The Gambler's Notebook

There wasn’t anything particularly special about the notebook, which was what drew the man to pluck it off the shelf. He was new to the city and, though certain he had walked by this road before, he had never noticed the antique bookshop. Ivy-choked and wedged between towering apartment buildings, the inside of the shop looked like a warm contrast to the biting, winter day.

Once inside, and slightly thawed out, the man found himself gravitating towards an unassuming, black notebook. It was hardly noticeable next to its more impressive neighbors: bound, with gold embossment crawling up their spines. He preferred plain, unremarkable things—recognized himself in them. Being special attracted attention.

Confirming that he was alone in this corner of the bookshop, he slipped the notebook into the pocket of his windbreaker and nudged down the brim of his baseball cap. The bored-looking teenager behind the counter didn’t so much as acknowledge the man’s presence as he left the shop and hurried down the street.

The man unlocked the door to his shabby sublet apartment before promptly resetting the main lock and the door’s two deadbolts behind him. The apartment was sparse. The previous tenant had graciously left behind the basics: a bed that squeaked when the man breathed, a couch that looked like it had seen the inside of a dumpster, and a stained excuse for a coffee table. They matched the atmosphere of the apartment, whose walls were so thin that the man could hear when someone in the neighboring alley coughed.

He’d lived in worse places.

The man tossed the notebook on the table. He preferred to keep the curtains closed off from prying eyes, but the light in the apartment was dim. The man parted the curtains and made a mental note to find a cheap lamp. He sat down and, thinking better of himself, transcribed his mental note onto the first page of the notebook.

Find a lamp

As the man sat back and closed his eyes, he felt the air in the room shift. The sensation left him woozy, like he had stood up too fast. It was over before he had the chance to open his eyes.

When he did, he started.

Sitting on top of the open notebook, was a lamp. It was a perfectly ordinary lamp, slightly worn and dusty. The man tentatively reached out, brushing his fingers against the yellowed lampshade as if it might disappear under his touch.

The man tried to comprehend what had happened. Aside from the moment of dizziness, he felt perfectly fine. He reached forward again, carefully picking up the lamp and setting it down next to the notebook. Glancing at the page, he saw that the words Find a lamp had been crossed out by a single, black line. It was indistinguishable from his own writing, as if he had crossed the thought out immediately after having it.

Closing the notebook, he studied the front, then the back cover. They were inky black, void of any markings. Opening the notebook again, he ran his hand over the inside cover, pausing when his touch skimmed across the slightest of depressions. He traced over them, feeling the clear outline of letters. He plugged the mysterious lamp in, and the bulb sputtered to life. The light was hardly comforting.

The words were still illegible; the blackness of the cover seemed to absorb the light completely. The man tore a page from the back of the notebook. Using his pencil, he lightly shaded the paper over the indents, words coming to life through the graphite fog.

Your desires, you need only write

For what you seek to be in sight

Something equal in value is the cost

No exchanging back for what you’ve lost

The man sat back, turning to stare at the lamp, unsettled but understanding. Its existence meant one of his own possessions had been taken. He pulled out and thumbed through his wallet. Even when he still gambled, he knew down to the cent how much money he had. The problem was that knowledge never stopped him from placing a bet.

Nothing was missing from his wallet. The man looked around the apartment, cataloging the rest of his scant belongings. He spotted it quickly, a book missing from the stack he kept next to his bed. It wasn’t one of his favorites, borrowed a lifetime ago from a library he never intended to see again.

Any thoughts of caution the man had were immediately drowned out by possibilities. He’d always loved games, even when they costed him. This notebook took reverse bets—guaranteed winnings, where the real gamble was in not knowing the wager.

He was overwhelmed by the surge of temptation to see how far he could push the notebook with what little he had. But, in that moment, his empty stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten a proper meal in days.

It was a small enough gamble. The man picked up the pencil and wrote:

A hot meal

He set the notebook down and blinked. It was fast, the smallest fraction of a second, but it was enough. The air shifted, he felt dizzy, and when he opened his eyes, there was a plate piled with spaghetti and meatballs. It was identical to the last hot meal he had eaten.

The first bite was scalding and he could barely taste anything. He didn’t care; the warmth radiated throughout his body. The man finished half of the plate before he remembered the catch. He got up and rummaged through the cabinets, sparsely populated with discount canned goods and stale, off-brand snacks. Grimacing, he noted that three cans were missing. He could stretch three cans between five meals if he needed to. It may have been an equivalent cost, but it was hardly an equivalent value.

