well, I’d better go." He steps out of the apartment and the door shuts behind him. He can hear them giggling, and though he wants to leave, to get out of that place as fast as humanly possible, his legs have turned to dead wood. He is anchored to the floor, a fossilized being from prehistoric times.

      "Weird guy," says Seth.

      "Oh, he’s not so bad," says Viola.

      "He’s a freak!" says Seth. "Alley, my ass. He’s obsessed with you, Viola. And I bet I know what he was really up to with that bag."

      There is a silence, absolute in its nothingness. Wagner cranes his neck toward the door to hear better, wishing he had one of his kitchen glasses along with him. The small juice glass with the picture of the cow would have been perfect to press against the door, and in turn, to press his ear against, a child’s amplifier for the hearing (or otherwise) impaired.

      "No!" says Viola. "You think?"

      "How many times do I have to tell you, you’re a terrible judge of people."

      "Maybe you’re right," says Viola. "One time, I did see him cut his own chin with a knife."

      There is the sound of more laughing, and then kissing. Wagner, a stone in suffering, finally uproots himself from the tired linoleum of Viola’s hallway and leaves.

      On the way home, he stops at the neighborhood 7-11 and gets a Big Gulp the way he likes it, half coke and half root beer. He’s already sipping as he walks through the doors of the store; the guy at the cash register, absorbed in a magazine, doesn’t even notice him. Wagner returns to his apartment and sits at his table for the duration of the drink, viewing the various items that he has pocketed over the last few weeks. When he finishes the Big Gulp, he sets it on the table, front and center in the place of honor. He sits there watching and waiting, as if for signs of motion or a signal from a higher power, until dawn, when he finally stumbles to bed. And then, though his eyes close, he still does not rest.