My Ugly Suitcase

Shit. Money. Way too much money. That was the thing I most needed and the thing I least wanted to get, at least like this. I expected to find the same old tired, worn-out socks, T-shirts and pants. Instead, I found cash. Lots of it. Fuck.

Who the fuck would own a small turquoise suitcase, apart from me? I never even took a second look before grabbing it at the airport. The thing was so ugly, it was an embarrassment to be seen with. The color was so gross that after a short phase of enthusiasm, even my wife had decided I should be the one to use it. We were quite a bit in debt, a status to which her shopping habits and lack of income contributed materially, so trashing the thing was out of the question. Time and again, I had hoped it would finally break under my harsh treatment and that of the airport personnel, but just to spite me, it refused to die.

The upside was, it stood out like a beacon of grotesque gaudiness on any baggage carousel, and I was pretty sure no one would ever steal it. What I didn't expect was to ever encounter a second one just like it.

Still, that's what had happened. This one wasn't mine; some other loser had obviously been the victim of a shopaholic wife and I had grabbed his suitcase by mistake. For some strange reason, I had the happy thought that I was finally rid of mine. With the damn thing, I had lost my beloved Banana Slugs T-shirt and some of my tools. What I got instead, were 100-dollar bills.

My tools were pretty heavy, and my employer was used to paying the excess weight, as he was too cheap to let me fly business. I was used to carrying around 30 kilos, so when I grabbed it from the baggage carousel, the weight seemed right. A quick Google search on my phone told me 30 kilos of cash equaled roughly 3 million dollars. Damn. How could any self-respecting crime organization employ someone who managed to lose an ugly turquoise suitcase with a few million dollars? If that idiot had managed to do his job, I wouldn't have this damn problem.

There was no way in hell this money was legitimate. Nobody carries millions around in a suitcase this ugly. This money was definitely as dirty as an old man's joke, and my guess was that the owners were not famous for their politeness and humor. The money and I were currently in very close proximity, and if the owner found us this way, I would be dead and he'd have the money back. I had no problem with the latter, but was less enthusiastic about the former.

The problem seemed pretty unique. What to do with too much money? Just dump it somewhere? What if I had been recorded by some security camera? Someone named Greasy Tony or One Eye Luigi might want to talk to me about it. While my feet were in a bucket of concrete and my teeth were littering the floor, they might be fatally (to me) disappointed to learn I had dumped their money just to get rid of it. No, dumping it was out of the question.

What about returning it? Well, to whom? It seemed important to ask the right mug. 'Hey, you look like a criminal. Would you mind taking 3 million from me?' would probably end with a positive response. Still, Greasy Tony wouldn't like that either.

The only solution seemed to be, keep it. Use it to buy myself protection? No. The only way was to not use it at all. Nobody must ever know I had it. More important, it might save me a few fingers or a life if it was still complete when Greasy Tony visited me.

Frantically, I tried to remember whether my own suitcase contained any info about my identity, but couldn't think of any.

Slowly, I closed the suitcase again, not even wanting to look at the money, and wondered how I'd do my job without my tools and where I'd get a toothbrush.

"Vinnie said my car needs a new gearbox."

Misery.

"You could also finally do something about the leaking faucet."

Pure misery. I hated being on the road.

"The dripping is driving me crazy."

I hated returning home, as well. Why exactly did I keep living, anyway? Laziness?

"Clara's husband fixes such things right away."

Clara's husband mostly sits at home, while I'm working my ass off. Mentioning that fact yet again wouldn't improve anything. I knew that for a fact; I had tried. I was really experienced at being unhappy. It was the one thing I really excelled at.

"You do nothing for me. Nothing."

Of course, there was no use in arguing. Years ago, I had briefly considered recording those talks, so I could play the recording instead of talking. I didn't expect that move to make things any better, so I usually just remained silent instead.

"I'm off to Clara's. Get some shit done around here for a change."

That's how my loving wife greeted me. Not 'welcome back' or 'I've missed you,' just the usual bickering. Of course, I wasn't exactly friendly towards her either. We had one of those unhappy relationships where nobody even remembers how things went wrong.

