"A Cigarette for Your Troubles."

Martine and I are on the floor of her grandfather’s bedroom. She’s sorting through his old suits to be donated while I dig through boxes and boxes of papers, old documents, stuff. Her grandfather died over a year ago, but nothing was ever done with his stuff. She is now the sole occupant of this house. Nobody wanted it, the upkeep, the dust, the death, so she took it. Now we are sitting in a mess that we don’t know what to do with.

“I’m going to take a break,” she says, standing up. She pulls a pack of cigarettes from her pants pocket and says, “Want to smoke?”

Martine knows I don’t smoke anymore, but still she asks every time as though it is just the polite thing to do. I say, “Martine, you know I don’t smoke anymore.”

She shrugs and says, “I know,” then leaves me to the mess.

The sound of the fan clipping the air punctuates my loneliness. I try instead to disappear into the sound of paper shuffling as I go through the boxes.

When I make it to the bottom of one box, I spot several bills in a currency I don’t recognize. I don’t need to recognize the currency, however, to calculate that together the bills amount to twenty-thousand dollars. I look up at the door, half-expecting Martine to be standing there, but the door is closed. Something inside me stirs at the realization that I’m alone with twenty-thousand dollars.

Without thinking too much about it, I stuff the money in my pocket. Martine returns shortly thereafter, and we continue to sort her grandfather's things into piles of “want” and “don’t want.”

Martine asks me to stay for dinner, but I decline. I tell her I have another engagement, which is a lie. When I make it to my house, only a few blocks from hers, I take out the money and press it to my cheeks. All these years of dishonesty have led me here. They have finally paid off.

The next morning I’m in a bright mood. I call in sick to work and spend the day in bed, licking clean a pint of ice cream. I think about all the things I can now buy. I can finally get the appliances in my kitchen replaced, my refrigerator that cannot keep a thing cold, my stove that makes my house stink of gas. I can finally pay off my student loan debt, catch up on past due medical bills. These thoughts bring me so much pleasure I decide not to waste the day in bed. I put on something pretty, a blouse I haven’t worn in years, and walk to the market. I think about how money is freedom.

At the market I have the sudden desire to grope something beautiful in my hand. I fondle the fruit just to feel their fuzzy underbellies. I wave to a couple passing by and they glance at each other, worried. I’m not offended though. I am also suspicious of kindness. I ask the fruit vendor for a watermelon, two grapefruits, and two oranges and I take them to Martine’s.

“I wasn’t expecting you today,” she says, her lean frame hovering in the doorway.

“I know,” I say. “But I missed you already!”

In her kitchen, I make us fresh orange juice. I slice open the fruit with a knife and we press our faces into their fragrant bodies.

“I was so hungry!” she says. “I didn’t even realize.”

“Me too. It’s funny how hunger works that way.”

I think about how money can create moments like this. Can buy you happiness, even if the happiness always leaves you.

Everyday that week I bring Martine a new treat. It is my way of compensating for my dishonesty. I listen to her vent about some man she loves whom I don’t care much about, but I pretend to care as good friends are meant to do. Afterwards, I clean up and walk home in the semi-darkness. She always asks if she can walk with me the same way she asks if I want a cigarette, expecting me to say no. I walk alone and think about how arbitrary life is. How I can be poor one day and rich the next. I massage my conscience by telling myself that nobody comes into money by being honest. Not in America.

After I don’t show up to work for two weeks, my boss calls me livid. He calls me names, calls me lazy, then fires me when I don’t beg for a second-chance. I realize that he’s more angry that I did not beg to keep my job than he is about my not showing up to work and, when I hang up, I feel relieved, like an overweight child has leaped from my lap to go play.

I call Martine to tell her, but she doesn’t pick up, so I go by her house. Through the window, I see her and the man she loves laughing over a table of treats I bought for her. At first, I think the knife turning in my stomach is jealousy, but it is just loneliness. Once I realize it is a sensation I know well, I’m less bothered by it. I watch them until the lights go out and they go upstairs, I imagine, to her bedroom. I walk home, reminded that happiness always finds a way of leaving. The man Martine loves will leave her in the morning, perhaps while she’s still asleep, and happiness will leave her too.

I call Martine first thing in the morning to tell her I was fired from my job, but all she can talk about is the man who she is no longer sure she loves.

“He’s getting married,” she says. “To a woman who lives in California. How does he even know a woman who lives so far away!”

“I’m not surprised to hear that,” I say, “But still, I’m sorry.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve never been in love,” she says. This is not true of course, but her accusation doesn’t bristle me. After all, most people are dishonest, even if they don’t realize it.

On Friday, I go to take the money to the exchange. I wait in line, marvelling at all the different currencies people ask for. Soon, I will be able to travel to places where I will need to ask for a different currency, colorful bills with metallic ribbons that reflect the light.

The man at the register smiles at me when I hand him my bills.

“What a nice day!” I say. But when he hands me the amount back in dollars, the day no longer feels nice.

“But this must be a mistake,” I say.

He says, “This is the amount you gave me.”

“But I gave you $20,000,” I cry.

The man is no longer smiling at me. He looks suddenly tired, like my foolish optimism has exhausted him. “Yes. $20,000 in malagasy ariary.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s the currency for Madagascar.”

“Madagascar!”

He offers me a sad, half-smile and says, “Unfortunately, what you gave me only amounts to five American dollars.”

Before I can protest, attack him, cry, he glosses over my head to the person behind me and calls “Next!” I walk out of the exchange, feeling lost in the chaos of the early morning scramble.

On my way home, I pass by the market. The money now feels like a weight in my pocket, a tumor I want to get rid of. I walk up to one of the vendors and point to a little black notebook. It is exactly five dollars, so I buy it without deliberation, then head towards Martine’s.

When I get there, she’s sitting on her porch smoking. Her expression looks empty. Perhaps, like me, she feels emptied out by all the things that have passed through her over the last few days.

“What’s this?” she asks when I hand her the notebook.

“I bought it for you.”

“How thoughtful,” she says. “I can use it to write a nasty letter to that woman in California.” But just like her face, the comment is empty.

“I have to tell you something,” I say and I tell her everything. About the dishonesty, the humiliation at the exchange, the job I no longer have.

When her neck falls back I think something’s wrong until I hear laughter rumble through her. When she recovers, she starts to say something, something mean, I can tell, but then she stops herself. She takes a long drag of her cigarette. She hands me one without asking if I want it, and I accept.