The High Price of Small Things - 1. Chapter 1

It seemed to me that he was everywhere I went; it was uncanny.

When I stepped off the Metro at Montgomery Station on my way to work downtown, he was stepping off the car in front of mine. Grunting through my dumbbell curls at the gym, he was near me on one of the cardio machines. When I walked out of the steam room, he was exiting the sauna. If I went to the supermarket looking for bargains in the canned-goods aisle, he was around the corner having pork-chops cut in the meat department, or he was at the other end of the same aisle as me, picking up jar of spaghetti sauce. When I browsed the produce to see what looked fresh, he was in dairy, on his way to produce. In wine & spirits, if I picked up a sixpack of an IPA I liked, he was selecting a pricey bottle of vodka. At the ATM, he was in line behind me, pulling out his debit card. And each time I saw him, it seemed that he was noticing me, but I could not be certain of that—perhaps it was only my imagination. But it was uncanny.

I never knew when it started, but it went on for months, or maybe for years—assuming it was all coincidence, I never bothered to keep track of every time I sighted him. But almost everywhere I went, sooner or later, there he was. He was either ahead of me or behind me, or he was coming the other direction. If I didn’t see him, it might have been because I didn’t bother observing my surroundings that day. But if he were an observant type with a steel trap for a brain, by now he was in a position to know everything about me—where I went, and almost everything I did outside our house. It almost seemed to me that he was obsessed with me. Yet each time I spotted him, he was positioned to have good reason for being where he was. I had probably been making a big deal out of a number of small things.

In his features, he was not a bad-looking man, but not looking his best either. But it was the look on his face that disturbed me every time I saw him: it was a hard, calculating, almost vengeful look; he was always firmly setting his brow in a scowl that seemed permanent. When I saw him, I tried not to look him in the eye; he was not someone I wanted to have anything to do with.

But I had no idea who he was or why he, or anyone else for that matter, was obsessed with me, of all people—or was it all only in my imagination? Just an odd obsession of mine?

***

As soon as my eyes opened my husband kissed me; it struck me as odd that he sat in a chair next to my bed. When I glanced at my surroundings, they confounded me—why did I wake up lying in a hospital bed with a gazillion wires and tubes hooked up to my body?

“You’ve been out for five days,” was the first thing he said. “It was pretty nasty. But the doctor says you’ll be okay.” Then he held my hand, and I gave it a little squeeze.

“What happened to me?” I asked. “Why am I in the hospital?”

“You went to Safeway on your way home from work to pick up a handful of small things we needed to make spaghetti that night. I texted you and asked you to get them, remember?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“You cut through that back alley behind Waller like we always do, and somebody jumped you and hit you in the head with a baseball bat or something like that. The neighbors saw him do it and called 911.”

I couldn’t remember anything about what he told me. Had it really happened?

He looked at his phone and said, “I have to go now, my Dear. I have an appointment with my doctor in the office building next door. It’s nothing—just a follow-up. I’ll be right back as soon as I can.”

I was still processing this information when I saw another face, that of a tall, black-haired Asian.

“Hello, how are you feeling? I’m Doctor Ching, your neurologist. I heard you had woken up and came by to see how you are doing.”

He struck me as very handsome: nice features, beautiful eyes, I thought. Young, but not too young, probably no older than his late thirties. I looked at his nametag and read it: Jamison Ching, M.D.—I can still read, I noticed with relief. So handsome, and with the nicest, smiling bedside manner, too. A handsome face makes for good medicine, I decided, and I tried to look my best by smiling up at him.

“Is the gentleman who just stepped out your husband?” he asked me. When I said, “Yes,” Dr. Ching said, “He’s very nice—he’s been here every time I’ve come. You are very lucky to have a man like him!”

Cool—he’s gay too, I thought.

Then he asked, “Now, can you remember anything at all about what happened to you?”

***

My husband kissed me as soon as I woke up from a nap, perhaps a few days later, and gave me the news. “Dr. Ching just told me the CT scan showed your injury wasn’t as bad as he expected for someone who had that happen to you.”

A few minutes later a good-looking, young S.F.P.D. officer came into my field of vision. He put my phone on the table next to the bed.

“Hello—I’m Sergeant Burnett. I have good news! We recovered your phone. I’d like to ask you some questions,” he said. “Can you tell us what happened?”

I thought about his question, puzzled by the whole matter, and shook my head. I still had no memory of what had happened to me.

“Don’t worry—he’s down in San Francisco County Jail now,” the officer said. I wondered who he was talking about. Who was in county jail? And what had he done? And had he done something to me? “He stole your phone and that’s how we tracked him down.”

“He doesn’t remember anything more recent than a few months ago,” my husband told him. Then I realized: that’s why someone had decked out the room with Christmas decorations—I thought Halloween was coming up next—not Christmas, not yet.

Then Sergeant Burnett tried a different question.

“Does the name Myron Plath mean anything to you?”

“No,” I replied.

Then, from a hidden part of my mind, sorting itself out from my earliest memories, something suddenly came up and nagged me, a little tug about a thing I’d done that I hadn’t thought about in more than fifty years.

“I don’t know if it’s any help, but there was a kid named Myron in elementary school. I don’t remember his last name. Then he moved away and I never saw him again. He was in second grade then, maybe, so I must have been in third.”

Then, rather sheepishly, I looked at Sergeant Burnett squarely in the eye, and, confident that he would not throw me in jail for this small thing, I admitted my guilt.

“I stole his bike.”

Sergeant Burnett laughed. My husband laughed too. Both with puzzled laughs, both thinking I’d completely lost it—maybe the pain medication made me sound looney. But such a small thing, a long time ago—although it didn’t seem so little then—how could that possibly have anything to do with why I am here?

“No, believe me, officer, it’s true—I stole Myron’s bike. And he sat and cried when I rode away on it, and the other kids made fun of him.” It surprised me that this little thing I hadn’t given a thought to in all those years had come up now, and might be important, but no one believed me. “Just kid stuff, you know? But if you say it was him who conked me over the head, then it must be that he probably never got over it, and that must be why he did this to me.”

Then I positively remembered—yes, that kid’s name was indeed Myron Plath.

They didn’t believe me the first two times, and so, frustrated, I said it again: “You see, I stole Myron Plath’s bike!”

Right then, I wished Dr. Ching would step into my room. He would believe me. Thinking that Dr. Ching’s handsome face would soothe me, I struggled to remember what it was they said Myron Plath actually did to me. I finally conjured up Dr. Ching’s smile.

And then I remembered something, but just a little bit: somehow, it had to do with a small glass jar of oregano. I remembered now, it cost me four ninety-five—Five bucks! Did I actually pay that much? If I did, I must have gone crazy. Five bucks is a high price to pay for a small thing like that. And then to see it shatter in the alley.