The Fourth Day

Spent and scared, Anthony tosses the paper bag of cash onto the kitchen table, rattling the breakfast china and startling his husband. When it lands, it tips over, but the money doesn’t spill out; the stiff brown paper is rolled tight at the top.

David, Anthony’s man and life partner of sixteen years looks up from his iPad and gawks at it. He leans forward, then back. “What’s that?” He says, smiling. He reaches for it.

“Don’t!” Anthony says, out of breath. He doubles over, panting. Mr. Jenkins, still on his leash, wags his tail, panting too. “Don’t touch it,” Anthony says, and detaches Mr. Jenkins’ leash, who runs off.

David is startled once more. “Why? What’s in it?” He says, but Anthony doesn’t answer right away—he goes to the sink and turns on the faucet.

“Is it a surprise?” David calls from the table.

Anthony tests the water, waiting for it to be warm. “In a way, I guess,” he calls back. He washes his hands and grabs a dry dish towel. “It’s twenty thousand dollars, I think.”

“What!?” David says, and seizes the bag to open it, emptying it onto the table. Half a dozen thick rolls of bills tumble out and one falls to the floor.

Anthony goes to the table and picks it up. He inspects it for a second sets it down quickly, as if stung. “I said not to touch it,” he says. He wipes his hand on his pants and sits down. For a moment, the two of them simply stare at the pile of money.

“Where did you get it?” David says, looking in turn between Anthony and the cash. “Whose is it?” He says.

Anthony tilts his head. “I was on my way back,” he says, “from walking Mr. Jenkins. He was being choosy about where to go.” He pauses.

David splays his hands, waiting for the rest of it.

“Then out of nowhere, this homeless man ambushes me.”

“What!?” David says.

"Yeah." Anthony nods, takes a napkin from the table, and reaches into the breast pocket of his coat. “He practically leaps on to me and thrusts this into my hands.” With great care not to touch it with his bare fingers, he produces a little black book with leather binding and withered white pages between. Anthony holds it up, and then places it on the table, next to the mountain of money.

David’s eyes go wide at first, then he screws up his face in confusion. “A homeless man gave you a Moleskine notebook? And then he gave you a bag of cash?”

Anthony almost laughs despite himself. “No—not exactly.”

“Then what happened?” David says.

“Well, I threw the book back at him and tried to get away, but he chased me down and begged me to take it.”

“What? Why?”

“How would I know?” Anthony says. “But then he offered to pay me to take it, and pulled out this paper bag,” he says, gesturing to the bag and its spilled contents between them.

“And you took it!?” David says.

Anthony gasps. “What was I supposed to do? He was making a scene! He was slobbering all over himself—he was mad with rage—he was desperate! People were starting to gather, so I took the book…”

“And the bag.”

Anthony sighs. "And the bag...and then he just…vanished.”

David tilts his head, unbelieving. “He vanished.”

Anthony stands up. “Oh you know what I mean. He ran off.” He says, and disappears into the house to find a pair of gloves.

When he returns a few minutes later, David has pulled out his laptop and is firing away on the keys. Open in front of him is the little black book.

Anthony rushes to him. “What are you doing!” He says. “You don’t know what kind of germs are on that thing!”

But David doesn’t answer—a grave look of concern has come over him. “Anthony,” he says. “I think you’ll want to see this.” He points to his computer screen.

Anthony comes closer.

David’s browser is open to a news article about a deadly car crash earlier in the year. “There was a car crash,” Anthony says.

David shakes his head. “Look at the name. And the date.”

“So?” Anthony says.

David looks at Anthony, and directs his attention to the little black book. Anthony reads it. Scribbled in red ink on the tattered, line-less page, are two names and a date. The first name means nothing to him, but the second… “Huh,” he says. “It’s the person who died in the crash.” He looks at David, who nods.

“There’s more,” David says. He opens a new tab turns to a different page the book. “Read me the second name,” he says.

Anthony does so, and the results are the same. In fact, the second name on every single page is a person who has died in some public way, and the dates in the book match the dates reported online.

Later that evening, Anthony and David discuss it over dinner. “Was someone keeping a journal of people who died unexpected deaths?” Anthony says.

David considers it. “I don’t think so,” he says. “Those news articles were from all across the country. And it doesn’t account for the changes in penmanship.”

It was true. Each page of the little black book appeared to have been authored, not only with different writing implements, but by different people.

“Do you really think a different person wrote on each page?” Anthony says. “How would they all know what to write?”

David has no answer, and the two of them go to sleep, perplexed.

At near three in the morning, David shakes Anthony awake. “Anthony!” He says, a bit frantic. His laptop is open on the bed and his eyes are glazed over from fear and lack of rest.

