by Antara Mann
“John, buddy, imagine… Imagine what it would be if I got what I wanted at least once in my life…” While I was muttering these words, I suddenly remembered the lyrics of “Imagine” and started singing about everything I wanted coming to me, about being a dreamer, and how I wasn’t the only one. While I was humming, a couple in love passed by. The woman looked at me curiously. I sighed and went my way further down the alley. It was shaping up to be another lonely evening at my small apartment in Midtown Manhattan. I was going to buy a bottle of white wine, some rice with vegetables, and a bag of chips from the nearest store. But suddenly something unusual happened. Something that completely changed my monotonous daily routine. As I was walking down West 54th Street in the darkening day, a stranger grabbed my attention. He had a little table in front of him with a sign saying “Wishing coins for sale.”
“Come closer, ma’am, take a look at my incredible magic coins and pick your own,” he said invitingly.
“Are these the advanced version of Bitcoins? Are they taxable?”
“Everything has a price, ma’am, and you know this very well.” The stranger paused. “But if you mean federal tax, no, these coins aren’t taxable. You’ve got nothing to declare.” He smiled widely.
I stopped in the middle of the street.
“Come, ma’am, and give them a try for free!”
Something about that vendor – it could have been his voice, the words he’d been using or his energy as a whole – aroused my curiosity and made me come closer to the table. According to the laws of logic, he matched all the characteristics of a crackpot.
“Do your coins really make wishes come true?”
“Sure, didn’t I attract you here? I had just wished that you would come closer and my wish did come true, didn’t it?”
I chuckled; the stranger had a good sense of humor. I glanced at the coins – some were white, others kind of yellowish and still others had the color of copper. There were some very old and other brand new ones among them.
“Is there any difference among them? What is each used for?”
“You’re quite observant! Yes, there’s a difference. The white ones you see fulfill all wishes related to health. The copper ones are for work and the golden – for love. Which kind would you like, madam?”
The stranger was so convincing that I was beginning to believe him. Wishing coins? I felt as if I was going back in time to when I was a kid and wanted to find something similar to Aladdin’s magic lamp.
“Can I buy all of them then? I have a wish that’s related to my work and another to love…”
“No, ma’am, these are very powerful objects and you can buy just one. I’m not allowed to sell anybody more than one.”
“But what I’d really like is a coin that will fulfill all my wishes. Don’t you have one like that?”
The stranger was staring at me intensely without uttering a word. I felt I couldn’t bear his silence any longer and decided to leave, but he stopped me.
“Miss, hold on!”
I turned back to him. He came closer to me as if he had to tell me something confidential.
“I do have one such coin. I don’t offer it to anybody because… because it really makes all wishes come true.”
“But that’s awesome!” I exclaimed, overexcited. “I mean… who wouldn’t want all their wishes to come true?! Where’s this coin? I am buying it immediately!”
The stranger smiled. He had nice white teeth. For a moment it crossed my mind that he might not have been just an ordinary vendor, but I was too excited to give it a second thought. Later on, when I was going back to this very moment I wondered if I would have taken the coin if I had known its real price.
“Miss, I can sell it to you, but I am not taking any responsibility for the consequences. Remember that what now looks like a gift may very soon turn into a curse.”
“I’m taking it!” I insisted. The more he was warning me, the more I wanted the coin. Marketing specialists could only watch and learn from him.
“All right, then,” the stranger resigned with a sigh and bent under the table. After a few seconds he took out a carefully folded cloth, unfolded it pedantically and revealed a small quite tarnished coin – a true relic. I reached for it but he stopped me.
“Don’t you ever take it with your right hand! Touch it only with the left one. Will you remember that?”
I reached out my left hand obediently and he dropped the coin in it quite unwillingly. As soon as it fell on my palm I got a strange feeling. There were some figures engraved on it and, tarnished as it was, I could identify something like a deity on its face.
“Where’s it from?”
“I’m not sure – either Nepal or Kashmir.”
“And this tiny piece of metal is my ticket to fulfilling all my desires?”
“Yes, ma’am, I warned you about it several times already.”
“Excellent. What do I owe you?”
“500 dollars.”
“500 bucks for this junky piece!” I couldn’t help but cry with astonishment. A passerby turned his head toward me and eyed me with curiosity. His reaction sobered me. How had I even fallen for such a cheap trick like wishing coins? I should have hurried to the supermarket if I didn’t want to eat yesterday's leftovers for dinner.
“Thanks a lot, I intend to invest my money in something more reasonable.” I gave him the coin back immediately. I expected the vendor to object or at least to start talking me into buying the coin, but he was visibly relieved and I heard him mutter,
“Thank God she didn’t take it.”
Now, I am asking myself: if I hadn’t heard him, would I have just gone home and would the story have ended right then? Who knows? But I heard him and made a firm decision: I had to have this coin at all costs, even if I had to pay five thousand. Thank Goodness, I withdrew enough money from an ATM earlier today.
“Hey… um… What’s your name? I’m buying the coin!”
He turned back to me, flabbergasted, and handed it to me reluctantly.
