Marty's Paw

Marty sat on the same New York corner where he always sat. It was fall, but one of those fall days that lets you know that fall will be ending soon, that it will quickly turn into winter. And winter is the worst when you have nowhere warm to go.

But it was okay with him. Marty liked the chill as much as he hated it. He knew he deserved it.

He watched the people walking past.

A tall, upright man in a suit, a phone pressed to the side of his head. He didn’t stop, didn’t glance at Marty or down into his change-littered coffee cup. But, then, that type never did. They had wives to cheat on, deals and mergers to make.

A beautiful woman, long, flowing dark hair, but somewhat ruined by a protruding nose, did stop. That type always did, as if they needed convincing that they were okay.

“I’m Rachel,” she said, dropping five quarters into his cup, meeting his eye.

That was something else that type always did.

They thought it mattered.

To Marty, only the coins mattered. And, really, did those even matter?

At forty, cold, old, and getting older, he didn’t care much about anything anymore. He hadn’t in what felt like a long time. Everything was his fault, and he knew it.

He gave her what she wanted though.

“Thank you,” he said, “so much.”

The woman beamed, her name already forgotten to him.

“What’s your name?” she asked him, like it mattered.

“Steve,” he lied.

“Steve,” she said. “I love that name.”

“Thanks,” he muttered awkwardly.

Her type always did this.

They wanted to make you think you were human to them.

Marty wasn’t even human to himself.

That’s why, after Rachel had stood up, said, “God bless you,” and walked away, he flicked his middle finger at her back.

Screw her.

Screw condescension and women who needed weird validation.

No sooner had what’s-her-name-with-the-nose left than a different kind of man approached.

This was a man who threw shadow where he went. A man in black. A man who sent an odd feeling, a feeling Marty couldn’t quite identify, flooding through him.

Marty felt himself cowering against his corner without knowing why.

“I saw that,” the man said. He did not laugh.

“Saw what?” Marty asked, his voice a whimper.

The man said nothing. He just smirked.

“Take this,” the man said.

Marty looked down at his coffee cup, waiting for change to plunk in, but instead, he felt something smooth and cool, oddly cool even in the chilly air, pressed into his hand.

He glanced down. There was a little black book. It looked leathery like skin, but felt both firm and soft at the same time. He felt richer just having touched it.

“What’s this for?” Marty asked.

“Write in it,” the man said. “You can write, can’t you?” His voice dripped with disdain, but somehow, it was less condescending than Rachel and her warm smile.

“Of course I can,” Marty said.

Once, he had been successful.

Once, he had been someone.

But that was before.

“Well,” the man went on. “write down what you want. But write it like you already have it.”

“Why?” Marty asked, but the man was already fleeing, quickly, almost supernaturally.

He paused only to turn, for the briefest of moments. “Because you can,” he said, and then he was gone.

When the day was over, or at least as “over” as it could be when every day was the same, one blending right into the next, Marty counted his change, the few crumpled bills mixed in.

Twenty-eight dollars and thirty-two cents.

Not bad. The money would be better when it got colder. But then, everything else would be worse.

Life was always a trade-off that way.

He thought of heading into the deli across the street, the one they hadn’t yet thrown him out of. He needed a warm coffee, a space to sit for a while. But, then, he also thought of the book the man had given him. It was in his pocket now.

He took it out.

Write what you want.

What a stupid thing to say.

“What I want,” he said aloud, “is a coffee . . . and maybe a pencil.”

He walked to the deli and, just outside his door, he heard a weird clatter. It seemed to come from nowhere.

Looking at his feet, to see if he had dropped something, he found a bright yellow pencil, sharpened to a perfect point.

What?

Marty shuddered.

“What I want,” he said, “is my wife back.”

But Rebecca did not appear, so he picked up the pencil, shook his head, almost laughing, and went into the warm deli.

After he’d collected his coffee, avoided the looks that were both knowing and warning at once, he went up the stairs to the small seating area. They’d let him sit there but not for too long. Too long, and it would be loitering.

Marty felt the book in his pocket, the book and now the pencil.

"Write what you want," the man had said.

So, Marty took the pencil, opened to the first page, which looked blank and full of promise, and wrote, “I want a lot of money.”

He didn’t really want it, but it seemed like the kind of thing that should matter, that could make a difference, so he wrote it.

He looked around. Nothing happened.

Nothing was different.

But then, it was as if he heard a whispering, an urging, “Write it like you have it.”

