Reinventing Mona (21 page)

I called Tim to see if there was another actor in his company that could use extra cash. Not surprisingly, there was a guy more than happy to make a cameo appearance on my next date with Adam. His role: the purse-snatcher. Mine: the damsel with no distress. When Toby snatched my purse after Adam and I left the movie theater Saturday night, I’d chase him, and reclaim my purse along with my dignity. Adam would see that I was a woman who really
could
save the day—or in this case, night.

That was the plan anyway.

I remember right before I graduated from high school, Grammy and I were walking down Ocean Boulevard when this scrappy-looking kid with an undersized denim jacket and a mess of black hair whipped by and snatched the purse right out of her hand. Without a moment’s hesitation, she bolted after him. Grammy was sixty-eight years old and she didn’t stop for a moment to think about the potential danger of pursuing a criminal, or the fact that in a race between an adolescent and a senior citizen, the geriatric usually loses. She just said, “No one takes my purse,” and darted off after him. Not a particularly bright budding criminal, the kid looked back in disbelief that Grammy was chasing him and within seconds was flat on his back, knocked unconscious by the street lamp he ran into. Like some sort of madwoman, she put her foot on top of his limp body and held her purse over her head. Picture that snapshot joined by the cinematic spinning newspaper headline, reading, “Local Senior Helps Keep Coronado Crime-free.” Within days, the news of Grammy’s heroics spread across the island and everyone was calling her “Gray Lightning.” Although the few news outlets that covered the story did their mandatory “Don’t try this at home, kids” disclaimer, it was pretty clear that everyone thought Grammy was pretty cool.

Even Grammy did her share of backpedaling after the adrenaline rush returned her to the reality that she’d just risked her life for a few hundred bucks and prescription shades. “Normally I wouldn’t have done something as reckless as that, Mona,” Grammy explained. “But this community means a great deal to me, and when that boy snatched my purse, it was as if he was trying to take away the Coronado I love. If I had been thinking straight, I would have let the boy take the purse, but at the moment, the thought of being robbed lit a fire under me.” Apologies notwithstanding, I could see that Grammy was also pretty pleased with her newfound status.

My staged purse snatching had the similar theme of someone falling; unfortunately that someone was me. I chased Toby for all of ten yards on the downtown San Diego sidewalk before my ankle snapped from under me and I was left watching Adam quickly gain on Toby. Unarmed and completely unprepared for Adam’s chivalrous pursuit, Toby ran clumsily like the school nerd being chased by the bully. (Casting could have been a bit better on this one.) Soon Toby was flattened onto the sidewalk getting the living daylights beaten out of him. I hobbled toward them watching Adam’s fist rise and plunge into poor Toby like an industrial sewing machine. “Stop!” I shouted. “He could have a gun.” This admonition caused a gasp from passers-by who quickly dove to the sidewalk to dodge Toby’s imaginary bullets.

Toby was face down on the sidewalk with Adam’s knee on his back, his hands being masterfully bound by my boyfriend’s necktie. When Adam tossed my purse to me and winked, he seemed kind of hot until I remembered he just beat the crap out of Coronado Playhouse’s Clarence the angel. Again with the damned cell phone, Adam dialed 911 and waited for the police to arrive.

Toby shot me a terrified look, and I tried to nonverbally communicate that I would take care of everything, though honestly I had no idea how I’d do that. Within minutes we heard sirens and four officers jumped out of their car with batons poised for the whooping poor Toby had already received.

“You guys,” I pleaded pitifully. “I really didn’t have much in my purse. Why don’t we give the guy a second chance? I don’t want to press charges against him.”

“Ma’am, it’s not your choice,” said a junior officer with slick brown hair and an oversized chin.

Toby looked at me with sheer panic. His beady eyes sat under vertically scrunched eyebrows, punctuating his face like exclamation points. Toby’s entire face was covered in sweat, and regrettably there was a little blood from his lip. He was cuffed and shoved into a police car, crying that his lip was bleeding while Adam gave a statement to the police.

“Where are you taking him?” I whined.

“To the station.” reported an officer.

“Which station?” I cried as the passenger door slammed shut.

“The
police
station, lady.”

