The Snow Brought Customers Outside to Watch Me Get Arrested

Snow had settled on the plastic heron above Bayou Glass Aquatics. In Shreveport, Louisiana, that was enough to stop traffic without a wreck.

People stood under the shop awning, taking pictures of their cars. I stood beside my box truck with a moving blanket over one arm.

I was thirty-six, a mixed-race man with brown skin, close-cut curls, a narrow face, and a soft brush tucked behind my left ear.

My name was Adrian Baptiste. I installed custom aquariums, which meant most folks saw my stained coveralls before they saw my work.

That morning, the stains were old silicone and red clay. The three tanks in my truck were clean enough to hold the pale sky.

Odette Landry came through the front door carrying her phone like a badge.

Odette was a white woman of fifty-eight with a blunt silver bob, pale eyes, and a red wool coat buttoned tight over her shop apron.

"There he is," she said. "That's the man stealing my tanks."

A boy near the door lowered his snowball.

"Odette, we have a pickup agreement."

"Don't say my name like we're friends."

She turned toward the customers.

"Please record this. The police are coming. I want his face clear when they arrest him."

Three phones rose. A woman pulled her little girl closer.

I had spent five months trying to sell those tanks through this shop. Now my own glass stood behind me, wrapped and strapped, while its manager called me a thief.

"They're mine," I said.

Odette laughed so hard she had to put a hand against the door.

"You carry things, Adrian. You don't own everything you carry."

I took the brush from behind my ear. Snow had caught in the truck's door seal. I swept it away before it could melt inside.

My father had taught me that with window glass. Brush first. Then wipe. Otherwise, you dragged the grit across a clear surface.

I needed something small to do with my hands.

"Three tanks," I said. "Six thousand two hundred dollars each. Eighteen thousand six hundred total. You signed for them on August nineteenth."

"I sign delivery slips all day."

"These said consignment."

"These sat on my sales floor until January. Customers saw them here. My staff cleaned them."

"That didn't change who owned them."

She raised her voice again.

"Hear that? He thinks saying a word makes merchandise his."

A man holding fish food asked, "Did you pay him?"

Odette faced him at once.

"Are you accusing me of cheating my workers? After everything this store does for the neighborhood?"

He backed under the awning. I knew that turn. Any question about money became an attack on her good name.

Last fall, I had asked for the monthly sales sheet. She had cried beside the shrimp display until two customers told me to give her room.

In December, I had asked again. She had called me greedy.

This time, I had sent written notice. Five days, as our agreement required. No tanks had sold. Her sales fee would have been fifteen percent. I owed her no storage charge.

At eight that morning, she had waved me through the side entrance.

"Take them before the weather gets worse," she had said.

Mateo Vega had helped guide the last tank onto my lift gate. Then Odette had gone inside. When I came around to close the truck, she had started shouting.

Now Mateo stood behind the shop window, his hand against the glass.

Odette saw me looking.

"My driver has work to do," she said. "Don't drag him into this."

"He helped load them."

"Under your instructions."

My phone buzzed. A client named Mrs. Cole had sent a link to a video.

Under it, she wrote, Is this you? Please hold our installation.

That job was worth $4,200. I had planned my February rent around it.

I put the phone away.

"Let me show you the receipts," I said.

"On your phone? Anything can be made on a phone."

"I have the originals."

Her mouth changed. Just a little.

"Where?"

"At my workshop. In my repair intake book."

She glanced toward my cab, then back at my coveralls.

"Convenient."

That book stayed six miles away, above the sink where I tested pumps. It held measurements, repair dates, and the etched serial numbers I put on every tank I rebuilt.

Odette had seen me writing in it once. She had called it my little chore book.

I had not corrected her.

A siren gave one short sound on the road. A patrol car eased into the lot, its tires pushing gray slush.

Odette lifted her phone higher.

"Keep filming," she told the customers. "Here comes the part he can't talk his way out of."

The officer stepped out carrying a small black notebook.