"At Kenny's. Did you get anything? Did the drop-thingy come in?"
"No," I said. "It hadn't come in. But it's hard to get, they stopped making it years ago, and Kenny doesn't even know for sure whether he can get one. I'll just have to keep looking around, you know? Like, maybe next time we go to New York, I can check that shop down in Greenwich Village, the comic store that had all the really obscure model kits?"
"Whatever," Sarah said. "I got the steaks, and some romaine, which was, if you can believe this, the same price as it was at Mindy's, there must be, like, a frost or something in California, I don't know, and the other stuff I needed, plus I got some more frozen pizzas. I bought five of them on the weekend, and I looked in the fridge last night and there wasn't a single one left."
"Don't look at me."
"The kids must be making them after we go to bed. I make them dinner, they say they're not hungry, that they went out for lunch, or had a snack at someone's house after school, and then at ten o'clock they're in the kitchen heating up pizzas. It makes me crazy."
I said nothing the rest of the way home. I knew Sarah was still thinking there was something wrong with me, but she wasn't going to bring it up again. She grabbed the bags from the back seat while I went to open the front door, but it was already unlocked. There were several pairs of shoes in the front hall, kicked about haphazardly, which meant Paul and Angie had brought some friends home with them. As Sarah went past me into the kitchen, I said, "Hang on, I think I left something in the car. I'll be back in a second."
I pressed the trunk button on the remote and watched it swing open. I reached inside and grabbed the purse in my right hand. This was the first time I'd had my hand on it since learning it wasn't Sarah's, and it was like touching ice. A chill swept over me.
"Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid," I whispered to myself.
Of course, now that I knew it didn't belong to Sarah, I realized that the purse did not look familiar to me. It was a dark brown leather bag, and Sarah's tastes ran to black and deep blue. To Sarah, this would be one of the more moronic aspects of this crime. I could almost hear her now: "If you'd been asked to kidnap me, instead of steal a purse, would you have been able to pick me out of a crowd? Or would you have come home with the housecoat lady?"
Again, I tried tucking it under my jacket, which looked almost as ridiculous as if I'd simply carried it out in the open. But I was able to get through the front door and into my study without Sarah seeing me, although she heard me and called out, "You want to start up the barbecue so we can do these steaks and then help me rinse this lettuce?"
"Yeah, in a minute," I said, slipping the purse out from under my jacket.
About then, Paul and three of his friends - Andy, Hakim, and Darryl - came bounding down the stairs from his bedroom, rounding the corner and heading for the door to the basement. Darryl had several video-game cartridge boxes in his hand, indicating to me that they were planning to park themselves in front of the downstairs television for the next several hours. Andy caught a glimpse of me as he passed the study door and shouted, "Hey, Mr. Walker!"
"Hi, guys," I said.
"Nice purse, Mr. Walker," Andy said. "Suits you."
My heart skipped a beat. "Thanks," I said, closing the door. I flicked on the desk lamp next to the keyboard, sat down in my writing chair, and set the purse on the table.
Sitting there, in the quiet of my study, the video game noises in the basement and the soft sounds of water running in the kitchen both muted by the closed door, with the handbag of a woman I did not know on the desk in front of me, I began to sweat. I took a couple of deep breaths, letting them both out slowly, in a bid to get my heart rate down a bit.
"Relax," I said. Okay, I had done a stupid thing, a really stupid thing. But this was a problem that could be solved. In short order. Before Sarah got wind of it and had something she could lord over me the rest of our marriage.
I unzipped the top of the purse and peered inside. I didn't want to look very closely. I had a sense of the invasion I was perpetrating. All I wanted was a wallet. For a name and an address. The purse had some heft to it, there was a lot of stuff in there, but my interests were very specific. I just wanted to track down the owner.