Commands in Hand

I have been told I must spend this $10 bill on a cab to dinner. It was nestled in an empty cigarette carton, the first pack of cigarettes I’d bought in months. I bought them on a night of a fight—smoked one. The following night, last night, they sat on my couch, hiding under a few envelopes of solicitous junk mail, and one catalogue. This morning, I chucked them into my bag along with matches I’d gotten free at a deli in Brooklyn while crying.

“Did you smoke another cigarette?” Girl asks me.

“No,” I say.

“Look in the box then,” she says.

I do. I find the bill and no cigarettes.

“Read the note,” she says.

I do. She loves me.

Now I am supposed to spend the ten in a cab to go on a date to celebrate an anniversary: “It is all part of an elaborate plan,” she says. “You have to put it back out in the world.”

I argue, assuming this will be a hard bit of paper to part with. But I believe in her, and I will do it.