TWENTY DOLLARS CHANGE©

George G. Epp

Her voice comes rasping down the stairs. “Klav, KLAV!”

He'd heard a joke about a woman who “had a 'lilt' that most nearly resembled a chainsaw through maple!” He visualized the chainsaw whenever Antoinette shouted down the stairs, especially when he was engrossed with his laptop, surfing mostly for news of yet another way in which the world was screwing him, jerking him around, ripping him off. Lately, Facebook, Twitter, were abuzz with the facts about Albertans paying millions into the federal equalization fund and Quebec withdrawing the same millions, “because they’re too lazy to work,” one reply to the latest story commented. Klavier clicked the LIKE icon.

“Klav, I need twenty dollars for eggs!”

Twenty dollars for eggs. How could she possibly need twenty dollars for eggs? Ah, well, there'd be change . . . and at least an hour of silence in the house. Twenty minutes to drive out to Bednicoff's, twenty minutes to buy the eggs and catch up on the latest from Sadie and twenty minutes to drive back.

Klavier pulled a plasticky twenty from his wallet as he ascended the stairs. Antoinette snatched it from him as if money was just a necessary inconvenience, like toilet paper, and headed out to the garage. Klavier harumphed and jammed his wallet into his hip pocket.

He was in the middle of an article about yacht-owning bankers, service charges, interest rate manipulation, etc. when something triggered the dawning of a thought, the emergence of an awareness that all was not well. He lifted his right buttock and pulled out the wallet. There remained only a ten and a five. He clicked on the calculator icon, punched in the two-hundred dollars he'd taken out at the credit union just yesterday, subtracted the forty dollars he'd paid for gas at the PetroCan, subtracted the hundred and five he'd spent on repairing the riding mower and lastly, subtracted the twenty dollars he'd just handed over to Antoinette for eggs. Thirty-five dollars should be in his wallet. Fifteen was what there was.

Klavier felt the hair on his neck bristle. He played back the transactions in his mind and on his fingers and drew the only logical conclusion: Amos Nedwin had ripped him off to the tune of twenty bucks. It couldn't have been the PetroCan; he'd paid with two twenties. That he'd inadvertently given Antoinette two twenties was pretty unlikely although the new, plasticky bills do stick together if you're not careful.

Klavier is careful.

It had to be Nedwin.

Twenty dollars isn't a lot of money. Twenty dollars will buy a pretty good hammer; he knows that because he bought one just a few days ago—on Master Card. It will buy a modest dinner at Harbison's Family Diner. It's not that much.

But Amos Nedwin; to be cheated out of it by Amos Nedwin increased the size of the loss tenfold. He fumed. Put his wallet back in his pocket. Pulled his wallet out of his pocket and counted again: a ten and a five doesn't take long to count. Fifteen dollars. Twenty isn't much, but fifteen is less. He shoved his wallet back into his back pocket.

“Something will happen; I’ll see to that!” he said aloud. “It’s about time!” But the thought that the reason for the missing twenty might occur to him later wasn’t sufficient to settle his mind. He read the last story on the Fox News website but absorbed none of it. Nedwin’s smirky face hovered between him and his computer screen. He checked all his pockets. Nothing except spent tissues. He marched up the stairs and checked the pockets of his jacket. Keys and a few deck screws. Nothing more. He took out his wallet for a third time and checked every little pocket lest it had absconded somehow into the slot for his Master Card. No dice . . . and no twenty dollars either.

Antoinette coming home with not only eggs but a whole bag of groceries didn’t lighten his mood. Not at all. “Did you bring back some change?” he said.

“Change? Have you forgotten the price of groceries? I had to charge them!”

“Yah, but you said you wanted twenty for eggs. Didn’t Sadie . . . ”

“SHE DIDN’T HAVE CHANGE, SO I’M PAYING HER NEXT TIME

“So where’s my twenty?”

“I figure I’ll just keep it. I’ve got to pay my book club annual dues tomorrow.”

“How much is that?”

“Well it’s ten dollars. But why the interrogation?”

Klavier pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got a ten here and you can give me back my twenty.”

