A Slave To The Coin

too soon, and the strong black coffee Bruce handed him wasn’t enough to dispel the memories of the night before. Lavender script on a faded page.

  “Let me out a few blocks away from the office please. Some fresh air might wake me up a bit.”

  The driver smiled into the rearview mirror. “Rough night sleep, Sir? I thought the shareholders’ meeting went well.”

  The shareholders’ meetings always went well. They were rolling in money. “Got a lot on my mind. A personal burden.”

  Emerson hopped out of the car and waved the driver off. Don’t look down, don’t look down. The sidewalks were full of people. Suits, yoga pants, jeans, uniforms. People starting their day. Look at them, not at the ground.

  He headed down the street. Only two blocks. He could certainly walk two blocks, like a normal person going to work in the morning. His teeth ground against each other, an invisible force urging his eyes downward. He fought, but eventually his eyes lowered, scanning the pavement around him. There. By the parking meter. Shiny and bright. Emerson stopped, his legs obeying a need stronger than his mind. The coin called to him. Just this one. He’d pick it up and move on. If he picked the coin up, he’d be strong enough to make it to the office without finding another. His hand shook, stretching downward.

  No. With a supreme effort of will, he forced his hand back into his pocket and turned away. Deep breaths. A fat drop of sweat rolled down his forehead and stung his eyes. Not the first either. He was soaked under his jacket. One step. Then another. He was at the street corner. Just one more block to go. Legs. Move one leg at a time.

  A car blared its horn, squealing and swerving as it missed him by inches. The driver shouted obscenities, and Emerson found himself in the middle of the street, cars beeping and drivers waving. It was no use. His feet increased speed as he walked back to the parking meter. He was a failure. He couldn’t even walk past one copper.

  By the time he reached the parking meter, he was running. Hand extended, he reached down to pick up. . . nothing. It was gone. Panic spiked his heart like a dagger. Gone. Dropping to hands and knees, Emerson felt around the parking meter, ruining six hundred dollar pants in the search for a penny. He was a successful business man, a multi-millionaire, a Harvard MBA. This was absurd. Tears stung his eyes as he got to his feet. He couldn’t live his life like this. There must be something he could do.

  Psychic Readings by Yolanda. A gold lettered sign on the building right in front of him. He shook his head, trying to regain composure. He wasn’t that desperate.

  The last block to the office seemed miles long. All Emerson could think of was the coin. Where had it gone? Had someone else picked it up, stole it from him? Lost. It was lost forever. He forced his eyes up from the pavement, staring straight toward the doorman to his office building.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cartwright.”

  Spare change for a homeless man? The beggar’s voice from last night was so close he felt it against his ear. Emerson spun about, but no one was there beside the smiling doorman.

  “Did you hear that? A beggar?”

  The doorman looked around in confusion. “No Sir. We’re diligent about keeping them away from the entrance.”

  A gust of wind swirled the leaves into a dancing funnel. Brown leaves that looked like tiny pennies in the air. Emerson couldn’t help a quick look around as he entered the building, but there was no discarded money within view of the office door. He’d seen it every day for the last twenty years, but suddenly the pattern of tile in the lobby looked like a giant doubloon. The buttons on the elevators were half dollars. There was a dime just in front of his assistant’s desk, but as he swooped down to pick it up, it vanished.

  “Did you drop something, Mr. Cartwright?”

  “A dime. I thought it was a dime.” Maybe another cup of coffee would help. And a return to his daily routine. That two block walk had been a bad idea.

  The day disintegrated into chaos. There was a surprise audit at one of their divisions, trouble with a patent application, and a hostile takeover attempt at Birness Enterprises. Emerson desperately needed to concentrate, but all he could think about was that penny. The one he hadn’t picked up. The one that was gone. He saw it everywhere out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head there was nothing.

  At lunch, he headed back and again crawled around the pavement, frantic to find it.

  Spare change?

  A faint whisper, but as Emerson looked up, all he saw was the sign for the psychic. Maybe he was that desperate.

