Thiefhunting, Day One, more. We’ve been standing in the tiny coffee bar more than an hour, speaking loudly. Eventually, the owner throws us out. No bad feelings, Michele translates—we’ve just been there long enough. Frank and Marc need to get back to work, anyway. They promise to meet us in the park tomorrow. They agree to demonstrate a few of their favorite techniques. They agree we can film them. And most important, they agree to sign releases, allowing us to show them in our film.
Warm goodbyes, and we all split. They go one way, Bob and I another, Michele-the-translator another.
Bob and I are ecstatic beyond words. On our first bus ride, we snagged a new pair of thieves and connected well with them. We’re surprised—and we’re not. After all, that’s why we chose this city for our documentary. It has the greatest concentration of pickpockets, who work the hardest, and are—we believe—the best at it.
Leaving the coffee bar, Bob and I walk blindly around a few corners. We’re all wound up and high-strung. We just want to get away, cool down, get our heads together, decompress. We want to find Michele and ask him a million questions, since he couldn’t possibly have translated everything the thieves said in the bar. And we want his impressions of the men.
A few streets away, we pause. Bob turns off his eye-glass-camera, his button-camera, and his book camera. He lifts the back of my shirt and turns off my button-cam. Our film director Kun Chang finds us, and we talk excitedly about what just happened—our meeting in the coffee bar—and tomorrow’s plans to meet in a park.
And at that exact moment, Frank and Marc approach us from across a wide street. There’s a third man with them—Ed—who was their partner on the bus with us. We stand there in the middle of a busy sidewalk and the coffee shop conversation continues, now with Ed, who turns out to be the brother of Frank. Ed is another good-looking man. At 51, he’s got a little silver in his hair, and a little bald spot. He has a distinguished look. Put a suit on him and he could con a banker out of a million bucks. But the banker might just give him the million bucks because he’s so benign, even affectionate.
I suddenly remember that all Bob’s cameras are now off and so is my button-cam. What about my purse-cam, did we ever turn it off? I can’t remember. I aim it, just in case. Another man strolls up: Clay, a colleague and team member. More of our production crew arrive, too, so we introduce the thieves to the filmmakers. Michele is translating three conversations at once, overwhelmed by the bizarreness of happy-chat with thieves, but utterly capable of interpreting the rapid-fire chatter coming at him from every direction. Hands are flying. It’s another long talk about not much, but it cements our relationship. Trust is building.
We are all to meet the next day at a time and place of their choosing. The pickpockets are to demonstrate their specialties for our documentary. They’re going to show us exactly how they steal.
P.S. I haven’t had a still camera in my hands all day, so I have no images. I’m sure I have tons of video, but I don’t get to see it. In fact, our days are so full that none of us see it. Even our director of photography has time only to spot-check. But we know we’re getting great stuff.
Thiefhunting, Day One, continued. Bob and I were on a high, having found a talented pickpocket team on the first bus ride of our first day of thiefhunting—in front of our film crew. Okay—in reality, the pickpockets found us. But let us credit ourselves as talented pickpocket magnets. And let it also be noted that we do not make it easy for the thieves. There’s no wallet peeking out of Bob’s pocket. His shirt covers the pocket, too.
The five of us—two pickpockets, our sound man-cum-translator Michele, Bob, and I—order coffee in a tiny bar. The thieves pay for it immediately. They’re smiling, laughing, and so are we. Michele translates with a huge grin, first nervously, then almost joyously, as he recognizes the human side of cold, heartless criminals. It’s a revelation to him, as it once was for us.
In these moments of close contact, of talk without judgment, of sharing insider talk with outsiders, we are like any strangers conversing. But no—we are more. We are intimates, because we speak of the unspeakable. We are confidantes, understanding what most do not.
As we enter the coffee bar, the gentlemen thieves step aside to let me, the only woman, enter. I’m terrified, hyper-aware of my hidden rigging: coils of wire, two boxes of electronics at my waist. These are just the sort of gallant gents who might place a hand softly on the small of my back. A move that would turn our encounter upside down. I rush past the men and their roving hands. Hands that are comfortable in other men’s pockets, in women’s purses, on the small of my back. I feel rude in the face of their chivalry.
Introductions over coffee—so civilized. Sorry, but I must now bastardize, anglicize, and fictionalize their names. For now. Frank is the clean-cut man who stole Bob’s wallet. He’s fiftyish, nicely dressed, good-looking. He’s muscular, confident, oozing testosterone; default emotion: jovial. As I said before, we’d not have suspected him for an instant were it not for his behavior on the bus.
