The Old Man’s Briefcase

I’d sat and watched this man drink here before, but I’d never thought much of him. Wearing a commoner’s old-school tie, thick striped suit, and a tattered, old briefcase in his arms, this old man could never have sparked anything but boredom in anyone. It seemed like a regular routine to see him there, in a corner table, surrounded by no one and sipping tea. Never any company. If I’d known his name, I would probably have been the first.

There was a slight blink of mystery in him, though. Routine was his position, his drink, even his posture, but never the times. This bar was an Irish place, owned by an Irishman by the name of Hertford, and was famous for its odd hours. I was constantly passing through. At the latest of nights, to the brightest and most sobering hours of the morning, he had been there. If it weren’t for the pocket watch that he carried and checked regularly, I would have thought he lived on an internal clock that was missing a few springs or gears. But, like I said, I never paid any thought to him.

Myself, I’d had enough of a problem with life, and could find an easy solution at the bottom of a glass of whiskey; sometimes it took three or four glasses to find it. My own friends were scarce and had been living the good life since before I could remember. I identified with the old man that lonely way. But, he carried a briefcase, which seemed to satisfy his need for company while I was flirting with every short, half-empty whiskey glass in Hertford’s cupboard. While I’d go to drink, the old man went to seemingly ponder over some hidden truths as he sipped from a chipped and equally old teacup, the one and only teacup Hertford had.

My interest piqued on one of the days where I had to search through the bottoms of five glasses before I found a bliss so dizzying I didn’t remember the time. I still doubt I’ll ever remember. But, after I dropped the fifth glass, I turned around and spotted the old man’s table empty. I smiled. Too late for an old fart like him anyway… Or was it too early? While my mind continued on in this fashion, something tugged at me. The table wasn’t completely empty. A briefcase.

I squinted through my drunkenness, though that didn’t accomplish much other than obscure my vision. There it was. Lying flat, exposing its water-blotched leather, crusted seams, as plain as day (or night) and waiting for its master to return. Being drunk, I couldn’t help but get up and stagger that way.

Now, don’t think too lowly of me. Digging through someone else’s things isn’t in my nature. Really. But there was a sort of adventure to that briefcase, and I was going to unravel the mystery. Privacy was out the window, flying in the night (or day) sky. I needed to know something, and all the answers to the old man; who he was, what he was about, why he existed, why he came to Hertford’s place, what he did here, everything was in that case. And I was going to know.

I ran my clumsy hands over the rough leather, feeling that each little pock had its own story to tell, and I sat down in the old man’s warm chair. The briefcase smelled of herbal balms, stiff cheese, and something still unrecognizable to me. The clasps to open the case were unlocked, and my hands seized them. Suddenly, there was a moment of hesitation, of dramatic pause where Indiana Jones knew that if he opened the chest, snakes would certainly be waiting for him. I tossed that thought to the wind. What snakes did old men have?

The suspense of opening the briefcase was caught in a melodrama. Papers. Papers everywhere. Every shape and size of paper. Not even organized folders, but blank sheets pretending to separate one mess from another. I scanned the ranks of cloth folds and examined the littlest nooks. There were papers, stacks of dozens upon dozens. I pulled out a handful of paper. The majority of them were done in type, but some were in a carefully scratched handwriting. I had always fancied myself a fanatic of neat handwriting, particularly since I didn’t have it, and there were no flaws in this man’s old pen. But, on a closer look, I saw places where the writing was chopped, hurried, and almost spat out onto the page.

I caught some of the words, and they seemed to coagulate together. Soon, I found myself reading through a fistful of papers.

However long it took for him to recover, she didn’t seem to care even though she thought she would. Sarah only wanted to have her words said. As long as she finished them, he would have to deal with them as a whole, the entire message. Sarah started to say them again, but Greg cut her off.

‘How long have you known?’

‘For two months,’ she said carefully. She knew this would come.

‘And you didn’t say anything? Why?’ And then Greg’s mouth went into a relieved smile. ‘I know why. You were going to keep it as a surprise for my birthday, weren’t you?’ Sarah started to shake her head. ‘What better gift could I have than the knowledge that I’d be a father. We’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time, Sarah. I can’t believe it. I love you so much.’

She was starting to lose control, feeling the entire thing slip like a coffee table full of fine china. ‘No, no wait. Greg….’

‘We’ll be such great parents, can’t you imagine it? Being our own little family, like we had talked about so long ago. It’ll be beautiful.’

