3.

At four-thirty in the morning, I found two Hong Kong dollars beneath my couch pillow. I held up the scratched, faded coin against the light and watched the yellow illuminated circle dance around the coin's jagged edges. "Hey Thomas," I called out, "look what I found."

Thomas had been pacing back and forth obsessively, as he is prone to do late in the evening. He had had a couple glasses of whiskey with ice which, rather than calming him, seemed tonight to be making him even more nervous than usual. "What's that?" he responded, after a few seconds of silence in which he snapped out of whatever he was thinking about and allowed my words to sink in.

"It's two Hong Kong dollars."

"What the fuck? What the fuck?" he shouted. His eyes were wide with what looked close to intense fear. "I haven't been to Hong Kong in almost six years. What's that doing in the couch?"

"I don't know, Thomas," I said. "I don't know."