You're Welcome

It was just a normal day. That’s usually how these sorts of stories start, with the narrator waxing poetic about how today was no different than the day before it. I went through my normal morning routine without a hiccup and made it to the Metro on time. The train was late, as usual, and conveniently empty. I went to the back and found a seat opposite a person who immediately caught my attention.

Normally, I don’t notice people on the train. Usually, I have my headphones on listening to my favorite podcast, Lore. I guess what caught my attention about this person was that I couldn’t tell whether they were male or female. Their clothing didn’t give it away, and our faces, obscured by masks, didn’t help. They were wearing the bottom half of a Guy Fawkes mask, and their dark hair was pulled back neatly into a ponytail. They carried no purse, suitcase, or backpack, just a book that rested on their lap underneath long delicate fingers.

Our eyes met, I smiled, but I don’t know why I did. We stared at each other for just a moment, and then the doors opened. The driver announced, “Metro Center,” followed by a rush of people entering the car. I could still see the person softly swaying in their seat to the rhythm of the Metro as it made its way through the underground. At Farragut West, they stood up to get off, and as the doors opened, I happened to look at the seat they gave up, and there sat the book they were holding.

My friend Vanessa had a Bullet Journal that looked similar to it, and I knew that she would have been distraught to lose it. I guess that knowledge is what compelled me to grab it in the first place. I was only one stop away from work, and it was a nice day. I didn’t mind getting off the train early and walking the rest of the way.

I heard the familiar “Doors closing” overhead and grabbed the book, darting out of the doors before they closed completely.

The platform was full of people. I must have looked deranged as I made my way through the crowd stopping to look all around me for the person who left the book on the seat. I thought I caught a glimpse of them at the top of the stairs. I made my way through the crowd as fast as I could in the heels; I was still breaking in. By the time I reach the top of the stairs, I had regretted my decision to walk to work and had zero sights of them in any direction.

I stood at the top of the Metro entrance, catching my breath, and finally taking the chance to look at the book I was so eager to return to its owner. The smooth black leather felt like butter in my hands. Surely, a book so lovely would have the owner’s information inside. As I walked towards my office building, I pulled back the stretchy black elastic that kept it closed and opened it. I stopped dead. I hated being one of those people who stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, but I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Every single cream-colored page was empty.

I arrived at work, tired before the day started. I sat the book on my desk, deciding to keep it. It was too nice to toss. On my lunch break, I stared out of the window of the breakroom, people watching when Justin popped his head in and said, “Emergency meeting.” I grabbed the black notebook from the desk and headed to the conference room.

I was tired and overly stuffed from my burrito bowl. I needed a cup of coffee. As the meeting started, I opened up the notebook, writing my name in the curliest of scripts on the front page. I started jotting down notes from the meeting that could have just been a long email with screenshots. I started to doodle to keep myself awake. I drew a Starbucks cup, and next to it, I wrote, I wish I had a cup of coffee.

The meeting ended, and just as I was about to announce my coffee run, Justin walked by my cubicle and handed me a Starbucks cup. “I thought you could use this,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the edges as proof of the smile I couldn’t see. I inhaled deeply when I removed my mask to take a sip. The dark, delectable goodness filled my nostrils with the anticipation of caffeine. I took in a mouthful and sat at my desk, grateful. I opened up my notebook, drew a little heart beside the coffee cup.

The days that followed passed by ordinarily. I didn’t think of the person on the Metro at all or the notebook that sat in the bottom of my workbag. That was until I needed to take notes again. I dug in my oversized tote for a pen and felt the notebook. I grabbed both and headed to my manager’s office, taking a seat in front of her desk.

I opened to a blank page and began furiously scribbling directions for a task she wanted me to complete. I hadn’t noticed it then, or maybe I did, and my brain, occupied with numbers and directions, didn’t quite register what I saw. When I got back to my desk, I flipped back to the first page. I was right. There was something there. Underneath where I wrote weeks before, I wish I had a cup of coffee, then drew a little heart was something else. In block letters, etched so deeply into the paper, I could feel the crease when I ran my fingers over it were the words, You’re Welcome.

