Of course. My credit cards were billed. My credit cards were unbilled. But T & E had already filed the claim. I’d already been approved for the reimbursement.
I couldn’t stop looking at that beautiful, blossoming number. Nineteen thousand, one hundred forty-seven dollars. It was so much money to me. It was nearly, to the dollar, the exact amount of my student loan balance, and I’d been struggling to pay that down for almost a decade. (Thanks for nothing, NYU.)
I folded the check in half, then in half again, and shoved it deep into the black-hole darkness of my bag.
Later, I would recognize this as the moment that I faltered, my pivotal turn. But at the time it seemed innocent enough. I would just, you know, bring the check home and then tear it to shreds.
Sure, I could have torn it up right then and been done with it, but I wanted to look at it some more first. To sit with it in my moldy one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, with its leaky roof and rats in the walls. I needed to take the check home to bed with me, for just one night, before discarding it.
So I did.
One night then turned into a week that I slept with that gorgeous green-patterned piece of paper on my nightstand, weighted down by my half-empty orange pill bottle of Lexapro. Then I had a nightmare that one of the rats in the walls made it into my room when I wasn’t home and ate the check, so I weighed it down with a mousetrap instead. Not one with cheese in it, just the trap, set and ready, cocked like an armed security guard.
While gazing into the check’s fine crosshatched surface, I’d let my eyes go soft and compose scenarios of cashing it and then being caught. What would I say? Oh, that check? Didn’t I cancel that? I’d never intentionally take money that didn’t belong to me. That’s just not how I was raised.
Which was true. I was raised Catholic by what they call old-school Italians. (Or what Robert in his native Texan twang would call Eye-talians.) My parents were the kind of people who favored the vengeful, Old Testament God over the more forgiving, nonviolent version from the “Americanized” (their word) New Testament. My father would threaten to cut off my pinky finger himself for a lesser offense than stealing. But then again, wasn’t my angry Geppetto of a dad’s most favorite phrase God works in mysterious ways?
What if this was that mysterious way?
And didn’t I “secret” this exact type of scenario when I read that self-help book The Secret? Twenty thousand dollars, I remember saying to the universe. That’s all I need. It’s not that much money, but for me it would be a life-changer. Nineteen thousand, one hundred forty-seven dollars was pretty damn close to twenty thousand dollars, and only a fool would refuse an accurately answered prayer from the universe.
Before long, I found myself becoming absentminded. I would catch myself leaving the house without shoes on or forgetting where I put my keys. I was this close to brushing my teeth with hemorrhoid cream when I realized what was going on. I was in love. I’d fallen in love with the idea of not having student-loan debt, and all the swooning and fantasizing that accompanied love was making me scatterbrained.
While drinking a cup of coffee or riding the L train, I’d slip into daydreams about how my life would change for the better if I let myself keep the reimbursement money. I could have savings, I thought. I could start hoarding my money in one of those things they call a savings account. All at once I would become less anxious and more generous. Maybe I’d get a dog—one of those adorable new mixed breeds, like a Cheagle. Maybe I’d start going to the gym with all the extra time I’d have not debating between eating the slightly off leftover burrito in the fridge and splurging on some groceries from C-Town; between getting the cavity in my molar filled and having that funky paramecium-shaped mole on my back looked at. And, sure, I could get one more wear out of this pair of socks before I go to the Laundromat. And look at this sheath of aluminum foil, it’s still good as new, I’ll just give it a little rinse. No. No more of that. Instead, I could be living the good life of enjoying dire necessities and bountiful comforts. I could pay my phone bill and go to the movies on the same day.
The next thing I knew, I’d come to in Canarsie.
This is the last stop on this train. Everyone please leave the train.
Something had to happen. I had to rip up that damn check!
Okay, fine, I told myself. I’ll do it.
Back in the safety of my bedroom now, blinds drawn, check in hand, I was poised to end this thing once and for all. But maybe I would just, you know, take a picture of the check first. Not a selfie or anything, just a snapshot. And not the kind that disappears thirty seconds after you take it, or whatever—just an old-fashioned photograph, to remember the check by.
And then I remembered that app on my phone, the one where all you have to do is click a photo of a check and—poof—it’s deposited into your bank account.
Damn you, technology.