Thrift Store Finders, Thrift Store Keepers?

Frank was having a bad day. More accurately, he was having a particularly awful day, after a long string of bad days. He had argued with Liza again that morning. This time over the unpaid internet bill, but it was always something. Then, his car broke down on the way to work. He had to call a tow truck to bring it to a garage and grab a cab he couldn’t afford to the warehouse. There, his supervisor Bill wrote him up.

“Look, we all got problems Frank, and this is the third time you’ve been late this month. I can’t keep letting it slide.” Every person in this building could be late and Bill wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but if Frank was two minutes late with a valid reason, it was a write up. Frank bit his tongue and nodded. He looked down deferentially, but his guts were roiling, and he was turning purple with rage. Bill pretended not to notice. He patted Frank on the shoulder and strode on.

If he was late once more, he’d get a suspension. Frank sighed as he hauled the oil-streaked coveralls over his jeans and t-shirt. I just can’t catch a break, he thought.

It seemed he was right. Within the hour the garage called. “Your car isn’t worth the cost to fix it. The chassis is cracked, and the engine is fried. Legally, we can’t let you drive it out of here. Best we can do is give you two hundred bucks for scrap.”

Frankie swallowed. “I’ll, I’ll let you know.” Was this someone else walking all over him? Like Liza? Like Bill?

His dead mother’s words replayed in his mind: “You can’t let people take advantage of you Frankie. You deserve better.”

He decided to go offsite for lunch to clear his head. “Hey Frank, remember this morning okay?” Bill shouted for all to hear. “Don’t come back late from lunch.”

Frank nodded as he pushed through the heavy metal door. “Nothing like kicking a guy when he’s down!” he yelled, but only after he heard the click of the latch behind him.

He made his way across the road to the biggest thrift store in town, the Value Vault. He used to come here with his mom; it always made him feel better. The shuffle of strangers’ feet and the murmur of their voices, the scrape of metal hangers across closet rods, the customary smell of mildew and body odor, it was all oddly comforting. The world outside could continue being a shit storm. In there, for that hour, it couldn’t touch him.

He liked to start in the front corner, in the book section, and make his way around. Clockwise. Slowly. Methodically. He fingered the spines on the shelves. All the usual suspects were there, dogeared Agatha Christie’s and hard covers by James Herriot. Then, something unusual caught his eye: a Moleskine notebook. Who would buy someone’s used notebook? Frank wondered as he pulled it off the crowded shelf, unwedging it with a jerk of his index finger.

It was jet black but battered, the elastic enclosure frayed but intact, just like the ones his mother used to write in. They were her only small extravagance in their frugal lives, and she would use every inch of them.

This notebook was filled with curled, almost illegible script, page after page, with little space between the words and no gaps between the paragraphs. The margins were crowded with doodles: poorly drawn flowers that mirrored the loopy handwriting. It was instantly familiar to Frank, like his mother’s but not exactly.

The pages turned of their own accord to the most referenced page in the book, where the spine was cracked from overuse. Before he could read it, he noticed a scrap of paper in the corner. It got caught in the air conditioning and lifted out of the book. It slowly cascaded to the floor.

Frank bent down and picked it up. “Buy the pants in aisle eight,” it instructed, in the same cursive. Weird, Frank thought as he jammed the Moleskine back onto the shelf. But he made his way to aisle eight, forgoing his usual system. It was crowded with sweaters and polos - no pants. He scanned the racks as he walked along slowly. Finally, tucked nearly out of site at the end, a lone pair of threadbare khakis.

“What the hell,” Frank sputtered. He looked around, making sure he was alone. He. He gingerly lifted them down and examined them from all sides, trying to see what was so special. They were grease-stained, with a pleat straight out of the nineties, at least three inches too short, and five inches too wide. Frank shrugged and began hanging them back up when his arm brushed the pocket and felt a bulge.

He reached into the pocket tentatively, as if it were a rat trap. He was wincing, bracing for the impact, but all he felt inside was the thin, crisp linen of a carefully handled bill, then another, then another. More than he could count then and there. He peeked inside and could see ‘1000’ emblazoned in the corner of the outermost bill. Without another thought he made a beeline for the checkout, khakis draped over his arm.

He tried to act normal, but he could feel his earlobes burning and sweat blooming on the underarms of his t-shirt. He was looking over his shoulders like he was doing something wrong. Frank chastised himself internally. You’re just buying a pair of pants at a thrift store, Frankie. It’s not a crime. Stop acting so suspicious!

He felt overcome with guilt and excitement as he passed the pants across the counter. His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt thick. He hoped the cashier wouldn’t try to talk to him; his mind was occupied with a back and forth dialogue all its own. You should have just pocketed the cash you dummy! But the note had said to buy the pants. Anyway, it’s too late now.

