Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "OK, first question because you offer," she said and assumed a very serious demeanor. "What is a frog?"

  "A small amphibian, or a rude name for a French gentleman."

  She looked at him with the same insulted look small children have, when they know they are being made an object of humor by their relatives.

  "And which of these two would you expect to climb from our ears?" she inquired, pointedly.

  "Well neither, but it was a nonsense statement meant to test your reaction. I didn’t do it to mock you, but perhaps it was unkind. I’m sorry," he offered.

  She pecked at the board a bit and he could see the entries scroll. "I think I understand. An absurdity? An exaggeration?" she asked.

  "Yes, exactly."

  "Is this a frog?" she asked and turned the pad around. It was a frog, but it was tiger striped in red. He had heard of bright colored tropical frogs, poison ones if he remembered right, but this one had rows of needle sharp teeth crossing each other outside its closed jaws. It was truly creepy.

  "Sure is. Ugly little sucker too," he volunteered.

  "Yes," she went back to text and looked up another word on the pad. "Poison, very bad."

  "I rather guessed that," he admitted, "given the coloring." That produced a frankly appraising look from her.

  "Is that a commercial dictionary?" he asked.

  "It is all the words I think I understand. Also some I know I do not understand and some I want to understand." At that she quickly typed in a short entry.

  "Which sort was that one just now?"

  "That is one I want to understand. Something you said - nickname."

  "Boy, that is going to take some explaining," he admitted. "Look," he said softening. "I have to go shop for some things. That’s why I came into town. But I’ll tell you what. If you want to ask some more questions why don’t we meet back here for lunch and talk a little more before I have to go home?" He pulled a twenty out of his wallet and picked his check up with them both in his hand.

  "Thank you, yes. I will walk around and look at things and meet you back here."

  "One o’clock?" he offered. That got the same look of uncertainty. Then he realized she had no watch on either.

  "When the big hand is on the twelve," he said to tease her, demonstrating with his index finger turned against the clock face of his flat hand, "and the little hand is on the one," he offered, adding his thumb. He pointed at the big clock on the wall. She didn’t act insulted by his humor, which surprised him. She consulted a couple of entries in her PDA and agreed that would be fine.

  She pulled a folded piece of paper from another pocket and opened it on the table to display some money. It wasn’t a wallet at all, just a sheet of paper folded to make an unglued envelope, like a jeweler might use to carry small stones.

  She didn't seem able to go very long at all without doing something strange. Even in a small town like this, people didn’t lay their money out flat on a table to show the world. They held it close and pulled what they needed out, without making a big show. She looked at the check and was having a hard time.

  The total was a scrawl in pencil, not a neatly printed number and she flipped it back and forth to look at front and back, like one would make sense eventually. She had a fair bundle of cash, including some hundreds.

  "How do I pay?" she asked. "Did I say that right?"

  "Yes, you have that straight. Haven’t you had to pay for stuff traveling?" he asked, but dropped it when she didn’t reply.

  "OK, you can’t pay with these," he explained and tapped his finger on the top bill. "Keith has a sign right on the door when you come in – No Hundred Dollar Bills." Roger pushed some bills off the pile until he found some twenties. She did not seem uncomfortable at all to have some stranger casually paw through her money.

  He pulled a twenty out and pushed it in front of her. "Our breakfast was eighteen thirty-five if you can’t read Mary’s writing," he explained. Then he stopped and looked funny at the pile of bills fanned out. Something was wrong with it and he couldn’t figure out what.

  He took a hundred and held it up to the light from the window trying not to be too obvious unlike her. The watermark was fine and he could see the embedded security thread. He checked the feel. It had the right texture from intaglio printing. It didn’t look brand new. He picked the next one up and looked at them side by side. What was it catching his eye? They looked fine, exactly the same. Then it hit him - that’s what’s wrong! He folded the one bill so the serial number was just over the fold and held it against the other bill.

  "Holy Shit!" he hissed. The older lady at the near booth had her back to them, but she sat up very straight, offended by his language. Her husband who faced Roger, looked over his wife’s shoulder with a frown of disapproval. He raised both palms to the man in apology and silently mouthed – "I’m sorry," to him.

  "Put that away," he told Martee and pushed the money back at her. "Hide it, look up the words if you have to, but hide it. And stay here", stabbing his index finger at where she was seated for emphasis. When she still didn’t react he said, "Sit," like you’d command a dog. He got up and walked over to the couple’s booth. They didn’t look happy to see him.

  "Look, I’m really very sorry," he told them. "That was uncalled for. The only excuse I can offer is I had a real shock. I just now ran into an unexpected legal problem and it's going to cost me to deal with it," he assured them. It was easy to say because every word was true.

  He picked their check up from the table. "I ruined your meal. The only small gesture that I can think to make is to at least get your tab. I hope if you see me around town again you won’t think too badly of me." He really didn’t want to have a bad rep with the local people and this was just the sort of thing that could get talked around between all the church ladies in a small town.

