Uri's choice

Sunlight caught Uri’s eye in a blast forcing him to look away. The brightness that crept across the floor, erupting a blinding brilliance onto anything shiny, was like a timer set to keep him from thinking about work too much. It had also forced the little black notebook in the seat across from him into his field of view. He snatched up his backpack and moved across the empty aisle, plopping down next to the book. He glanced around the gate again as if he hadn’t made sure it was empty when he decided to set up there. His flight was to leave in an hour provided the airline didn’t delay it again. Uri had walked past his boarding gate, seeing it packed full of waiting passengers, choosing instead to wait here. He secluded himself yet stayed within earshot of any announcements about his flight. He hated the crowds. And despite knowing he wouldn’t be able to avoid the way people cluster in poor attempts at lines the first moment of boarding, he could at least avoid the calamity until the last minute.

He reached for the notebook with forced casualness in a display for anyone that might be watching him. For a moment he hoped it was empty as he loved using notebooks at the start of his projects. Admittedly he’d only ever use the first third of one before the need for graphics and links overwhelmed him. Maybe this one would inspire him to use it to completion. It did look nicer than the ones he stockpiled when the dollar sale price compelled him. Yet even after he glanced around again, he flipped through and saw that there were heavy pen strokes through a lot of it. Reasserting himself to start at the beginning he opened it to its first page.

Thick pen strokes made tree trunks and light feathering defined leaves, mist, and brush of a forest. It was stunning. Not only did the drawing seem to transcend the lines of the pages but the image also resembled the forest from Uri's current project. Uri designed video games and loved mystical and sometimes mid-evil settings. This image pulled him back into thinking about work with seduction and not urgency, the way his deadline did. The artist hadn’t erased the lines but made them irrelevant by the immersion they commanded, the way flames of a burning building cast a forgetfulness of the structure they devour. He glanced around again with a frantic hope no one was coming back for the book. Uri assumed its owner had forgotten it. This was only the first page. Uri felt a sense of having won a prize he hadn’t imagined. He held in his hands not only an inspiration to finish his job on time but also innumerable possibilities proportionate to the unknown number of pages left. He turned the page.

“locker 137 in terminal C code 1634 20 k”

Uri laughed as he realized that referred to a locker only a few hundred feet away from him.

Certainly, the 20 k didn’t mean twenty thousand dollars, but it did mean he would go check what was there. He saw the locker room just after the smoking lounge and had thought do people still use those? just after thinking, do people still smoke?

Instantly the unimaginable contents of the rest of the notebook vanished from his mind. He grabbed his bag, with the notebook firmly in hand, he headed for the lockers.

There in seconds, Uri fought the urge to look back and see if anyone had followed him. He also wanted to check a mirror to see if he looked as flushed as the heat in his face suggested. The locker room was empty in what seemed part of a joint effort, a conspiracy with the sun, then forcing him to consider the notebook, now to open the locker.

He found locker 137 and stared at it for close to a minute before reaching for the keypad. Then the regrets of what he hadn’t said to Angelica last night pushed him to punch the number in. He tried the latch and the ten-inch square door opened.

An oddly small duffle bag lay inside. Uri shook his head. Maybe there were twenty thousand dollars in it. The bag looked full. He grabbed the bag and left the locker room. Without thinking about it he returned to the very seat he had left moments ago. His flight was to leave in forty-five minutes. He sat with his backpack at his feet, the tiny duffle bag in the seat the notebook had warmed, and the little book of possibilities still gripped in his right hand.

