Lucky You

            ‘Dilemma’, by definition, compels a choice between two terribles. And when someone is so cursed to have to choose between, say, admission to Cambridge or Princeton, you might call that a positive dilemma: a divergence in a yellow wood, a ‘you had to be there’ hint of being included when you’re probably glad you weren’t. Positive dilemmas have a fickle step-sibling called the faux dilemma: framing #firstworldproblems like games of tic-tac-toe, the luxury of ennui. Not to say the affluent cannot have bona fide dilemmas—the Euro crises in the ‘PIGS’ countries may have shit the pants of Strasbourg—yet theirs tends to be a blush that adds not much to laundry bills. On our side of the pond, a black-listed Colin Kaepernick could have helmed the injured hopes of Packers, Colts, Texans, Dolphins, Cardinals, Eagles… if twitting were to abdicate its fifteen minutes (or months) of fame, fanning jingoistic flame.

            You’ve been merely a tool in these problems, delivering newspapers to upper-class households that hold on to nostalgia—walking in silk pajamas to the near end of long, manicured driveways—and a sense of seeing the world beyond computer screens. You’re employed by a distant media conglomerate but also, by design, a local, coupon-stuffing grocery store that hardly pays your rent, let alone what you’d do in that reach of real estate you deign to designate as your zip code, allowing kids you can’t afford into a public school that, so far, survives (even flaunts) the trend of vouchers. You’ve been doing this now for thirteen years—Horoscope, if it knew such tabulation, would be going crazy, especially if you were taking things for a grain of salt. Sing all you want, we built this city, we built this city on rock ’n’ roll, because that’s about the likes of it. You’ve only built a little more traffic into the grocery store, as well as an archive of op-ed oblations to grand old partisanship.

            Less the Starship than Fleetwood Mac was on your mind last Tuesday:

                        Now here you go again, you say

                              you want your freedom…

                        Well, who am I to keep you down?

God, she could put the hooks in you, 5am or otherwise. The blur of pure alto and birdsong and bass beat and railway brakes made the distribution of papers feel like—not heaven, but some earthly high, a reason to wake up to do this again (as you’d have to, anyway). But today would be different, in what you had and what you lost….

            The municipality had installed recycling areas to attend to the modest outcry that paper/plastic/clear and/colored/glass/tin/aluminum were not sufficiently sorted by the kind of truck that looked too much like the one for general garbage collection. This initiative had nothing really to do with your routine—yours was not the profession of disposal (not immediately, at least) but of dispersal. Granted, in a day or two, the news and coupon flyers that you’d throw into driveways would become the fodder of the blue recycle bin designated for ‘paper’; you supplied their minds, perhaps, before they supplied these mindless bins. You thereby went about your neighborhood routes with a sense that you fed the ‘mouth’ of a process that, intestinally, ended up here, in cloistered hobbit houses.

            Last Tuesday, hooked distinctly to the top of a bin quite deep into the neighborhood was a vinyl bag with a pull-string to keep out pickpockets, if not potential drops of rain. But Tuesday was precipitation-free. So was Wednesday, when you saw this bag again, hanging as if a prop to a not-so-Norman Rockwell scene. The bag—two days in a row—bulged a bit like a halloween haul of…not fun-size Snickers, but… Wonka bars, as Charley and his Gramps would imagine. The bag, like the bin, was cobalt blue, its pull-string white against the silver hooks that would lift the whole thing up into a truck tomorrow, according to the recycling schedule.

            Why would someone loop the bag onto the hook and not dump the contents into the bin? Because the bag itself was not paper? A sort of footnote to the staff? Recycle what’s within, then dump the receptacle somewhere else… If one day passed, the bag might have served notice as a sort of lost-and-found. A second day would have allowed for some reclaim. A third would have posed a dilemma for the recycle truck: to include or not include into its designated paper moraine… You doubt the reflection would be so considerable. Still, your own doubts held you in, preventing a midnight stroll in that direction.

            6am, Thursday—who would note?—you took the bag from its silver hook and snuck a look. It contained an comic amount of bound one hundred dollar bills, Wonka wads of golden tickets, multiplied a couple hundred grand. Holy shit! you let slip out, against any logic that deity or defecation would spawn such a thing, at least together. Luckily, no one in pajamas heard the ejaculated phrase, and probably the cover of the trees prevented windowed watchers from seeing you, though who could really say? You took the vinyl pull-string bag and snugged it into where your papers lived, as temporarily as the dawn turned into day. This was not stealing—finders keepers, dumpster divers, reuse-before-recycle—nothing in the subtle wars of ethics and morality would do more than shrug a shoulder, or maybe even pat you on the back.

