A little black book

“Wake up sleeping beauty!”

In his life, Frank had been called many things, but beauty was not one of them.

Growing up had been hard, as it had been for a lot of kids from his neighborhood. His father had left shortly after his birth, and his mother had become bitter and angry at being strapped with a young child. She often told Frank that being his mother was the worst thing that could have happened to her. Frank was very certain that being her son was actually worse, so he escaped home when he was 15.

As hard as life at home had been, being on the streets was harder. He made it only a couple of months before his hunger made him swallow his pride and head back home looking for solace, or at least sustenance. But he didn’t find any. His mother had moved out, and he was truly on his own.

“Hey! Dumbass! I’m not done with you yet!”

Ice cold water hit Frank’s face. It quickly worked its way down the front of his shirt and into places that ice cold water should never find itself.

Frank’s eyes bolted open as his memories quickly faded away. The room was still dim except for the flickering of the overhead light. The pain in his jaw and his swollen left eye brought him back to hard reality.

Across from him sat someone new – someone in a fine Armani suit -- the real kind, not a knockoff. Obviously a boss. Armani dude’s eyes lit up as he leaned forward to survey his brute’s handiwork with a look that could only be equated to a wolf about to pounce. Frank now knew what prey must feel like when there was nowhere left to run.

Beside him was the thug who been using Frank’s body as a punching bag for the last half hour. Frank would have laughed if it wasn’t too painful. This guy, this brute, looked exactly like you’d expect him to look. It was as if life had plucked him straight from Frank’s mind in the most painful way possible. Well over six feet tall, this gorilla had a nose unnaturally crooked and too large for his face, but his eyes were just slightly too small and too far apart. From his expression, it was obvious he enjoyed the power he felt when he tore someone apart.

Inwardly, Frank screamed in his head: “If only I hadn’t picked up that notebook!”

The tiny black Moleskine notebook was such a small thing, left by someone after the race. Frank had seen it as he was leaving the stands. That night he had lost half of his paycheck, but he just knew that his luck had to change. He tried so hard not to gamble, but he just needed one win. One major win, and all this loss would be worth it.

He didn’t know what to expect when he picked up the tiny notebook. Did it hold someone’s seedy secrets he could get a laugh at? What he didn’t expect – but what he found -- was the prediction of all future winning horses for the next day’s races.

The next day, when he woke up, Frank thought about the predictions in the notebook. Just somebody’s guesses, but Frank figured they had to be better than his, so why not bet on one to see? Imagine his surprise when he won $100 on the first race. So, he bet on the second, then the third. At the end of the day, after walking away with $5,000, he went to Sal’s, his favorite dive bar, and bought drinks for everyone.

That night, before turning in, he leaned back on his pillow and thumbed through the notebook one more time. Suddenly his breath caught in his throat. That day’s predictions weren’t the last entries -- even though Frank could have sworn nothing else had been on the pages. He now saw entries for the next day’s winners.

Each day Frank continued to win, and at the end of the day, just like clockwork, the next day’s winners were listed. He knew better than to win every time, but the more he won, the better he dressed, the more confidence he exuded. Women were noticing him, getting close to him. He now had a choice of women that a few weeks ago wouldn’t even have looked his way. It was intoxicating. This was how life should be. Frank knew he should walk away, but he liked winning. It made him feel more alive than he had ever felt.

Unfortunately, women weren’t the only ones noticing him.

The brute pulled off Frank’s sock and pulled pruning sheers from a toolbox against the wall. Frank couldn’t take it anymore. His mouth formed the word “Notebook.”

“What?!? I can’t hear you, let’s see if you can still walk without toes. We don’t like cheaters in our house.”

The boss stood up so quickly that he almost popped an Armani button.

As he leaned close to Frank, his features transformed from a wolf about to pounce to a wolf with sheer hunger. This look scared Frank more than being used as a punching bag again.

“Say that again,” the boss demanded and watched Frank mouth the word “Notebook.”

The boss got even closer to Frank and whispered in his ear, “That wouldn’t happen to be a small black notebook, elastic band, that you can open to find ‘helpful’ information as if by magic?” Frank nodded “Yes.” Then he heard, “I’ve been looking for that.”

The boss backed away, looked at the brute, and said, “Clean him up, he’s going to take us to retrieve my property.”

Frank realized that if he were to make a bet on living after taking them to the notebook, he wouldn’t like the odds. Then Frank did something he hadn’t done before. He began to pray.

_______

Sarah closed her Moleskine limited edition purple herringbone notebook and looked up into the face of her editor. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?!? I think this newest book of yours is going to make us a lot of money! When can I see the final draft?” Sarah’s editor sat back in her chair and started calculating dates in her head and steps to take to get this newest book ready for publishing.

“I still need to type it all in, I just wanted to get it as close to what I saw in my head before doing that.”

The editor looked at her and with a friendly sarcastic smile said, “You know, some people write their stories directly on the new device called a laptop? Just as easy to carry around as a notebook and less work for you...”

Sarah laughed and looked down at her notebook. “I know... but there’s something earnest about pencil on paper. You lose some of the magic going straight to computer. At least I think so.”