The phone was ringing again. Marilyn could hear it through her closed door and Sally did not answer.

She threw her door open and stomped to the secretarial station. "Sally." No concern, this time, about a repetition of past mistakes. Her stride length increased. The padded walls provided background. She registered one detail only: The girl was gone.

Marilyn picked up the phone. "Marilyn Beach," she snapped.

"I have what you want," a whispery voice answered, sounding almost too tired to speak.

"Who is this?"

"I have your purse."

No sense asking how he got the phone number. Her home phone was printed on the checks, the machine at home gave her office number.

How does one prepare to confront a person who has violated you? School -- even law school -- doesn't train us for this. Some fathers counsel attacking first. Governments follow that dictum in the preemptive strike. The distance of the phone prevents action. Who might have expected a call? No time for tracing, no machinery in place.

"I'm not a bad person you know." A somnolent quality in his tone, as if he had to translate the words from another language. "I'm not a bad person. I'm not."

"You can keep the money."

What does Marilyn want from this conversation? For the event to have never happened, for the day to roll up and begin again, for an opportunity to change her life at the outset. She is a pragmatist however, and, without dwelling on the myriad of possibility that every second brings, she understands that one choice cancels out another, the outcome of one event negates the possibility of a different outcome from a second.

"I don't want to hurt you or anything," the man says now. "I don't want anything from you. I'm sorry for any trouble I've caused. I'm not a bad person. I'm, well, I have problems. I need lots of money."

"The bag didn't have much money." She keeps him on the line thinking of what she wants from him, how she wishes this episode to end. If you have only followed the story along its most linear path, we are well into the middle, I would suppose. Without much background, the initial conflict is deepening. Know too, that Marilyn is not alone on the floor. Other assistants sit and type and answer phones and file. Small parties of mostly men, all of them dressed in dark suits, walk by periodically. (A group is walking by now as Marilyn speaks. One is a senior partner -- and they ignore her. The senior partner may even think, this is where Marilyn belongs. All women do. But billings would suffer and that should be avoided.)

"I'm sorry. I'm not a bad person," the thief said.

"Stop saying that." That grating voice. If she got him face-to-face she would demonstrate her fury. Right to the eyes.

"I went to your home," he said.

All this to reveal one, short, five word fact. I went to your home. How the smallest action spins worlds. How the day Marilyn began is infinitely different from the one she will end. Safety is a construct, a myth. Of course I have now grouped all of you together, assumed that I and you are from the same backgrounds. We are untouched by crime, by the evil of the world. A man writes as a woman, colonizing the female. In 50 years of feminism nothing changes.

"I went to your home," the thief said.

And the story is one of female oppression. Female as victim.

"I went to your home," he said.