“Ring in the New Year with the old bank account game,” Mark said as he sat down at his computer. He opened his Firefox browser, went to the Scotiabank web page and pressed the first digit of the number on the red debit card in his hand into the specified field. Nothing happened. He glanced down, raised his left eyebrow, and jutted out his jaw before noticing that the numeric lock wasn’t on. Closing his mouth sheepishly, he typed in the digits and his password.

He liked to play games with himself, seeing how closely he could come to guessing the dismal number which represented his lifetime savings. He was normally within five dollars of the answer.

“Forty-five bucks, give or take ten,” he said.

The page loaded.

“What the fuck!”

He scanned the transaction record. Five bucks at Shoppers’ Drug Mart on Wednesday, seven at Boston Pizza on Thursday, fifteen at the LCBO on Saturday afternoon—and a deposit of fifty-six thousand, nine hundred dollars at 12:01 on Sunday, January 1, 2006.

He sat motionless in his chair. His left eyebrow furrowed slightly and stared at the houseplant in the corner to his left. It refused to tell him what he should do, so he looked back at the number, the very large number which was by this time flashing, stomping its feet and screaming for him to realize that it belonged to him, the very large number which signified that the amount of fifty-six thousand, nine-hundred thirty-eight dollars was attached to his chequing account.

Clearly there had been an error. Some lame prankster had wasted his once-yearly chance to watch a glowing ball descend behind a sign in the middle of twenty thousand drunk revellers on TV and had instead deposited an empty envelope into the night deposit box with Mark’s name on it…. Mark realized he didn’t quite know how the system worked.

He pondered calling his mom. Maybe she had gotten money from somewhere, lots of money, lots of money that she had decided to give to her twenty-four-year-old son whom she loved dearly. Maybe he should just call the bank.

He walked over to the cordless phone that sat on an end table, picked it up and hit the ‘Talk’ button. He dialled 9-0-5 and realized that he didn’t know the number, so he reached under the end table and paged through the phone book until he found it.

“Hello, Scotiabank, Marcia speaking. How may I—“

“Hey, this is Mark de Vries, and—I just accessed my chequing account and there’s like more than fifty thousand dollars in there. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t—I mean, yeah, I shouldn’t have more than sixty bucks in there at most.”

“Well, we’re pretty good at closing loopholes, or we wouldn’t last very long. But—let me go run this by my manager.”

“Sure, thanks.”

Mark wandered in a small circle in his living room and imagined armed drug dealers or foreign agents crashing through the picture window and demanding that he hand over his debit card and PIN. He stole a glance at the window and chuckled as the bank representative came back on the line.

“Sorry for the wait.”

“No problem.”

“Well, I talked to the manager and she said everything checks out. Someone deposited an envelope at midnight on New Year’s with fifty-six thousand, nine hundred dollars in it into your account. You’re a lucky guy, I wouldn’t complain if I was you.”

Something about the woman’s comment set off alarm bells in Mark’s head, possibly her use of the simple past tense in place of the present subjunctive. No: it was something more than that.  He tried to think, what did she say wrong? but his mouth was already filling in the silent moment.

“Uh, thanks, um, well, have a good day.”

“You too. Have fun with that money. Bye now.”

He hit ‘End’ on the phone, then ‘Talk’ again and rattled off ten digits.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Josh, how’s it going?”

“Not too bad. Yourself?”

“Well, I did find like fifty thousand bucks in my bank account today.”

“Hey, that’s cool. What’re your plans?”

“Um, I don’t know. I just found out like ten minutes ago. I called the bank and—”

“Wait—you’re serious? This isn’t some—like, what the hell—are you sure it’s legit?”

“Yeah. Called the bank and everything.”

“Oh. And they don’t know, like, who did it, or whose money it is?”

“No, it’s apparently mine now.”

“So—you’re going to like, do some hard-core shopping, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? What do you want?

“I don’t know.”

***

That night, Mark dreamed. And in his dream, he sat in his living room, drinking coffee and reading Swiss Family Robinson.

