From the Notebook of Ulyssa Kincaid
Who would have thought that one of life's little ironic pleasures would hinge on a memorably ugly bowling bag? It happened on my last birthday, I'd just turned forty-one. My family had made a big deal about my fortieth birthday the prior year. I'd been surprised at the house Jeremy built with a huge party, gag gifts, male stripper, the whole works. But now that I'd reached the ripe old age of forty-one, my birthday was obviously just another workday. My husband toiled a thousand miles away at a two week long business seminar; both of our daughters were away at two different colleges; even the cat had disappeared for two or three days.
So I began celebrating my birthday on my own by watching the sunrise at the bottom of a tequila glass. Then I watched another sunrise and another.
As I walked through this labyrinthian house that my husband, Jeremy, had built, I knew that basically it was just the world's most beautiful cattle barn designed to keep me and the rest of his possessions penned inside.
My best friend, Gina, had always told me that what I needed was to have an affair with a real man who'd not only take my body out of Jeremy's stockade, but steal my heart as well. Of course, Jeremy informed me that Gina was white trash, and he didn't want me to associate with her.
I continued to pace the walls inside my expensive cage. Soon I passed the large wall length mirror. Naturally, I waved to Mirror Marlene.
"Happy birthday, Marlene," I called out. Mirror Marlene lifted her half empty cocktail glass toward me, and we saluted our birthday by draining the last drops of our fourth tequila sunrise together.
"I believe we're out of tequila, Marlene," The lady in the mirror told me. "Have you got some more stashed over there in mirror-land?" I asked. Marlene laughed at me, since we both knew that I needed to go out to buy another bottle. "Have you seen my jacket?"
Of course she had. It was still on a hanger in the closet that Jeremy designed. In the fleeting moments before nine: forty-five AM, I was out of the house and off to the liquor store.
That was where the trouble started. First when I parked my car, I nearly hit a street lamp post where a tall thin young black man in a hooded gray sweatshirt stood next to an ugly purple and green bowling bag. He quickly turned his face away from me, but not before I noticed some disfiguring scars around his mouth. But the tequila was the big thing on my mind.
"Lady, it looks like you've already started celebrating," the cashier said. "You know I can't sell booze to you when you've been drinking."
"But it's my birthday!" I said quietly getting a signal from Mirror Marlene who was loitering on the surface of a glass counter to try a few tears to induce the clerk. By then a few more people had begun to form a line behind me.
None of us noticed the dark figure who came up softly behind us, and neither Mirror Marlene nor I reacted until it was too late.
"All right, people, everyone lay down on the floor," a hoarse falsetto voice sneered. "Empty your wallets and the cash register and nobody will get hurt."
The liquor store I frequented was being robbed by a young black man with a black ski mask, his desert storm style field jacket covered most of what appeared to be a generic gray hooded sweatshirt, he carried a .9 mm automatic, and lugged a brown grocery bag into the store.
Quickly, thoroughly, the young man took the money from the two cash registers, my money, and close to a thousand dollars from three businessmen in the store. Strangely enough, though the young black man had taken all of our money, he left us our credit cards. As I noted the strange scars on his lip which could be perceived at the mouth hole of his ski mask, I was sure I saw just a glimpse of an ugly purple and green bowling bag hidden just outside the front door. My curiosity peaked, I watched which way the young man went, and something in Mirror Marlene's smirk told me that if we felt like playing detective, we might be able to track him down.
However, the manager of the liquor store convinced me to stay and talk to the police when they arrived. He offered to fill my tequila order at no charge if I promised to hide the bottle in my handbag and tell the police what I knew. The owner surreptitiously gave all four of us good citizens our various orders on the house. Of course, my description of the suspect was immediately dismissed as inaccurate. After all, I was female, and like Mirror Marlene, I had bottle blonde hair. It didn't help that I was partly under the influence, but the worst part of it was that I was over forty years of age.
