Authors: Scott Carter
“Smart man.”
“Brilliant man. Do you want to be rich, Dave?”
Dave raised his pint glass. “It would help.”
“Help what?”
“Help with my financial responsibilities. I could get a home, travel, the usual things.”
“When you say financial responsibilities, you mean your father?”
“Yeah.”
“And is being an accountant going to provide you with these financial freedoms, the freedom to provide for the next generation?”
“Not the way I’m doing it.”
They looked at each other for a moment without saying anything. Thorrin deliberately backed off, and Dave hoped he wouldn’t ask another question.
Thorrin drained his pint and rose from his seat with the empty glass held only by his fingertips. “The thing about us is, we need each other.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. You’ve got the gift of luck, but you act like an unlucky person. Without me, you’d never realize your gift.”
“What do you mean ‘act like an unlucky person’?”
“I read a study on luck. The researchers gathered up fifty people that claimed to be lucky and fifty people that claimed to be unlucky. Now you couldn’t just sign up for this. Each person had to have some proof behind their claim. A lottery winner, gambling addict, those types of things. They took these hundred people, gave them each a copy of the same magazine and told them their task was to count how many photos there were. Now, the unlucky people immediately started with questions. ‘What if it’s just a headshot?’ ‘What if it’s in black and white?’ ‘Does a full spread photo count as two pictures?’ All fifty of the unlucky people, every last one of them counted forty-seven photos, which was correct. Every one of the lucky people, bless their souls, stopped at page two, where a sticky note said, ‘Stop counting, return this magazine to the instructor and collect your two hundred dollar prize.’ Unlucky people are so focussed on meeting tasks, pleasing people, taking the straightforward path, that they miss the opportunities right in front of them. And that’s you. You never saw what you were capable of until I came along.”
Dave was wondering how many sticky notes he’d missed over the years when Thorrin lightened the mood with a smile. “Do you like movies?”
“I do.”
“I have over a hundred thirty-five millimetre prints. How do you feel about
On the Waterfront
?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Well you’re going to.”
And they did. They watched
On the Waterfront, Strangers on a Train
and
The 400 Blows.
They watched almost six hours of movies in a screening room with high-back seats, surround sound and pint after pint. Thorrin worked his way through three buckets of popcorn while Dave wondered if he was ever going to forget this visit.
Eighteen
Watching T.V. wasn’t an option any more. Dave had tried it as a late-night tool to distract his mind, but now he couldn’t tolerate the fantasy. The predictable storylines, repetitious character traits and exaggerated moments used to entertain him, occasionally even thrill him, but now they were just offensive. Cop shows with their glamorized violence, sitcoms with their cookie-cutter characters making the same mistakes week after week in the name of allegory, and “Reality T.V.” dripping with melodrama that tapped into the most basic instincts. Television provided packaged living organized into any genre he felt like watching, but watching wasn’t living, and after living the destruction of his workplace and the death of his colleagues, no matter how much he wanted to lose himself in T.V., it had lost its magic.
With the T.V. off, he could hear his neighbours arguing about spending too much and staying out too late until the voices rose to inaudible roars. Dave hated yelling, so he walked to the window for some deep breaths to remind him of sleep. He wanted it more than anything, and not just for rest. He wanted to sleep so he could forget, just for a night, the tragedy that had befallen him and his coworkers. He wanted to wake up without images of their broken bodies and without the guilt that circumstances had allowed him to survive. But he couldn’t sleep. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw flashes of the truck and horrible details, like the way Shannon’s broken jaw drooped to the floor and the way Mr. Richter’s hands looked like they were reaching for something. He knew the truck had crashed into his work simply because it could, but it didn’t stop it from being awful.
The door buzzer startled him. He looked through the peep-hole, surprised to see Amy, and opened the door. She wore a black bubble jacket with a faux-fur collar and flashed a mischievous smile that he didn’t know was in her repertoire.
“I want to take you somewhere,” she said.
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
They hustled from the apartment through a steady rain and stepped into a four-door white Honda from the late eighties. The exterior was covered in spots of rust, but the inside held up surprisingly well. Dave guessed one hundred thousand kilometres.
