The Suitcase

He had a single one hundred dollar bill with him. The rest of the cash was in the hotel across the street. The little black suitcase that held several thick stacks of hundreds was lying on a bed beside a man who smoked Marlboro reds. He was up there now smoking. Alan knew this because he could see the floating red bead of the cigarette’s cherry as it danced like a firefly in the darkness of the room’s only window.

Alan Goodman stood in line at the counter of a convenience store across the street from the hotel. The last few years had been difficult, the most difficult of his life in fact, and he wondered at the chain of events that had led him to be here in this convenience store. It was late, maybe two in the morning he guessed, and the convenience store’s few occupants looked like they were also in the middle of the most difficult years of their lives. People who had it together, it seemed, had little use for convenient shopping in the middle of the night.

The clerk was looking at him expectantly, but Alan was having trouble getting up the courage he needed. He knew he looked nervous. Hell, he could feel his chest thumping so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if the clerk could actually hear it. Delaying made it worse, made him seem more guilty he was sure, but he still had time to simply walk out of the store, climb in his car, and go home. He was suddenly aware of odd details around him, a coffee stain on the floor near his feet, the three hairs that grew from a bulbous mole on the clerk’s cheek, the smell of marijuana from someone in line behind him...he remembered a Discovery Channel special on how adrenaline from intense fear caused heightened sensory perceptions as he was noting the small black plastic sleeve the clerk had balled up and thrown in the garbage. It was the kind of sleeve they sold Hustler and Boob Envy in.

“Sir, is that all for you?” the clerk asked pleasantly.

Alan had played in his mind how he would feign surprise if the bill was counterfeit, but now he wasn’t so sure of his ability to pull it off and keep himself out of jail. Of course it was counterfeit, but this was the only idea he had come up with to find out with for sure. If the clerk said anything about the bill he decided he would just run. He glanced at the camera above the door realizing the perfect mug shot he was providing.

He fingered the bill in his pocket, crisp and starchy, and slid the candy bar across the glass counter. The counter was so scratched he could barely see the lottery tickets below.

“One twenty five please,” the clerk remained pleasant even as his eyebrows gave him away. The man in line who smelled of pot shifted impatiently behind him.

He took the bill from his pocket and laid it on the glass. He slid it toward the clerk and stole a glance at the man in line behind him. The man seemed edgy and impatient. A little bead of sweat ran along the deep lines in the man’s forehead. He was busy keeping an eye on the street and didn’t notice the denomination of the bill Alan was using.

“I cannot break that.”

“Of course not, no. Umm, I also need 99 of these.” He stabbed his finger at the scratched glass. The tickets below his finger were bright red and featured a manic gold miner with bulging eyes and an expansively round belly covered in a shower of gold nuggets. He felt in his other pocket and removed a quarter and placed it next to the bill. The clerk grabbed the bill, found a marker from behind his register, popped the cap off of it and ran it across the bill. The line produced was a custard color. Alan wondered briefly if that was good or bad. The clerk seemed satisfied and placed the bill under the tray in his register.

Not counterfeit apparently. He realized now he hadn’t truly expected that. His mind flashed again to the suitcase stacked with similar bills across the street. The clerk produced a pile of lottery scratchers adorned with a wealthy cartoon miner. The clerk tore loose what Alan assumed was 99 of them and slid them across the scratched glass to sit next to the candy bar.

Alan took the candy and the tickets and walked out into the starless Phoenix night. This part of town, while not Compton, wasn’t somewhere you wanted to be caught alone at night. He walked quickly across the street to the hotel.

He thought of the first time he had driven this street. Coming to Phoenix had been Jessica’s idea, but he hadn’t been a tough sell. Phoenix sounded nice enough. They had chosen an exit from the I-10 more or less at random and had driven down this street looking for somewhere to stay. They ended up at a Motel 6 about two miles further down the road and then a Denny’s the next morning where they made up their minds to try again. Phoenix seemed like a nice place to start new and try again.

He ate the candy bar absently as he thought about the man that he knew was smoking on his hotel bed. The man had knocked on his hotel door about an hour ago and offered him a suitcase full of cash. Why couldn’t he place the smell either? The man on his bed smelled like old rubber boots or a rusted pipe or a freshly lit match. It was something specific, like something from a childhood memory, he was sure of that. It irritated him that he couldn’t place that smell.

Why had Jessica chosen Phoenix?

