This is not a morality tale. It’s simply a story.
It began innocently enough, over a lunch of beef pho in the Financial District, when my friend Paolo first mentioned the Money Box. Paolo was a pupa of industry then, waiting to emerge as a titan. He was wearing a light blue seersucker suit with a flower-print ascot, which I remember distinctly because he spilled Sriracha on it. Also it was unseasonably cold for May, yet Paolo made us take a table outside.
“A money box?” I said, intrigued.
He nodded, daubing at his lapel with a wet napkin. “I can show you one day.”
“What’s with the getup, anyway?” I said. “Are you going to the Derby?”
“Oh, I’ve no need of such action anymore,” he replied, smiling cryptically. He slurped a noodle through a straw-shaped gap in his lips and changed the subject to his upcoming wedding, to which I was invited, though with no honorifics.
Paolo, unfortunately, I have not seen in ages. Swept up like the rest of us, I suppose, in the season of the plague.
Months passed with no mention of the Money Box, and I tried to forget about it. The news was awash with rising sea levels and apocalyptic dust storms. That summer was, yet again, the hottest on record. One of my clients suffered an oil refinery explosion that destroyed four hundred thousand acres of virgin rainforest. Another client published a series of tweets denying the Holocaust. So I had plenty to think about. But I couldn’t stop obsessing over the Money Box.
I threw myself in with my colleagues, whom I despised, and I walked my dog, whom I loved. I tried to date, with little success. My ears are rubbery and pinguid, my mouth spumescent. My nostrils are asymmetrical and, as an object, my body is short and round, unpleasing to the eye. A small but noticeable goiter protrudes from my neck. Also, I don’t ever seem to “get” jokes and therefore must force myself to laugh, often inappropriately.
Nevertheless, I was able to charm one woman, Penelope, in for a nightcap. It was our eleventh date, and her children were with her sister. When I flipped on the lights I noticed my goldfish, Simeon, had finally succumbed to the dropsy. He had indeed looked singularly unhappy for weeks, swimming in circles and popping out little air bubbles, but in my malaise I’d done nothing about it. So she wouldn’t see Simeon’s inert body floating at the top of the bowl, I had Penelope wait in the kitchen while I scooped him out with a little net and deposited his rotted carcass into the toilet. He seemed to be staring up at me with those piteous, lifeless eyes, forever open and plaintive, as (regretfully, I admit) I urinated on him, for I didn’t want to waste a flush.
I didn’t tell Penelope about the Money Box, nor did I pester Paolo about it.
But many nights I would dream fitfully about it, though I knew nothing other than it was a “Money Box.” My imagination cooked up all manner of containers: an old cigarette carton stuffed with hundreds; a gleaming, stainless steel bank vault stacked
