Considerations on a Thursday

Different days call for different things. Today is a $6.32 latte and vintage denim kind of day. Tomorrow, Maggie thinks, may be a cheeseburger and cotton dress kind of day. She sips her coffee and crosses the street, careful to look both ways, then enters the park through the west gate, wrought iron arching gracefully skyward. She nods to the gentleman with the kind eyes and snowy tuft of hair. He tips his hat and winks in greeting. He’s there every day, sometimes with a newspaper, sometimes with birdseed, a comforting living effigy in an ever-changing world.

Maggie takes this route every Thursday afternoon after her last client of the day. She cuts through the park, turns left on the faded brick pathway once and right twice, and sits on her bench, the one half-hidden under the overgrown willow. From her perch, she watches as strangers and familiar faces alike stroll by, fifteen minutes of uninterrupted observation. It is her favorite pastime. On Thursdays, that is.

She brushes a few stray leaves off the bench and turns to sit, settling in with a happy sigh of relief. Taking another sip of her drink, she turns to set her cup down and lets out an involuntary chirp of surprise. There, on the other end of the bench, is a woman.

She wasn’t there a moment ago, was she? Maggie furrows her brow as she tries to remember. The woman inclines her head, a silent hello. She wears a dress of deepest sapphire that stands in stark and beautiful contrast to her golden skin, fashioned by the sun and stamped into her bloodline over several decades. In her lap is a small, black leather notebook.

Maggie glances at the woman’s hands, worn but smooth, then back up to her face. A nervous chitter escapes her lips, a tiny bird bursting from a cage, as she determines that the bench was, in fact, empty just moments ago.

“Didn’t see you there! You startled me!” she tries.

“Apologies, Maggie. I’ve been told I should wear a bell,” the woman replies.

“I’m sorry, have we met? How do you know my name?” Maggie asks, now straddling the delicate line between uncertainty and fear.

The woman simply smiles, showing both the top and bottom rows of her perfectly square teeth. Fear overtakes the uncertainty and Maggie shoots to her feet, muttering an excuse about having somewhere to be.

“Oh, but you only just got here! Please, have a seat,” the woman says. Her tone suggests that Maggie does not have a choice in the matter. Maggie sits.

The woman continues, “You can call me Etta. I am here to offer you a deal.” She turns to pull a pen from her satchel, then hands both the pen and notebook to Maggie, insisting with a single firm shake of her outstretched hands when Maggie does not move.

“What are you talking about? What kind of deal?” Maggie asks, wary.

The woman sighs, then brings her copper hands back to her lap, right crossed over left. “In this notebook, I’d like you to write down a name. It must be the proper given name of a person that is currently alive. You do not need to have met them. If you do this, the exact sum of twenty thousand dollars will be deposited into your bank account.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Maggie asks, incredulous.

“Would you like me to repeat everything I’ve just said?” Etta replies.

“You want me to write a name in your notebook, the name of someone currently alive, etcetera etcetera, and you’ll give me twenty thousand dollars? Just like that?” Maggie’s coffee does a sickening swirl in her stomach.

“Yes. Just like that,” Etta echoes.

“What happens to the name? The person, I mean. If I list my sister, for example, what will happen to her?” Maggie asks. There are days for questions and days for silent contemplation. Today is a day for questions.

“That, I cannot tell you.” Etta almost looks apologetic, but she gives nothing away.

“Will you go to them next and offer them the same thing? Will you kill them? I can’t just write a name down without knowing what I’m subjecting that person to.” Maggie’s exasperation begins to offset some of her fear. Surely, this woman is mad.

“Shall I take that as your declination?” Etta asks. She begins to reach for her satchel.

“Hold on. Wait. Twenty thousand dollars…” Maggie trails off. It is a tidy sum. She could use it to pay off her student loans or perhaps put it towards a down payment on an apartment of her very own. She could finally take that trip to Italy.

What if she were to write her own name? She quickly abandons the idea; she is not willing to risk her life. Maggie thinks that perhaps she’d be alright with writing down the name of a criminal, someone already in jail. She remembers the name of a murderer that was finally caught and imprisoned last year after a rather gruesome killing spree. If he died, it would be well deserved, wouldn’t it? But what if he received money, too? He’d be richer, but he’d still be locked up. It’s a safe bet.

She reaches silently for the book. Etta, expression unreadable, hands it over. The pen is poised a hairsbreadth from the page when Maggie stops. What if, she thinks, she hasn’t thought this all the way through? What if the man is granted something else instead? A wish, something to get him out of jail? It would be her fault.

The money is so close, a scribble of ink away, but she cannot bear the burden of being responsible for someone else’s life. And so, with a frustrated sigh, she snaps the notebook shut and hands it back to Etta who, without a word, slips it back into her satchel.

