Her Second Favorite Mug

She tugged the thick envelope out of her mailbox. When she did, it tore on a sharp edge, revealing what was inside.

Blood roared in her ears as she processed what she was seeing. She wasn’t counting money at her department store job; she was standing outside her dilapidated apartment, key to her own mailbox dangling from the door that was swaying in the wind.

There’s thousands of dollars in here, she thought as the blood drained from her face.

She closed her box and locked it up, movements jerky. She clutched the envelope underneath her coat.

She climbed the stairs and entered her apartment, locking the door. The apartment was dark even in the daytime. She always kept the blinds drawn and the sky was cloudy and grim.

She pulled the envelope from under her coat and opened it with trembling hands. Sure enough, the bills were still there; clean and orderly, so different from the few bills she carried in her own wallet.

A post-it fluttered out of the envelope. She picked it up and read:

20 now, 80 after.

Patrice Bradford, Doctor at Central.

If it goes wrong, you’re done.

Her hands continued to shake, and she sunk down onto the floor.

This can’t be real, she thought. Why me? What was this doing in my box?

She heard a door close on the level below her and she crept over to her window and lifted the blinds. A man from the apartment below her went to his mailbox, opened it, saw that it was empty, and turned back.

As he turned she thought his gaze lifted upwards to her window, and she let the blinds fall with a clack. She huddled, waiting for someone to barge through her door, but nobody came.

Her brain scrambled. She thought she should call the police, but what could they do? Take in all her fellow tenants for questioning? What if they didn’t find the intended recipient of the envelope? Would the hitman then come for her?

She doubted the police would offer witness protection to a broke-ass twenty-something Latina when the crime hadn’t even happened yet.

A half-hour passed. A neighbor took their dog out for a walk. No one else entered or exited their apartments.

Jacqui decided that perhaps the best course of action was to put the envelope back, pretend that she hadn’t seen it, and then call the cops when someone came to retrieve it.

She flicked on her water kettle as she slipped out the door. The wind ripped dirt from the bare lot and threw it into her face as she made her way to the mailboxes.

As she fumbled with her key, she noticed that the number on her box- number 29- had a screw missing, and the nine was upside down. The mailboxes counted 27, 28, 26, 30. She shook her head. Another thing the apartments would never fix.

She looked down at the row below her, where the real 26 resided, and she wondered.

Could they have mixed up the mailboxes? Shouldn’t criminals be smarter than that? She hesitated, pulling her key back from the box.

Jacqui turned to go back inside, envelope still in hand. She saw blinds in a first-floor apartment snap together as she turned.

Someone is watching me.

She walked up the stairs, legs trembling, trying to look calm and unconcerned. She went to her door, and her hands were shaking badly as she forced the key into the lock.

“You have something of mine,” a quiet voice said behind her. She turned slowly, and saw her downstairs neighbor smiling in a way that meant nothing kind or welcoming.

She said nothing. His hand was in his coat pocket, and she could tell he was holding onto something. A gun.

“Why don’t we go inside? Nice and slow.” She grabbed the key inserted in the door and turned it, hands shaking. She opened the door and stepped inside. The man followed, and closed the door behind them, leaving it unlocked.

“Want some tea?” She squeaked in a voice that belonged to her pre-adolescent self. Her throat was dry and scratchy.

“Why don’t you hand me the envelope?” He said, hand outstretched. His other hand remained in his pocket, but she could see the barrel shape of the gun through the fabric.

She pulled it from under her jacket and held it out, hand trembling. Her stomach gurgled. He took it and then stepped back. She backed away to the water kettle happily bubbling away.

“You sure you don’t want some tea? My stomach’s feeling a bit unsettled,” she said in the same high voice.

“Something’s missing here,” he said. “It appears you haven’t taken any of my money but there was a note in here.”

“This was all a mistake sir,” she said, grabbing her favorite pottery mug off the counter. “I think your friend meant to put the money in box 26, but my nine is broken and so it swung around to be a six- twenty nine, twenty six.” Jacqui was vaguely aware of how nervous she sounded.

“I was on my way to put it back as you saw, but then I wasn’t sure if it would actually get to you. And here we are.” She poured hot water in her mug, and pulled a tea bag from its sleeve. She saw him walk closer out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to look up at his stony face covered in a sheen of sweat.

“I know there was a note in here. I know you took it. If you don’t give it to me, I’ll have no choice but to hurt you until you tell me where it is.” He towered over her, hand still in his pocket with the gun.