"Yeah, I've missed you too," I replied sarcastically.

"Cut the crap." My wife, the last of the great romantics.

The closing door put a merciful end to the unpleasant conversation.

Sighing, I moved towards the kitchen. I grabbed an empty glass. Always the same one. Three pieces of ice. Diet Coke. The small black bowl. Potato chips. Always exactly the same spot on the sofa. The Coke on the corner of the small table. The chips right next to it. Next is the remote. Always nicely aligned. I looked at it and felt nauseous. I might be going crazy. Who lives this kind of life? Repeating shit time and again. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't make me feel so unhappy.

I couldn't stop my thoughts from returning to the suitcase. Could that be my escape from this living nightmare? Sure, I'd risk my life, but was risking the shit I called a life really so bad? I sometimes wished I was dead anyway.

Problem was, while I didn't enjoy living, I was afraid to die. No, the suitcase wasn't a solution for anything, it was just another problem.

Damn, I need to remember to hide it. It could hardly remain in my trunk.

Half an hour later, I returned to the sofa feeling good. The old tree house, left behind by former tenants, which Doris had bugged me endlessly to tear down, was the perfect hiding place. The thing was absurdly high in a huge tree, so I never got around to actually removing it. I felt good about that hiding spot and about the broken monotony of my life. I felt excitement for the first time in years.

"Three thousand? Seriously? For a damn gearbox?"

"Sadly, yes." Doris was in a pretty mellow mood that morning and I didn't want to rock the boat too much. I had no idea how we were supposed to come up with that kind of money, but she acted as if she at least recognized a problem and didn't just drop it into my lap.

"What about Vinnie? Could he help?" I suggested.

Vinnie was Doris' cousin. In my opinion, the man was a total asshole. He was a huge guy and took great pains to keep up his hostility towards me at all times. He also owned a run-down car-repair shop. When I asked for anything, I could be sure he made a special family price by adding ten percent. He liked Doris, though, maybe a bit too much, so she might be able to get him to help.

"That is already Vinnie's price."

Fuck. A new gearbox. We had no money at all, except the trifling three million in cash sitting in the old treehouse. All our problems would be over if I just used it, but so perhaps would be my life. No. I couldn't use it. My life might not be worth much, but hopefully more than a Miata gearbox.

"Look, I'll try to find a used one on eBay. All we need is Vinnie's car lift and maybe a little advice and a helping hand."

"He won't like that." Yes, he probably wanted to use our bad luck to make some money. "I will see what I can do."

Damn, the guy was clearly watching me. He pretended to stack shelves in our local supermarket. I admit he was damn good, handling the packages as if he'd been doing it for ages. I saw through it, though. Where was the original shelf stacking guy? This one was swarthy and muscular. They always had a scrawny kid for the job. What had happened to him? I imagined his corpse lying somewhere in the woods and felt sorry for the kid.

I quickly grabbed the few things I had been ordered to get and left the shop as quickly as possible while trying to look cool and unaffected. In the parking lot, I immediately noticed another unknown face. He was throwing paper into a dumpster, but like Shelf Stacking Guy, he watched me as inconspicuously as possible. Had they sent a team of two hitmen, or were these guys just here to check me out?

Shit, I was about to go crazy. No self-respecting mafia hitman would stack shelves or dump waste just to kill a nobody like me. They would just get it over with, shoot me and then go do whatever those guys did in their free time. Still, the underlying feeling of panic was hard to quell, and I kept watching my rear-view mirror on the drive home.

"Thank you so much, Honey," Doris gushed as soon as I delivered my loot.

That shocked me even more than the unknown guys in the supermarket. Doris was being nice to me! Why now? Could that be a coincidence? Unlikely, but how could she possibly know about the money? How should I even react? I wasn't used to peaceful conversations at home anymore.

"My pleasure, Honey," I replied, trying to sound sincere. We both delivered Oscar worthy performances and both pretended to not know what was going on, which wasn't too far from the truth in my case. There was only one possible reason for such a mood swing. She certainly hadn't suddenly rediscovered her love for me. She knew about the money and wanted to know where it was.

