In the beginning we were perfect. There were fifty of us. Smooth, crisp, stacked neatly, and held together by a blue paper band. We had no notion of what would happen to us, our fates and destinies in this world. It hadn't even occurred to us that we were different from each other, we were that much alike. We'd been in the dark, really, a succession of dark places, vault to bag to safe. And then one day, we were taken out, and placed in a drawer. There were others there, haughty twenties who understood how the game worked. They'd be back in a bank within forty-eight hours, probably back that very night when the deposit was made. On the other end of the spectrum were the pennies and nickels doomed to being lost beneath couch cushions. Quarters slipped into vending machines without dispensing candy. But what did we know of all that? We thought we'd always be as one.

And then the finger idly ripped through the band. It was like we all simultaneously exhaled without even realizing we had been holding our breath. And then the finger descended again, and two of us were gone. Soon enough more of us were taken. One at a time, in twos and threes, the stack was sent out into the world. I was taken with one other, passed to a dirty hand. It rubbed us together, disturbed at how tightly we clung to the other. Then we were crumpled up, and shoved into a pocket.

Pockets. Wallets. Money clips. Sometimes more unusual places, but still usually constrained in some way. Can't let us fly away, after all. Sometimes I'm washed, tumble-baked in the dark, and when the lights come back on I'm flattened up against the lint filter. Someone finds me like a cereal-box prize, and calls out, "Hey, you want to go out for lunch today?"

When I get out in the open air it's often in a place like this. Wide open table, a person on either side of it. I'm lying on top of Abe who was my neighbor in the wallet, and on the other side of him I can just about catch a glimpse of Alexander. Alex is one of the older tens: symmetrical, stately, reserved. Below him, a thin green-and-white tile and then the table.

"Hey, you think that's enough?" That's the girl talking.

"It's what I always put." I instantly imagine all the other times this scene has happened, them sitting here, when he pulls out an Alex, an Abe, and a George -- today that just happens to be me.

"Yeah, but you had that fancy new sandwich. It cost extra."

On his side, there was bacon, or perhaps that's just the ambient oiliness in the air. Some places are like that. On her side, though, something sweet, with maple syrup.

"Fancy sandwich," he grumble-scoffs.

"How was it, anyway?"

"It was OK."

"Just 'OK'?"

"It was good, but it wasn't twenty-cents-more good."

"How good does it have to be to be twenty-cents good?"

That's an interesting question, I think, because I must be five times better than that.

But he just answers, "I don't know. Depends how close to pay day you ask. I should never have gotten it, letting them think they can just charge more for stuff like that." A glass comes down on my corner, the arc of it pinning me down, condensation soaking into me with a slight acid tingle.

"Well, I'm going to add more if you're not." And another George floats down on top of us. He's been with her a while, I can tell. He smells of vanilla. I'd greet him more politely but I'm still a bit distracted by the glass on my corner.

"Be my guest. Can we go now?"

"Yeah, yeah." And then they're gone.

By the time George has introduced himself to the rest of us a hand slides me out from under the glass and brings us over to the register. But I know by now we won't stay there long, if at all. And indeed vanilla George and I find ourselves in another pocket with some more of our brothers.

Soon our new person is reciting, "Hello I'm April what can I get for you" -- and they think being a dollar bill is boring. We follow her around for a while, then a few of us are back on the table. Same one as when I arrived, if I'm not mistaken. This time the maple syrup side is occupied by a boy, and the other side by an older gentleman. I'm on top of the stack again. My new vanilla friend is back in the pocket.

"You ready to go?"

"Yeah dad."

"Take that dollar bill there. You got your Coke bottle?"

"It's in the car."

"All right, then. To the beach."

Being rolled up like a cigarette and then unfolding slowly as sunny days turn to starry nights and stormy seas is all the action I have seen recently, and I can't say for how long, for repetition and cycles bleed into one another through the fogged glass of the bottle as I bob up and down, to and fro.

Perhaps it is just being out of circulation, like a nickel or penny, lost and forgotten in the fold of a sofa, just like the Abes had warned us, and we Georges always think of ourselves more like the Abes and Alexes than our metallic brethren. They just become worn and fuzzy, slowly losing definition as oxidation further ages them, but we, we grow rough around the edges, get rips, taped up, written on, stained and cleaned. We develop ... character.

I once asked this old and worn George -- or really two Georges, half of one, half of another, taped, translucent and browning in the middle, and his lips met not in the pencil-perfect straight line we all know but in a Mona-Lisa-smile -- about that, about character, and I was still fresh and unstained and relatively crisp. Not the question but that I asked it amused him; coming from those identical blue-wrapped bundles we all act like a theme and variations, but without the variations, and if we're all so the same, how do we end up so different? This George just grunted between his taped lips at his tears and stains and folds, the scars that made him him rather than me. This George talked of his past, which we do not usually do; it's the episodes and exchanges that matter in the now, that tell us our worth.

