Finders Keepers

It was sitting there, like a guest in its own right, on the table in the corner of the food court in the Ramsgorge Shopping Centre - like a holy book on its lectern, stood in a church of obesity and type-two diabetes. Lewis queried it with the slits of his eyes and decided that if it were not claimed in the last twenty minutes of his shift at the Quirky Chicken, he would claim it for his own. Were it a comic book or a magazine, he would have binned it there and then. But it looked ominous, important - and Lewis felt a certain apprehensiveness wash over him. It stood about an inch and a half thick, with soft, black leather wrapped around it like snakeskin. A short stack of dense pages sat between the lips of hide like a row of yellowing teeth. Squashed between the paper was a purple velvet tongue. Lewis felt himself drawn to find out what was on that page two thirds of the way down where the bookmark stood guard, and found that he was relaying a customer's Satay Chicken Meal Deal with a jumble of mispronounced vowels and consonants that left a perplexed look on the balding man's face in front of him. They laughed it off and Lewis handed over the receipt - but he was concerned. What is it about that book that has such a hold on me?

As the Quirky Chicken was approaching closing time, the last of its punters shifted out in droves and the food court turned barren with an orchestra of sweeping brushes and squirts of Flash filling its arena. It was at this point in the evening when the fantasies of handing in his notice played over in Lewis' mind. The document already existed. It had sat in his 'Random' folder under the name of 'School's out' for the last two months. No more abuse from customers, no more reciting word-perfect scripts on taking customers' orders (the ones where if interrupted, you were hit with a brain fart hot enough worth opening all windows for), and no more worn-out shoes or shirts that seethed that penetrating chip-fat smell. It's for uni, Lew. Then you're out. The irony of the file name wasn't lost on Lewis. It just seemed funnier that way.

The last sale of the day went to a woman in a worn pin-striped blouse. There were micro tears in her tights around the knees and her shoes looked tired. Lewis could see she was in a sweat and her energetic pupils shot all around her like a feral woodland creature - all but in Lewis' eyes. The woman had dark brown, straight hair, nearing on black. Staring at the sweat-laced strands surfing along her forehead, Lewis couldn't shake the feeling that this anxious bank teller and that little black book were somehow related. As she stood, one hand on her handbag, the other fussing over her pleated skirt and with her bottom lip in her mouth, Lewis felt uneasy. She looked unpredictable, manic.

The woman ordered in a flurry of false-start sentences, quick, joyless smiles and blank expressions - like a computer from the nineties experiencing a coding error. Before Lewis had even inputted the order into the Quirky Chicken app, the woman reached out an American one hundred dollar note, without as much as looking at it. It's as if she's desperate to get rid of it. "That's a US note, miss" Lewis said, laughing nervously, hoping for reciprocity. There was none. She didn't laugh, nor answer, and the woman's face had a pained look on it before she stuffed the note back into her pink leather handbag, replacing it with a twenty-pound note and smiling for a fraction of a second. Lewis reckoned that if he had blinked in that moment, he would have missed it.

The woman took her teriyaki wrap with a frantic snatch that was more clumsy than unfriendly, and took it to the corner table - of course - and sat on the edge of the seat, her foot tapping the ground like a drummer machine-gunning a double-bass. Since Lewis first noticed the book sitting there, most people assumed the table was taken. But this woman clearly wasn't like most people. She's drawn to it, too. Why else would she be here? She's going to take my book! Lewis thought, suddenly afraid he might never get to see what was inside. The woman was strange and interesting, but that book was more interesting for reasons Lewis could not explain.

With the clock ticking over to six-thirty, Lewis closed down the app and took the red, plastic broom that had brushed its last effective brush six months before and was now no more useful than if the bristles were made from spaghetti. The broom was his cover story - but in the depths of his mind, he knew it was also a shield. Lewis approached the woman, who drew her body in, the way a defensive dog does when it feels threatened. "Excuse me, I'm just going to clear this for you" Lewis said, trying not to choke on his own heartbeat. The woman looked almost offended, glancing at the book with both apprehension and want. Lewis waited for her response, but it did not come, taking her silence for acceptance and grabbing the little black book from the table with a little too much haste. It was cool in his hand and heavy. The leather was soft and he could smell it in his mind as he took it back to the Chicken hut. "Don't open it" a small, fragile and unsteady voice yelped. Lewis turned. The woman was now looking directly in his eyes. She looked somehow more frightened than before - but also more focused. "Sorry?" Lewis replied, feeling hot around his neck and ears. Why are these collars so hard and uncomfortable? he asked himself. "Don't open it" she repeated, with more conviction this time, and within an instant slouched back into her anxious and cowering state, shaking her head as if to say "ignore me/ never mind". She jumped to her feet and fled the food court, leaving Lewis confused and speechless.

Of course, he wasn't going to listen to some strange woman's advice regarding his book. Finders keepers, after all. ...But what did she mean? Lewis came to the conclusion that she must have just wanted it for herself and realised she was wasting her time. You had your chance, missy. The book's mine.

Walking back through the rows of shuttered shops at this time, when no one was around was the best part of Lewis' day. It was time to go home. No boss, no customers, and no responsibility. The evening of the twenty-second of November, however, had been different. Charging down past the rows of cards shops and sportswear outlets, Lewis felt a hive of bees humming in his stomach. He had his little black book and no one could claim it now. It was his book. Lewis studied the front cover. It was a fine piece of workmanship. Delicately made, intricate. There was a strap that held the book closed, sealed by a round, golden button clip. Lewis popped it out and turned the first, weighty page. The spine creaked gently as it fell in place. The page simply read:

"To whom it may appear: Your money or your life. You have 24 hours. Have I made myself clear?".

Lewis' head turned cold and his mouth dried up as if soaked up by a sponge. His heart began to race and he knew that there was a cold truth to that poem - a message that he ought to take seriously. He turned the next page.

The little black book was hollow. From corner to corner, the pages were missing except for a roughly cut two or three-centimetre border following each edge. In the middle was a large wad of one-hundred-dollar bills, held together in the middle by a tight, red elastic band. Each end of the bills looked like an outstretching accordion, curled and layered thick. Lewis stopped in his paces and stared with green eyes at the deck of cash. He had never seen so much money before. Not in real life. The notes looked real too - though Lewis had in truth never seen real American notes before. Someone had once tried to buy a breakfast menu burger with a five euro note, but no dollar bills.

But what does it mean? What happens after twenty four hours? I have to spend all this in that time? I have to pay it back somehow to some strange loanshark with homicidal late fees? What happens then?

This must be fake. Surely. Lewis walked to the nearest bench and sat down, taking out the wad under the cover of his work jacket with its comically sized smiling chicken logo, and began flicking through it with trembling fingers. Like an early twentieth century zoetrope, the '100's jumped around the same place like a child using a skipping rope - always landing in roughly the same spot. Nope. It was real all right. 20,000 dollars of real. And so was the message that preceded it. That was when the overhead lights began to flicker and the paranoia really began.