Park Bench

Diana had every intention of returning the little black book she found. It was old, battered, and wrapped in rubber bands to keep it shut tight. She had spotted it at the park half-buried in the mud that always formed beneath benches. It was lying forgotten, and she picked it up, almost without thinking about it. A wave of tears rushed down her face, and she dropped it into her bag while digging for tissues.

Not even the mystery of such an intriguing item was enough to pull her out of her misery. Her life was falling apart. She had lost her job and was now working two crappy jobs just to keep her head above water, but she barely made enough to cover her portion of the rent. Her living situation was quickly becoming untenable. Josh had broken up with her three months ago. He had assured her they could stay friends and roommates, but Diana couldn’t keep living there. Not while he brought home a string of women. She didn’t know if it was to taunt her or get her to move out or to make her jealous. Maybe some combination of all three.

Josh was a dick.

She’d known that going into the relationship, but he was a dick to other people. Not to Diana. Never to Diana. Not until the last few months of their relationship had she ever seen signs of his dickishness towards her. She sighed and scrubbed at her face. Her tears were useless, but somehow she always felt just a bit better after crying. A bit less overwhelmed, a bit calmer, a bit more herself.

She stood quickly and hurried back to her apartment to shower before crashing into her bed for a few hours of precious sleep. She would have to deal with the little black notebook later. Perhaps on one of the few days when she didn’t go to both of her jobs. If she could manage to get them scheduled that way. She really needed a full-time job again. Then she could quit both the waitressing and the retail shop. Or maybe, just stick with the waitressing for a while to save up money. The problem was that the retail store only scheduled a week in advance and never on the same days. If Diana needed off for an interview, she would have to beg someone to switch, and somehow she had gotten hired at the unfriendliest retail store in New York City. Not a single one of her coworkers had ever offered to change shifts with her in the month and a half she had been working there. It was getting to the point that Diana thought she might have to quit applying for full-time jobs. If she couldn’t do the interviews without leaving her job, what was the point?

Her full-time job hadn’t even been that glamorous. She’d just been an administrative assistant in the sales department of an ad firm. But then, they’d been bought out by a larger firm, and all the assistants had been let go. Then Josh had dumped her, and Diana knew he was just itching for a reason to kick her out of the apartment. She wasn’t on the lease at all; she knew she had few rights, and having an eviction on her record would blacklist her among the landlords in the city.

She entered the apartment as quietly as possible, hoping that Josh was in bed already. Judging by the bed squeaking and moaning, he was. She grimaced and vowed to make her shower as quick as humanly possible so she could lock herself in her room and put on her noise-canceling headphones. They were her most prized possession at this point and one she’d held on to, despite letting go of as many other high-valued things as she could. She was quickly running out of things to sell; if she didn’t get a full-time job soon, she dreaded to think what would happen to her.

Swallowing down the humiliation, Diana dived into her room just as Josh’s room opened and the scent of bodies hard at work doing unspeakable things wafted out. She slammed the lock on her door and hurried to comb out her hair before shoving the headphones on her head. Her adrenaline was pumping at the close call, and she decided to look at a few job boards. Maybe there was something she hadn’t yet seen. Or a new posting in the last twelve hours. If there weren’t, she could look at listings for roommates.

A few days later, cleaning out her bag, Diana found the little black notebook. She glanced at the clock and saw she had a few minutes before she had to leave for her shift at the diner. It looked like someone’s journal. Hopefully, they had used the space on the back of the front cover to fill in some personal details, and Diana could return the book to them.

Carefully, she pulled off the rubber bands, hoping to not fling mud all over her room. Some still fell to the floor at her feet, and she dropped the dirty rubber bands to the floor. Her heart raced suddenly. She wasn’t sure why, but she was nervous about opening the notebook.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she muttered to herself under her breath. Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath in, and opened the book.

There was nothing on the interior of the cover. She frowned and looked at the first page, which was covered with faded, spiky handwriting. She moved closer to her desk lamp and squinted at the page to read what it said.

If you’ve found this notebook, congratulations are in order. I instructed the executor of my estate to drop it beneath my favorite bench. Hopefully, Paul has done what was asked of him and hasn’t pocketed this for himself.

Paul - if you’re the one reading this, I will find out about it and haunt you from the grave.

To the lucky person who does find it, I hope you have a need for what’s inside. The good Lord above knows I had enough of it in my lifetime that I shan’t need to give any more of it to my heirs and their children.

I hope it brings you joy. It’s yours for the keeping. I only ask that you pay, at least a portion of it, forward.

Yours,

Charles Hammerlin III

Esquire

August 2017

Diana stared at the date, then stared at it some more. That was over two years ago. The notebook definitely looked as if it had spent some time outside, but two years? That seemed unlikely, improbable, and yet. Perhaps that’s just when he wrote it? And he died more recently?

She shook her head. Whoever Charles Hammerlin III was ultimately didn’t matter. What had he put in the notebook? Life advise? Maybe he put in some investment advice. She chuckled to herself, not that she had anything to invest.

The next few pages were blank, but then…

After the fifth page, there was a hollowed out space in the rest of the notebook, and inside was a tightly-rolled bundle of bills. Her hands went numb, and she was sure she stopped breathing as she slowly lifted the roll out of the book. The notebook dropped to the floor, falling end over end until it landed face down, crinkling some of the pages.

Diana didn’t notice.

Another rubber band bound the bills, and she was almost too afraid to unroll them. Diana hoped and prayed that these were real, that these weren’t like the bills she sometimes got at the diner that looked real but were really religious tracts in disguise.

Slowly, she slid the rubber band off and unrolled the bills. They were so tightly wound together and apparently had been for so long that, at first, it didn’t register exactly what type of bill she was holding. They were hundred dollar bills. A lot of them. Her chest felt tight as her breathing sped up, and she pulled one out of the roll. They all rolled together, and she carefully set it on the desk as she examined the one she pulled out. It looked exactly like a one hundred dollar bill.

Benjamin Franklin’s purse-lipped gaze stared back at her. There was the orangy color of the quill and inkpot with the liberty bell, the blue security stripe. She turned it over to see Independence Hall, a place she once went to on a field trip in school.

Holy shit.

Picking up the rest of the bundle, Diana flattened them the best she could and began counting them up. She lost count once, then twice before taking a deep breath to center herself. Settling onto her bed, continuing the deep breaths she had learned in yoga class, back when she could afford yoga class, she slowly counted the bills again. Two hundred. There were two hundred, one hundred dollar bills. That was… her mind drew a blank for a moment.

Oh my god.

That was twenty thousand dollars. It was a small fortune. It was enough money for Diana to move out of this crappy apartment with Josh and quit her retail job. It was enough that she could live on it for a few months and concentrate on finding a real, full-time job.

For the first time in months, Diana felt like she could take a full, deep breath. The elephant that had been sitting on her chest was gone. Her shoulders, seeming to sit perpetually, just beneath her ears, relaxed a fraction, and then a fraction more as ideas and fantasies about what she could do with twenty thousand dollars unfolded in her head.

She didn’t know who Charles Hammerlin III was, but he had just changed her life. Irrevocably, for the better.