The Inevitable Debut

Emile sat on the edge of her grandmother’s bed. Eyeing the writer’s desk in the corner of the all-but-empty room, she sighed. Closing her eyes, her weight collapsed, and she melted into the bed as eagerly as the bed engulfed her.

She imagined her grandmother writing to her, somehow revising their stolen goodbye. With a sharp inhale, she rolled to her side, turning her back to the window. As she exhaled, she opened her eyes.

And there it was. The little black notebook. Sitting neatly on the nightstand.

Grandma knew she would one day find the game of chance that suited her cautious granddaughter. But if it had to do with luck... well, Emile wanted no part of it. Luck on its own could not be trusted, especially not by one so acquainted with Murphy’s Law. They each cherished the other’s company and that was enough.

Emile studied the little black notebook. She pictured her grandmother hurriedly writing her stats between the end of a game and an afternoon snack. She watched how the book’s ruffled pages danced towards the middle of its production; left ahead were only undisturbed pages, longing for their debut.

Without hesitation, Emile grabbed the little black notebook and went for a walk. She searched for a place she could still feel her Grandma; somewhere, anywhere in the city.

While she walked, she read. The entries made little sense to her, but the words were written by her grandmother and that was enough. But it had gotten too cold. Emile realized she had been looking down for so long, she no longer knew where she was. She was not a city girl, not like her Grandma.

Emile looked up; snowflakes took their seats atop her eyelashes, and she smiled. It was a few moments of peace before she realized how ridiculous she must have looked. Her soft curls whipped from left to right as she tried to discern what street she was on and how to get back, doing her best to ignore the fact that she couldn't remember which direction she had come from.

She hated when this happened. Directionally challenged, Grandma coined it. Emile would occasionally wander too far while running an errand for her grandmother. She'd call for help and Grandma would proceed to direct her home as if she made the maps of the city herself.

In a panic, Emile darted into a mom-and-pop convenience store on the corner of the street. Hanging her head, she walked up and down the aisles, pretending to look for a much-needed item, when really, she just needed to remember which way was back.

The clerk asked, “Can I help you find anything?”

She pretended not to hear him.

After five minutes, which to her felt like five seconds, he asked again.

Uneasy in her inevitable capture, Emile admitted she was lost, which was embarrassing for a 20-something-year-old, at least to her.

But he was kind. He helped her find her grandmother’s apartment on Google Maps, called her an Uber, and even threw in some gloves. “Just in case there is a next time,” he added.

She told him her name while they waited inside.

“Mr. Perl,” he responded, pointing to his name tag with a smile.

She didn’t like his mustache, and unfortunately, Emile does not have a poker face. He asked if she was okay in response to her bewildered look.

Embarrassed, she replied, “Yes...”

Emile could feel the blood rush up through her neck and into her face. Before he could say another word, she yelped, “I’m fine, just trying to decide which scratch-offs I want.”

It was a lie. She hated gambling, even the least risky of games. But with Grandma on her mind, and the weight of the little black book in her newly gloved hands, it was all she could think about.

She’s taking quite a while, Mr. Perl thought to himself. In truth, it was he who was bewildered by her. What could she possibly be thinking about while re-scanning the numbers on the display case, yet again?

“I’ll take a scratch-off ticket number 25 and a number 21, please.”

Before he could even reach for the tickets, she blurted, “Wait! That’s how you order them, right?”

“It’s good enough,” he replied, shaking his head with the lift of a mustache kind-of-smile.

When she returned to her grandmother’s apartment, she wrote her first entry in the little black notebook. Unsure of the type of stats scratch-offs would have, she scribbled “25 and 21;” the numbers on the display case of the tickets she chose. Then she wrote why she selected them.

25, the one she won on, was picked because it was Grandma’s birthday. And 21? 21 was the wish that this year would make life a level playing field after taking away her grandma in 2020. ‘21 was hope.

Emile wrote to her grandmother beneath the day’s entry. She told Grandma about getting lost and how the store owner, Mr. Perl, helped her get back. She told her about the scratch-offs and that number 25 was the luckiest; she couldn't have won without her.

A smile took hold of Emile’s face; realizing she could feel her grandmother, she decided she would do this every Sunday. The train ride from her home to the city wasn’t that long, she told herself.

Mr. Perl started to look forward to Sundays, himself. Emile would come in and buy a few scratch-offs. They would talk and he’d pretend not to notice when she'd stop to write a few lines in her little black notebook. He'd chuckle to himself, admiring how unabashedly quirky she was; it reminded him of his late wife.