“I can’t do it without knowing what will happen to him.” Disappointment saturates Maggie’s voice, a bitter tea she cannot swallow.

“It’s been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. I do not blame you.” With a graceful dip of her head, Etta rises from the bench.

Maggie watches as the woman joins the pleasant bustle on the park’s pathways. She fights the urge to run after her, to snatch the notebook out of the woman’s bag and scrawl the name on its blank first page. She feels the bewildering sting of losing something she never had in the first place.

Delightful Thursday routine now ruined, Maggie sucks in a deep breath and stands. Frustrated and unsettled, she tugs her purse strap up and over her shoulder and strides away. She exits the park through the east gate and heads for home, a one-bedroom walkup on a quiet street three blocks over. On the way, she works to shed her regret. The money would have been great, she thinks, but she did the right thing. Her soul is intact. By the time she slides her key in the lock, she is thinking of fish for dinner and mentally reviews her client list for the next day.

She does not see him at first. She drops her keys in the bowl on her thrifted entry table and heads straight to the bathroom, tossing her bag into her bedroom as she walks. Coffee expelled, she exits the bathroom and passes the living room on her way to the kitchen. Only then does she register the dark shape on her couch, the presence of another life in the room. With dawning horror, she turns to look at him.

There are days for fighting and days for fleeing. Today, Maggie does neither. She remains perfectly still, feet rooted to the ground, every tiny trembling breath an extraordinary effort. The man’s lips quirk up at the corners, a shadow of a smile.

Maggie considers her options. She won’t make it out of the apartment in time; the man is closer to the door than she is. Her bedroom does not have a lock, but her cell phone is in the bag she tossed in there just minutes ago. Her bathroom does have a lock, but no access to the outside world. Before she can decide, the man clears his throat.

“Sorry for the intrusion. You must be terrified. It seems we have a friend in common. Etta?”

Maggie begins to tell him that he’s in the wrong apartment, that she has no friend named Etta, when she remembers with dizzying force her encounter in the park, the woman in blue, the notebook.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” she asks, voice thick with fear.

“You can call me Gabriel. Gabe, if you prefer.” He speaks in a rich baritone, pleasant and smooth. It makes Maggie uneasy.

“Well, Gabe, I’d like you to leave.”

“Aren’t you brave?” He leans back and stretches his arms over the top of the couch, effectively signaling he has no intention of leaving.

Maggie decides to run for her phone. As if reading her mind, Gabe tuts and crooks a finger at her, beckoning her over.

“I wouldn’t, darling,” he warns. “Besides, I’m not here to harm you. We have business to discuss.”

As if compelled, Maggie’s feet carry her to the worn green armchair against the wall. Her legs give out and she plops unceremoniously into the seat.

“How do you know Etta?” she ventures. “I only met her this afternoon. We’re not friends.”

“We run in the same circles. I won’t bore you with the details. Now, love, tell me, did she offer you a deal today?”

“Maybe?”

“So she did. Did you take it?”

Maggie hesitates. She is surprised to find that she is worried about Etta. She does not want to give this stranger any ammunition.

Gabe studies Maggie, amber eyes narrowing with some unspoken thought. He clears his throat and says, “I do not want to hurt you, but I require your honesty. Did you or did you not take the deal?”

“I didn’t,” she whispers. “I couldn’t.”

“I see.”

“What would have happened if I had? If I’d taken Etta’s offer and written a name in her notebook?” She does not expect him to tell her, but she knows she will regret it if she does not ask.

“That doesn’t matter as much as what will happen because you didn’t take the deal,” he says.

“And what’s that?” she asks, unable to mask the tremor in her voice.

“I did Etta a favor in exchange for a name willingly given to her by a third party. As it happens, that third party was you. You declined to participate, so she still owes me. When I find her, she will pay with her own name.”

“What does that mean? Are you going to take her life?”

“No. She will live. But her name will belong to me. This concerns you no longer.” In one elegant movement, he stands and buttons his blazer.

There is much tied to one’s name. A reputation, a familial history and future, an identity, a life. Maggie wonders what this will mean for Etta. She wonders if she should have written the murderer’s name in the notebook. Surely Etta deserves her freedom more than he does, she thinks. But there is no going back. She cannot undo her actions today, just like the murderer cannot undo his, like Etta cannot undo hers. Gabriel heads for the door, turning once to nod in silent farewell.

The following Thursday, Maggie passes through the aged iron gate into the park once more. The kindly gentleman tips his hat in greeting. Apparently, today is a newspaper kind of day. She starts on the path that leads to her bench under the willow, but her feet take her straight through the park and out the east gate. Different days call for different things, and today is not a day to tempt fate.