She had never even talked about Arizona before. He remembered the day it had come up. They had been fighting all week about money. They lived in a shithole apartment alternating the utilities they were willing to do without. No water month was his favorite since it meant sponge baths, but she loved the scented candles of no electricity months. It was good then. Most people wouldn’t think so. Jessica didn’t think so, but he did. Life was little more than survival, but things mattered little to him. As long as he had Jessica he could be happy.

He had walked in from work to find her sitting at their little white Formica table with her face in her hands, twirls of brown hair falling over her fingers. Bills and checks were scattered across the plastic tablecloth and he knew a tempest was building beneath those brown twirls. He wanted to just quietly close the door and come back when she was better. Jessica, by all accounts, was a sweet girl, but when she was like this she channeled devils of rage and fury impossible to imagine from her tiny 100 pound frame. She looked up through red eyes and smeared black mascara.

“Babe,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong??” She cried. “What could be wrong? Everything is fine!” She smeared away snot and tears black with makeup and said “How was your day sweetheart?”

“Don’t worry about the bills. I will handle it,” he approached the table reaching for the bills “I will…”

“Oh I am sure you will do a fine job handling it!” She interrupted. “Like everything else you handle right Alan?” She swept her hands across the table flinging a snowstorm of bills at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He kept himself calm, but he couldn’t bear all the blame forever. He knew he had his own devils waiting for their chance at daylight. “I am doing the best I…”

“Maybe that’s not good enough for me anymore. Maybe your best is the problem Alan. Did you ever think of that?”

“We are going to get through this together okay.” He tried to touch her arm but she yanked herself away from his reach.

“Asshole!” she screamed, “Don’t touch me. This is your fault! Your fault!!” She ran into their bedroom and the door banged shut behind her. They fought about money because they couldn’t fight about what actually had come between them. It was too painful to touch.

That was two years ago in Troutdale, Oregon. He had worked in a mill and waited tables on weekends and for the most part they made ends meet. He just wanted to make her happy. It was all he ever wanted.

He entered the bright glow of the hotel lobby and nodded at the dozing desk clerk. The lobby of the hotel was garishly decorated with gold trimmed drapes and red wallpaper. A painting of cherubic angels hung at an exaggerated tilt above a twenty year old yellow-gold couch stained black at its edges by the palms of years of sweaty guests. Alan walked down a short hallway lit by flickering fluorescent lamps to the elevators.

As the elevator doors closed he heard Josh Grobin singing “You bring me up!” instead of the two gunshots that were ringing out across the street in the convenience store. As the elevator moved a floor upwards Alan looked at his own tired and worn reflection in the elevator’s mirrored walls unaware that the pot smelling man had just murdered the store clerk for a few twenties and a crisp starchy one hundred dollar bill with a custard colored stripe on it. The pot smelling man died a few minutes later when he was shot down by a cop he tried pulling his gun on as he fled. The cop, having seen the hundred dollar bill and stuffed it quickly in his pocket, died a few days later. He was stabbed in the guts with a dull knife by a hooker he had paid with the stolen bill to do the things he mean bitch of a wife wouldn’t do. The hooker had her head crushed by a solid waste removal truck when she passed out drunk behind a dumpster in an alley after spending the money on booze. The bill passed along for many years, always bringing a violent and brutal death to its possessor before being snatched up by another. Whether the taint of blackness was already in their heart or the stain began once they possessed the bill everyone who owned it was tempted to base and evil acts and then killed by their ways. Unfortunately for Alan, this bill was not the last of its kind. Many, many more waited in the black suitcase on the bed next to the man who smoked Marlboro reds.

As the doors opened he could see room 204 facing him at the far end of the long hallway. What if the bill isn’t the only thing that is real? What if it is all real? What then? What if everything the crazy old coot was saying was somehow the truth? Utterly impossible of course, but what if?

He knew better. The man with the suitcase was just a nutjobber with a load of money. Maybe he was an eccentric that got off on running his own private lottery for pathetic people like himself and Jessica. Who cares really? The cash is real. Alan knew that much now.

He had a leap of nausea suddenly as he crossed the elevator threshold and the hallway started to spin. He leaned backwards against the wall and shook his head a little against the sudden dizziness. He chest felt tight and hot and his eyes swam with red and gold paisleys from the carpet. He had to focus on the door to his hotel room for a moment, tether himself to it with his eyes until the blackness at their rims faded. He took in heavy breaths through his nose and pushed them out from his belly until his mind cleared. He had almost passed out.

