It came with a price

Carol wanted a lot of things. Nearing thirty, she was married with a daughter, middle-class, working at a desk job (9 to 5). Her life was not miserable but not joyful, exactly. Her daughter was four years old, named Kristen.

Lee, Carol's husband, loved her. He was an architect and had on occasion slept with a secretary, but Carol was (so he was sure) his soulmate and he took care not to jeopardize their relationship too much. He was towheaded, and Kristen had inherited his hair.

What Carol wanted, and she was too ashamed to tell anyone this, was money. They had enough money to scrape by, and they weren't going hungry, but Carol wanted more. She wanted a swimming pool, and before it was filled with the clear blue water she wanted to stuff it with crinkly green cash and she wanted to swim in it. She wanted to be able to casually donate billions to charities and still have billions left for herself, to buy every book and record and article of clothing and television set and computer upgrade and God knew what, she just wanted to have the wealth. She told no one this, but she knew that if Satan himself came to her and offered her a trade, her soul for ten billion dollars, she would accept it with no hesitation.

There was no free lunch, she had learnt that early on, and she knew, logically, that there would be a price even for the money. Her soul, if one believed in fairy tales. More likely it would be her free time that flitted away, or her health, or her relationship with Lee or Kristen. None of that mattered to her. Once she made enough money to last her a lifetime, she would be able to fix up those things using it. She had some fifty years left in her life and if earning money cost her ten, well, she'd have forty more afterwards to enjoy it with.

She dreamed about the devil sometimes. She had been raised Protestant, although she wasn't religious; she disliked Christmas and Easter, and they celebrated them only for Kristen's benefit. God was never in her dreams, but the devil was. He didn't scare her much. He didn't look like the devil in the storybooks; he was just a man, but somehow, in the hazy way of dreams, she knew what he really was. He greeted her casually always, and she nodded and smiled. He was like a boss that she was a little bit afraid of. He never threatened or bribed her.

One Tuesday Carol found a lump in her breast. A frantic rush to the hospital later, she was diagnosed with a benign tumor, not cancerous. The scare had shaken her up, and she downgraded to working part-time, bonded with her daughter more. Kristen turned five and they celebrated her birthday. Lee went on a business trip for two months and returned glowing, happy and slightly richer. They were saving. Carol was glad she only had one child: college educations cost so much these days. It was lucky she hadn't gotten cancer after all, or the hospital bills would have been debilitating.

They made enough to buy a second house, and this made Carol excited. They could rent out the smaller one and make all the money back, and then some. Things were going well.

More time passed: five years, to be exact. Kristen turned ten. Lee began to get gray hair. Carol wanted cosmetic surgery, but she told herself it would happen later, once she had enough that the cost would seem like spare change.

A year later, while reluctantly writing a check, she realized that that would never happen. Even if she had billions, like her dream, she would scrimp with pennies. Because pennies added up. That was the kind of mind Carol had.

At that point she quit her job, treated the family to a month in Hawaii, and began to go shopping every other Sunday. It was difficult at first, but within months she began to think of money as simply a means to an end, not as an end itself.

She got pregnant again in September. Her life was still not miserable; it had, she told herself, improved, become more joyful.

Carol still had a coin collection, though, and could spend hours poring over the currency. And she still dreamed about the devil, sometimes.