One unparticular Sunday, Mr. Perl asked Emile about her little black notebook. She told him how she documented each pick and why she picked it. It amazed him how her logic lined up perfectly once explained, but it most certainly could not be found in another’s head.

She told him about her Grandma, and how the little black book was originally hers. But Grandma played more difficult games, the risky kind with rules to follow. Rules Emile didn’t know.

“May I?” Mr. Perl asked, glancing down.

Emile looked at her hands. The notebook now looked more grey than black against her gloves.

I can trust Mr. Perl, she thought to herself.

Interrupting the only awkward silence they would ever have, he asked, “Maybe you can describe it for me?” referring to the contents of the book.

“It’s durable?” she replied, misunderstanding his question.

Her eyes darted around the store looking for adjectives. Before he could rephrase his question, she shouted, “It’s like that!” pointing to Mr. Perl’s waistcoat.

It was his favorite: olive-green in color, comfortable, and a gift from his late wife.

Baffled that he had followed her thought process, and elated he knew the answer, Mr. Perl proudly announced, “It's Moleskin!”

From that day on, Grandma's little black notebook was referred to as, The Moleskin.

Emile liked it; some days it did feel like she was on some top-secret mission. And regular black books, little or not, were just that, books. Nothing special. But The Moleskin?! It was simple, yet epic, just like her Sunday adventures.

Emile enjoyed her conversations with Mr. Perl and how he would always humor her number selection process. It had become their Sunday ritual, neither knowing what it meant to the other, but one that neither would ever miss.

One particular Sunday, Emile walked into the store; the familiar sound of the door’s jingle echoed in the steps she left behind her, but Mr. Perl was nowhere in sight.

“Mr. Perl?!” she called out.

In a rush that resembled more the hustle of a turtle, Mr. Perl speed-waddled to the front counter, greeting her with his usual mustache-y smile.

“Emile! Today’s your anniversary!” he proclaimed.

“What?” she replied, confused.

“Exactly one year ago you lost your way into my store,” he explained.

Frantically, she grabbed The Moleskin from her bag and thumbed through the pages over and over. It had been one year; Mr. Perl was right.

He handed her three scratch-offs, which she traded with a puzzled look.

“And what is this for?” She asked.

“I picked them out, just like you do: 40, 7, and 25.”

As it turned out, after work on the Sundays Emile bought scratch-offs from Mr. Perl's store, he would buy a scratch-off from his local mom-and-pop store. He bought only one and did his best to keep track of it, the way Emile did with the two she purchased from him.

“40 for the years I had with my wife. 7 for today because it's Sunday and that's the seventh day of the week... by the international standard, at least." Emile was impressed by that one, “and 25 for your Grandma. The first scratch-off you ever won.”

As he showed her his less impressive version of The Moleskin, she held back her tears and an awkward laugh of happiness. She had to restrain herself from jumping over the counter to hug him.

After their team deliberation, it was decided that Emile would scratch ticket number 25 and the main game on ticket number 7, while Mr. Perl would scratch ticket number 40 and the bonus on ticket number 7.

They both won five bucks on their respective scratch-offs. They didn’t expect any other luck and decided they would look at their shared scratch-off as more symbolic, for their pride's sake...

Emile was already wired from winning, so scratching their shared ticket was the opposite of delicate. But that didn’t matter, because she WON… One-thousand-dollars.

In an immediate and unfamiliar tone, she barked, “We have to split the prize! You bought the tickets and today is really our day, and you know it.”

She made sure that her face looked as stern as she forced her voice to sound.

Mr. Perl refused, “You were meant to scratch that half, Emile; it’s yours. And you know I would have never bought those tickets had it not been for you.”

Emile rolled her eyes and told him to do the bonus.

Mr. Perl started to scratch.

Afraid she would jinx it by watching, Emile nervously wandered around the store, walking with her hands behind her back, just like her grandma had. She went up and down each aisle, inspecting the items she would never buy while inhaling the scent of a store that felt more like a room in her house now.

As she turned her head to face him, his eyes looked upwards and widened in a way she had never seen before. He grinned. For the first time, Mr. Perl's mustache didn’t look so mustache-y to her.

Emile rushed to the front counter.

Pressing her body against the cold glass, she clamped at its dulled edges. Her jaw dropped and her eyes lit up. She blinked a few times to make certain this was real, and it was.

He had scratched a 20X. Together, they had won twenty-thousand-dollars!

All on the game of chance that suited a cautious granddaughter.