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Review Avenue

I left a dime on top of this stone on Review Avenue. You can’t see it in this picture. The dime, that is. I chose this stone from among thousands on this wall because of its flat surface on top and because it was reachable from the ground without need for a ladder or stepping stone.

I don’t know how long the dime will remain in this spot, but I plan to look for it the next time I find myself on that street.

In the past I have hidden small amounts of change in public places. For years now I have placed 50¢ at a place I walk past. Despite how tiny the coins might seem I can nevertheless see them from a distance, hiding in plain sight about 7 feet above the sidewalk. I placed them on the bottom hook of a letter on a sign with letters that extrude about 2 inches from the wall. I can barely reach the spot, but I imagine that when I need 50¢ I will know where to find it.

Disaster-planning-gone-amok would find me stashing small amounts of coinage all over town, adding up to a small fortune, or at least a bus fare.

The 50¢ sometimes disappears from the above-mentioned spot. The sign’s letters are metal, and I assume someone cleans the sign once in a while, probably spraying it with water or something to prevent corrosion. I checked in on the coins yesterday, though, and they were there, their surfaces feeling very weathered after several months of continuous exposure to the winter elements.

The stone on Review Avenue seems more perilous a place to store a coin. Even if the coin stays put I might simply not be able to find its location again. This wall is probably about a mile long, and to find one stone among thousands will probably be more difficult than I assumed when I placed the tiny dime there. I took pictures of the wider area and can remember the building across the street, though, so maybe I’ll have not such a hard time of it.

A few weeks ago, on 5th Avenue, I spotted 2 decks of playing cards stuck inside the top of a payphone enclosure. Like those two quarters (which the above-mentioned 50¢ comprises) these decks of cards were just sitting there, hiding in plain sight. Anyone’s eyes could see the boxes but to most they would (like the payphones themselves) register as but a sundry blip on the imminent horizon.

Being a payphone guy I noticed the irregular shape of something that was not supposed to be there. I often notice payphones littered with emptied liquor bottles and assorted garbage, but the neatness and conspicuity of the playing cards caught my eye. They had been intentionally placed, not simply tossed there like most payphone refuse. Had they been left for someone to pick up? Was this a handoff, from one card hustler to another? What kind of cards were these? Marked? Were the decks stacked?

I reached up and grabbed the boxes. Something about that act made me feel like I was in the game, though I couldn’t tell you what kind of game. Handling cards is a gleefully grubby feeling for me. I can’t hold even 2 cards without feeling greedy.

Days earlier I happened to have heard that many of the office buildings on this part of 5th Avenue host illegal poker matches and gambling tournaments. This, combined with the sketchy circumstances in which I found them, made me skeptical of the integrity of these cards. The circumstances gave me an illusory moment of paranoia. I imagined that whoever left these cards on the payphone might have surveiled the location to ensure that the intended recipient got them. My intrusion, I imagined, could have ramifications beyond simply intercepting a random transaction. I might be identified as someone who I am not. I might be followed. The pick-up might have been the signal to someone watching, someone who expected to follow me to the place where the poker match would commence.

These paranoid cloak-and-dagger pangs vanished as quickly as they appeared, and I confidently shoved the cards in my pocket. Later, on the subway, I opened the boxes and quickly found that the decks were indeed stacked. One deck had 56 cards (there should only be 52, or 54 with Jokers), and among several card-distribution anomalies I found that one deck had 5 Aces, 6 Kings, 2 Jacks, and 7 Fours (there should only be 4 of each). What little I know about card-playing includes nothing from the world of cheating but these cards seemed to have come from that realm. I am far removed from the details of the possibly concocted scenario from which these cards came — the skeevy world of card hustlers and poker cheats — and I felt neither satisfaction nor exposure in having possibly confiscated a flimflammer’s toolbox.

Whatever the deal (pun intended) with the cards, finding them in that manner re-ignited my interest in stashing harmless and low-value coins and objects in public. I will look for the Review Avenue dime next week, and if ever I stay at a certain hotel in Daytona Beach again I will ask to stay in a certain room so I can see if the dollar bills I taped to the bottom of the dresser drawer are still there after I placed them in 2006.