Stormy Monday

Last night I received a call from my friend that her house had been robbed and she asked that I come over.  I drove as fast I could to her home becoming angrier along the way because it was just so unfair. When I arrived there were already six cars parked in her driveway and in front of her house. The scene inside was ugly and chilling, everything she and her sister owned was scattered all over the floor throughout the house, a broken door, the dogs still very disturbed. They were still trying to figure out what was missing.  I was greeted with, "They took the Cria Cuervos movie you bought me." The police had just left and the place had been dusted for fingerprints. I sat with her and we began to sort through piles.

We started to come across some of her possessions I had not seen since we met twenty six years ago.  I was touched when I saw she had kept my cards, letters and little memento's from decades ago. Pictures of us from high school were all over the floor. I found the trinket box that sat on her dresser in high school and refilled it with the turquoise rings and tiny earrings I knew belonged in it. As I helped her pick up I realized just how much I love her and how we have been so lucky all these years to not only remain close friends but we have never lived far from each other. I knew the stories behind the things I was picking up and what they meant to her.

A huge rock was used to break their glass door to gain entry. The thief or thieves filled two suitcases with cameras, jewelry, DVDs, electronics, credit cards and other valuable odds and ends. He even took the last of the vintage dresses we had bought by the pound years and years ago in Del Rio when we were still high school. We could tell that he or they spent a great deal of time in her home, enough time to finish off  several bottles of liquor leaving only her Campari untouched.

Eventually we started to laugh at what the thief left behind. Despite taking her entire DVD collection he left behind anything with Hugh Grant in it. He didn't steal the Bill Callahan tickets, didn't touch her books. The four aged and worn stuffed animals from her childhood had witnessed it all and they sat just as they always had, on the shelf, while everything around them had been tossed or taken. A few hours later we found ourselves outside, laughing and carrying on as if at one of the many parties she hosted at the house. There was a call, the cops were closing in on the thief. Monday evening had become Tuesday morning.