A Case of Paper

Marlo Rinetti thought about money all the time. She thought about all the things she wanted to do, she thought about all the things she might do, but most of all, she thought about things that lay in the quandary of her imagination, just beyond her reach.

A small and serious girl, this realization came to her quickly, the pieces of which had been festering in her mind for a while. After all, it wasn’t just the ugly yellow bus that took her to and from school; it wasn’t only the inane pebble-tossing that her classmates resorted to for entertainment; it wasn’t even the pathetic games of pretend that they played to be older and more interesting.

No. Rather, it was the timely accumulation of these events, minute by minute, hour by hour, that she realized there had to be something outside of this madness. Something else. And her answer arrived in the form of a woman.

One afternoon, Marlo scraped her knee and was sent to the school nurse. As she waited in the room that doubled as an office, she noticed a tall, middle-aged woman sitting two seats away from her, absorbed in a short novel. At first she stared, with the boldness of someone who has nothing better to do; then, as she paid attention to the details of her dress and manner, curiosity emboldened her.

“Hello.”

The woman looked up.

“Hello.”

“I fell on my knee. I was running very fast.”

“I see.”

Marlo felt a sense of urgency, the woman was about to return to her book. Quickly-

“I like your rings.” It was true. They had been the first thing she had noticed about the woman, apart from her eccentric style.

“Thank you.”

Then-

“Would you like one?”

“Me?”

“Sure, why not. Maybe it’ll make you feel better,” she added, gesturing towards Marlo’s bloody knee. Then, casually, as if Marlo were her own daughter, she pulled off a thin gold band from her pointer finger and fitted it onto the child’s thumb.

“See, it suits you.” She patted Marlo’s hand. Without warning, she got up, exchanged a few words with the school receptionist, and left.

That encounter set fire to Marlo’s mind in a way like nothing ever had before. The nurse returned to dismiss her, and instead of returning to class, Marlo began walking.

She walked and walked, one foot in front of the other, hands stuck firmly in the pockets of her pants. Notions, less than thoughts, tumbled furiously in her mind. Up until that point she felt that she had gone through life in sort of a daydream, now she knew what she wanted and why. She wanted money. Money as an idea was nothing new, but the desire rammed her with such a freshness that it gave meaning to a previously aimless pursuit. It wasn’t so much what that the woman had decked herself in but the choice behind it, the careless yet gentle way in which she gave Marlo the ring. Yes, that was what she wanted. She wasn’t sure how money changed these sorts of things about a person, but she knew that it had something to do with it.

She continued, brow furrowed in concentration, piecing together the meaning of what had just transpired. Marlo was so absorbed that she didn’t notice the fat dirty rat lying in the middle of the sidewalk.

When she stepped on the mess of fur and grime, she remembered the time she bit into an overripe peach. The way the skin peeled away from the pulp, exposed its orange fleshy insides to the sharp, muted edges of her teeth. The way the sickly smell came next, forcibly hitting her nostrils, overwhelming her until she spat it out and resolved never to eat another peach ever again.

Disgusted, afraid, and a little curious, she peeked at what she expected to be the remnants of some poor creature attached to her heel. To her surprise, she found a piece of paper stuck to her foot. She reached down to brush it off and her eyes widened.

It was a hundred-dollar bill.

Her heart quickened, she turned it with quick, thinking fingers. What she could do with such a surprise! Buy a delicious lunch near the waterfront- no, somewhere outside this neighborhood, a new pair of socks, some shoes, even- and just as quickly as it had struck her the jolt of delight passed through, leaving in its wake disappointment and some bitterness.

A hundred dollars and then what? A lunch, some petty items, and no more. She stuffed the money in her pocket, stuck both hands back in her pockets, and began walking again. The dazzling plans of her child mind quieted, dulled. Having completely forgotten about whatever poor creature she had quashed in her state of heightened emotion, she started when a low, silky voice interrupted her firmly but politely-

“Excuse me.” She kept on. Then, louder, more clearly-

“That’s mine, I’ll have you know. Who are you to go around taking people’s things as you please? Especially after so rudely smothering someone without an apology.”

Marlo glanced around, searching for the source of the voice. In its place she found a fat, dirty rat, peering at her petulantly. It held out a matted paw, palm facing upwards. Marlo grimaced, began to protest, then thought otherwise. Something in the way that the rat’s eyes glinted compelled her to remove the bill from her pocket. She watched as the rat immediately busied itself with the money, wrapping it around its swollen body like a cape.

“What?” it said impatiently.

“I just thought you’d do something else with it, that’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you go on like this, you won’t be able to use it. Especially not after the way you’ve messed it up, crumpling it this way and that.”

