One Way Ticket

The first thing you should do when you win the lottery is nothing. Go nowhere. Tell no one. Think through your next steps and come up with a strategy before you do anything at all. Then you call a lawyer. At least, that's the move when it's a very large amount of money. Winning $20,000 is nothing to sniff at, but it's also not an incredibly large sum. A year's salary for someone making the bare minimum. Enough to pay off some debts and maybe have enough left over for one extra-extravagant meal—if you're the responsible type.

I, however, have never been the responsible type. About ten seconds after I realize I've won this modest fortune, I'm looking up flights to Bora Bora and all-inclusive resorts. It’s been a rough year. A rough lifetime. And all I really want is a small taste of the good life since I'm doomed to grind away all my days until I age out of the workforce. It's nothing to look forward to.

Here's the problem, though. I'm one-hundred percent confident that someone’s been watching me for the past week or two. And I don’t think it has anything to do with the twenty-grand lottery ticket I scored. But it could. Before, I would have called myself paranoid and walked out the door to cash in on my ticket. But two weeks ago, I received a package with no postage and no return address. The only thing inside was a small black notebook with one line filled on the first page.

“All the world’s a stage. Is your part worth playing?”

I’ve got no idea what that means, but since the book arrived strange things keep happening in my vicinity.

First, there was the geriatric who fell onto the subway tracks just before the A-Train was due to arrive. There were tons of people who rushed to help him up, but he refused to move and called for me by name. I mean, I could have ignored him, nobody would have known who the name belonged to, but there’s something about a person asking you directly for help that works like a kind of magic. Its not really a choice after that. I jumped down onto the tracks to help him and the last thing I saw was a bright light coming up the tunnel. I don’t really know how we got out, but when the train pulls up, we’re both standing on the platform like nothing ever happened and everyone is staring at me like they forgot the old man even existed. Until someone says, “He’s bleeding! Is anyone a doctor?” A few people crowded in to deal with a cut on the old man’s head. I panicked and took off and just ran the whole three miles home. It took forever and all I wanted to do was collapse as soon as I opened the door, but for some reason I felt like I needed to look at that little black book again first.

That was a mistake.

“Being the hero means you show up every time.”

I tore my apartment up looking for whoever wrote the new entry, or some kind of evidence of breaking and entry. There was nothing, though, and I convinced myself that the new writing must have been there the whole time and I just missed it somehow. I spent hours flipping through the book and back again trying to find any kind of clue. The black cover was some sort of construction paper, but heavier and more durable, and it appeared to be hand-stitched to the thick, cream-colored, lined paper on the inside. There was nothing to tell me who had left it for me or why. I tucked the notebook into a drawer and decided to figure it out another day.

But a couple days later, though, the crazy struck again. This time I was at work, sitting in my gray cubicle feeling my soul seeping out of my ears while I plugged away at the usual mind-numbing reports, when my office phone rang. Nobody in my department ever receives calls. We’re not the people you call to get things done. We’re the ones on whose desks you dump a pile of all the stuff you don’t want to deal with, and then go about your day feeling good about how much you accomplished by offloading your busy work. I wasn’t even sure how the company expects us to answer the phone and all of my hard-earned customer service skills few right out of my head.

“Uh… hello?”

“Rooftop. You have five minutes.”

Before I could respond to the robotic voice on the other end of the lined, the dial tone blared in my ear.

“Who was that?” Rodney, from the cubicle beside me, asked. Rodney doesn’t really care who called; he just wants to know everybody’s business because he loves to spill tea.

“Wrong number.”

“Figures,” Rodney said. “I was hoping something exciting was finally happening around here.”

“Sorry, not today,” I said.

But then I got to thinking, what if it was today? I looked at my clock. Three minutes and forty-five seconds left to find out if there actually was something waiting for me on the roof. I asked Rodney to watch my desk while I stepped out to the ‘restroom’ hopped in the elevator to the top floor. I had to take the stairs to the roof access and stepped out into blinding sunlight with ten seconds to spare.

The roof was empty. I thought someone was playing a trick on me but then I heard someone screaming for help from somewhere far below. I don’t know why I ran to the side of the building and looked down over the edge like an idiot. It’s not like I could have done anything to help whoever was screaming from way up there. While I was looking down, I got vertigo or something and lost my balance. I don’t remember falling or how I managed not to die when I hit the ground, but the group of four men that had cornered a young couple in the alley looked like they saw a ghost. I’m not proud of myself for what I did next. I’ve never really had to fight anyone like that before, but I was so angry.

These girls looked like they were still in their teens and they clung to each other desperately, hoping for even a few seconds longer together before their attackers brought all of their worst fears to life. Nobody deserves this, especially not young people just trying to live and love in peace. I kind of lost control and the muggers got hurt. Badly. I know the girls were probably traumatized as much by what they witnessed as they were by what almost happened to them, but they were good kids and even had the manners to say thank you before they left. If it was me, I probably would have just run screaming from the alley as soon as I could. I don’t think they’ll call the cops though. I mean, what could they even tell them? I’m not even sure what I’d tell them.

I called back to my office and told Rodney I’d gotten sick and had to leave without notice to clean myself up. Of course, he went and ran his mouth right away, but when my boss called a few minutes later she was more understanding than I expected. She gave me the rest of the day off and even said it wouldn’t count against my sick leave since there was only a couple of hours left anyway. It’s times like these I don’t entirely hate my job. They don’t make a fuss when the ugly, unmentionable parts of life interfere with productivity. We’re only human, after all.

I was too much of a mess to be seen in public. Would have drawn too many questions with no answers that wouldn’t land me in a cell or padded room. I had to hide out until after dark and hoof it home, again. After the longest shower of my life, I went back to the little black book in my drawer.

“No act of kindness is ever random.”

Now, I knew for sure that hadn’t been in the book before and I still had no idea what any of it meant. I was on edge all week, waiting for this newest addition to make sense. I was in so much of a daze that I barely noticed when a pregnant lady at the bodega let me go ahead of her. She made a half-joke about maybe giving away a winning lottery ticket by letting me cut, but she’d let me keep the money anyway since it was probably fate or Karma at that point. We both smiled since the odds of either of us winning anything was super low.

Yesterday, I saved that same lady from a drunk driver running the red light. I don’t think she remembered me. Or maybe things just happened too fast for her to notice.

Now, looking at the winning ticket and flights to Bora Bora, I think maybe I should check the little black book again.

“Dress for the job you want.”

I back out of the travel website and a pop-up ad flashes on my screen with a picture of a group of serious looking businesspeople tearing open their button up shirts to reveal bright superhero costumes underneath.

SUIT UP CUSTOM TAILORING. DURABLE FINERY FOR THE URBAN WARRIOR.

It’s cheesy, but effective so I click on the ad expecting to see a selection of over-priced blazers, slacks and business suits. I’m redirected to a site with a sleek video that zooms over the curves and contours of a people dressed in what can only be described as carbon-fiber super suits. Prices start at $15,000. Discounts for do-gooders. Call for a consultation.

I glance at the book, but I don’t need to open it to know what I need to do next. I pick up my phone and dial the number on my phone.

“Took you long enough.”