The Black Envelope

I watched her for over an hour and a half pick pocketing people outside of Hard Rock Stadium at Miami Gardens, Fla. Super Bowl LVI. I was doing Miami police undercover work to protect innocent drunk fans. She was wearing a Victorian inspired long length sheer shift lace dress with fancy cuffs and buttons.  In all honesty she reminded me of some kind of Fortune Teller looking through a crystal ball or reading tarot cards or reading Lipton tea leaves that you just might see in a late night movie starring Gypsy Rose Lee. 
Then I got to thinking who in this day and age would want to be a gypsy? To live a Gypsy life is to live in constant fear of the outside world, which is marime. You know what I detest more than a thief? When I don’t know the meaning or a word I just ran across for the first time. (marime) Put marime in a sentence my old English teacher would say when learning a new word. The most marime individuals, are the ones who do not follow our cleaning rules and rituals. If you spend time in their environment, touch their stuff and use their cutlery, you too will become marime. Marime is sometimes translated as 'ritual pollution or avoidance'. In fact both its definition and its expression are complex. You got that right.  It can be basically divided into issues of defilement and social rejection, both of which are called marime and which influence each other. In terms of marime as defilement, all things are classified as either wuzho (pure) or marime (impure/defiled). The wuzho/marime opposition is expressed in several ways: the upper and lower body, the inner and outer body, inner and outer territory and, by extension, Gypsy and non Gypsy (Gaje). These distinctions pervade daily habits such as washing and eating, age and sex roles, and contact both with fellow Gypsies and with Gaje. The body is the most immediate 'map' of the distinction of wuzho/marime. The upper body, especially the mouth because of its ability to take food into the body, is wuzho. Why didn’t the definition just say her body and breath stinks? 
I would discover that when I placed my hand cuffs on her filthy dingy wrist.  She tried telling me that she couldn’t speak or understand no English. I speak in Gypsies language (Romany) that is related to Hindi. आपके पास चुप रहने का अधिकार हैं aapake paas chup rahane ka adhikaar hain. (You have the right to remain silent). She gave me a look as if I stole her 1944 caravan hooked up to a horse. 
I really didn’t want to put her in the back of my undercover BMW police car. The temperature outside being a very humid 92 degrees. I tried passing her off to one of my fellow female undercover officers but they immediately  refused to take that odd gypsy particular collar. 
While I was turning the air conditioner on full blast she got to talking with her halitosis breath that could be smelled through the bullet proof glass that separated us about the pink super-moon usually prevails in the sky during the night of April 7 to 8. I was glad it was February 2nd just in case she was trying to put a death curse upon me for just doing my job.  In a very low voice she says it can be seen with the naked eye from anywhere in the world. I interrupted her on purpose and say जेल की कोठरी से नहीं jel kee kotharee se nahin. (Not from a jail cell). Hush she demanded in proper English! Its influence will be felt in all of us. Being a symbol of deceit and hatred and death upon you, the Moon has been in the center of attention of different cultures since ancient times. करना है लोगों को मैं पूछा कतरन kliping logon ke saath kya karana hai (I say what’s that got to do with you clipping people)? झूठ बोल रहे पुलिसकर्मी को चुप कर (shut up lying policeman die!) she shouts! This especially, when it will be the first full moon of spring (in the northern hemisphere), the season that will represent a death curse upon you. 
I’m not really listening to the foul smelling woman wearing one earing in her right ear lobe as big as a hula hoop as I do something I never did before. I stopped at a Family Dollar store to buy two 24 ounce cans of Glade air fresheners. When I got back to the car she was gone. A part of me was relieved and another part of me was concerned about how to explain to my superiors how I lost a stinking pick pocketing thief and why did I stop in route to the jail? What was so strange was that the smell was gone. I looked in the back seat and the handcuffs where there along with a black envelope in which I pulled out a tarot card. The Death tarot card indicates Death itself, which was riding on a pale white horse. In its hands was a black and white flag. In this scary tarot reading card, death is depicted as a skeleton that favored me, which showed me that skeletal bones are the only part of the living body that faces death and still not survive. 
