Lost and Found

The Notebook

He showed up precisely at six o’clock, just as he had every other Thursday night for the past eight weeks. By now, Valerie could almost pick out his elegant black overcoat from amongst the others in the cloakroom just by its scent and feel, no ticket needed. She had taken to keeping it in a special, isolated nook, a consideration she liked to think he noticed and appreciated. She certainly appreciated the twenty he always handed her whenever she gave it back.

This gentleman intrigued Valerie. He was middle-aged, well-groomed, genial, and obviously wealthy. He always came to the restaurant alone, but was frequently joined later by different men and woman. Peering from her perch in the cloakroom, Valerie sensed that the meetings were more about business than pleasure. The steaks and Scotch would end up on an expense account; departures featured handshakes, never an embrace.

The man always gave Valerie a big smile along with the twenty. He also thanked her by name, courtesy of her name plate. She liked that, along with the fact that he never joked or said anything about the serpent tattoo on the back of her hand that she had long ago stopped liking. Once in a while, he winked.

Things went pretty late this night, for a Thursday. It was close to eleven by the time the last diners left to unsteadily face the cold. Hers was the last coat. As she was pulling it on, she noticed something small and black lying on the polished wood floor, half-hidden by the coatrack wheels. She bent over and picked it up.

It was a palm-sized, black leather notebook, well-worn but still supple. She opened it and started flipping through the pages. It was immediately obvious that whomever owned it had a lot on his or her mind - the pages were crowded with writing. Strangely, although the book was indexed like an address or telephone book, there were hardly any names, addresses or phone numbers in it. Instead, there were extended passages that seemed almost like diary entries; bold-faced, underlined single words like ENCRYPTION!, REPARATION? and STITCHOMANCY!; fragments of prayers and poems, occasional recipes, and enough doodles of animals to populate a zoo.

Although she knew it must mean something to somebody, Valerie didn’t quite know what to make of it herself. She had never seen anything like it. She checked the first and last pages, hoping to find the owner’s name, but all there was on the last page was a string of numbers too long to be for a telephone. Then she scanned through every leaf in the book, looking for any sort of contact information which might be helpful. But all she saw were more dense scrawling and cute portraits of primates. This was one disorganized organizer.

As it happened, Valerie wasn’t just the Mistress of the Cloak Room, but the Guardian of Lost and Found items as well. On a shelf beneath her little counter was a box which housed a couple Tote umbrellas, some white gloves, a nice cigarette case, a rotating retinue of lipsticks and lighters, batches of keys, some paperbacks and CDs, a stuffed felt Chihuahua (which Valerie hoped would never get claimed), and a fountain pen. To this assembly, she would add the notebook.

But not tonight. Tonight, she would take it home and read through it cover to cover. Could there be anything more intimate, or more prying, than reading soul-searching words meant only for their author’s eyes? Valerie knew she was crossing a line. But she convinced herself that she had to read it in order to find out the writer’s’s identity. Her conscience assuaged, she began to read.

Her initial impression had been wrong. The passages she thought might be diary entries had nothing to do with what happened on a particular day. There were no mentions of current events or even of personal events in the writer’s life. Instead, the words seemed that of a tortured soul, a philosopher, someone definitely searching. There were a lot of musings and a lot of questions, all without answers. ”Why am I here?…what’s the worth of anything….why are some people so lucky and some so cursed.?”

The more she read, the more Valerie felt a kinship with whomever had penned these thoughts. She had often obsessed over the very same issues. At a time when her buds and besties were plunging into all of Life’s youthful pleasures and passions, Valerie was famous amongst them for hanging back. If the unexamined life was truly not worth living, Valerie wasn’t about to let that happen to her. The old adage to measure twice and cut once - wise counsel for carpenters - were words she took to heart as well. Better to be safe than sorry. If that meant she was alone more often than were her friends, well, so be it.

Since Valerie found the notebook so close to where she habitually stashed the overcoat of Mr. Mystery, as she liked to call him, she assumed it was probably his and looked forward to surprising him with it when he returned the following Thursday. As the week nights passed and the notebook remained unclaimed, she became more and more sure it was his. This certainty grew and grew until it crested at six o’clock Thursday night, when the gentleman usually arrived. It waned somewhat at six-fifteen, a lot more at six-thirty, and disappeared entirely at seven. Her mystery man did not show up.

That night, back at her apartment, Valerie read through the notebook again, looking for clues as to its author. And she was again struck by its passion and probing, so similar to her own deep feelings. Whoever wrote this was someone she would like to know. She already felt she knew him or her better than she knew some of her friends; the words were that revealing. She just wished she could put a face to the philosophizing.