"You want omelet and orange juice with your breakfast?"

Okay, we were deep into the twilight zone at that point.

"Oh, that would be so nice, Sweetheart," I replied, trying to sound loving and not too confused.

Things continued like this, which turned out to be more stressful for me than the usual bitching or even possible hitmen lying in wait at the supermarket.

Later, when I was sitting in front of the telly, she again surprised me by attempting to sit right at my side. It took a great effort to not shy away, I wasn't used to close contact with other humans anymore. I didn't know how to handle the situation. I could deal with bitchy by being ignorant. That was our usual modus operandi. Being nice was much more work, but I tried. I really did.

"Michael," she began and immediately stopped again, obviously trying to find the right words. "I know things haven't been easy between us recently. Don't think it has been only your fault."

I just looked at her, nodding ever so slightly. She looked empathetic, caring, like the Doris of the distant past.

"We started off so good, and I really thought you were the one," she continued. "Something went wrong along the way, and I don't even know what. Work, worries, everyday life, I don't know."

I nodded in agreement once again. "Sadly, yes. I feel the same way. I never wanted us to grow apart like this."

"Don't you ever think that I didn't love you." I noticed the past tense. "I just can't see any way to escape this treadmill. It wore me down, changed me, and it changed you, too."

I thought about that for a while, and I appreciated her giving me that time. Unfortunately, my contemplation led to no result at all.

"You think it can be saved?" I finally asked, not really knowing if I even wanted to.

"No," she said, sounding honestly sad. "It's too late for that. We can still live together, and we can make things better. We can try to be nicer. That burning love won't come back, though."

That was harsh, but she was probably right.

"You could do that? Continue living with me without love?"

"Please don't think I don't like you. I can easily see myself living with you for a while longer. I think I'm looking for a break, for a way to escape this endless repetition. I just wish we had found that way together."

"You just don't love me anymore, right?"

"Not anymore, no. I won't apologize, as I'm sure you feel the same."

I nodded, and we just sat there, staring into the telly without seeing anything. It was a good moment. We felt close again for the first time in an eternity, both knowing it would probably be the last time. I still didn't know if she knew anything about the money, but right then, I suspected not. I hoped she was not that cold and calculating and had just an unusually mellow phase. Maybe she, too, sensed we had come to the end and it was her way of saying goodbye.

In any case, she started to massage my neck, which had been her signal that she was willing to have sex, many years ago. The whole talk was surprising, but this really put me in a quandary. I didn't love her anymore; she didn't love me anymore and we were about to get used to the idea of having to part ways. Was sex really the best idea at that point? No, it wasn't, but who cared? I wanted this, and so did she.

We got up from the sofa, as any kind of intimacy outside of the bedroom had always been unthinkable for her. I followed her there and had the first doubts about being able to stay in the mood. In the bedroom, the first thing she did was switch off the lights. Sighing, I remembered that my seeing her naked body even during sex had always been some kind of taboo. My mood was already mostly ruined by then.

In the near darkness, I listened to her undressing and decided to do the same, mostly to not make things any more awkward. A few seconds later, I felt her naked body next to mine. Any doubts about my mood left my head immediately. I still desired her on some level. Feeling her naked skin painfully reminded me of the past, of the burning need we once had for each other. My old, long buried feelings flared up again, and I kissed her wherever I could reach her.

We soon were entwined on the bed, passionately kissing and moaning. Yes, she still had feelings for me, as well. Nobody was that good an actor. My old Doris was still in there, somewhere, closely guarded by the new one.

I wanted to kiss her everywhere, smell her, taste her, even if it was for the last time. I tried to savor everything I could get, but she stopped me by guiding me on top of her. No heads below the waists, I remembered, and complied while trying to suppress my disappointment.

I entered her while we kissed frantically. We were lost in the moment, forgetting everything around us, enjoying each other. It was like a time machine, transporting us back to happier times.

Softly grinding into her pelvis, I remembered how she liked it. She needed time and gentle movements and I enjoyed providing that. Slowly and methodically, I built her up until she exploded violently. I gave her a bit of time until I picked up the pace for my own climax.

