Sedona

Ordinarily, Tobias would have never considered going east of 38th Street. In his 21 years in the city, he had only crossed that boundary a handful of times and even then, only out of necessity and usually for work. He had been in a bit of a slump lately and wanted to do something different, so at the suggestion of a friend, he decided to celebrate his birthday with a visit to Entheos Book Store on 42nd.

As Tobias entered and passed by the front counter, he briefly met eyes with the smartly dressed elderly woman standing behind it. Without saying a word, she nodded hello and put forth a warm smile that instantly made him feel welcome.

He spent the next several hours slowly wandering up and down the rows of books, pausing occasionally to pull one from a shelf and flip through it. Some he kept, but having limited library space at home, he was very selective about the titles that he put into his basket. Still, by the end of his browsing he had a small stack that he took up to the counter.

As the woman focused on ringing up his books, Tobias took a good look at her. She had long gray hair and deep blue eyes. She had soft facial features and a warm smile, even when not looking at him. The thing that stood out the most about her, however, was a mesmerizing pendant that clung to a worn leather cord around her neck. It was roughly the diameter of a fifty-cent piece and had a magnificent stone in the center unlike any Tobias had ever seen. Around the outside of the main stone, the piece was divided into 12 equal parts with a smaller gem and some sort of equally small carved symbol in each segment. As the woman moved back and forth ringing up the books and placing them in a bag, Tobias watched the pendant hypnotically. Perhaps it was the low light in the bookstore, but he could swear that the center stone and the outer blue gem were brighter than the rest, almost glowing. Tobias was so fixated on the pendant that he did not notice the woman had finished ringing up his books and was just standing there smiling, watching him admire her necklace.

Tobias felt the blood rush to his face in embarrassment and he managed to stammer out, “that is a lovely pendant.”

“Thank you” the woman replied, her voice calm and silky. “Several years back I was hiking through Arizona. I came upon a small roadside stand in Sedona, near Bell Rock. They were packing up but still had a few things out and this was one of them,“ she said. “I instantly fell in love with it and knew I had to have it.”

Tobias continued to gaze at the pendant, perhaps a bit longer than was socially acceptable.

“Will there be anything else today?” the woman queried politely.

Tobias said no, but then noticed a rack of journals and notebooks on a carousel behind the counter. “Actually, I could use a new notebook,” he said. “How about that black one on the bottom rack?”

As the woman knelt to retrieve the notebook, the dangling leather cord caught on one of the wire racks and as she stood back up, the clasp gave way and the necklace clattered to the floor. She calmly placed the notebook on the counter and retrieved the necklace, placing it on top of the notebook.

The backdrop of the black notebook brought out the brilliance of the center stone, almost as if it were on fire. As he looked closer, however, Tobias noticed that the small blue gem was missing. “Oh no,” Tobias exclaimed, “it’s lost one of its stones.”

“Nothing is ever lost,” the woman replied, still smiling warmly and without appearing to be the least bit upset about the missing stone , “it just changes form.”

Tobias was hungry and had already spent longer at the bookstore than he had intended so he nodded in agreement in order to avoid what he felt would have been a lengthy, “new agey” conversation. As he reached down and picked the pendant up off the notebook, he felt what could only be described as a small electrical shock, but not painful or uncomfortable, and he was dizzy for just a few seconds. He dismissed the feeling as low blood sugar and headed out of the bookstore with his purchases in hunt of food.

As luck would have it, there was a small sandwich shop a few doors down and Tobias stopped in for lunch. Several small tables were scattered throughout, and Tobias picked a sunny one up front near the window. As he sat down, he noticed that there was a missing leveler on one of the legs and the table was very wobbly, but he liked the view out of the window, so he decided to stay. He took the lid off his coffee to let it cool a bit and had a bite of sandwich. With no one to talk to Tobias pulled out his newly acquired notepad and ran his fingers over the pebbled Italian leather and admired the aesthetics of the gently rounded corners. As a lifelong lover of books, he could appreciate craftsmanship when he saw it. He paused briefly and put his hand flat on the cover before gently pushing aside the black elastic strap holding the notebook closed. He always paused for a moment before opening any of his journals, taking a moment to think good thoughts and ask that he might be able to write good and happy things inside.