His partner is Marc, thirtyish, short hair, light beard as dictated by fashion, big bright eyes. Marc is a bit cagey. Cautious and observant, his eyes dart around, land for an instant, keep moving. He can pick up some of our English. He can speak a little, too. But he’s nervous and confused in this unheard-of situation.
Bob is excited and wants to cement his new relationships. He tosses me his book-cam, which I now balance on my purse-cam, carefully holding the two at slightly different angles in hope of capturing the scene. And remembering not to block my button-cam with either.
Bob pulls out his iPod Touch, on which he’s loaded a gallery of thieves: pictures of pickpockets we’ve met in this city over the years. There are twenty or so faces. Bob lets the thief take the iPod in his hand. I watch, pretty certain he doesn’t intend to dart out with it. Frank slides the photos around, showing Marc, enlarging them as he pleases. He’s dumbfounded to see all his pals on Bob’s iPod. He points, laughs, doubles over, and names each one. Then he looks up at Bob, smile gone. “Which model is this?” He raises the iPod. Old model, Bob admits. “Okay, okay. I have the new one,” Frank says, and lights up again.
As Frank flips through the photos, he comes to one of Lou, another pickpocket we know in this neighborhood whom we first met in 1998. We learn that Marc is married to Lou’s daughter. They flip to a photo of Lou’s brother, Andy—Marc’s uncle. It’s a thriving family business.
Frank chuckles: “We thought we were hunting you, but you were hunting us!”
“Twenty years ago we made a good living without the tourist,” Frank tells us. “Now because of the economy, we depend on them. For that, we are sorry.” He tells us they now use a new technique, only developed about 20 years ago, because the police complained about the thefts. “We now can steal only the money from the wallet, without taking the wallet. And we don’t take all the money—we try to leave a little.”
For the most part, they don’t use stolen credit cards, either. That would raise the crime to another level. When they do steal a wallet, they bundle credit cards, ID, even photos, and drop them into a mailbox. Lou told us the same thing in 1998. Now, the police here corroborated it.
Our film crew had gathered outside the bar and are trying to get footage however they can. Marc becomes suspicious. He calls Bob on his sunglass-cam. Bob fesses up. The mood doesn’t change in the least.
Bob explains our film project to Frank and Marc. He invites them to participate, saying they’ll be shown on big screens around the world. They’ll have to sign releases. We make an appointment: tomorrow in a park.
On buses and trains, Michele ditches his studio headset in order to monitor sound with something less obvious.
Thiefhunting, Day One, continued. As we synchronize our thiefhunting plans with the film crew, I’m newly appreciative of Michele, our London-based sound recordist, who is from this city. He’s a gentleman, a perfectionist, and an invaluable translator. We’ll need him in order to talk to the pickpockets. Assuming we find any. Assuming they agree to talk to us.
We’re all driven to a point near to where Bob and I want to board a bus. We disperse like a criminal gang, each ducking into various doorways to turn on our cameras.
Bob and I linger, loiter, choose a bus, and board. It’s not crowded, not promising, we see no “suspects.” But we decide to ride to another location. We stand near the middle door. The crew scatter throughout the bus. All of us wear a veneer of nonchalance. All of us are coiled like springs, hyper-alert. Bob and I have done this a million times, but it’s the first time for our team.
At the second stop, three men board the bus. They’re clean-cut, fresh-faced men—two in their fifties, one 30ish. Bob and I don’t suspect them until they move close, crowding us—unnecessarily—against the window. Bob gives me a little squeeze, so I know something’s happening. He concentrates on the feeling behind his butt pocket, then whispers to me “done.”
As the bus approaches its next stop, Bob blatantly feels for his wallet. The pickpocket, still behind him, points to the floor, where he’d dropped it after finding it empty. He picks it up, hands it to Bob, and smiles as if Bob must have dropped it himself.
The pickpocket and one accomplice get off the bus. We follow, and all our crew jump off too. One of the thieves stays on the bus. As the two thieves stroll away, Bob and I accost them. “I do the same as you,” Bob says. He repeats it in several languages. With friendly faces, the pickpockets try to pretend they don’t understand. Bob persists and makes himself understood to some degree. But he wants full communication.
