Twenty Dollar Bill
by Richard Thomas

Waukegan, IL
The Trojan horse twenty dollar bill sits in a pile on the night stand. Peeling wallpaper, and thick grey curtains block out the cars rambling by on the interstate. A cigarette smolders in the ashtray as she pulls on her panties. Black lace. Predictable, but effective. I watch her as she dresses, mesmerized by her tight body. Every bend and stretch, the first female flesh I’ve seen or touched in eleven years. Besides my wife. She is everything that my wife is not. Blonde hair down to her supple ass, green piercing eyes that sparkle when she laughs, and firm breasts that hold my every glance. It’s been easier than I thought it would be. Hit the ATM, a stack of bruised green bills, and that one crisp new $20, sitting on top. Watching me, laughing. The paper trail mocks me, screams out adulterer, liar. I don’t care. Her name is Kelly, and I think I’ve found a new hobby. She’s gentle and kind and looks me in the eye. Glancing back at me, she smiles, her lips barely parted, head bowed in a shy flush. She’s new. I know that much. And I’m already playing back in my mind every motion and touch, every gasp and moan. It’ll have to last me. At least until next month. I never notice the blinking red light in the upper right corner of the room. Soon we’ll be on the internet. And it will all fall apart.

Waukegan, IL to Libertyville, IL
This john, he’s my first, and I have emerged renewed, invigorated, and to a lesser degree, satisfied. Wrapping my long black wool coat around me, my skin hums, and the deep glow from my center is part orgasm, part love, and part hope that I can leave now, be independent. Leave my worthless man. I’ve finally found my calling. The wasteland around me is nothing but skeletal trees and snow banks with dirty feet, icy and black. Boarded up storefronts and gas stations, overflowing dumpsters and cold, crisp air. The salt splattered Camry waits for me, like nobody does. She’s my safe haven in any storm, and as my long black boots clomp across the parking lot, heel-toe, heel-toe, a heat rises up the back of my neck. He’d been my first, sure, but there’s a long line of men waiting in my in-box. They find me attractive, even if he doesn’t. They want to spend time with me, even if he doesn’t. They’ll help me pay my bills, get the heat turned back on, get the water turned back on, get the fucking phone and internet turned back on. They’ve got me turned back on. Pulling out a handful of keys, I open the beige door. Exhaust from a semi passing by coats me in soot, grounding me in the reality of the moment, and ripping me out of the film in my head. Off to the Currency Exchange. Bills to pay. Or not. Maybe it’s time to leave. Fuck him. He can deal with it all. Whenever he comes home. Whenever he wakes up. It’ll be a quick stop. Two suitcases, and my laptop. A pot or two. That’s all I need. The rest I have. In my head. And in my skirt. That hot, moist moment of pleasure that men will kill to get at. Pay to get at. I have the power now, and nobody is going to take it away again. Pulling into the Wendy’s I order a #1 with cheese, large diet coke. Hungry, in so many ways. Here’s a $20.

Libertyville, IL to Chicago, IL
If you’re real smart, and fast, you can take the order at the drive through window, not enter it into the register, and verbally relay that to the fry cook. You can steal that twenty dollar bill and issue the change directly from your previous transactions, straight out of your pocket. No one is the wiser. Crisp, folded in half, slipped into my jeans. She was hot though, in a MILF kind of way. Bit of pale cleavage leaking out of that bundled up coat, a ray of sunshine in that suburban soccer-mom car, winter beating at the window, her smile a hint at something more. I almost say something. Totally out of character. Like, what are you doing later? Like, what’s your sign, hot mama? Please. I get enough ridicule in school, I don’t need it from some hottie on her way home from Pilates class. Even if that bit of thigh slicing out from under her long black coat will probably drive me to self-abuse later. Probably. Most definitely. What else do I have going on? I pull the bill back out, after she’s driven off, after her order has been filled, a gap in the lunch rush as things ease up. Even in the middle of the grease, the onions, the charred beef, garlic, and oil, it has a hint of her on it. A hint of something musky and sweet. It’s almost more than I can handle. I’ll sniff it while I sit on the train, headed back to the city to meet up with my brother. Working at Wendy’s when you’re in High School is one thing. Working at Wendy’s in college is another. Working at Wendy’s when you’re 30 is a disgrace. I won’t give this to the conductor. Or the homeless guy with no legs who sits in his wheelchair on the Washington bridge crossing over the Chicago River. I have singles for him, and a nod of the head, a momentary locking of our eyes. His warning to me. My understanding to him. Don’t go there. Don’t come here. I won’t. Good. I’ll hand this to my older brother. His long brown hair shaggy with waves, greasy and thick. The bar code tattoo on his left wrist flashes for a moment as he takes it, quickly, never looking me in the eye. It covers up the scars there, at his wrist. The black ink hides the scar tissue, the cuts horizontal in hesitation, vertical when it was serious. It’s all I can do. He’s pale, and shivers, no matter how many thrift store flannel shirts I bring him. No matter how many black sweatshirts. He always looks cold. And it’s contagious. I head back to the train. Back home to the suburbs, to mom and dad, the clinical dinner table, lack of commentary, lack of discussion. He doesn’t come up. I don’t bring him up. Our eyes meet over passed butter and ladled gravy. My brother. I hope he’s eating.

Chicago, IL
So many choices. El Chino Burrito. A fifth of Old Grand Dad. The electricity bill. Socks. A hand job. I stand at the intersection of lost and found, blurs of yellow screaming by on their way to airports or high rise eruptions. It’s too cold to smell a thing, my nose hairs crisping in the frigid air. She said she’ll do me this favor. If I help her move. If I help her get away from him. I know the story. I’ve seen the bruises. Hands shoved deep in my coat pockets, the crumpled up bill clenched with the others. I gave blood. I gave sperm. I gave gold fillings to the man on the corner with the little shop that asks no questions. The crusty blood dried at the corner of my chapped lips. His eyes stare, looking down, then up then gaze back down again. His knuckles are hairy, short stubby fingers, ringed with gold, and sparkling stones, his work. No more, he says. Stop it, he warns. I nod and leave. In my pockets, my long slender fingers that used to play, at so many things. Keyboards. Guitar strings. Typewriters. Sweaty necks, rubbing lower, closing my eyes, getting paid. She said if I helped her to escape him that she’d cut me a deal. No freebie, I was not a symphony. A sympathy. A discount for a preferred customer, a friend maybe. A warm body. I stand there in the cold, every slice of the sky blue or gray, every bit of structure metal or glass. But I stand. She pulls up in the long beige sedan, right on time. Or is it hours too late? There isn’t much to get, she says. Some boxes, some clothes maybe. But we have to hurry. No more waiting for the fists to land, the rotten stench of his breath in her mouth. No more, she says. But we have to hurry. I climb into this foreign ship, this tan piece of suburbia, familiar is so many ways to a life I once knew. It’s warm. She smells of sandalwood and sweet spices, brown sugar and patchouli. Hiding in her long dark coat, her blanket of wool and sanity, her shelter from anything that could actually touch her. I reach out my hands to her as she cups hers under mine. Down comes the rain, the crumpled up ten dollar bills, the fives, and the one folded, crisp twenty. Is it enough? It is.