FRESH YARN presents: Lost & Found... by Jack Hannibal

FRESH YARN presents:

Lost & Found
By Jack Hannibal

The subway token agent takes one look at the mound of pennies I have poured in the groove of her booth and says, "Unh-uh. It is rush hour. Leticia hasn't the time to count all these damn pennies!"

People in line behind me start grumbling about the hold up. From the rear, the voice of what sounds like someone's grandmother calls me an asshole. Humiliated I want to apologize and explain to everyone how I accidentally spent the last of my tip money a day too soon, how it'd be a day and a half before I worked again, and how these pennies were all I had.

I was nineteen and I was terrified. All my life I had had this secret belief that God, the Universe, or whatever, wanted me dead. And now that I was living in New York City with no one to protect me, I could feel death coming. Running out of money was a sign.

Knowing this thinking was crazy, I decided that morning that instead of playing into the fear by asking my parents or friends at school for help, I would do the opposite. I would go about my day and not say a word to anyone about my situation. God be damned. If He wanted me dead He'd have to do more than make me broke.

Opting to skip this speech, I simply say to Leticia, "Please just this once?"

Arms folded across her chest, she shakes her head. "No."

Bulletproof glass, I think. Now I know why.

The line is now a small crowd and again Grandma shouts, but this time at Leticia,"Just give the guy a fuck'n token already, why don't ya?"

This does the trick. Rolling her eyes and taking one last long suck of her teeth, Leticia says, "Fine." and slides a token out to me.

The subway packed, I push my way to standing in the middle of the car. Stuck between the sweaty armpit of a pinstripe-wearing broker type, and a homeless man masturbating in his sleep on a bench, I think, I love New York!

Trapped as I am, I consider my train mates. Here we are, three men as physically close as is permissible short of dinner and drinks yet, simultaneously, inhabiting entirely different realities. Where are those realities now, I wonder? They are in our minds. In the stories we are each telling ourselves. Though invisible to the homeless guy and myself, I imagine that the broker's reality of prosperity is as close at hand as is his body, and that if I could just change my thinking, it might be possible to step inside.

At school the day goes by hungrily but uneventfully. When it is over I leave by way of the big red front door and, while crossing 54th Street, kick a green plastic piece of crap to the curb. I just kick it and keep moving. It occurs to me that I should stop and check the thing out but I don't want to. I'm tired and cranky. All I want to do is go home and figure out what I won't be having for dinner.

I worry all the time about God, money and my survival because I believe worrying is how I will arrive at a solution. But maybe all the thinking I do is itself the obstacle to experiencing the world differently. In the spirit of testing this theory, of taking action from a place of un-knowing, I turn and retrieve the plastic thing from the street. Puke green vinyl scuffed black from being run over and kicked at least once; just holding it makes me feel dirty and diseased. Disgusted and ashamed, I imagine being caught by my mother. And at your age. Really. You should know better. Now, get rid of that thing and go wash your hands. I move to toss the green thing back to the street. But just as I do, curiosity gets the better of me, and I grab the little zipper along the side of the case and pull it back.

Inside is a stack of fifty-dollar bills.

I totally freak out. I scream, Whooooo! and literally jump backwards. I can't believe this is happening. Then I get paranoid. It's a scam! I'd heard of this kind of con. Two people find money at the same time …uh…something else happens that I can't quite remember, and then you end up getting fucked out of a lot of money. But no one else is here. No one else is claiming the wallet. Then I think it's the FBI. Oh my god, I've stumbled into the middle of a sting! Everyone on the street is suddenly an undercover agent and there are hidden guns and cameras pointing at me from all over. Hoping to signal the agents there's been a mistake but not wanting to blow their cover, I wink knowingly at a Hassidic Jew passing by, and whisper an apology to a mailbox, "My bad, man. My bad."

Nothing happens. Time slows way down. Still feeling the crosshairs of automatic weapons trained on my skull, I decide to chance getting off the street. Holding the wallet out in front of me like a bag of ripe dog shit I can drop in an instant if commanded to or shot at, I make my way into the lobby of the nearest building. An old brownstone, it is very quiet and serene inside. Sitting on a little bench beneath a big potted palm, I turn the wallet over in my hand. The fact of it seems a miracle, like it's not just a wallet but rather a star-filled piece of sky that has broken loose and fallen to earth specifically so I could find it. Maybe it's not God who wants me dead after all. Inside there are sixteen fifty-dollar bills. Eight hundred dollars. Next to them, a few credit cards and a checkbook bearing a woman's name and posh upper west side address. I smile. Shopping money. She'll never miss it.

The wallet stowed in my backpack, I head for the subway home. Lexington Avenue is a river of commuters. Letting the current carry me along, this weird Twilight Zone feeling comes over me of being in two realities at the same time. In one I am the person I have been all day. I am hungry, tired and still pretty fearful. In the other I am light and alert, neither hungry nor afraid. One reality says keep the wallet, the other give it back. Fear or faith. The choice is mine. Against what sounds like my better judgment, I step away from the crowd into the street and, breaking into a run, head for Central Park and the West Side.

