My car was stolen a few weeks ago, and then found, the morning after I reported it to the police. I'd been telling myself this is Newport Beach, it's an '84 Camry, no one'll care enough to find it; getting it back, and so fast, was surprising. Kind of a relief, too, that it hadn't been misplaced; I was still very spacy from surgery a couple weeks before, and only about 80% sure where I'd parked it last.

But it was stolen, and was found, intact in its blanched crustiness on modest Bimini near Baker in Costa Mesa (the 2006 engine was somehow still there).

Either way would've been okay -- I miss the bus -- but the delivery-back of the car was touching for me. Not the car itself, so much, but parts like Officer Navarro, who picked me up from Enrique's and drove me to where it was, rather than my having to pay to get it out of the impound lot (he didn't think that was fair to victims).

He said now that the rain had stopped things would be warming up. He referred to me as "the victim" several times, which I enjoyed. He and I were about the same age, I could tell by how he talked about K-Earth (which was playing in his car). People younger and older than me may be okay being cops, but not people roughly the same age, we're not cut out for it. He said he used to listen to jazz and I decided before he could explain that he'd stopped because it kept him out of cop mood.

He was extremely thorough and polite in his dispatches to "Beth" on the other end (that was when most of the "victim" stuff came up), and then later with everyone else. When I saw him toward the end of the whole thing, patiently waiting in his car for word back from headquarters that I was clear to take my car home, he looked sort of small, and sort of old. And I suddenly felt like part of this place. For the first time, I think.

It was a random, liberal-looking grayhaired householder, Sue, on Bimini who thought to call the police about the car in front of her place. She and a stocky female detective were chatting beside it when Officer Navarro and I got there. I felt so grateful to Sue. She and the detective talked about the beautiful "forest" in front of Sue's place, and how Sue sometimes even naps out in her yard, the trees protect her so well. The detective warned her about people hiding in her bushes and Sue said she has a guard dog. This turned into a conversation about geese, the detective suggested she get geese because they take no nonsense from anyone. I suddenly felt like with a couple of costume changes, we could be in an illustration in a children's nursery rhyme book, like in Low German, from like the 1800s or something.

Sue eventually ducked out and I talked more with the detective lady. The glove compartment was open and receipts in little balls on the floor below it. Though she never said it, I began to understand that she'd carefully examined every single thing in my car. Like the affirmations sheet in the back seat about fertility and children; cheapshit movie magaines; Spanish flashcards; and the dust. She'd tried unsuccessfully to get fingerprints off the "contents of the bag" (a small brown paper bag holding a few cassettes). Toward the end she complimented the broom in my back window, calling it a "bezom," which I believe may have been Wiccan sign language.

Eventually word came that I was free to take the car. We all waved to each other as I drove out. As I left I wondered if -- while getting the crapster back was definitely a good and convenient thing for me -- it might have even been like 1% better for them. An entirely positive thing, I mean. As I thought about that possibility, I felt a lot of love for them.

The rest of the day was a rainbow. I spent way too much time and money at RiteAid (they sell these gorgeous Indian skirts and blouses now, which of course took forever to consider). It seemed like only women were working there that day, all easy and funny. Finally tore myself away and home...continued the post-fumigation (oh, we'd also just been fumigated) put-back...and then, got my first period since the surgery.

I was so proud. Not of myself, exactly, but of bodies. They try.