Scavengery

Elizabeth examines her sallow complexion in her bathroom mirror, “Vitamin D deficiency and I’m out of toilet paper,” then wraps two bandanas around her face, covers her eyes with dark sunglasses and slips on a pair of yellow rubber cleaning gloves, “Safe, so far.”

Double-masked, she checks her bank account on her iPhone: $20.15 and lets out a deep sigh strong enough to fog up her glasses. Elizabeth wipes them on her mask, then slowly closes her apartment door behind her.

The rising sun is blinding forcing her to squint like a vampire who forgot to close the lid on its coffin, “I need to be brave.” A quick glance around leaves her with a post-apocalyptic feeling of impending doom. There are no people or cars in the area just a slight breeze -- however the murder of crows caws much louder than usual today. She ducks, a reflex action, to avoid the swoop that just misses her head by a wingtip to retrieve a dead rat she nearly trampled on. Her glasses steam up again with another panicked breath as she slowly drags her feet along the broken concrete sidewalk on her way to the market remembering that she is “three, 2-ply – sheets” away from being unable to wipe her ass.

And then, Elizabeth trips over a crack in the sidewalk lurching forward she catches her foot on the edge of a tree-well and turns her ankle. She freefalls in slow motion hitting the curb with a thud and a groan. She cries out grasping her lower leg and inches her butt to curb to access the damage. Other than a couple scrapes, she bravely shakes off the hurt when she notices a little black Moleskine notebook laying in the dirt next to her. Tempted, she reaches for the cover but quickly pulls her hand away, “What am I thinking… it could be contaminated.” She slowly rises to her feet staring at the book as if the book’s about to flip open – and then limps ever so slightly down the block.

From a distance she sees the ginormous line at the local market stretching around the corner and up the street. People are standing spaced “socially-distant” with their necks bent forward and their thumbs pounding on the smooth screen of their cellphone keys texting away the boredom.

She takes her place at the end of the line and reaches inside her pocket feeling an empty pouch where her iPhone would be. “Shit! It must have slipped out of my pocket when I fell.” The thought of losing her only connection to her inner social media circle sends a panic through her entire nervous system. She asks the middle-aged man, with perfectly coiffed hair and the newest line of earbuds, watching “The Crown” on his iPhone to save her place. He nods as if he understands.

The injury she suffered from her earlier fall seems secondary as she jolts from the line in the direction toward her apartment. What starts off as a sprint quickly becomes a slow jog, then a speed walk to the corner that’s more than ten blocks away. When she nears the spot where she fell, she notices the little black book is now spine down, opened to the center, written in cursive are the words -- “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” Tears fill her eyes. She flashes back to a memory of her carefree college days when she runs across the 59th Street bridge, then lovingly embraces a very thin, but gorgeously androgenous man with beaming blue eyes. They lock in a kiss that stops time.

The loud honk of an obnoxious city driver snaps her back to her grim reality where she looks down again and the pages of the tiny black book waiver in the wind, "I miss my Madhatter..." She reaches down and picks up the book up fanning to the front cover -- “If lost, please return to the front steps at the red-gated house with a dragon on the front door, on Vista, just north of Franklin.” Curious, she tosses the tiny black book inside her reusable shopping bag.

In a desperate attempt to find her phone she squats down eyeing every dusty branch leaving no leaf unturned. Finally, at the foot of a STOP sign, she sees the cracked screen facing up. “FUBAR!” Elizabeth retrieves her broken phone and tosses it inside the bag along with the little black book.

As she makes her way back to the market, she hears a customer announce to the crowd outside, “They’re out of toilet paper, I bought the last roll.”

Exasperated, Elizabeth mumbles to herself, “Using my hand is looking like the only option,” until she eyes a convenience store across the street, then darts in that direction.