“Does anyone speak English?” he calls to the crowd. The nearest woman says no, and walks past. One man rises from where he’s lying in the grass, and volunteers to translate. It’s Michele, our sound-man, jumping into his role of anonymous translator. “How about coffee, then?” the pickpocket pair suggests. Just what we’d hoped for! And off we went.
Later, Bob described how smoothly the pickpocket had extracted the wallet on the bus. Bob said that if he hadn’t been concentrating on it, he’d never have felt it. And our crew? They got the shot from every angle. But nobody knew that until much later. There was no time to look at footage.
The crew films us in our room as we gear up for thiefhunting.
Thiefhunting, Day One. Fully half the day is spent rigging hidden cameras. I’m wearing a button camera attached to an awful button-down shirt that I force myself to wear for the cause. The camera is wired to a control pack and monitor tucked into the back of my skirt. Another wire runs into the shirt pocket where a tiny mic is attached. Another wire ends in a remote control that allows me to start and stop the camera.
The button looks like any other, but contains a camera and is wired to a recorder.
I’ve got another microphone clipped to my bra—another piece of clothing I wouldn’t have worn but for the need to keep lifting my shirt for the crew rigging me. This mic is wired to another box that is tucked beside the first one on my back. This pack is a transmitter, and gets very hot. My skirt is tight now with all the equipment loaded under it, and I feel like a third-world building, draped in external wiring.
The bulbous lens of our wide-angle camera is concealed within a piece of an earring sewn onto a small bag.
I’m carrying a purse—a little clutch bag—which contains another hidden camera. This one is a wide-angle that takes gorgeous, sharp video, especially at close range. Its bulbous lens, like a black marble, has been beautifully disguised by our crack camera pros. I put on my NABI cap (my private joke because NABI is the National Association of Bunco Investigators) add sunglasses, and I’m ready to go out and investigate some bunco.
A wide-angle camera lens is behind the shiny sticker.
Bob gets the same kind of button cam and mic set up. In addition, he wears a completely wireless camera built into a pair of sunglasses, that he can casually remove and keep shooting with in his hand or set on a table. Bob will also have a tiny wide-angle handheld video camera like mine. His has been carved into a paperback novel. You can’t see it at all—it’s brilliant. Our director of photography is a master. We’re told his shooting is gorgeous, too, but we haven’t seen it yet.
The book is carved out for the camera, and closes with magnets. It\’s a gorgeous piece of work.
Fully rigged, we make a plan for our thiefhunting. Bob and I will ride public transportation. Sound and camera crew will be nearby, not too close. Film director, associate producer, and our local “fixer” will all tag along, watching, but keeping their distance. We have a few assistants, too. We’re a big group. It will be difficult to coordinate our movements while acting as strangers to one another.
Bob Arno in the refectory before dressing for an interview.The stairs and tunnel we found to escape the locked refectory.Another unlit passageway to explore.
Six of us—locked into a small, sweltering room. We’d done interviews in the convent refectory all day, first Bob, then I. Some of the walls were swaddled with blankets, as was the floor. Bright lights had been burning and the room had heated steadily. It was past 8 p.m. by the time we finished and the crew began to break down equipment.
Someone had closed the iron door and we were now locked in.
This hotel, a former monastery originally carved into the mountain in the 16th century, is a warren of rock tunnels and staircases among public rooms and halls. The clean, newly plastered surfaces are a stark contrast against the ancient rough stone that is visible and usable by guests. With a flashlight, the number of nooks and crannies and almost-hidden accessways begging for exploration must be endless. Lucky for us, one of these stone backways led off a tiny nook in the side of the refectory. Up, down, and around a few corners, heads bent, and we came into the yellow light and fresh air of a tiled hall.
“They’ve bugged our room,” I postulated to Bob in the taxi from the airport. “I bet they hid video cameras inside.” That aspect of shooting a documentary hadn’t occurred to me.
Our hotel is a former monastery carved into a hillside. With an outrageous view, it overlooks the entire city we’ve come to infiltrate. It’s a pleasing dichotomy: after years of sweaty skulking lowdown among the gritty streets, we now look down on the calm innocence of colorful rooftops which belie the commotion of the city and its criminal activities.
We opened the door of our room to find its lovely decor largely hidden behind draped cloths, booms, electrical cords, and extra light fixtures. The room’s chandelier was wrapped in pink gel (colored cellophane used to alter theatrical lighting) and cloaked in black fabric studded with clothespins. The bedside sconces were half-covered with foil. The ambiance of the room was pretty much destroyed.
