“You’re wrong,” I said. “I didn’t take anything.” I opened my jacket and said, “Go ahead and check for yourself.” She hesitated. “Go ahead,” I said, as calmly as I could, the way Frank would have said it. I turned to the employee. “You want to check?” He didn’t know what to do. “I saw you take it,” he said. “Then go ahead and check. Or do you want to call a cop?” I said, “We can do it that way too.”

“We’ll call the cops,” the woman said.

We all went back inside. A few people were staring at us, but mostly they went about their own business. The employee went to call the police. I walked back to the table and turned and said, “I was sitting here. Where were you?” The woman motioned to her things, still in place on the table.

“You were twenty feet away from me,” I said. There was someone at my table so I moved closer to the woman’s table. She backed away from me as I approached. “Relax,” I told her. “Look at where you were and look where I was. I couldn’t have taken it.”

The employee was back from his call. “You took it when you walked past,” he said. “I saw you.”

“You saw me? From behind the counter? Could you go back and show me.” He walked back behind the counter and I walked to the woman’s table. “What was I doing?” I asked.

He wasn’t sure now. “I saw you,” he said but he wasn’t as eager as before.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll wait for the cops. Where do you want me?” The employee motioned for me to move near the cash register, so someone could keep an eye on me, I suppose. The woman went back to her table and looked out the window, waiting for help. Finally, someone saw it. A guy got up from his table and walked behind the woman and said, “Is that your watch?” and pointed to it on the floor, pinned against the wall. I’d let it fall down my pant leg a good ten minutes earlier. No one was paying attention.