“WHAT? YOU WANT YOUR TWENTY BACK? WHAT’S GOTTEN INTO YOU?” The chainsaw again.

“I’ve already lost twenty today. I think Amos shortchanged me.”

“AND THAT’S RELEVANT TO THIS TWENTY . . . HOW?”

Klavier gave up. But now the number twenty was burned indelibly into his consciousness, lodged there like a leech, or a tick. 

Antoinette heard the door close softly. “KLAVIER?” She heard the car start up.

At the four-way stop in town, he waited impatiently while old Mrs. Davis shuffled through the crosswalk with her walker, and he muttered, “Goddam NDP, Goddam Notley . . . while he waited impatiently. “Goddam Nedwin, Goddam socialists, communists and Catholics . . ..

Klavier pulled up at the grimy front door of Amos Nedwin’s Small Motor Repairs and Skate Sharpening. By the time he put it in park and turned off the engine he’d worked himself into a righteous state, certain now that Amos hadn’t only overcharged him on the mower repair but that he’d added to his take by cheating him on the change to the tune of one slippery twenty dollar bill.

Amos: “You’re back, Klav. Problem with the mower? I don’t think so.”

Klav: “Haven’t tried it. But I think you—accidentally, that is—gave me the wrong change.”

Amos: Pardon me?

Klavier: I think you shortchanged me twenty bucks.

Amos: How d’ye figure?

Klavier: I’m twenty bucks short.

Amos: And what makes you think your twenty’s in my till?

Klavier: You’re the last person I did business with before I went home.

Amos: Did you count your change?

Klavier: No. I trusted you.

Amos: You trusted me then . . . but you stopped trusting me when you got home?

Klavier: I’m short twenty bucks.

(Amos scratches his derriere, Klavier hitches up his jeans, the phone rings, Amos picks it up.)

Amos: Amos here.

(Pause.)

Amos: Yah. He’s right here. I’ll put him on. (Hands Klavier the phone, continues unpacking a box of fan belts.)

Both Amos and Klav had reached the place in life where creeping debilitation had robbed them of five-tenths or more of their eyesight, seven-tenths or more of their hearing acuity. And—one might think—nine-tenths of their intelligence by the way they insisted both to themselves and to the world at large that, “I’m fine, I just prefer the large print,” or “I can hear fine, people just mumble all the time.” 

Klav had no trouble hearing Antoinette on the phone, though: “GET HOME AND STOP BOTHERING AMOS. I FOUND YOUR TWENTY DOLLARS ON THE BASEMENT STAIRS.”

Klavier handed Amos the phone, but thought, “That twenty could’ve been on the basement stairs for months the way that woman cleans, and anyway, I’m pretty sure he overcharged me for the mower. Probably charges fifty bucks an hour for labour. Goddam communist unions! Goddam Notley!”

“Still seems a lot to charge for a little mower repair,” Klav said.

Amos didn’t need to dig down far through the greasy invoice copies in the tray on the counter to find Klavier’s mower repair bill. “Ok, Klav. Let’s go over your bill and you tell me where I overcharged you. Here, where it says ‘PARTS’ there’s a new bearing for the mower blade for which, by the way, I paid forty-four dollars plus shipping. Also a new spark plug cuz yours was dirty, and burnt, and old. Total parts retail price, fifty-five dollars. And for the two hours labour, fifty dollars. That’s one-hundred and five . . . Oh shit, I forgot to charge you the GST. You owe me six dollars and . . . and thirty cents.”

“I owe you?”

“No, you owe the government.”

“Goddam Liberals. They’re ruining this country . . . again. Anyway, it’s your mistake, you pay it. I ain’t payin’ it. Or take it outta the twenty you screwed me outta.”

“Don’t pull that on me. Tony told me she’d found yer bloody twenty. You should be more careful!”

“Anyway, you charged me twenty-five dollars an hour. Minimum wage is ten. Don’t tell me that’s fair.”

“C’mon, Klav. Minimum wage guys don’t have to own a shop, pay heat and hydro and . . . and taxes. I bet you that after all that’s paid for, I don’t get anywheres near ten dollars an hour to take home.”

