The Purse Snatcher Letters Read online

Bernard,

  Its all no good tonight. I’ve spent the last hour looking out the window at the lot of the convenience store – I’m in the same town for three days now, even way after I should’ve left, all I did was change hotels and even that I’m just up the street. I don’t know why, I don’t know what the thing is.

  The convenience store – it was a clumsy snatch, just a straight up hard pull and I shoved the woman up in the direction of the payphone and I took off, had the route planned out that’d get me to the hotel and right up the stairs, my room key at the ready. It was a drag and there wasn’t but twenty-four something dollars in there. No, Clumsy isn’t even the word, man, clumsy-as-bloody-clumsy-can-be, no method at all, I hadn’t marked her from anywhere, I’d just smoked cigarettes in the lot of the comicbook store next to the place, waited until things were more or less still and for the quote-endquote opportune moment. Kabam. Twenty-four crumby dollars and the usual silly contents I don’t care anything about. It’s weird, the other stuff used to be kind of a fetish - I’ve admitted that to you before - but now it’s a monetary proposition, pure and simple.

  I just keep going to the window – nothing’s going on there, anymore. But it was like half-hour of her standing around with her arms crossed and some of her friends had showed up and even after the police left it was just her standing there shaking her head like she just couldn’t believe it with her arms locked crossed tight tight tight. It’s kind of put me off. I guess I keep expecting her to wander back over, haunt the spot or take photos or something.

  Christ.

  This hotel, it’s about the cheapest in the area, it’ll have to be home base the next little while unless I manage to get some loot up. Funny thing about it – the bars of hand soap are incredibly generic, incredibly incredibly cheap but get this: the shampoo is labeled “shampoo”, the conditioner is labeled “conditioner” the larger soap in the shower is labeled “soap” but the little cake of hand soap at the sink is labeled “complexion bar.” Complexion Bar. When have you ever heard of something like that? I don’t understand it for one second - that’s the sort of thing you’d expect some hotel with more pretension to go about calling a cake of hand soap. And it’s the same company does the complexion bar as the shampoo, the conditioner, the soap - so whose bright idea was it to go ahead and say out of the blue “Well, let’s call this thing the Complexion Bar, that’s what it is, after all, it’s for the complexion.”?

  Wonderful hotel – crack in the toilet seat, but housekeeping folds the rolls of toilet paper to a triangular point during clean up. Amazing, this is actually - now that I think about it - the absolute most wonderful hotel I’ve ever been in in my life.

  I’m just going to stop stalling and just go ahead and get to the point of even writing this letter - I’m stalling by writing that I’m stalling, I don’t know how to just out and write anything.

  So tonight: just now - so as I wrote just here in this letter - I just snatched that ladies purse, pathetic pathetic, yes, I won’t bore anyone - even myself - with trying to romanticize it, I don’t find it romantic, anymore. There once was excitement, I’ve admitted that - and though I guess it all makes me sort of feel a bit nauseous now, there were times when I genuinely felt exhilarated.

  No. Jesus, the mind just spins from wanting to get at what it wants to get at.

  I’ve never really gotten in a hairy situation with all of this, it’s always pretty much been like tonight, often less klutzy. Only time it was ever close was I grabbed this ladies bag in front of a grocery store and bolted and I hadn’t counted on her adult son – very fit guy, unlike me – giving me the chase proper. He was at the parked car, she was waiting with the grocery cart, I grabbed the purse and just took off - had the route planned - and even as I grabbed the purse and took off, I saw that he was already sprinting across the lot. This man chased me chased me chased me - it was abominable, awful, it felt like I’d lost my mind. There was a long parking lot up through a car dealership up a hill by a crumby motel and this onto some train tracks and he was in hot pursuit, man, right on my heels the whole time and I got a little bit away from him at the tracks took a really bad spill got up with my head spinning and ran and ran and ran and ran I don’t even know - ducked through a tree line, in through a neighborhood, across the street, across a field – completely insane thinking about this, it’s like trying to remember a dream I once invented with accuracy to pass a lie detector test. But anyway, I got away somehow and holed up just in like a fenced in area behind some office building - like where the dumpsters were fenced in - and figured that if I just stayed put no one would be looking because they’d figure I just kept going once the guy’d stopped his pursuit, no one would expect that I’d just holed up for like nine hours in one spot. Turns out I’d broken three fingers in the fall – I remember it was freezing and I kept trying to convince myself all night that my fingers weren’t broken, that it was just like stubbing your little toe really bad, feels terrible but nothing’s wrong. They were broken.

