The Pocket

“Good morning, Billy!”

“Hiya Erin.” Will smiled warmly to the barista as he walked into the coffee shop. He hated being called Billy, but for Erin he made an exception. He liked Erin, though he never told her.

As he walked up to the espresso bar, Erin leaned onto the counter next to a small jar of coffee mints (“Does anyone actually buy those?” Will thought) and smiled back at Will.

“The usual today?” Erin asked.

“Yeah....no, wait. Just a medium coffee today. Don’t want to get too hyper, ya know?” His smile turned awkward as he heard his words. “That’s how you win the ladies over, Will. Fret about caffeine jitters first thing in the morning.”

“JING!” The shrill chime of the bell over the cafe’s door rang as someone came in, breaking Will’s train of thought.

“No problem,” Erin said. “One coffee coming up. Take a seat and I’ll bring it over.” Her smile hadn’t changed after his awkward comment.

“Thanks, Erin. You know where I’ll be.” Will always sat at the same seat in the cafe. It was next to the window so he could see Main Street outside and the activity inside the cafe. It was close enough to the fireplace to be cozy but not too hot. It had one of the small tables, not the big communal-types most of the other seats had. And, it had the perfect angle to watch Erin as she worked behind the espresso bar.

Will’s gaze broke from Erin’s eyes as he turned toward the cafe’s seating area. Another man was sitting in his favorite seat, looking directly at Will. Or was he? There were a dozen or so people in the cafe. Will thought, “Why is he looking at me?”

He turned back to Erin, who also noticed the man in “Billy’s seat”, and gave her a “Who the hell is this guy?” head nudge towards his seat. She returned the silent question with a silent answer. “Beats me” portrayed by a shoulder shrug and a head tilt causing a wisp of hair that was tucked behind her left ear to fall out, framing the left side of her face. Will melted a little as he watched her tuck it back behind her ear.

With their silent correspondence yielding no clues towards the man’s identity, Will said, “Um, I guess I’ll be sitting over there today,” gesturing to one of the other chairs with a small table.

“OK, Billy. I’ll be right over with your coffee.”

Will made his way towards the table. “This is ok, I guess,” he thought. As he strolled across the cafe, he couldn’t help but feel like he was still being watched. He glanced up towards his “usual” seat, and saw that the man was still staring at him. Will quickly looked away and arrived at his surrogate table. He sat down and pulled out his notebook.

———

William Browning came to Perk Up Cafe every Saturday to write. His professors enjoyed his creative writing samples, though he still had a long way to go before he could make a career out of it. The coffee was good. And cheap, which fit his dwindling budget. He’d spent most of his savings purchasing a fancy laptop, but quickly transitioned to writing his ideas in a physical notebook instead.

One day at the bookshop, he picked a little black notebook off the shelf and brought it to the register.

“Ah! Moleskine,” said the cashier, his name tag explaining that this was Brandon and he was a Bookseller. “Nice!”

“Excuse me?” Will said.

“A great notebook. Perfect size. Amazing paper quality. Not too heavy. Plus, they have this cool pocket in the back cover where you can stash stuff.”

“Uh huh.”

“I like black, too. Not too fancy. Although there are some fun cover designs.”

“Ok. How much is it?”

“Plus! They make pens that fit on the covers. Very aesthetic! We have a few for sale over there...”

“I have a pen, thanks. Just the notebook.”

“Okie dokie.” Brandon said as he rang it up. “That’ll be $23.80.”

“Jesus. For a notebook?” said Will.

“It’s worth it, man” said Brandon. “I’m tellin’ ya. You’ll never wanna write in anything else. You want a bag?”

Will stuck his credit card into the chip reader. “No thanks. This is fine.” He picked up the notebook and walked out.

———

“Here ya go, Billy.”

“Huh? Oh, thanks, Erin.” Will looked up to see Erin with his coffee. He put down his pen as she bent down over his table. Her baggy polo shirt and work apron left plenty to the imagination. “Maybe at some point you can actually get to know her,” he thought to himself.

“What’s with Mr. Crazy Eyes?” she whispered, placing the cup on Will’s table.

Will glanced in the direction Erin was looking.

The man was still staring at him. But from this angle, it seemed he was also looking out the window. “Must have a lazy eye or something,” Will thought. “Hopefully he’s not just some weirdo staring at me.”

“No idea. I’ve never seen him before, have you?”

“Nope.” said Erin, “he’s been there all morning, nursing that cup of coffee. Kinda weird. It’s like he’s waiting for someone.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Will said.

“I don’t know. He gives me the creeps. But, who am I to judge?” She shrugged and headed back to help some customers. Will smiled as she walked away.

Will had lost his train of thought. As his form of meditation, he picked up the notebook and flipped through all of the pages from back to front. It cleared his mind watching the blank pages in the back transition to pages filled with words.