We do not all come from the blue bands, though, this George whispered. Sometimes the edges are too rough, the watermark too bold, or something in the grain just skew, but he knew and even confirmed there are those who look and talk almost just like us and get passed around in pockets and drawers all the same but who are counterfeit. So if they do not come from the same place, I asked, do they end up at the bank as well? When their time is up what happens to them? This George did not know. But all of this was before I found myself trapped by a perspiring glass, before April, before being pocketed and taken to the shore for a boy's class project.

Is there something more beyond that last return to the vault, I wonder as I bob. Is there something of me that will end up in a later George, or will I become an Abe or Alex or Andrew? And when is the end -- when I am cut beyond recognition and repair, when I bleed to faintness? Or do I just end up trampled and buried?

The current shifts and the tides start to carry me back toward land.

It's been a good run, sunning myself in the Gulf. Bobbing on the waves. Admiring the breathtaking spectacle of a million stars, at night. Waving howdy-do to the occasional passing shark or octopod. It's early in the morning, but then it's never too early for cephalopods. Or fishermen, it seems. The shadow of the boat blocks the rising sun, and it's back to the grind of daily commerce.

They open the bottle, pull me out, find the ink that kid put on me, and I'm folded up and put away. Returning to that way of life, with brief glimpses of daylight, and long murmurings in the dark, on somebody's hip. Handbags are nicer. There's more room, for one thing. More company.

Just the other day I was chatting with a safe deposit box key ... But that's another tale.

This day, sometime in early October, I think (though it's hard to keep track of the days when you're on vacation), as soon as the fishermen hit the beach, my new person goes off in search of his girl.

I must have spent hours in his pocket, under a pile of clothes in the hot sun. Not as hot as it would have been in July, but hot enough. And then, here he comes again. Footfalls, rummaging around, and I'm out, blinking in the glorious daylight. Handed over to the girl, who's ... ahem ... most deliciously clad in next to nothing.

And I get a ride, somewhere, under that next to nothing. Next to the nothing. Next to that which is very much not nothing. Nicely bouncy, crumply; I wonder if the corners and folds are uncomfortable, but she doesn't seem to mind.

I can hear her speaking, partly through the garment, partly through the bones. "Ooh, I've never had ginger ice cream," she says.

And then I'm out in the sun again. The ice cream guy is smiling, unable to take his eyes off of where I've just appeared from, and he nearly misses me when she offers. "Jimmy found this in a bottle, out on the Gulf." There's an awkward exchange; ice cream cone for a bill, an ever so brief electric moment of touching fingers, and she turns and walks back the way we came. Leaving me with a new person.

"Lucky guy, that boyfriend of hers," he says under his breath. "And not just for finding the bill. I wonder what she'd look like if the ice cream went where that dollar was." I spend the rest of the day in the front pocket of his jeans.

And that night.

And the next day and night.

And eventually, another trip through the laundry, which makes me crispy again. He finds me, as usual, keeping company with the lint in his dryer.

He shoves us -- a wadded-up handful of us -- into his front pocket. He still smells a bit like ice cream, just going off. A sweet, milky stench, like a garbage bin at a park that's been left to rot in the July sun. Under the mouldering ice cream, though, is a different smell. A nervous, sweaty smell. His hand, when he reaches to check for us, is damp. He whistles tunelessly to himself.

And then there's a blast of sound, and even through his trousers, we can see flashing lights.

"Hey, honey, whatcanIgetya?" This woman sounds nothing like "Hello I'm April." This woman's voice sounds even less interested in the answer to her questions.

"Er." The ice cream man rubs the fronts of his trousers, crinkling us even more. "Absolut Mango and soda?"

"What are you, queer? We got Citron, that okay?" We hear the woman walk away on clattery shoes.

"No," mutters the ice cream man. "Not queer, stupid bitch." He reaches into the pocket and pulls us out with a damp hand. He smoothes us on the table, rubbing the top George compulsively.

"Tenbucks, hon." The waitress is back.

"I'm not queer," says the ice cream man. "I just like ..."

"Tenbucks."

A splash of fizzy, alcoholic fruit lands on us, seeping into our threads. One of the Georges complains softly. Another suggests that things are about to get worse. There's a pessimist in every stack. Ice cream man writes something quickly on each of us, thumbing through as fast as he can.

The ice cream man grabs us up suddenly and shoves us in the top of his pocket. Most of us are still hanging partly out, and we wonder if we're going to end up trampled in the cigarette ash and spilled drinks on the floor.

The music gets louder, and the lights flicker on and off, more or less in time to the beat. The loudspeaker announces something unintelligible, but the crowd begins to cheer, a deep, throaty roar that swells with the music.

The ice cream man grabs a handful of us from the top of his pocket and jostles his way forward. We can feel the thrum of the bass in his hand. He reaches up and shoves two of us in a string. A string attached to a woman's thigh. She reaches down and touches the ice cream man's hair.

"My number," he tries to say. "On the bills." But she's gone, over to the next upturned face.

And then it's dark and quiet and we're surrounded by leather that smells of jasmine and musk. The pounding of the music fades into the background; shoes tap dully on concrete.

And then, a scream, and we're ripped from our safe, sweet-smelling leather den. The woman falls to the ground, moans, and is utterly still. I float down, landing in a pool of red, stuck now to the coarse asphalt, waiting.