Greg continued on, with his smile, until Sarah almost shouted her next words, ‘No!’ He stopped, and looked at her. ‘No, Greg… I didn’t tell you because,’ and she swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know.’

He half-laughed with a smile in the corner of his mouth. ‘What? Why?’

‘Because I’m leaving with the baby.’

Greg’s smile sank down, and she thought that she would never finish seeing that smile sink to the bottom.

I steadied myself on the chair, and took a breath, forcing myself away from the paper. Something I hadn’t expected, and suddenly I was caught in it. In search for the next page, I instantly grabbed the one underneath it. Instead of seeing the rest of Greg’s reaction, I found myself looking deep into another world.

Cassandra’s eyes were deep and wide as the oceans and only so much more beautiful, so I told her this. In reply, I only got her charming smile. How could she demean the words I said? Did she know how much she meant to me? Without a hesitated moment, I pulled her lips to mine and gave her the kiss I had been dying to deliver since I saw her. This was more than a kiss; it was a stake, a fortification of my claim on her, and an acknowledgement of the claim she held on me. And the claim was not in the name of revenge, as it had been with Charles, nor was it in the name of a family obligation, as I had with Sandra. No, this kiss had a claim on us in the name of love.

I blinked my eyes. The paper somehow felt heavier, and I felt the clouds begin to thin, but not clear away. I tucked the pages carefully into their proper order, or as close as I could. The white sheets of ink weren’t just paper, but an entire world where an existence outside of my own carried on. I read through a few pages after. The romance between Ralphe and Cassandra was as real to me as the whiskey I had chucked down earlier. I was no closer to who the old man was, but that discovery could wait. It had to be in there somewhere, and I would eventually find it. I searched through another pile of papers and found a very different world.

Nick looked coldly into those dreadful eyes again, trying to decipher some sort of emotion from them. The past few nights of dreadful haunts and suspense were getting to him, but the man’s face was as kinetic as a wall. It did not help Nick’s reading that the face was of an anonymous sort. It blended anywhere, like a phantom’s. Nick almost wished he had so bland a face that he could disappear.

‘How could you have set me up that way?’ Nick spat off, hoping to sound accusing.

‘What way?’

‘You knew that handing that letter to me would put me in the direct path of Ellis’ agenda, especially after you saw what happened to George. After all I had survived with his onslaught. My wife, my children, my house, my damn dog! All of them were crossed for the sake of that stupid letter! I could have been seriously hurt. And you didn’t have to do that. There was no point to putting me in the direct path of that. None! I thought we were allies, Damon. And the Queen’s guard won’t stand for this mess you’re dealing in.’

‘Allies?’ Damon seemed genuinely hurt, which meant it was faked. ‘Yes, we are allies. But you must learn to trust me. You’re so naïve, aren’t you, Nicky? Like you said, you know what happened to George. Ellis doesn’t make mistakes, and if he wants you dead, you’ll be dead, Queen’s guard or not.’ At this point, Damon sat back and sipped at his drink. ‘He’d have eliminated anyone in between him and that letter. Only you could have fended him off with that business back in Holland.’

All of what he said seemed to make more sense, if not agree with my accusation. Something clicked for me just then. ‘Then, how did you know he wouldn’t kill me?,’ Nick asked, hoping that someone in this God-forsaken Secret Service knew what they were doing.

Damon looked back at Nick with those dull brown eyes. ‘I didn’t.’

I took a deep breath before I set down the paper. The complexity of the plot weighed down my breath. The frustration of Nick at Damon and apparently the rest of his world. And what sorts of subtle sense it all made. The ugly sickness of the entire world was what made it all so perfect. Damon’s enigmatic responses to “Nicky’s” childish attempts at understanding what he had volunteered for. I sat back and took a long breath of the liquor-thick bar air. The chair beneath me seemed to have aged quite a deal, as though I had been sitting in it forever. I relaxed for a moment before delving into yet another adventure. Like an addict, I began to peep again into another life.

Emily turned a whirl in her chair and stared at me. I knew what she was thinking, but I didn’t dare confront her with it. I just waited there like a poor sap and took the beating as it came. What little experience I had with women taught me never to face a woman like this, ever. She had tears in her eyes as she leapt to her feet and took me by the collar. Our momentum sent us back onto the wall, and there I was glued, with her face, her lips, so close to mine.