“You know I don’t normally drive? Especially not in this weather.”
“I’m honoured.”
“You think I’m weird, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Yeah, you do. I can tell by the way you’re looking at me.”
“I don’t think you’re weird; I think you overanalyze things.”
She looked at him like he’d spat in her face. “I’ve been in five car accidents. I broke my collarbone once, and I’ve had whiplash twice.”
“Then maybe I should drive.”
Her eyes warned that jokes like that weren’t welcome. “The insurance company labelled every accident the fault of the other drivers.”
“Well, driving is dangerous.”
“Yeah? Have you ever been in a car accident?”
The car pulled into a large parking lot. There were so many cars that it took a lap to find a spot. Amy parked beside a black van emblazoned with a mural of a motorcycle riding over the clouds.
“Are you excited?”
“I’m curious.”
They stepped out of their respective doors to see a sign for “Bingo” in gaudy fluorescent lights. Dave waited a moment to make sure that she wasn’t walking across the lot to what looked like a diner before following.
“Your surprise is a bingo hall?”
“That’s right.”
“
Now
I think you’re weird.”
“Yeah? Remember you said that in an hour, because I’m going to prove to you that you’re lucky.”
“At bingo?”
“Follow me.”
She led the way up a makeshift red carpet, past a man holding a fully dressed hot dog in each hand and into the hall. The place reeked of desperation. Men and women with cigarettes dangling from their mouths and plastic cups of beer in their hands traded barbs as they hit their bingo cards with their dabbers as if they could win a million dollars. The smell of deep fried food and the veil of cigarette smoke made Dave wince in disgust as he sat beside Amy at a table. She already had four bingo cards for each of them.
The bingo reader yelled, “B Eight.”
Dave shifted his weight to avoid Amy’s frantic dabs. “B what?” he asked.
“Eight,” she said and passed him a dabber.
A forty-something woman beside Dave with a face like a prune flashed him a stern look for infringing on her cards with his elbow.
“Sorry,” he said. He leaned back from the smell of her perfume.
Amy spread his cards out in front of him for faster dabbing. “Haven’t you ever played bingo before?”
“When I was a kid.”
The bingo reader yelled again, “G Forty-seven.”
Amy moved from one card to the next in rhythm. Her eyes were focussed and unfazed by the chaos around her. Dave gave up.
“So what’s your game then?”
He looked at her with care. Her eyes looked bluer, more expressive and more alive than they had at her place. She dabbed the top of his hand.
“What’s
your
game?”
“I don’t have one.” He wiped at the ink the dabber had left.
“Sure you do. What do you bet on?”
“I don’t bet.”
“I Fourteen,” the bingo reader announced to a series of grumbles.
Amy dabbed her cards then Dave’s. “You don’t gamble at all?”
“Never.”
“Never? Not cards, horses, football?”
“I’ve never been interested.”
“O Sixty-eight.”
The woman beside Dave jumped out of her seat, and her eyes bulged as her chair tipped to the floor. “Bingo! Bingo!” The peak of her teased hair seemed to reach for the ceiling as she pumped her fists in the air. She might as well have won the lottery.
Dave turned to Amy. “Looks like
she’s
the lucky one.”
“You just weren’t paying attention.”
“I think I’m done.”
“No.”
“I’ll watch.”
“No, you have to play.”
A deep male voice that Dave associated with strip clubs came over the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, today’s door prize winning number is three, eight, one…”
Amy’s eyes widened. “Let me see your ticket,” she said, tapping his arm.
“What?”
“Your door ticket, the stub.”
“What about yours?”
“I want yours.”
The announcer continued to milk the crowd’s greed. “Once again people, that’s three, eight, one…”
Dave searched through his pockets, past his keys, wallet, a gum wrapper and bank machine slip before pulling out the stub. “Here you go.”
Amy scanned the ticket. “Three, eight, one…”
“Four,” the announcer continued. “Seven, five. Three, eighty-one, four, seventy-five.”
