Istopped at a crossroads red light, like other riders around me. An elderly woman approached a rider in front of me, saying something
I couldn’t overhear, but I guessed she was asking for a lift. The man-rider smiled shaking his head. I thought she would turn to me and she did. Exactly what I had guessed: she asked for a lift. I didn’t smile but nodded. The rider in front looked back with a grin, an excuse or a warning?
I didn’t know but I had nodded to her. In fact, she looked honest, her clothes were not expensive. Maybe, she belonged to the lower class.
We didn’t share the itinerary, it meant I had to carry her to a place not on my way home, but it was alright, it just took minutes for a motorbike to go.
On the way, from behind my back, she told her story: she came to visit a relative in the city.
She lived in a small town and came here by bus, and she lost all her money that she kept in her bag. I asked how come and she said maybe on the bus, too crowded then. I believed her. It was a very common thing in a big city like Ho Chi Minh City. Then she concluded, “You should be careful, too. City folks are like that.”
I seemed to be waken up from a dream. I pretended to scratch my back to silently run my hand over the back pocket to be sure that my wallet was there.
Sure enough, it was there, as large as life. “I am to cautious,” I talked to my self.
When we arrived at the place as indicated by the woman on the back seat of my motor-bike, I asked her where her relative’s house was. “A little farther, but I can walk,” she said reassuring me in a very friendly way. She also sounded conscientious and grateful. “Let me take you to the right place,” I retorted. “A good deed is to be completed.”
At the right place, I stopped and she got off, and thanked me. Quite assured of my good deed, I rode off. But only a moment latter, I felt kind of a premonition and I looked back: the woman was nowhere to be found, I felt my back pocket: my wallet was gone.
- Yên Lan