‘How can you be so dense?! Why would you stop taking your medication! I tried my best to help you! I loved you, Mallory! And now…,’ her grip loosened and I could feel her chest breathe at a regular human’s pace, rather than her usual superhuman rate. ‘And now… I just don’t know. Why would you act like that around people you know could send you back to the institution, Mal? I feel like screaming inside. Why do you have to be normal around only me?’ Emily looked up into my eyes with a stare resembling a laser, and I could feel it already blinding me. Her hand drifted down my cheek in a gentle affection that I’d only been privy to when I saw it in other couples. ‘At least then I could still know you loved me. You do still love me, don’t you, Mallory?’

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know whether this was about me, or if it was about her being attached to another one of her patients, and I wasn’t about to find out. Right then, my hand found that pen with our names embossed on the side, still in my pocket.

Romance, again. I didn’t know whether it was the quality of the story, or if it was the whiskey, but I could easily identify with Mallory. It was a certain kind of amazement that I thought only existed in independent movies. I knew that if I read another one again too quickly, the wonder and power behind them would be lost, so I tried my best to pace myself before going on.

From the seat, I raised my hand for attention and Hertford looked up. I had “Another whiskey, please” on my lips, but suddenly I didn’t want to be drunk. I didn’t want to be numb against life, or what I found of it in these stories that had become more real than my own existence.

“What do you have that isn’t alcohol, Hert?”

He gave a startled laugh. Hertford seemed drunk himself, but he shouted back something in his slurred Irish and it sounded good, so I said, “Yes, that’ll do me fine.” I settled back in the chair and looked out into the bright day. I have no idea how long I had sat there. The day was crisp and the liquor in the air wasn’t so heavy. I suppose it could have been midday, and that would mean that I found the briefcase at night. Or then again, it could have been late afternoon, and that meant I found it early this morning. Like I said, I’ll never know. I looked outside and watched the clouds with a sort of blank state, yet so much was being uncovered behind my mind. I just didn’t know what yet.

The approach of Hertford woke me from this pondering, and with a sneer, he dropped a familiar teacup on the table space to the left of the briefcase. The aroma of Earl Grey steamed out of it, and it filled my lungs with sweetness. I picked up the cup and looked at it. It was the old man’s regular. The only teacup Hertford had. The chip in the handle nestled right into the bridge of my thumb, the smooth bowl practically held itself in my fingers. There was such a friendly and familiar attachment between me and the old man’s brew, like something I had visited in a daydream when I was a child. I sipped it, and after that hot fuel, I set the cup down with a clumsy clack on the tea saucer to resume reading.

As he looked into the horizon, Joseph didn’t want to believe he had spent his childhood there. The ancient sand buildings barely stood on a lazy foundation, and they tilted hauntingly out at him. As he walked along, Joseph recognized places where he had once played street soccer with friends down the road, or crannies that he had hid from his parents in, and there it stood. The homely apartment that held so many of his childhood memories.

Joseph dashed to the crusty building and sprinted for all he was worth up the steps. He had to see it all. He wanted to envelop himself in all of the hate, pain, love, stress, frustration, detriment, heartache, and family that he felt in that stinky little hole in the Egyptian desert. Perhaps he was being masochistic, but on another plane, he knew it was because he wished he could fill himself with all of it now, and never have to come back again.

At the sight of the door, he froze halfway up the flight and set down his bags as he was contorted into a nostalgic state that he thought only attacked old lovers, long separated. He made his way up the last few steps and slowly ran his fingers along the wall as he had done so long ago…. ‘So long ago, when I was young.’ The little holes in the plaster retained the memory of a dozen times when he had been called for supper and this very wall was all that he had had to keep himself outside with his friends. He stopped at the door and held his palm to it. He bent his knees, hunkering his face down and closer. There. That seemed right; it was at this height that he remembered this threshold, and this hallway, and those steps. He reached up and gripped the knob with fumbling fingers so long they seemed to wrap around the knob entirely, and gently pushed open the door.

The paints had been stripped, but not so much that it was unrecognizable. There was no one here; it was just Joseph and the flat. He went along the walls, remembering the drunken nights of family happiness and ginger cruelty that kept affection in it like no other feeling could. He was startled, but not entirely surprised at the tears that began to roll down his eyes. There was nothing like going back, and, boy, did it hurt.

I stopped at the bewilderment of my own tears flowing down my face and then onto the page with a flat drop. Hurriedly, I wiped at the imperfection, but didn’t go on reading. There was so much behind it, so much inertia which plummeted me into those papers that I didn’t dare reading on. And I smiled at my next thought. “It was all too terrible.”