Before the next flip, with the pages in his left hand, Will looked at the pocket designed into the back cover and chuckled. He thought about Brandon, the Bookseller, who’d sold him this notebook. Brandon was so proud of that damn pocket. After buying the notebook, Will had stuffed the receipt for his new laptop into the pocket and promptly forgot that he’d put it there. A few weeks later, the store wouldn’t let him return the laptop without the receipt. Months later, during a meditative page-flip, he looked inside the pocket and found the receipt. He never used the pocket again.

Page-flipping got his mind back on track. He picked up his pen to continue writing when he heard Erin shout, “Charlie, are you all right?”

Will looked up and saw Charles Dorning choking on something in front of the counter. Erin started making her way around to help Charles. Will got up from his seat and hurried over. He knew the Heimlich and had a straight shot to Charles, faster than Erin would from behind the counter. As he made his way across the cafe, he noticed Mr. Crazy Eyes still sitting calmly in his chair. One eye watching the drama, the other following Will across the room.

Will made it to Charles before Erin did. He stood behind him, got his arms into position and pulled in and up. A glistening white ball shot out of Charles’ mouth, flew across the cafe, and hit the window with a “plink”.

“Jesus. Thanks, Will.” Charles gasped. “First time that’s ever happened.”

“What was it?” Will asked.

“One of those damn coffee mints.” said Charles. “I buy them all the time. Never choked on one, though. Thanks for saving my life.”

“Thanks for not dying.” Will smirked. “I’m sure Erin would’ve done a fine job if I wasn’t around.”

“Our hero!” Erin said in a mockingly flirtatious tone. She locked eyes with Will, giving him that sweet smile again, tucking the wisp of hair behind her left ear before heading back to the counter.

Will smiled back and instinctively walked back to his “usual” seat. He looked down at the mint on the floor. “Must have rolled over here after hitting the window.” He bent down to pick it up then thought, “l should use a napkin. Let me just grab my notebo...”

But his notebook wasn’t there. Panic swept over him as he thought of the work he’d lost. Countless hours of writing. Nothing “backed up to the cloud”. No extra copies. Just...gone.

Then Will remembered, “Wait, I wasn’t sitting here today. I was sitting over there...” he looked over to the small table he was sitting at earlier. There was his black notebook. Safe and sound. Cover closed. Pen sitting neatly next to it. Will went to get his notebook, but stopped again.

The man was gone.

Mr. Crazy Eyes wasn’t sitting at Will’s usual table anymore. Will hadn’t noticed him get up to leave. “Maybe he left during the choking commotion?” Will thought. “Guess I’ll sit at my table today, after all.”

He went over, picked up the pen and notebook, and brought it back to his usual table. Along the way, he noticed the notebook felt...different.

He sat down, opened it, and grasped the pages, ready to start flipping again. He immediately noticed writing on the pocket on the back cover. It was very elaborate calligraphy. And the pocket was filled with something.

Will looked inside the pocket and found two stacks of crisp $100 bills neatly tucked and perfectly placed inside the pocket. “What the hell?” he thought as he pulled out the money and flipped through the bills. All 100’s. Dozens of them! “The hell?” he said, aloud this time.

His first thought was that he picked up the wrong notebook, so he opened to a page with writing on it. It was his. This was his notebook. But where did the money come from? And how did it get there? And when? And who wrote the....? He flipped back to the intricate writing on the pocket:

Lives saved. Roads paved.

New tasks for those brave.

Will looked around the cafe. Things had gone back to normal. The bell on the entrance door rang it’s shrill “JING!” as Charles opened the door to leave the cafe. “Thanks again, Will!” he called with a wave before walking out.

“That bell definitely didn’t ring during the commotion,” Will thought. “Where did Mr. Crazy Eyes go?”

Will realized the only logical explanation. “The bathroom, of course.” He glanced at the bathroom door. “Occupied” showed in red letters over the door handle.

As if on cue, the word rotated around, displaying “Vacant” in green as the door unlocked. “Guess I’d better get up and give him his seat back,” Will thought.

But it wasn’t Mr. Crazy Eyes who exited the bathroom. It was a woman. “The hell?” Will said again. He looked down at his notebook at the neat stacks of money, now sitting outside the pocket.

“This makes no sense” he thought. “There wasn’t time for anyone to put this money in here so perfectly. Plus, it must have taken time to write this. Who the hell writes in calligraphy? And where did Mr. Crazy Eyes go?”

He sat there looking at the words. “Is this a joke? Or a test?” He counted the money. Two perfect stacks of one hundred $100 bills. “This is $20,000. In cash. This could help. A lot. And I know just where to start.”

He stuffed the money back into the pocket of the notebook. He was unable to make it as tidy as he’d found them. He closed the notebook, stood up, and walked over to the counter where Erin had just finished with a customer.

“Hey, Erin.”

She looked up a Will. “Hey Billy! I’m really impressed with how fast you got to Charlie! Good thing you know the Heimlich, otherwise I might have had to embarrass you...”

“What time do you get off today?”

Her smile faded. She was taken aback by the abruptness of the question. “Three o’clock.”

“Do you have any plans for tonight?”

Her smile returned. This time bigger than ever.