Suddenly the rat hissed meanly, “You people think that money is just for you, that it makes you different from the rest of us. But no. Money is paper and paper is for other things too. To chew, to amuse myself with, maybe even use it for fire on a cold day. This is mine, I’ll do with it what I like.”

And it scurried off before Marlo could respond.

Stunned, she stood silently, thinking about what the rat had just said. Then she grew annoyed with herself for letting such a despicable creature run off with things it didn’t know the value of, even if it was just for lunch, new socks, shoes, petty things.

She called out, “You won’t be able to use it properly but I can. I’ll buy you what you want.”

Silence.

Then, the rat reappeared.

Slowly, “What can you do with it that I can’t?”

“Lots of things. For one, I can buy you a thousand pieces of paper to chew on, much more than you have now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why would I waste my time lying to a rat?”

“All right, wait here a minute, I’ll be back.” The rat slunk away and carefully tucked itself into a small crack in the sidewalk, cautiously keeping an eye on Marlo the entire time. It returned, not only with the hundred-dollar bill, but again and again, carrying heaps of cash in its tiny little arms that overflowed onto the concrete. She gawked at the sight before her as sun and sidewalk blended in an impossible mirage. Finally, the rat heaved the last of the bills onto the concrete and watched as she began to separate the cash.

In total she counted twenty thousand dollars, no more no less.

They decided to take the money to a bookstore, where she could purchase the necessary paper for the rat to chew on (it liked the idea of variety). The closest one was fifteen minutes away, hidden behind a swath of orange-gold trees. She often passed by in the ugly yellow bus but never went in. They walked in silence, she with long, confident strides, the rat with tiny hurried steps. Pit-pat, pit-pat, it went on like this for a while before they arrived.

“Stay here,” she ordered, surprising herself with her sudden authority. The rat obeyed. It handed over the money, (if not a bit hesitantly), careful to describe, threateningly, what would commence if she did not follow the plan. Marlo nodded but secretly she already knew what she would do. She would keep all twenty thousand dollars for herself and run out the back before the rat could figure any of it out. And although she felt nervous, she remembered the prospect of money stripped away her fear.

Marlo swung the door open and stepped inside, heart pounding. She was met with a clean, musty (but not unpleasant) scent that emanated from the rows of shelves. She was glad to have left the grubby rat outside a place like this. She ran her fingers along the endless routine of spins, some worn, some new, and still other somewhere along the middle. Momentarily forgetting about her plan at hand, she paused to study a particularly thick volume bursting at the seams.

“Fantasy, adventure, or perhaps both?” A woman’s voice, rich and deep, thundered behind her. Startled, Marlo turned and found herself face to face with the woman from earlier that day.

“N-neither, thank you.”

“It’s a good pick.”

Marlo nervously fingered the ring that encircled her thumb (the only one). Would she ask for it back? Surely she regretted giving it to her the way Marlo regretted giving the money back to the rat, a rat that knew nothing about money. Suddenly she felt depressed, helpless, then indignant. After all, it was she who had twenty thousand dollars at her disposal, she who knew the value of things, she who had outsmarted a rat.

The woman smiled.

“Looks nice on you.” Then she pulled out a small black notebook and scribbled something in its pages.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s something I do whenever a feeling comes to me. Or if someone inspires it.”

This pleased Marlo.

“How much for one?”

The woman laughed.

“It’s priceless, you couldn’t ever pay me back. But I’ll give you mine for free.”

Flustered, Marlo gently took the book in her hands, aware that they cradled something precious, maybe even more so than the twenty thousand dollars that sat in her pocket. She purchased the titles that the rat wanted (and a few for herself, the rat couldn’t count anyways), then left, forgetting to sneak away as she had initially planned. Instead, her feet took her back out the front door and her arm slipped, as though possessed, into her pocket to return everything back to the rat.

They sat on the sidewalk, the rat muttering to itself something about modern pulp production. It dug into a biology textbook, noisily tearing apart the first chapter. Marlo pulled out the notebook and began to write.

“What are you doing?” The rat observed her curiously.

“It’s for whenever something interesting happens to me.”

The rat chewed thoughtfully, swallowed.

“How do you know when something interesting is happening?”

“A feeling.”

It laughed.

“It is still just paper all the same, no? And none of it to eat.”

Then, soberly-

“Nonetheless, you’ve done a good job and I am a fair rat. Here, take what you deserve. And put me in your story.”

Marlo took the wad of cash from the rat’s greasy paw, flipped through the bills until she landed in the middle, and held the money in her fist, a little less tightly than she had before. Placing it carefully in her pocket, she picked up the little black notebook and thought of the woman.

She had no use for the ring anymore. She slid it off her finger and onto the rat’s wrist, where it glittered. She felt lighter.

The rat chortled, clapping gleefully, and skipped away before she could change her mind.