The picture window shattered. Green monsters rappelled into the house; they were big and furry, and he thought they had probably escaped straight from Jim Henson’s imagination into his life. They insisted that he play a game with them. Some wanted to play ring-around-the-rosies and others voted for tag, though the more mature monsters wanted a sedate game of euchre.

“Play with us! Play with us!” the monsters said. They danced around him and shouted at him and each other, making it hard for Mark to think.

Mark weighed his options with care. Tag was probably out. He didn’t know how fast the monsters could run, but he guessed they were more athletic than he. Ring-around-the-rosies was fun but a bit monotonous, and the monsters’ hands looked clammy. Euchre gave Mark a headache because he couldn’t ever remember what trump was and spent most of the time praying that he would be allowed simply to follow suit the whole game.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, “you can’t break into my house like this.”

***

                Mark opened the door of his brown 1994 Taurus, got in and turned on the ignition. It grumbled but finally agreed to start on the condition that he take it in soon for the oil change which he’d been putting off for two months, sixteen hundred miles.

                “Fine then,” he said and drove off. He’d do it but he also didn’t want to spend the first bit of his windfall on automobile maintenance.

It was a Tuesday evening and so the mall parking lot was not the circus Mark generally encountered. He locked the car doors.

“Parking lots are not safe places,” he remembered his mom chanting to him as a child, and thought of the visions he’d had of kidnappers awaiting his return to the car under blankets on the floor of the back seat. The idea had always amused Mark rather than scaring him because he’d figured that since his mom took so long to shop, it wouldn’t be worth it for a kidnapper to hide in such an cold and awkward crouching position.

Mark wandered through the mall. For once, he could allow himself to consider clothing that wasn’t on the clearance racks. He tried on four shirts at American Eagle and two sweaters at Bluenotes, but he didn’t quite like the look of any of them.

This is his shopping pattern: first, he stood in front of a table of clothing and tried to avoid looking at any price tags. Next, he picked a sweater he liked and dug through the stack until he found a size ‘Small’; there was usually one, and it was usually on the bottom. Then, he went to the changing room in the back, waited for the attendant to come around and hand him a tag and unlock a door, walked inside and put on the sweater. Finally, he made faces at himself from every angle until he decided that the sweater was too big, or too weird, or too hot, or too cool, or not quite the right way to start spending fifty-six thousand, nine hundred dollars.

He walked through the parking lot, glanced in the back window of his car, got in and drove to a slightly run-down strip mall.

Mark opened the door of one of the strip mall units and walked in. A man wearing a solid polo sat behind the desk. He turned from his computer and looked up as the bell on the door rang.

“Hey, good morning.” he said. “Have a seat, what can I do for you?”

Mark sat down, rested his chin on his hand and tapped his index finger against his upper lip. He looked down at the paperweight on the desk; it was a gaudy stone angel.

“Actually—I’d like to make a donation.”

“Sure. Let me just grab the paperwork a minute.” The man opened a drawer and pulled out a form. “We just need a bit of information for tax purposes.”

Mark filled out the sheet.

“OK, I’m assuming you’re paying by cheque?”

“Yeah.” Mark always carried a couple in his wallet, though he rarely needed them. He felt like a fifth-grader again as he wrote out in cursive the number fifty-six thousand, six hundred dollars and zero/100 cents.

“To whom do I make it out?”
                “‘The Salvation Army’ is fine.”

“Thanks,” Mark said. He finished writing the cheque and handed it and the other form to the man, who glanced smoothly over them but did not even hike an eyebrow or look up at Mark upon seeing the number.

“Thank you,” the man said as he reached across to shake Mark’s hand. “God bless you.”

“God bless you, too,” Mark said, looking down again as he turned away. He walked outside to his car and twisted the key in the ignition. It refused to turn over and he rolled his eyes in amusement at the irony. He tried once, twice, three times more.

He laughed at his car. “Come on, buddy. I know I promised an oil change; well, I’ve still got thirty-eight bucks left,” he said as he tried to start it one last time.

It chuckled to life and he drove it to the instant oil change place, then home.