Or anybody, really, for that matter.

I was in Florida, about a year ago, staying at the apartment of my dead parents, trying to get the place cleaned up, the smell of dog urine out of the porous concrete.   My mother had told me it was going to be a nightmare going through all those drawers and closets when she was gone.  It wasn’t exactly a nightmare, but it wasn’t that much fun.

On the way to the 2004 Cadillac that would eventually become an excellent buy for some pushy bastards who called my sister around the clock, I slowed as I passed the small circle of benches where a group of old people hung out when the shadow of the building fell there, as the afternoon faded into the relative cool of evening.  One of the regulars, a fat woman with white hair, a virulent racist and an imbecile, according to my mother, had been out there when my mother was taken past her on a gurney to the hospice where she died.  “Oh, look, they’re taking another one to die,” she’d said loudly as my mother and I passed on the way to the hospice’s vehicle.  I thought she was an idiot for that, and for the racism, and the next time I was in Florida I learned that she was dead too.

Eddie was on the bench with his girlfriend Jean, a woman who raised my mother’s blood pressure.  Eddie was a lot like Foghorn Leghorn, he loved to tell stories about himself– he’d brought a man back from death, for example, true story, and long story.  Oh, he had done all kinds of things.  Jean, probably never the brightest bulb in the chandelier to begin with, was in the grips of a dementia that made her mostly pleasant, but very repetitive.  She could also be stubborn, which drove my mother as crazy as Jean’s habit of asking the same question over and over.  Eddie had his hands full caring for her, but they always seemed affectionate with each other.  They held hands when they sat on the bench.  

I said a quick hello to Eddie and the beaming Jean as I passed, careful not to break my stride.  Eddie was talking to a white haired security officer leaning out the window of his patrol car, he introduced me to this southern man.  We said hello to each other, I told him it was nice to meet him, smiled, wished everybody a good night and kept walking to the car.

The following day I was riding my bicycle around the circle.  It was 2.4 miles and I’d go around several times, to keep the heart and lungs tuned up.  I’d generally do this at night, but on this particular day it was before dark, I was on my way to dinner at my sister’s nearby.   A security car pulled next to me and the uniformed man inside yelled for me to pull over.  It was the white haired security guard, driving too fast, red in the face.  I ignored him and kept riding.   I heard him scream at me again and, most likely, casually waved a finger over my shoulder.

Wrong thing to do.  It caused him to accelerate to well above the 25 mph internal speed limit, he was in a rage.  Not only was the damned country slipping away from his kind, it had never belonged to him in the first place.  He cut me off, blocking my path with a diagonal veer.  If I hadn’t spent years riding in the traffic of NYC he might have caused me serious bodily injury.  I was indignant and adrenalized as our chat began.

“You need to show me some ID,” the asshole demanded, getting out of his car in an angry hurry, his body language reaching for the gun he wished he was wearing.

I not only didn’t show him some ID, I showed him my smart mouth, and how stupid he was, and proved to him that he already knew who I was.  He angrily denied this so I reminded him we’d been introduced by Eddie in back of 1601 not 24 hours earlier.   He muttered that I needed to get a pass from the gatehouse before I could ride a bicycle in the circle.  My blood pressure was elevated as I left the senseless confrontation with an idiot.  It shouldn’t have been, but it is difficult sometimes to be a master of the fight or flight reflex in the heat of the moment.

I complained to my sister, her husband sort of chuckled, he knew the guy I was talking about.  The whole thing was senseless.

A week or two later, on my second to last night in the apartment, which no longer smelled of dog urine and which had been tidied up quite a bit, I took my nightly bike ride, the twelfth in the last twelve days.  I passed the security car circling the road, it was the only car out there at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night.  I made a few circles, had my aerobics, and then got a goodnight call from Sekhnet as I got ready to carry my bike the two flights up to the apartment.   We talked for a while, I may have still been chatting with her as I came up the stairs with the bike.  I said goodnight to her as I went inside the air-conditioned apartment, took my shoes, shirt and pants off and took a shower.   I read, or watched a little TV, then went to sleep.  Seven hours later I got up looking forward to going to Redlands to play guitar with an old friend’s husband, a great blues and rock guitar player.

