Favourite Notebook

The restaurant is busy. It’s lunch time. People are starting to go out again. There are as many people as there can be in this tiny place. Masks are worn but it’s permitted to take them off when you sit down. The tables are generously spaced apart. The waiters all wear double face coverings and place your food items using a long reach. I am used to it all now: masks, wearing big coats so the restaurants can leave the doors and windows open. When I do go out, I like sitting outside under a heat lamp.

It’s winter but it’s mild here. The table we have reserved, or my friend did rather, (I’m not so good at planning ahead), is a small one by the entrance. At first, I sit with my back to the door but then I change my mind and switch seats. My Dad calls this “Cowboy instinct”. Never sit with your back to the saloon door in case a bad guy is slinging a gun and looking for trouble.

My friend is late. This is unusual for her. She is the most organized person I know. I am fine with it, in fact, I like having a few minutes to catch up on myself. Full disclosure: I am a high functioning adult with ADHD. There are many traits for ADHD you may not know about. One of them is a compulsive need for order but never being able to attain it. Another is being terrified of wasting time and being trapped some-where with nothing to do. I usually bring newspapers in my purse in case I have to stand in line at the bank. I do my makeup at red lights. I bring laundry to fold in my car when I take the ferry. I make lists and write in my journal all the time. I have filled hundreds of books with confessions, poems, musings, and ideas. I don’t tend to ever read through the books again although I intend to at the time of writing.

I fish my book out of my bag. I turn to a blank page, but the page is on the left. It’s the back side of a used page. I hate that. I prefer the right side. It’s new, unsullied, flat. More than I like to make lists, I like crossing things off my lists. Sometimes I write something I already did on the bottom of a pre-existing list just to cross it off. Do other people do that?

My notebooks used to be random books. Any blank book would do. But then, I refined my taste. It happened gradually. First, I started to hate coiled spines. Then it was garish patterns. Then it became anything with writing on the cover like: MY THOUGHTS. Although, there is this one girl in my writing group who has a book that says: “PUNK POEMS”, and I like it. If you want to figure me out, you may not be able to. I never stick completely to a pattern. There is always a chance for a Y variable in an equation. If you don’t know what I mean by that, we don’t think alike. A purple book with a tree on it would throw me over the edge of bad taste. I don’t know why, but in general, purple pisses me off (there are some nice shades). I like sleek, thin, writerly books with good substantive paper. I have decided after much trial and tribulation that my favourite (favorite if you hail from the USA) is the smug little moleskin. It’s not really moleskin but I suppose you know that. Maybe it is made out of a mole’s skin but if it is, don’t tell me. I can see how you could think that though, the books are soft and lovely, and I love mine. I like black, but then that can be a bit boring, so I tried orange last time but went back to black. I wouldn’t say no to olive green.

On the inside cover I usually write a warning to any-one that might find my book: Do not read this, these are just personal morning pages. Nothing interesting. Nothing about YOU. People are usually self-interested, don’t you find? I think just reading that it isn’t about them will help them decide not to read my book. If you don’t use exclamation marks you can de-emphasize the amount you care about some-one reading it, I tend to experiment with reverse psychology.

Once, I left one of my notebooks on a plane. A few years later, I was on a vacation in New York City. I could have sworn I saw a homeless man in Central Park reading it. That one was all about my work life. I don’t think the lists would have been very interesting, but I always thought I would put it in a story.

Maybe it’s a little archaic to write on paper. Of course, there is the omnipresent phone. Sure, they are good for everything. Who needs a watch, paper, cards, television or friends?

How strange that we walk around with these computers in our pockets and choose to be available 24/7. Too much technology. It has surpassed my needs. I won’t speak for you, but I hate doing everything on a screen. And because of my ADHD I often lose my phone (just for a while) or more often, I forget to charge it. I won’t lie, if I don’t have my moleskin, I do surf on my phone, but I do not write on my phone because it’s unsatisfying.

I look up. My friend is nowhere to be seen. I don’t mind. I order a glass of wine. I open my book. I am having such a nice time that I hope she doesn’t come.

She arrives. She puts an envelope on the table.

“What’s that?”

Her eyes sparkle. She’s pretty, my friend. She has ice blue eyes. I am impressed by the way she is always so neatly turned out. She’s wearing a crisp white shirt. I mostly have clothes that don’t need ironing.

“$20,000.00” she says, “cash.”

