Residents of Harm City know that the cheapest and safest place to purchase your bootleg DVDs is at the local Nubian hair salon. As these ladies make their monthly visit to drop a week’s pay on their hair do, they are accustomed to street venders coming in to sell stolen goods and bootleg movies. Batteries, buttafinga candy bars, and Dove bar soap are three high demand items. Fresh food though, is rarely sold to women who are having their hair treated, cut, weaved, ejection molded, and what have you.

This past Sunday Ajay, an unlikely NASCAR fan and heavy metal concertgoer, was having her hair done. I’ll let her tell it:

“I was sitting with my hair under the [I missed this word, for whatever otherworldly device bakes hair while still on the head] while Michelle was doing something when this man came in. He was older and had a bag. He walked over to Michelle and tapped her on the arm. She ignored him. Well, I suppose this was not clear enough for this trifling fool so he tapped her again. She ignored him. Then he came over to me and grabbed my wrist! Boy! You best not be coming into a salon and touching people in the chair!

“I grabbed his wrist and threw it off. He was weak, a weak, stupid, trifling fool. Then he was like, ‘Come on baby, don’t you wanna buy some meat?’ and he was holding up this shopping bag full of God knows what kind of stolen mishandled meat that nobody in their right mind would ever buy—especially where hair is being done.

“Oh, he left alright.”

Ajay was duly horrified when I informed her that shoplifted meat is routinely sold in Harm City bars, and even on busses, and at bus stops. I sometimes go to one bar, at which the owner’s permit a pair of thieves—a husband and wife couple—to keep a folding table behind the stairs. On Saturday night, at 11:00 p.m., the man hauls in a backpack and two wheeled coolers as the lady sets up the table and begins arranging the display and announcing prices of $2, $5, and $10 dollars, on high retail items like meat, Tide, club pack candy, etc. Once this Bonnie and Clyde team of shoplifters set up their display and announce prices, if some patrons hold back from shopping, they proudly announce that they only sell items stolen from Walmart. That breaks the ice and everyone rushes the table. Then, after everything is sold—which takes about 20 minutes—the little lady takes next week’s orders on a memo pad. I am the only patron at this bar who does not shop with the Walmart resellers.