I ran to the driver’s window and rapped on it frantically. “Which police station?” Then in a muttered whisper, I told the officer, “Rss isn huh wy it rooks. R’ll cub dow huh huh statuh and hsplain reverything.”

“What you saying, lady?” he shouted.

I leaned in about an inch away from his face and whispered, “I said this isn’t how it looks. I’ll come down to the station and explain everything, okay? He isn’t really a purse-snatcher. He’s an actor.”

“Come on, Mona!” Adam shouted. “Let the boys do their job and forget the bleeding heart routine. He’ll get what he deserves.”

He’ll get what he deserves. He’ll get what he deserves
,
haunted me like the ghost from the past. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard this before, but the words struck me as cruel, punitive, and completely unforgiving. Maybe because they were, but there was something more to this phrase that crept into me and hurt in
a place I wasn’t aware existed. But not quite as much as Toby had been hurt, so I quickly refocused on getting myself out of this date and down to the police station before the actor had a criminal record.

“Adam, I’m a little shaken up by this whole thing. I think we should call it a night,” I said.

“Okay, it’s a night. I’ll take you home and make you a cup of tea before you check in for the evening.”

I wasn’t particularly interested in having sex with Adam, but wondered why he wasn’t pursuing a more physical relationship with me. So far, on these greatest dates of his life, he hadn’t even tried to kiss me. I was in no hurry to kiss him, but it bothered me that the feeling seemed to be mutual.

“All right, lemme get this straight,” an older pudgy police officer delivered entirely through the right side of his mouth. He sighed for effect and continued. “You say this guy snatched your purse ‘cause you paid him to?”

“Yes, Officer Marman.” I shook my head eagerly, hoping that my reading his name from his tag would help us connect.

“And you did this ʼcause you wanted to show off for your new boyfriend?” I couldn’t tell if he was baffled or amused or a little bit of both.

“Yes, yes, that’s it.” I craned my neck to see the officer who sat in a dispatcher box a few feet above me. The walls were the pale blue of a computer screen, almost gray. I felt as though I’d done something wrong just by the hard surroundings of metal desks and hardwood chairs set against the stark background of nothingness and gating. Three prostitutes and a drunk guy muttering about Bob Dylan being a murderer sat in the lobby waiting for their photo session and booking for the night. Slouching in her chair, one of the hookers sat with her arms folded across a red sequined tank top and a look on her face that was pure righteous indignation. “I don’t know whatcho thinking,” she repeated to the officers who brought her and her friends in. “This bullshit. You undastand me, buuuull-sheeet, motherfucker.” I was amazed at her complete conviction that she had been wronged by the police when I was on the brink of peeing in my pants just for being there. However, from the smell of things, I wasn’t the only one who had that impulse. “You motherfuckers gonna be sorry,” said another prostitute in a green lame prom dress hemmed to the upper thighs. “Sorry-ass mother fuckers.” I kept waiting for the third to get up and start singing “She Works Hard for the Money,” realizing that I’d gotten far too used to the characters in my life being paid actors.

“Hold on a sec, toots,” said Officer Marman. He picked up a phone receiver. “You gotta get in here, Davy. Bring Ernie and Burt, too. I’m definitely takin’ the pot tonight.” Within seconds, I was surrounded by six uniforms. “All right, tell them what you told me.”

“Where is Toby?” I asked.

“Who?” Marman asked.

“Toby, Toby, the guy who snatched my purse.” I panicked at the thought that they’d misplaced him—lost in the criminal justice system after only forty-five minutes. Damn that Adam and his tea!

“She means Weepy Boy,” said Burt.

Oh no!
“Weepy Boy?” I asked.

Marman smirked. “He ain’t exactly a hardened criminal.”

“Has he been crying?”

“Since the moment he got in the squad car,” said another officer.

“I insist you let him out!” I stomped my foot.

“Oooow, child!” said hooker number three, laughing through her bubblegum.

“You go, girl!” said the green prom dress. “Don’t take that shit from these motherfuckers. Getcho man out this place.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I realize my foolishness caused you unnecessary work this evening, officers. I do apologize for that, but you must understand that the thought of my dear friend—a fragile soul at that—sobbing in a jail cell and not knowing his fate is simply unbearable to me. You must understand that.”