            6pm, Thursday—you’ve sweat out your guts. You’ve counted in the glow of naked lightbulbs, curtains closed, eight hundred thousand dollars, exactly. You laugh for the first time all day: ‘I could call in sick, for a change!’ And you really might need to, because this windfall will require more maintenance than a baby (you imagine): diapers = getting rid of distractions, bottles = nurturing the naïve notions of how things develop, cooing and crying and all other participles babies and parents go through. There are meaningful people in your life to talk to—especially now; you toy with the keypad, thinking a message might filter the shock; person X could complicate, person Y could comfort, person Z could tilt toward the X or the Y or, most likely, the Z. Nobody’s considering U, least of all your exponential W.

            You reasonably call in sick, then stupidly, 6am, return to the scene to witness the recycle truck doing its weekly routine. You eyeball the driveways—no sub has yet delivered the news—and scurry away in the instance that some windowed watcher might call in to call you out: ‘he’s really not sick at all!’ Gaming the system, you are. Damn straight—‘bout time! Those lotto guys do this on tv; the difference between them and me is, well, tax authorities. A difference that’s stark, worth getting sick over, staying out of sight. You call in again for the entirety of next week—the boss you’ve rarely seen seems to sympathize, wish you a speedy recovery—then wisely, you sleep, perchance to dream.

            There are ways to proceed. Your budget, including a decent dating life with Dana, down the street, came to about seventy-five bucks a day, rent and utilities included. Just bounce that up a third in quality-of-life, slowly quit your job, and you could be worry-free for the next twenty-plus years—mattress money! Getting fancy, of course, would mean upgrades that wouldn’t take cash-in-hand and would, instead, require lawyers mostly out of your control. Let that wait ’til the teen-age years of this adventure—keep it childlike, while you can. A hundred bucks a day—hell, two hundred if you want to pay that way at Kohl’s—will recycle back into society, the leaver’s ostensible objective anyway. How to fund the bank account, how to pay rent, credit card and other bills not by wire:… these become the sticking point, reason enough to keep the paper route awhile.

            Should Dana know? Should Dana know…. Dana cares for you, and vice-versa; you’ve been feasibly close to moving in—not so seriously, but sometimes discussed—one to the other, circumstances quite aligned (before the treasure). Let that question hibernate; it’s forgivable that unexpected secrets have to have their time to come and go.

            Foolishly or not, you spend your sick leave at the library, among other stops, paging through some texts you wouldn’t find online. Or maybe guided by suggestions of the internet—you don’t want to type in ‘how to deal with sudden wealth’, but other, subtler things come up: Saramago novels, strangely, like The Double, which you start to read and almost toss upon the floor. You check it out, though, with The Cave and Ruskin’s Unto This Last, which you know you could have found online, but even so… You’re wary of the cybersphere, tendrils of which might discern what’s going on. It’s no crime to check out Ruskin, but put it in a pattern, slipshod it may be, and there’s no telling….

            The week wheels dizzyingly. Nothing helped by mid-day drinks. To go back to the paper route will meet with some relief—Stevie Nicks will be there, after all,

                        when the rain washes you clean,

                        you’ll know—you’ll know…

There is some solace in the thought of windowed watchers—whoever they might be—seeing routines go back to normal, whether the sub did satisfactorily or not. You are a part of this community, weirdly richer, seemingly the same.

            Dana comes over, naturally, and the two of you go out for Indian take-away and come back to watch a movie. “Wow, I like the upgrade—did I miss a sale at Best Buy?”

            “No,” you say, “I just wanted to surprise you—didn’t cost me any nest egg, but also doesn’t bow to Black Friday.”

            “Okay,” Dana says, buzzed because you had more booze than usual, “nest egg talk or otherwise, let’s snuggle into this beanbag that I see you also bought.”

            And so it goes, or hopes it will. Stevie’s fully keeping count:

                        Now here I go again I see

                              the crystal visions…

                        I keep my visions to myself.

