Greetings From Hawaii

Greetings From Hawaii

The most prominent thing at my desk used to be my Hawaiian Sunset postcard. I’d answer the phone, “Audio Video World, Tricia speaking, How can I help you?” I’d listen to people’s problems, which generally consisted of someone who didn’t know how to hook up their stereo, while gazing at that postcard and thinking, “Someday.”

Living for the weekend and dreaming of vacation, but then I hadn’t really ever taken one. . . a vacation. I’d taken the time off from work, but I never went anywhere. I had that surprise radiator job on my car that took all of my money. I had that surprise root canal, but no surprise dental insurance. Life had so many surprises and so few of them seemed to be wonderful.

Until I found that key.

It was a little locker key, with an orange plastic hood and the number 434. Really if it hadn’t had the orange hood, I never would have noticed it and if it had looked dirty at all I still would have walked past. But I did pick it up and that orange key rode around in my pocket for the rest of the day.

My sister, Trina, called to complain about her new husband, Rob. I made sympathetic noises while thinking, “At least you’ve got someone to come home to, someone who loves you.”

My mother called to warn me that she thought my father was losing it. She calls three times a week to issue that particular warning. I think he just jerks her around. Don’t get me wrong, if it really sounded like he was forgetting things maybe I’d worry; but he tells her things like “Why did you make me a peanut butter sandwich? You know that I’ve always hated peanut butter.” The next day he’ll say, “Where’s my peanut butter sandwich?” Maybe he’s trying to make her lose it.

Mr. Friedman made his monthly call to tell me his remote won’t work his television again.

Thoughts of the weekend were frantically trying to crowd everything else out when I pulled that key out of my pocket that night

“What do you open?” I thought.

Lockers, where are there lockers? Schools. School lockers usually have combination locks. Besides haven’t they banned all school lockers and make kids carry their books everywhere? Airports. There’s no airport in town and I was assuming that the locker in question is local.

I pulled a small tablet out of my nightstand and made a list. Health Clubs, Private Clubs, Golf Courses, anyplace that might have lockers with keys.

The next day I wore the key on a chain around my neck. My Hawaiian Sunset Postcard still drew my attention, but it competed with thoughts of what might be locked in the mysterious locker.

A million dollars! The thought of which would be followed by worries that it was drug money. Why would all that money be in a locker unless it was illegal?

I read once where an author checked out a whole stack of library books and put them in a locker at the bus station. They found them years later and he owed a pile of overdue fees. But that probably wasn’t something that happened more than once. Of course, a million dollars in a locker happened everyday, huh?

A pile of dirty gym clothes, because let’s be real, it’s probably from a Health Club and they’ve probably already replaced the key for the guy.

Once a day, when the phone wasn’t ringing, I would look through the phone book speculating. Then one day, I found it. I was waiting in line at my bank’s ATM, wondering if there was a line inside, when I noticed they were building a new Storage Locker Company across the street. A storage locker!

A storage locker, why there could be anything in one of those from old furniture to antiques to . . . hadn’t I once heard someone found a dead body?

Still in all, it was the most exciting thing that happened to me in several years; so dead body or no, the hunt was on! The next weekend I visited all of the Storage places until I found the locker. You know that joke about finding something the last place you look? Ha, ha? But it is so often the case. Just when I had decided it was time to throw the key away, it had to be something somebody from out of town lost; I found locker 434.

My palms were sweaty as I contemplating opening the locker. It was a small locker, not unlike a school locker. I didn’t know if a million dollars would fit in there, but I was pretty sure a human head would. “Ridiculous!” I chastised myself, “it isn’t a refridgeratored locker, a head would begin to smell.”

As I stood there, but before I opened the locker, I became aware of a man standing just off to the right. Nervously, I glanced at him.

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

I knew, I just knew, I had to be looking at the owner of the locker.

“Well, it isn’t really mine. I just found the key.”

“So open it.”

I looked at him. He had sandy blonde hair and rather amused, but kind looking blue eyes. A small smile played about his lips.

“Ok I will.”

You would never believe what was in the locker . . . .my Hawaiian Sunset postcard. Well, not mine, but the same postcard. We still laugh about it, Steve and me. You see he got that locker to store things that he planned to buy and then sell on Ebay. He lost the key before he put anything in there. And the postcard? That was what he planned to buy with the money from Ebay . . . a trip to that sunset.

Now the most prominent thing on my desk is a picture of the two of us . . . . in Hawaii.