The clerk and the three male customers identified the man as a shotgun toting African American/Hispanic, or a Samoan/Hawaiian carrying a .350 magnum pea shooter. He was occasionally over six foot-five, just barely five foot-eight, but mostly average in height. He was thin and just 25 years of age, but looked over 30 and weighed nearly two hundred and eighty pounds. The same man apparently wore Nike shoes over his Cochran jump boots and black denim jeans which were a faded blue and/or khaki in color. Stuffing the stolen cash into a combination bank sack and briefcase, he then skateboarded alone off to his getaway minivan where half a dozen companions waited.
Anyway you get the point.
Eventually one of the officers told me he'd have his partner drive me home in my own car. I smiled graciously and thanked him, and I suppose that should have been that. But on the way back just minutes from my place, I noticed the tall thin young black man in a gray sweatshirt carrying an ugly purple and green bowling bag into Northside Bowling Lanes. I started to say something to the officer, but he was in contact by hand held two-way radio with his partner in the squad car and didn't want to be bothered.
Afterwards, I thanked the police for getting me home safely, and promised not to drive any more today. Naturally as soon as they drove out of sight, I jumped in my car and headed straight for the bowling alley.
Early afternoon traffic slowed to a crawl as I made a turn onto the main road. Barely focusing on the snarl of traffic ahead, my eyes darted around the boulevard watching whatever there was to see on the road besides stalled traffic.
I caught sight of something disconcerting: a young mousy blond teenager treading a bit too deliberately with a huge bag of groceries and a package of Huggies diapers balanced in one arm and a small toddler balanced on her hip. Poured into the confines of preshrunk denim shorts and bursting braless through a fading orange tank top, the girl was fatigued and quite overwhelmed by her struggling child.
Quite obviously a handful, it was the toddler which attracted my attention. He was soft toned brown in color with a full mop of brown black curly hair. The child was much too dark complected for his mother, and yet, the baby's feature reflected the mother's startlingly. For some reason the image of those two stuck in my head even after I turned the corner and drove out of sight.
I drove on until I had pulled into the parking lot of the bowling alley. Before I left the car, I asked Mirror Marlene why we were doing this again. But she just smiled at me, shrugged, and winked. We must've had some sort of plan worked out, so I followed her lead.
I was in luck. The bowling bag and its scar-faced owner were still there waiting quietly by the snack bar. But now what do I do? Try to apprehend him and turn him in? Yeah, that sounded just as stupid to me then, as it does now that I repeat it. So I merely walked up to the counter, took a seat, and ordered some coffee.
The man behind the counter was joking with my suspect about some woman fingering him on a paternity suit. "Of course, that's something you probably won't have to worry about, player."
"I'm the faithful kind, Richard. A one woman man."
"Shit, you ain't even found that one woman yet, Rucker."
The scarring along the right side of his mouth was more severe than I'd realized. It looked as if he bore some ugly scars from some sort of surgery to his cheek and upper lip. Still, there was something admirable about the way he maintained his dignity. So when he noticed me staring at him, I blurted out the first thing to come to mind: "So, what are you going to do with the money?"
Shocked, the young man looked at me, and then he let his face go as placid as it would allow. "Do I know you, lady?"
"I'm pretty sure you remember where we met," I answered. "The thing is if I figured out that it was you, how long do you think it will take the police?" I figured that would be sufficient enough bluff to influence him.
He stood up and strolled two bar stools closer to me. "What is this lady?" he murmured. "Some kind of shakedown?"
"No, actually it's some kind of birthday," I replied. "Grab your bowling bag and let's go for a drive."
"Wait a minute lady!"
"Wait too long and all you'll get is a free ride in the back of a police car." I hopped down from the counter stool. "C'mon. You've got nothing to loose." I offered him my keys. "You can even drive if you want."
Shrugging, the young scar-faced man declined my keys, picked up his bag and gestured towards the door.
"Are we headed out of the city?" he asked. I told him no. I knew that his instincts for staying close were correct, and we'd be much better off hiding in plain sight.
