First Steven, then this…

Could things fall apart any more completely? What was next? Was their house going to be robbed this afternoon? Was the bookstore going to burn down? Was Dr. Wilson going to fire her?

She glanced down at her watch. Her lunch ended in two minutes, and the optometrist was not the most sympathetic person when it came to excuses for being tardy. She hurried inside the building. There was a whole host of things she needed to do in order to protect her financial security. Dr. Wilson glanced at her when he saw her, then glanced up at the clock and then without a word walked down the short hallway to his private office, shutting the door.

There were no patients yet, and Anita commandeered one of the computers, then thought the better of it and used her phone to access the Experian site, then thought the better of that and got a phone number from the website so she could call the credit monitoring company directly. She didn’t trust the security of anything at this point, but she needed to do what the woman had told her and get control of her personal information, not to mention freeze all of her accounts.

“What’s going on?” Jen asked, walking in and putting her purse under the counter. “You look kind of frazzled.”

Anita shook her head. “You won’t believe it.”

“What?”

“Credit card fraud. Someone pretended they were me and tried to charge something. I got a call about it five minutes ago, when I was walking in.”

“Jesus!”

“It was happening right then. Live! As they were talking to me on the phone! Some guy in a Best Buy in Ohio was trying to use my card to buy…I don’t even know! I forgot to ask! How stupid can I get?”

Jen put a hand on her arm. “Calm down. It’s not your fault. You’re not stupid. You’re just upset.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Of course! Something like that? I’d feel so…violated.”

Violated

An image flashed in her mind: Steven with his erect penis.

You know you want it

She pushed the thought away. “I need to get this taken care of. Cover for me, will you? I’m going to go in the bathroom and make some calls.”

“You don’t have to hide in the bathroom. He’ll understand.”

Anita glanced toward the optometrist’s closed door. “You didn’t see the look he gave me when I came in. Because I was almost late. Cover for me?”

“Sure.”

In the bathroom, she sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. She tried to call Kyle, but he’d set his phone to voicemail, and when she called the store, the line was busy. So she spent the next ten minutes talking first to a computer, then to a man with a thick Southern accent who elicited the information needed to secure her credit line. She was about to call Equifax when Jen came in and said, “Better wrap it up. Mrs. Wheeler’s here for her appointment. He’ll be out in a minute.”