The Checkbook

**This is a story of lost love and finding more than a checkbook...

I found a checkbook on the ground this evening on the way home.  It was plain looking, brown leather, nothing out of the ordinary.  I had been walking to the bus stop after another day at the office.  It was the only interesting thing that happened to me on this unexceptional day.  Today, my boss, Jenny, had been on the warpath and was in one of those moods that put everyone on edge.  After only a brief encounter with her I found myself snapping at the mail clerk as he brought in my mail.  He wasn’t really late, just a couple of minutes, but I jumped on him,

“I bet your mother had a hard delivery, you seem to make a habit out of being late.  Can’t you make this an exception and get my mail here on time?”  The poor boy looked at me with those cocker spaniel eyes and said, “I’m sorry Mr. Evans, the mail truck was late again today.”  He backed out of the room with his tail between his legs, glancing over his shoulder and I knew he was on his way like a pony express rider crying, “don’t go in there, the assholes in a mood.”  It’s funny how moods can spread through a workplace like wildfire.

The subway ride was uneventful, no vermin, vomit or vagrants to contend with.  The passengers lapsed into their open-eyed sleep of the damned.  It has always been a mystery to me how and why that many people continue to put themselves through the five-day-a-week ordeal of sitting or standing face to face or sometime butt to face with total strangers.  It makes sense that there exists some kind of trance like state that allows subway commuters to leave their bodies as soon as they hear the “chhhssssshhh of the closing doors.  I wonder if Wikipedia has an entry for that, I will have to check.  I can see it happening, first they claim their not-so-eternal resting place, settle in for the long ride and then without so much as “ooooohhhhmmmm” their eyes go into that Zen-like stare and they are in the zone.  Tranced out for the ride.  I am surprised that L.Ron Hubbard hadn’t noticed this and used the subways as a training ground for Scientologists.  In a big way I am glad he hadn’t.

Coming out of the zone, I oozed my way out of the subway car and started up the hill to my house.  I turned my head, not to say goodbye to good friends, but to say goodbye to the workweek.  Hello weekend!  Almost immediately my shoulders started to relax and I rolled my head slowly back, around, down and back several times from right to left then from left to right and back again.  I could feel those little crunchy things popping and snapping as I performed this little relaxing ritual.  I had walked this hill nightly for the last four years since I moved in.  I watched the leaves on the few hopeful little city trees change color with the seasons.  I don’t think they really grew, they were puny runts like little orphan trees that nobody really wanted and the city probably got for free.  As I walked by each one planted in its own little square foot park-like setting, I felt as if they, too, were glad it was the weekend.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye; it was Mrs. Goodman’s cat guarding her front stoop.  It had taken up its nightly sentry position, meowing hello as I walked by.  Mrs. Goodman is the neighborhood Jewish mother.  She, like her cat, worries about all that goes on within her small ten-square block community.  She introduced herself that first weekend, showing up unannounced; I greeted her at my door: 

“Hi, I’m Mrs. Goodman, in the Brownstone at the foot of the hill.”  She took a quick look around into my house through the open door.  “You don’t have much furniture.   Do you live here alone?  Is there a Mrs. In the house?"

In my most polite voice and trying to hide the feeling of participating in an inquisition I answered, 

“Hello, nice to meet you.   I’m Elson Evans.  I just moved in this week from Manhattan, I work down there, and I do live here alone.  I sold most of my stuff before the move, kinda making a new start."

Delighted to find that an eligible bachelor had moved into the “hood,” she shoved some kind of casserole into my hands, took one more look around at the “bachelor pad” and swished off to tell the other matrons anxiously awaiting any tidbit of gossip or misinformation.  Over her shoulder, as she left, she shouted in her best “Jewish Mother” voice, I know lots of good Jewish girls if you get lonely."

I continued the trek up the hill past the lime green eyesore owned by the gay couple, on past the beautiful brick three story bottom floor our local grocery and top two floors housing the grocer and his family.  “Lots of good Jewish girls...” I’m not there yet, will I ever be? 

**Join Elson on his journey as he creates a new normal and begins to feel like he may be able to love again.  I would appreciate any feedback as I continue to post more of his journey.  Thanks for reading.