The Little White Lie

“It’s Greek to me,” I sighed. I snapped the digest-sized, matte-black-covered notebook shut and tossed it with all the vigor of a condemned man in Austin’s general direction.

He scrambled out of his seat to catch it as if it were the final touchdown pass and he had actually ever played a sport on purpose. He feverishly flipped it open to the page at which I had just been blankly staring after flopping back down into his oversized café lounge chair. Behind the magenta flash of the small, circular anti-reflective lenses of his brass wire spectacles, his eyes performed a quick somersault before settling into a cold glare aimed directly into my soul.

“It’s Greek to everyone.” His flat tone conveyed his sharp contempt. “Because it’s Greek.” The subtlety of my humor never ceased to completely evade Austin. I smirked, but before I could retort, I both heard and felt a warm sigh flow out over the top of my head.

Oh, that’s where Anne was. I had thought she’d gone for a refill of Earl Grey.

Did that condescending groan smell faintly of bergamot? So she had gone for a refill of Earl Grey.

“It’s Russian,” Anne proclaimed as a matter of fact. It seemed like nowadays Anne corrected Austin just for sport. He rolled his eyes again and plopped the notebook down on the table between us with a dismissive click of his tongue. The notebook, being of such a soft matte finish, made considerably less fuss about being plopped down so dramatically than Austin had expected, robbing his gesture of its intended theatricality.

“Well…?” I intoned as I twisted around in my own oversized café lounge chair and craned my neck up to address Anne.

She stared down at me as if I’d said nothing at all.

“Well, what does it say?” I asked more brusquely than I had intended.

She stared down at me as if I’d asked her how her dead grandmother was enjoying hell.

“I don’t know Russian,” she hissed.

I raised my eyebrows as if to say “oh, that’s helpful.”

“Oh, that’s help—” Austin began to squawk.

“I know some Spanish,” the barista declared supportively—if a bit too cheerfully—from behind his confection-strewn counter. We all turned to stare at him as if he’d suddenly become the embodiment of a flaming, multiple-fatality pileup on the freeway.

“Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Kyle!” Anne gushed, sickeningly sweet. Kyle might have blushed if not for his dark complexion, but he did grin stupidly and wave his hand like it was no big deal before slinking around the corner to pretend to wash some dishes. Austin and I, however, knew that Anne reserved such overt cheer exclusively for garnishing her most venomous doses of sarcasm. Austin winced as if he’d been on the receiving end, and I just shook my head as I turned back around to draw another gulp of my… whatever seasonal thing it was I’d ordered off the hand-written chalkboard menu. Pumpkin spice? Gingerbread? Kyle had sold it so well, but it just tasted vaguely of late autumn.

“Where’d you find this thing anyway?” Anne asked idly as she picked up the notebook to examine it for herself, replacing it with her now twice-emptied cup of what had been Earl Grey before alighting delicately atop the edge of her oversized café lounge chair. She hunched forward and leafed through the smooth, weighty, cream-colored pages intently.

“Bathroom,” Austin answered tersely between noisy sips from what looked like a cereal bowl full of his usual cappuccino with extra cocoa powder.

“Ah, speaking of which…” I announced, giving my now empty paper cup an indicative shake before setting it down on the low wooden table. I stood and froze momentarily before my compatriots’ nods of acknowledgement dismissed me to the customer bathroom.

They think me mad, but I’m just kind.

Submerged in the tank, a treasure you’ll find!

I repeated the words silently to myself several times as I sauntered across the café’s sparsely populated seating area. It hadn’t been a couplet—it didn’t even rhyme—in Uzbek (at least Anne had gotten the alphabet right), but I thought I’d have some fun with it; I had to keep my mind busy enough that my feigned ignorance didn’t strike my companions as melodrama.

But were they the words of a madman? I wouldn’t have thought so. The Cyrillic letters were penned with almost calligraphic precision, and the book’s condition was pristine. That, and it was the only thing written in the entire notebook—the rest of the pages were blank. One would expect a madman’s diary to be a tattered sheaf of feverish scribbles and smears.

I shoved open the bathroom door unceremoniously and locked it behind me. I immediately set about scanning the cramped space for the X that would mark the spot, but the author of what I now assumed was a lazy prank didn’t seem to have been much for riddles.

Submerged in the tank…

I made my way stealthily—not really knowing why—toward the toilet tank and, wrapping my fingers around the lid, hesitated as possibilities flickered through my mind. Would I end up on the next edition of some obnoxious YouTuber’s trite offerings or emerge from the bathroom covered in some garish shade of phosphorescent goo? Was someone’s idea of “treasure” a sock full of old pennies?

I shuffled my feet back, positioning my body slightly farther away, poised to take refuge behind the toilet tank’s lid should things go awry. With the little effort it takes to shift a bit of porcelain, I hoisted the lid up.

And I waited.

Nothing exploded. No streamers dropped from the ceiling. No loudmouth with an outlandish haircut barged in to chuckle good-naturedly about his “prank show.”

So, I set the lid down onto the toilet seat and peered into the abyss at what seemed to be a sealed plastic bag occupied by two neatly stacked and bound bundles of $10,000.

All the blood in my brain seemed to evacuate southward as any moisture in my mouth evaporated entirely. I immediately clamped my bottom lip between my top and bottom incisors hard enough that the bright spark of pain kept me from remembering that I had something to lose my composure over.

I squeezed my eyes closed and inhaled forcefully through my nose, filling my lungs with the bathroom’s lightly sanitizer- and urine-scented atmosphere. I blew the stale air back out and opened my eyes again.

Reaching down to grab something had never—before or since—taken this degree of focus.

Now in a Zen-like trance, I retrieved the parcel, replaced the toilet tank’s lid, washed my new-found treasure (and hands), and shoved the thing in my pocket. After all, a temporarily damp thigh was a paltry price to pay for $20,000.

I shook myself out of my reverie when I finally faced about and caught sight of myself in the mirror. Tapping my cheeks and rubbing my eyes, I donned my most convincing visage of nonchalance and, to no one in particular, I proclaimed, “looks like drinks are gonna be on me for a while.”

I practiced the line a few more times before turning to exit the bathroom and march triumphantly back to my friends to explain to them that I had taught myself Uzbek in high school on a whim and had never bothered mentioning it. And the other thing.