And Dana might, in slumbered terms, respond,

                        It’s only me who wants to

                              wrap around your dreams…

                        Have you any dreams you’d like to sell?

And the rest of the song—you know far too well—is beyond the capability of the evening, let alone a shared life.

            Life beyond that last Tuesday, which was last month, will never cease and desist. You’ve given your three-weeks’ notice, reasonably, and scoped out better places to rent that won’t stipulate nagging particulars. You’ve set up a new account at a different bank—expressly to handle a new debit card—and no questions were asked about the way you brought in a supply of a hundred hundred dollar bills. Nonetheless, you proffered something plausible, like Norton Anti-virus had failed and a modicum of liquidation seemed due, to which the banker nodded, maybe knowingly. From here on out, you’re free to refresh the account with a couple hundred dollar bills that shouldn’t raise an eye, if done wisely. “I have another account for my salary and other expenditures,” you usually feel a need to say.

            ‘Idiot’, though—‘say nothing more than a need-to-know’, as these bills are probably being traced by now. Nobody would just leave eight-hundred grand for common recycle! You still have your ‘finders-keepers’ apologia—the most usable derivation of ‘defense’. Truth be told, nobody threw their body at that bag for forty-eight hours, and by now its contents could have been the very pulp to make McDonald’s paperware, or more likely, next week’s broadsides of nostalgic news.

            You work assiduously for these three weeks—every interest at stake. The job’s been pleasant, after all, and you’ll miss the morning mists, literal and otherwise. Naturally you’re interested in the originator of that vinyl bag, the whys and wherefores by which it came to land on you—reluctantly, it shall be known on the record, if known at all.

            Nobody cared about your return-to-circuit, or your retirement from it. Take that back: a few of the pajama-clad saw you by coincidence and bestowed a befitting ‘hello’, never thinking that the same kind of tip at their restaurant of choice might make the leap of logic from their wallet into your pocket, if anyone would deign to think of it. ‘Oh, you’re leaving us?’ you’re asked, and you don’t know how to begin debunking ‘you’ and ‘’re’ and ‘leaving’ and ‘us’, let alone the vapid ‘oh’…

            Dana put your mind to rest for most of this stretch, not even aware that you’ve resigned. ‘Are you feeling alright?’ lends to easy nods and unabashed weeping into the neckline of the garment Dana wears so perfectly, open for exactly that, if closed to scrutability. There’s been no mention of the vinyl bag, but surely, if there is a God, that devilish deus ex machina must have revealed itself beyond that recycle bin: it was hung there for all to see, for heaven’s sake! And it still hangs from a nail at the back of your closet, behind a bunch of sweaters you’ve long stopped wearing.

            Remain yourself—you’ve done so all your life. Yes, you clearly need an upgrade from your Ford Taurus. Amazingly, the Lexus dealer two suburbs away took your enveloped thirty-six thousand dollars without question—that’s not how the modern world works, you know. In the back of your mind, sort of as a test, you think ‘if these bills were stolen, they’d be traced by now, through serial mark or GPS on the wraps or something of the equivalent.’ Lexus didn’t bat an eye—or didn’t seem to—and you drive out with a sense of feeling free, if really still confined.

            The landlord’s at a loss: you said you’d like to stay but need to pay another way and… maybe you are looking for another flat. Good scripting, that. You couldn’t have thought this out more thoroughly? the place you’ll lay your head at night? the fact this landlord’s been the best you’ve ever had? Your solo plan had better work out right. There are fates attached to any such designs to move, and that’s an uncomfortable fact.

            Dana wonders differently: “Did you get some inheritance check, or something like that?”

            You figure lying isn’t right, but also playing into ‘something’ might incite a domino of query, why a Lexus comes from nothing or how unemployment suits so well. “I’m just… at an age [no mid-life crisis, this] where… saving has been… saved up, sufficiently.”

            Way to stay vague. Dana waits for clearer clauses, which do not come, then bursts out laughing. So, at least you’re not showing signs of suicide. Signs of growing up? Well, you have to join in Dana’s mirth.

            Eventually, the world within your world would know. You took a job at the grocery store—the produce section, mostly—to sustain appearances, but your mind was often elsewhere. History or mythology says there are coastal getaways in Mexico, perhaps Belize to slide in language-wise. Dana might be good with that—you wouldn’t want to go alone. It’s twenty years rent-free! There’ll never be a span of time, one-tenth or one percent as much—there’s nothing arguing the opposite.