I didn’t write it. At least I didn’t think I wrote it. The hamster in my brain started running, trying to figure out where I could have left the book, but I didn’t. And it wasn’t my handwriting. I felt the tiny hairs on my neck stand on edge as I ran my fingers over the writing again. I wanted to close the book and throw it away, but I didn’t. Instead, I put it in my tote bag and thought about it the rest of the day until I got home.

I knew it was crazy. I knew a book couldn’t respond to you. Things like that didn’t happen. Part of me wanted to believe in magic. I needed to test it if only to prove to myself how crazy it all seemed. I grabbed a black pen and wrote, Who are you? Please send me a sign that this is real.

I closed the book and waited. I ate dinner. I watched TV in an attempt to take my mind off of the book. I waited all night for a sign. I opened the book compulsively, looking for an answer that never came. By midnight, I felt like an idiot and went to bed feeling salty.

The notebook stayed beside my bed while I slept as if I thought that fairies would come into my room during the overnight hours and take it. That didn’t happen, and it was in the same spot, unmoved, in the morning. I shook my head at myself in the bathroom mirror for thinking that something as inconsequential as a notebook could ever possess any power.

It wasn’t until I was back in the cubicle that it dawned on me. Words have power, and maybe it wasn’t what I wrote but the words I used to write it. I had wished for something, and it came true. Maybe if I wrote down another wish, it might come true again. But it had to be an impossible wish, something that would never in a million years happen. That’s when I thought of it.

I turned in my chair and looked down the long row of cubicles to Anthony, one of the three tech employees we had. Anthony never held a conversation longer than “Hi,” with anyone. From the moment he said one of those “Hi’s” to me, I had harbored a crush on him. Attempts to get him to talk to me had failed in so many spectacular ways over the years that I gave up.

I wish for Anthony Lerro to ask me on a date.

I wrote it so fast and slammed the notebook closed that I was sure someone heard it and wondered what I could be up to. I waited, got distracted, and wound up having to do my job when I heard a familiar voice.

“Hi,” Anthony said, holding out the stack of documents I sent to the printer next to his cubicle. I took the papers and waited for him to run off like he usually did, but instead, he kept talking. “This is random, I know, but I was wondering if you watched documentaries?”

“Who doesn’t?” I replied, knowing that the last documentary I watched was in Biology class, and I fell asleep during it.

“There’s this new one about the Tiger King. Would you like to do a watch party with me sometime?”

During a pandemic, this was as close as I was going to get to a real date, and I might have said, “yes,” a little too loudly and quickly, but it happened. When Anthony walked away from my cube, I opened up the little black book, and in ink pressed deep into the crème page were the words, You’re Welcome.

There was no denying it now. Something was happening to me with this book. Like a genie in a lamp, it granted my wishes. I wished for expensive shoes, and they appeared in the mail from some unknown delivery service. I wished for a better apartment, and my building manager emailed me with an upgrade that was the same rental fee. But I knew there had to be an expiration date. As I got to the last page in the book, surrounded by all of the things I wished for, all of the stuff I thought I needed, I decided that my last wish should help someone else.

My office was taking up a collection to help an employee whose husband had passed away. I took out my little black book and opened it to the last page. At the top, I wrote in big, bold letters I wish for $20,000.00. I drew a big red heart beside it and closed the book.

For days I waited, anxiously checking the bank app on my phone. I paced in front of the mailboxes in the evening, impatiently waiting for the other residents in my building to move so that I could check my box. I called myself crazy for thinking that it would work.

On the last day before our offices closed for the holidays, our CEO made an announcement. Our company had done so well even amidst a pandemic that he was going to profit share with our small office of employees. Every employee received a holiday bonus of $20,000.00. My hands shook when my manager handed me the white envelope with my name on it. I opened the little black book to the last page, and it read, You’re Welcome.

Instead of drawing a heart or nothing at all, this time I said thank you to the person on the train, the one I never got to return the book to. I never saw the book again. I sat it on my desk to celebrate with the rest of my teammates, and when I went to pack up that evening, it was gone. I didn’t bother looking for it. I knew that it had moved on to someone new and that someone somewhere was finding a black book with empty pages.