“And remember, don’t you ever touch it with your right hand!”
“Yes, yes, all right.” I took out the money hastily and paid him. All I wanted was to go home as soon as possible and examine the coin undisturbed by anything. Perhaps all this was just a well-staged theater aiming at making me buy this useless piece of crap, but I could feel in my gut that there was something special about that coin.
I opened the door of my apartment and immediately rushed to the living room, where I took the coin and put it up under the lamplight. I could definitely discern something like a deity. On its back I identified some geometrical shapes blending into one another. I felt overexcited. “Could this be true? A wishing coin?” I spoke aloud and then laughed nervously. I glanced back at the little coin – it was now or never.
“I want…” I started but then stopped. Did I have the guts to try it? “I want to be the new host of The Screw,” I announced firmly. “If this works out, I will wish for Lewis and me to make up,” I was thinking on my way to the fridge. I took out a bottle of white wine.
“Namaste!” I raised a toast to the strange coin I had put in a prominent place in the kitchen.
Chapter 3
“How I spent five dollars on recording a hit song for YouTube that now has over 2 million views. See it yourself!” That was the message displayed in my GChat. I stopped to consider it with my hand on the mouse. The link was one click away. I hesitated because it had been awhile since I had last paid attention to such aggressive approaches.
It was past 10 o’clock and for an hour already I’d been checking my email and the latest tweets from AEC’s Twitter account. I was looking for a topic for some new material when this message got my attention. I got a lot of personal messages of this sort every day but usually they turned out to be ads or made up stories. People would do anything to get to their own piece of 15-minute fame. In the past I would’ve checked every link and every message, but eventually I’d given up
. Looking at that message, I felt a compelling urge to click on it.
Was I curious or did I just want to see what the sender of the message had come up with? Anyway, I was going to find out after some seconds.
“Yo- yoo man, what’s up? Diggin’ in the dirt,
Girl, better take off your shirt
I’m a gangsta
Catch me if you can
I am the man
…”
Less than 15 seconds later I stopped the video. It was a cheap one, shot somewhere in the Bronx. Why had I wasted even a single minute from my working time to listen to that impostor’s gibberish? I wondered how many views this “masterpiece” had had. I expected not more than several hundred, so when I saw the number two million and three hundred thousand, I was dumbstruck. How was that possible? I stared at the paused video and refreshed the page.
“Yo-oo man,” the rapper began again. The number, however, didn’t care to change – it had remained two million and three hundred thousand. What the hell?
I then moved my eyes to the likes of the video – there were over half a million. The dislikes were a bit over three thousand. I clicked on the comments and was hit by a wave of praise. There were some negative ones among them but that was normal. An artist couldn’t appeal to everyone, after all. I was gaping with surprise.
“How the hell?” I spoke aloud when somebody tapped me on my shoulder. I turned around. It was Emily, the News Editor.
“How are you? How did you get to your place last night?” she asked me.
“Oh, it’s you. Well, it was okay. In fact, on my way home I met this curious guy and I even bought –”
“I’m sorry for yesterday but you know Susan, don’t you?” Em interrupted me impatiently. “Oh, gosh, I gotta go! Nick will kill me if I don’t bring him the reports immediately. Take care, Julia!” She ran down the corridor hurriedly. I focused my attention back to the YouTube video.
“But how has this piece of crap become so popular?” I was puzzling over it aloud when I heard a familiar voice again.
“I’ll tell you how. We are drawn by what sounds provocative and intriguing and we share it with friends on social networks. Artists aggressively use all kinds of methods to grab our attention, with the risk of making their messages look like shameless self-promotion or even spam.” Taylor Carey, the Technology Editor, came nearer. His desk was next to mine and we often popped into the Dead Poet after work.
“Okay, but two million?”
“It’s all about marketing. It’s wrong to draw a line between a product and the way it’s promoted. Making a good product or, in this case, a piece of art, is marketing in itself.”
“Do you mean Roscoe Ritch’s song is good art? God save us from such artists!”
“Why, don’t you like him?” Taylor winked at me. “My 13-year-old nephew is a huge fan of rap and of anyone who raps about hot chicks and violence.”
“The world’s surely going nuts!” I exclaimed while still trying to assimilate those two million views.
“I’m not sure if it’s going nuts or if we’re just addicted to negative news. Hey, how about having lunch with me at David Burke at Bloomingdale’s? In a few hours I’m having a meeting with an entrepreneur in front of the Sony Tower.”
“Fine, but you’re paying. Isn’t that some negative news?” I winked at him.
***
“So what, you couldn’t make it as a host of The Screw?” Taylor asked me while he was having tomatoes with mozzarella.
“Yeah, life sucks.” I took a sip of wine resignedly.
“Did Carter at least tell you why he didn’t choose you?”
“That new one, umm, Jennifer Bailey, you must know her, from James Miller Live? Her stories apparently generate much more response and have won the affection of the mass viewer.”
“Was she the one who interviewed Dannie Ashville and that boxer Dexter Bake?”
“Yeah, that’s her.”
“Well, her stories were a bang up job. You can do nothing but start learning from her.”