Write it like I have it, he thought.

What the hell did that mean?

Struck, almost as if he wasn’t moving of his own accord, he wrote, neatly, “I have a lot of money."

Again, nothing happened.

He rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. Of course it hadn't. If life had taught him anything, it was that life was cruel, that there was no magic in the world.

He finished his coffee, already growing cold, both in the cup and in his stomach. And, on his way out the door, he crumpled both it and the stupid, unbending book as best as he could, slipping them both into the trash.

The sky was already getting dark. He needed to find a place to sleep for the night.

He thought to head down near the ferry, where it was almost always safe to sleep, where there was rarely any hassle.

He hadn’t slept there in a while, but it seemed the right place.

And, no sooner had he headed in that direction than he saw a cloth sack a few paces in front of him, plopped right down on the slim sidewalk, people maneuvering around it as if it contained dog crap. It probably did.

But, there was something that compelled him to go to it, to pick it up. And, though he wanted to open it right then and there, something else compelled him not to.

He ferreted away into one of those bank entrances full of ATMs, a place where he was usually shooed from instantly, even when all he needed was a brief respite from the cold.

But, now, it was mercifully empty, the kind of empty that never happened in the city.

He opened the bag, and his eyes bulged at the sight of stacked, crisp hundred-dollar bills. Flicking his fingers carefully over the stacks but refusing to unband them, multiplying fast in his head, he counted. $20,000. A lot of money to him now, an impossible amount. It hadn’t always been, but now it was.

But, what was this?

Did someone rob a bank and leave their stash behind?

Was it the book?

The book.

At the bottom of the sack, there was the book. The little black book he had crumpled and thrown away, only it was smooth, perfect, as if it had been waiting for him.

Marty peeled off only a one-hundred dollar bill, tucking the sack and the rest of its contents under his arm inside his coat.

He did what he had always done when he was confused or unsure or terrified. He went into the closest liquor store and bought a bottle of Fireball.

The warm cinnamon touched his lips, instantly warming him from the inside out.

All thoughts of the ferry, of sleep, of reality leaving his mind, he slumped into a quiet corner, as quiet as it got in the city, took another quick swig, and pulled out the little black book.

He opened it, his two scrawled sentences written there.

It was definitely the same book he had thrown away before.

His mind whirring, he gripped the found pencil and wrote, “I have a roof over my head.”

This time, it worked fast, without explanation.

For, the next thing he knew, there he was, in a white robe with “The Plaza” emblazoned on it in gold.

He had no right to be here.

He knew it.

But, when he poked his head out into the hallway, just to look, just to be sure, he wasn’t met with shrieks by the lone, wandering bellhop.

Instead, he was met with a curt nod, a nod of respect.

He ducked back inside quickly.

He felt something heavy in his pocket.

The fireball.

And, next to it, the notebook, the pencil.

It was real. The notebook. The stranger. The promise.

He didn’t know how it could be, but it was.

And, he realizes, if it is, if he could really have anything he wants, he wants her back. His wife. His Rebecca.

He picks up the pencil to write it, but he can’t.

You can’t do that, he tells himself

You can’t bring people back from the dead.

It’s wrong, sacrilegious somehow. Even he knows that.

The phone in the suite rings, and it’s a voice, the same gravelly voice from the man who gave him the book.

“Why can’t you?” It says, simply.

“Who are you?” But the line went dead.

It doesn’t matter. Does anything? Nothing has mattered since he lost her, and now he could have her again.

He writes in the book, “I am with Rebecca.”

He falls into a dreamless sleep.

In the early hours of the morning, they will come. The firemen, the cops, the lot of them.

They will find Marty, dead in the room, the room inexplicably charred around him, the other rooms somehow untouched, the spread of the fire stopped somehow, contained to one place.

They are confounded.

But, there is one of them, a man with sad eyes and a sad, spreading paunch around his middle, a man who has lost much, who will stoop down, the mournful eyes catching on the one thing in the room that is not a charred mess. On the thing that is a little black book.

To this man, the book looks as if it has survived much. He identifies with it, though he’s not sure he can count what he’s doing as “surviving.” More like existing.

But, as he picks it up, puts it in his pocket, he feels hopeful.

He feels somehow as if the book was put there for him and him alone.

And he feels as if he could, no as if he should, write down in it what he wants . . . but in a weird way, in a way as if he already has it.

He tells no one about the book. He does not bag it as evidence.

Instead, he takes it out into the world with him, hoping it will change his life.