            That said, you’ve never given voice to X, Y, and Z, one of them a trained confessor that could, theoretically, retain such confidentiality. There’d be advice to turn the whole deal over—maybe even get a reward—or parse it out to charities, an honest way to recycle means for a lack thereof. There’d be ways to launder—‘I got this cousin, see?’—and ways to cover—‘simply in your closet? You gotta be kidding me!’… They’ve been stalwart friends who wouldn’t have to change because of this; but this has never been tested, obviously.

            Dana’s beyond them—the only one you’d cry to see after just one month. Sure, there’d likely be good people to meet, if some of whom might sniff you out. No matter where, the world within your world would know.

            So, you’ve decided. Since you’ve taken four of eighty stacks already—the Lexus being the lion’s share—you figure that four more (a tithe to self, at ten percent) would be a type of piggy bank—you even saw one on a shelf at Kohl’s—and the rest? You’d string it slightly leaner on the same recycle bin, well before 5am next Tuesday. It can journey as it has done with you, to another you that has the wherewithal to observe and wonder and risk and dream and reconsider. You can go back to the paper route—the exercise alone is salary enough—and back to snuggling in beanbags new and used for twenty years and more. Yes, that is what you’d do!

             

            You halt your tracks a hundred feet from what you squint to see: there, hanging on the silver hook, is another vinyl bag—exactly like the one you’ve harbored in your closet, now enclosed in your raincoat, as thunder has been rumbling all night. You haven’t been to this side of town in weeks, and you can’t imagine vinyl bags have been cycling like some experimental scheme. You think of abandoning the plan—where there’s bait, there’d be a rod and reel, some hidden camera, a way of tracing you, perhaps in body chalk, eventually.

            A flash of lightning acts like an interrogator, silent before the clap of accusation. You have an idea that would cost a half-hour, at least, but maybe let you go scott-free. You’d seen a flattened cardboard box against another blue bin closer to the railway line. It had contained a refrigerator, twice the size of you, and with a bit of effort—punching eyeholes through one soggy side, an armhole through another—you could scurry like Scout in her ham costume, switch the vinyl bags, and leave the box approximately how you found it.

            It is as gritty a job as you thought it’d be, and you fear the cardboard won’t hold up. The weight is difficult to balance, delicately, and the rank lack of air threatens to asphyxiate. You could become the pulp of your own plan, dying not from mafia surveillance getting back its dough, but from coffin you’ve put on, all in the name of freedom. Thirteen years of paper routes had never shown a jaunt this arduous, yet the training has come to this: you’re now at the original bin, you push your right arm out to unhook the vinyl bag that hangs there—apparently empty—and exchange it with the bag that hasn’t been exposed to the elements for all its adopted babyhood. Your eyeholes are not cooperating with your desire to make it hang just so; you know it shouldn’t matter, and, with the distant sound of train brakes, you let it be and scurry out of any camera’s range. A block or two away, you slide out of the soggy coffin and fold it to obscure the holes, and leave it at another blue bin, more or less in the direction of your home.

            And, there, you get undressed. The vinyl bag you snagged in replacement looks up from the pile of damp clothes and seems to wonder if you’re okay. Why take another one of us? Good point—maybe out of curiosity. The forty grand from its compatriot has nestled nicely in your underwear drawer; it would be playing with fire to put that stash in this new bag and hang it in the closet. You’ll dispose of it—the bag, not cash—the next time out, and the molting will be finished.

            It wasn’t empty, though. In blue pen on lined paper, maybe even Dana’s handwriting—or are your eyes playing tricks on you?—a riddle unfolded, causing you to render all a dream:

I have always been much richer than you knew,

hiding wealth for sense of self in what you do—

what is shared or spared from anyone’s purview,

I have always had an overweening sense of you,

never minding what that means for ‘sense of us’,

you know we could ticket each a one-way bus:

I could pay and you could stowaway, if we must

(allowing there’s no need to calibrate such trust),

you have minefields to plow, cautiously, as do I.

I have never been a wise old owl and wouldn’t try

to be one now; the fact I stay awake, wonder why

the morning may be different than meets the eye,

only bears on how you’ll wake and see in kind—

you are the dawn and dusk and settle of my mind.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2018)