Jacqui stared up at him, resisting the urge to look over the man’s shoulder to the black leather notebook resting on her tiny kitchen table. Tucked inside the pages of her journal was the note she had pulled from the envelope. She had figured as long as the hitman got his money, he wouldn’t search further, and she could protect that poor woman. Apparently she was wrong.

“A note?” Her voice went up another octave. The man’s stony expression didn’t change. She grabbed her cup of steeping tea- peppermint for the growing nausea in her stomach.

“Ah yeah. Uh…. I burned it.” She gestured to her gas stove, the one thing she liked about her shitty apartment. The stovetop was caked with the charred remains of meals cooked; charcoal from burning a note would be indistinguishable from the rest of the baked-on grunge.

“What?” the man sputtered. “Is this a sick joke?” She backed into the corner of the kitchen, and he followed.

“I- It’s not-” She tried to get the words out, but something was coming out instead. Acid and remnants of her greasy single patty burger lunch spewed out as she heaved, splattering the floor and the hitman in front of her. He yelled something in between “Yuck!” and “Ugh!”, pulling both hands from his jacket to try and smear the vomit off of himself.

Hot water from the mug she held splashed over her hand, and she dashed her tea into the distracted hitman’s face. He howled and reached for her but she was already smashing her mug over the man’s head. That was my favorite mug, she thought as the shards flew out around him.

It didn’t happen like the movies; he didn’t go tumbling down to the floor, unconscious. Instead, he growled and lunged for her, pushing her against the counter, pressing an arm across her body to restrain her arms and the other hand holding the gun to her head.

“Stop this,” he hissed. “I just want the note!” She looked in his eyes, breathing hard, her arms going limp. “I don’t want to die,” She whimpered.

“Tell me what the note said and you won’t,” he growled again, waving the black gun in front of her face. She dimly registered that the trigger and muzzle of the gun were… orange?

“Is that a real gun?” She asked in her high voice. He snarled, looked between her and the gun, and then deflated, stepping away from her, releasing his grip .

“No, it’s not. I… I’m not really a hit man.” He looked down, and she realized he looked more like a grown up middle schooler rejected from the football team than someone who killed people for a living. He stood back, tossing the fake gun on her table next to the notebook.

“I’m sorry. I… I’m a vigilante,” he said, shrugging.

“What the fuck,” she said, staring at him. It was a statement and a question. What kind of crazy have I just stepped into?

“I’m a software engineer. Part-time hacker. I found a place on the dark web where people hire hitmen, and I thought I could pose as one and turn in the people who hire me to protect whoever they’re trying to kill.”

Jacqui sank down to the floor among the specks of vomit and water. “That is the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” she said.

The man inhaled as if to argue, but then exhaled, shrugging. “Now that I say it out loud, it does sound pretty stupid,” he said, color rising to his face. “I never meant to hurt anyone, I just didn’t want to involve you. When I saw you with the envelope, I figured out what had happened.”

“Didn’t want to get me involved?” She said, anger rising. “You just thought it was okay to assault me with a fake gun?”

“You did dump boiling water on me, to be fair,” he noted.

"That was my favorite mug I smashed on your head," she said. “I think we should call the cops.”

The man shook his head.

“If we do that, what’s it going to look like if I have twenty grand in my hands and no note? They’re not going to believe me,” he said.

She got up and pulled the note from her journal with fingers trembling from adrenaline.

“Here. They’ll believe you now,” She said. “But you’re still going to have to explain how you got into this crazy mess in the first place.”

He took the note, and looked at her. She saw guilt, fear, and realization flash across his face.

“I’m screwed,” he said.

“You kinda are,” she agreed. “But it’ll be okay.” She saw the fear solidify in his eyes.

He spun around and darted for the door. As he dashed outside his foot slipped on her spilled tea and he fell forward, flinging his hands outward to catch himself.

The envelope tore as he fell and Jacqui saw the bills go flying up into the air, just like in a movie. The wind gusted, carrying the money over the railing and into the dirt below.

The tenants in her complex wouldn’t call the cops for a couple having a screaming match in their apartment, but they would call them because twenty grand was tumbling in the wind around the complex.

She also found out that calling the cops didn’t mean her neighbors wouldn’t grab some of the money for themselves. After all, finders keepers, right?

The hacker hid in his apartment until she directed the cops to his door. Jacqui didn’t press charges for the assault- but the charges for posing as a hitman on the internet were a little different.

The next morning she sipped tea out of her second favorite mug before work. She was trying to journal about the day before, but it was still too fresh. She used the five hundred dollar bills as a bookmark and got ready for work. She was going to spring for a nice lunch today, not a burger.

And she was going to buy a new favorite mug, too.