Sated and happy, we savored the moment and I stayed in place. I kissed her once again, taking in her delicious post-sex smell and taste. It was an unexpectedly intimate moment. We both enjoyed it thoroughly, trying to forget that it would be the last one for us.

I hated that damn car repair shop. It was dark. Yes, there were windows, but the last time they had been clean was when they were new, many decades ago. Now, they were just a tad lighter brown than the walls. The room was stuffed full of shit, mostly tires and boob calendars. There were objects I couldn't identify, perhaps nobody could.

Entering it was like entering some foreign sanctum. It wasn't exactly forbidden, but I sure wasn't welcome, either. I never figured out how many guys worked there. They appeared and vanished all the time, and I was sort of sure there were more than four and less than ten. It didn't help that they all roughly looked the same: short cropped hair, lots of muscles and tattoos. All that was missing were some bars on the windows, and it would look exactly like a high-security prison.

There was only one car lift and one tire mounting machine. I had no idea why so many men worked there and what they did all day long, but I suspected most of it wasn't exactly legal. Everything looked cheap and worn, there was no way all those guys could earn a living with it.

The back yard was extensive, and looked like a forested parking lot. Some cars looked like they hadn't been moved since the stone age, others were changing all the time. None of them had any price tags or other signs showing they were on sale. Many looked way too expensive for the run-down place. I was sticking to my usual "don't ask" policy.

Entering the shop, I found Vinnie standing with two other guys near the tire machine. As usual, nobody seemed to be working or being bothered about that fact. Earning money by manual labor didn't seem a main priority. As usual, everyone completely ignored my presence. I stood in the middle of the shop like a clueless idiot. God, I hated those dominance games.

Finally, Doris entered behind me and Vinnie graced her with some interest. As usual, it was mainly focused on her cleavage. She never seemed to mind and always dressed accordingly. I never complained, as we usually needed something from him whenever we saw him, and I understood why she did it.

After half an hour of being either ignored or barked at rudely, I was finally able to get busy on the damn Miata. As expected, nobody helped me, not even Doris, but I could at least use the car lift and the tools. My wife was busy talking to the guys in Vinnie's office. Miraculously, their number had increased from three to four, and I had no idea where the additional guy came from or which one it was.

The office was separated from the shop by what once was glass. I suspected if you removed the glass now, the grime alone would still do the job just fine. The boob pic density in there was even higher, and with five people, the place was absolutely packed.

They were talking animatedly until they suddenly stopped and all turned around to look at me. Cold chills ran down my back. Shit. The money. They somehow knew about the money. I knew they were all criminals of some sort, so why had I even come here? Those guys had a sixth sense about such things.

Suddenly, they started talking again, but shot glances in my direction now and then. Right then, I much preferred their previous neglect. I continued to work on the damn car, trying to act as if nothing happened.

"Nice car."

I jumped in surprise and cut my hand on a hose clamp. There was a guy standing right behind me. How the fuck had such a big muscly caveman managed to sneak up on me like that?

His grin revealed a few gold teeth and distorted the huge scar that ran across his mouth. A big piece of barbed wire was tattooed above his brow. To me, it looked as unappealing as the huge spider tattoo on his bare belly or the tears under both eyes. The guy had to be almost two meters tall. All his body fat seemed to be assembled in a pot belly, the rest was pure muscles.

All in all, he looked scary as hell. To any alien happening to land right in that shop, we would have looked like two different species.

"What?" I croaked and hated how frightened it sounded.

"Nice car," he patiently repeated, as if he was used to talking to morons.

Why did he want to talk about the car? It wasn't nice. It was just a broken old Miata, worth less than one of his teeth.

"Oh. Thanks."

He looked satisfied that he had finally gotten through to the idiot.

"Gearbox trouble?"

Okay, I was sure he knew about my money right then. There was no way he could be even vaguely interested in my gearbox problem. Sensing a trap in those questions, all I could do was nod silently.

"You're not the talkative type, right?"

Oh my god, he couldn't be any clearer. If I wasn't willing to talk, he'd make me. He certainly was some kind of expert in the pain and communications field.