Under the Fridge

The bellman expertly angled his extra-large umbrella over the space created when he opened the back door of the arriving taxi.

How do they do that? Chase wondered as he watched his buxom wife exit the cab from the safety of the hotel’s lobby. It’s raining sixty miles per hour sideways and she is bone dry. And - early for our monthly keep the marriage exciting hotel rendezvous.

Stacy was digging in her overnight bag-sized purse as the bellman continued to shield her crossing the sidewalk.

“Here, honey, I’ve got it,” Chase said as he met them at the hotel’s front door and handed the bellman a five dollar bill.

“Thank you, sir.”

“What?” said Stacy, her arm swirling around like the blade of an electric mixer, swallowed up to its elbow by the purse’s innards. She looked up at Chase with tears rolling down her cheeks. “It’s gone!” she wailed.

“What’s gone, babe?”

“My bracelet. The one you bought me. Someone stole it!”

“Stole it? When? Where?” Chase paused for a moment. “And why are you looking in your purse?”

“You know how hard the clasp is to do one handed. I put it in my purse so that you could help me get it on. I even got here early. Someone must have grabbed it while I was waiting for the cab.”

Stacy was starting to hyperventilate in the middle of the hotel lobby. In a soft, calm voice Chase said, “Honey, are you sure? There’s a lot of room in that purse. Maybe you just missed it.”

“I didn’t miss anything!” she yelled, plopping down on a nearby couch and dumping the contents of the purse on the glass-top table sitting in front of it. “See? It’s not here!”

As Chase’s arms flailed trying to rescue some cylindrical objects before they rolled off the table and hit the floor – he made a nice one-handed grab of what looked to be a lipstick, completely fanned on two tubes of Chapstick and inadvertently sent a few other unidentified tubular items skittering across the polished lobby floor – he tried another approach.

“Well, maybe you never put it in your purse”, he said gently. “Maybe you thought about it and just forgot. Maybe it’s still at home somewhere.”

“How can you be so indifferent?” she cried. “My favorite bracelet is gone! And I didn’t forget it,” she said with an edge in her voice. “I’m not the idiot you think I am.”

Chase’s tried to stay patient. “I’ve never thought you were an idiot. But there was the time we found your long-lost watch at the bottom of the laundry hamper. And your favorite work-out CD did somehow end up under the fridge. Maybe the bracelet is doing something exciting too.”

“Hmmph,” said Stacy as she gathered up the non-mobile residents of her purse. “Then you better get it to tell you the story.”

She stood up and smoothed her form-fitting dress. “Because that’s the most excitement you’re going to have tonight.”