The Stolen Heart by Lauren Kelly

Author:Lauren Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061752919
Publisher: HarperCollins

Security Guard

At Wal-Mart, at a discreet distance I sighted him.

At Wal-Mart in the Northland Mall. Into which until now I had never stepped.

Unmistakably, the man was Roosevelt Jimson. Tall, solidly built, burnt-gingery-skinned. In his early thirties. Inclined to frown. With facial whiskers bristly-repellent as a giant black hairy spider clutching at his jaws.

Jimson was stationed in the check-out area. If he hated his job, if he believed that it demeaned him, who should have been a law enforcement officer carrying a nightstick, flashlight, revolver and two-way radio and handcuffs attached to his shiny leather belt, and not just a crackling walkie-talkie, he didn’t show it.

Wal-Mart! It wasn’t my scene.

When I shopped in Manhattan, it was in very different kinds of stores and always, you can be sure, in smaller stores. Wal-Mart was enormous as a warehouse. This relatively new store at the mall commanded an entire corner of the mall and what looked like acres of parking space. It felt as if such a vast space must generate its own wind currents, which tended (on a midsummer day) to be refrigerator-cold. I saw that Jimson’s uniform was a crisply ironed pale blue short-sleeved shirt and trousers of a dark-blue serge. His footware looked like combat boots. If I’d dared to come closer, I could have made out the identification on his brass badge and braided epaulettes, that mimicked that of a police officer’s.

So Jimson, a young black recruit in the predominantly white Mt. Olive Police Department, had been suspended for using “excessive force” against a suspected pedophile. I hoped he hadn’t quit police work permanently; hoped he hadn’t insulted his superiors so he’d never be hired back.

I didn’t want to think so. I wanted Jimson to be something more than a Wal-Mart guard for the rest of his life.

“Just like you, Jimson! ‘Fucking up’ a good thing.”

I shared Selena’s exasperation. I was angry with Jimson as if we’d been quarreling.

“Disappointing my father, too. ‘Dennis Graf ’ who’d helped you…”

Seeing Jimson now, I’d come to doubt that the man had stolen anything from my father’s hospital room. That sudden fantasy of mine, lifting abruptly out of a dream of emotional/sexual yearning, had faded in the fluorescent-lit clarity of the gigantic store. Girl, what’d I want with your crap! Not a thing from you.

In my fantasy, I’d imagined confronting Jimson. My heart had begun to beat with excitement at the prospect. But now, in the crowded store, peering at Jimson from my hiding place in Kitchen Appliances, I understood that that wasn’t going to happen: I was stone cold sober.

“Fuck ‘sober.’ But I’m not going to drink for you.”

This was so. God damn if I would drink for Roosevelt Jimson, or with him. I would not.

Spying on Jimson, I was intrigued to see how indifferent he was to women shoppers who occasionally glanced at him. In fact, he was indifferent to his surroundings. From time to time he glanced at children passing by him, followed a child with his eyes for a short while, but that was it.

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