Amy mouthed the numbers as he spoke.
“Those are your winning numbers, people.”
“Three, eighty-one, four, seventy-five.” Amy jumped from her seat and waved the stub as high as she could. “He won, he won.” She turned to Dave and pointed a finger at him as if he were a celebrity. “Right here, he’s the winner.”
Embarrassment made him want to hide from the pointing fingers, the sneers of jealousy, and the announcer waving him up on stage. He would have left if Amy hadn’t grabbed him by the hand and led him to his prize.
Dave didn’t say another word until they were back in the car. He couldn’t stand the bingo hall’s incessant buzz of chatter and stink of sweat, but watching Amy made him happy. The way she interacted with people showed a different side of her. Her face was flushed, her hair was a little messy, and it looked good on her. She started the car.
“Are you excited?”
“I’m not big on attention.”
The car pulled out of the lot, and she honked twice in excitement. “I told you I’d prove it to you.”
Dave squeezed the sides of the box sitting in his lap. “Winning a high-speed blender does not make me lucky.”
“Do you know how many people were in there?”
“You’re reading too much into it.” He put the box into the back seat.
“You still don’t believe, do you?”
“Not at all.” He wanted to tell her to keep her eyes on the road, but that felt rude.
“Well, you should.”
“Look, I don’t know whether to be flattered or creeped out by this belief that you and your brother have, but you’ve got to listen to me. I’m not lucky.”
“No?”
“That’s right.”
The car began to accelerate. The engine was not used to working hard, so it growled as they picked up speed.
“I’ll prove it to you.”
The speedometer read ninety-five kilometres per hour. A tingling in Dave’s stomach warned him that this wasn’t fun.
“Slow down.”
“We’ll be fine.”
Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel as the car picked up speed towards an intersection with a red light.
“We’ll be dead.” Dave raised his voice. “Now slow down.”
“No.”
He looked at the red light, then for cars coming from the west or east. Then Amy shut her eyes.
“Are you crazy? Open your eyes.”
“No.”
“Open your fucking eyes.”
He leaned towards her like he might grab the steering wheel, but they were too close to the intersection, so he raised his forearms in front of his face and braced himself for contact. But the contact never happened. They blew through the intersection unscathed except for the fear that left his stomach nauseous. Amy slowed down before pulling the car over to the side of the road. Her face glowed.
“Tell me you’re not lucky now.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No, I just believe.”
The words slowed the moment. Things began to come back into focus, and his heart steadied. Her belief in him felt good.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“Kiss you? You almost killed me.”
She leaned into him and kissed him until he kissed back. They were gentle kisses, and they followed each other’s lead until she pulled away. They looked at each other for a moment. Dave appeared surprised but stricken, and Amy flashed a closed-lipped smile before she leaned towards him again.
The drive back to his apartment felt like a natural progression for both of them. Amy put on a CD of ambient music, and they drove without saying a word. They hoped the momentum would carry them back to the apartment with the same feelings.
Once inside the apartment, Dave began to tighten up. It had been awhile since he’d had sex with anyone when he was sober, and even longer since he’d had sex with someone he’d liked before he’d lusted. A part of him wanted to sit down and listen to Amy tell stories about her childhood and high school years for the rest of the night.
She kissed him before he took off his jacket. Unlike the gentle kisses in the car, her lips moved with passion. There was no talking at that point, and for the first time since the accident, Dave enjoyed being alive.
Nineteen
The doorbell woke Dave from a deep sleep. It buzzed again, and he sat up to look at Amy’s naked back before heading to the door. He didn’t bother putting a shirt on. He expected a salesman, maybe a charity asking for donations or at worst a neighbour, but instead, he opened the door to see Grayson. Exaggerated blinks, as if he were dreaming, failed to make the image go away.
“Good morning, Dave,” Grayson said, raising a styrofoam cup of coffee to eye level.
“Grayson.” He thought of being beaten to death, stabbed in the stomach, or shot in the back of the head. “Ah, just give me a minute, I want to throw on a shirt. Come on in.”