08:57 PM
"Don't scream, don't jump around, don't act crazy."
My first instinct was to do all of those things. The person who had just materialized at my elbow was reinforcing his warning by pricking the side of my neck very slightly with what I assumed to be a knife. A very sharp knife. I had never been mugged before -- I've never even known anyone who had been mugged -- so I didn't have much experience in framing a response. I really, really wanted to scream and jump around. I wasn't sure how the mugger might have defined "acting crazy", but I suspected I'd feel better for doing some of that, too.
"Empty your pockets," he ordered. "Hand everything back to me. Don't drop anything, don't throw anything, don't try to turn around. Don't do anything that might encourage me to poke a hole in you with this knife."
"I don't really have a lot of stuff with me," I protested. "Only some cash for a cab -- "
The point of the knife became more insistent.
"For Christ's sake! This isn't a negotiation! Just give me everything you've got on you and shut the fuck up."
"Okay, okay. I'm just trying to explain -- Ow!" Quickly, I passed back the twenty bucks in fives and ones that I always carried on my run just in case something came up while I didn't have my wallet with me and I needed a bit of pocket cash.
"That's it? That's all you've got?"
"Yes. That what I -- Shit! Stop doing that!"
"Stop talking or you'll get a lot worse." The mugger rattled the bills, then crammed them into his pocket.
Harry Claussen, my usual running partner, was working an extra half-shift tending bar at an upscale Greek place down on South Bridge Street, so I had been running solo this evening. I never bothered to carry a phone for my run, partly because there was no place for it in my running shorts and partly because I had no desire to clutter up my run with the detritus of the working day. It had never occurred to me that there might be armed muggers in the park. The worst thing that had happened there in recent memory was a flasher who had been annoying women and kids since the beginning of summer, rousing the police to an intense, if ineffectual, flurry of activity. Violence, even only implied violence, was unheard of. With law enforcement pretty much a fixture now at the park entrance and at the bandshell, my mugger was skating on the thinnest of ice trying this now.
"Give me your clothes."
"What? Shorts and a tank top? They're not worth five bucks altoge -- "
"Jesus! Do you want me to cut you? How have you lived this long without somebody yanking your tongue out of your head? Just do it!"
I pulled my tank top over my head, then stepped out of my running shorts.
"Hand 'em back to me. Okay, now the jockstrap. And the socks and shoes, those are nice running shoes. I'll bet they're even my size."
"Oh, come on! Leave me something -- "
"One more word and what I'm gonna leave you with is a potentially fatal knife wound. The jock. The shoes. Now."
I did as I was told, then stood with my hands over my crotch, feeling extremely uncomfortable. I had been known to bare all at the behest of a strange man before -- many strange men, truth be told, some stranger than others -- but never at knifepoint.
"Now then. The cops are still looking for the flasher, so if I were you I wouldn't go hollering for help, not with your skinny ass hanging out like that. You just stand there like a good boy for a count of ten as I walk away. Do what I tell you and I'll leave your shorts on the bench over there where the path curves back on itself. Dig?"
I nodded, and the knife disappeared from my neck. I counted to about six and then whipped around, staring wildly at the path, the shrubbery, even up into the trees. No sign of the mugger. Still keeping my hands over my crotch, I scurried up the trail to the bench.
Nothing.
"Motherfucker!" I groaned. Now what? I was trapped in a Freudian nightmare: buck naked at midnight in a public place, a mile and half from my apartment. If I walked out of the park like this, I'd be arrested by the time I got across Nineteenth Street. The east entrance, around the corner from Fairleigh Drive Circle, would be less exposed, but I'd still have to get the twenty blocks to my apartment.
Bartender Harry was a friend with benefits: I had been hoping that we would have our usual run then indulge in a less-usual but always-welcome romp in the sack to celebrate my birthday, which was only hours away, but his work intervened, and I had launched my birthday-eve evening without a plan. Now I was alone and naked in Fairleigh Circle Park and celebration was the furthest thing from my mind.
One thing at a time, I thought. I took a deep breath and started jogging toward the gate.
Not only was the east entrance to the park smaller and less well-lit, but it opened onto a long row of on-street parking. When I ventured out onto the sidewalk and peered up and down the street I could see that there was one car, an older BMW, sitting in a parking space about fifty yards to my left. Two men were sitting on a sidewalk bench nearby, talking. They were dressed to party, but looked pretty subdued for all that. I decided to risk an encounter.
"Um, can you help me? I've been mugged in the park."
One of the men, a stocky fireplug type with a stubble of black hair and beard, dressed in tan slacks and a yellow-and-white silk bowling shirt, stared and then guffawed.
"I'm seeing things!" he laughed, elbowing his companion.
"I'm seeing it, too. Maybe it's a whattayacallit, a collective hallucination."
"I'm not a hallucination," I pointed out, resisting the urge to snap. "I was attacked by a mugger in the park while I was out for a run. He stole everything. My money, my clothes, even my shoes. My apartment is about twenty blocks from here, on Thirty-third Avenue. Could you give me a lift there? Or maybe let me have something I could wear so I could walk home?"
The second man rolled his eyes. He was taller and leaner than his friend, with dark skin and a shaven head, wearing black jeans and a clingy white t-shirt, the shirt dazzlingly bright under the street light.
"How do we know you're not some naked psycho looking to inveigle yourself into our confidence and then knife us in the back?"
"'Inveigle'? I like that," his friend put in. "Inveigle."