I put my glass on the table and eyed Taylor spitefully.
“Are you picking on me?”
Taylor grinned.
“No, I’m damn serious. Go and show some more mainstream stories and you’ll become the new host of AEC News in no time.”
“Do you think I don’t realize this? It just…” I stared at the little bubbles in my wine. “It just wouldn’t be me and the spirit of my stories – the way I planned them to be eight years ago – would be lost.”
“Yes, but if you don’t change them, you’ll risk losing your screen presence.”
“Is it really that bad?” I asked worriedly. “I remember that this month I had two stories which gathered some very favorable feedback, not only among our viewers but in the social networks, too. Even Georgepolous congratulated me.”
“Julia, I don’t mean they’ll kick you out, just… make those stories more – What’s the word? – more appealing to the mainstream viewer.”
“You mean I should lower the quality?”
“Why, for example, don’t you interview that rapper who had the video with two million views as part of your next story? It will be a killer!”
“That guy? But he’s horrible. Do you really think it will make the grade?”
“Do I think? I’m a hundred percent sure.”
I gave him a skeptical stare.
“Is he really such a gold mine?”
“Let’s bet, if you don’t believe me! Feature that white rapper in Good Morning USA and your rating will double! Fifty dollars and a free drink at the Dead Poet for the winner. Do we have a deal?”
I laughed. “Okay, if you don’t mind wasting your money so easily, then let’s bet.”
At the same moment my iPhone vibrated. Mike Greenberg’s name was written on the display. I wondered what he wanted. I dismissed the call.
“Do you have an admirer?” Taylor winked at me.
“Oh, shut up and eat your salad!”
Chapter 4
“And you just went and got an interview with him on the following day?” Emily asked me while being handed her frappe at Starbucks on Broadway.
“Here’s your change, ma’am, two dollars twenty five cents, have a nice day; good afternoon…” The barista halted when it was my turn to order and suddenly spoke excitedly. “You are Julia Preston from Miracle – How I Did It, aren’t you?”
Before I could even say a word I was swept away by a torrent of words.
“The Roscoe Ritch story turned around my perception of the world and my whole life! Well, so far only in theory, but thanks to you I realized that miracles are possible as long as you do some hard work.”
“Yes, very interesting, I’m happy that my story has helped you –”
“What’s going on? I’ve been waiting for a coffee and a piece of pie for ten minutes already! If you wanna talk, do it outside!” cried a disgruntled customer further down the line.
“A cup of black tea and a muffin,” I ordered hastily. “How much do I owe you?” I reached for my bag in order to take my wallet out but the barista stopped me.
“No, ma’am, it’s on the house. Bon appétit and have a nice day.”
I went to the table where Emily was already drinking her frappe and observing the incident with interest.
“It’s the first time something like this has happened to me,” I noted, sitting next to her.
“What? Being shouted at in Starbucks?”
“No, it’s the first time a barista has recognized me, praised me for the story I’d made, and even given me a free coffee as a sign of gratitude.”
“You’re a star now, get used to it.” A playful smile curved Emily’s lips.
“Could you please stop mocking me?”
“Mocking you? What’s not true? You’re AEC’s new rising reporter. But I still can’t understand how you did the trick with only a 10-minute interview. Have you done some magic or something?”
I
looked down at my cup of tea.
“I guess you can call it sheer luck.”
“Sheer luck? That’s anything but sheer luck! Can you remind me again how you got so far?” Emily gazed at my eyes, trying to read the answer there.
Some amazing things had happened that week. As soon as Taylor and I made the bet, I called the rapper whose artistic name was Roscoe Ritch. The same day I interviewed him at his home in the Bronx. It was the last time I’d set foot in that squalid borough! I wondered how far I would have gone to get my own show. Roscoe Ritch turned out to be a 15-year-old who lived with his mother in a small apartment in the beginning of the Bronx. His mother was really surprised to see me there and admitted that she hadn’t expected her son’s debut single to become such a success.
“You know, Roscoe can’t really sing. In fact his singing is horribly bad,” she explained to me, perfectly at ease.
She couldn’t have been more right. Her son, however, was on cloud nine. He said that he himself hadn’t even hoped that his song would be watched by over two million people and that he would become the most popular boy at school in no time. Before I began the interview, I introduced him to the viewers as the Eminem of the new generation, a young poet and rebel with a debut single in both iTunes and Amazon’s Top 100. Both before as well as after the filming, Roscoe couldn’t help saying over and over again: “I can’t believe I’ll be on Good Morning USA! Oh my gosh, I must be dreaming.”
Walking out of their home, I was convinced I had only wasted my time there. I hadn’t been prepared for what came next. True, his video had been quite popular but still, Roscoe was just one of the many rappers from the Bronx and was underage, too. On the following day, Roscoe Ritch’s interview, along with a short excerpt of his hit single, were featured in my slot. The story drew a lot of attention and GMU’s producer personally invited me to the studio for a chat with the hosts.
I walked in 15 minutes earlier and saw Georgepolous, Rogers, and Lancer chattering during the ads.