The Gift

Johnny left the screen he had been staring at for the past hour to feed the goldfish. He had bought Pride and Prejudice from the Barton Creek market together with a large pack of TetraFin Goldfish Flakes spending in total twenty-five dollars. He had read on a specialized website that those flakes were the best to keep his two new friends healthy. The food was made so that it would not dissolve, keeping the water clear and easier to clean. That went well with his habits and likes. He spread two moderate pinches on the surface and put the package back in the lower drawer of his wardrobe. It was a perfect place to keep the food dry for it maintained the nutrients intact, something essential the animal lover website said. Goldfish average lifespan is fifteen to twenty years, but some can last up to thirty. Johnny was set on making the most out of his two.

On his way back to the oak desk he peeked through the curtains. He had not seen Laura for at least three days but that did not worry him too much. She must have spent the night at her boyfriend’s flat. He was a good guy but not one who would stick around for long. Many had come before him after all. Laura was not somebody who would settle for little. Johnny checked the time and reckoned that he had one hour or so before his mother would call for dinner. He unplugged the laptop and sat on the light blue blanket of his bed with it, right on the face of the flying elephant. Set like a frog, he typed the address of his favourite porn website. Not that he felt much like masturbating but a couple of videos would give him a little boost, enough to get on to doing some work. His brain would always go faster after if he got some hot blood run through his limbs. First, he watched a tube called stepmother milks stepson. This was not his favourite genre but he gave it a try. He knew that the women in those cuts were just actresses. They moaned too much and they were too dominant. Most of the time that was enough to put him off. He stopped before the video was over and backslid to the gallery of home-made stuff where he knew he could find more genuine situations. Those shabby bedrooms with a cheap mirror and grey walls felt like anybody’s room. Not Johnny’s because he was tidy and all, but anybody else’s. The best were the scenes where faces could not be seen because they gave him the freedom to put on the girls’ bodies Laura’s face. He loved doing that even thou it made him feel a little uncomfortable when he happened to say hello to her. The couple in the video was not very skilled. Their bodies did not seem to match very well. They kept on changing position every twenty seconds and that was very distracting. Johnny reached only a very mild erection, which he kept in his pants, and decided to move on.

Sitting on the bed was making his back hurt badly. He had to go back to doing those fitnessblender.com exercises. It was a pure coincidence that the girl in the videos was called Laura too. She was blond and skinny and her New York accent made her very annoying. Seeking to get more comfortable, Johnny lied belly down and checked his open positions. He had joined the app in 2013 following the recommendation of a blogger who went by the name of Ryan Green who lived in some middle of nowhere town in Nebraska. He had started with a few hundred dollars, mostly the left-over of a series of Christmas presents, and he had made his way to being a successful trader. After one year he had decided to quit college and move back with his parents, just outside Austin, on the Hills, where he had grown up and away from nosy flatmates. He had taken up a job as a cashier at the closest HEB and he had told mum and pa that he wanted to write the new great American novel. Then his Robinhood wallet had passed half a million and his parents ceased to be a problem. Happy with what he saw on the screen, Johnny moved again, struggling to find the right spot on the bed. He stretched backwards to grab a pillow and placed it under his chest. He fiddled with a few graphs and then decided to hold on to most of the stocks. As fake media were tattering bullshit on regulation coming to hamper the fortunes of bitcoin, Johnny felt ready for a new ride. He only trusted himself on money matters. He put a buy for five bitcoins at $ 7,300 and closed the account to enjoy a bit of spend time.

He rarely bought things for himself but loved making presents. The moment when people opened the mouth in disbelief was priceless. They found it very difficult to say thank you to him. Once a neighbour lady had brought him back a glass vase he had ordered for her from an Italian place called Murano. After keeping it for two days, she had come to say that it was too much and she could not accept it. Johnny was looking at the vase between Pride and Prejudice and the cap of the Austin Huns, when a ding caught his attention. A bubble appeared on the top right corner of the screen reminding him that Laura’s birthday was only two weeks away and he had nothing to give her yet. So far hours of searching on eBay had not helped. Nothing was at her level. She was not into stuff or things like other people. To get that look on her face Johnny needed something special, something only she would be able to appreciate. She also lived with her parents, in the red bricks two stories house with the little white porch across the road, the same where the two of them had played Lego up to second grade. She was a smart cookie thou and she was there only temporarily because her PhD wasn’t paying enough for a rent alone. Laura had told him that, one day when Johnny had managed to catch her while she was getting the mail out the box by the sidewalk. It was one of those conversations that made him think that they would have been a perfect match if only he had found the courage to come forward. They were both from Austin and they had shared the same schools for many years. More importantly, they were both people of letters, although Laura was an actual professor of literature. He had money thou, lots of money, enough for her to continue working as a professor without having to worry about her student loan.