The crew followed us in for a few arrival shots and immediately dismantled much of the equipment before leaving us in privacy. As soon as the door closed and we were alone, I got up to sweep the place for hidden cameras. Is that one in the middle of the gilt scrollwork of the sconce in the dressing area? What about the handles of the closet door? Behind the translucent panel covering the electrical fuses?
Entering the bathroom I stopped dead in my tracks. The ceiling lights were gelled. In the bathroom! What shots do they need in the bathroom? Nobody’s talking. At this point, we still don’t know.
That was one of the first sentences directed to me upon landing. We did not collect our luggage because it didn’t arrive. As we came out of the airport, our film crew was waiting. We did not make the expected dramatic appearance pushing a mountain of aluminum cases on two trolleys. It was just us, dragging our carry-on.
The soundman needed to mic me in the airport lobby. With exquisite courtesy in his accented English, he inquired about my undergarments. He needed a sturdy mount for the mic.
It took two hours to rig our taxi with cameras and lights. You think a documentary is just a camera following the action, but the action must be lit and wired for sound.
Light panels are mounted on the taxi ceiling and backseat windows. White reflecting fabric helps brighten the scene. It’s dark before we get moving.
The sound and camera crew crawled around in the taxi while we waited beside it at the airport. Meanwhile, our film director hinted of some sort of surprise to be found inside our hotel room. The room and hotel are gorgeous, we were promised. But whatever it was that we’d find in the room was left intentionally ambiguous.
There’s a lot about this project that’s ambiguous, or at least unknown. We know what we’re looking for and we know what resources and how much time we have for the search. But we don’t know what we’ll find. We’re meddling in a criminal subculture and can’t predict the reaction we’ll elicit from the thieves. And what about their bosses? If we’re poking into organized crime—and we believe we are—will the bosses feel threatened? Will they be angered? Or will they just smirk and laugh at us?
Time to make an announcement. Our long-dreamed of, long-worked for project has become reality. Bob and I are making a documentary about pickpockets. The shoot starts now! We have an incredible team, and backing that is the fantasy of any serious documentary-maker. And we have a film director whose passion and persistence has been the engine of our project for more than four years now.
Bob and I have been on our feet countless, endless days, for the past seventeen years in pursuit of pickpockets. We find, follow, and film the thieves, talk to them, and interview them. Dropping into the most fabulous locations of the world, we give short shrift to museums and monuments, and instead lurk among the tourists, preying on their prey. In the name of research, we people-watch. We’ve slowly acquired better and better video equipment, and a massive archive of crime footage. Time to do something with it.
We’re on location now in a European city we chose for the main filming of our documentary. While I can’t reveal everything, I intend to share the excitement, successes, and surprises of our journey as we dive ever deeper into the world of pickpockets. I don’t mean to be coy if I only hint of tantalizing details; certain aspects are contractually unmentionable for now.
I intended to post our progress every day, but our only internet point, in the hotel lobby, has gone down. There is nothing else nearby. We have several new local modem sticks—none work.
Every frequent traveler has a personal list of what he misses about home. The list varies depending on the type and length of travel. Items high on my list are gardening and cooking.
My garden at home is of the type a frequent traveler can maintain. Specifically, that means it will survive, if not thrive, with a sprinkler system on a timer. Save for a few herbs there’s nothing edible, since I’d certainly miss fleeting moments of ripeness.
We’ve spent this spring and summer bouncing around Europe. By the end of September, we’ll have been on the road five straight months. Flying every three to six days, changing time zones, putting new names and faces into short-term memory, packing and unpacking, all while trying to keep up the administratrivia of business.
Between business trips, we made Stockholm our base, and our Swedish garden is what kept me sane. Growing food thrills me. Picking the bounty of the garden is a joy. A fistful of fragrant parsley makes me breathe deeply. A bowl of basil leaves or a palmful of oregano make me salivate for the possibilities. Weeding brings tranquility, and flavor explosions in the form of smultron, tiny wild strawberries found throughout the yard.
When we arrived in May, the rhubarb was ready and the cherry trees were flowering gloriously above it. I carried long, thick bundles of the red and green stalks up to the kitchen the afternoon of my first day, chopping and baking it into a crispy-topped pie. Later in the season, I simply chopped it and cooked it in a pot for ten minutes with nothing but a little sugar and cinnamon.