  Yolanda was a woman in her fifties, attractive except for the dyed black hair that was a jarring contrast to her ruddy complexion. She wore what appeared to be a gypsy costume, complete with huge gold hoops in her ears. The deli sandwich was hastily hidden away, and she self consciously wiped crumbs from her gauzy skirt as she stood to greet him.

  “I don’t have an appointment,” Emerson apologized. “But I’m hoping you can help me with a problem.”

  “A reading? Of your future?” She covered her mouth as she spoke, quickly swallowing the bite of sandwich.

  “It’s the past I’m more concerned about,” Emerson said vaguely. He wasn’t really sure what he wanted from her. Confirmation that his problem stemmed from an inherited mental illness, and not a curse? Insight into why he couldn’t break this obsession? Knowing the future would be too frightening. He had a premonition there would be no happy ending, and sometimes ignorance really was bliss.

  Yolanda motioned to the chair in front of the table, and sat across from him. Taking up her Tarot deck, she shuffled with practiced skill, putting the cards down in an intricate pattern. Her hands appeared slightly pink in the crimson lighting of the shop.

  “Nine of Swords.” She flipped the first card over. “You are filled with anxiety and worry, and that makes you vulnerable.”

  Well, duh. He was here, consulting with a psychic.

  “Devil.” Emerson’s heart thudded as she announced the second card. “The problem you seek help with involves obsession, bondage to a darkness within.”

  Okay, that was eerie.

  She flipped another card. “This problem stems from a devastating loss, a difficult time long ago, and the next card indicates a decision was made during this difficult time. That decision triggered what burdens you so.”

  More cards turned. “You’ve had a setback recently. You want to be in control, to be brave and bold. You’ve made the difficult decision to turn your back on something, but it’s useless to fight against what you cannot change.”

  “No,” Emerson shouted. “I can fight it. I can be in control. This obsession will not rule me.”

  Yolanda looked up at him in surprise. Her face changed slightly, becoming harsh and angular under the reddish lighting. “There are some fates you must accept,” she said firmly.

  “You’re wrong.” He was shaking in anger, and in fear. “Why should I bear the burden for a choice my great grandmother made? Why do her sins fall on me?”

  Her eyes glinted, pupils stretching into shadows. “Everyone lives by the chance of their birth. Innocents die through no fault of their own. Good people suffer at the hands of a merciless fate. The physical body is not the only thing which bears the sins of our forbearers.”

  Emerson felt his resolve strengthen. “I refuse to live like this. I won’t accept this. I won’t.”

  The psychic made a strange noise, a laugh that rasped from her throat. “Let’s see what the outcome will be if you continue on this path.”

  She turned over the last card. Hanged man reversed. “The sacrifice will be huge. Are you prepared to make such a sacrifice? Or will you accept your fate and carry the burden you must bear?”

  Emerson shot out of his chair, knocking it backwards to the carpet as he threw a fifty dollar bill onto the table. “I won’t carry this burden. Never again,” he hissed.

  Her red
eyes burned into him, her mouth a cruel smile as she picked up the money. “Would you like your change?”

  Change. A lifetime of worry every time he paid for something in cash and received coin back. If it wasn’t an even dollar amount, he always used a debit or credit card to avoid the dreaded change.

  “No,” Emerson shouted. “I don’t want the coins. Never again.”

  He raced out of the building waving for a cab. Home. He’d go home and throw away all those coins. The entire room of them. Just dump them into the street, throw them from the roof, put them out with the garbage. Then he’d be free.

  A cab pulled to the curb, and he saw it. A glint of metal a few feet down at the edge of the curb. Gritting his teeth, he forced his hand to open the cab door and tumbled inside. Lungs strained for air, and drops trickled down his forehead. He gave the cabbie his address, clenching his fists as the taxi pulled away from the curb, and away from the nickel.

  The cab smelled of garlic and cumin, ethnic music blaring. It had been years since he’d been in a taxi. He looked at the taped tear in the seat, an odd circular lump under it. Glancing at the driver through the rear view mirror, Emerson ran a finger over the tape. A quarter. It felt like a quarter. As if they had a will of their own, his fingers began to pick at the tape, loosening it.

  No. He held his hands tightly together, shoving them between his legs. There. On the floor. A quarter. He