The Old Ladies and Big Cheese

My parents are out of town this weekend! Are you guys up for something fun? Kate messaged in the Old Ladies WhatsApp group.

None of them remembered why they had chosen that name year ago. “At least it’s going to last!” Ilaria had commented. 

Sleepover? Elyse replied.

How old are you? Twelve? I’m thinking of something crazy! Kate texted back, adding the monkey-covering-its-mouth emoji.

Kate's plan was simple. The four friends would meet at her place, order pizza, and then drive to a club thirty miles away. Afterward, they would all sleep at her house. To their parents, it would be a normal girls' night: new skincare products, a movie, early to bed.

My parents will kill me if they find out we went to a club! Claire replied, adding a knife emoji.

They will never know! Kate answered with a wink.

Three hearts appeared beneath the message.

The four girls met at Kate's house as planned. They had been friends since elementary school, but this was their last summer before college. In a few weeks, they would scatter across the country.

"How are we getting into a club?" Ilaria asked, biting into a slice of pepperoni pizza.

"I know the guy at the entrance," Kate replied.

"How do you always know everyone? Where did you even meet a guy who checks IDs at a club?" Elyse asked.

"You know I have my secret circles." Kate took a sip of Diet Coke.

"Are you on Tinder?" Claire asked.

"Tinder? No way. That's for old people."

"Then where did you meet him?"

"I told you, it's a secret. He'll let us in. That's all that matters."

After helping one another with their hair, they changed into the backup outfits they had smuggled out of their homes and left. Ilaria volunteered to drive. It was a good excuse not to drink. 

When they reached the club, Kate flashed a wide smile at the man at the entrance. He looked to be in his late twenties and wore a black T-shirt and jeans, a tattooed snake climbing his right arm.

"How does Kate know guys like this?" Ilaria whispered into Elyse's ear. Elyse shrugged.

The man smiled back at Kate. He introduced himself as Athos and touched her arm lightly, with the familiarity of someone who had done it before.

Inside, the place smelled of alcohol and weed, and the music was so loud that the friends had to mouth words at one another.

Kate soon found a guy to buy her a drink, and not long after that, they were kissing.

Ilaria danced awkwardly beside the others. She would rather have been home watching a movie, but she didn't want to ruin the night.

Elyse danced as if she were alone in her bedroom, eyes closed, convinced nobody was watching.

Claire kept scanning the room, looking for anyone she knew, or worse, anyone who knew her parents.

Four hours later, they walked out almost limping, the soles of their feet aching, still singing the last song the DJ had played. When they reached Ilaria's car, they stopped. The trunk lock was broken. Ilaria opened it. 

"Oh, shit. Somebody stole my purse.”

"What was in it?" Elyse asked.

"My wallet. My driver's license. Some cash." Ilaria went quiet. "And my mum's credit card."

"My parents are going to kill me if they find out we came here." Claire's voice rose. "We can't tell them."

"I have to tell mine something. The lock is broken and my stuff is gone. I can't exactly say I misplaced my purse."

"Nobody needs to know we went to a club." Claire's eyes filled with tears. "Please. Don't tell anyone. You don't understand what the consequences would be for me."

"There were hundreds of people in there," Kate said. "Keeping it a secret might be a little optimistic."

"Nobody knew us. We're thirty miles from home."

"There's an easy solution," Elyse said. "Tell your parents the purse was stolen while your car was parked at Kate's."

Kate frowned. "In my neighborhood?"

"Why not?"

"Because nothing ever happens in my neighborhood."

"Claire, I could just tell the truth," Ilaria said. "My parents are chill. They're from Italy. They went to clubs when they were sixteen. They won't tell your parents."

"We can't add two more people to the secret! Your parents could tell mine by accident."

"Not to mention all the people who saw us tonight," Kate said.

After another twenty minutes of arguing, they agreed: the purse had been stolen from Ilaria's car while it was parked outside Kate's house. By the time they went to sleep, it seemed like a perfectly sensible solution.

Ilaria's parents were less convinced. Someone had broken into a car on Kate's street? For a purse? Nothing ever happened there. The houses were enormous, the lawns professionally maintained, and packages regularly sat untouched on porches for hours. There had to be an explanation. Maybe a teenager. Maybe someone the girls knew, someone who had been dumped by one of them and was looking for revenge. 

By the following afternoon, the theft had reached the mothers' coffee circle.

"I think I know who did it!" Elyse's mum said, while sipping her cappuccino.

“Who?" They all asked in one voice. 

"You know that weirdo who's always riding his bike around the neighborhood?"