When I get back to the precinct everyone was laughing. My sergeant asked me where was my prisoner? I say she disappeared. Again laughter. Maybe they all knew something I didn’t know. The captained called me into his office and said forget about it. I asked what’s going on? He said you were the 5th undercover officer to try and bring her in or was she posing as a man this time? You’re dismiss he said while laughing. I didn’t find anything funny. Why did that stinky gypsy woman want me dead?  I had never lost a prisoner even when my partner forgot to lock the back door one time and placed the handcuffs in front of this crazy dude selling ounces of cocaine drugs who decided to jump out of the police car while it was still moving at 52 miles an hour. He almost escape even with a broken neck. To see his head wobbling back and forth like one of those bobblehead dolls of Dan Marino you see in the back of cars here in Miami, while he appeared to be running in slow motion was funny as hell and unprofessional on my part. 
Maybe just maybe I should have taken that job as an expeditor from my ex wife father’s Brick Foundry Company. Nah! I could never see myself working with the Basics of Brick and Refractories for Ferrous Foundries. Especially, in the production of pig iron, when brick and refractory materials are used to form the very large ovens or retorts (coke ovens, the mixing and heating of bituminous coal at temperatures ranging from around 1832° to 3632°F (1000° to 2,000°C) within the airless oven yields the coke byproduct. This device is a crucial part of the coke-making process.) in which coal is converted to coke. Refractory and brick materials are needed to line huge shaft-like blast furnaces in which the molten pig is formed. Suddenly I’m awaken from that reverie when a voice in my head is telling me to go too Gypsy Village at Tobacco Road in Miami, FL. Now my head is pounding as if I just incurred Excedrin headache number 55. 
I head home immediately. That night I dreamed all about living a gypsy life. The image of the stinky Gypsy woman conjures up ideas of me being carefree, who lives a life without rules and restrictions. In her sing song voice she says that it is a common occurrence for non-Gypsies like myself to hashtag #gypsy or #gypsy life while spending a lazy day at the beach, weed smoked out and not a worry in the dead world. In reality, being a real Romany Gypsy as you are Mr. Dead Policeman is not a life of lackadaisical sea-shore living. Then that stinking gypsy Esmeralda Morales appears out of the clear blue. Come to me my dead lover she coos. In my dream I say no! Come to me so that I can teach you how to die and care about your fellow man. I’m screaming at her that I do care and that’s why I became a officer of the law to protect and serve and keep your stinking mind, body and soul away from the public. Come to me now! I awake to discover that my bed is soak and wet from sweat. I could smell her awful scent all over me. 
When I get back to headquarters that Monday the sergeant hands me a sealed black envelope. My mind is telling me to just rip it up and toss it in the trash and that’s just what I did. Now that the super bowl was here and gone. I could get back to some real detective work. 
At our morning staff meeting I was assigned to find out if them nasty gypsy’s vacated from living on Tobacco Road. I asked the sergeant to reassign me. He laughed and handed me the keys to undercover car  number 333 a black Mercedes A 180. 
When I get to that car there was a black envelope on the front tinted windshield under the windshield wiper. This must be some kind of police prank I thought as I tossed that black envelope on the ground. 
For the first time during my tenure as a detective I don’t do as I’m assigned. 
I’m stopped at a red light when the stinking gypsy Esmeralda Morales is standing directly in front of my car holding a black envelope. The light changes to green as I tried desperately to run her over. She had vanished but again the black envelope landed on the windshield. 
I drove straight to the liquor store. Called the dispatcher to tell her I ‘m calling off sick. 
When I get to my apartment I decide to get my mail from the mailbox. Lo and behold there’s a black envelope inside with my subscription of true crime magazine. I toss it on the floor of my apartment. When I open the front door there I see another black envelope. I step on it leaving a size 10 shoe print on it and head to the refrigerator to get a few ice cubes for my drink. After consuming almost 3 quarters of Cutty Shark Scotch I retrieve that black envelope. The letter inside the black envelope asked me what day did I wish to die?