Yours, Not Mine.

There are many things one could do with an extensive amount of free money. By ‘free money’, I mean no strings attached, no wings clipped, that sort of thing. For us humans, the prospect of “coming into money” is something desirable yet usually unattainable; not because of a lack of want or determination to seize it, but simply because of circumstance. For a young unremarkable person like me, twenty thousand dollars looks, to them, like a black leather-bound scrapbook recording all the places a stranger, who seems to be twenty-two years their superior, has been and seen. Imagine thick crusty pages of lacquered notes adhered to layers of stiff sheets. It would be a heavy thing to travel around with, so I’m not sure why this older person thought the space in the small of their back, tucked under their shirt and in the waist of their pants, was a good place to carry it. Maybe they thought no one would notice it thus avoiding any questioning on the matter. Where, if they carried it around like a note book or diary, I am sure some keen and prying individual would have stopped them to ask what important words were kept on the internal folds of paper. I know this to be the case in this instance, as I am one of those inquisitive and interfering people who have stopped strangers to ask what is in the note book they cling to so desperately. Most people respond with an ‘excuse me?’ ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’ But not this traveller I met only a week ago in a corner coffee shop in Yarraville, Melbourne. I was wearing my stage blacks as usual, looking like suave actor. Oh wait, let me introduce myself…My name is Ashton. I am not a suave actor. I am not a traveller. I am a watcher. I watch people, see people, uncover people when they least expect to be discovered. Of course, this is all a game I start playing when I step out of my musky rental and potter down the main street to acquire my late morning black coffee with a side of honey, and a block of dark chocolate that I discerningly conceal from the team members as they walk past me; so as not to bring attention to the fact that I have brought external food into an establishment that provides food…naughty me… I am currently unemployed and like to spend time making up stories about strangers I come across on my daily outings. Today is my twenty second birthday and day twenty-two of unemployment, which is why I chose to tell you about this intriguing person I noticed, on table 22(wink, wink), who had a foreign quadrangular protrusion from the small of their back. After a few moments of intense staring, I determined the outcrop to be a notebook of some sort. I watched this individual for the duration of their morning coffee. The usual sip and look around, place the cup down and cradle your chin in your cupped hands for a few moments while looking despondently out the window before slowly picking up the cup to take another sip. When they got up to settle the bill, they untucked their shirt and extracted the book from their pants, flicked through it, like a novel they’d read multiple times and were trying to locate a favourite quote to show a love interest of theirs, and stopped on a page that, as far as my eyes could see, was titled ‘AUS.’ With a delicate lick of their right index finger, by a wormy and caffeinated tongue, they plucked out a five dollar note and deeply resonated, “keep the change.” As they stalked out, they took a sharp look at me from underneath their frosty caterpillar eyebrows. I felt an internal pang and release as though my blood froze into icicles for a second and then defrosted immediately after piercing my heart. I squeaked out, ‘That’s an interesting looking notebook,’ and they replied, ‘Correct. You’ll never have seen anything like it.’ An indistinct caramel accent rolled off their tongue and their weathered face said more than their words did. In a single sweep they were out of the establishment and hastily bouncing down the street. Quite affected by their portentous demeanour was I, I decided to sit a short while after finishing the last of my coffee and honey (the chocolate was long gone by now), before floating up to the counter to settle the bill as my predecessor had done.

I stalked out of the coffee shop and decided to go for a wonder around the village. Walking is great for the cloudy soul, and mine was a tad battered since losing an important job and struggling to find work for quite some time now. I followed my feet down any street I felt a calling to explore and witnessed cats lazing around in the morning sun, dogs barking at the sound of my feet mutedly hitting the pavement. The next corner I turned I saw a black clump of something in the distance, I thought it a cat, hopefully a stray I could rescue and take home, calling it my own. Maybe I’d name it Figaro after the cat in Pinocchio. Anyway… I made it to the black clump only to find the black leather notebook of my mysterious friend in the coffee shop. Ripples of excitement swelled through my body as I bent to pick it up. It was warm, so they must have just dropped it, though I couldn’t see anyone close by. An ominous shift occurred in the winds as I tucked my thumb under the cover to peel it back and reveal an intro of sorts. Written in a delicate yet rushed calligraphy, the words read ‘Keep me safe.’ Several crows started cawing and flapping their dense wings as I flipped to the first page.

*

There were hundreds of notes papier-mâchéd to the pages. A rainbow of currency spanning countries from Greenland to South Africa. Moldoven leu with its lifesaver shades, rich hues of the Sri Lankan rupee, the candied Gambian Dalasi and of course the Australian dollar with colours akin to that of the endangered Gouldian Finch; with rich purples, reds, electric greens, blues and yellows. Surprisingly the Australian dollars were not glued down, to which I assumed this amazingly organised person would have arrived in Australia not long ago and hasn’t had time to secure the notes to the collage. In the bottom right corner of the ‘AUS’ title page the total of $20,000 was written in grey lead. You could see the ghostly figures of smaller amounts that had been erased earlier… There. It. Was. Twenty Thousand dollars, in the make up of currencies from all around the world.

Off I went, picking up the speed to try and catch my bushy eyebrowed friend from the coffee shop. Two hours, no, three hours had gone by and they were nowhere to be found. I decided to mosey on home and take a good look into the black note book. It took me four full days to count, researching all the types of notes and calculating the exchange into Australian Dollars to determine exactly how much was glued into this book. The grey lead calculation was correct, there was exactly Twenty Thousand Australian dollars inside. On the last page a small yet very clear message was printed in English, it read: ‘Yours, not mine.’