Heads up, said Sarah, we had something strange. Marguerite nodded slowly. We worked at a bookstore with big white cows drawn on its sign. Sarah explained: seven black males and one white male were loitering in the store, in biography, then religion, then the magazines. We offered assistance but they adamantly refused. A few times one or two of them would peer out the front window looking for something. Twice they exited in pairs and regrouped in the parking lot by a white van and smoked cigarettes and talked. One of the black males was angry and jabbed his fist toward the sky to punctuate his words. Though in the store they barely spoke at all. After about an hour they left in a different van, a light blue one, driven by a middle-aged Asian woman whom we hadn’t seen in the store. Nothing was stolen.

Marguerite’s eyes flashed. What do you think? I agreed it was strange. I didn’t see any vans outside so I went to the back office and worked on payroll. Or maybe it was inventory, I can’t really remember.