  "Thank you, young man," the older gentleman said softening. He gave the young woman an appraising look, wondering what she could have told Rog that was so shocking. "I hope it all works out for you," he offered in dismissal.

  That and the fact he didn't demand his check back, said he'd probably fixed it with them.

  When he got back he was happy to see that Martee had put the money away.

  "Both of those words are ones I have lots of questions about," she told him very seriously.

  He stopped and had to think about it. When he realized which two words she meant he was really irritated. "Not now. We can talk about words some other time. You can’t pay with that money," he told her quietly. "It’s counterfeit – fake! I suppose you'll tell me you didn’t know that?"

  She looked at her PDA again and frowned. "It is a perfect copy, down to a level that you should not be able to detect, even if you had the original to compare. What could you possibly object to about it? How could you even know it's a copy?"

  "So, you admit you made it?"

  "No, but a friend made it for me and he is very good at this. He restores and reproduces all sorts of historical objects and museum pieces. If two things are absolutely identical, how can it mean anything to say one is fake? How can you even know after, which is the original, unless you keep them carefully separate? It’s nonsense," she said.

  Roger let out a heavy sigh. He could just walk out the door and go home. He didn’t owe this woman anything. But whatever trouble she got in after he left he was linked with her, now that so many people had seen them eat together. Somebody would wonder what sort of fellow he was, to consort with criminals. Instead he took a dollar bill out of his wallet.

  "OK Martee, What do you see here?" He took a pen out of his pocket and circled the serial number on the bill. It said: L91583249 I.

  "Those are numbers and the end ones are letters, right?" she asked.

  "Yes and why do they put this on the money?"

  "I don’t know. There are a lot of symbols on there I don’t understand." She flipped it over and pointed out the pyramid with its eye at the apex. "This one I think very strange."


  He got another bill out, laid it down and circled its serial number too. "Now do you notice this bill looks the same, but the number is different?"

  She glanced at them, unimpressed and agreed.

  "Who would bother?" she asked confused. "Isn’t it easier to make all the same?"

  "Sure it is," he couldn't believe her; this was the sort of conversation you had with a six-year-old. "But it’s even worse than you think. Every bill is different. No two are alike."

  She blinked. "Because?"

  "Nobody can make them but the government. If you make your own it is a very bad crime. If two show up with the same number they know somebody is copying them. If you used two of them the same and got caught they would arrest you and lock you up, probably for a long, long time."

  "Pritsha!" she exclaimed, understanding blossoming on her face and shaken.

  "Which means?"

  "A word – very much like 'holy shit' I am guessing," she admitted.

  After another half hour of question and answer she was starting to understand how the government used control of the money supply to monetize every transaction and make sure almost nothing lies beyond the reach of the tax authorities.

  "All these ‘control freak’ people are very bad," she assured him, awkward with the new phrase. Maybe even more bad than mine," she allowed darkly.

  "More bad is worse," he corrected. "Well, some governments are better than others," he assured her. "Some are smart enough to allow you to get a little wealth knowing that they can tax more off a rich man than a poor one. You can’t get blood out of a turnip after all."

  She looked at her screen and sighed.

  "Just when you start to make sense, you say something that sounds like frogs out of ears again." She looked tired.

  "We’ve sat here way too long. Why don’t we go out and walk a bit and when we come back this way it will be time to eat again?"

  "It is good. You say OK, right?" she agreed.

  He went to the register, Martee at his elbow and paid her bill, his own and the older couple’s bill all at once. He’d left a twenty for a tip.

  "Thanks cowboy," Mary said. "The owner was keeping an eye on you from the service window. He was afraid you were waiting until nobody was looking, to skip out holding three bills. I told him you weren’t crooked city folk. In fact this looks like some more charity work on top of your toast to me."

  Chapter 2

  Roger walked around to the side lot and unlocked his truck with his key fob from a distance. Martee seemed to flinch a bit when his truck beeped gently and the lights flickered.

  "I’m going to move my truck over to the market. It’s not all that far away, but it’s too far to carry the bags back comfortably." He walked up and yanked his door open and started to slide in, but realized with a start that Martee had followed him right up to the driver’s door and was standing unnaturally close behind him like she didn't know what to do.

  He really wasn’t sure what to say, because he didn’t know what the problem was and why she didn't just hop in. "Would you like to ride over with me?"

  "Please, that would be good," she agreed and looked at the open bed tentatively, as if she might jump up there.

  "Well, you’ll have to ride in the cab with me. It’s not legal anymore in this state to ride in the back."

  "Oh, are there a lot of uh, little laws like that?"

  "You have no idea," he grinned, amused at her finding the law 'little'. "Sometime I have to show you a law library." She still stood not sure what to do so he walked around the nose of the truck and made a little come along motion with his hand. That she understood just fine. He stuck his hand in the recess and yanked the door open.

  She immediately understood she was supposed to get in, but she hesitated trying to back in and the seat was too high to do it that way. Then she stuck her left leg in first and he could see it coming that she would crack her head on the roof, getting in like that, so he said, "Hold on, wait, let me show you how." He stepped past her and for just a second he froze up himself, because he tried to think out about how to get in. It was such an automatic thing he couldn’t do it by thinking about it step by step, anymore than he could ride a bicycle by that process. If he did he’d probably crack his head, just like she'd been about to do.