He was tired, but he hadn’t realized how tired. Alan hadn’t slept in more than two days and wasn’t sure when he had last eaten a decent meal. He was completely, utterly exhausted and the thought of the suitcase and the life it promised for him and Jessica only made him weaker. She would love him like before when he threw that suitcase full of cash down in front of her. He had hoped a new baby would make him love her like before, but they hadn’t conceived and he didn’t think he had much more time left before he woke up and she was gone forever. The cash would give him time, maybe a lot more time.

The dizziness and nausea finally passed and he started walking towards room 204.

Their fight that night two years ago had been the first time he realized in a real way she was going to leave him. Leaving Oregon had been his idea, but Phoenix had been hers.

After she had slammed the door on him he could hear her crying in the room, sometimes hysterically, sometimes in a low moaning wail that rose and fell like waves crashing. He looked at the bills spread across the floor and flower print tablecloth and then gathered them all up and slid them into the white plastic garbage they kept by the bar.

“Jessica. Jessica sweetheart,” he said as he looked down at the empty table. “I think we just need a new start. Clean slate. Whaddya say to that? Just leave this all behind us.”

The crying stopped. He waited, listening at the door and could hear her heaving breaths. Finally the door opened and Jessica emerged, “Like Phoenix.” she said. She looked absolutely mad with deep red bloodshot eyes and black runnels of mascara smeared across her face. Within that madness though he could see she had fastened to this idea of the clean slate. She looked at him with a fierce intensity, but the anger was gone. She was flush with this new emotion now, this new possibility.

“Sure Phoenix. Anywhere really. Baltimore for all I care. Let’s just start over.” She came into his arms and he held her. He thought of the baby, as he usually did when she cried like this. He loved her with a terrible overwhelming deepness and he had been terrified of losing her more than anything else after the baby died. He could never say it aloud because it was the sort of cruelly true thing you only think to yourself, but maybe another baby would fix it. He knew there could never be another Jessica so he would do anything on heaven and earth to keep her.

They didn’t say much else that night about their plans. They packed what few items they owned into plastic bags and boxes he pulled from the apartment dumpsters and stuffed it into their faded lime green Geo Metro. He made a small dinner of frozen peas, corn tortillas, and the last couple of pieces from a KFC bucket. She cried the whole time, a low exhausted cry without any energy or drama. Just a gentle trickle of tears.

He counted out the cash they had as they ate. Forty-five dollars in ones and fives and two hundred and eighty in neat stacks of quarters, dimes, and nickels from the big water bottle they had kept by their bed.

“I guess we can call your mom when we get there.” He said to her as she made a little taco out of her peas and chicken.

“Yeah.” A tear fell into her taco as she ate it.

Rain poured day and night through the entire drive in sideways sheets. The Geo pulled harshly to the left at high speed so driving required a constant right turn to keep the car on the road. He drove through two days of cloudy grey skies and oily black nights seen through the squeaking and whining wiper blades. Jessica had left all the driving to him and spent most of the time with her head resting against the window watching the rain wash across it. She sometimes hummed a lullaby to herself in a quiet absent way that made Alan think she wasn’t even aware she was doing it. It was the lullaby she had used to put their baby to sleep in those first few nights after they brought her home. When she wasn’t humming and watching the rain wash across the window she closed her eyes and slept.

The rain finally broke on the last day as they crossed the Grand Canyon. The sunlight through the window on Jessica’s face woke her and she blinked at it.

“We’re here. Arizona. Just a few more hours to Phoenix,” he told her.

She stretched and sat up in her seat and looked out the window at the colored red rocks and steep canyon walls of the high desert. She didn’t cry anymore the rest of that trip.

She had blamed him for the baby’s death. Maybe she could blame his father, or his father’s father, but she didn’t. It was his fault. He could see it in her eyes, even when they played scrabble and drank tea and laughed at his terrible spelling he could see that she hated him for killing her baby. She hated him for poisoning her with his flawed genetics and dooming her to die in a hospital crib before her second birthday.

Sometimes he wished they had never had a child. He had given in to Jessica on that one too. They had only been married a year and she was insistent that it was what she wanted. Alan had made it his life’s work making Jessica happy so he had given her the baby she asked for.

When the baby was born Jessica absolutely absorbed herself in being a mother. She quit her job without even asking Alan. She just never went back after her maternity leave and Alan didn’t question her on it. He just picked up a few more hours at work and she stayed home with their daughter. He saw little of her during the week and the weekends became filled with play dates, baby sign classes, music classes, and stroller clubs. Jessica was as happy as Alan had ever known her to be so he let himself be happy for her.

