Better Than Ezra

Ezra sat at the table with his co-workers on a Friday night, and the conversation had turned, as they sometimes do when it is too late in the evening, philosophical.

“All I’m saying is that there is a reason for everything.”

Ezra scoffed, as he peeled the label off his beer bottle. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Why is that ridiculous?”

“Just take a look around! This world is a random pile of messes, stacking one on top of the other.”

“Well,  I just believe in purpose and destiny.”

Ezra set his bottle to the side. “Okay. Let’s put that to the test. Tomorrow is Saturday, the perfect day for a bit of experimentation. When I wake up in the morning, I will grab a quarter off my bedside table. I won’t make a decision without flipping the coin. We will let the coin determine my day. I promise you, it won’t be a fraction different than any other Saturday. I might end up wearing a green sweatshirt instead of a gray sweater, but I guarantee you that the events of the day will be roughly the same.”

Everyone at the table chuckled. Sarah, his best friend at work, shook her head. “Nope. I don’t trust you. You’ll cheat to prove your point.”

“Fine. Before I go to bed tonight, I’ll put a key under the mat. Come to my place at 7:30, let yourself in. My alarm will go off at 7:45, and the game will begin with you as monitor.”

Sarah smiled. “You don’t have to leave a key out. I’ll just knock when I get there.”

Ezra raised an eyebrow, smirking at Sarah. “What if the coin says don’t let you in?”

Ezra heard his alarm beeping at 7:45. He opened one bleary eye to aim his alarm-silencing slap. Why did he suggest such an early time after such a late night?

He sat up in bed, vigorously rubbing his face, trying to shake off his sleepiness. 

He looked over and saw the quarter on the bedside table. He picked it up and turned it over. It was a Missouri state quarter. Across the top, the words “Corps of Discovery” were embossed.

“Fitting,” Ezra mumbled to himself. “Might as well get this started. Quarter: should I get out of bed or set another alarm for 8:30? Heads I get up, tails I snooze a bit longer.” He gave the coin a flip, and it landed on heads. Ezra rolled out of bed.

Walking to his closet, he asked the quarter to choose an outfit. “Heads: a hoodie and jeans, tails: khakis and a sweater.”

Heads.

The quarter landed on heads a third time, sending Ezra to brush his teeth and comb his sandy mop of hair.

Ezra walked out of his room to find Sarah sitting on the couch waiting for him. She was way too bright-eyed for the amount of sleep she got.

“Good morning, sunshine!” she said as the bounced off the couch. “What does our day hold for us?”

“Let’s ask the quarter. Quarter: should we go out for breakfast or cook it here. Heads we eat out, tails we cook.” Ezra flipped the coin.

Heads.

“Interesting,” Ezra said, mostly to himself.

“What?”

“That’s, like, the fifth time I’ve flipped the coin since I woke up. It’s been heads every time.”

“That’s crazy. What are the odds?”

“That answer would require someone who had better math grades.”

They walked out of the apartment, across the parking lot, to Ezra’s car. Once they were inside, he asked the quarter where to go. “Heads we go to a diner, tails we go to a coffee shop.” Sarah and he followed the coin with their eyes as it flew up, then back into Ezra’s hand.

Heads.

“Wow! That's amazing! Are you sure you aren’t doing something funny on the flip?”

Ezra passed her the coin. “Here. You flip it the next few times.”

They continued flipping the quarter on the drive,  turning left or right depending on the toss. Heads every time. Sarah spotted a diner as they turned on to 7th Avenue.

They parked across the street from the diner and walked over. Sliding into the first open booth, they grabbed the menus tucked behind the napkin dispenser.

“So, what will we have?” Sarah asked.

“You can have whatever you want. The quarter will tell me. Let’s see… let’s go with… heads: a western omelet, tails: pancakes and bacon. Sarah, flip the coin.”

Sarah pulled the quarter out of her jacket pocket and gave it an enthusiastic flip.  Letting it land on the table, they watched it hit, spin, and come to rest.

Heads.

“Incredible.”

“Western omelet, it is.”

When breakfast was brought to the table, they dug in, waiting until they each had eaten a few bites before continuing the conversation.  Sarah broached the subject first.

