The minute I step through the electric eye, the drug-store’s alarm goes off and several pairs of eyes freeze me inside the cage of their suspicion. I stand on the spiky plastic Welcome mat, waiting for someone to release me, to say “Go on, it is all a mistake.” The rotund manager, propelling down the center aisle toward me like a nuclear submarine in his too-tight steel-gray suit, his pudgy finger aimer at me, orders me in a loud voice to come back and empty my purse on the counter. I protest, put my hands up. I have not done anything. But his face – folds of hardened rubbery flesh, mouth curling into a tight smile of scorn, eyes almost slits – tell me to expect no pity. He informs me that he will call security if I do not obey. I turn over my bag on the glass case that displays cheap watches, their plastic faces impassively watching me through safety glass – a jury box of Timex ladies’ and men’s, alarms ready to go off when I am found guilty, none of them showing the right time.

Without touching any of my things, as if I carried the bubonic plague in my handbag, he inspects its contents, poking around inside with a pen he has pulled out of his pocket, letters scrolled on the side: We value our customers. This is what he finds: half a roll of breath mints (tropical flavors), two lipsticks (Brown Sugar Babe and Hot Spice Girl), hairbrush, pink sunglasses with slightly scratched lenses, envelope with a letter I still writing to my mother, small mirror in the shape of red lips; two five-dollar bills, three quarters, two dimes, one nickel, and seven pennies – money I was going to spend on beauty products. He takes his time, looking up, raised eyebrows, after tapping each item with his pen. I know he is acting for the security cameras. Finally, finding nothing that looks like his merchandise, he looks me over as if I were hiding something in my clothing or maybe hidden deep within my bushy foreign hair. I stand like a statue while he stares. His cheeks begin to quiver a little bit. He rubs his eyes, squints. I turn my five jacket pockets inside out for him; leave their linty insides hanging out. I lean over, grab the hem of my skirt, pretending I am going to lift it up for his inspection. His eyes grow almost round in outrage. He give me a hateful look, makes a sweeping motion with his plump hand, Get out of my store. Case dismissed due to lack of hard evidence; not lack of guilt, his mocking smile tell me. He will get me next time.

He maneuvers his huge body, almost stuck between counter and wall, toward our audience of three customers, his sarcastic smile ugly and mean as the crack on the sidewalk that trips you. We know she’s guilty, right, friends? He nods as he passes the elderly couple, and nods again at the girl with blonde dreadlocks, who have waited, maybe hoping for the entertainment of their day to end with cops and handcuffs. But they act as they too feel cheated. The girl walks out without buying anything, tossing back those heavy yellow ropes of hair. The old people return to the magazine they had been flipping through. I watch as the king of these thirteen aisles of beauty products, two of cough and cold, and one of pain relief goes back through his secret panel at the rear wall of his store, to his office behind the two-way mirror.

I put everything slowly back into my bag, taking my time. I sort the coins and put them into the change pocket. I put my makeup in the middle section, zip it up; slide the sunglasses into the outside pocket so they will not be scratched again. I reapply Brown Sugar Babe using the mirror on the counter. I run the brush through my hair. It gets stuck in a tough curl and I have to spend a few minutes working it out.

This is what I leave on the glass countertop, above the Timex watches, all telling the wrong time: half a roll of mints (the green one on top broken in three places and a little bit dusty), several strands of coarse black hair I have carefully shaped into a question mark, and a ticket stub from the movie American Beauty, which I really didn’t like all that much.