went down to her favorite juke joint to knock back a few draft beers, shoot some pool and hopefully start a bar fight. Gwen used 77R to pay for some pickled eggs and sausages for dinner before she left the bar. Jack entered the bar with Lola who had just finished her shift. Since Gwen and Lola were good friends, Gwen decided to stay for a while. After all, she had yet to start a bar fight and the night was still young. Jack bought a round of boilermakers and paid for them with a fifty, receiving 77R as a part of his change. “Hmmm… thought Jack. This bill looks familiar for some reason and shoved it down in his pants pocket.” He soon forgot about that however as Gwen finally managed to start a bar fight. He managed to grab Lola by the hand so he could rescue her from the fight but she bashed him in the head with a cuestick, as she had joined forces with Gwen in fighting off a biker gang. Jack, deciding he’d had enough of those two, went to Jack In The Box, ordered a burger and a diet Sprite to take back to his room and paid with 77R.
Sorry. The wrong Eddie seemed to get the bill at one point, so I had to armwave something up.
77R got bundled with other bills for the burger place’s nightly deposit. It was deposited just down the street at a nearby branch of Mega National Bank. Over the following hours, it was loaded into a metal ‘cassette’ and sent out via armored car to a local ATM service company. It ended up in a MNB ATM at the San Jose airport.
Meanwhile, high above…
… Russian Cosmonaut Aleksandr Grigori had his eyes glued to the taught space-suit-clad derriere of Captain Sarah Goodwin for so long that he had not noticed 77R floating out of her wallet and handbag, and was entwined in the clasp of Cosmonaut Topou Topupalo’s Habitation Module. Grigori was so consumed in, and distracted by the international collaborative experiment to document the migration habits of spermatozoa in zero gravity, that he had become so focused in his desire to mate with Captain Goodwin, and not Cpl. Xi Pei Heng that he had long-since devised a sure-fire plan to match himself and Goodwin. While Heng and Topupalo were engaged a space walk placing a two-armed Canadian robot to the orbiting International Space Station, Gregori placed a mild form of bacterial-laden cream in the left arm of Heng’s and the right arm of Topupalo’s Habitation Module, insuring their face-to-face contact would seem logical. While doctoring Topupalo’s Module, Gregori found 77R in the clasp, and thought this would make an excellent gift for his little Nataly, so he rolled it up and placed it in the empty Coke can in his bag. Little did he know that…
…what he thought was a Coke can was in fact a Sprite can. It went to his grateful son Boris, when his father returned from his space mission. “My clumsiness,” the father thought, and went with his eleven-year-old son Boris to the local bank.
The bank took the twenty and gave Boris the equivalent in rubles and kopeks.
The twenty stayed in the foreign currency drawer until the arrival of George Galloway, an international businessman who lived in central California (not far from the Sharps’ mansion). His sojourn in Russia at an end, he decided to exchange his Russian money for American, and what he got included 77R. He left Moscow via Aeroflot, bound for the States, but instead of central California he was going to…
New York to take care of some business and perhaps take in a show or a ballgame.
The flight was long and uneventful. With 77R in his wallet, George arrived at JFK about ten minutes late, briefly stopped at customs, claimed his luggage, and wearily walked out of the terminal to hail a taxi. Fortunately, one pulled up just as he raised his hand.
George opened the door and climbed into the cab’s backseat. “Take me to the Carlyle,” he told the driver.
The cabbie turned around and told him…
he’d heard about a ring of counterfeiters specializing in twenty dollar bills and to be especially wary of any twenties he may have gotten in foreign countries. George wasn’t worried though because he knew the only twenty he had was a beat up lookin’ one he’d gotten in Moscow, our very own counterfeit 77R. George arrived at the Carlyle, paid the cabbie and then tipped the bellman with the counterfeit 77R.
Meanwhile back at the San Jose airport where the real 77R awaited withdrawal from the atm…
Aside: Will 77R end up like the five dollar bill and reside in paralell universes? 
