I'm Not High Read Free

anything back. It was a giant hotel, she didn’t speak English very well, and it would just be a convoluted ordeal. But it wasn’t money or jewelry I was thinking about. It was my notebook, which I was relieved to see was still on the desk.
    “No,” the maid said, shaking her head. “Just candy. That’s all.”
    “Great,” I said. “Let’s not worry about that.”
    “Thank you,” she said, smiling, and walked back out to her cart in the hallway.
    Dee went into the bedroom, and I walked over to the desk. I had no sane reason to pick up the notebook and thumb through it. I mean, it was sitting there just as I’d left it. Opening it up would be proof that I was paranoid. I get that the candy—so tempting and delicious, spilling out of a wide-open briefcase—was an obvious target to be snapped up. But a $3.59 notebook? All of the hotel rooms were furnished with stationery. And the maid probably had extra supplies of it on her cart to replenish any that had been used. If she needed paper, she had access to tons of it.
    But I had a peek anyway. And I couldn’t believe my eyes. Every page I had written on was gone, ripped out, and what remained were only blank pages. I closed it. What was happening wasn’t real. I reopened it again, and still the pages were nowhere to be found. I flipped page after page. This was impossible.
    I began to sweat. I took a deep breath.
    “Dee,” I called out. This time there would be a logical explanation. “Where did you set all the pages I was working on?”
    “What are you talking about?” she answered.
    “From my notebook,” I said.
    “I thought it was there.”
    “It is,” I said. “But it’s empty.”
    She came out of the bedroom and looked over at me. “What are you talking about?”
    “So, you didn’t touch this? ” I said, holding up the notebook. “There’s only blank pages in here.”
    “You must have put them in your suitcase,” she said calmly. She didn’t seem too concerned. “Wait, are you sure you didn’t take them into the bathroom, Jim?” She made a face indicating that working on the can was exactly the sort of thing I’d do.
    “No!” I yelled. “What are you, crazy? I kept them in the notebook. There was no reason to tear them out.”
    “Stop panicking and take another look.”
    “Dee,” I said, “the notebook is way thinner. The only pages left in it are blank. Everything I’ve written is gone.”
    “Why don’t you go ask the maid then?” she said. “There’s got to be some reasonable explanation.”
    “Why would the maid have them?”
    “Why would she have cleaned out all our chocolate, Jim?” Dee said, shrugging. “None of it makes any sense.”
    I took the notebook, bolted from the room, and saw the maid’s cart a few doors down. I poked my head in the room she was cleaning, and she came out into the hallway. She took a look at the notebook and started shaking her head and apologizing again.
    “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”
    “What happened?” I asked. I was close to losing it, but I did feel slightly relieved that at least I knew who was responsible for the missing notebook. “I thought you said the candy was the only thing that went haywire in there.”
    “Sorry. I thought was garbage,” she mumbled in broken English.
    “Garbage?” I said, exasperated. I shook the notebook. “You went in this and ripped out the pages and threw them away ? Why? Why would you do that?”
    “Sorry. Sorry.”
    “Well, where’s the garbage?” I thought it might be on her cart. That seemed logical. I thought we could just dig through her trash can and fish them out, and then I’d go and stuff the pages in the safe or keep them in my pocket for the rest of the trip. Before she answered I dug into the garbage and started flipping through it.
    “All gone,” she said, shaking her head again. “Not in there.”
    “Come on!” Now I really felt like this might be a big prank. Maybe the comedians at the festival were behind it.