The best kind of fairy tale

We did it all in one day. We got up early, both of us unable to sleep, and we added up all our credit and our savings. We arrived at a number, and we went about doing that which the number required.

At first it was easy. We went to a bookstore and spent hundreds, got a nice set of earrings for her. We promised no electronics but bought a new TV anyway. After that we had to get creative. We bought a palm tree that was sure to die since we didn’t have a place to plant it. We bought a half-dozen piñatas at the grocery store along with a case of chocolate bars and some frozen egg rolls I always wanted to try. We went over to the flea market and bought the suit of armor that had sat unsold for months outside and probably wasn’t for sale until the old woman in the straw hat saw our enthusiasm and joy. We gave her some chocolate just because.

We added up the receipts with a calculator, spent down to about the last penny except for seventeen cents that we found in our car’s console, which we threw that out the window.

We got home and put it all in the living room and kitchen, sat on the floor eating chocolate and Chinese takeout and our own egg rolls. She pointed at the pile with her chopsticks and said look at our net worth, and we laughed. Maybe in the morning we would get scared and return what we could, maybe we had just committed the gravest of errors in the history of man, maybe this all wasn’t funny, but we both bent over and laughed in the face of reality until we were flushed red and holding each other as bravely as we knew how.