Paper Money

A glass ballerina that had shattered in transit, a blender carafe he used as a margarita pitcher, and his wife’s missing curling iron were all that remained of the last, stubborn box that had been relegated to the garage on move-in day last year. Breaking the box down, Larry Harcroft thrust his hip into the entryway table, sending profanity rebounding off the walls of his home and a letter fluttering from the mail pile onto the imitation hardwood floor.

Red letters; some were hidden. “Final” was not.

“Delivery guy out front, honey!” Larry’s wife, Janet, yelled from the living room.

A knock followed. A hand, thrust around boxes triple-stacked on a dolly, presented him with a clipboard before the door was half open.

“Delivery for Mr. Harcroft?”

“That’s me,” he groaned as he signed and cast a wistful look back at the just-emptied hallway.

“More coming,” the driver said as he turned to leave.

“More?” Larry asked as he spied seven more boxes at the bottom of the stairs to their doorway. “Dammit, Janet, did you order more throw pillows?”

“No?”

“Well then what is it?”

“Do you need me to open them for you?”

His toe, it turned out, was not as sturdy as a box loaded with heavy objects. Opening one at random through watering eyes, he brushed a layer of packing peanuts off a bundle of brown paper and uncovered a black, leather-bound notebook.

“Books,” he answered, hefting the first package and tearing a bit of the paper away before replacing it. Lots of books.”

“Books? Wait, wasn’t your grandfather a collector?”

Larry opened the notebook. His grandfather’s tight handwriting looped across the first page.

He read aloud: “Larry, I hope these volumes show their value to you. They have been valued by me. Best, Grandpa.”

“Awwww! See if he left any money between the pages,” Janet jostled.

“Sweetie, he sent us books, not a check made out to the bank,” Larry said as he carefully flipped through every page.

Janet swung around the corner and into the hall. Face downcast, he didn’t turn. She wrapped her arms around his waist.

“We’re on the same side. We’ll figure the money out.”

He turned, still looking down.

“Hey,” she said, turning his face up to hers, “it’s hard, but we’re keeping to the budget. We’ll make it.”

Larry blinked.

“We’re keeping to the budget. Right?”

“I need coffee, do you need coffee?”

“I just made—”

“I’ll get you a latte!” he called, grabbing a jacket from a peg, the little black notebook still in his hand.

* * *

“$7.98.”

Larry turned his ear to the plastic barrier. “What?”

She pointed at the readout, spoke up. “Seven-Ninety-Eight.”

He slid the card, rounded to $10 with tip, and confirmed.

“Enjoy your coffee.”

“You, too...” He pulled his head into his shoulders in shame and headed for the corner to wait. Two drinks dropped into cups as he opened the notebook to its first blank page.

Budget

Coffee - $10 w/tip

A drink caddy appeared on the bar; grabbing it in haste, Larry fumbled the notebook and, stooping to retrieve it, noticed a $10 bill peeking out from behind the page he’d just inked. He shook his head and stuffed the bill in his pocket.

“Would’ve been nice...”

Turning toward home as he exited, he hesitated upon noticing a florist shop nearby. The doorbell tinkled as he entered. A young woman offered a bright, “Hi! What’ll it be?”

He indicated an arrangement from a display placard, answered “cash” to her question, inspected his wallet with a grimace, and withdrew the notebook from his pocket. “Budgeting,” he commented with a wry smile that the cashier returned. Pulling the pen from another pocket, his hand brushed the $10 bill from the coffee shop. His scalp tingled.

“What did you say the total was, again?”

* * *

“So much for budgeting, huh?” Janet said, waving her screwdriver a bit too close to Larry’s face as she seized the oversized bouquet and dropped it onto the kitchen table. “What, $50?” she asked, stooping again in front of the cabinets.

“Babe, I have a solution to our little issue.”

“Not spending $50 to watch something die for a week?”

“I’m thinking pizza tonight.”

“Piz—with what money, Elon?” Janet exclaimed, grinding her screwdriver into the squealing hinge plate. She paused and dropped her shoulders, laid a palm on her face.

“I need you to come back to the real world, honey,” she muttered.

“Easy! I found a couple twenties in an old jacket.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and continued savaging the errant screw.

“Pizza sounds great. By the way, make sure those boxes are alright. I heard some tearing earlier. The stuff may have shifted in transit.”

His scalp tingled again. “Tearing?”

“Yeah. Didn’t sound good. Happened a couple of times while you were out, actually.”

Larry thought to continue the thread but instead applied himself to the pizza order. Two larges, choice toppings.

“What was the total on that?”

“$44.87.”

He spied the black notebook, paused. “Send the last guy that got stiffed.”

***

“Comes out to $44.87, my man,” the teenager muttered as he presented the stacked boxes.

“Tell you what,” Larry said, recording Pizza - $100 in the notebook, “treat yourself.”

The delivery driver made to ask “what” before the sound of a phonebook tearing in half caused them both to glance down the hallway. Larry returned his attention to the notebook, turned the page, and held out a crisp $100 bill.

* * *

Larry winced as Janet scraped a fork across her egg plate the next morning.

“You mind?” he snapped as she cleared her throat. “Focusing.”