“You wouldn’t do this if you weren’t makin’ money, C’mon.”

“Well I assure you, Klav. I’m not gettin’ rich.”

“So why do you keep on?”

“I dunno. Why is the moon?”

“Why is the moon?”

“Exactly.”

Klavier and Antoinette used to go to Arizona for most of the winter, but they could no longer bring themselves to pay for the medical insurance that Antoinette insisted on now that they were seventy plus. Antoinette took a trip to Quebec City every other year to visit family but Klavier didn’t go because her cousins only talked French all the time even though they knew plenty of English and knew that Klavier didn’t understand French. Goddam Quebec!

Klavier had long since begun to think there was no good place on earth anymore. Used to be able to point at socialist Saskatchewan and crack-head B.C. and say, “There, but for the grace of Getty, go we. Ha, ha. Never happen!”

But it happened. Goddam NDP socialists stole the government and started right off pandering to all the abortionists, the homosexuals and lazy bums on social assistance and raising taxes for hard-working Albertans. Luckily Ezra Levant and Jason Kenny and Derek Fildebrandt and Brian Jean would kick the communists out of Alberta for good come the next election. (Although Klavier had doubts about Jason Kenny; still smelled too much like Ottawa.)

It should never have happened. Alberta fell asleep and the pacifists, communists, homosexual perverts, refugees and immigrants stole the vote. Goddam communists.

Goddam Ottawa, Vancouver, the UN . . . and now, Edmonton.

* * *

It’s about a week after the twenty-dollar fiasco when Antoinette hears an unusual sound from the basement stairs and goes to see Klavier sitting on a step half-way up, clutching his chest, beads of perspiration on his forehead and temples. She calls an ambulance, unlocks the front door and sits down beside him, soothes him down from the panic that’s gripping him; they both know what it means.

Klavier survives; the ambulance arrives within five minutes, he’s whisked into emergency and attended to by no fewer than two doctors and twice as many nurses. It’s not a mild nor a massive heart attack, but something between.

“If you’d spent less time on the couch with your laptop and more time out walking, this wouldn’t have happened, Klav.”

“I walk.”

“Yah, Klav. from the front door to the car and later, from the car to the front door.”

He’s released in three days but has to come back for rehab every other day for a month, the cardiologist says. “Will I have to pay for my medication after I leave the hospital?” he asks the nurse who fills out his discharge paperwork.

“Of course. Do you have health insurance, Blue Cross or something like that?”

“No. I don’t believe in insurance. It’s a rip-off.”

“Then yes. You’ll have to pay for your medication. But—here’s the good part—while you were here in hospital, well, everything was free. I don’t have a bill for you. You will get a bill from the ambulance service, though.”

“You’re kidding. A bill? Goddam NDP.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well an ambulance is part of healthcare, isn’t it? So why isn’t it covered?”

“I don’t know. Why is the moon?”

“Why is the moon?”

“Exactly. And by the way, if you had had your heart attack in free enterprise USA with no insurance—since you don’t believe in it—I’d be giving you a bill now for . . . oh, a minimum of thirty thousand dollars, probably, most likely forty-five thousand!”

At home, Klavier walks the therapeutic, mandatory, daily half-block and back—for two days—then asks Antoinette to bring his laptop up from downstairs. His web search turns up a story of a Canadian man who severely sprained his ankle while vacationing in Colorado and a clinic bandaged him up with an elastic support and when he went to pay, the receptionist said, “There’ll be no charge.” He adopts this as the real truth on the topic of the bullshit being spread in Canada about the high cost of medical care in the USA, particularly by the Goddam socialists.

Antoinette thinks that if Klav was a cannon, she’d leave him, have him committed, something. But since he’s not a cannon but a faulty pea shooter, she assumes the world is safe from him and just sighs when he comes up with his truths.

“THAT’S NICE, DEAR.”

“It’s not ‘nice, dear.’ It’s a bloody ripoff. It’s time somebody did something about it!”

“WHY DON’T YOU GET RIGHT ON THAT, KLAV?”

“Goddam . . . whatevers.”