Setting the notebook in his lap, Uri reached to unzip the duffle bag. A second of tugging on it revealed a few bound bundles of cash. Uri zipped the bag shut again, leaned back, and took a deep breath. He had no idea who or what the money was for. Paying for murder, drug money, a bribe, the dark possibilities were becoming endless in his mind. He remembered the notebook. It had to have answers, yet his hands seemed heavy now as he picked it up again and opened it. The fourth and fifth pages were blank. The sixth was also empty but the drawing of a woman on the seventh overshadowed that fact. It was in the same style as the forest. Bold strokes defined an overcoat, lips, and eyes, as her neck, face, and hair were the subtleties. Uri pushed further into the book. It took several more turns before he reached anything. “You stole it. Now what?” The words got another laugh from Uri as he glanced around the terminal. Was someone playing him? Had he fallen for some videoed practical joke? He turned more pages. This must be a journal logging someone’s crime. At this point, if Uri figured out where the money came from, maybe he could turn the money and book over to the authorities without being guilty of anything. More scenic drawings, a large old, twisted tree, a windmill in the distance, and a lake with a small rocky island in its middle, caught Uri’s imagination in the same way the forest had. The tree was like one at the end of a forest in Uri’s current game project. The windmill and lake seemed a fitting part of the next level. He envisioned some magic-user-type character as an ally or a villain there. Just as the concepts had taken Uri’s mind from the bag of money and the threat of its origin, someone walking into the empty gate drew him back.

A woman, with an overcoat, and features identical to the woman in the drawing sat two isles over and facing Uri. She seemed preoccupied and more withdrawn than the image had made her out to be, but it was certainly her.

Now Uri suspected something greater behind all of this. Something cosmic or perhaps the universe itself testing his grip on reality. Why would this book have a picture of that woman? Could it be hers? Did she draw herself? The woman glanced back at Uri in response to his long stares. He managed to smile but quickly looked away. He then returned his attention to the book, even holding it up a bit to see if the woman recognized it.

“It’s to tell you who to look for,” were the words on the next page. Uri flipped quickly now, masking his surprise to himself as much as to the woman or anyone else watching him. “It’s okay. You’re not in trouble, not yet anyway,” came on the next page. Was it talking to him? Uri shook his head and glanced back to the woman. She was smiling at him. He returned the smile before looking back at the notebook. “Boarding time,” three pages later. And as he read it, he heard the announcement coming from his gate. “Attention passengers, we will begin boarding at this time.” Uri shut the book, threw one strap of his bag over his shoulder, and then took the small duffle in his hands. Without looking at the woman, Uri made his way to his gate to be one of those who stood just outside the boarding area without any regard for the zone he was in or if it was his time. In what seemed like only a moment later it was his turn to board.

“Sir,” the woman at the post called to Uri. “That bag,” she said pointing at the duffle. Uri’s chest became a block of ice and his face a small flame. “You get one personal item. Either combine those or I’ll have to check one at your cost.”

“Oh yes,” Uri said. He spun his backpack around and unzipped it to stuff the duffle in.

“Sir, you’ll need to stand over here and not block the way,” the woman said. A passenger went around Uri.

“Okay,” Uri said, stepping to the side as he zipped the now overfilled backpack closed again.

The woman shook her head as she took Uri’s phone and scanned his pass. The beeping sounded very different from the last passenger’s scan. Finally, the woman looked at him. “Go ahead,” she said.

“Great," Uri said as he made his way down the ramp. His ability to breathe slowly returned to him. The line to board moved quicker than he expected. As if it helped mask what had happened from others, he kept thoughts of the notebook, locker, and duffle bag away from the surface of his brain. A few rows from his seat an attendant called to him. “Sir, would you like to use this overhead space?” She asked as she reached for his bag.

“No, I’ll keep it,” he said, pulling away from her. “Sorry.” He managed an apologetic smile. “Thanks though.” Finding his seat, Uri tucked his backpack under the seat in front of him. All traces or proof of what had just occurred in the terminal were gone from his mind. They had all vanished until he heard a voice say, “This is me.” Uri looked up to see the woman from the notebook standing at his row. As he motioned for her to sit, Uri’s mind increased speed as if it were about to take flight too. He debated putting in earphones but managed to avoid the woman until they were in the air and at cruising altitude. Just after the seat belt sign went off the woman leaned over to Uri. “You get a choice,” she said. “Either the notebook or the bag. Whichever you take is yours without any strings. You just give me the one you don’t want when we land. Got it?” she asked.

Uri turned to her as she finished. She was stunning and seemed warm and friendly like the sketch now. He nodded.

Uri spent the rest of the two-hour flight staring out the window. As the landing approach began, he rubbed his hands on his thighs. The moment the plane stopped at the arrival gate the woman turned to him. “So, what did you decide?”

Uri took a deep breath. The thought that he would likely never see this woman again came to him. “Isn’t it obvious?” Uri said.