She sighed and laid down her fork. “Listen. Can we talk seriously for a minute? I thought I remembered reading something about your grandfather’s collection once, so I mentioned his name to a classmate of mine from college, she’s a rare book broker now. It turns out I was right. She thinks it may actually be worth something. She’s coming—”

“Sure, mhmm, call her,” Larry replied dreamily before continuing to draw plans for a beach house on his napkin. “Going to the bank today, the house isn’t a problem,” Larry insisted, rising to refill his mug.

“I did call, and she’s com—wait.” She looked at him sharply. “Bank? Why are you going to the bank? We don’t have anything to give them.”

“Don’t be such a worrywort! The spirits,” he said, combining waves of his fingers with ghost noises, “are on our side.”

She slammed a hand on the table. “Be serious, please! We don’t have anything to give them. You should wait for Judy to get here today. She’s already told me this could be—”

“Let me take care of this. I’m telling you: we’re good. Period. End of discussion.”

“I can’t do all the work, Larry,” Janet growled. “I can’t be the only adult. I’m going for a run. She left the house, Larry right behind her, turning the opposite way.

* * *

“I know times are tough,” the banker said, taking off his glasses and frowning, “but there’s just no other way. The amount is just too high to be realistic. As of next week, that home is no longer yours.”

Larry took the notebook from his pocket and rested it on his lap. “How… how much, exactly?”

The banker glanced at him, then at the computer screen, blew a lungful of air out the corner of his mouth. “Penalties, interest, not to mention the past-due balance… We’re talking a minimum of $20,000 here.”

Opening the notebook, Larry took his pen in hand. “Let me just… write this down.”

In tall numbers that consumed two lines, he wrote the digits: a curly two, a zero, a comma, and three more zeroes, before shoving the pen into the spine and closing the notebook. The pages swelled under his hand.

The banker hesitated. “So… should we move forward with the pap—”

And he stopped, dead, mouth agape, as Larry opened the notebook and dropped pile after pile of neatly-stacked $100 bills on the calendar space marked with a red circle.

“It’s all there, but you should count it anyway.”

* * *

Larry heard the unfamiliar voice as he came within a few feet of his front door.

“—such a coincidence! I just finished facilitating the transfer of Mr. Harcroft’s collection to the university when you called. Lucky I did, or it might have taken me weeks to get back.”

“Larry! Come in here, I want you to meet Judy Fernstein, the book broker I was telling you about.” They shared a moment of pleasantries.

“I can’t describe how excited I was to hear from your wife. I was just explaining to Janet that the portion your late grandfather donated to the university was recently valued at over $1.5 million, and—”

Larry blinked. “What did you just say?”

She flushed and turned to him. “Oh my goodness, were you not aware? Forgive me, I—”

“No, no! $1.5 million?”

She regained her composure. “Yes, million. But what’s truly fascinating is that the contents of private collection, which you now hold, have never been cataloged. It’s likely that what you have here is—well, I should begin.” She gestured to the box that Larry had taken the notebook from.

“May I?”

“Sure, go right ahead,” Larry said.

She pulled back the paper protecting the text that Larry had begun to uncover the previous day. With a reverent gasp she revealed, one letter at a time, G-U-T-E-N… She stared at Larry in disbelief.

“Oh yeah, I saw that! Reminded of something I read in school about the printing press.”

Ms. Fernstein gingerly placed the book on the entryway table and donned a pair of white archivists gloves. “I’ll need at least a few hours and your dining-room table. Rest assured, this collection shows incredible promise.”

Larry gestured for Janet to follow him back to the kitchen. “Honey? Let’s let Judy work.”

His smug satisfaction filled the room as she joined him. “It’s done: we’re keeping the house!”

“What? How?”

“I just wrote down a number for them and they took it, just that easy.”

A scream from the dining room. They bolted inside to find Ms. Fernstein, a box at her side and the table empty but for a battered, black, leather-bound notebook not unlike Larry’s. Ms. Fernstein sat half-hunched with a hand over her heart, staring blankly into the distance.

“You alright?” they asked simultaneously.

“So sorry. It’s just: you may—I didn’t want to open it without—this—do you know the name Victor Hugo?”

“The hunchback guy, right? Wasn’t he deaf?” Larry ventured. Janet groaned and massaged her eyes.

“What? No. More importantly, that…” she said, rising and making her way, off-balance, to the open box, “appears to be an original and heretofore unknown diary of his. If I’m correct, that item alone could triple the value of the collection. May I do the honors?” Janet and Larry imitated bobbleheads.

She turned the cover and gave a shuddering gasp.

“I… I can’t even imagine...” Her voice was tiny, broken, as she turned toward them not a book, but an empty spine. Every page was missing, the torn pages revealing jagged edges.

“I have no words... What could explain this, I haven’t the slightest… I can only console you with my confidence that the remainder of the collection will soothe the disappointment.”

Gripped by an abrupt, almost fiery tingle of the scalp, Larry selected another box from the floor and lifted it onto the table—a bit too forcefully—noting its surprising lightness.

Ms. Fernstein opened the box and cleared the packing peanuts away to reveal another brown package. Without taking it from its place, she removed the protective paper. The gorgeous leather appeared: Don Quixote in gold on its cover.

“This is odd,” Ms. Fernstein said as she placed one palm under the spine and started to withdraw it. “I’ve never known any book to be so light…”