As Tobias ate, he absentmindedly flipped through the ivory pages, but stopped suddenly as he saw what appeared to be bumps on one of the pages. It looked much like the tracing children do, only this was just the very faint outline of a word, just a few letters, but with no pencil markings. Tobias spent the next few minutes being both upset that his new journal already had “writing” and trying to figure out what the markings were. He finally held the journal up near his face and the light streaming in the window cast an ever so slight shadow. “Cup,” Tobias muttered quietly, not even completely certain that this was what the letters spelled or if they were even letters at all. “Cup,” he quietly whispered again to himself, leaning back in his chair. This shift in position caused his foot to move, the one which was compensating for the missing leveler and keeping the table balanced. As the table lurched, Tobias watched his lidless coffee topple over and spill onto the floor.

Tobias grabbed his empty cup and headed to the counter for napkins and a refill. After handing him a stack of napkins, the kid behind the counter asked Tobias if wanted to “pull the tab” on his cup before he refilled it.

“What does that mean?” Tobias grumbled, still slightly put out about the notebook and the spilt coffee.

“It’s our grand opening promotion,” the teen replied. “All of our cups have these pull away tab thingies on the bottom. Some are for free food, some are for drinks, some are for, like, hats and stuff, but the big one is $5,000 and no one has gotten that one yet. Maybe you’ll win, or like get a free desert or something.”

“Sure,” Tobias said as he turned the cup over.

A little over an hour later, after a bit of paperwork and some photos with the owner, Tobias sat back down at the table with a $5,000 check in hand. Never having won anything in his life, this was quite a shock and he took a minute to reflect. His mind circled back to the raised letters in his notebook, and he flipped to the page with the letters, but they were no longer there. He knew it was the right page because he had put the bookmark in as he got up, but the page was as crisp and clean as all the previous ones. Tobias held up the book in hopes of seeing the letters again, still nothing. Maybe in his hurry to get up to the counter he had put the bookmark in the wrong place, he thought.

He started flipping pages back towards the front of the notebook, scanning each one carefully. Four or five pages later he caught what he thought was raised lettering again, only more faint than last time. He could tell the first letter was the same, but this one had four characters, not three. This time Tobias had a better idea of how to read the lettering, but how could it have gotten before the other lettering, he would have seen it the first time.

“c o i r……….c o i r. What does that mean?” He leaned back again, taking care not to tilt the table this time. The mid-afternoon sun was shining in the window and from this new angle Tobias could make out a very faint leg on the side of the “r” that he hadn’t noticed before, it became apparent this was actually a “n.” “Coin,” Tobias muttered. “Coin,” he said again, looking at the notebook. As his mind tried to comprehend what that could mean, let alone how these words were appearing in his notebook, his eyes fell on the check sitting on the table. “Better put this somewhere safe,” he said to no one in particular, pulling out his wallet. As he did, the change in his pocket also came out and fell to the floor. This would make twice now that he had to clean up something from under his table.

As Tobias gathered up the coins, he noticed a wheat-head penny among them. His grandpa had collected wheat-heads and would occasionally give him one when they visited. Tobias sat back down and put the coins on the table, still contemplating the word his notebook. Moments later he finally put it together that he had half a dozen coins sitting on the table right next to this notebook that was inexplicitly sending him messages, the last one being “coin.” He went right to the penny and upon closer inspection saw that it did not have a mint mark. Tobias typed “1939 penny no mint mark” into his phone. He stared for a long minute at the result before he was able to type in “numismatic store near me”.

His GPS said it was a 20-minute walk to Three Springs Coins, Antiques and Jewelry. Tobias did it in 14. He showed the coin to the gentleman behind the counter, who took it to the back and was gone for about 20 minutes. Upon his return, the clerk told him that it was indeed a very collectible coin. He told him that at auction it could go for as little as eight or as much as 25,000 dollars. Three Springs, however, was willing to pay $15,000 outright for the penny, and Tobias accepted the offer.

Tobias found an old desk towards the back of the store to sit at while he waited for the paperwork. He pulled out the notebook that had brought him so much fortune that day. Tobias opened it to the page where he had seen the last letters, expecting that they would be gone, and indeed they were. He inspected every page in the notebook and there was not a blemish on any of the pages, except for the very last page. The last page had a single, small bump exactly in the center. As Tobias flipped it over, pressed between the last page and the back cover was a small blue gem. A smile appeared on his face as he slowly closed his new notebook and softly said to himself “Nothing is ever lost, it just changes form.”