Moving a finger over the flat mouse below the keyboard he clicked on a collection of leather vintage gloves from the Sixties. The seller claimed they were all original from some Paris designer, the last chance to get items otherwise impossible to find. Expensive but nothing Laura would wear. Back on the main page, he wrote “paintings” in the search bar but a fraction of a second before pressing enter he saw something that captured his attention. The asking price was $ 20,000 which in itself was a good marker. The picture showed a little black book with the cover consumed on the hedges. The one-liner on the side said “only for experts”. Johnny observed the cursor landing on that text and then the page opened. The description wasn’t in perfect English which made him hesitate but it did say that that the journal contained a collection of original signatures of the greatest American authors. Two of the pictures in the item profile showed those of Saul Bellow and E.L. Doctorow. Johnny clicked on one of them to enlarge it, then he pulled himself up and went next to the window, trying to get as much light as possible. Standing there he googled samples of Saul Bellow’s signature. His heartbeat accelerated and his mouth got dry. He was onto something extraordinary. It could definitely be a scam and it was risky but if it was real Laura would have been flabbergasted. He sat at his desk, his back too much forward and his eyes too close to the screen, and he typed “How to Detect a Real or Fake Autograph”. The website seemed legit. It showed a list of ten golden rules. Johnny found that kind of stuff very useful. It said that the best way to compare a signature was to turn it upside down. This way, the mind isn't reading and can look objectively for tell-tale signs. It made a lot of sense. He scribbled “upside down” on the yellow post-it on top of the block and went on reading. The website caveated to look closely at the ink to avoid falling into the trap of printed shit. Johnny added to his notes and pulled his Carson magnifying glass out of the desk drawer without stopping reading. When his mum called for dinner he had marked down six great tips. Before closing the laptop he went back to the eBay page. The seller’s name was Anthony Catone. It was worth having a check. There were quite a few of those on Facebook but only one from Houston. His wall was full of posts from some QAnon like kind of crap and Trump speeches and memes. Mum called again. She did not like to wait and dad wanted the three of them around the table before saying thank you for the food. He slammed the lid of the laptop. He would continue the investigation after dinner.

Sitting in front of some green salad and macaroni cheese Johnny chew silently while, as usual, the father did all the talking. He had a word for all the people working for him at the construction site. He cheered as in the morning he had gotten the last permit needed for the hotel extension. No way the man was going to retire any time soon. Mum nodded until he was done and then she started with her own update made of public gossip taken from some Fox channels and of a review of grocery prices. When Johnny was done with his meal and was ready to go back to his room, she threw it there as if it were nothing important. She looked at him and said that the neighbours had been muttering about an engagement. That Laura had somehow managed to get a ring of some sort. Dad made his eyes big and asked mum if she was really talking about that lump with thick glasses living next door, little Laurel the piglet as he called her all since she was a kid. They laughed together and Johnny laughed too but then he excused himself. He had some work to do.

Alone in his room, walking with fast steps around the bed, he assessed the risks and the opportunities that the book sale offered. He sat in front of the laptop and thought about writing to that Catone asking him if he could prove that the signatures were original. Pretty dumb question, really. He dithered and moved next to the window remaining hidden behind the curtains. Outside it was dark, the street kept bright by the lampposts. Laura’s window was dark too. It was the fourth night in a row she wasn’t coming back home to sleep. Johnny forced himself to rest over the idea of the present, sure that she would be absolutely startled if the signatures turned to be real. He tried to put himself asleep watching a few videos. After that, he covered his eyes with one of those blackers that they give you on planes and rolled back and forth on the bed fighting with the blankets. He had a lucid dream of some kind where he could not move and could not speak and finally, a few minutes past 2 a.m., he decided to send a message to that Catone. He replied after a few minutes, misspelling the word “certain”. He missed the “i” before the “n”. Johnny wrote again saying that he would drive to Houston the morning after. Laura deserved something special and, back in bed, Johnny fell asleep thinking of when she would be looking at him with the black booklet in her hands, mouth open, surely his, with disbelief.