"Pretty good-lookin', huh?" he said. Then he said, "Oh, and here's my other girlfriend."

He opened his wallet to a picture of another naked blonde.

I smiled and took another gulp of my beer; then I put the glass down on the bar, deciding that I'd had enough. I reached into my right pocket to leave a tip for the bartender when I realized my wallet was gone. I felt my other pockets, but the wallet wasn't there either. I checked all my pockets again, then looked around on the floor near my bar stool.

"What's wrong?" Eddie asked.

"I can't find my wallet," I said.

Eddie started looking around too as I stood up, feeling my pockets again. Then the realization set in that I had been pick pocketed I suddenly felt hot all over and I became even more frantic.

One of the Scottish bartenders came over and asked me what was wrong.

"Somebody stole my wallet," I said.

"You sure?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm sure!" I shouted.

Now other people nearby were looking over, and a couple of college-age guys started searching on the floor.

Eddie was still looking around too, and then it hit me what had happened.

"Give me my wallet back," I said to Eddie.

He gave me a drunken stare, then said, "The fuck you talkin' about?"

"Come on, I know you took it," I said, "or you were working with somebody who took it." I looked around, but there was no one suspicious-looking nearby. I turned back to Eddie and said, "Give me my fucking wallet back."

A big surly-looking guy with a blond crew cut and bulging muscles squeezed into a tight black T-shirt came over. I figured he was the bouncer. "There a problem here?" he said.

"Yeah, there's a fuckin' problem here," I said. "This guy stole my wallet."

"I didn't steal nobody's wallet," Eddie said.

"He's lying," I said.

Eddie started taking things out of his pockets his keys, change, crumpled up bills, his own wallet.

"See?" Eddie said. "Where do you think I got his wallet, up my ass?"

"Why do you think he took your wallet?" the bouncer said to me.

"Maybe he didn't take it, but someone else did," I said, "somebody he was working with. He was distracting me while his friend took my wallet."

"I wasn't distracting nobody," Eddie said. "I was just sitting here, minding my own, then he starts screaming I took his wallet."

"Did you see him with a friend in the bar?" the bouncer asked me.

"No, I didn't see him," I said, "but that's what happened. Can't you call the cops or something?"

Eddie stood up off his bar stool.

"Hey, enough'a this shit, all right?" he said. "I didn't take your fuckin' wallet."

"Yes you did," I said.

"You callin' me a fuckin' liar?"

"Yes."

"Fuck you, asshole."

I pushed Eddie, not hard, but hard enough to knock him back a few steps. But he was so drunk or faking drunk that he fell backward, knocking over the bar stool and spilling his beer onto the woman to his right. The woman's boyfriend started shouting at Eddie, and the bouncer grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd toward the front of the bar.

"What the hell're you doing?" I said. "Let go of me."

He didn't let go until we were outside.

"The guy took my wallet," I said, "I'm telling you."

"I don't give a shit about your wallet," the bouncer said. "There's no fightin' in the bar. Now get the hell outta here 'fore I call the cops!"

The bouncer went back inside. A couple of seconds later Eddie came out. He looked at me, then headed away toward Sixth Avenue.

"Please," I said, walking next to him, "I don't want to fight with you, okay, and I don't want to call the cops either I just want my wallet back. You can keep the money, all right? I just want my credit cards and ID and everything else."

Eddie stopped and turned to face me.

"For the last fuckin' time, I don't have your fuckin' wallet," he said, spraying spit in my face with each F sound, "so just leave me the fuck alone."

Watching Eddie walk away, I tried to decide what to do. I could call the cops on my cell phone, but by the time they came Eddie would be gone. Besides, from the position he'd been sitting, Eddie couldn't have taken the wallet himself his partner had to have taken it, and by now his partner was probably long gone.

Then there was the chance that I was wrong about Eddie altogether that he'd had nothing to do with it.

I decided that calling the cops would be a waste of time. I'd spend the whole night filling out forms for nothing, because they wouldn't make any effort to catch a pickpocket. I walked to the corner and checked the garbage can, figuring that the thief might have taken the cash and dumped everything else nearby. My wallet wasn't in the top layer of garbage in any of the garbage cans around the intersection of Forty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. I walked around the block, checking other garbage cans, finding nothing. Finally, I decided it was hopeless. The pickpocket could have dumped my wallet down a sewer, or anywhere.

I only had forty-five cents on me, so I couldn't take a bus or the subway. Walking home along Seventh Avenue, I took out my cell phone and got the numbers for my bank and credit card companies, and then I started closing my accounts.

DURING THE HALF-HOUR-OR-SO walk to my apartment on West Eighty-first Street, I froze my bank account and closed my credit card accounts, relieved to find out that nothing had been charged on any of my cards.

I'd heard horror stories about identity theft, so later I'd have to call the credit bureaus and report that my wallet had been stolen.

Then, tomorrow, I'd try to replace my more minor cards Blockbuster, United Health Care, the New York Public Library, Duane Reade Dollar Rewards Club and deal with the headache of replacing my Social Security card and driver's license.

As usual, when I entered my apartment hip-hop music was blasting and the living room reeked of pot. I was slightly surprised, because Rebecca had said she was going to be out for the night.

"I'm home!" I called down the hallway, toward the bedroom, but I doubted she could hear me over the pulsing music.

I went into the narrow kitchen. There had been a six pack of Amstel in the fridge this morning, but now there was just an empty carton.

"Sorry, yo, we got thirsty."

I looked over and saw Ray, one of Rebecca's dancing friends, standing there, smiling by the entrance to the kitchen. Ray was a clean-cut Latino guy and he was dressed in tight pants and a tight, ribbed, Ricky Martin-style T-shirt, showing off his lean, ripped body. Rebecca claimed Ray was gay, but I hoped she was lying. If she left me for Ray or somebody else it would've solved a lot of problems.

"It's okay," I said. "I probably shouldn't drink any more tonight anyway."

"You out partying?" Ray said, his eyes glassy from the pot he'd smoked. "Say it ain't so."

"I just had a couple beers," I said.

"Still," Ray said. "We should call Eyewitness News down here to do a story. David Miller gets fucked up details at eleven."

I was used to being the butt of jokes for Ray and Rebecca's other friends; because I held a steady job and didn't drink a lot or do drugs they treated me like I was Mr. Rogers.

As Ray laughed, I took out a carton of orange juice from the fridge and gulped some from the spout.

"Seriously," Ray said, "sorry about the beer, yo, but we needed to get a buzz on for tonight. But don't worry 'bout it next time I come by I'll bring you another sixer."

Whenever Ray came over he drank my beer or ate food from the fridge and always promised to replace it, but never did. At this point it was like a running joke.

I was still guzzling orange juice when Rebecca sashayed into the kitchen. She was twenty-four, and there was no doubt she was hot. She had wavy brown hair that went halfway down her back, a fit, slender body, and small, doll-like features. Whenever people asked her what she did for a living she always answered, "I'm a modern dancer," which used to impress me, until I saw her dance. A few weeks after we met, I went to a showcase that she and her friends were putting on at a space they rented out downtown, and I was surprised by how awkward and ungraceful she was. After that night, it became painful to hear her talk about her dancing, taking it so seriously, when I knew she was deluding herself. She blew off most of her dance classes and auditions, sleeping through the alarm clock, or just not bothering to show up. The only dancing she did on a regular basis was when she went out to clubs and partied with her friends four or five nights a week.