Stolen

When she wore the mink stole, with its glassy eyes on her right shoulder you knew something was going to happen. The stole, which she had stolen from her grandmother’s closet, was a sign.

“I didn’t exactly steal it,” she would say. “Whoever killed the mink is the one who stole it. After that, ownership is difficult to establish. It was a gift from her lover in the thirties. He was married to someone else. One might say she stole it when she stole his affections.”

It made me very hot when she wore the mink. I stole a kiss as I opened the back door for her. She liked to sit in back when I drove, wearing my black chauffeur cap. She called it stealing status; it made her look like a rich lady with a driver. I was supposed to be waiting for my boss to finish a meeting so I could drive him to the next one. I wasn’t sure what he did in those meetings. He always got on his cellphone afterward and said “I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.” I didn’t know if he just liked stealing the line from Don Corleone or if he really was a gangster. It’s not a question you ask your boss, so I stole scraps of conversation to figure it out. I was pretty sure the answer was yes, he was a gangster.

She was my neighbor growing up. We used to sneak into the movies together. It wasn’t really stealing, they were going to show the movie anyway. We liked movies about heists, like Oceans Eleven. She liked George Clooney; I thought Julia stole the show.

Her dad and my mom were stealing time together during the workday. They would shoo us out with five dollars each. We would steal candy but we never stole cigarettes; it seemed crazy to steal something we knew was going to steal breath from us eventually. Once I felt bad about stealing into the theater so I bought her a Milky Way. “Ahww,” she said, “you’ve stolen my heart!” I wasn’t sure she actually meant it.

I stole a glance in the rear-view mirror. She was touching up her lipstick.

“Where do you want to go, baby?” I asked.

“Let’s steal away and get married,” she said.

My heart leapt. My boss was busy the rest of the day, and neither of us had promised to marry anyone else, so we stole away to Atlantic City. The stolen mink was lucky; before the ceremony we won enough at blackjack to buy a nice wedding dinner afterward, with caviar.

She stole the wine glasses. They’re up on that shelf. Want a drink?