Read She'll Take It for Free Online

pyramid that can mysteriously keep fruit from rotting if placed directly in the center) and second of all, stealing fruit just doesn’t give me as much of a rush. I’ll take a bottle of lotion over a squishy orange any day.
    I hesitate at a bouquet of yellow roses. Should I bring them to Jane? “Just a little something to brighten your day,” I’ll say, waving off her gush of gratitude. Or would she smell the fear and think I was trying to bribe her? I pick up the flowers. I put them down. I pick them up again and smell their faint, powdery scent. I touch a petal ever so slightly. It floats off and sticks to the palm of my hand. No flowers. I put them down and enter the deli.
    â€œYou break, you buy.” She is right behind me, a stout, dark woman with bushy eyebrows and an intense glare. She shoves the yellow roses at me.
    I put my hands up as if at gunpoint. “I don’t want them.”
    She thrusts them toward me again. “You break, you buy.”
    I head to the counter. She follows. “One regular coffee and a chocolate chip muffin,” I say to the man behind the counter.
    His eyes slide from me to the yellow roses. The woman speaks to him in rapid tones in a tongue I can’t recognize let alone decipher. He speaks back to her and she hands him the roses like the passing of the torch at the opening of the Olympic Games. He rings the roses up along with my coffee and muffin.
    â€œEighteen dollars.”
    I dig in my purse and hand him a twenty. I glance behind me to see if I’m still being tailed, but she has already headed off to harass other innocent, flower-sniffing customers.
    My right hand drops down to the candy section and my fingers play across them like a Beethoven concerto. I lift candy bars and flick them into my purse with a sleight of hand that would impress any magician. Although I don’t quite make up for the twelve dollars the roses cost me, I do manage to swipe two Kit Kat bars, a bag of peanut M&M’s (New! Twenty Percent More!), and a box of Chicklets. My diet is indefinitely on hold.
    â€œChicklet?” I hold the yellow box out like a peace offering.
    â€œNo, thanks,” Jane says curtly while positioning her soy milk and grapefruit so that they square off with my coffee and chocolate chip muffin. Then she turns back to her computer screen and ignores me. I start to sweat. Five minutes go by. Five whole minutes and she has yet to say anything directly to me. She has answered the phone and talked brightly to the callers, she has smiled at other temps coming in to get their assignments, and for an excruciating twenty seconds she filed her nails. Finally, I pull out the yellow roses and hold them out toward her.
    â€œJust a little something to brighten your day,” I squeak.
    Jane stops filing her nails and stares at me. She is a pretty girl, born and raised in Brooklyn, Italian descent, and a take-no-prisoners attitude.
    â€œFlowers, Melanie? You brought me flowers?” She jabs a recently filed fingernail at me like it’s a self-guided missile and my head its target location. “Get me a vase, will ya? Back there.” She throws her arm back and points her fingernail file at the tiny kitchen behind her. Obediently I fetch a vase and arrange the flowers in water while she taps on her keyboard and makes mysterious notes in the margins of her desk calendar. “All right. Let’s have a little talk.”
    She opens her desk drawer, brings out a stack of pink telephone messages, and slams them in front of me. “Do you know why you’re here?”
    â€œYou have a wonderful assignment for me?” I ask with a nervous laugh. Her answer is a cold stare. I shiver. She picks up the first message and reads it out loud. “Banco de Popular de Puerto Rico.” Uh-oh. “What does”—she brings the pink note closer to her face and wrinkles her nose—“ Una cerveza por favor mean?”
    â€œOne