He held his breath as the cashier unfurled the khakis. Her nametag said Gloria, the same as his mom’s. She held the pants up and examined them much longer than necessary. Breathe, Frankie. Keep your cool. She’s just doing her job. Would she feel the wad of bills and remove them? She deftly doubled the pants up, leg over leg, then folded them again, and again: an expert maneuver she had repeated many times before. As she folded the pants smaller and smaller, Frankie felt his problems shrink along with them. He could feel his pulse slow and his temperature returning to a normal level. Finally, she unceremoniously thrust them in an old plastic bag, which crinkled in protest.

“Honey, those pants are wrecked. I’m only charging you half for them. $2.30 please.”

“Oh, that’s okay mam. I, I like them,” he stumbled over the words.

“No worries, you enjoy.”

As if I didn’t feel shitty enough and I can’t believe I’m getting away with this, repeated in his mind one after the other, over and over as he pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his frayed jeans and fished out his credit card. He was always on the cusp of maxing out the card, so he willed the payment to go through. Mercifully, he heard an affirmative beep and a receipt churning out of the machine.

“Receipt in the bag?” The cashier asks.

“Sure, thanks Gloria,” he squeaked as he fumbled for the bag’s handle. Their knuckles grazed and he looked up and met her eyes: blue, like his mother’s.

“No problem Frank,” she replied and he felt the blood drain from his face. She smiled, as if reading his mind. “Your credit card. Your name was on your credit card.”

“Oh right,” he laughed. “Sorry.”

Frank backed away, right into a customer’s cart. They scowled and he mumbled another apology, then rushed for the door. As soon as he was outside, he began to run.

The rhythmic slapping of his feet on the cement, his mouth turned up in a smile, he hadn’t felt this good in years. He ducked into an alley and counted out the bills: twenty pristine thousand-dollar bills. Twenty thousand dollars! He had never seen this much money before, let alone owned it!

He checked his watch. Lunch hour was long over and there was no way he was letting Bill crush his good mood. He texted Liza: “Can you pick me up? My car crapped out and I can’t go back to work.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” she replied, accompanied by a wide-eyed emoji.

“Nothing like that! Long story. Tell you here?”

Ten minutes later, she rolled up to the corner and Frank piled into the rusted out Civic, eyes shining. The whole story poured out of him in an excited gush, from when his car stalled out to counting the bills in the alleyway.

“I hate to burst your bubble Frank, but you have to return it.”

“Are you kidding me Liza?”

“It’s the right thing to do! It’s not ours.”

“Value Vault isn’t even a charity. It’s a corporation! Besides, whoever owned these pants is probably dead!”

“Some little black book tells you to buy a pair of pants? It sounds like a setup.”

“The universe has been shitting all over me lately. This is the break I’ve needed.”

“Sorry to hear our life is so awful for you Frank.”

It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the car. Frank’s short-lived buoyancy was a distant memory.

“Please don’t turn this around Liza. This is a good thing.”

“Karma will catch up with you if you keep it.”

“What if this is karma catching up with me?”

She gave an exasperated huff. “Why don’t we just sleep on it?”

“Fine,” Frank said, although he felt anything but. A few minutes later, he tried again. “Just think about everything that money could do for us. We could get out of debt. We could get you a new car. We could rent a nicer place.”

“You do whatever you want, but I don’t want anything to do with that money.” Liza flicked on her indicator with much more force than necessary. “I think it’s cursed.”

Frank turned towards the window, rested his forehead against the glass, and fingered the bills, still nestled in the khaki’s pocket. “Well, I think it’s blessed,” he mumbled. If Liza had heard him, she made no sign.

That night, Frank took the bus out to Value Vault and walked under the fluorescent lights in a daze. Liza couldn’t possibly expect him to give up this life-altering sum of money. But she did, and she would probably leave him if he kept it. She was all he had.

Maybe the little black book will know what I should do, Frank thought. He backtracked and ducked in between the bookshelves. He located the Moleskine right where he left it and delicately peeled back the elastic enclosure.

He tried to read through the book from the beginning and couldn’t make heads or tails of the contents. Then, he tried reading the last page. Nothing again. He began opening it at random and reading a passage wherever his hand fell. One, two, three, times. Nothing. He sighed and sunk down to the floor, threading his legs together in a knot. “Criss-cross applesauce” his mother used to sing, kissing him between each syllable. He remembered sitting in this same aisle with her, reading books they couldn’t afford.

He laid the Moleskine down on its spine and let it fold open. Just like earlier in the day, the book fell to the often-referenced page near the center. His eyes zeroed in on the first sentence on the page: “Only you know what to do.”

He snapped the book closed, stood up, and returned it to the shelf. It was right.