Column: Lost and found

We were in downtown Cutchogue when the Jitney driver slammed on the brakes in one of the more dramatic episodes in more than 20 years of commuting to and from the Island and city. We all lurched forward and the moment passed and life went on.

A little later, I notice a plastic freezer bag in the aisle ahead of us filled with feminine lotions and potions and whatnot. Is that yours, I ask Jane, and she says yes. The sudden braking had apparently propelled the pouch from her quilted carry-on.

We get to Greenport and Jane is assembling her gear. Her purse is missing. We know it was on the bus because she used a credit card from it to conduct some online business. It too must have launched during the braking incident, and the search commences.

I’m on my hands and knees starting from the front of the bus looking under every seat. Nada. The driver and attendant see what’s going on and get in on the action. Four of us are scouring the bus for the purse. We look in the bathroom, though Jane never used the bathroom. The purse has vanished and a great mystery is unfolding.

The only answer is that someone must have spotted the purse and taken it, either unwittingly or for dastardly reasons. Regardless of motive, the purse is gone, and the dull pain of losing a purse is engulfing Jane.

There are few misfortunes so distressing than the reality that your whole life, sketched out on dozens of credit cards, ID cards of various kinds (driver’s license, New York City ID and on and on) has been appropriated by someone else, perhaps to rip you off.

Our only hope was that a Good Samaritan would alert the Jitney that he/she had it and was eager to return it. (I lost my wallet on the Jitney years ago but got it back.)

A day goes by with no word from the Jitney while Jane has killed all the credit cards and applied for new licenses. The dull pain doesn’t really go away but you try to move on, having done all you can do.

Then you remember that your CDC vaccine card was in there as well as several other obscure but valuable IDs and the pain flares up again. The loss feels like a personal invasion.

Jane stays on the Island and I go back to the city two days later. I had been going through a period of weird phone calls from strange places, and my habit is to ignore them. Half-way to the city, I see an unknown incoming call with a 631 area code. Maybe it’s a contractor, maybe a neighbor, maybe it’s a crank caller. I break my rule and answer it. It’s a woman who found the purse!

It all traces back to Cutchogue, as somehow we knew it would. Alina, the rescuer, was sitting a couple of rows ahead of us and her carry-on tumbled on the floor during the braking incident. She scooped up all her belongings, including, unknowing, Jane’s purse, which had nested with her stuff.

I have Alina call Jane and they make arrangements to get the purse back. Jane offers to drive to Alina, in Riverhead, to pick it up, but Alina says she will be taking the Jitney into the city in a couple of days and could drop it off at our apartment building. And what stop would that be, Alina? Seventy-ninth, one block away!

I agree to meet her and the purse. I get there absurdly early and see a Jitney pull up around the scheduled time and watch two women disembark with obviously no interest in looking for someone like me. I call Alina and she says the bus is running late, maybe 10-15 minutes away. It is now a certainty that the purse is coming home. Dull pain? Gone.

The bus pulls up, Alina steps out and the handoff is made. She is a pleasant looking woman who could be a secretary or a CEO with a slight foreign accent. I shake her hand, probably a little too vigorously.

And then I wonder: How did she know to call me and not Jane? And then the mystery is completely solved. Think about it. How many ID cards and licenses have your phone number? Like zero? But on one ID/license was an emergency contact phone number: Moi! (I forgot to inquire why she didn’t just call the Jitney.)

As for icing on the cake, as it were, the driver and attendant from Greenport, the ones on their hands and knees? They were on the bus and they might have been happier than I was.

Not to overstate, but maybe there is a God.