She looks at the menu and acts as though it is completely normal to have an envelope with $20,000 on the table.

I take a long sip of my drink. I imagine $20,000.00 dropping into my life. It would be nice. I would buy a beautiful cashmere coat and not even look at the price tag. I would pay off my visa. I would go to Paris. I could buy beautiful notebooks in all the colours. I see Fuchsia.

The waiter arrives and she orders a glass of wine and a salad.

That doesn’t seem like an order for a flush person. Especially when she adds: “a glass of water, no ice.”

I don’t have $20,000.00, so I order the same.

I notice my friend’s nails. Polished, thick, perfect. I fold my nails under my fists so no one can see them. Her teeth are perfect too: veneers, gleaming white. I take a sip of my water and swish it around surreptitiously, remembering that I didn’t brush my teeth yet today. I don’t even know the last time I flossed.

She notices my book and takes calendar out of her purse. “I have one just like that,” she says and waves it around. She flips through the pages quickly. I notice neat lists with a lot of items checked off.

She must get a lot of her items completed because they are things like: go to dry cleaner.

Get Botox. Get more photos taken of me.

Mine are, finish screenplay, edit first draft of The End of Nihilism (a novel I started four years ago).

I ask about the money.

She takes a quick look around the room and leans in.

“It’s cash. I’m trying to avoid depositing it so that I don’t have to declare it as income.”

My friend is a rule follower, this surprises me.

“You know my mother-in-law died. It’s sad but she was ninety and had a good life. It turns out she didn’t think much of banks. She had quite a bit of cash stashed in her apartment.”

If this $20,000 was only part of the stash, I wonder just how much the old lady had tucked away but it seems rude to ask.

“And you are carrying it around in an envelope?”

She laughs. “I brought it because I need a favour. I need you to keep it for me for a while, if you don’t mind.”

“Why?”

Suddenly I’m worried about responsibility. It’s not like she is giving it to me. If I deposit the money it would become income for me, so I don’t understand.

“You can do whatever you want with the envelope. Hide, deposit it in an account, collect interest. I just can’t have it at my house in case some-one comes looking for it. I don’t know who knows about the cash. In case we get raided by the tax man or some relative, I just want some cash stored off-site. You have a safe, don’t you?”

How she knows I have a safe I have no idea. I don’t reveal that I don’t know what is in that safe or have the combination.

“No one would suspect I would give it to you.”

There it is again: my self-doubt. Why is this A-type person with perfectly blow-dried hair even friends with me? But she is, she must really trust me if she is asking this favour. Maybe that’s why I say yes, flattery and low self-esteem.

The food has arrived, she is shovelling salad into her mouth. She picks up the wine and has a big gulp.

“I won’t need the money back for a year, so any interest gained would be yours and for your trouble I am happy to give you $200.00.”

This seems cheap to me, but I don’t say anything about that. Instead, I ask the other burning question.

“Is this, illegal?”

“Not for you. For me, technically, yes. I mean I’m purposely hiding money and kind of treating you like an offshore bank.”

I imagine myself in a foreign country, there are sidewalks and retaining walls next to an ocean and small European cars in bright colours parked backwards and up on curbs. I wear a cardboard sign draped over me that reads: OFF-SHORE BANK.

“I don’t want to pay inheritance tax. It’s unfair! Every dollar that woman earned was taxed and now I have to pay tax on it?”

“Why don’t you just fly to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands?” I ask (although I have only a childish and possibly misinformed idea about how easy that would be or even if it’s true that you can have secret bank accounts).

“Believe me, I’ve been thinking about it. Not sure how it works, plus travel restrictions, and then there’s flying with cash.”

We finish lunch and don’t talk about the envelope. Her phone buzzes. She reads a text. Something has alarmed her.

“I need to go,” she says and gets up, “Thank you, I really appreciate it.” I doubt she even realizes she is leaving me with the bill.

She puts on her coat quickly and doesn’t look back.

I open the envelope and it’s filled with neatly stacked bills held together with rubber bands. I take a hundred to pay for lunch.

The waiter takes his time to return. I continue to write in my journal and become engrossed in a story about a woman who falls in love with her neighbour and thinks her voyeurism (involving a telescope and a bit of following) is nothing but a simple compliment. He calls the cops.

When I get home, I don’t have the envelope. I call the restaurant, but no one has seen it.

Well, being friends with some-one like me can be irritating. I don’t think that relationship was going to last any way.

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