  Okay. I let myself get lost in that little narrative, got the blood up to write, to write this little confession to you. Okay, I’m just going to write this and then I’ll figure out about it once I have it wrote:

  This is more than two years ago, but I don’t know – sometimes I feel I go awhile without thinking about it, but then when it gets on my mind it feels like I’m always thinking about it. Lately it’s gotten all over me and I don’t know what to do about it, so hence this letter I’m trying to write. I’m trying to tell you.

  I was doing my thing, scoping out cash machines and all, had my whole little operation set up to guarantee at least a hundred, couple hundred a take. This woman - she is the perfect mark, alright? this was all by the book - I knew she had at least a few hundred in her purse from I saw her take it out. So I followed her around, hoping she didn’t rush off to buy birthday presents for people or whatever. No. Perfect. And so it gets dusky and she’s heading home and it is more perfect than perfect: she lives in a row house, a shared lot in back, quiet quiet and no one around. So I go like I’m someone lives in one of the other houses and then when she’s getting to her door I dash at her, give her the blitz. Then I don’t know – I don’t know had she marked me from before, had she been at the ready, I don’t what the thing was but she had some pepper spray and like snapping her fingers it’s out and I’m getting the wash down, straight on. I reel away and she puts more of it to me - and I think I’m wailing like a girl, right? - and then I have no idea, but my thinking isn’t “Hey, take off, run, run” instead I just grab around at the ground – I’m on the pavement, the parking lot in kind of a shabby state – and I just grab a piece of this asphalt and I spin and I just hurl it, I pelt it at her, I mean like a growling dog, I zip it right at her and I know it gets her straight in the face, her eye, the side of her face. So, I get kind of a look up and I scramble and I deck her, like I barrel her with my shoulder, full weight, tackle her and it whaps her, breaks her screen door and there’s a tremendous thud of her hitting the wood door and I grab the purse and take off running, throwing up – Christ, you cannot image the scene, I don’t even know what in the world.

  Okay. Okay. Yes, I’ve read that back now ten, twenty times. Christ.

  I can’t make it out in my head why I did that, man. I have no idea what happened to the woman, I wound up just looting the purse for the cash and didn’t even bother about what was her name or any of it - I buried the purse in some dirt, like with my hands, like a raccoon or a squirrel or something, hardly even did a job of it, just dug a little ways and scooped stuff over it and put a tree branch there – I remember that, I put a tree branch on it, I will always, distinctly remember the shape of that stupid tree branch.

  I can’t make out why in the world I did that, you know what I mean? Why didn’t I just run? It makes me scared of myself, like I’m not myself, like I’m a dog, somehow, or something like that. I know I caught her good with that pa
vement. She could’ve had to go to the hospital, lost an eye, lost her hearing - I don’t know. And then I attacked her, leveled her into the door. Why would I do it? I just cannot understand it and it makes me scared a lot - like they say criminals get, like they say murderers cry themselves to sleep and wet their beds and all, you know? I don’t wet my bed, but I’ll be honest with you that I have cried about it. Years after, years after sometimes I cry about it and it’s trouble if I like want to have a drink, because I’ll think “I want to have a drink, relax, screw it tonight, I’ll just watch a movie, have a drink, sit out someplace with a bottle” and then its fine for a slug or two, a glass or two but then I find I’m muttering to myself, like I’m telling the story to somebody, just talking to myself and it gets all over me. I don’t know. I maybe even once told someone about it when I was drunk - I have a terrible feeling I did and that they made me leave - but it’s gotten so I don’t know is that a memory or something I made up or dreamt or what.