The damage had already been done. The man sat back down and continued to eat, slower this time, savoring each bite.

That night he hardly slept, haunted by the possibilities the notebook had to offer. He would pick it up, only to set it back down again. He knew the dangers of losing more than he could afford. It was the reason he was in this mess.

By morning, the man had resolved not to use the notebook again. It was the first step back down a dangerous road, one he had barely escaped from.

By mid-afternoon, he had changed his mind a dozen times. He left the apartment, hoping that both distance from the notebook and the cold January air would shock him back to sense.

He hardly made it a block before a fist closed like iron around his bicep, dragging him down the nearest alley. Dread pooled in his stomach as he came face-to-face with the spook he had spent months carefully hiding from. Bookies tended to be menacing by nature, but none made the man’s blood run cold like Gideon did.

Gideon towered over him, grinning wickedly. His dark, predator eyes narrowed.

“You left town before we could settle up. Did you forget that you owe me twenty large?”

The man shook his head violently, mumbling protests and apologies.

“You were my favorite customer,” He said. “I never thought the day would come that you’d try to pull a fast one on me.” He shook his head, feigning disappointment. “Gamblers are all the same.”

Gideon continued. “You probably weren’t prepared for our little visit and don’t have the bills on you. I’m an understanding man. How about I swing by that roach nest you’re calling home tonight and we can consider that the end of our partnership?”

His tone implied there was only one way it could end.

The man nodded once. He didn’t have anything close to the sum Gideon expected, but if he didn’t buy himself some time, he was as good as dead anyways.

Gideon tightened his grip on the man’s shoulder, leaning in close enough to whisper. “Excellent. I’m really looking forward to it.”

In one swift movement, he spun the man around. Holding his arm, Gideon leveraged the palm of his hand against the man’s back and thrust it forward. The man’s shoulder cracked as his arm dislocated from its socket. He bit off a scream and sank, shaking, to the floor of the alley.

Gideon loomed over him. “That was for skipping out on me last time. I don’t give second chances.”

The man used the wall as leverage to stand on shaky legs before darting out of the alley and down the street. He held his injured arm, careful to not bump into his surroundings. He felt eyes on him as he scurried back to his apartment, not bothering to lock it. That wouldn’t keep Gideon out. The door itself looked like it might cave under the gangster’s ugly sneer.

The man only had one option that might allow for him to live. The cost hardly mattered at this point. He opened the black notebook. Blessedly, Gideon had dislocated his non-dominant arm. He wrote on the third line:

Twenty-thousand dollars

He put the notebook down, took a shaky breath, and blinked. His head rushed as he felt the air shift around him. When he opened his eyes, the notebook was buried under a stack of money. Twenty thousand.

The man scanned the apartment for what had been taken from him in the exchange. As he shuffled, searching through the apartment, he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A stranger’s face stared back at him.

The man stumbled into the bathroom. He bumped into the doorway with his injured arm, freezing when he realized that it hadn’t hurt. Carefully, he tested his shoulder. The arm was back in its socket, moving as if it had never been broken. In a daze, the man looked back to the mirror. He reached up to touch his face and the stranger in the mirror did the same.

His nose was smaller, cheeks filled out to look angular instead of malnourished. His mousey hair had lightened, matching the beard that had sprouted on the lower half of his face, covering the angry patches of eczema that were a constant companion to his stress.

He looked like an entirely new person.

The man fished his wallet out with shaking hands, searching for any proof of his old self. What he found instead was an ID for this strange, new face and a name that wasn’t his.

All at once, without having to search for it, he knew the answer.

His identity had been worth $20,000.

The man’s mind reeled from this information and the implications. Before he could think twice, the man pulled his small duffle bag out from underneath his bed, stuffing the money and the notebook inside. After changing his clothes, forgoing the now unnecessary baseball cap, he left the apartment without a second glance.

Ducking out a window hidden from street-view, the man scaled down the emergency stairs which deposited him next to the bar below. Even with a strange face, he couldn’t risk leaving from his front door. He could, however, leave from the bar—just another face in the crowd.

He left the bar, the alley, and then the neighborhood unnoticed.

The man travelled several blocks to the nearest bus station. After buying a ticket with the furthest destination, the man rounded the back of the station and chucked the notebook in a dumpster. He headed for a bench, to wait for the bus and his new life.

An hour later, the man boarded the bus, out of breath. He brushed scraps of trash from the notebook, thinking to himself: Just in case.