“So, what do you make of this quarter turning up heads every time?”

“Crazy, right? I mean, we should have landed on tails at least once by now.”

“Wanna switch coins? Think this one is… broken?”

Ezra laughed. “I don’t think coins break. And we can’t switch. That’s a Missouri quarter. It literally has “discovery” written on the back. I think it’s…  leading us somewhere.”

Sarah sat her fork on her plate, staring at Ezra quizzically.  “Ez, what are you saying?”

“I don’t know! But that coin should not have landed on heads the last twenty times we flipped it! Something is happening, and I’m not sure what that is.”

“But you don’t believe in purpose or destiny. That’s why we are doing this.”

“Maybe. But I am starting to believe in this quarter.”

As Sarah continued to stare incredulously at Ezra, the diner door flew open.

“Somebody call 911! There is a woman standing on the ledge across the street!”

Ezra and Sarah turned from the door back to each other. As Sarah looked at Ezra, she saw something in his eyes. Something that suddenly terrified her.

“Ez, no.”

“Flip the coin.”

“Ezra, they are calling the cops right now.”

“Flip it.”

“There is nothing to do but let someone else handle this.”

The coin still lay on the table between them, where it landed after the last toss. Sarah and Ezra lowered their gaze to it simultaneously, and then both quickly reached for the coin. Ezra’s hand got there a split second sooner. Sarah left her hand on top of Ezra’s.

“Ez, this is not what this game is about.”

“This is EXACTLY what this game is about!”

Ezra yanked his hand out from under Sarah’s, and quickly flipped the coin. Catching it in midair, he slapped it down on the back of his other hand. He kept the coin covered for just a second, and then took his hand away.

Heads.

Ezra jerked his head back toward Sarah, a look in his eye that Sarah had never seen before. There was a calling behind his gaze. She started shaking her head as Ezra said, “Let’s go.”

He was out the door first, Sarah following as the waitress began yelling at them to pay their bill. As the door began to close behind her, Sarah yelled over her shoulder, “I’m sorry! We’ll be back!”

Ezra stopped in the middle of the street, Sarah plowing into his back.  Traffic screeched to a halt on both sides, horns blaring. He was looking up, counting floors.

“Fourteenth floor,” was all he said, and he flipped the coin again, as people leaned out their car windows, yelling obscenities at the maniac stopping traffic.

Heads.

Ezra sprinted into the lobby of the hotel, scanning left and right for the bank of elevators. Finding them, he curved his run to the left, knocking over the full luggage cart being pushed toward the door by a bellman. The door opened as Ezra arrived at the elevator, Sarah close behind.  They jumped in, Ezra hitting the number 14 repeatedly until the doors began to close.

The volume of the moment dropped as the elevator doors closed. An instrumental rendition of Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration” played over the speaker, the ding of the elevator echoed as each floor went by. The sound of Ezra’s heart pounding in his chest.

Sarah knew the moment was spiraling out of control. “Ezra. Give me the quarter. You have to stop.”

“If I were supposed to stop, the quarter would have told me.”

“You sound crazy!”

The elevator stopped on the fourteenth floor. Ezra bounded through the door and came to an abrupt halt. He realized he didn’t know which way to go. The hallway stretched to the left and right, a sea of carpet and doors in both directions. Ezra flipped the coin. As it flew through the air, he said, “Heads: I go left. Tails: right.”

Heads.

Ezra sprinted off to the left, as Sarah stood there helpless, hands on her head, tears of frustration beginning to well in her eyes. Who was this person, and what had he done with her friend? She followed him.

As he ran down the hall, he heard someone yelling in the room to the right. The door was ajar. “Hello?” He yelled from just outside the door. No answer. He flipped the coin.

Heads. 

Ezra pushed open the door and ran into the room.

An older woman was leaning out the window, crying hysterically. She was pleading with the girl on the ledge. “Laura, please! Come back in! Baby, I’m scared!”

Ezra crossed the room in three steps and pulled the lady back from the window. 

“Who are you?” She asked.

“My name is Ezra. I have a quarter.”

The distraught woman could only look at him, certain that she had misheard him.

Sarah was in the room now, as well.

“Ezra, stop it!”

Ezra flipped the coin again.