They lived in a big tiled house with high ceilings and great natural reverb.  The guy had two strat type guitars, made by a local guitar maker, nice axes.  Tube amps.  It was a pleasure playing with the guy, I’d done it only twice over the years, but each time was a lot of fun.

Only, picking up the pants I’d worn the night before, I discovered to my alarm that I had no driver’s license.  There was no wallet in the back pocket of the treacherous baggy cargo pants, still in a heap in on the floor in front of the bathroom.  I tossed the cushion on the chair in front of the TV, rummaged in a panic and then dashed out the door to retrace my steps from the night before.

It was now broad daylight and I’d had the wallet in the back pocket on the road side of the pants.  If it had fallen out while I was riding, which it surely had, it had fallen into the road.  It was fat, black and the size of a small turtle.  No passing car would have failed to see it.  The only car out there at that hour was the security car, I’d passed it at least once, possibly twice.

I went around the circle twice, one way and then the other, searching also in the grass, though I knew it was unlikely that it was there.  I went to the security booth and told them to be on the look out for the missing wallet, that I’d pay a reward for its return.  I made sure they had my cell phone number.  

I’d just been to the ATM, so there was $100 in cash in there.  After the attack on 9/11 Sekhnet had urged me to carry $400 in a zippered compartment in the wallet, in case of a future emergency, so that was there too, a hundred dollar bill, a fifty, some twenties and tens and fives.   It would be foolish, Sekhnet had pointed out, to pay $20 for bottled water in case of an apocalypse when I could offer $5.  There were 60 Euros in there, waiting for another trip to Spain.  There was an uncashed 2004 check for $600 signed by a friend I’d done a favor for, a guy who has done me countless favors.  There were all the credit cards, license and my attorney ID from the NY court system.  This attorney ID had a recent picture of me on it.

I went through all the horrors one might expect after losing a wallet, made all the calls.   Kept checking with security.   Finally, on my last day there, I went to the security office where I talked to the head of security, a grim-faced important  man who’d kept me waiting while he concluded a long phone call.  This guy looked a little like Chris Christie, a big, blustering tough guy.  He was in much better shape than Christie and wearing a white uniform.  I thought of Redman Tobacco chewing sheriffs in small southern towns as I sat across the desk from him, uncomfortably making small talk about a picture of Mickey Mantle he unaccountably had on the wall behind his desk.  I told him about a great, highly nuanced biography of Mantle I’d recently read, by Jane Leavey, recommended it to him.  

For his part, he was adamant that nobody on his security team would have pocketed the wallet, repeating the line I’d heard from other security personnel that one of the (black) home attendants leaving at 3 a.m. had probably found it.  Why a night nurse would leave at 3 a.m. was not a fit question so I asked him to look up who was on duty that night so I could at least speak to him.  He would not do that.  National security, you know, and executive privilege, and the ancient doctrine of “I know you are but what am I?”.  He eventually went over to a file cabinet and pulled open a drawer, glanced at a folder, put it back and closed the drawer.

“Nope, he would definitely have returned it, if he’d found it.  Honest as they come,” he said.  “He’s been working for us for twenty-two years, he’s returned lost jewelry.  If he’d seen it, you’d have it.”  I nodded, recommended the Mantle biography again and went out feeling like a sap.

The realization was slow to dawn on me.  Twenty-two years a Florida security guard, suggesting white hair and a red neck, a stupid bastard driving too fast and yelling at people to pull over and assume the position.   I wondered bitterly about that moment when he saw my photo on the ID, my mother’s photo ID with the apartment address on it, the baby pictures of Sekhnet.  It was possible he whooped with glee, if he recognized me, as I would surely recognize him.  There’s no doubt he did whatever a dumb bastard does the day after he finds $500 in cash at 3 a.m. on a deserted circle in a retirement village. 

“Who’s the goddamned smartass now, you rich goddamned NY lawyer bitch?”  I can hear him ask, rhetorically.