Then the coughing started a few months before her second birthday and never stopped. Alan hadn’t taken it seriously at first. Jessica did immediately, but he thought she was just being overly protective. She probably hated him for that too, but it hadn’t made a difference. The baby was doomed from the moment she was conceived. She was suffocating slowly, breathing through a machine and lying in a little plastic crib in a hospital bed.

They went broke with the medical expenses almost right away. They had been comfortable, but it hadn’t taken long for them to become financially crushed. Savings accounts emptied, his tiny retirement account still in its infancy drained, credit cards maxed, a second mortgage, and then one day he just couldn’t come up with another dollar no matter how many people he asked. They lost the house and the few possessions they had. Her mother had taken them in, but she seemed to blame Alan too. In her eyes a man provided what his family needed. If Alan couldn’t do that maybe he wasn’t a man after all. He had been relieved when Jessica had finally agreed to get their tiny apartment.

Alan kept working and came to the hospital evenings, but Jessica never left her side. She held her hand, stroking it gently and singing her favorite lullaby. When she wasn’t soothing her dying daughter she was screaming at nurses or doctors who could do little more than answer her questions and say that they were very sorry. The doctors insisted there was nothing to be done, but Jessica made that wing of the hospital a nightmare for the attending staff. Alan couldn’t remember her acknowledging him when he was around, except to insist now and then that he needed to do something. Just do something.

He might be able to do something now if he could convince the old man to give him the cash. No one else was in the hallway of the second floor of the hotel. He pulled the security key from his shirt pocket and slid it through the slot watching for the red light to blink green. The door opened and he immediately got a fresh whiff of the old man’s odor. It was much stronger now and didn’t mix well with his nausea. The entire room seemed saturated with it as he walked in. The old man was still sitting on the bed, still smoking. The cherry of the cigarette left little tracers in the smoke as the old man waved it at him.

“Satisfied?” The old man asked.

“Yeah, the bill is real. I don’t understand it.” Alan looked at the old mans hands as he spoke. They were like a bird’s claws with dry cracked skin and thick elongated yellow nails that came to cracked and splitting points. “Why are you giving this money to me? How did you even decide that it should be me that would meet you at this hotel?”

“You’ve suffered Alan. I just want to ease the suffering for you.” He dragged the suitcase next to himself on the bed and rolled the locking code to 999 and it clicked open. Money spilled out of the suitcase and onto the bed. Alan guessed it was at least two dozen stacks an inch thick each. He noticed that one of the stacks had a brownish red smear across it that looked to Alan like old dried blood. The old man continued, “You will be helping me do my work too Alan. It’s my job to ease the suffering of poor lost souls like yourself. This money helps me do that. Think of it as my little collection plate.”

“Why me? There must be others that have it worse than us.” Alan found himself trying to mentally calculate how much money that would be. It didn’t matter if it was three hundred thousand or three million in his mind it already belonged to him and it would make all the difference. Finally Alan was going to be able to do something.

The old man’s head was swimming in a thick cloud of smoke that hung on him like a mantle. His eyes looked like black orbs without pupils in the dark lighting of the room and his long black hair was slicked across his scalp in a smooth shell that fell from his head into curls at his ears and shoulders. He was watching Alan count the money in his head and smiling, dragging long tokes from his cigarette and blowing the smoke into his cloudy halo.

“You’re the right one Alan,” the old man said after some time. “I am very sure of that. You need this money more than you need to understand where it came from or why it’s yours to spend. I do have some small stipulations that I haven’t yet mentioned.”

Alan paused from his counting and looked at the old man waiting for him to continue.

“You have to spend all the money. That is my first requirement. This is not the kind of money that you stash away under the mattress for a rainy day Alan. This money burns a hole in your pocket until it’s all spent. Can you do that Alan?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” the old man drawled. “Second you should spend the money as cash. These bills are yours to spend, but do not deposit it in a filthy fucking bank and write checks against it. This one is important. It would be a mistake to do that Alan and it would upset me quite a lot. Spend the cash Alan. Can you do that?”

He frowned a little. That would be harder. He had already decided a house would be one of his first purchases. Maybe even make it a surprise for Jessica. He could buy the house and then spread the cash all over the bed and show her both at the same time. She would squeal in laughter and delight probably throw him down on the money and make love to him right there.

“What’s wrong with a bank?” Alan asked.

“Banks are evil pits of corruption and this cash would probably erupt into flames the moment it touched the banker’s hands. This is righteous money Alan. I have personally blessed each and every one of these bills myself and the more of it you spend the more your suffering will be replaced by ecstasy. I cannot compromise on this point.” He started moving the stacks back into the suitcase.