The following Thursday came and went without the appearance of Mr. Mystery. So did the next one. And the one after that. Valerie asked the wait staff if anyone knew him. All the maitre de could do was shrug and say that he thought his name was Mr. Smith, one of a few hundred in the five boroughs. If that was his real name at all. He always ordered the same thing, he always picked up his dining partner’s tab, and he tipped big. That’s all anyone knew.

A month passed. The Lost and Found box lost the fountain pen, the gloves, the cigarette case, and the tote umbrellas (which were all claimed, somewhat suspiciously, on the same rainy evening). Valerie took the notebook home with her every night and brought it back to the restaurant each following evening, just in case. You never know. She began looking forward to the day when she might, in good conscience, keep it at home permanently. She had grown attached to it. It spoke to her deepest yearnings, and it made her feel that she was united on a soul level with at least one other being on the planet, even if she hadn’t the slightest idea who that was.

Time passed. Then, one evening in early spring, at six o’clock sharp on a Wednesday this time, not a Thursday, Valerie was shocked to see Mr. Mystery walk into the restaurant. He wasn’t wearing a coat, it being warmer, but he still stopped by Valerie’s station to say hello, remembering her name. She was so surprised and delighted to see him that she completely forgot to ask him if the notebook was his.

Until, that is, he took his seat. Suddenly, she remembered she needed to ask him about it. She hurried over to his table, holding the notebook in her outstretched hand. Even before she could say anything, she saw his eyes widen in shock and recognition as they fell on the slim, worn volume.

“Oh my God, oh my God, where did you get this? You’ve got it! Oh my God!”

Valerie started to describe how it came into her possession, but before she got very far, Mr. Mystery jumped out of his seat, grabbed the notebook from her hand, kissed her on the cheek, thanked her profusely, and rushed straight out the door.

Now it was Valerie who was stunned. The little book she had grown so attached to was now gone, and so was her erstwhile soul-mate. The beguiling journal which had so profoundly captured her imagination had suddenly disappeared, likely forever. Finding the book had been a gift to her psyche. Losing it now was a punch in the gut. Valerie was devastated.

But not for long.

A week later, again on Wednesday, Mr. Mystery returned. He made a beeline for Valerie. In one swift motion he grabbed her right hand and kissed it, right on the forked tongue of the tattooed serpent. He looked her in the eye, said her name quite tenderly, and proceeded to explain himself.

Yes, of course, the notebook belonged to him. And it was of great importance. But not just for the reasons Valerie imagined. True, it contained a record of his innermost secrets, pondering, and fears, and was thus tremendously personal. But it contained something else as well.

Mr. Mystery was, indeed, a businessman. His various dinner companions were investors and clients. And, yes, he was wealthy. Since many of his dealings involved international financing, his assets were mainly stored in an overseas bank account. Fancying himself a security expert as well, he had set up a protocol for withdrawing funds that relied solely and completely on a password; there was no back-up procedure should that fail. This violated the bank’s own security policies, but they eventually gave in to his demands. They weren’t about to turn away his millions.

He had hidden the password in various places in his digital domain. What he failed to envision was that his computer would be hacked, his files entirely deleted or corrupted, his cache in the Cloud catapulted forever. The only other place that held his password was the notebook. It was the long string of numbers Valerie saw on the last page. Now he had it back, and with it, his fortune.

He reached inside his suit jacket, took out a sealed envelope, and put it in Valerie’s hands. With a final, sincere “thank you,” he kissed her hand again and strode out the door.

Valerie went behind her little station and, once her heart slowed down, opened it. Inside was a cashier’s check payable to her in the amount of $20,000.00. On the memo line, it said “for saving me.” Sure enough, it was signed by a Charles Smith.

That night, Valerie returned home with the check instead of the notebook. She deposited it at her bank the next morning. Afterwards, she went into a fancy gift shop two storefronts down and exited a short while later carrying a luxurious red leather notebook.

Back at her apartment, she sat at her kitchen table, grabbed a pen, and stared at the book. She had never owned a journal before. Or an organizer. What for? All her contact information was on her smartphone. Why would you need anything else?

She knew why now. A notebook need not be just a repository for addresses, phone numbers, recipes and directions. It could house hopes, dreams, and, apparently, fortunes. It could be anything you wanted it to be. The choice was yours.

She opened it to the first page. She ignored the headings asking for her name, address, and phone number. Instead, she wrote in big block letters…VALERIE’S BUCKET LIST! She turned to the page tabbed “A.” She closed her eyes and thought for several minutes.

Then, she began to write….