“It’s not like we beat him or anything,” said Marman.

Red Sequins chimed in. “Don’t believe that sheeeet, girl. We seen that boy and he got his ass kicked. Yo man is one ass-kicked motherfucker in jail.”

“I’m sure you didn’t harm him, officers. If anyone put him in harm’s way, it was me, and I feel just awful about it. Can you please get him now, then I’ll explain the whole story to your colleagues here?”

When they brought Toby out into the lobby, he looked as though he’d been released from a three-year sentence. His slouched body was topped with a head that weighed nearly a hundred pounds, or so it looked from the way he struggled to keep it up. His eyes were blotchy and red and the sight of his split bottom lip made me jolt with sympathy pain. “Oh God, Mona, you have no idea what this night has been like.” He ran toward me with arms outstretched. For a moment, I thought he might just pretend to hug me so he could get close enough to grip my throat with his bare hands. Whether it was genuine goodness or fear of committing a crime in a police station, Toby hugged me with all his might and sobbed into my shoulder. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. Look at my lip!”

“All right, put the harmonica away, jailbird. G’head, Miss Warren.”

“Well,” I shifted my weight uncomfortably as the officers grew quiet. “Seven years ago, I met my grandmother’s accountant. Well, actually he was her accountant’s son who had just become a CPA and joined the family business. Anyway, he was just magnificent. Confident, sexy, and totally charming, everything I wasn’t. I looked at him and thought
that
is the man I’m going to marry. Grammy told me she’d known Adam’s family for years and they were as close knit as could be. And you could see it just by looking around the office, too. There were pictures of all of them together on a sailboat, smiling in the sun with their arms draped around each other’s shoulders. There was one of Adam on a horse with his six-year-old niece who was missing both her front teeth and had the biggest, most beautiful smile you’d ever seen. There was another one of Adam’s parents, and I don’t know where they were or what they were doing, but they looked so happy, so in love with each other still.

“I thought, I want to be in those photos. I want to be part of them. And I looked around the office some more and there was all this stuff, souvenirs and paperweights and I didn’t know where any of it came from, but I imagined there were stories behind everything. They had history. Texture. It was like Grammy and I were these two little drops of water and they were this big ocean and I wanted us to just drop right into it with them.” I looked over and now the hookers were listening, too. “I don’t know, Adam just seemed perfect. Like he’d be the ideal man to marry. I don’t have a family.” I choked on my words. “They, they ... they all died a long time ago and it was just me and Grammy for the last fifteen years. Then she died last year and I, I ...”

Marman pulled a chair and told me to sit down. Another brought me a glass of water. “I felt so ... I was so alone. Then one day I walked into my office and they tell us that they’re having financial troubles and asked who wanted to leave. At that point, I realized that nothing is permanent; everything is completely fluid, changing, and disappearing. And I was like, hey, I’m not getting any younger and my life is passing me by. If there is one thing I really want in this world it is the feeling of belonging somewhere, being a part of something.  Love. I want to be part of a family again.” I stopped to wipe away a tear that had escaped in my losing battle to hold them back.

“So, I thought, if I want to marry Adam, I’d better kick it into high gear and make it happen. Anyway, to make a long story short, I’ve been trying to impress him, to show him what an asset to his life I’d be, but everything I do turns out wrong. I hired some guy to pretend he was my cool forlorn ex-boyfriend and, well let’s just say, that didn’t go well. Then, I tried to save someone’s life, but ended up getting some poor woman’s driver’s license taken away. And now, instead of looking like a woman who can take care of herself against a purse snatcher, poor Toby got beaten up and arrested.” At this point, I buried my face into my hands and sobbed.

“Jeesh.” Marman sighed. “I thought this was going to be a funny story.”

“Yeah, that’s really sad,” said another.

“Didja ever think of maybe cooking your boyfriend a meal?” Marman offered.

“How ʼbout sucking his dick?” the green prom dress offered.

Toby wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Or fall in love without engineering the whole thing.”

I laughed.

“What?” a few asked.

“It’s just that I used to be an engineer, that’s all. I found it amusing.”

“Owww, child, you can take the girl out of engineering, but you can’t take the engineering out the girl!” said a hooker.