With the bitter taste left after a short cry, I raised the teacup and sipped it down. It tasted refreshing. I returned to those papers with a new respect and set them into their places in the decrepit briefcase. I sat back and let that bit of life sink in with the others. There was an experience in it that I wasn’t sure anyone else had, unless they lived it, or read what I had. I released the tears and let them absorb themselves into my soul.

My thoughts drifted to the old man. Could he have written this? I was never able to imagine him in any light other than sitting here and drinking this tea. There was romance where he had no love, there was drama where his life was dull, there was thrill where there was no adventure to him at all, and there was a homecoming without him ever leaving. Who was he? Without a name, I was on the disadvantage, and with that thought, I began to leaf through the pages. No names. Not even a pseudonym printed along with the titles. But, the letters on the page began to form into words, and the words again into sentences. Then the sentences snagged me by the collar and dragged me in.

Timothy looked at his shoes. They were dirty again. Bits of mud and soot came from walking the night in search of answers, and all he had left now was to stand on the corner of 9th and Heatherly and look at his shoes. He took out a pad of paper that he had often referred to. The words killer and rape were circled and underlined, and each word had little doodlings around it. He found his pen, clicked it once, and sketched another doodle around killer. He must have found this a destructive use of time, so he went down the road in a brisk walk.

At the familiar building that Timothy liked to call work, he hopped up the steps, imitating a child in the long coat that carried a certain demure demeanor. If one watched him carefully enough, they might have seen a sneer. But no one was watching carefully. He danced his way to the lock, undid it, opened wide the door, stepped in and closed it behind him. Timothy dropped the key into his coat pocket and hung the long coat on the hanger. The secretary that he had grown to depend on was probably at home, asleep in some motherly nightgown, and wearing that silly eye-covering-thing. Her desk was empty, and shadows fell around it, meaning that the moon was full, and the street lamps were on. The pad of paper mentioned the moon, somewhere. He walked to his desk, passing the name label that read “Timothy Cellars,” sitting in the creaking chair, and faced away from the window. Little sounds of leaves, feet, and kids went pitter-patter along the sidewalk behind him.

Timothy sniffed loudly, and said, ‘It’s not so creepy.’ He dumped the papers he had scrawled on throughout the day onto the table. The words killer and serial seemed to coagulate in the bunch, and he was staring at the insane spelling of serial when he heard more noises outside, and a dog or a cat whining at some door in the neighborhood. Then he heard the door creak.

Timothy’s eyes wandered around the room, and he somehow caught the word killer again before looking at the black shadows of the night that had walked into his work. He squinted, not being able to see through the mess of blackness.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ Timothy said, much too loudly for the darkness around them.

Then the shadows stepped forward, fleshing out into a man, and in a voice that Timothy had been imagining all day long, they said, ‘I’ll bet you have.’

I blinked again. The tale had ended right there, and I gasped for Timothy. There wasn’t anything more to say. My mind wandered and I looked about. The dark night had usurped the day (supposedly again) and I was now reading by the light in the bar. Then a shadow caught my attention and revealed itself on the briefcase. I turned slowly and saw the old man standing there. At first, I was embarrassed at having been caught with my hands in someone else’s property, but the look in his eye wasn’t exactly scrutinizing, though I could easily tell he wanted the briefcase. I quickly, and rather nervously, packed the papers back into it again, as though I did it for an emperor. The old man’s face smiled at me, and I felt a new kind of warmth come to me when I realized that he liked having an audience. I guessed that he had been standing behind me for quite some time and I never noticed him in my rapture. I handed the briefcase to him, and he took it by the handle.

The old man then tipped his hat in a “good day to you, young man” and turned to leave. The mystery was even more tightly wound and it seemed that this would seal the enigma forever. I didn’t know how to deal with it happening so quickly, so I jumped up and shouted the first question burning on my brain.

“How did you…?” The question tumbled out as disoriented as any half-phrased question could, and I was instantly ashamed at the inarticulate stumbling.

The old man stopped and turned. His wrinkled face seemed genuine as it turned up into a thoughtful contemplation. With a smile that shined through his words, he said, “I do it because I must. It’s not a question of how, young man.” Then he left.

It seemed to be forever before I moved again, but I sat back down to the table, noting the emptiness left by the briefcase. I didn’t have anything to do but sip out of Hertford’s only teacup. I had gone into the old man’s briefcase looking for some answers as to who he was, but instead I was graced with a bit of the life I might never have experienced without him. I had been looking for escape and life at the bottom of those shot glasses for so long, it came as a shock to walk finally out of the bar that night a little wiser.