Heads.

“Well, crap,” was all he could say.

And he climbed out the window.

The cacophony of the city blared all around him as he stepped out onto the ledge, sirens and car horns, people screaming from the street below. The roar of the wind pushing down through the corridor of buildings, filling his ears, threatened to push him right off the ledge before he could even stand straight up and get his back against the building.

Ezra had always been terrified of heights. Step ladders were normally all it would take to send him into a full blown panic attack.  But, to his surprise, here, standing on top of the world, he was absolutely, irrationally fine.  Almost 200 feet above the city street, standing on eighteen inches of concrete, Ezra was… confident. He realized that he could no longer feel his heart pounding in his chest. He was good.

He turned to the girl, who was now staring at him. “Hey, I’m Ezra.”

“I’m Laura. What are you doing out here?”

“My quarter told me to.”

Laura stared at him blankly, waiting for more explanation. None came.

“Laura, why are you out here?”

Laura took a moment to respond. “I just don’t see the point anymore. I mean, what’s the purpose of all this?”

Ezra smiled softly. He looked down at the quarter in his hand, then closed his fingers tightly around it. “Man, I sure get that. Had this same conversation with some of my friends last night. We even came up with this stupid experiment to prove how random and pointless everything is. But in the last hour and a half, I have flipped this quarter maybe twenty five times, Heads I do this, tails I do that. Letting the quarter decide where I go, what I do. Twenty five times, it has come up heads. Every one of those tosses bringing me right here, right now.  In twenty five tosses, I could have ended up anywhere in the city, but here I am, standing on a ledge, having the same conversation I had with my friends last night. How strange is that? What are the odds of that? I don’t know. Maybe there is some purpose or plan.”

Right at that moment, a thought ran through Ezra’s mind. A crazy thought. A thought that, if he shared in any other context, might have gotten him committed.

“Tell you what. Let’s just test it. Let’s flip the quarter one more time. Heads: we go back inside. Tails: we jump. It’s been heads twenty five times in a row. Let’s find out if there is something bigger than us happening here, or is it all just chance.”

Laura just stared at him. Then, turning her gaze toward the city below, she replied, “Sure. Why not?”

For the first time since he stepped out onto the ledge, Ezra felt his heart begin to pound in his chest. This is not how he thought this day would play out. But this was bigger than him. This was purpose. This was destiny. Ezra liked how this felt. He liked how HE felt. He felt like himself, but better. He realized, in that moment, he wanted to be a man with purpose. A man OF purpose.

“Okay, then. Let’s flip.”

Ezra opened his hand, grabbed the quarter, and placed it on his thumb for the flip. He looked at Laura.  

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Ezra flipped the coin into the air. As he did, the strongest gust of the day blew through. Instead of coming straight down, the coin blew out of Ezra’s reach. He stretched his arm out, attempting to catch it, but missed. He watched it fall, still flipping as it faded from his sight.

They both stared down at the street below. Laura slowly raised her head and turned to Ezra. 

“So, twenty five times in a row it came up heads?”

Ezra was still staring down at the street. 

“Yep.”

“You gotta figure if it did it twenty five times, it would’ve done it twenty six, right?”

“Sounds right.”

“Why don’t we assume it did and go inside.”

Ezra smiled at Laura. “Sounds like a plan.”

After an extended conversation with the police, and after a quick once-over by the paramedics, Ezra was free to go.  Sarah and he were walking away from the ambulance when a teenage boy called after them. “Excuse me, sir?”

Ezra turned toward the boy. “Me?”

“Yeah! Did you drop something while you were up there?”

“What?”

“Did you drop something? It looked like you reached for something, and then I heard something hit the ground by me.”

Ezra and Sarah looked at each other, wide-eyed, and turned back to the boy. 

“It was a quarter. A Missouri quarter.”

The boy flipped the coin over in his hand, squinting at it.

“Yep! That’s it!”

The boy walked over to Ezra and handed him the quarter. As he turned to walk away, Ezra called out to him.

“Hey! Did you happen to see what it landed on?”

“The coin? Yeah! Anytime I find a coin, I look to see if it’s heads or tails.”

“Well? What was it?”

The boy smiled. 

“Tails.”