I was outside for my 15 minute break, just enjoying the sunshine, drinking iced tea, watching people walk by.
This little old man walks up to me. Swarthy, what was left of his black hair flat against his head from persperation. His eyes were blue. Brilliant blue. Cataract blue.
“Excuse,” he says to me. “Excuse. Help.” He’s got two quarters in his hand.
I asked him what I could do.
“Lost,” he told me. “Lost purse. Mervyns.”
I work across the street from a shopping mall. One of those big ones. Hundreds of stores and three floors. I tell him I’ll help him find his purse. I lead him across the street, and he shuffles next to me with tiny, quick steps. As we walk, I ask him his name. He mumbles something I don’t understand. I tell him my name, and we keep going. He keeps palming the two quarters he’s got in his hand.
Through the mall, the food court, by the Macy’s, all the way over to Mervyns. His huff-puff breath picks up a little, and I hear a little groan of hope. “Three hundred dollars,” he tells me. Wow. I tell him he shouldn’t be carrying that much money. He mumbles something else, his bright blue eyes shining happy.
We get to Mervyns. He keeps walking. Walking outside. “Thank you,” he says, not even looking back. He shuffles right over to the bus station, two quarters in his hand.
“Lost,” he said to me. But not “purse.”
“Bus.”
I have no idea where those three hundred dollars came from. Or even where they went.
I watch him go, laugh a little, realize I’m late to get back off my break.
Halfway back, I remember Llugh racing with the sun. And I laugh.