In the money universe I am a grunt, common and run-of-the-mill, printed by the millions, cut, stacked and bundled, sent to Federal Reserve banks and then dispersed into the world. I doubt very much that you have ever given me a second thought or considered that I might have feelings, dreams, desires and hopes. I don’t blame you for this.
The single. The buck. My life expectancy? Eighteen months, on average. But let me assure you that a month in the life of a dollar bill passes like a year. My kind travel non-stop, hitching rides in pockets, purses, wallets and backpacks, never in one place for long. As crisp, clean freshly printed dollars many of us dream of cozy piggybanks where we can remain in one place, conversing with our metallic cousins -- pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters and the occasional half dollar – as well as the fives and tens and twenties received from relatives in birthday or Christmas cards. That’s the life. Calm, routine, predictable, but mainly, stationary.
Imagine life without the $1 bill. I see that you’re beginning to understand and view my kind in a more appreciative light. Listen now as I tell you how I came to be here, in this silk purse, under this pillow.
My first glimpse of daylight came in New York City when I was handed to a Norwegian tourist – a big boned blonde woman with blue eyes -- by a sidewalk vendor. The woman had a habit of biting her fingernails, and in general seemed nervous and high-strung, traits not normally associated with Scandinavians. For reasons I never understood, she hid me and my kin from her husband, a heavyset fellow who took hours of boring video, mostly of street scenes; he was particularly fascinated by taxi cabs and their drivers, most of whom were sullen looking Hindu or Pakistani men. Ending up in the pocket of one of these men, wrapped in a greasy wad, frightened me, but that was my fate and fate is inescapable. After a visit to the Empire State Building I was unceremoniously wrapped around a bunch of soiled tens, fives and fellow ones – none of them as new as I -- and held captive by a thick rubber band.
The cabbie’s name was Humayun. He smelled of stale cigarettes and onions. When he wasn’t making change for his fares, Humayun kept us in his coat pocket, alongside lint, salted almonds and scraps of tobacco. His cell phone rang constantly and in his native tongue he barked at whoever was calling; more often than not he hung up while the other person was still talking. Humayun grumbled about his customers and made it very clear that he thought goats far superior to people. Into the pocket and out, in and out, until I was peeled off the wad and handed to a woman on her way to JFK and then Philadelphia. She carefully folded me in half and slid me between a snooty twenty and a tired, dog-eared ten. The twenty was talkative, arrogant, and boasted of his recent travels in Atlanta and New Orleans; the ten was weary and morose. I didn’t converse much with either of them.
Sue was the woman’s name, plain, vanilla Sue. After flipping through the airline magazine in her seat pocket she spent the entire flight to Philadelphia working on her laptop. My impression was that she had been jilted recently, her heart crushed and left to wither; now she was immersing herself in work in order to block her pain. Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard, rapid fire, words and numbers, lines and columns, but I was not fooled: her fingers were full of sorrow.
My time with Sue was short and uneventful and, to be honest, I was happy when she traded me for a Diet Coke at the airport and went on her sad way. After a short trip to the night deposit I landed in the hands of a man named Reed who was visiting Philadelphia from Santa Fe. Reed owned an art galley with his wife but I soon discovered that Reed had a secret life with a man named Peter. Reed and Peter. There were monogrammed towels hanging in Peter’s bathroom and fuchsia sheets on the bed. Egyptian cotton. Yes, it was a cozy love nest that Reed and Peter shared, full of books and paintings and delicious smells because Peter was a remarkable cook. They knew many people in Santa Fe and were openly affectionate with one another, which led me to assume that Reed’s wife knew about Peter. Understand that I make no moral judgments – I’m just a lowly $1 bill.
I rode in Reed’s expensive wallet for more than a week and thoroughly enjoyed myself and the ambience of the art gallery. Well-dressed tourists ambled through the gallery, admired the paintings and sculptures, chatted with Reed about color, perspective and style, the attributes of particular artists, up and coming talents on the Santa Fe scene, and enjoyed wine and cheese set out by Peter. This life suited me very much and I wanted it to continue forever, though I knew my hold upon it was tenuous and fleeting. To circulate is the destiny of a $1 bill.
And I did circulate, in places low and high, hand to pocket, pocket to hand, until a wannabe gangster known by the nickname Bobcat scooped me off the counter at a Taco Bell.
Bobcat had seen too many music videos. He wore a baseball cap sideways on his shaved head, a thick gold chain around his neck, a Kobe Bryant jersey, baggy jeans, and new Nike’s. How ridiculous he appeared swaggering around in this getup! The fool boy carried two hundred dollars in worn bills and three ounces of marijuana into an area of Albuquerque controlled by Calderon, a dealer with ties to the Sinaloa cartel and a deserved reputation for vicious retribution on his rivals. When Bobcat, all of seventeen, crossed West Alvarado Street to meet his customer I noticed that my fellow bills, even the $20’s – usually so boastful – had fallen silent, as if they knew something awful was about to happen. I have to tell you that a chill swept over me even before Calderon himself stepped out of the shadows with two henchmen behind him.
Have you ever heard a young man beg for his one human life? It’s not pleasant, believe me, and Bobcat’s tearful pleas for mercy only amused Calderon, who toyed with the boy the way a cat toys with a cornered mouse. In a calm, casual voice Calderon explained how he couldn’t afford to let Bobcat slide. It would damage his reputation and invite others to poach in his territory. He had a business to protect, after all. You’d do the same thing if you were standing in my shoes, right? A man’s not worth shit if he’s unwilling to protect what’s his. Nothing personal, see, just the nature of my business. Shaking his head as if human nature was beyond understanding, Calderon told Bobcat that the tragedy here is that he, Bobcat, has nobody but himself to blame for his current predicament. Who forced you to cross the wrong line with the intent of upsetting the order of things? After ordering Bobcat to hand over the contents of his pockets, Calderon made the trembling boy kneel before a cinderblock wall sprayed with graffiti. If you think it will help, say a prayer, Calderon suggested. Hail Mary, Lord’s Prayer, whatever, and don’t mumble because God won’t understand you, and right now you need him to hear you. Laughing at his own gallows humor, Calderon pulled a pistol from his coat pocket and calmly pumped two bullets into the base of Bobcat’s skull.
We Treasury notes, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America, home of the free and land of the brave, witness more suffering than we deserve. Bobcat’s brains were splattered against the cinderblock wall and this grotesque fact meant nothing to Calderon; he had solved a problem in the same way a plumber solves the problem of a clogged drain, and now that it was resolved he was taking his girlfriend to the movies.
And that is where I parted company with the murderer and found my way to the shirt pocket of a hard working, God-fearing janitor named Luis Valdez, born in Mexico and now making a meager but much appreciated living in Albuquerque with his wife and daughter, Maritza. Luis once worked in an electronics factory in Ciudad Juarez so he was no stranger to exploitation and suffering, the unfathomable cruelty that human beings inflict upon one another without a moment’s hesitation. I felt comfortable in his simple hands and the chill that had gripped me finally abated.
On the day that Bobcat lost his life, Maritza lost a tooth. After Maritza fell asleep that night Luis placed me in a silk purse and slipped me under her pillow, and it is there Maritza found me when she woke. Her gap-toothed smile was as beautiful as any painting in Reed’s gallery. Like her father, Maritza possessed the capacity to be thankful for small gifts.
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