It is a long way to the woman's apartment and it is nearly dark. My energy is boundless. I'm not even running; I'm flying. The only thing moving faster than me is my mind. Returning the wallet has made me an instant celebrity. There I am on The Late Show, laughing it up and tossing pencils through the windows with Dave. The ovation I receive on Oprah goes on so long it's obscene. Looking to her to please, please reign in her audience, the First Lady of Television shakes her head that she cannot. "This is for you, Mr. Jack Han-ni-balllll!" she shouts. "For you and the GOODNESS you are putting OUT-THERE-IN-THE-WORRRRLD! YEEEES!"

Winded, heart pounding and, I'm sure, wild-eyed, I arrive at the apartment, and tell the doorman I would like to see Ms. M-. An old guy with dim gray eyes standing behind a pink marble counter, the doorman considers my request with the measured gravitas of a mafia lieutenant considering someone's petition for an audience with the don. With all the time in the world, the doorman touches a finger to his tongue, turns a page of his paper and looks it over.

Oh Jesus, I think. You're gonna bust my balls, aren't you?

"Ms. M- expecting you?" he asks, still scanning the page.

"No," I say. "She's not."

The doorman furrows his brow and asks, "You mind telling me what this is about?"

Poised to tell him my story, a sudden feeling of intense privacy overtakes and quiets me. I want to tell my story. I want to tell it to the world, and I want to be given huge amounts of money and the Nobel Peace Prize for it. But I can feel it in the words that are making their way to my mouth in answer to the doorman's question. The part of me that wants to speak is the same part of me that this morning was telling me I was going to die. It is the voice of my old self, and because it knows only fear, it wants to take what is happening in the unknowable realm of faith, and drag it back to earth where it can be controlled and cashed in on for personal gain. If I tell my story to the doorman, and then again to the woman to whom the wallet belongs, it will be for no other reasons than to glorify myself and secure a reward. Standing there I am struck by the depth of fear from which this impulse arises. In every aspect of my life, it is as if my very being is itself nothing more than a construct of fear. And yet, side-by-side with this realization, there remains the presence of a field of possibility so vast and unknowable that it reduces the frightened self to something smaller than a minnow in the ocean.

"Please just tell her I have something that belongs to her," I say, finally. "Something she lost. She'll understand."

The doorman looks at me long and hard then turns and takes the receiver from the wall. A moment passes and then he is talking to someone; another moment passes and then he covers the receiver with his hand, "She wants to know what it is you have," he says.

I knew it. She dropped the wallet shopping and hasn't missed it. I shake my head and consider telling the doorman to just forget it. "It's her wallet," I say. "Tell her I have her wallet."

The doorman tells her then hangs up. "She wants you to leave it with me," he says.

Now I'm pissed. "Look, I'm sorry, but there's a lot of money in this thing and I've just come all the way across town. The least she- "

The doorman holds up his hand and nods, he gets it. Picking up the receiver again, he calls the woman back. There is a little back and forth and then he hangs up. "She's on her way down," he says.

While we wait for the woman to come down, the doorman and I stand awkwardly side-by-side, looking through our reflections at the now dark street.

"Warm today," he says, finally.

"Yeah," I say. "I think we're over the hump. Meaning, of winter."

A long silence follows and then the doorman says, "Funny that. 'Over the hump.' Caught myself saying it today on account of it being Wednesday. I retire Friday and here I am still saying, 'Over the hump.'"

The woman who comes out of the elevator, a fat little troll in tights and over-sized sweater wearing a look of perpetual disgust, is exactly the kind of woman I wouldn't mind taking eight hundred dollars from. Handing her the wallet I tell her only where I found it, and how much was in it. Put out that I have made her come to the lobby the woman takes the wallet, says, "Thank you," and turns to leave. I am almost out the door when I hear the doorman clear his throat. Thinking it is my attention he is calling I turn, but it is the woman he is looking at. She is indignant but he doesn't back down. Realizing I am still there, the woman tries to cover by asking me for my story. "Who are you? Do you live on 54th Street?"

I politely wave her off. "It doesn't matter. I'm just glad you got your wallet back." And the truth is, my old story doesn't matter anymore and I am glad. Not so much that this idiot got her wallet back, but that having caught a star-filled piece of sky, I had faith enough to return it from where it fell and watch it roll away.

As I turn once more to leave, the woman stays me with a hand to my forearm. Her touch is tentative and soft, a coded message smuggled beyond the garrisoned walls of her heart. We exchange a look, but unable to sustain this simple intimacy, the woman retreats into haughty superiority. She looks with anger at the doorman and is about to say something recriminating, but then changes her mind and lets it go. At a loss for words and more than a little embarrassed, the woman avoids looking at either the doorman or myself by opening the wallet and rummaging inside. Coming up she hands me two fifty-dollar bills, smiles thinly and, once again says, "Thank you." With a dismissive look to the doorman she turns, enters the elevator, and is gone.

Stunned, the doorman and I stand there in silence. The arrow above the elevator doors the only thing moving. After what feels like forever I hold out one of the fifties to the doorman. Like everything with this guy, he nods, considering it.

"No," he says, smiling sweetly. "Thank you though." Then, moving to the front door, he holds it open for me. "You did a good thing, son," he says, as I pass onto the street. "A nice memory my last week of work."

With one of the fifties I ordered a large sausage from Fiero's Pizzeria when I got home, and groceries from Red Apple the next morning. The other fifty, like the stars twinkling above the skyline as I made my way home that night along 10th Avenue, I still have.