Obsession

I hadn’t been in New York City for very long but the sprawl of the metropolitan landscape and the lights, especially at night, had captured my imagination and attention like no place ever had. I was raised in upstate New York, in a rural town just south of the great Lake Ontario. It was beautiful country and my father was an apple farmer. He had managed to parlay the fruits of the land into a respectable income that had allowed our family to have an upper middle-class experience in the setting of a lower middle-class community. My best friend from college, Vicki, had joined me in my quest to move to NYC and we were fast friends and roommates since moving to the city.

She and I were having a picnic in Central Park one day when I noticed something in a huge, stately oak tree that sat at the edge of our picnic spot. Curious, as always, I couldn’t ignore the small, tattered leather-bound notebook that was wedged into the tree. When I bent down to pick it up, it was tangled in a large root of the old oak. The root had actually grown through the booklet, piercing its cover and seeming to hold the notebook tightly to its breast. I walked back to Vicki, telling her what I had found. She advised me that perhaps I should leave the book in its naturally-hidden location. After all, some things weren’t meant to be found.

I was not one to leave a puzzle, and I was enamored with the idea that the little book could hold treasures unknown that had not been seen for uncounted years. Far be it from me to leave such an enigma untouched. So, with a butter knife from our picnic basket, I began filing down the large root and trying to cut the small booklet away from it. It took me about an hour to slowly unwind the root that seemed to be clutching the book even tighter than it had been when I had first laid eyes on it. It was as if the root--no, the entire tree--were crying out to save its baby. After toiling on my knees, I gently released the treasure from the tree’s grasp. When I opened the book, I saw that each of the small pages had numbers recorded on them. They were written with fountain pen, many no longer legible. The notebook was stitched along the binding and was in surprisingly good shape for its apparent age and distress at being held hostage in the tree root. I was enthralled with my find, and wrapped it gently in a linen napkin, carefully placing it into the picnic basket.

Vicki told me she had a bad feeling about the notebook. She couldn’t figure out where that feeling was coming from, but she felt a sadness that the book had been wrenched from the arms of the tree. She was always so dramatic that I laughed at her concern, and wondered why she seemed to have such a soft spot for an old meaningless relic. As the days went on, there were times during which I found myself daydreaming about the book, and it would become a distraction from the things that I needed to get done during the day. Sometimes I felt anxious about it, but managed to keep my feelings under wraps, hidden from even my best friend.

One day while fixating on the book, I decided that I would use some of the numbers to play the lottery. Playing the lottery had become a weekly ritual since I was 12 years old and Dad had taught me how to buy a ticket. What could come of it, except that I might get lucky? I shared the idea with Vicki, who was puzzled by my seeming preoccupation with the book. I insisted that the numbers might be providential or, somehow, perhaps even magical. With laughter, she told me to go ahead—what could it hurt?

The next day, I went down to the local convenience store, Alfie’s, and bought a lottery ticket. I used the black notebook and selected a string of numbers from one of its pages to place my lottery bet. I couldn’t wait until Saturday, when the winner would be announced. It seemed to me in that moment, I was engaged in a meaningless game that was of course not going to result in any winnings. What was I thinking! I went to Alfie’s and checked my ticket on Saturday. I looked back at the winning numbers and again, at my ticket. After checking them against each other several times, I realized that I had won $3,000! This was unbelievable! I had never won anything before in my life. I was excited and astounded, and rushed back home to tell Vicki. When I spouted it out, she gasped and let out a whooping yell of surprise. She was shocked and also a little taken aback that the book had actually had winning numbers hidden within its pages.

I hid the black book in my dresser drawer, hoping it would be safe enough there. Later that week, I returned to the book to rifle through its pages. I chose another six numbers from one of the pages and proceeded to return to Alfie’s to buy another lottery ticket for the coming Saturday. I was becoming more fixated on the notebook and its numbers each day and that bothered me a bit, to tell the truth. But I quickly cast my worries aside, excited about the potential of winning.

