The next
morning I awoke to the blaring of some loud, unintelligible rock
and roll mixed with the annoying buzz of the alarm-clock radio.
Dismayed to find that the weekend was already history, I
sleepily rolled out of bed and stumbled into the shower. Wouldn’t
it be great if I’d just dozed off after working too late
once again on a Friday evening – that I might somehow wake
up back in my office to find myself gawking up at the clock with
the whole weekend still ahead of me? Eventually, I succumbed to
the shower’s warm water and the illusion vanished. Reality
set in – Monday morning. Yuck.
Wrapping a towel around my dripping body, I
climbed out of the shower and strolled into the kitchen to make
my morning cup of Java. It was still there. After staying up
half the night counting it over and over, it was now lying in
proper little stacks on the kitchen table. The cold hard cash
was confirmation that the weekend’s strange event was not a
dream, and certainly not an illusion.
Yes, of course, the incredible and amazing Max
Vi was right – precisely twenty-one dimes, one-hundred and
eighty-four nickels, five-hundred-seventeen pennies, one-hundred
and ninety-two quarters, thirty-eight one dollar bills, one five
spot and one ten. Exactly $117.47, just as the magician had
predicted. "Some kind of trick," I thought. "Who
does he think he is, Nostradamus?"