  It’s like you and I used to talk about: people can’t write books or anything that’s just them asking “Why do I do the things I do?” anymore. You said that and you were right about it. Old books are like that, just as simple as that and it seems like the question should always be pertinent and we’d always want to know about that and what someone has to say about it, but now it’s like nobody does. Now it’s called “naval gazing”, or it’s “self-indulgence”, now it’s “Who cares,” right? “Who cares why you did the things you did?” Or it’s like someone would point out all of these other, bright people who have asked the question before you and answered for themselves and then they’ll tell you “I think so-and-so said it better” or “Why don’t you go read…I don’t know…Marcus Aurelius or something.”

  I don’t know what I mean, I guess. It’s like that question has vanished from the world, like asking it means nothing. Or maybe I’m just a guilty little rag, can’t face it so bottle it up in my head. And I’m not a book either. I’m not a book either, so maybe that’s why it doesn’t make sense. We care very much what imaginary Mister so-and-so did and why but Mister so-and-so the actual shoe-store clerk, well who cares why he does what he does, he does what he does because he’s a shoe store clerk or an imbecile or whatever.

  I’ve never tried to find out about that woman, by the way. I mean, I know I could or I could go turn myself in – it was a violent crime, on report, I know what town I was in and all and I could find out and have them serve me up, but I’m not going to do that. I’ll write a letter to you, instead, alright? Maybe I want you to do that. My kid brother as John Detective. You can be the spook on my trail, it can be you hunting me down like a game of tag, right? Like a game of hide-and-seek like we used to in the house with all the lights off, remember? Do you remember - that one time we actually told dad when he got home to leave, said “We’re playing hide-and-seek and need the lights off” and he just left, just like that. Remember that?

  Don’t waste your time, though. I’m kidding. Don’t come and get me, kid - good God that would be the worst.

  Speaking of like detectives and cops looking for someone – the only time I’ve ever experienced that dreadful knock on the hotel door and it was the cops on the other side it was this one time that had nothing to do with me. They were knocking on all the doors, showing around a picture of a little kid and this man - the kid’s father, some man, maybe the kid’s father or something had taken him, run off. I don’t known, now that I’m writing this down, why I think it was the kid’s father – I always have the scenario in my head that the dad picked the kid up from daycare or something, wasn’t supposed to have and was hiding out, but it could have been anything, really, some pervert or the kid’s dad or both or whatever or some filthy thing like that. Either way, my heart was pounding the whole time like it was a set up to catch me out, you know? Isn’t that kind of ridiculous - like the cops would do this whole elaborate charade to catch me at snatching purses? Maybe if I’d been thinking about what they were telling me rather than about how would I talk my way out of whatever and make my getaway I’d know was it the kid’s dad or some random degenerate or what. I sometimes stare at men walking with their kids, but every kid reminds me of that picture I wasn’t paying attention to - I could be watching the guy, whoever he was, watching the kid and have no idea and meanwhile some poor mother hasn’t slept a wink in ages and hates herself, blames herself.

  Doesn’t your brother just have the most interesting stories to tell? Aren’t I just a dab hand when it comes to writing a letter-from-the-road? Try hard and your life could be just as interesting, just make everything into a grand narrative and there you have it - you’ve grown up and presto you’re me.

  Let me lighten the tone: considering how many hotels I’ve stayed in, I’d like to’ve gotten laid more. Perhaps that’s crumby to say, perhaps it’s juvenile, but I really mean it. I think I’m not as good at staying in hotels as I think I am, because I hardly ever get laid and I’m always in a hotel. To boot, I’m a criminal but can spout off about some philosophy, I have some weight on me but I think women find me attractive enough to go to bed with, but it never happens. I don’t even think I’m being selfish about it - I don’t want to come off as Jackson Stallion to some lady or anything, I don’t care that I’m not that - I’d gladly even be a regrettable, bad lay a woman had just because whatever secret thing women want, but it never happens. To tell the unfiltered truth – you always wind up the recipient of valuable life lessons, that’s why mom gave birth to me first – even the times I have gotten laid have been more traditional set ups, none of the allure of the anonymous hotel/motel lays, just more like I’d see the lady a time or two and we’d go to a hotel - to my hotel - but it was never like getting-laid-in-a-hotel, it was just like getting laid at home, because she’d leave, I’d stay another week and it was just something that’d happened in the room, irrelevant by the time I left, not a little, eternal, ethereal tryst in a room I only occupied the length of undressing, frolicking, dressing and closing the door behind me, squinting at the parking lot air.