…an attorney named Professor Walter Fields approached, wanting some walking-around money, enjoying his own vacation in and around the San Francisco area. He pikcked up the apparently genuine 77R bill from the ATM and went to several places–a Starbucks, a Wal-Mart, a Dennys, and a clothing store, before hailing a taxi to return to his hotel. He spent the twenty at…
…a lap dancing bar that he’d decided to go visit after dinner.
He sat for a while in the bar when his attention was drawn to a striking brunette who was sat at the bar, he wandered across, ordered a drink and made small talk with her.
After about 20 minutes she asked him if he’d like a ‘special’ performance. This took him totally by surprise but he readily agreed and ‘Clare’ took him into a back room where she quickly removed her…
lapdog from the loveseat he was sitting on and performed her stripper version of “I’m A Little Teacup” for Walter’s enjoyment. Walter having spent all his money, returned to his hotel. 77R stayed in the vault at the the lap dancing bar for several days, until the club’s owner…
…Leonard Lewis, passed out cold and fell from his desk chair, from which he was leaning backwards at a dangerous angle. The combined effects of cocaine, Jack Daniels, and fellatio was too much for his central nervous system to handle. The impact of his skull reverberated through the office, in perfect tempo to 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop,” which happened to be playing at the time. Lexxxie Desire, who assumed the stripper name over her given name of Janice O’Donahue, was suddenly freed from the temporary confines under Leonard’s desk, and quickly scrambled out of this den of iniquity with an urgency and determination that she had not felt since leaving her parents on the porch of their home in Bellfonte PA only 3 years ago. She quickly realized that she would have to leave the club, the city, and likely the West Coast, and was contemplating her next move, while finishing the Jack and Coke on the desk. At that moment, she spotted the slightly open door to the vault-like safe, next to which Leonard’s body laid prone, his blood pooling into a space-occupying epidural hematoma which would likely end his life without immediate medical attention.
Lexxxie stepped over Leonard, grabbed a stack of cash which contained 77R, and liberated herself from the office and the club. Thursday night at midnight was not a bustling time in the Mission, and she didn’t want to hail a cab from in front of the strip club. As Lexxxie was hungry, so she walked to her favorite Mexican restaurant for a taco before leaving for…
the bus station, where she bought a one-way ticket on the next bus leaving for Las Vegas, which happened to be just ten minutes later.
Lexxxie, not overtroubled at having left Leonard behind to die (she’d always thought he was a creep and a cheapskate, and his spunk tasted something awful), dozed off on the bus and didn’t feel the deft fingers of Barry “Barracuda” Maisden as he relieved her of 77R and the other cash she’d stolen. Sleep tight, darlin’, Barry thought, and thanks for the dough, just before getting off in Yerdov, Calif. Lexxxie shifted uneasily in her seat but didn’t wake - in fact, she began to snore - as the bus continued its way towards the slowly-lightening sky to the east.
Barry had been in Yerdov just twice before, and each time he’d had a great time. He decided he would look up an old friend and stepped into the nearby Dew Drop Inn to see if they had a phone book. They did, and within moments…
Barry ripped it in half. He was a showoff like that. Having ripped the Yerdov phone book in half (ok it was not that impressive) he decided he needed a stiff drink. Barry sauntered up to the bar and ordered a frozen strawberry daquiri and a jack back. He paid for his drink with 77R, telling the bartender to keep the change, and headed across the street to the Motel 6 to get a room and a hooker for the night. Shortly after, the bartender cashed in his tips for the night, an impressive $23.46, that included 77R. He then went…
… directly across the street to the Motel 6 to video Barry’s session with his hooker. Their discrete “interactions” were always prefaced by Barry slipping him a $20 shortly before closing, which cued him to the event. Barry would always pay for two rooms, adjoining, and the video equipment was in place, along with a payment. Knowing he would be making $103.46 for the evening, he bought $20 of weed from Clancy, the night clerk at Motel 6, in return for the bill which happened to be marked 77R.