Anthony stirs and sits up, rubbing his eyes. The blare of David’s laptop screen stings them. “What are you doing?” He says, reaching for the glass of water on his nightstand.

“I know what the first names are,” David says, almost choking up. “Look.”

Anthony sips his water and looks. In David’s shaking hand is a folded piece of paper with tired script. “What is that?”

“It was in the back cover pocket of the book. It’s a note.”

Anthony sets his water down and takes it. “I still don’t think we should be touching this,” he says, and reads it. As he does, he sits up straighter and wakes up more, fear filling him. Written on the page is a warning. Keep this book and on the third day your life’s love dies. Anthony reads it several times in disbelief. Finally, he looks up at David, who is near tears. “This can’t be true,” Anthony says.

“It’s true, Anthony. Every second name on every page of that book is dead.”

Anthony’s hands drop into his lap. “But—“

David wipes his nose and opens the little black book to the latest page. He hands it to Anthony, whose name has since appeared at the top.

In the morning, David readies for work in silence. Anthony, who works from home, sits at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, the little black book in the other. Sleep did not find him again after their conversation. Over and over again he pored over the little book’s warning, at once accepting and rejecting the idea that his life’s love—David—could possibly die from something so simple as a tiny, leather-bound notebook. Repeatedly he returned in his mind to the homeless man in the street who had implored him to take it, and in the end, he had nothing to overturn the evidence he and David found online. Soon, he was ashamed to be contemplating doing precisely the same—give it away.

On the night of the second day, David questions him. “Well?” He says.

“Well what?” Anthony says, knowing full well what David means.

“Did you give it away?”

Anthony sighs. “If I give it away, I’ll be killing someone.”

“If you keep it, you’ll be killing me!” David says.

Anthony’s shoulders drop. It’s the other half of the horrible coin he’s been flipping in his mind for two days.

“Do you want me to die?” David says.

At this, Anthony begins to cry, and after a moment, David embraces him and begins to cry too. “What if you just…like…stuck it in someone’s mailbox or something? Someone we don’t know?” He says.

Anthony struggles to stifle his sobs and speak. “I’d be dooming whoever I give it to. I’ll either be killing the one they love, or giving them the same choice I’m forced to make now. It would just be just like passing a torch,” he says. “How would I live with myself after that?”

David sighs, unable to answer his husband’s pure heart, unable to solve the problem, but Anthony already knows what he plans to do.

On the evening of the third day, Anthony and David are having dinner. “I gave it away,” Anthony says, breaking the silence. “I put it in a mailbox, like you said.”

David looks up at him, surprised, and puts his hand on Anthony’s. “Thank you,” he says. “And I’m sorry you had to make that choice.”

Anthony does his best to smile, but it was a lie. Early that morning, before David left for work, Anthony hid the little black book inside his husband’s briefcase, and when David took it with him, it changed hands. I would rather die for my love than to give death, he thought when he did it, hoping beyond all hope that the surreptitious transfer of possession would not alter the promised curse of the book.

When he wakes on the fourth day, he finds his plan has worked.

The next three days pass all too quickly for Anthony as he prepares to die, and David is none the wiser. They eat at their favorite restaurants, watch their favorite movies, and talk about all their favorite memories. Anthony calls his parents and his siblings. He expresses his love for them. He writes letters. He buys a lottery ticket. While David is at work on the second second day, he test drives a Maserati.

On the evening of the third day, as Anthony finally closes in on his final moments with David, the love of his life, he prays to God for help, and as he lies in David’s arms that night, he does not sleep.

He waits.

But death does not come for him—the sunrise does, and its rays streak through the room like the pealing bells of hell. Something inside Anthony breaks, but he doesn’t know what.

The instant David gets up and goes to the bathroom, he shoots out of bed and runs to find his husband’s briefcase, his heart pounding. After fumbling through the wrong pockets for a moment, his hands clasp the little black book and he pulls it out. Hesitant and afraid, he opens it to the most recent page.

At the top is David’s name.

At the bottom, another, but it is not his own.

The blood leaves Anthony’s hands and he drops the book. His fingers quiver and his breathing increases. He would run but he is struck still—as he stands there in the hall, tears rush into his eyes and his spirit leaves his body, pushed out by the harsh wind of an invisible reality, suddenly seen. He blinks.

Someone, somewhere, has died.

Something, inside Anthony, has died.

After a moment, Anthony’s heaving chest slows, and like the rush of a wave, his senses return. Quickly, he wipes his face, scoops up the book, and replaces it in David’s briefcase.

Then he clears his throat, and runs into his office where he hid the homeless man’s cash. Teary-eyed and frantic, he stuffs it in a go-bag.