Finders, Keepers
Three dates into my dalliance with an extremely handsome and eligible Ivy League-educated lawyer, we went to a bar around the corner from my Manhattan apartment. In a corner booth, after some small talk, he said that he had an announcement to make. I told him to go ahead.
“I have a problem. It’s a Winona Ryder problem,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, utterly confused.
“I sometimes have to take things.”
Turns out the guy, who worked at one of New York’s top law firms and was easily earning six figures, was a kleptomaniac. He told me he’d “acquired” a piece that afternoon and began digging in his backpack.
In shock, my immediate first thought was: what if he whipped out a diamond necklace as a gift? Would it be acceptable to accept it? Talk about a moral dilemma! But there was no danger of that since he proceeded to reveal that he only stole when slighted by someone.
He fished out a souvenir and told me that he’d taken it from a museum because the security guards there hassled him. This got me wondering if I’d rubbed him the wrong way at all. He’d been in my apartment already. I wanted to run home to check everything and make sure that my credit cards were all in my purse.
I excused myself and stepped out (clenching my handbag) to call a friend of mine who’s from the same part of the world as him. I wondered if maybe the “problem” was a legacy of his troubled childhood. After all, he’d had to flee his native land as a child since his father was a controversial political figure there. She listened and delivered her verdict.
“It’s nothing to do with him being oppressed. He’s a thief,” she said. “And you should totally not be dating him.”
Indeed, I couldn’t. I went back into the restaurant and told him I could not see him anymore. Knowing that he would take this as a slight against him I quickly departed while double checking that I had everything I brought to the restaurant with me.
