"Extravagant Dreams" -- July 8

Word count: 1500

Extravagant Dreams

Harry started out singing, mentally calculating the value of the stacks of money in his backpack. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills, the last of the money in his safe, waiting for him to spend at the last Costco in the city. He estimated he might have a million dollars or more in the stacks, neatly wrapped in strips of sturdy paper. Not that a million dollars was much anymore, but the little he could buy at the Costco would be the height of luxury after meager potatoes from his side garden.

Sunlight filtered through low-hanging clouds as Harry climbed the on-ramp to the freeway. The time had long passed when paper money would buy gas, and slowly, the city had fallen still as people abandoned their useless vehicles. A steady trickle of bikes streamed by in the left lane as Harry started down the shoulder of the road, past a cluster of burned-out vehicles abandoned after an accident.

Just over the crest of the first hill, Harry spied a young man walking with a scuffed, dirty skateboard across his shoulders. He had a short ponytail and his jeans were full of holes. He walked slowly—more of an amble—and Harry, striding down the hill in the confidence of a backpack full of money, caught up to him quickly.

As he came up beside the kid, they exchanged nods.

“Where are you heading?” the kid asked, more friendly and soft-spoken than Harry expected, given his multiple facial piercings and fierce black punk jacket.

“Costco,” Harry answered, glad of the company.

“Costco! You got money?”

Harry shrugged, a proud glow between his shoulders. “A little.”

“I’m heading that way too. Name’s Jake.” Jake transferred his skateboard to his other shoulder so he could offer his hand to Harry to shake.

“Harry.”

“Pleasure.”

They walked in companionable silence for a time. Costco was one of the only remaining centers of retail in the city. The giant concrete building five miles down the freeway had become a sort of trading post, compartmentalized and filled with stalls of anyone scrappy enough to try to make a living off people who used devalued money for toilet paper.

As Harry and Jake crested a second hill, a billboard came into sight, looming over the silent landscape, massive and imposing and in tatters. Harry caught sight of a familiar pair of golden arches, and his stomach growled.

“Remember that?” he asked, elbowing Jake and pointing up at the waving billboard skin as they passed beneath it. “Remember when you could get a burger for a dollar?”

Jake squinted upward and scoffed. “It was always a crappy burger.”

“I ate one for breakfast every day on my way to work for…at least a year.” That had been when he was Jake’s age, before he’d made the strategic investments and started the side hustles that had won him his money. Harry remembered those days with pride—the days when his small paychecks felt as heavy in his hands as gold, when he carefully counted out his nickels and pennies to pull together enough change to supplement the burger with a soda.

“How much do you think a burger costs now?” Jake asked.

“Probably…a hundred and fifty times what it used to, at least.”

“I think it’s more like a thousand.”

“No way it’s a thousand.” Harry tried to process the numbers in his head. If his money was worth a thousand times less than it used to be worth…

He couldn’t even do the math.

“I don’t know for sure,” Jake said. He swung his skateboard down and pushed it lazily with his foot, zigzagging in long loops over the deserted, sun-warmed asphalt.

Harry put his hands in his pockets, head down, thinking. Thinking of everything his money could buy. He was hungry; they were three miles into the five-mile journey, and he had eaten the last of his bartered eggs for breakfast with nothing else.

He could buy eggs. They’d probably only take one bill off his stacks of hundreds. He could buy chocolate. It was four years since he’d had real chocolate. Thick, creamy milk chocolate that stung going down your throat.

“If you had a million dollars, what would you buy?” Harry asked, to pull his mind away from the chocolate.

“In the old days or now?” Jake asked. He picked up his skateboard again and swung it easily up to his shoulder, looking like a punk but speaking with all the elegance and respect and thoughtfulness of an adult.

“Either.”

Jake thought. “A car. An original Model T. I’d convert it to a drag racer. What about you?”

“Food.”

“Just any old food?”

“Nah.” Harry let his mind go, driven by his rumbling stomach. “I’d start with caviar. Truffles. Hundred-year-old wine.”

“In this economy?”

Harry laughed and pulled himself back down to earth. “Right now, I’d settle for three fat hot dogs and a can of Dr. Pepper.”

“Me too.” Jake sobered. “I’m not sure what I’ll be able to afford when we get there.”

A thought occurred to Harry, and his heart sank into his stomach. He looked away, down at his feet on the treadmill-like regularity of the asphalt. For a moment, his backpack hung heavy on his shoulders. He tried to shake off the feeling.

He could probably eat three hot dogs loaded with condiments. A bucket of crispy fried chicken. Chocolate.

The feeling stayed, and he was unable to distract himself.

As they walked, he found himself shooting suspicious glances at the younger man. The money in his backpack seemed to vibrate, advertising its presence. Could Jake smell it? Harry had seen the “Pathetic Poor Kid” act before. He’d done it himself, back in the day.

Harry mentally shook himself. Jake swung along beside him, carrying his skateboard again, unbothered. He’d retrieved a hat from his backpack and he adjusted the brim as he put it on.

“Don’t you grow your own food?” Harry said, trying to push away the sudden cloud of suspicion that had descended on him. “Most people do.”

“I tried.” Jake shrugged. “Kind of hard when you don’t have a place. I can usually work for it, though.”

“I did that when I was your age,” Harry said, too quickly, to calm his riled conscience.  It hadn’t been the same when he was Jake’s age. Then, there had been money that was actually worth something.

Jake made a movement and Harry caught it out of the corner of his eye. He jumped.

“What’s going on?”

“Sorry.” Harry shook himself, falling back into step. He kept his suspicion, and the image of a knife that had flashed through his mind, to himself.

He’d worked hard for his money, and he was going to spend it himself.

The Costco loomed in the distance. The giant red letters had long faded and cracked. Several were missing. The parking lot was empty except for smashed remnants of cars that had been ravaged for parts and had spiderwebs hanging off them in thick ropes. A thin stream of people flowed in and out of the doors.

Harry and Jake paused at the edge of the parking lot. Harry was absurdly conscious of the weight of his backpack, the lumps in it, the shape. He kept his eyes on the door, mind filled with flashing images of the food he was going to load up on. Jake’s voice finally faded into his consciousness.

“Thanks for the company.” Jake reached a hand toward Harry.

From somewhere deep in his gut, Harry reacted. He shoved Jake away, certain the younger man was reaching for his backpack, and he ran straight for the door.

He never saw Jake again.

Clutching his backpack to his chest tightly, Harry went straight for the food vendors. Breathless, he wended through a sea of people, all clutching bags and boxes close to their bodies, all warily watching the others. Sellers shouted and haggled. Stacks—boxes—wheelbarrows of paper money changed hands. Some sellers had the entire back wall of their stall covered by man-high towers of paper money, stacked double.

Harry pushed through all of them, only concerned that Jake did not follow. He hurried up to the closest vendor who did not have a wall of money on display. The prices were suffocatingly high.

Harry plopped his backpack on the table. “Let’s see your menu,” he said.

The owner opened the backpack gently and rummaged around. He pulled out one stack. “What do you want?” he asked.

“As much of anything as I can get.”

The shopkeeper removed several neat stacks from Harry’s bag. He set them down atop each other and counted. A quiet smile came over his calculating face.

After a few minutes, Harry leaned in. “How much will that buy?”

The shopkeeper smiled. He reached down behind the counter. “This is what you can buy with that amount of money.” He slid a package across the counter.

Shoelaces.

Harry’s heart sank with his head onto the countertop.