“No, don’t do that. I am sure I can figure it out. It’s fine. I will use cash.”

“Perfect Alan. One last little thing. If I give you this money you will take it home and make love to your wife on it.” Alan’s eyed shot wide as the old man said this. Was the old man reading his mind? It was a natural fantasy to roll around in one hundred dollar bills, but it had struck him like a blow when he heard his thoughts spoken out loud by the old man. “Spread the bills all over the bed and make love to her. It will be the most fantastic fuck of your lives and it will give you the baby you have been wanting. A perfect baby without any diseases or defects.”

Alan’s head was swimming. He was tired, probably delirious, but he felt suddenly sure that the old man was not only reading his mind but hypnotizing him somehow. Those eyes were like little black whirling eddy’s that sucked you in until you were stuck like a fly in a trap. How had the old man known about their baby? How had he known about her defect? Alan tried to calm himself, think rationally. Maybe he had told the old man earlier tonight and forgotten. Or more likely he had found out as part of his research to find the right person to give the money to. Rich crazy bastards like this could easily get that kind of information.

“Jessica needs another baby,” Alan said mostly to himself.

“Yesssss,” the old man hissed, “she does. And that baby will be a little girl that you will name Rose.”

A battle was being waged within Alan now. His mind was fighting against the reality he was facing and it was making his head spin. Some part of him now knew what this deal with the old man was. He couldn’t face it, no matter how hard that part of him tried he couldn’t allow himself to accept the truth and run from that stink infested room and leave the money where it sat. He needed that money more than he needed anything else. He hadn’t ever been able to do anything to save himself and Jessica from the misery they had endured and now he could. That was all that mattered, all that was real. Everything else be damned if that was how it needed to be, he had to have the money.

“Is there some type of contract?” Alan finally asked.

The old man smiled and produced a rolled piece of parchment cloth from his black coat. He handed it to Alan who untied it and stretched the roll between his two hands to read it. The leathery cloth was discolored and stained and singed black in one corner. On it in a looping calligraphic script that had been written in dripping black ink were the terms of the contract. Alan couldn’t read a word of it.

“Latin,” the old man informed him. “It just outlines the stipulations we already discussed. And the terms of your repayment of course.”

“Repayment?” Alan asked as he stared at the severe penmanship that slanted sharply to the left jabbing and looping like the writings of an angry madman.

“It’s a standard clause in these types of matters. No need to concern yourself with it.”

“What about Jessica…and Rose?” Alan ignored the exact nature of the repayment and tucked it away in that still screaming part of his mind that pleaded with him that it wasn’t too late.

“Jessica will love you for the rest of your lives Alan. This money will fix everything for you. She will adore you and respect you and see you for the man you finally can be for her.” The old man stamped out his cigarette into the carpeting. He pulled a new one from a gold case and lit it with a tiny flame that erupted from the tip of his finger.

“And Rose? What about the new baby?” Alan found he didn’t really want to know. The new baby would be for Jessica in any case.

“Rose will be perfect. She will be a perfect angel Alan, don’t you worry about her.” The old man’s smile drew wider as he said this and his eyes seemed to glow with a black fire as he thought of the baby girl who would be named Rose.

“Maybe this is wrong. Maybe I need to go.” Alan mumbled. He could imagine himself turning to run, leaving this room and running home to Jessica. He could imagine it, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“It’s too late Alan,” the old man said and pulled the contract from Alan’s fingers. The contract was stained red wherever his fingers had touched it, signed in his own blood. He looked at his fingers and they oozed little runnels of blood down into his palms. “Done deal” the old man added as Alan stared at his blood stained hands.

He rolled the contract back up and stuffed it away in his jacket. He puffed once more on his cigarette and then walked into the shadows at the far corner of the room. Alan watched as the cherry on the end of the old man’s cigarette faded deeper and deeper into the shadows until it was gone completely.

Alan looked once more at his hands and then to the money on the bed. He scraped the bills back into the suitcase, leaving fresh red smears on them as he did, and left the foul smelling hotel room in a frenzied rush.

He thought of only one thing as he drove home that night. He thought of how Jessica would look at him when he showed her the money. How she would laugh and they would dream and make plans together and make love on a bed covered in bills. He understood now why she had chosen Phoenix, because finally they were going to rise from the ashes of their old life like the bird of Phoenix. He thought of these things because if he didn’t that screaming terror in a dark corner of his mind threatened to drive him mad. Alan just kept thinking happy thoughts as he drove home to his beloved wife planning to give her the perfect little angel she always wanted.