Memoir prologue — feedback welcome.

The Samsonite

On March 5th, 2000, I wheeled my bright blue suitcase through Gare du Nord station in Paris, clutching a ticket for the Eurostar to London Waterloo International. I had a seat in coach five because I smoked a pack a day. My handbag bulged with toiletries and pajamas so I could stay overnight in London and go out with my buddy, ‘Beautiful Dora.’ My main preoccupation was where Dora and I would go that night (Notting Hill Arts Club, please).

Inside my Samsonite was one million in American dollars.

The money was in 100-dollar bills so it filled my suitcase two-thirds. Anyone X-raying my bag couldn’t help but notice it was all cash. Before I shut it, a sea of Benjamin Franklins gazed with a look of disquiet at this unscheduled field trip. A thick purple plastic band cosseted each 10K wad.

In case you think I was part of some cult forced into money laundering, or some Kiwi version of the woman off Orange is the New Black, I might mention that I volunteered for this.

That morning I’d gotten a safe cracker to open the hidden wall safe in a property I managed because a client had left it locked with their cash inside. I volunteered to get the cash to the client in London today because my overly adaptable personality reframed this illegal activity into ‘doing what I had to do.’ You know, like any other regular day in the office.

I rolled toward the ticket barrier with narry a care.

No way did I pull myself to aside and slap myself around with a stern, “WTF are you thinking?”

For one thing, we didn’t use acronyms in 2000. And for another, I believed I was invisible… so taking undeclared cash over an international border, without so much as a letter to say whose money it was, posed zero problem.

Steal the client’s money?

No way. Didn’t cross my mind.

There were several other trains further down the platform that could have taken me to Hamburg, Amsterdam, Cologne. I could have been in Poland by sundown. I could have easily absconded with all that cash in my suitcase, no sweat.

Nah, I kept right on rolling.

I cleared check-in with a cigarette at my lips and a total air of indifference. Living in Paris made me a mime artist who smoked a lot, shrugged, and raised my eyebrows to communicate.

I presented my EU passport to the double set of police in their tidy booths. The French police said nothing, the British police bid me a good trip. I took that as ‘good signs.’ I was on the right track. I slipped my trusty passport into my handbag with a sincere “Merci” and genuine “Thank you.”

A sudden thought hit me: if Notting Hill Arts Club was on the cards tonight, I really ought to grab a bottle of Veuve Clicquot at the kiosk after customs… to drink at Dora’s flat before going out. I could squeeze it into my Samsonite. The Benjamin Franklins could bunch up a little.

I wasn’t panicked that I’ll be grabbed or arrested because, as I mentioned, I felt invisible. I believed I could slink around the whole world unnoticed if I chose because that’s what worked for me.

I had a severe case of invisibility-invincibility that I am calling, for the purposes of this memoir, Xamnesia.

It’s a heady mix of feeling like a freak and blocking out reality. On March 5th, 2000, I lived in a garret of Place Vendôme and had full-blown Xamnesia. No cure in sight.

I rounded the corner and sleepwalked right up to the customs agent with his muzzled drug-sniffing Alsatian and large, gray X-ray machine. As if every bad choice couldn’t touch me. As if I were cloaked in a cozy, gray fog.

What started me on the path to this — being a weird girl who volunteers to smuggle cash from Paris to London? To see that I have to back way the heck up — airplane-high — to see how this happened.

Lizzie Harwood’s love of her home country, New Zealand, spills over into her writing, as evidenced by the vibrant — and sometimes charmingly quirky — stories she tells. That isn’t to say she doesn’t adore her adopted country, France, where she currently resides with her husband and two children. Lizzie’s Triumph: Collected Stories, launched in February, 2015. When she isn’t writing, she’s neck-deep in editing. Visit EditorDeluxe.com, Lizzie Harwood Books on Facebook, and @lizziehbooks on Twitter for the latest.