Bathroom Monologue: Lucky Four Leaf Clover

Waylon checked the security cams. Still nobody in the building. He’d beat them all here. Maybe it was his lucky day. He leaned both palms onto the lip of the briefcase. It bent, but the clasps refused to meet.

“Oh, come on.”

He yanked it open and pulled out the top stack of bearer bonds. Those could travel in his pockets – most people didn’t even know what they were. If anyone at the airport got nosy, he’d give them one. That’d shut them up.

Wadding the bonds and stuffing them in his pockets, Waylon circled the office. His screen blinked to alert him that reformatting had finished. He shoved the flashdrive into his breast pocket, then stepped to the opposing filing cabinet. The picture frame crackled under of his polished shoe.

“Cambodian. French. Brazilian.” He finished flicking through the second drawer. Nope, everything had gone to the shredder or his briefcase. But he’d had to check, because the guilty always forgot something, and damned if Waylon was going to become a member of the club of examples.

A bottle of lighter fluid waited in the third drawer. The reminder to light the trash can. He took it and made the last sweep of the room.

The rest of his desk? The monitor. Keyboard. Newton’s Cradle. He’d buy a new one. There was his wife’s photograph. He could buy a new one of those, too.

“Like you weren’t intending the same, Charlene,” he said, tapping the glass from the bottom of his shoe. “You’ll only be angry I beat you here.”

Then he saw a fleck of green on the windowsill. He approached, fingers sweeping over his briefcase. What was that? A flower? He didn’t keep plants in here.

It was a clover, and damned if it didn’t have four leaves. He touched it in disbelief. Whatever adhered it to the pane released and it fell across his palm. He held it by the stem, looking down on it and the ten stories below. He tensed his thumb and made the leaves twirl.

“My lucky day.”

He turned to toss it in his briefcase and missed the flash. The instant it left his fingers, Waylon’s window cracked. He dropped the clover, and life dropped him. He fell, one hand gracing for briefcase, the other at the sucking wound in his lung.

The four leaf clover landed on top of the bonds and deeds. It had been good luck - for the man who’d left it.