  Oh well.

  I’m thinking to grab an actual job a little while, just to recoup. I’ve done this before and it wasn’t so bad. I just get some nothing-job doesn’t need much history, work it to get a few checks in my pocket and then off I go – I usually even give two weeks notice, but usually wherever it is just sighs and tells me not to worry about it since I’d only been on a month - and I get the feeling that even their training me all of a sudden seems a big waste of time to them, they’re annoyed but not so much to bother me about it. I worked in a tire store once and I hated it because I don’t know anything about cars or ties except what I’m supposed to say, according to my training, and what I’m supposed to say according to my training never seems to relate to what the customers are asking. I’d love to get a job as a janitor or as hotel housekeeping but I can never find availability for those – I think ex-cons get janitor jobs, so maybe I should get caught and then I’d stand a better chance, right?

  One more thing and then I’ll leave you alone, for now. Just because I know it’s obvious that I’m blue, not feeling my usual heroic self, these days – Ne pas etre dans son assiette, as we liked to say, god bless high school French class. I know I come off as blue and I am blue, but look: I’m alright, this is just a moody letter, I’ll write you another letter soon that’ll be more pink hued and you can read it at the dinner table to your girlfriend or whatever you do, fancy pants.

  Here it is, make of this what you will: I rented one of those little paddle boats, you move them by peddling – peddle boats? - went out on this lake. Other people were out on the lake, but it was pretty isolated, me in my boat. I had a sandwich and a Gatorade and I got ugly sea-sick, I mean a horrendous mess, I was in the worst state imaginable. Ridiculous way my mind works: the first time I vomited, I knew I was going to vomit and I thought it would be rude to vomit in the lake so I vomited into the boat, all over
my lap. Brilliant, correct? So I was on this lake for a few hours in the throes of this illness and various other paddle boats, I guess they got wise to I was suffering, would make their way over and see if I was alright. I’d wave them off with some excuse, embarrassed, they’d stay a minute like “Was I really okay?” and then they’d paddle off. I finally took the boat in and three people were waiting - one of them like the dock medic, the medic of the place - and they were like “You the fella got sick out there?” just like that and I just sighed and they took me to this little infirmary.

  That was kind of a beautiful afternoon. I felt so different than I tend to feel, have no idea why I got on that paddle boat or why I was even out in a big old public park area where there would be the option of paddle boats. I sometimes tell that story and it gets such a laugh, like I should send it in to a magazine or something. You can tell people that about me, tell them something crazy like that. Or I don’t care - do or don’t - but you’d probably get a laugh, too. Oh, I tried to wash myself and the boat out before going back - before the doctor and all - but this wound up just getting me soaking wet and mixing a three-inch puddle of lake water with the vomit. Lord knows what they thought when I stepped out of that quagmire, it all over my pant cuffs and shoes – I wonder did they know it was lake water mixed with vomit, or did they just think it was all vomit?

  I’m gonna run. I like writing you letters, man. I do. I’m gonna write you letters whenever my head gets backed up, because you’re my kid brother and I think maybe you might read my letters in a certain way - like how I’d read letters by you, if I got one. But, I’m gonna dash now, I just want to remind you that while things are murky with me right now, I’m principally the same guy who I am when I’m in better spirits and I just need a pick up - I just need it to be tomorrow, already. It’s like that song you like that I can’t really honestly say I remember right now, but you seem to like a song says something like “I wish today could be tomorrow” or you used to like it more than a decade ago - you tried to cover it with your little rock and roll band, that time you sounded so awful, but I thought there was something really splendid about that you did sing it and no one cared, the band didn’t even really know how to play it.

  Okay man, went to the store and got envelopes and since this is still sitting in the typewriter, I’m slapping down I guess a little other last bit. I’m feeling better, by-the-by, except now I need shoelaces because there ones’re wrecked and I didn’t get them at the store, just now, because how am I supposed to remember about shoelaces? This typewriter is getting to be a slog to lug around. Too bad for me. Typewriters, typewriters.

  Alligator,

  (signed Hugo Cambridge)

  twenty-six, July 2004

  Letter no. Two