Clancy stuffed 77R in his pants pocket and watched Barry giddily walk out of the Motel 6 office victoriously waving the bag of weed for all the world to see.
“That dumbass really needs to be more careful,” Clancy thought to himself. “We’re right by a busy road and you never know who could be coming along.”
A couple minutes after Barry’s big score, Clancy felt the need for nicotine. Putting a stop down on the bottom of the front door, he stepped outside and reached for a pack of Camels in his front shirt pocket. He then drew a cigarette from the pack, put it in his mouth, and tilted his head down as he prepared to light the cigarette with the Zippo lighter from his pants pocket. As he did this, Clancy thought he heard the scuffle of feet coming up behind him. He was about to turn around and look up when he felt a sudden sharp pain in the back of his head.
“Did somebody just hit me?” he thought the millisecond before everything went dark.
Clancy’s next conscious thought came about 23 minutes later and was triggered by the sensation of liquid on his face. He groggily came to and noticed he was tied to a chair with a gag around his mouth. He also noticed he was staring into the livid face of…
…an unknown assailant with a large knife!
“Do you give me that pot or—”
“or WHAT?” said a strident female voice in a London accent. Clancy and the assailant saw the reflection of the street light on a police badge abnd a name pin reading TERWILLIGER, W. This was Winifred Terwilliger, a hard-working veteran police officer on the local force.
“Drop the knife!” she demanded, pointing her service revolver between the assailant’s eyes. He obeyed and she handcuffed him. Then she called out to her partner, her husband’s sister-in-law Hermione Terwilliger, also an Englishwoman. Hermione came with her handcuffs as Wiinifred was untying Clancy. They picked up the knife (carefully), Mirandized the two handcuffed men, and hustled them into the radio unit, and drove to the station.
Clancy was in fact on parole. On his parole officer’s advice he pled guilty to possession of marijuana and got a suspended sentence. The assailant wasn’t so lucky; he was sentenced to a year in San Quentin–no parole.
When Clancy was released his personal effects, including his money (with 77R)–but no weapons–were returned to him. When he got back to his motel, he stopped over at the neighboring diner for…
a Jell-O parfait and a sweet iced tea, the special at the diner that night. Clancy paid ClaraSue Faceplant, the waitress with 77R, took his change and went on over to the motel. ClaraSue cashed in her tips for the night, an impressive $21.07 and took 77R as she didn’t want a bunch of small bills tucked inside her bra where she always kept her money. She went on over to the DewDrop Inn because it was Wednesday night which meant…
bingo! Using 77R, she…
…bought six bingo cards and received an adequate supply of markers.
She didn’t win anything, of course, and went home muttering dark oaths.
The operators of the bingo night bundled up the receipts and deposited them, 77R included, in the bank the following morning. Shortly after they left the bank, Eloise Sharp came in with her three youngest children, Marty, Nancy, and Owen; Owen was just starting seventh grade. Eloise took care of some complex business with the bank–she and her husband and most of their fifteen (!) kids lived in a mansion on the outskirts of a nearby town–and she gave Owen the well-traveled 77R as a reward for a 100 on his last math test. A few days later, Owen…
…hit the local Gamestop, where he picked up a copy of the Nintendo DS game “Fossil Fighters,” surrendering 77R to the clerk. 77R spent the night in the till and narrowly missed being made part of the night deposit; it was the sole $20 bll retained as part of the startup “bank” of money in the register for the next day. And it served its term of duty ably, enabling the clerk to make change the next day for a kid named Darren Otterbeary, who was buying a used PSP and some games with a few hundred dollar bills. Darren’s parents would have been astounded to see him with hundred dollar bills; they had no idea he was the biggest pot dealer in the ninth grade at Kennedy Jr High. Darren held on to 77R for the better part of a day before it left his hands, traded for…