When Saturday came, I went down to Alfie’s and anxiously waited for the new lottery numbers. To my utter amazement, my numbers won again! This time, the purse was a total of $6,000! I was filled with a mixture of happiness as well as apprehension. How could it be that the book had yielded two winning sets of lottery numbers? I went back to the house and told Vicki what had happened. She was definitely shaken by this turn of events.

I told Vicki we should go out that night and celebrate. We went to a local bar and I proceeded to get wasted. I had never been drunk before and to be honest, it was a lot of fun. The next morning, I found myself unable to awake from my stupor and I missed work without calling in. It was the first time I had ever missed work for anything and it felt rather freeing. The next day, I received a warning from my boss that if it happened again, I’d be put on probation. I felt angry and thought that I didn’t really care because I now had a source of steady income that seemed to be pretty reliable. I ignored the warning with contempt.

I found myself thinking about the notebook every day and it was often the first thing that popped into my head when I awoke. At work, I thought about the book so often that I was beginning to lose concentration at my job. My boss was noticing the change in my appearance, and mentioned it one day. I told her to mind her own business and that I was just fine. Inside, I noticed that I was beginning to feel resentful that I even had to go in to work each day. It seemed that I was losing my grip on reality, but I ignored the warning signs. The black book seemed to have given me a new outlook on life that felt good for a change.

During lunch one day, I went to buy my weekly lottery ticket. Once again, I was compelled to jot down a string of numbers that were on one of the pages of my new best friend—the little black book. At Alfie’s, I wrote down the numbers again, hoping against hope that perhaps they’d be another winning set. I spent the week on pins and needles, waiting for the moment that I would again win more money.

On Saturday, I was no longer surprised to find that my numbers were the golden key--I had won $8,000 this time! I now had $17,000 in total winnings from the past month of playing the magical numbers. I couldn’t focus on anything else except the lottery as I made my way back home to tell Vicki. She was stunned, and told me that something was wrong with this scenario. I had a feeling of immense exhilaration, along with a sense that something was really gravely wrong with it. I was also rocked by this turn of events, but I couldn’t shake the idea that the book was magical in some way. We then had a contentious argument over it, leaving me angry at Vicki for bursting my bubble. She told me that she was worried about me and the changes that she was seeing. Who did she think she was, anyway? The book gave me power and I was invincible. I knew the book was magical and I couldn’t be convinced otherwise. I felt angry and defensive, and yet, deep inside, I had a sense of foreboding about the whole thing that made me apprehensive.

For the next couple of weeks, I found myself going to check on the book several times each day. I had a feeling that Vicki might steal the book. I was becoming obsessed with the idea that she would find it and take it away from me. She noticed that I was no longer going to work, showering, or doing anything I was supposed to be doing to maintain my daily hygiene. My hair became stringy and dirty, my clothing disheveled, and I had stopped eating. She was alarmed, and talked with me about my appearance. I became angry, and argued that I wasn’t doing anything out of the realm of normal and frankly told Vicki to mind her own damned business. However, I did not tell her that I had been fired from my job. I really didn’t care.

Nothing else mattered anymore except the black book and my new-found power. That Monday, I got another set of numbers and placed them on the lottery. On Saturday, I found that, indeed, once again, I had won $3000, for a grand total of $20,000! I walked home slowly, feeling that something ominous had just occurred. I was not happy. I was not excited. I had gained the magical power of the book and thousands of dollars, but I was losing myself, my friend, and everything that was important to me. I was filled with a sense of dread that almost felt like terror.

I tried to hide my feelings from Vicki when she arrived home, but wasn’t able to. She became frightened and expressed to me that perhaps something supernatural was happening. Both of us began crying. I acknowledged that I was scared and vowed that I would never place a lottery bet again. Vicki supported my decision as we sat down together on the couch and hugged each other. We both agreed that winning money through this bizarre and mystifying process was not worth losing myself. I then went to the drawer, withdrew the black notebook, and we walked to the park together. Going over to the mighty oak, we both got down on our knees and began to weave the oak roots back through the front cover. It took some time to replace the book, but we left it exactly as it had been found. When we finished, the book was hidden in a nook of the huge tree roots, and it was impossible to see from the outside. We walked home together slowly, hand in hand.