  Finally, he managed to clear his mind and hopped in smoothly. "See? Nothing to it. Just be careful not to hit your head on the roof," he warned and patted the edge in warning.

  He got back out and she copied him fairly well. He slammed the door and went back around to his door, that was still open.

  "That's where we're headed, down there on the South side," he pointed. "To the sign on a post that says ‘Foodland’ in red letters on white. Buckle your belt," he instructed, "Like this," and pulled the harness across him and pushed it into the latch until it clicked. "You push this button here to release it," he said and demonstrated it for her.

  She pulled her own belt across her and the buckle clicked into place. "Is this really necessary to go such a small distance? If we don’t go any faster than the other trucks I see, it doesn’t seem dangerous." That was one of the best sentences she had made.

  "It isn’t, but if I pull out on the public street without us both belted in I can be ticketed because…"

  "It’s another law," she finished.

  Quick learner, he thought.

  All the way down the street she touched everything on her side of the cab. She played with the air-conditioning vents and felt the seats and door trim. The one thing she didn't do was touch anything that looked like a control. She didn't run the window down or lock the door. She even kept her hand away from the radio and heater controls. She seemed very serious about it all, too.

  When he got to the supermarket the lot was fairly busy but he pulled around to the back, next to the dumpster and the loading docks. It wasn’t that far to push the cart around back and if he had to do a dance again showing her how to get in a truck or something else strange, he didn’t want to do it with half the town falling on the pavement giggling. How can somebody…

  He stopped and looked at her again suddenly aware he wasn’t sure how old she was, anything from twenty-five to a very healthy thirty-five. An adult anyway, so how come she acted like she never had climbed in a car before? Brain damage? Lost memories? But such an impressive native intelligence she was relearning everything quickly? Maybe she didn’t remember where she was from and didn’t want to admit it. That might make sense. He had seen kids that would say just about anything to avoid a simple ‘I don’t know’ when you asked them something.

  "OK, you want to come along while I shop?" he asked opening his door.

  She watched him get out and he looked back inside and saw her pull the door lever and frown when nothing happened.

  "You have to push," he said and made a push motion with his hands in the air.

  Martee reached across with her left hand and shoved. The door opened a little, but it was a stiff heavy door for a small woman. Roger realized he hardly ever opened it, so it might need to be greased up, too. He was about to walk around to help her when she shoved it the rest of the way open with a foot. He resolved he would be a better gentleman when they came back.

  Walking in with her was kind of fun. He had no idea what she would do, or consider strange. Mostly she was just very alert, big-eyed, like a kid in an amusement park instead of a supermarket. Even the unfriendly glare John the owner’s son gave them as they came in didn’t put her off. The man was the sort of local who would have raised a chain link fence around the town and kept all outsiders out if he could.

  To hear John tell it, every new summer family with a vacation home, he regarded as a step toward ruining the whole area. Even though they probably spent more in his store over a summer, than a local customer would spend all year long.

  He picked up a large size canister of coarse ground black pepper, remembering she'd liked it in the restaurant and caught himself in surprise...Wait a minute-What am I doing h
ere? He wanted to ask her out to his place for dinner. But the sudden urge was way out of character and made him feel strange. He usually worked hard keeping people away from the cabin.

  He hoped she wouldn’t take an invitation wrong. He was really curious about her, but he had not felt any romantic attraction at all yet. That was odd too. She wasn't ugly. But despite the internal conflict he went ahead and put it in his cart.

  Two dozen eggs seemed like a good idea too and he decided to splurge on a big jug of real maple syrup, a roll of aluminum foil and a box of raisins. That made as much as he wanted to carry in one trip. He knew when he got home he’d find he forgot something. If he was going to do dinner right he decided to not worry about the cost and doubled back to the meat counter and got two thick porterhouse steaks, that cost as much as a careful shopper could live on for a week.

  If she figured out they were special, or why he was buying them in pairs, she didn’t let on.

  Back at the checkout he looked in his wallet to count his cash. He’d spent so much for breakfast he didn’t want to come up short. He felt a tap on his elbow and Martee was offering him a hundred-dollar bill. He started to argue, but she explained. "Just use one. The original will never be used, so it’s just a substitution not a cheat."

  He thought about that. If you burned a bill up or something and could prove it, the bank would get you a replacement. - Question was, he thought, did he trust her to be telling the truth about the original? Trust her enough to put his prints and DNA on this one? Strangely enough he did.

  "Thank you," he said and accepted it. She might have felt like a freeloader over breakfast and this would more than square it.

  As the cashier rang it up he watched the total. When it got to ninety dollars he said, "Hold it John. That’s the end of the ladies stuff. Total it up and the rest is mine." He did that because anything over a hundred dollars he’d have to give his Federal ID number, to get a transaction number. He didn't care to leave a record of his habits if it could be avoided.