"Oh, I know who you mean," Kate's mum said. "What do the girls call him? Mozzarella?”

"Big Cheese!” Elyse’s mum corrected her. 

"Exactly. I heard he's had problems with alcohol since he was very young," Claire's mum said.

"Maybe he's into drugs now," Ilaria's mum added. "Maybe he needed money."

Kate's mum put down her coffee.

"You know what? I think I saw him recently. He was riding really slowly past the house."

"When?"

"I don't remember. Recently."

"Did he look at the house?"

A pause.

"I think so."

"He probably knew you were out of town."

“So it was all planned! Thank goodness he didn't try to get inside and hurt the girls."

Nobody could later remember who had first suggested Big Cheese, or exactly when someone had seen him riding past the house. But the more the women talked, the clearer the story became.

By the end of the coffee, they no longer had a suspect. They had a villain.

Ilaria's mum filed a police report. When the officer asked whether she knew of anyone suspicious who spent time in the neighborhood, she gave him a name. Frank Maxwell.

That was Big Cheese's real name, though almost nobody in the neighborhood used it.

The next afternoon, two officers knocked on his door.

Frank opened it wearing gray sweatpants, a white T-shirt, and a baseball cap. Behind him, a bicycle lay upside down in the hallway, one wheel spinning slowly while a toolbox sat open on the floor. The officers asked where he'd been the night of the theft.

"Around here."

"Doing what?"

"Riding."

"Did you go past the house on the corner?"

Frank shrugged. "Probably."

They asked a few more questions. Frank became irritated. One of the officers ran his name and discovered an outstanding warrant from an unrelated case. They arrested him.

During the search that followed the arrest, they found a small bag of cocaine in his pocket.

That evening, four phones lit up in four different bedrooms.

Hey, did you see they arrested Big Cheese? Ilaria texted the Old Ladies group.

WHAT? For your purse? Claire replied immediately.

I think so.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Maybe we should tell the truth. There's an innocent man in jail because of us. Ilaria texted.

This time nobody answered immediately.

Finally, Elyse wrote:

Let's meet at my place tomorrow. Don't talk about this here.

The four girls gathered in Elyse's bedroom the following afternoon. A giant headshot of Elyse in elementary school stared down at them from the wall.

"We can't tell the police," Elyse said. "If we do, they'll know we lied. Then, we will be the ones going to jail!”

"But he's in jail because of us!" Ilaria said. "Don't you feel guilty?"

"We don't know that."

"Of course we know that. My mum gave them his name."

"Okay, but they'll figure out he didn't do it," Kate said.

"And what if they don't?"

"They will."

"How do you know?"

"Ilaria, you always overthink everything." Kate leaned back against the bed. "He'll spend a couple of days there, his parents will get him out, and this whole thing will disappear."

"What if he finds out we accused him? What if he comes after us?”

“It’s not going to happen, Ilaria!” Claire said. 

"I should have just told my parents," Ilaria said. "This was such a stupid idea. Everything was a a stupid idea, even going to the stupid club. I don’t even like clubs!”

"It'll be fine," Claire said. "In twenty years this will be one of those stories we tell each other and laugh about."

Ilaria looked at the three of them. Nobody else seemed particularly worried.

Two days later, she learned that Frank hadn't been arrested for the theft at all. The police had released him on the warrant and cocaine charges after processing the case; there was no evidence connecting him to the purse.

Ilaria read the message from her mum twice. Then she put her phone down and exhaled.

For the next few weeks, nobody mentioned the club, the purse, Big Cheese.

Summer moved on. College approached. Their secret began to shrink into the kind of stupid thing you did at seventeen and eventually forgot.

Then, one Saturday afternoon, Claire went to the mall with her mum. They ran into one of her mum's old friends, who was shopping with her daughter. The daughter looked a few years older than Claire. The two girls stood beside their mothers while the women caught up on years of marriages, jobs, houses, and people neither daughter remembered.

"And this must be little Claire!" the woman said finally. "Not so little anymore!” She said, following with a high pitch laugh.

Claire smiled politely. "That's me."

The daughter kept looking at her.

"Do we know each other?” She asked.

"I don't think so.” Claire said, although the girl looked familiar to her too.

The young woman tilted her head.

Then her face brightened.

"Oh! I remember."

Claire's stomach tightened.

"We met in the restroom at Club Fly about a month ago. You were with two friends: Elyse and Ilaria, right?"

Claire looked at her mother. The smile that her mum had kept for the last fifteen minutes turned into a line.