Summary

The Thief

Socrates is eating dinner in a makeshift diner run by a neighborhood woman named Iula, as he does once a week when he has money after selling the empty cans and bottles he has collected on his “route”. While enjoying her homemade meatloaf and flirting with Iula, a young black man named Wilfred comes into the restaurant wearing a bright blue exercise suit and proceeds to order everything on the menu for both himself and for Socrates. When asked how he is going to pay for it all, Wilfred shows the two of them a fan of twenty-dollar bills. Socrates knows that there is no way anyone in that neighborhood could get that much cash legitimately, and while talking to the younger man learns that Wilfred is a thief. He dresses in a three piece suit over which he puts on...