There’s no cue -- but the local drunken vagrant holds the door open for Elizabeth as she steps inside hoping to strike toilet bowl gold. She scans the aisles up and down but only manages to find a small bag of sanitary pads. “Depending on how I can angle these I might get multiple uses out of each one.” And then she eyes the metal containers near the Slurpee machine filled with 7/11 napkins. Talk about hitting the motherload of paper products. Quickly, she stuffs as much as her pockets can hold, then squeezes a short stack inside the waist of her expandable tights. She approaches the counter with a $1.59 gluten-free snack bar. The cashier gives her that hairy eyeball-look like he knows she’s up to trouble but he can’t frisk her for #metoo reasons. Elizabeth takes her debit card from the pin-pad and leaves with a spirited laugh, the giddiness of doing something secretly bad.

At home, she collapses on her sofa, frustrated as she calculates the remaining dollars and cents in her account -- $18.56. She stares at her cellphone that pings with texts she’s unable to retrieve due to the damaged screen.

Exasperated, she scans through the empty pages of the little black stopping again on the handwritten quote, “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” She closes the book only to flip open the flap on the front cover. This cryptic address captures her curiosity.

“Maybe this was some sort of pre-pandemic scavenger hunt? Worst case scenario I can drop it off, then hit up the nearby Ralph’s for pasta, butter and T.P.”

Elizabeth goes through her safety rituals of sanitizing then “double-masking” before putting on the yellow rubber gloves. Even though her ankle has slightly blued from her earlier fall, she manages a steady gate to the bus stop clutching the mysterious Moleskine.

With a handful of loose change, she boards the bus running on the holiday schedule. The driver puts his hand on the fare container, “Ride’s free, Miss.” Elizabeth takes the first seat, “Do you stop at Hollywood and Vista? “No, Gardner,” he says.

She watches city pass by her. The empty streets and sidewalks give an eerie feeling of hopelessness.

What normally would take close to an hour is mere minutes before bus approaches her stop. She disembarks, then heads up the hill towards her unknown destination. She’s winded from months of no exercise and the steep and steady climb. Entranced by the sound of her own breath, Elizabeth nearly misses the large house with red gates and dragon as described. She backtracks down the sidewalk approaching a fenced-in garden instead of a driveway. Slowly, she ascends the front cemented steps, and is about to ring the doorbell when a hunched over, elderly woman in her 80’s opens the door. Startled, Elizabeth takes a step back.

The woman’s kind smile disarms Elizabeth quickly, “How can I help you?” Elizabeth holds up the tiny black book, “Does this belong to you?” The woman appears surprised as she takes the book from her hand, “Quite possibly.” She opens the cover, then flips to the centerfold of the book with the handwritten quote, “Can you tell me how your life is different from yesterday?”

Elizabeth smiles wryly, “Yesterday, I was connected to the outside world without leaving my home and today, it seems that leaving my house brought me back to an inner life that I longed to forget.”

The woman raised her eyebrows intrigued, “Heartbreak will do that to you. And what prompted your excursion?” Elizabeth laughs, “Well, to tell the truth, I was in search of toilet paper…” The elderly woman claps back, “Well, the least I can do is get you a roll for the road. Stay here, I’ll be right back. Oh, and do you happen to know where the quote inside the book originated?” Elizabeth nods, “Alice in Wonderland.”

The elderly woman closes the door leaving Elizabeth on the doorstep; she grins thinking she’s fallen down her own rabbit hole of "scavengery" as she replays the events from the day in her mind. In less than a minute the elderly woman returns with a small brown bag containing a roll of toilet paper, “Glad tiding, my dear. Stay safe and well,” she hands it to Elizabeth, then closes the door.

As Elizabeth peeks inside the bag, she glances at the roll and mutters to herself, “I still have $18.56, and a free bus ride home. Oh, the lengths one will travel for a good ass-wiping.”

About an hour later, Elizabeth takes the toilet paper roll from the bag. Written on the top sheets, “Good deeds are always appreciated, but seldom rewarded.” Inside the center of the cardboard circular is a roll of hundred-dollar bills. Her eyes widen, stunned as she counts out $20,000 in cash with a tiny note that states, "Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity, that you appreciate classic literature and a fine notebook to write it in."