The elderberry trees burst into big, feathery flowers. They’re called fläder in Swedish, and we make a sort of juice-concentrate from the flowers. Worth a separate post.
Cherries, huge black ones and shiny white ones, required long ladders to harvest. The birds like them before they’ve reached their peek and, with easier access, always win the lion’s share. Those we manage to gather are too delicious to eat any way but out-of-hand. But why, we wonder, do the birds have to take a little bite out of each cherry? Why don’t they eat a whole one instead of pecking at a dozen?
Raspberries ripened next; I all but ignored them for my garden favorite, the deep and complex svart vinbär, black wineberry, aka black currant. These I gorged on—plain, on ice cream, with yogurt, thrown into a pan with a roasting chicken. It’s no wonder the most interesting red wines tout “flavors of black currant.” (Sure beats aroma of cat pee!)
Black currants are tedious to harvest, as they hang in loose, delicate bunches of only a few berries. But our bushes were so laden I could fill bowlfuls without moving my feet. Before each trip I took in July, I cooked a pot of these for five minutes and filled a jar to take with me.
Snails love black currants, too. The adorable baby ones, smaller than a bedbug, are impossible to see among the black berries. They quickly flee to the rim of the bowl though (as quickly as a baby snail can go), when I fill the berry bowl with water for a few minutes.
As the black currants dwindled, the red ones ripened, the berries becoming so dark and heavy in their grape-like clusters that the lower branches of the bushes laid in the grass. Red currants are easy to pick, and a fork quickly strips them from their little stems. They’re gorgeous, like little ruby marbles, but I find them too tart and one-dimensional in flavor. Still, they’re excellent over ice cream…
Golden green gooseberries fattened to perfection, overlapping the black and red currant weeks. My thumbnail was black for a month from topping and tailing them. I baked them with curried chutney chicken and chopped them with sugar for the freezer, to be eaten slushy through winter. Turns out they’re sublime arranged cut in half on a peanut butter sandwich. I always start eating the gooseberries too early, and only realize it when they’ve turned honey-colored and thin-skinned on their branches, and half of them are already gone.
Now the rhubarb has gotten a second burst of energy and the plums are ripe. These plums, called Victoria, are sweet as sugar, another favorite of the birds, and alas, this year, a little wormy. I can’t eat them without cutting them open for examination. But that just requires a bit of knifecraft.
It’s September 4th, and we’ve already had to turn on the heat. Sunny nights are long gone. The days are more often gray, rainy, and windy than otherwise. Bob and I are packing up, leaving Sweden for the last time this year, full of antioxidants and phytochemicals and glowing with good health. From our upstairs windows, we look down on reddening apples, but we’ll miss them.
Bob and I both had our mouths full of Roquefort and pears and sourdough croutons. We raced each other to swallow awkwardly in order to answer. The man stood at our table expectantly and watched us chew. One of us finally managed a polite reply.
“You’re really good at reading people,” the man continued, and went on, full of praise and compliments. He was referring to a routine in our show in which Bob analyzes the personalities of five or six audience members. It had gone especially well that night and the man was raving about it. Bob and I set our knives and forks down and smiled up at him while he recalled “a similar show” in which a woman’s brassiere was ripped off.
We detest the comparison to this goofy magician’s coup, but we nodded and smiled some more. Our courtesy encouraged him. He gestured with enthusiasm, sloshing a bit of red wine onto the table. I folded my hands in my lap and realized the bouillabaisse would arrive before we finished our first course.
The man was now relating how he was almost pickpocketed once, long ago. Oh, you’ll like this story, he promised, and asked permission to sit down. Sure, we had to say, but my smile was thin. The man launched into his ancient near-catastrophe. Just as he was getting to the good part, how he foiled the theft before it ever happened, his wife arrived at our table, wine in hand.
“Oh, he hasn’t imposed himself, I hope,” she said. “Shelly, why are you sitting at their table? They’re trying to have a nice dinner.”
“I’m not bothering them, we’re having good conversation!” he said jovially. “They look conservative but I bet they like to get wild! We can join you, if you like,” he suggested. “I’m sure the waiter wouldn’t mind moving our plates! And a bottle of wine, please!” He gestured to a hovering waiter.
“Of course we won’t do that, Sheldon! Get up right now and let’s leave these people alone.” The woman turned to me. “I’m very sorry, he must be a little drunk.”
