The Wallet

“I didn’t steal it,” he mumbled as he walked down Sixth Avenue. He heard nothing as he walked; not the foreign cursing echoing from a crumbling building, not the angry honking as other pedestrians confidently walked out into the busy street; not even the smack-flip sound his separating right sole made onto the cement with each step. He reached his building. A pair of feral cats were fighting over chicken bones recently retrieved out of the open garbage cans, hissing and spitting, while a slumped and bearded homeless man moved in on their prize. They also went unnoticed. 

                He made his way up the stairs to his sixth floor apartment, past crude graffiti over crumbling wallpaper of an indiscernible pattern, avoiding the loose eighth stair after the fourth landing. Once there was a working elevator in the building, but like everything else in this area of town it was long gone. The world had moved on, and many places like this had been conveniently forgotten. 

                He made his way to the tray table he called his desk and sat in the armchair with the shredded upholstery. A stack of old paperbacks leaned precariously next to the table. Salinger, Bradbury and Hemingway watched as he folded himself into the seat. He looked at the door one last time, making sure he was alone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. Leather, by the look of it, and plumper than a roasted chicken. He ran his hand across his stubble and sighed. 

                He stared at the wallet on the table. Inviting it to offer its thoughts, its opinion of him. It said nothing. He heated up a can of beans. The wallet waited, neither welcoming nor unwelcoming. 

                It was six hours before he opened it. He read every bit of information on the drivers’ license as he ran his thumb across the rows of hundreds he had expected to find. He tried not to, but finally he gave in and flipped through the picture book. No kids, that was good. He wouldn’t want to take from kids, even rich kids. He pulled out the many credit cards one by one and looked at them on the table.  He returned the cards to the slots and removed the cash. He sighed again. From down the hall came the sound of a child sobbing, and this finally brought him out of his daze. He nodded to himself, found a scrap of paper and wrote down what he had to say. 

                “I found this on the L-line. I didn’t steal it. Sorry about the cash, it was needed.”

He folded the paper and carefully put it into the slot where the cash had been. He’d take it to the post office and send it to the address on the license. That was going to cost him five bucks he didn’t have, but it couldn’t be helped. 

                He stepped back out into the hall, closing his door behind him. He took a few steps and stopped at an apartment down the hall from his. The child had stopped sobbing for now, but he knew it was still hurting as it had been for a long time. He slipped the cash under the door, knocked twice and said out loud, “Take him to the doctor.” 

                By the time the door opened he was already down the stairs.