“Not at all! Sit down, Phyll. I’ll tell the waiter.” The man rose.
“Shelly, don’t be rude. You can’t just—”
“You’re welcome to sit,” I finally said, “just please don’t stand over us arguing.”
That was all it took. The couple’s cold, half-eaten meal was quickly brought to our table and Bob and I picked up our silverware. At least we didn’t have to say much. The man was full of stories and his wife supplied timely prods. Bob made appropriate replies, dredging up authentic courtesy from some stale reserve. My well was dry.
The bouillabaisse arrived steaming; its clear broth, fragrant with fennel, covered barely-cooked fish. I had the distinct impression that the couple had designed their finagle from the start, despite their bickering role-play. The way the wife sauntered over with her lipsticky wine glass, like a suburban housewife ready for twilight gossip. Why, otherwise, were their plates brought over so readily? And the bottle of wine. They must have cued the waiters. I took another sniff of soup scent and lifted my spoon.
“I know!” the man said looking at me. “Let me read your hand. You’ll love this.”
A palm reader in Yokohama\’s Chinatown
“He’s really good at it,” his wife said. Silver charms on her necklace flashed as she leaned back anticipating our satisfaction.
“Hold up your right hand.”
I dropped my spoon and limply raised my hand, wondering how long I had to allow this. We’d intentionally taken a table at the back of the restaurant, but that had meant parading through the whole room.
“No, fingers together. Open your hand hard!”
Yes, like a protest, I thought. Enough!, I silently gestured at him. Stop! But he didn’t read my mind or body language. He was going to read my palm and I gave him the pose he wanted.
“I can see right away that you don’t like spending money. Your lifeline is long, but your loveline is broken. You’ve had multiple relationships, yes? Or you will.” He stretched to pour me some wine. “I think you like the lifestyle…?”
I gave away nothing with my stoneface. I felt mean and I wasn’t going to let him cold-read me. I took a spoonful of broth, noticing a faint essence of orange peel.
“No, I’m not finished! Hand up!”
I put my hand up obediently and tuned out as the man droned on. My anger brewed and my tolerance withered. We’re often interrupted at meals, but most people are polite enough to keep it brief. And how many simply forego interrupting our meal at all?
“isn’t he wonderful?” the wife was saying. “Is he right? Isn’t he exactly right?”
“You’ve said a lot,” I offered, “and it was remarkable. I’ll have my dinner now, before it gets cold.” I wished for once that Bob would tone down his manners. He was too gracious about the intrusion. As always just after a show, he was high on endorphins, talkative. I was the only sourpuss.
I imagined the accidents that could occur with shellfish in broth. How well could I aim a recalcitrant mussel shell? I’ve splashed myself enough times to know how to orchestrate a brothy geyser. Or, the crab claw—might it squirt when I straighten the joint? Amusing myself this way made me feel a little better. What the hell, we were in it. Can’t change the situation now.
“This is only the second time he’s read someone’s hand,” the wife said. “Really, he doesn’t do it all the time. I don’t know what made him do it. It’s hot in here, isn’t it? Are you hot?” She waved her hand in front of her neck, then lifted her silver necklace, as if it to let air under it, or to dislodge it from sweaty skin.
And of course, calling attention to her delicate chain made me notice the oddness of its four silver charms. They were two identical male gender symbols, and two identical female symbols.
Bob and I worked on our soup while the couple egged each other on with their stories. I guzzled the Chardonnay, thinking another bottle would be fair compensation.
The couple was not particularly obnoxious. The man, Sheldon, had certainly behaved badly when he imposed himself and then his wife. He didn’t notice (or ignored) my discomfort when he insisted on reading my hand. So he had poor judgment. Or was a little drunk. A life-of-the-party type, he’s probably accustomed to spicing up dull conversations. Full of himself, though, he failed to pick up our signals.
Maybe we failed to pick up his, too. Was this some sort of pitch or come-on? Did we miss some subtle clues embedded in Edward’s hand-reading blather? Maybe I should have paid attention.
Bob and I excused ourselves before dessert, preempting the invitation I now think would have been inevitable. But we’ll never know what Phyll and Shelly were plotting or what activities they had in mind.
I often struggle with the choice between courtesy and honesty. I’d like to practice both, but sometimes the two are mutually exclusive. In this situation, I was neither. And I hated it. Honesty was not called for, but I should have been able to dredge up some grace, if not courtesy.
